This article uses Nigeria as a case study to examine the nature and consequences of the ethical dilemma African journalists face as a result of conflicting obligations to their profession and socio-politicaI environments. Professional skills and codes of conduct used by African journalists are adapted from Western libertarian news media philosophy that prescribes news media that are independent from the government. But African governments favor the development journalism philosophy that calls for a close working relationship between the news media and (...) government because of political instability and national development objectives. The conflicting expectations between the two philosophies create a clash of loyalties and ultimately an ethical dilemma for African journalists. (shrink)

PurposeBanks spend thousands of dollars on several CSR activities and communicating the same to defined stakeholders becomes a strategic task that must be artfully managed by the banks. Bank web sites now represent a useful communication platform in the reportage of CSR activities. This paper aims to report on CSR reportage amongst four leading banks in Ghana. Two of them have won CSR industry awards while the others have not.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was adopted using Hinson et al.'s online CSR (...) framework to analyze CSR reportage in the four banks. Two of them had previously won CSR awards at a Ghana Banking Awards ceremony in the last five years, and two had not. The data drawn from the banks were analyzed within and across the four cases.FindingsAgricultural development bank, the bank with the most socially responsible bank of the year awards, has the weakest online CSR reportage in the study with just one CSR report online.Originality/valueCSR communication is a rapidly evolving field of scholarship and this study adds to the extant literature from a developing economy banking perspective. (shrink)

A large-scale field experiment in Rotterdam, Netherlands, tested whether nudging could increase public transport use. During one work week, 4000 commuters on six bus lines, received a free travel card holder. On the three bus lines in the experimental condition, the card holders displayed a social label that branded bus passengers as sustainable travelers because of their bus use. On the three bus lines in the control condition, there was no such message on the card holders. Analysis of the number (...) of rides per hour showed that the intervention led to a change from pre-intervention to post-intervention period that was estimated to be 1.18 rides per day greater on experimental lines than on control lines. This experiment shows that public transport operators can increase public transport use by incorporating messages that positively label passengers as sustainable travelers in their communication strategies. (shrink)

The present paper discusses Grosseteste’s reception of Proclus’ Elements of Physics (EP) in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics VI. In the first section I examine the method with which Grosseteste reconstructs Aristotelian texts. The second section initiates a study of the way Grosseteste evaluates Proclus’ EP on the basis of this method. Thus, the third section brings out Grosseteste’s moderate criticism of Proclus’ treatment of certain Aristotelian conclusiones and assumptions. The fourth section extends this study to the conceptual relation between (...) contiguity, continuity and succession. Finally, Grosseteste’s evaluation of Proclus’ tendency to omit, divide and merge Aristotelian conclusiones is studied in the fifth section. I conclude that Grosseteste is a careful and moderately critical reader of Proclus. He aptly grasps the dependence of the EP on Physics VI and conceives of Proclus’ EP as a forerunner of his own method of reconstructing Aristotelian texts. (shrink)

Although John Black Grant (1890-1962) is well known among historians of public health and an older generation of public health practitioners, he has not received the wider recognition that he deserves, especially as the solutions that he proposed to public health problems some 70 to 80 years ago still apply. Several factors inhibited Grant from being recognized as a public health leader. To begin with, the general policy of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division (IHD), where he worked for more (...) than 40 years (1917-62), was that its employees should keep a low profile and not advertise their accomplishments. More importantly, the Foundation itself was unsure of Grant's place in their history, as .. (shrink)

In 1967, the American Geographical Society awarded Marston Bates with one of its highest honors, the Charles P. Daly medal. In giving this award, they noted that Marston Bates wears an almost bewildering variety of scholarly hats, and all of them become him. He is at one and the same time biologist, zoologist, medical ecologist, naturalist, humanist, and, unquestionably, also geographer manqué.... He possesses a gift of clear and literate exposition; his style displays a philosophic bent, an acuity of perception, (...) and a spark of humor that together make for delightful reading. Bates was an early bioethicist, in the sense that he was one of the first thinkers in the 20th century to... (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by policymakers and (...) practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.One expert's framing of the mission of public health may help improve understanding of the range of hazards for which to be legally prepared. These hazards include urgent realities — such as chronic disease, injury, disabilities, conventional communicable diseases, and an aging and obese population — and urgent threats, such as pandemic influenza, natural disasters, and terrorism. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by policymakers and (...) practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.One expert's framing of the mission of public health may help improve understanding of the range of hazards for which to be legally prepared. These hazards include urgent realities — such as chronic disease, injury, disabilities, conventional communicable diseases, and an aging and obese population — and urgent threats, such as pandemic influenza, natural disasters, and terrorism. (shrink)

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.

This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast (...) with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4–251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed. (shrink)

An eminent scholar of Carolingian history, Rosamond McKitterick, recently remarked that for specialists in Carolingian art it is currently “unfashionable to link manuscript images with anything the artist has seen in real life.” Clearly, there have been important exceptions to this observation, but it has some ring of truth; indeed, it could be expanded into the contention that art historians are reluctant not only to associate imagery of the period with what its artists might have seen but even to connect (...) it with what the artists might otherwise have known of situations or events in contemporary society. (shrink)

When an event occurs which involves a change from a state ϕ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\phi $$\end{document} to a state not-ϕ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\phi $$\end{document}, when does the change occur? This is known in the philosophical literature as the problem of the moment of change. I discuss a puzzle based on this problem raised by Sextus Empiricus in Against the Physicists. I compare two lines of solution, one provided by (...) Hans Kamp’s work on the logic of change and the other inspired by Aristotle’s claim that change cannot happen at an instant. I end with a discussion of these solutions vis-à-vis the account of cessation implicatures proposed by Altshuler and Schwarzschild. (shrink)

For courses in Business Ethics A fresh approach to the assumptions that underlie business practices Two recent events — the 2008 economic meltdown and the ongoing concentration of the nation's wealth in the hands of a very small percentage of the population — have led many people to question a number of basic assumptions about business, corporations, and the workings of contemporary free-market capitalism in a global economy. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and a hypothetical contemporary CEO,Socrates (...) Comes to Wall Street leads students to think critically about perspectives and practices that are taken as “givens” in most American business schools and corporations. Employing this original and provocative approach, author Thomas White seeks to encourage the next generation of business leaders to be more astute about the implications of their actions, and to act more prudently and more fairly than we have seen in the recent past. (shrink)

This is the companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' highly acclaimed work Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Four ground-breaking papers which laid the basis for his understanding of Socrates are collected here, in revised form: they examine Socrates' elenctic method of investigative argument, his disavowal of knowledge, his concern for definition, and the complications of his relationship with the Athenian democracy. The fifth chapter is a new and provocative discussion of Socrates' arguments in the Protagoras and Laches. (...) The epilogue 'Socrates and Vietnam' suggests that Socrates was not, as Plato claimed, the most just man of his time. The papers have been prepared for publication by Professor Myles Burnyeat with the minimum of editorial intervention. (shrink)

One way to interpret the work of Joshua Greene (2001; 2008; 2014) is that the wave of empirical research into moral decision-making is a way for us to become more confident in our ability to gain moral knowledge. We argue that empirical research into moral judgment has shown (both survey-based and brain-based) that the grounds of moral judgment are opaque on several dimensions. We argue that we cannot firmly grasp what the morally relevant/irrelevant features of a decision context are, understand (...) which cognitive system responds to said features, and further know that we are actually basing our judgment upon what we take to be the morally relevant features. That is, we argue that moral judgment is very much like other kinds of judgment: Deeply influenced by facts about the decision-context and the decision-maker. However, if moral judgment is merely the exercise of our general judgment making faculty, we shouldn’t be surprised by this result. We conclude by considering what this means for our practice of making moral judgments. (shrink)

Putnam discusses each of the fifteen odes found in the book, studying the work both as a whole and as a series of interactive units.

I argue that the arguments presented in Socrates’ dialogue with the personified Laws of the Crito are arguments Socrates endorses and relies upon when deciding to remain in prison. They do not, however, entail blind obedience to every court verdict, nor do they provide necessary and sufficient conditions for resolving every dilemma of civil disobedience. Indeed, lacking definitional knowledge of justice, we should not expect Socrates to be able to offer such conditions. Instead, the Laws present an (...) argument that is sufficient for resolving Socrates’ specific dilemma, showing us how Socrates can deliberate and act despite his lack of knowledge. (shrink)

The article is about the poetic-practical philosophy of dialog of Lesia Ukrainka, which is manifested in the dramatic creativity of the prominent poetess, her translation activity and the concept of “person-nature relations”. In the text it is shown that Lesia Ukrainka created a new genre of contemporary drama on the basis of application of “Socratic dialog”, which started an important direction in contemporary literature and coincides with a leading trend of world philosophy associated with the paradigmatic turning point from the (...) philosophy of subjectivity to the philosophy of inter-subjectivity. The kinship of the Socratic philosophy of dialog and “Socratic drama” is also referred to. The author also showed that the meaning of Socratic dialog of Lesia Ukrainka in the resolution of the main problems of world outlook of modernity and the role of argumentation, in particular, the method of elenctics, the realization of such notions as “truth” and “verity”, which is particularly important the modern day situation of “posttruth” and “post-morality”. Against the background of the global environmental crisis, it is important to look at the way how Lesya Ukrainka suggests treating nature as a subject and partner in dialogue. This paradigm continues and deepens the Romantic concept of nature as a partner in a conversation and co-creator of the liber mundi ("the book of the world"). It also opens the opportunity to apply hermeneutical methods of understanding nature as a common world (Mitwelt) of communication, love and creativity. The article also analyzes the topic of dialogue between cultures, as well as perception and understanding of another culture as a subject in a dialogue. We can see this focus in Lesya Ukrainka's approach to translation of poetic texts produced by cultures from distant places and epochs. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the (...) subsequent history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

Many critics bemoan the lack of civic engagement in America. Tocqueville's ''nation of joiners'' seems to have become a nation of alienated individuals, disinclined to fulfill the obligations of citizenship or the responsibilities of self-government. In response, the critics urge community involvement and renewed education in the civic virtues. But what kind of civic engagement do we want, and what sort of citizenship should we encourage? In Socratic Citizenship, Dana Villa takes issue with those who would reduce citizenship to community (...) involvement or to political participation for its own sake. He argues that we need to place more value on a form of conscientious, moderately alienated citizenship invented by Socrates, one that is critical in orientation and dissident in practice. Taking Plato's Apology of Socrates as his starting point, Villa argues that Socrates was the first to show, in his words and deeds, how moral and intellectual integrity can go hand in hand, and how they can constitute importantly civic--and not just philosophical or moral--virtues. More specifically, Socrates urged that good citizens should value this sort of integrity more highly than such apparent virtues as patriotism, political participation, piety, and unwavering obedience to the law. Yet Socrates' radical redefinition of citizenship has had relatively little influence on Western political thought. Villa considers how the Socratic idea of the thinking citizen is treated by five of the most influential political thinkers of the past two centuries--John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss. In doing so, he not only deepens our understanding of these thinkers' work and of modern ideas of citizenship, he also shows how the fragile Socratic idea of citizenship has been lost through a persistent devaluation of independent thought and action in public life.Engaging current debates among political and social theorists, this insightful book shows how we must reconceive the idea of good citizenship if we are to begin to address the shaky fundamentals of civic culture in America today. (shrink)

Most current work in epistemology deals with the evaluation and justification of information already acquired. In this book, Jaakko Hintikka instead discusses the more important problem of how knowledge is acquired in the first place. His model of information-seeking is the old Socratic method of questioning, which has been generalized and brought up-to-date through the logical theory of questions and answers that he has developed. Hintikka also argues that philosophers' quest for a definition of knowledge is ill-conceived and that the (...) entire notion of knowledge should be replaced by the concept of information. He offers an analysis of the different meanings of the concept of information and of their interrelations. The result is a new and illuminating approach to the field of epistemology. (shrink)

_Socrates_ presents a compelling case for some life-changing conclusions that follow from a close reading of Socrates' arguments. Offers a highly original study of Socrates and his thought, accessible to contemporary readers Argues that through studying Socrates we can learn practical wisdom to apply to our lives Lovingly crafted with humour, thought-experiments and literary references, and with close reading sof key Socratic arguments Aids readers with diagrams to make clear complex arguments.

Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith offer a comprehensive historical and philosophical interpretation of, and commentary on, one of Plato's most widely read works, the Apology of Socrates. Virtually every modern interpretation characterizes some part of what Socrates says in the Apology as purposefully irrelevant or even antithetical to convincing the jury to acquit him at his trial. This book, by contrast, argues persuasively that Socrates offers a sincere and well-reasoned defense against the charges he faces. First, the (...) authors establish a consensus of ancient reports about Socrates ' moral and religious principles and show that these prohibit him from needlessly risking the condemnation of the jury. Second, they consider each specific claim made by Socrates in the Apology and show how each can be construed as an honest effort to inform the jurors of the truth and to convince them of his blamelessness. The arguments of this book are informed by a critical review of the scholarly literature and careful attention to the philosophy expressed in Plato's other early dialogues. (shrink)

This long-awaited study of the most enigmatic figure of Greek philosophy reclaims Socrates' ground-breaking originality. Written by a leading historian of Greek thought, it argues for a Socrates who, though long overshadowed by his successors Plato and Aristotle, marked the true turning point in Greek philosophy, religion and ethics. The quest for the historical figure focuses on the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues, setting him in sharp contrast to that other Socrates of later dialogues, where he (...) is used as a mouthpiece for Plato's often anti-Socratic doctrine. At the heart of the book is the paradoxical nature of Socratic thought. But the paradoxes are explained, not explained away. The book highlights the tensions in the Socratic search for the answer to the question 'How should we live?' Conceived as a divine mandate, the search is carried out through elenctic argument, and dominated by an uncompromising rationalism. The magnetic quality of Socrates' personality is allowed to emerge throughout the book. Clearly and forcefully written, philosophically sophisticated but entirely accessible to non-specialists, this book will be of major importance and interest to all those studying ancient philosophy and the history of Western thought. (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for (...) many of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends (...) that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue. (shrink)

To teach that being ethical requires knowing foundational ethical principles – or, as Socrates claimed, airtight definitions of ethical terms – is to invite cynicism among students, for students discover that no such principles can be found. Aristotle differs from Socrates in claiming that ethics is about virtues primarily, and that one can be virtuous without having the sort of knowledge that characterizes mathematics or natural science. Aristotle is able to demonstrate that ethics and self-interest may overlap, that (...) ethics is largely compatible with common sense, and that Aristotle’s virtuous person can make ethical decisions rationally. Case studies can help students improve their ethical perception and keep their values from being overwhelmed by corporate culture. (shrink)

Socrates’ refutations of Thrasymachus in Republic I are unsatisfactory on a number of levels which need to be carefully distinguished. At the same time several of his arguments are more powerful than they initially appear. Of particular interest are those which turn on the idea of a craft, which represents a shared norm of practical rationality here contested by Socrates and Thrasymachus.

Xenophon's portrait is the only one other than Plato's to survive, and while it offers a very personal interpretation of Socratic thought, it also reveals much about the man and his philosophical views.

The Socratic method has a long history in teaching philosophy and mathematics, marked by such names as Karl Weierstra, Leonard Nelson and Gustav Heckmann. Its basic idea is to encourage the participants of a learning group (of pupils, students, or practitioners) to work on a conceptual, ethical or psychological problem by their own collective intellectual effort, without a textual basis and without substantial help from the teacher whose part it is mainly to enforce the rigid procedural rules designed to ensure (...) a fruitful, diversified, open and consensus-oriented thought process. Several features of the Socratic procedure, especially in the canonical form given to it by Heckmann, are highly attractive for the teaching of medical ethics in small groups: the strategy of starting from relevant singular individual experiences, interpreting and cautiously generalizing them in a process of inter-subjective confrontation and confirmation, the duty of non-directivity on the part of the teacher in regard to the contents of the discussion, the necessity, on the part of the participants, to make explicit both their own thinking and the way they understand the thought of others, the strict separation of content level and meta level discussion and, not least, the wise use made of the emotional and motivational resources developing in the group process. Experience shows, however, that the canonical form of the Socratic group suffers from a number of drawbacks which may be overcome by loosening the rigidity of some of the rules. These concern mainly the injunction against substantial interventions on the part of the teacher and the insistence on consensus formation rooted in Leonard Nelson's Neo-Kantian Apriorism. (shrink)

Socrates’ view about human motivation in Plato’s early dialogues has often been called ‘intellectualist’ because, in his account, the motivation for any given intentional action is tied to the intellect, specifically to beliefs. Socratic motivational intellectualism is the view that we always do what we believe is the best (most beneficial) thing we can do for ourselves, given all available options. Motivational intellectualism is often considered to be at the centre of Socrates’ intellectualist account of actions, according to (...) which: (1) we never act against our present judgment about what is best to do; (2) all wrongdoing is due to ignorance; (3) non-rational desires cannot motivate actions; (3) we all desire the good; and (5) no one does wrong willingly. Despite their centrality for Socratic philosophy, interpreters disagree on the exact interpretation of these five claims and of Socrates’ account of motivation. This chapter surveys the interpretative landscape so that the reader may more easily navigate the primary and secondary literature and decide for themselves whether Socrates is a motivational intellectualist and, if so, in what sense. (shrink)

In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master-concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical role in this conceptual shift. Once we understand (...) that our narrow, reductionist focus on “thin” ethical concepts is a contingent historical development, we are, I claim, in a much better position to evaluate it. (shrink)

Socrates was not a moral philosopher. Instead he was a theorist who showed how human desire and human knowledge complement one another in the pursuit of human happiness. His theory allowed him to demonstrate that actions and objects have no value other than that which they derive from their employment by individuals who, inevitably, desire their own happiness and have the knowledge to use actions and objects as a means for its attainment. The result is a naturalised, practical, and (...) demystified account of good and bad, and right and wrong. Professor Reshotko presents a freshly envisioned Socratic theory residing at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and ethics. It makes an important contribution to the study of the Platonic dialogues and will also interest all scholars of ethics and moral psychology. (shrink)

This paper argues that Socrates does not claim to be a political expert at Gorgias 521d6-8, as many scholars say. Still, Socrates does claim a special grasp of true politics. His special grasp (i) results from divine dispensation; (ii) is coherent true belief about politics; and (iii) also is Socratic wisdom about his own epistemic shortcomings. This condition falls short of expertise in two ways: Socrates sometimes lacks fully determinate answers to political questions, and he does not (...) grasp the first principles of politics. (shrink)