Abstract

With this volume all of the late Gregory Vlastos's papers on the philosophy of Socrates have appeared in their final form. As promised in the introduction to Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, this volume contains revised versions of four previously published essays and additional material. Readers of Vlastos's Platonic Studies and SIMP are aware of the elaborate genealogies of these works. These books, which lack cohesion and unity, are collections of independent articles: each is a closely focused study of a central problem that undergoes several stages of development--lecture, journal article, response to criticisms of an article, and so forth. The present collection is taken from the same mold. In relation to SIMP this volume represents less a sequel than a prequel. The three major papers presented here in revised form--"The Socratic Elenchus," "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge," and "The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy"--were published earlier than all but one of the eight chapters of SIMP. Vlastos's original article on the elenchus was a classic like his great article on the Third Man Argument in the Parmenides : both spawned scholarly cottage-industries, and both have been superseded in important respects. Burnyeat notes in his editorial preface that this essay is the most revised, which appears to be true. However, Vlastos has not adequately responded to critics of his central claim that the elenchus can be used constructively to discover and confirm moral truths. The important nonconstructivist interpretation of Hugh Benson is not even mentioned. And the searching critiques by his fellow constructivists Richard Kraut and the team of Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith are addressed in rather piecemeal fashion. Nevertheless, it is useful to have the paper available in book form even with these minimal revisions.