Socratic Paradox

Author(s): Renford Bambrough

Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 41 (Oct., 1960), pp. 289-300
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 THE

PHILOSOPH
QUARTERLY
VOL. 10 No. 41 OCTOBER 1960

SOCRATIC PARADOX

The insight and the industry of twentieth century analytical philosophers

have provided a whole armoury of finely designed and well tempered weapons
which can be of the greatest value to scholars engaged in the study of ancient
philosophy. But because classical scholars, even if they are familiar with
the methods of contemporary philosophy, have rightly been conscious of
the dangers of applying modern doctrines and distinctions to the study of
ancient texts, and because philosophers themselves, even if they can read
Greek and are interested in the history of philosophy, have understandably
been preoccupied with important developments within their own primary
discipline, the field to which this paper is meant to be a contribution has
been little cultivated. Some writers have already done important work in
what was until recently a no-man's-land; a few others have hoped and
wished that work of this kind might be done; but there is still indefinite
scope for detailed studies which will both clarify the doctrines of the ancient
thinkers and illuminate some philosophical problems which deserve and
attract the attention of modern philosophical practitioners.
This paper is written in the belief that the last few decades have seen a
progress in the understanding of the logic of philosophical paradox in general
which can profitably be applied to the investigation of questions about
Plato's use of Socratic paradox, questions which have divided and perplexed
Platonic commentators ever since the time of Aristotle, the first Platonic
commentator. The success or failure of such an approach to the interpreta-
tion of an ancient author can be measured only by the validity or invalidity
of the particular points made in particular studies of this kind; but there is

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290 RENFORD BAMBROUOG

one general observation which may be made at the outset. The method
recommended and pursued in this paper is inevitably used to some extent
by all commentators on philosophical doctrines, ancient or modern. Scholars
differ only in the extent to which they recognise and acknowledge their
philosophical motives and results, and in the relative importance in their
work of the philosophical and historical elements. It can be argued that
the best way of guarding against the danger of distorting history in the
interests of philosophy is to be open and self-conscious about one's philo-
sophical concerns; it is when they are unavowed that they may wreak
havoc.
This paper will deal incidentally with a number of the well-known ethical
and philosophical paradoxes attributed to Socrates by Plato, Xenophon
and Aristotle, but the primary aim will be to elucidate the Socratic paradox
that no man does wrong willingly, and that virtue is knowledge. This
paradox is important to the Platonic commentator because it expresses
the central article of the ethical theory which Plato developed out of the
sayings of Socrates; and it is important to the moral philosopher because
that ethical theory has continued to be defended and attacked throughout
the history of ethics, and because it shares some of its important features
with other theories that are not in other respects closely similar to it.
My aim is to mediate between the two most familiar and popular accounts
of the paradox. Scholars and philosophers have at all times divided them-
selves into those who hold that Socrates was expressing in his paradox an
important new ethical insight, and those who have protested that what
Socrates said was manifestly false and in conflict with common experience.
Plato and Aristotle are the leaders of these two parties. Plato uses the
paradox as one of the main bases of his thinking on the nature of the good,
and he repeats and supports it in dialogues of every period of his life. Aris-
totle devotes an important section of the Nicomachean Ethics to combating
a serious misunderstanding of the nature of right action to which, it seems
to him, the acceptance of the paradox is likely to lead. Most later writers
have ranged themselves behind these opposing leaders. Not only do Plato
and Aristotle exercise a great and natural authority over their readers;
what is more important is that on this issue, as indeed in their whole attitude
and approach to moral philosophy, they differ in just those ways in which
ethical theorists are always likely to differ. Naive and misleading as it can
be to represent Plato and Aristotle as archetypal instances of two radically
different types of human and philosophical temperament, as naturally
opposed in every department of philosophical enquiry, it is at least tempting
to regard them as the born leaders of two sharply differentiated schools of
ethical philosophy. Plato is the patron of all who seek for universal answers
to moral and political problems, for the general recipe from which all ethical
and political judgments and decisions can be derived as logical consequences.
These are the thinkers for whom large scale moral and political activity is
the true end of all theorising about the good, the moral and political reformers,

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 SOCRATIC PARADOX 291

the men who seek, and who may believe that they find, the master key to
the safe where Western Values are stored, to the prison in which we are all
held captive until we see that from the nature of what is the nature of what
ought to be can be divined; that individual happiness and political perfection
will follow as soon as we recognise the real truth about this world or the next.
Aristotle speaks for a party whose ambitions are more modest, and whose
achievements are both less spectacular and less controversial. These are
the thinkers for whom each separate ethical question is a separate challenge,
who deal piecemeal with what the Platonist attempts to dispose of in one
great enterprise. Ethics is for them the study of " what is only for the most
part so ", and it is only after careful thought and for the most powerful
reasons that they will abandon the Ev5ooa from which their enquiry starts.
They emphasise the importance of men's choices and preferences in any
enquiry about action and the good, and they are systematically suspicious
of their opponents' attempts to base conclusions about what is to be done
on premises about what is the case.
The whole conflict between these two groups can be represented as a
battle between Ev6oca and rTapa8Soa. With the conception of goodness as
a science there goes the hope of demonstrating large-scale conclusions about
what is good, and the conviction that the mistake of the man who acts or
decides or judges wrongly is a species of ignorance, blindness or intellectual
error. The empiricists, on the other hand, hold fast to the common experi-
ence of humanity, to the recognition that each of us can sometimes truly
say " video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor ".
It is not surprising that each new enquirer to whom the dispute is re-
ferred should place himself within one or other of the two camps, and should
feel that there is no third way, no possible compromise between two doctrines
each of which is the direct negation of the other. He is faced with rival
claims about the nature of his own and all other men's experience of the
moral life. They cannot both be true, and at least one of them must be true.
He must choose to follow the philosopher who gives the theoretical account
that squares most satisfactorily with his own reflections on his own experi-
ence. But it is just at this point that the situation becomes very perplexing.
Plato and Aristotle are not, after all, agreeing to differ about a matter of
taste and sentiment; it cannot plausibly be held that they are not really
in conflict, and that each is merely expressing a personal reaction to his
personal experience. Each of them produces arguments in defence of his
doctrine, arguments which claim and deserve the most careful and rational
examination by all enquirers in the field of philosophical ethics. They take
themselves, and are naturally and reasonably understood by their readers,
to be disagreeing about the nature of goodness and the nature of man,
about a question of ethics and a question of human psychology, to each of
which questions there can be only one answer that will stand the test of
persistent and well-directed rational examination. It cannot be true both
that "o856Ei5 KCv a(&apT-rvEt" and also that " orro$s iv oOv6 X6yos &Ctalopr-rT

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 292 RENFORD BAMBROUGH

-ros 9atvo|evotsEvapyycs ". But in that case it seems astonishing that the
combined energy and intelligence of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and of
all the lesser men throughout the ages who have benefited from their pioneer-
ing work, should not by now have brought us to see which doctrine is worthy
to be received; that a dispute which bears all the marks of being objectively
determinable should remain obstinately unsettled, should be treated, and
should apparently require to be treated, as if it were a matter of mere opinion.
At this point a parallel may suggest itself. Ptolemy and Aristarchus
proposed incompatible solutions to a very difficult problem, and it was
many centuries before all the competent authorities agreed on which of
them was right. But the problem on which they disagreed would now be
said, and could now be shown, to have been finally solved. Similarly, Plato
is rightly said to have made certain discoveries in logic, which put an end
to disputes which had perplexed his predecessors : he showed, for example,
that ' S is not P ' does not entail ' S does not exist '. In logic and in natural
science it has repeatedly happened that questions on which there was radical
disagreement between early enquirers have been conclusively answered by
their successors. We may therefore be prompted to hope that Aristotle's
dispute with Socrates will one day be settled in favour of one or other of
the disputants, that one day we shall know whether it is really true that some
men sometimes willingly do wrong, or whether Socrates made a discovery
in the science of men and morals which, like the discovery of Copernicus
in the science of the heavenly bodies, seems to conflict with our everyday
experience only when we imperfectly understand that experience. Even
if we are pessimistic, and do not look forward to a time when the issue will
be decisively settled, we may think that this is only because of " the difficulty
of the subject and the shortness of human life ", because no observer will
be acute enough to notice the facts that would convince all doubters, no
theorist ingenious enough to devise the knock-down argument. Meanwhile
we shall go on taking sides as at present, each party claiming that its own
doctrine is at least more reasonable or more probable than its rival. Philo-
sophical questions are notoriously more difficult than other kinds of ques-
tions, and it is small wonder if in the long infancy of their discipline even
the experts radically disagree.
This account of the matter is tempting until we notice that there is
one feature of the situation which it does not adequately explain : and that
is that no essentially new considerations have been adduced on either side
in this controversy since Plato and Aristotle laid down their pens, and that
indeed the principal arguments of both sides can be found within Plato's
own dialogues, in the pronouncements of Socrates and the comments of
his interlocutors. Even if it is claimed that this is because we are here faced
with a question infinitely more difficult than the questions of logic or astron-
omy which we inherited from the ancients and later solved for ourselves,
then we require at least an explanation of the peculiar intractability of the
problem. Until such an explanation can be offered, we must be allowed to

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 SOCRATIC PARADOX 293

doubt whether the situation is what it seems at first sight to be; we need
an account of the controversy which will explain why some of the world's
foremost intellects should persevere in radical disagreement about a question
which is in principle within the competence of human reason, and should
not be able even in twenty centuries to achieve more than a tedious repetition
of unchanging arguments and counter-arguments. We need an account which
will give due weight to the genuineness of the disagreement, but which will
also justify our reasonable confidence that both sides are talking sound sense
and giving good reasons for their conclusions ; which will save us from having
to accuse either Socrates or Aristotle of gross logical confusion or gross
inattention to the facts of our moral experience.
It is here that the need for the assistance of contemporary philosophers
is most acutely felt, and here that this need can be most satisfactorily sup-
plied. The type of situation of which the controversy about the Socratic
paradox provides a signal instance is one which has been fully and penetrat-
ingly investigated by recent and contemporary philosophers, and in partic-
ular by Moore, Wittgenstein and Wisdom. I should like to emphasise here
how much my treatment of this topic owes to their work, and especially
to the writings and teachings of Professor Wisdom.
One of the fullest and clearest statements of the Socratic doctrine is
to be found in the Protagoras, in the section where Socrates and Protagoras
discuss the poem of Simonides. The poet has drawn the common-sense
distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrong-doing. He will praise
and respect any man who never willingly does a shameful deed; even the
gods are powerless against necessity. Socrates pretends to take &Kcvwith
instead of with Ep81i, and repunctuates the passage in order to
Erraivrlpit
square it with his own paradoxical view. Simonides is too wise a man to
believe that wrongdoing is ever involuntary: " Simonides was not so ill-
informed as to say that he praised those who never willingly do wrong, as
if there were some who do wrong willingly. My belief is that no wise man
considers that any man ever sins willingly, or willingly commits wicked or
shameful deeds. Wise men are well aware that all who do what is wicked
or shameful do so unwillingly. Simonides does not mean that he praises
the man who never willingly does wrong, but that he willingly praises the
man who never does wrong" (345d6-e6).
The same statement is made in slightly different terms in the Gorgias.
Socrates asks Callicles if he accepts the conclusion agreed between Socrates
and Polus, that no man willingly does wrong, and that all who commit
acts of injustice do so unwillingly (509d3-7). Socrates is here referring to
his discussion with Polus of the question " Are orators the most powerful
men in cities ? " (466b4). Polus alleges that orators are able to do & poviAovTar
and &SOKEIacrols. Socrates draws a distinction between these two expressions,
which Polus, with the support of ordinaryGreekidiom, has used as synonyms.
According to Socrates, orators and tyrants do & SOKEI aTrois, but not &po07AovTai.
A man always wishes for what is good, although he may sometimes be mis-

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 294 RENFORD BAMBROUGH

taken about the means of obtaining the good he seeks. In such a case he
will seize on what merely seems to him to be good. The point depends on
an ambiguity in TOadyo6v, which may mean either what is morally good
or what is pursued as an end or advantage, regardless of its true value,
and on an exploitation of the notion of seeming that the word 6oKEibrings
into this context from the other contexts of its common use. Callicles raises
no objections to these uses of these words, and Socrates is able to conclude
that no man does wrong for a lack of pouAioias,but always for a lack of 8iuvauIs,
and that the necessary SwIvapswould take the form of a TEXvn1
or caOeiais.
In the Timaeus (86d ff.) we are told that there is really no such thing
as OxKpaTrEa: " for no man is willingly wicked; he becomes wicked because
of a diseased bodily condition and a lack of proper training, and these are
misfortunes which befall a man against his will ".
In Book IX of the Laws (862-4), and in numerous other passages, the
doctrine is reaffirmed and elaborated, with no important modifications.
In all these passages there is the implication, which is made explicit in
many of Plato's works, that political and moral virtue is a skill or science,
a T?XV11 whose practitioners are the unchallengeable authorities
or ETlWrrT-rlr
on questions of right and wrong. This doctrine that virtue is knowledge,
that all sin arises from ignorance, and is therefore involuntary, is main-
tained throughout the ethical and political works of Plato.
Aristotle is repeatedly critical of the Socratic paradox and its implications.
The first direct references to Socrates in the Nicomachean Ethics are to his
doctrine that dvSpEioa is a form of TnrloTrCr (1116b4), and to his reputation as
a paradox-monger: "Those who make use of EipcoVEia are very much inclined
to deny Ta& EvSoa,as Socrates was in the habit of doing" (1127b25). Near the
end of Book VI there is an allusion to Socrates' belief that all apTraiare
(povioaElS,to which Aristotle gives a qualified approval: " He was mistaken
in saying that all virtues are 9povilo6is,but he was right in the sense that
there is no virtue without (po6vriol".(1144b18 ff.). Similarly, at 1144b28,
Aristotle says that Socrates believed that all virtues were Aoyot or ETrio-Trii,
whereas he himself holds that they are -rETao6you.But it is in Chapter 2
of Book VII, shortly after a remark on the importance of paying sympathetic
if critical attention to Ev5ooa,that we find Aristotle's most emphatic objec-
tion to the Socratic TrapaS&oov. In Chapter 1 he recounts the Ev5oboaabout
dapaaia, and then Chapter 2 begins: " There is a difficulty about how a man
who has a right apprehension can fail in self-control. Some say that a man
who has knowledge cannot so fail. Socrates held that it was a terrible thing
if a man who possessed knowledge could let it be mastered and overpowered
by something else, like a slave. For Socrates altogether denied the occurrence
of Kxpacia ; he held that no man who had a right apprehension acted other-
wise than for the best, and that wrongdoing was the result of ignorance.
This doctrine is in manifest contradiction to the facts ". (1145b 21-28).
Aristotle remarks further, in Chapter 6, that aKpaaiais rebuked not
merely as a &ocapTia,but as a species of moral depravity.

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 SOCRATIC PARADOX 295

In the course of a similar discussion in the Eudemian Ethics, (1227b ff.),

Aristotle once again gives his support to the ordinary way of speaking to
which the Socratic paradox is opposed : " Both vice and virtue must neces-
sarily be voluntary, for there is no necessity to do what is wicked. That is
why vice is to be blamed and virtue praised. No blame is attached to what
is bad or shameful unless it is voluntary, and praise is appropriate to what
is good only if it is also voluntary ".
There is a direct clash between the Socratic submission and the Aristo-
telian protest. It is this direct conflict, which appears so clearly in the above
passages as an affirmation and denial of the same proposition in almost the
same words, that it is our task to resolve, and to resolve in such a way that
it will be shown how it was possible for the same conflict to be continued
in the same terms, and with the same degree of violence, throughout the
history of the controversy.
It is in Aristotle's insistence on the EvSo(a, on what is commonly said,
(r& AEEyoiPva 1145b 20) that we find our first clue to the understanding of
our problem. Although Aristotle accuses Socrates of going against the
oalvo6Eva,the well-known facts of experience, he might equally well have
accused him of using words in unusual senses. As soon as this suggestion
presents itself it has a great appeal to us. It seems so improbable that
Socrates should have been unaware of the fact of moral conflict, of the
phenomenon of aKpaoia as normally understood, or that he should have
perversely ignored it when he spoke of moral psychology. And even in
those very passages where Socrates speaks of virtue as knowledge, and
propounds his paradox that all wrongdoing is involuntary, he rightly feels
called upon to give an account in his own terms of what is commonly called
aKpaola. A man cannot be accused of ignoring facts which he takes the
trouble to explain and to reconcile with his doctrine. When we see this
point, when we therefore feel the inadequacy of saying merely that Socrates
" took no account of the will ", or that he expected all men to equal his
own superhuman feats of self-control, we are then attracted by this new
statement of the case, that the paradox of Socrates &dploprT-rE Tero1s AEyoPEVOIS
Evapy?os. The attraction is not a mere temptation. It does much to account
for features of the controversy which remain puzzling on the view that
Socrates and Aristotle were at odds about simple matters of fact on which
each was surely as well informed as the other. For the reaction of Socrates,
when the facts are set before him, is not to deny the facts but to describe
them anew : to say that what is called " knowledge " in the ordinary account
of conscious and deliberate wrongdoing does not deserve the name of know-
ledge: that true knowledge, real knowledge is such that no man who knew
what was right would ever do what was wrong. For Socrates it follows as a
matter of logic that if a man does wrong then he does not know what is right.
Socrates does not use the word 'knowledge' as we ordinarily use it; his
criteria for applying it are very much more strict than our ordinary criteria,
so strict that according to his usage nothing can be allowed to count as

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296 RENFORD BAMBROUGH

moral knowledge unless right action inevitably flows from its possession.
On this account it becomes logically true for Socrates that no man does
wrong willingly, and Aristotle's protest amounts to an appeal for the use
of ordinary language and not a reminder to Socrates of the familiar facts.
At this point we may feel satisfied that all has been made plain. Socrates
and Aristotle are no longer disagreeing on a matter of fact of the first im-
portance, but saying the same thing in different words. It is at once clear
(we may think) that there is no need to accuse Socrates of ignoring what is
well-known to us and to all men, or to accuse Aristotle of blindness to the
importance of a new discovery. The choice between the Ev8o~a and the
rrapadSoais merely the choice between ways of presenting a truth which is
recognised by both sides in the dispute. The disagreement resolves itself
into a matter of words.
But our respite is short: new questions at once arise. Was Socrates
ignorant of the ordinary use of ordinary Greek words ? Clearly not, since
he expressly rejects the ordinary usage. Why should Aristotle take the
trouble to remind Socrates of linguistic usages which he not only very well
knew but even explicitly criticised and rejected in the very passages which
Aristotle is opposing ? And why should Socrates object to ordinary language
if what he wished to say could well be said in ordinary language ? It is
sometimes said that he spoke paradoxically because a paradoxical statement
is more striking and more memorable. But can this point of style be all
that has exercised the minds of scholars and philosophers for two and a half
millennia ? Is the whole controversy a shadow-battle between two state-
ments of the obvious, one of which is so heavily disguised that even the master
of those who know was slow to see that it was a statement of the obvious ?
This solution of the paradox is itself too paradoxical.
What we must still seek is an account of the conflict which will show
that Socrates is justified in saying that no man does wrong willingly and
will also show that Aristotle is justified in saying that we well know that
men often do wrong willingly, and which will nevertheless recognise that
there is a genuine disagreement between what Socrates says and what
Aristotle says. We have now considered three different accounts, each of
which fails to satisfy one of these three conditions. Those who give unquali-
fied support to Socrates deny the justice of Aristotle's remarks. Those who
are content with Aristotle's protest miss the illumination that shines out
from the paradox of Socrates. Those who see the conflict as a mere matter
of words learn nothing from either party, and leave us at a loss for an explan-
ation of why there has been no end to what is according to them a trivial
dispute about merely arbitrary linguistic usages.
But the usages are not arbitrary : and that is the key to the understanding
of the whole matter. Both sides in the dispute have good reasons for their
claims; both sides can find support in ordinary usage and in ordinary ex-
perience. Socrates was concerned to reveal what in ordinary language was
hidden, and the light that he shed cast a shadow on an area which Aristotle

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 SOCRATIC PARADOX 297

in turn was moved to illuminate. Bright light is inseparable from shadow:

sharp insight and steady vision are not achieved by the same person at
the same time.
It may be helpful to consider a very much simpler but otherwise closely
analogous example of a philosophical paradox. Some ancient thinker,
whether Heraclitus or another, said that it was impossible to step into the
same river twice. Of this statement, as of the Socratic paradox, Aristotle
could have said with justice that it &dplopqTr-rETro7soaivopEvol5Evapyco5. I have
not stepped into many rivers, but there are some rivers into which I have
stepped many times. According to the most ordinary usage of the expression
'the same river' as applied in ordinary situations, to say that I cannot
step twice into the same river is to utter a plain falsehood, and the Aristo-
telian rejoinder is a fully justified reaffirmation of the plain truth that the
paradox denies. And yet nobody would think that the paradox was disposed
of by the simple demonstration that what it says is plainly false. Its author
was as well aware as his critic that his remark was plainly false. Its point
and purpose depend on its literal falsehood in such a way that the imaginary
critic would be guilty of missing the point of the paradox. That the paradox
is literally false, and that its author must know it to be literally false, shows
clearly that it is not meant to be taken literally, that its real meaning,
whether true or false, is different from its apparent and literal meaning.
When we say, paradoxically, that it is impossible to step into the same river
twice, we do not deny that it is possible, literally, to step into the same
river twice. What we do is to point out that a river, even while it continues
to be one and the same river, is always changing: and we do this by using
the expression 'the same river' to mean something different from what it
ordinarily means. And so we may reasonably, and up to a point rightly,
say that the paradox and the plain truth are only verbally in conflict: that
a dispute between a defender and an opponent of the paradox is a verbal
dispute. But this account is inadequate, because it obscures the fact that
the paradox-monger's usage of the words 'the same river ' is not arbitrary;
that he is appealing to a use which the word 'same' already has in our
language, and that he is doing this in order to bring before our minds, more
vividly than he otherwise could, a fact about rivers of which we are aware
but may not be fully aware. His opponent, in turn, reaffirms an old truth
which the paradox, if it makes too powerful an impression on us, may be
in danger of obscuring : the truth that if I step into the Cam twice I do not
step into two different rivers in the sense in which I step into two different
rivers if I first step into the Cam and then step into the Isis.
The simplicity and triviality of this example make it easy to give an
account of it which satisfies two of the three conditions that an adequate
account of the Socratic paradox must satisfy. What I have said about
the river-paradox is sufficient to show that its author was justified in saying
what he said, and that we are justified in denying what he was justified
in saying. We cannot satisfy the third condition, that of showing that there

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298 RENFORD BAMBROUGH

is genuine disagreement between one who affirms and one who denies the
paradox, but that is simply because in this case there is no such disagree-
ment. The paradox is too simple, and its point too obvious, for anybody
to be seriously puzzled or provoked by it. What I suggest, however (and
this is the main thesis of this paper) is that the genuine conflict that rages
over the Socratic paradox arises chiefly from the greater complexity of that
paradox and the wider scope of its consequences and ramifications. I suggest
that the situations are very similar in kind, and that they differ mainly in
degree of subtlety and complication.
An important qualification is implied in this last remark. I say that the
paradoxes differ chiefly in degree of complexity, and not only in degree of
complexity, because there is another element in the Socratic paradox which
is not found in the river-paradox. What this element is can best be shown
by considering an example in which this element is present and prominent,
but which is not otherwise much more difficult than the river-paradox.
Such an example is to be found in another familiar Socratic paradox, the
doctrine that only the good man is happy.
A typical exposition of this paradox occurs in the discussion between
Socrates and Polus in the Gorgias. When Socrates first suggests that no
man is happy unless he is good, Polus is astonished, and is confident that he
will make short work of this extravagant doctrine: aX' oviXi KOiv o
TTraiS
"
ENEylEIEV, 0TI oVn d&rAQfi yEIs; (470c). He thinks that one example will
suffice to prove that Socrates is wrong. He quotes the case of Archelaus,
the tyrant of Macedonia, who has been guilty of the grossest forms of in-
justice, and who is nevertheless the happiest of mortal men. Socrates is
unimpressed. This example does not count against his submission. He
insists that if what Polus says is true, then Archelaus is the unhappiest of
men. But this is not because he disagrees with Polus about any of the facts
of the case. He does not deny that Archelaus has a throne and riches and
freedom and power. He simply denies that he is happy : " for I do not call
such a man happy ". Polus points out that no Athenian will agree with
Socrates, but Socrates knows this already. He is deliberately using the
word 'happy' differently from his fellow-countrymen, in order to express
a different view from theirs about the nature of happiness. The difference
between Socrates and Polus is not a difference in factual belief, but a differ-
ence in moral and emotional attitude : Polus envies the tyrant, and Socrates
pities him. In this example the function of the new use of a word is not to
express new insight into familiar facts, but to express an unconventional
attitude towards familiar facts. These are the two principal uses of para-
doxical speech: one of them is prominent in the river-paradox, the other
is prominent in the happiness-paradox, and both are important in the
understanding of the paradox that no man does wrong willingly.
If these submissions are correct, then it must be possible, even if it is
very difficult, to set out the ways in which the Socratic paradox is illumin-
ating and the ways in which it distorts and obscures : to expound the para-

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 SOCRATIC PARADOX 299

dox and Aristotle's protest in such a way that we can see the justice of
each and the dangers of each. It must also be possible to show how the
moral views of Socrates and Aristotle, as distinct from their insights into
moral psychology, differ in ways which are connected with their assertion
and denial of the paradox. I believe that all this can be done, although I
am certainly not satisfied that I have been able to do it. The remainder
of this paper is a description of my attempt.
The first step is to underwrite Aristotle's contention that what Socrates
says is plainly false. He denies that there is such a phenomenon as dKpaiaa,
and we all know that it frequently occurs. But it turns out that Socrates
knows as well as we do that what we call oKxpaoiafrequently occurs, but he
refuses to call it OKpaoia. This shows that he is not concerned to deny the
plain truth that his words are denying; it shows that his use of the word
dKpaofa is different from the normal use, and that he is deliberately using
the word differently. After all, Socrates is a moral teacher, and his chief
concern is to lead us to live better lives, to turn us from our evil ways. He
is stultifying his own efforts to reform us if he claims that all our misdeeds
are literally involuntary, that we are not responsible for the sins he lays to
our charge. Plato's writings are filled with moral exhortations, which are
pointless if his account of the nature of wrongdoing is literally true, and
even with descriptions of that very type of moral conflict and moral defeat
whose possibility he seems to deny. It is clear that, whatever Socrates and
Plato may mean by their paradox, they cannot mean what they say. And
if they are to be allowed to use words, deliberately, in new senses, and to
say, deliberately, what is plainly false, we must ask to be told why they do
this. It is one thing to see that Aristotle is missing the point, and another
to say what the point is that he is missing.
We can find a clue by going back to the Gorgias, to the argument be-
tween Socrates and Polus about whether tyrants do what they like or what
they really wish to do. Socrates seems at first sight to be denying that the
tyrants deliberately choose to do what they in fact deliberately choose to
do. But his point is different. He is saying that what they choose is different
from what it would be if they were clearer-headed and better informed.
Did Isaac willingly bless Jacob ? Did Oedipus willingly kill his father ?
The answer to these riddles is the answer to the riddle that Socrates sets us
in his paradox: and the answer is 'Yes and No'. Isaac willingly blessed
the man whom he blessed, Oedipus willingly killed the man whom he killed :
but if he had known more, Isaac would have withheld his blessing : Oedipus,
if he had known more, would have stayed his hand.
This I take to be the point of the Socratic paradox, that there is always
more scope than we allow for thinking before we act : that what we can all
easily see in the stories of Isaac and Oedipus is harder to see, but is there to
be seen in the story of every moral agent and every moral act. However
careful and thoughtful we may have been, there is room for more thought
and care, not only in considering the nature and quality of this or that

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300 RENFORD BAMBROUGH

individual act, but in arriving at reasoned and mutually consistent principles

of action : and so we are led to the conception of the ideal limit, the perfect
self-knowledgeand knowledge of the world, which, for any man who possessed
it, would leave no need for choice or conflict, would make any act but one
unthinkable in any situation. Here we see the connection between the
Socratic paradox and the wider reaches of the Socratic morality. The sharp
reminder that we sometimes freely choose to do what greater experience,
wider knowledge, clearer and deeper reflection would save us from choosing
is generalised into the claim that wheneverwe choose wrongly it is always
because we have failed in rigour of thought or clarity of vision. And since
we all know the moral maxims and principles that are conventional in our
society, and yet are guilty of wrongdoing even by those standards them-
selves, it follows that the maxims and conventions, no less than our individual
actions and choices, must be subjected to searching examination, to ordeal
by Socratic EAEyXos.From the Socratic plea for consistency and generality
in moral judgement, for moral education and self-education, with its in-
sistence that there is always scope for moral improvement through mental
improvement, it is a short step to Plato's conception of goodness as a branch
of positive knowledge, with the Form of the Good as its object, and the
philosopher-king as its omni-competent exponent.
It is small wonder that the voice of Aristotle is out of tune with this
grandiloquence. In ethics, as in the other biological sciences, he believed
that one could best establish what a good specimen of a species ought to
be like by observing what the actual specimens of a species are like. His
remarks on the writing of tragedy were based on a study of actual tragedies,
his political philosophy on a study of existing constitutions. The same
approach marks his theorising about the moral life of men : it is no accident
that the Charactersof Theophrastus are the work of a pupil of the author
of the Nicomachean Ethics. Socrates and Plato were going too fast and too
far for Aristotle's liking when they made the good life as inescapably remote
from actual life as the geometer's triangle from the draughtsman's diagram.
His aim was to understand human life, and not to change it : and the Socratic
paradox, whatever its subtlety and power for suggesting what the life of
man might be like, was seen by Aristotle as a mis-description of what the
life of man is like. Here we find the genuine conflict between the assertion
of the paradox and its denial: between the desire to save souls and the
desire to save T&pcatvo[Evca. I suggest that we should be above the conflict,
shamelessly profiteering from both belligerents: that we should catch the
infection of the divine Platonic madness,' and cure it with the humane
sanity of Aristotle: that we should answer the call of Socrates to see life
whole, but never forget to see it steadily.
RENFORD BAMBROUGH
St. John's College,Cambridge.

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