Socrates as a deontologist.

Graham, Daniel W.

ANCIENT GREEK ETHICS IS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY VIEWED as a set of theories that derive moral rules and directives from their tendency to bring about the good for the agent. This relevant good is happiness. Accordingly, Greek ethics is taken to be teleological and eudaimonistic. Socrates is the founder of Greek ethics and hence the figure who instituted the eudaimonistic teleological model. (1) I wish to argue to the contrary that Socrates is best taken as a duty theorist or deontologist, for whom teleological considerations are irrelevant or, more precisely, come in only tangentially. I shall take as evidence of Socrates' position Plato's Socratic or early dialogues, which are widely but not universally held to represent the philosophical methods and views of the historical Socrates. (2) Those who are skeptical of the value of Plato's Socratic dialogues for understanding the historical Socrates may take my argument as applying to the fictional figure portrayed in the same dialogues, who may or may not represent the historical Socrates' views and/or Plato's own views at the time Plato was writing the dialogues, but who has an interesting and coherent position to defend. (That at least this much is true is the undeniable outcome of a large body of recent scholarship on "Socrates.") I shall (1) lay out the basic ethical distinctions to be observed; (2) examine a moral deliberation Socrates makes, showing its deontological features; (3) explore the priority of moral goodness to happiness; and finally (4), indicate how Socrates' commitments to duty might fit within a consistent theoretical framework.

I

Teleological theories have been popular from antiquity until the present. They attempt to derive moral rules, precepts, and judgments from nonmoral calculations, thus rendering the opaque and inscrutable amenable to rational considerations. As one authority puts it, A teleological theory says that the basic or ultimate criterion or standard of what is morally right, wrong, obligatory, etc., is the nonmoral value that is brought into being.... [F]or a teleologist, the moral quality or value of actions, persons, or traits of character is dependent on the comparative nonmoral value of what they bring about or try to bring about.... Teleological theories, then, make the right, the obligatory, and the morally good dependent on the nonmorally good. (3)

Teleological theories have the evident advantage of allowing for the objective calculation of nonmoral goods so as to replace the often subjective determinations of moral agents.

Teleological theories need to specify the nonmoral good that is the object of action. According to hedonism, the good is pleasure and the bad is pain. By calculating the relative balances of pleasures and pains that will result from an action, the agent can determine the moral worth of the action. For those who consider pleasure too crude or visceral a criterion, happiness can count as the universal good that is the ultimate objective of all human actions. The doctrine that happiness (eudaimonia in Greek) is the standard of morality is eudaimonism. (4)

Teleological theories seem to capture an important facet of human psychology, and even of animal psychology in general. They exploit the insight that pleasure or happiness provides the most fundamental motive for all human (or animal) activity. Humans seek pleasure and shun pain; they seek happiness and shun misery. The view that everyone always acts only in his own best interest (in seeking happiness and avoiding misery) is psychological egoism. The view that one should act in one's own best interest is ethical egoism. The former view might make the latter seem otiose; the latter might make the former seem vain. Yet often teleologists subscribe to both views, seeing the former as providing the basic motivation, the latter a rational articulation for an instinctive disposition. The view that the good to be realized in action is the sum of the goods of all concerned is utilitarianism. This view expands the domain of calculation considerably but in doing so loses the close connection to natural instincts.

Recent ethical theorists have preferred the designation "consequentialism" to characterize roughly the same domain as teleology. The new term emphasizes the fact that acts are to be evaluated in terms of their consequences rather than their aims. Scholars sometimes point out an important practical difference between ancient teleology and modern consequentialism. "[The] idea, that my final end or goal essentially involves my own activity, and is not a good that others could just as well get for me, is important for our understanding of ancient theories. [This] goes some way toward explaining the almost complete absence in ancient ethics of anything resembling consequentialist ideas." (5) The goal of the ancients, on this interpretation, is never to produce some objective state of affairs independent of the agent. So there is some difference between teleological and consequentialist theories, and Greek theories may not quite fit in the latter class. In fact, however, there is no strict characterization of teleology or consequentialism that all modern interpreters adhere to. My aim here is not to define narrowly the alternatives, but to make use of widely held classifications to locate the Greek theories to be discussed. I shall, accordingly, speak broadly, conventionally, and somewhat vaguely of the goal- or outcome-based family of ethical theories as teleological, in opposition to the family of duty-based theories known as deontological.

Deontological theories deny that moral good can be read off from nonmoral goods. They posit some sort of basic role for moral values in their own right, independent of nonmoral outcomes. They claim that there are fundamental duties and rights that are intrinsically valuable. Because deontological theories are often understood as the negation of teleological theories, it may be almost trivial to call a theory deontological. If a theory is not completely teleological, by default it can be called deontological. (6) I do not wish to make such a weak claim. I will call Socrates' views deontological only if they show some strong or preferably decisive tendency to take moral claims as autonomous and nonderivative, and teleological if nonmoral goods make some significant or preferably decisive contribution to the determination of moral goods.

There is one other methodological concern to be addressed. Deontological theories are often characterized as those theories that emphasize values expressed by "right" and "wrong" in lieu of "good" and "bad." But it is doubtful that ancient Greek moral theories will follow just these nuances in their own expressions. Furthermore, the distinction between right/wrong and good/bad in modern discourse is at most an indication of underlying commitments; we can speak of the morally good/bad versus the nonmorally good/bad to distinguish the two kinds of theories. The vocabulary of moral discourse can provide clues to underlying theoretical differences, but these clues are not likely to be decisive by themselves. Nevertheless, I think some evidence can be extracted from Socratic terminology, as I will indicate below (section 3).

One final caveat: The debate between proponents of teleological and proponents of deontological theories developed historically in the nineteenth century and has continued to the present. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., there was no confrontation between deontological and teleological theories. Positions were not yet taken and battle lines not yet drawn. Socrates cannot be taking a stand on an already articulated debate between rival theories. At most we should be looking out for a kind of protodeontological theory that might prefigure theses advanced reflectively and systematically in modern times. But even with that proviso, the question of Socrates' ethical orientation still seems an important one.

II

There is one Socratic dialogue of Plato's that shows Socrates making a self-conscious moral deliberation about his own future action under trying circumstances: the Crito. Because of its narrow focus on one situation, this dialogue provides the best place to observe Socratic moral theory in action. Let us look at a part of Socrates' argument about how he should act in the situation. Having been convicted of impiety and corrupting the youth, Socrates has been condemned to death and is in prison awaiting execution by the civil authorities. His old friend Crito visits Socrates, informing the latter that he has arranged through bribes to have Socrates escape from prison. Crito urges Socrates to cooperate with the plan and flee Athens. He appeals to Socrates' family responsibilities, to Socrates' personal welfare, and to Socrates' friends' reputations. Socrates answers that he needs to consider the plan to determine if it is the right thing to do: The questions you mention about spending money and what people think and the raising of children, these are really the worries, Crito, of those who would casually put someone to death and revive him again without a second thought, namely the many. But since the argument demands it, we for our part must take into account nothing but what we just now talked about: whether we shall be acting justly (dikaia praxomen) in paying money and giving thanks to those who help me break out of here, and whether we ourselves shall be acting justly in arranging and participating in the escape--or whether in truth we shall be acting unjustly in this action. And if it becomes clear that we are committing injustice, it will not be right to weigh in the balance whether we shall die if we stay and behave ourselves, or whether we shall suffer any other fate whatsoever, against the cost of committing injustice. (7)

Here Socrates rejects the arguments Crito brings forward to show that Socrates' personal interest will be served by fleeing prison. Of course it will, but Socrates rules out the arguments as irrelevant. All that matters to him is whether he will be acting justly or unjustly in undertaking the escape. It appears that Socrates is taking a deontological line in focusing on the moral qualities of the putative action rather than on the outcomes it might have for Socrates, his family, and his circle. Now if Socrates were an ethical egoist, Crito's arguments would be precisely on target; indeed, Crito could even go so far as to point out that only by escaping could Socrates continue his divinely sanctioned mission to reform Greek morals. But Socrates rejects the appeal to his own interest out of hand. He does not recognize the problem of his living or dying as a legitimate part of the debate.

Socrates goes on to recall a moral precept that both he and Crito accept, "Do we say," he asks, "that we must not do injustice intentionally in any situation, or that one must do injustice in some situations, but not in others? Isn't it the case that injustice is in no way good or right (kalon), as we have often agreed in past discussions? Or have all those earlier agreements been wiped out in the last few days?" (8) Socrates points out that the principles should apply no matter what Socrates' present situation and regardless of public opinion. He does make one remark that seems to suggest a teleological strategy: "to do injustice happens to be bad and disgraceful for the wrongdoer in every respect." (9) Socrates goes on to apply the principle. If one should never do injustice (adikein), one should never do wrong in retaliation for a wrong done to one (antadikein). By the same token, one should never do harm to another (kakourgein). (10) Finally, Socrates goes on to argue that to flee prison is to violate the laws, which will be an act of harm against the laws "and the whole city." (11)

This argument looks like a straightforward application of a moral rule, a duty never to do injustice or wrong in general. From this Socrates deduces that it is never right to retaliate and that it is never right to do harm. To flee prison is to violate the laws of the city, and hence it is an act of harm directed against the laws and indeed the city itself. Accordingly, to flee prison is to do wrong and cannot be justified.

There are two evident strategies for challenging a deontological reading of Socrates' argument. The first is to stress his remark that "to do injustice happens to be bad and disgraceful for the wrongdoer in every respect," showing how the alleged duty in question is itself a product of a teleological argument, whether explicit or tacit. Socrates might be a crypto-rule-utilitarian or, more likely, a rule-ethical-egoist. The other strategy would be to show that Socrates' reason for believing he should not break the laws is to avoid the presumptive harm that will be clone to "the whole city"; Socrates would then be making an appeal to the collective good of the whole community in the way a utilitarian should. And Socrates had said at his trial that he was, in effect, the best thing to happen to Athens, God's gift to the city. (12)

As to the first strategy for arguing against a deontological reading, I shall not argue against it directly. Rather, I shall look briefly at the one argument in the Socratic corpus that supports Socrates' no-wrongdoing duty, and show that it is not a teleological one. I shall later come back to give what I think is a Socratic rationale for saying that wrongdoing is bad for the wrongdoer.

The argument for a duty against wrongdoing or, more precisely, against doing harm is found in Republic 1 (the Socratic prelude to a very Platonic dialogue). In a discussion aiming to define justice, Polemarchus comes to say that justice is to help a friend who is good and harm an enemy who is bad. Socrates asks if it is appropriate for a just person to harm anyone. Polemarchus says it is. Socrates then offers an example of horses. If a trainer harms a horse, does he not make it worse? Yes. In the excellence of a horse or of a dog? Of a horse. Then by parity of reasoning, if we harm a human being, do we not make it worse? Yes. In human excellence or virtue? Yes. Do we not then make the human more unjust? Yes. But it is not the work of a horse trainer to make horses worse, nor of a just person to make people more unjust. Accordingly, it is not the work of justice to harm people, even enemies who are bad. (13)

This argument could focus on the issue of introducing more bad than good into the world. But in fact the focus is on the practical inconsistency of an art that does the opposite of what it is intended to do. It is not the work of justice to produce injustice. (14) This is an argument that makes no appeal to the actual outcome of the action, or to its effect on the agent's well-being, but only to the consistency or, if you will, to the rationality of the undertaking or the willing. It might remind us of the chain of reasoning that Kant uses to arrive at the categorical imperative. If a maxim can be willed universally without self-contradiction, it is incumbent on the agent to do that action.

The second strategy for rejecting deontology is to show that Socrates brings in utilitarian considerations when he argues that fleeing prison would harm the laws of Athens and the state itself. To argue against Crito's plan, Socrates brings in the personified Laws of Athens. "Are you aiming by this plot you are undertaking," the figure asks, "to do anything other than to overthrow us the Laws and the whole city to the best of your ability? Do you think that any city, whose verdicts have no force but are invalidated and trampled on willy-nilly by individuals, can stand without being overturned?" (15) Socrates' proposed action will tend to overthrow the laws (the government) and the city itself. But notice that the argument is based not on the actual effect Socrates' particular actions will bring about, but on the potential effect of "individuals" who act in this way. The claim is not that Socrates' act itself would overthrow the government, which is highly unlikely, but that the act he is contemplating, if it were to become a widespread practice, would be destabilizing. We are reminded of the question Kant asks: What would happen if the maxim you are operating under were to be universalized? Could you still will the action you are intending? The Kantian questions require us to formulate not a cost-benefit analysis, but a logical evaluation.

The spokesman for the Laws goes on to point out all the benefits Socrates has received from citizenship in Athens. He further points out that Socrates does not enjoy equality with the Laws any more than with his parents. But the Laws do allow Socrates either to obey its edicts or to persuade them to allow him to do otherwise. If he is not satisfied with their rule, he could "vote with his feet" and depart to another city. By staying and never leaving (except on military campaigns), Socrates has tacitly accepted the rule of the Laws. All of this shows that Socrates is under an obligation to continue to recognize the authority of the Laws. To break the laws would be tantamount to harming the Laws, whether they have wronged him or not. The argument illustrates Socrates' indebtedness to the Laws and his continuing obligations to them. It is an argument based not on outcomes but on prior obligations--a deontological argument.

III

There are, however, a number of places in the Socratic dialogues where Socrates seems to offer a teleological motivation for doing moral acts. Indeed, there is one in the Crito itself which calls for our attention. To Crito's argument that we should take to heart the opinions of the many, Socrates argues by analogy that we should rather heed the opinion of the expert. Consider, he says, the case with health. Should we hearken to opinions of laymen or of "the one," the doctor. "Well," says Socrates, "if we destroy what is made better by health and spoiled by disease by not obeying the opinion of the experts, will life be worth living for us when that part is ruined?--isn't this the body?" (16) When Crito agrees, Socrates continues, "But then will life be worth living for us when that part is spoiled which injustice ravages but justice benefits? Or do we regard that part of us, whatever it is, as inferior to the body, the part that deals with injustice and justice?" (17) That part, though it remains unnamed in the passage, is obviously what Socrates elsewhere calls the soul. There is, Socrates implies, an expert in justice who should be consulted for the welfare of our souls no less than the doctor should be consulted about the welfare of our bodies.

So much for the opinion of the many. But Socrates himself brings up the "obvious" objection that the opinion of the many may put us to death; Crito jumps at the chance to endorse the objection. Socrates reminds him of their shared view that "we must not value living more than living well.... To live well is the same thing as living rightly (kalos) and justly--isn't that our view?" (18)

In this series of arguments, Socrates judges the value of actions on the basis of their outcomes, namely, the quality of life that is attained by following the principles in question as opposed to yielding to the desires of the many. The good life is the objective. Surely we glimpse here eudaimonia as an objective and criterion of our actions. So here, it seems, Socrates is, after all, a teleologist. The argument even seems to anticipate the Platonic argument that Plato appeals to in defense of justice at the end of Republic 4. We pursue justice because it enables us to function optimally as a psychological unity and hence to live the good life.

Yet in the present case the good life is not a life that can be specified independently of the virtue in question. In fact, as far as we see, the good life is defined wholly by the presence in it of justice. Thus, justice is logically and axiologically prior to living well or the good life. If our aim is to determine the good life and then to use that to understand justice, we have put the cart before the horse. Instead, we must understand justice first, and then we can understand the good life. Moral value is prior to nonmoral value. We cannot read off moral values from nonmoral values, or derive duties from consequences.

In the Crito Socrates faces a moral dilemma when he is given the opportunity to escape from prison. The situation is unique, and the need to decide is urgent--at least for Crito. Socrates invokes a moral principle he and Crito have acknowledged often. But Socrates does not provide a general rationale for his action or a general basis for his reasoning. In the defense speech at his trial recreated in Plato's Apology, Socrates offers such a rationale. What is the motive and ground of moral action?

In the middle of his speech, Socrates offers an unprecedented explanation of his mission to the people of Athens. He sums up his message as follows: I spend all my time doing nothing else but urging you, both young and old, not to worry about your bodies or your possessions in preference to or as much as your soul, how it may be as good as possible, declaring, Goodness [arete] does not come from wealth, but from goodness comes wealth and every good thing that men possess, whether in private or public life. (19)

He explains that he has learned by questioning the statement of the oracle at Delphi, which said no one was wiser than Socrates, that the things they value are of no worth compared with the state of one's soul. (20) Here indeed we meet a kind of confrontation of values. What is most important in life? Not the things people typically seek--money, power, reputation, and good looks--but rather goodness, that is, moral excellence or virtue (arete).

Far from basing his quest on a determination of nonmoral goods, Socrates makes moral goods the foundation of nonmoral happiness. According to the teleologist, the moral agent should first ascertain what action maximizes the sum of nonmoral goods minus nonmoral bads, and on that basis decide what action is moral. Socrates, by contrast, says that the agent should decide what is morally right and on that basis alone infer that appropriate nonmoral goods will follow. Whereas "teleological theories ... make the right, the obligatory, and the morally good dependent on the nonmorally good," (21) Socrates holds that this procedure is backward. The right, the obligatory, and the morally good entail what is nonmorally good. By this criterion, Socrates is an antiteleologist and a deontologist.

But, one might object, this speech of Socrates is a piece of bravado that does not express his actual philosophical practice. More needs to be said about how Socrates' admittedly unique statement of method conforms or does not conform to his actual practice. (22) Here I can point out only one piece of evidence from earlier in Socrates' defense. He imagines his critics objecting to him that he should be ashamed of himself for living the kind of life that has made him a target for accusation. "You are mistaken, sir," he replies to the hypothetical argument, "if you think a man who is worth anything at all should calculate the risks of living or dying, rather than to consider this alone whenever he acts, namely, whether he acts justly or unjustly [dikaia e adika prattei], whether he does the deeds of a good or a bad man." (23) Here he takes his stand, claiming that considerations of personal interest or advantage are utterly irrelevant to the real question of how he should behave, which is an irreducibly moral question. The only thing that matters is whether his action is just or unjust, right or wrong, not whether it jeopardizes his life or fortune. He rules out teleological and consequentialist considerations from the start.

As evidence that he is not moved by concern for his personal safety and welfare, Socrates offers his behavior as a soldier at three significant battles, (24) his veto of an unconstitutional motion at the trial of the generals of Arginusae, (25) and his refusal to obey the Thirty Tyrants when they ordered him to arrest Leon of Salamis. (26) He also makes a point of not parading his family before the jury at his trial, as was customary for the accused, on the grounds that he does not consider it proper (ou ... kalon) to make an emotional appeal rather than to mount a rational defense. (27) His subsequent decision concerning the plot to free him from prison fits into the same pattern. In all of these cases Socrates' unconditional (categorical, we might say) commitment to moral imperatives provides a coherent justification for his actions.

It has been objected that the vocabulary of Socrates and Plato lacks the terminology necessary to distinguish between right and wrong and good and bad, or between the morally and the nonmorally good and bad. Indeed, Socrates and Plato have no word for morality as such. This sort of argument never seems decisive to me. For instance, the Presocratics were evidently talking about matter long before there was a word for their subject (coined by Aristotle in the mid-fourth century B.C.), and they made a good deal of theoretical progress without a generic term. But critics are right to raise the question of how Socrates might communicate his insights. The present study is not a philological one, but I would make the following suggestions. First, the phrase dikaia/adika prattein, which I have rendered above rather literally as "act justly/unjustly," could in most of the cases cited be plausibly translated "do right/wrong," where the emphasis is on acting according to duty. (28) Aristotle, we should remember, identifies a kind of justice that is "complete virtue" rather than a proper part of it, and a kind of injustice that is complete vice. (29) Sometimes the term kalos also seems to carry the implication of rightness. And sometimes the pair agathos/kakos carry the implications of the morally good or bad in contrast to the nonmorally good and bad; (30) and in particular this is true when the contrast is between one's survival and one's character--as in the cited passage. Further, the term arete "excellence, virtue, goodness" seems to work quite nicely as a term for morality, where Socrates declares that it is the sine qua non of wealth and success rather than the other way around. (31) To be sure, the term itself has a much broader application than merely to moral virtue; but Socrates more than anyone may be responsible for the increasingly moral association the term acquires. Here we meet the principle Gregory Vlastos calls the sovereignty of virtue: Virtue, think morality, is preeminent over every other constraint placed upon us, even those we might think of as natural instincts such as that of self-preservation. (32)

IV

Thus far I have tried to show that Socrates says the kinds of things a deontologist says and does the kinds of things a committed deontologist should do. But there is a deeper worry. Given the strong teleological background of Greek ethics, and drawing on an interpretive tradition that finds no room for duty theory, can Socrates consistently hold a deontological position in ethics? Do not his own theoretical commitments preclude him from taking duty as an independent and authoritative source of moral judgment? Are the views I have attributed to Socrates taken out of context, historically or philosophically?

Here let me present a recent reconstruction of Socrates' value theory and moral theory that would make deontology impossible for Socrates. The reconstruction is that of Naomi Reshotko in her book Socratic Virtue. Her interpretation is intelligent, articulate, and theoretically rigorous; it belongs to a family of interpretations that would similarly preclude a deontological theory for Socrates. Here I can only sketch Reshotko's interpretation and my response to it. More would need to be said to be fair to her interpretation and to defend my response. But I hope at least to articulate a more typical reconstruction of Socrates' position (Reshotko's) and to show that a coherent response is possible and potentially defensible.

Reshotko argues: Socrates was not beginning from preconceived judgments concerning what is right and wrong, and then allowing them to dictate what should motivate and therefore explain human behavior. Socrates was reasoning from what actually could cause human behavior, to what such a theory would dictate constitutes good behavior. (33)

As she sees it, psychological egoism provides the only basis for adequate understanding of moral action: "Egoism is the only way that beliefs can harness the motivational and--in turn, the physical--apparatus that must be invoked in order to explain a particular, physical action." (34) Since Socrates "believes that all desire is for the good," it follows that he "must believe that all desire is rational." (35) Thus virtue is knowledge, which allow us to obtain what we desire and to be happy. (36)

Reshotko goes on to look at Socrates' value theory, in which he distinguishes three values: good, bad, and "neither-good-nor-bad" (which she abbreviates to NGNB), a neutral state of things. Most of the things people put in the "good" category, such as health, wealth, and reputation, Socrates puts in the neutral category--because, he says, they can be used for either bad or good ends. All the advantages that a cruel tyrant has, for instance, are used for bad ends, and it would be better if the tyrant did not have them. In analyzing this value theory, Reshotko rejects the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods for a more complex one: There are self-generated values and other-generated values, and conditional and unconditional values. The self-generated unconditional values are happiness and misery; other-generated conditional values are the NGNBs, while other-generated unconditional values are virtue (positive) and ignorance (negative). The advantage Reshotko gets from this is the view that virtue is, on the one hand, dependent on happiness but, on the other hand, not merely of instrumental value but an unconditional concomitant. "Virtue," she says, "never fails to contribute to happiness, so it is always good." (37)

So is virtue sufficient, or necessary, for happiness? "Virtue doesn't need to be necessary or sufficient for happiness in order to be pursued. It simply needs to be the only game in town. In fact ... it only needs to be the only game in town that is based on skill rather than chance." (38) Virtue does not need to be sufficient in the strong sense of making us perfectly happy, or the weaker sense of making us maximally happy in our circumstances. We just need to know that knowledge always benefits and never harms the agent. In the end we find "a contingent and nomological connection between virtue and happiness" which is adequate to motivate us to follow virtue. (39) What knowledge is it that we need? From a study of Plato's Charmides Reshotko determines that temperance is "the only science that is properly regarded as beneficial. It must be the science of good and bad (happiness and misery)." (40) "For Socrates, the science of good and bad is simply the science of what condition is naturally, objectively, and actually the ideal condition for a human being." (41) This becomes part of a comprehensive science of everything. For "Socrates thinks that what we today call 'values' are dictated by what we today call 'facts'." (42)

On this well-constructed and evidence-based interpretation, Socrates is a psychological egoist who sees the human good as happiness and virtue as a science of everything, one that allows us to understand what happiness consists of and how to get it. On this theory, moral values are not independent of nonmoral values, but arise from a consideration of how rationally to achieve the latter. Morality is, then, based on hard facts about human nature (inter alia) such as an empirical social science might discover. On this view, any noises Socrates makes about doing right for its own sake, come what may, must be just hot air. A disinterested pursuit of duty is impossible and indeed irrational.

Structurally, Reshotko argues for psychological egoism and eudaimonism, which lead to Socratic intellectualism, which, applied to Socrates' threefold value theory, allows her to identify happiness as the primary good, and to argue that virtue-as-knowledge offers the only reliable (if contingent) access to happiness. The knowledge in question is a science of everything, including human well-being.

There are, however, reasons to worry about this account. It would entail that, absent a complete science of the world and in particular of human nature, namely some kind of empirical psychology, no one could make reliable moral judgments. In some future Utopia we may have access to the knowledge we need, but not now. Yet Socrates is notably indifferent to scientific philosophy, which he regards as at least irrelevant to moral problems. (43) Further, this view would entail that Socrates has no present access to moral knowledge (a view that many scholars attribute to him; but should they?). Yet Socrates tells us in the Apology that he has never done anything wrong, (44) and he shows us in the Crito that he recognizes moral imperatives that he adheres to with absolute confidence. Socrates is self-confidently moral now. So let us look at an alternative view.

Socrates surely is committed to some kind of strong theory of motivation. "In pursuit of the good we walk when we walk, thinking it is better, and on the other hand, we stand still when we stand still, for the sake of the same thing, the good.... For we want good things, as you say, not things that are neither bad nor good, nor bad things)." (45) Socrates takes it as axiomatic that we seek for what is good as opposed to what is bad or what is neutral. But what Socrates does not say here or anywhere else is that I always seek what is good for me. He does, it is true, sometimes infer that what is good is good for me and what is bad is bad for me. But that could be consistent with the view that what is good is good for everyone. And at least Socrates seems to indicate in this passage that we act, not of the sake of ourselves in the first place, but "for the sake of ... the good," where the good seems now to acquire some objective validity apart: from my personal welfare. Accordingly, I suggest we reject psychological egoism for a view I shall call psychological agathism, namely, that people act to bring about the good simpliciter.

This move calls into question the doctrine of eudaimonism. If the motivational principle we accept is not self-regarding, it at least cannot follow immediately that human motivation is directed toward the agent's own happiness. What, then, about Socrates' remarks that seem to express eudaimonism? First, Socrates seems to say remarkably little about happiness, and second, what he does say often does not square with eudaimonism. In passages where we might expect Socrates to talk about happiness, he often talks about whether life is worth living (biotos) under certain conditions (with reference to how we act). (46) "Do we still stand by the view that living is not the most important thing but living well?" Socrates asks Crito, and the latter agrees. "And do we stand by the view that living well is the same thing as living nobly and justly?" Crito again agrees. (47) An important discussion of values in the Euthydemus that Reshotko draws on starts thus: "Don't all of us men want to do well (eu prattein)?" (48) But only after several other uses of that phrase and a lengthy exploration do we get a discussion of eudaimonein, where it is paired with eu prattein, (49) as if in an afterthought.

In the Gorgias Polus offers a conventional view of happiness: "It is clear, Socrates," says Polus sarcastically, that you will say that you don't even know if the Great King [of Persia] is happy. And I will be right. For I don't know what his situation is in relation to education and justice. Indeed? Is that what the whole of happiness (eudaimonia) amounts to? In my view, Polus, yes. I maintain that the upright and good man or woman is happy, the unjust and evil miserable. (50)

Challenged to spell out what happiness consists of, Socrates identifies it with (moral) education and justice--the word we find in the Crito most connected with morality. This seems to me to suggest a much stronger connection between happiness and virtue than a "contingent nomological" one. Here virtue seems to be both sufficient and necessary for happiness, and perhaps even more, to be somehow identical with or to supply the whole content of happiness. Perhaps, indeed, instead of virtue being a lawlike concomitant of happiness, happiness is a necessary concomitant of virtue. And it may turn out on this view that the only inherently good things are moral goods, which may include moral attitudes, characters, and actions, all somehow involved with what Socrates calls virtue.

On the present interpretation, psychological agathism entails intellectualism; virtue is coextensive with, and perhaps identical with, happiness. Hence the good life, or doing well, amounts to acting morally. Kant might find the connection with happiness undermines the "pure" character of morality. For Socrates, however, it may come as evidence for the rationality of the world (a feature that Kant brings into his theory at another level of abstraction, but does not neglect). The present interpretation also seems to have important similarities with the ancient Stoic understanding of Socrates.

I have not, of course, proved that Socrates is a deontologist. That would take much more work. But I have, I hope, indicated how such an argument might proceed, and shown that Socrates' commitment to duty is not necessarily mere posturing and pretense, but may represent something integral to the Socratic way of life.

V

Conclusion. There is room in Socrates' philosophy for considerations of personal welfare. But the arrow of justification seems to go contrary to what Ideologists maintain. Happiness does not teach goodness, but goodness ensures happiness. Socrates recognizes duties such as the avoidance of wrongdoing and harm as prior to all prudential concerns. His justification for such duties brings out the inconsistency of acting otherwise than as duty prescribes. I submit that we can find in Socratic discourse the signs of a protodeontological theory, where morality trumps personal interest as the basis for practical action.

I leave the last word to Immanuel Kant, "It would be easy," he observes, "to show [in this way] how human reason ... is well able to distinguish, in all cases that present themselves, what is good or evil, right or wrong--provided that, without the least attempt to teach it anything new, we make reason attend, as Socrates did, to its own principle." (51)

Brigham Young University

Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, Brigham Young University, 4086 JFSB, Provo, UT 84602.

(1) See Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1991), chap. 8; Terence Irwin, Plato's Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), chap. 4; Naomi Reshotko, Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-Bad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socratic Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 44-49; Christopher Bobonich, "Socrates and Eudaimonia," in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, ed. Donald R. Morrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 293-332; Terry Penner, "Socratic Ethics and the Socratic Psychology of Action: A Philosophical Framework," The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, 260-92. Lloyd Gerson, "Socrates' Absolutist Prohibition of Wrongdoing," Apeiron 30 (1997): 1-11, insightfully examines Socrates' strict moral code, but firmly within the framework of a teleological ethics in which "wrongdoing undermines personal or self-identity" (10). One of the few voices against taking Socrates as a eudaimonist is Nicholas P. White, Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 173-81, who, however, is very doubtful about attempts to reconstruct the thought of Socrates. Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, The Foundations of Socratic Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994) comes close to making Socrates a deontologist but ultimately rejects this reading (69,81). Roslyn Weiss, The Socratic Paradox and Its Enemies (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 7, helpfully calls Socrates a "dikaiosunist" rather than a eudaimonist, but without a detailed argument. The strong eudaimonist reading of ethics goes back at least to late antiquity; see Augustine, City of God, 8.8.

(2) The champion of this approach in recent times is Vlastos, esp. Socrates. Recently the approach has been ably defended by Brickhouse and Smith, Socratic Moral Psychology, 11-42. See also Daniel W. Graham, "Socrates and Plato," Phronesis 37 (1992): 141-65. Many students of ancient philosophy (for instance Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue [Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996], 88-95) recognize some connection between the Socrates of the early dialogues and the historical figure, but are dubious about finding a clear line of demarcation between Socrates and Plato.

(3) William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 14; followed by John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 24 n. 14.

(4) This term is used in a number of ways, some of which I find misleading. I shall take it in the relatively narrow sense of a theory of value that specifies the proper end of action.

(5) Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 37. Christine Korsgaard, "Teleological Ethics," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 9 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 294-95, makes a somewhat similar distinction, arguing that while ancient ethical theories identify virtue with the good, modem theories assign only instrumental value to virtue or right action. I think this distinction is too strong and begs the question against reconstructions of Greek ethics such as that of Terence Irwin (Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977], 84; Plato's Moral Theory, 67-68), who sees Socratic virtue as having only instrumental value. In the final section of this paper, I will examine a theory of Reshotko, Socratic Virtue, who assigns more than an instrumental value to Socratic virtue; but I do not think this view is ipso facto preferable to Irwin's.

(6) Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 30, with John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 87-88, who points out that on this criterion, Aristotle would not count as a teleologist (though Rawls, p. 25, takes him as one).

(7) Crito 48c2-d6; my own translations throughout except as otherwise noted.

(8) Crito 49a4-9.

(9) Crito 49b4-5.

(10) Crito 49b-c.

(11) Crito 50a-b.

(12) Apology 30d-e. The Crito is set after the Apology dramatically, and also presupposes it, literarily: for example, Crito 52c looks back to Apology 37c-e.

(13) Republic 335a-d.

(14) The conclusion of the argument in Republic 1 is narrower than the one Socrates invokes in the Crito: a no-harm principle rather than a no-injustice principle. But note that premises of the argument would work perfectly well for the broader principle. It is not the work of justice to produce injustice, that is, it is not the work of doing right to make others prone to do wrong or, one might add, to do wrong oneself.

(15) Crito 50a9-b5.

(16) Crito 47d8-e2.

(17) Crito 47e7-48a1.

(18) Crito 48b4-8.

(19) Apology 30a7-b4. The influential reading of Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito, ed. John Burnet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 124 (Apology 30b3), makes agatha in 30b4 the predicate, yielding the following, more moderate sense of the second clause: "but goodness renders wealth and every thing that men possess, whether in private or public life, valuable." This reading, however, forces us to construe the verb gignetai once without a predicate and once (supplied from context) with a predicate, effectively changing both the syntax and the sense of the verb and so destroying the tight parallelism interwoven with a chiasmus.

(20) Apology 29d-e.

(21) See the reference to Frankena in n. 3 above.

(22) On this see Roslyn Weiss, "Socrates: Seeker or Preacher?" in A Companion to Socrates, ed. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rechana Kamteka (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 243-53.

(23) Apology 28b6-cl.

(24) Apology 28d-29a.

(25) Apology 32b-c.

(26) Apology 32c-d.

(27) Apology 34e.

(28) Burnet, Plato's Euthyphro, for instance, repeatedly renders dikaios/adikos as "right/wrong"; for example, 193 (Euthyphro 47e7), 195 (48b8), 199 (49e6).

(29) Nicomachean Ethics 5.1, esp. 1129b25-26, 1130a8-10.

(30) As at Apology 28b6-cl, recently cited.

(31) At Apology 30bl-4, quoted above.

(32) Vlastos, Socrates, 209-14.

(33) Reshotko, Socratic Virtue, 61; her emphasis.

(34) Ibid., 63; her emphasis.

(35) Ibid., 74.

(36) Ibid., 89.

(37) Ibid., 125. For the threefold value theory, see n. 45 below.

(38) Ibid., 139.

(39) Ibid., 155.

(40) Ibid., 165.

(41) Ibid., 171.

(42) Ibid., 172.

(43) Apology 19c; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.11-15.

(44) Apology 37a, 33a.

(45) Gorgias 468b 1-4, c5-7; see also Meno 77c-78b.

(46) For example, Crito 47d-e; Apology 38a.

(47) Crito 48b.

(48) Euthydemus 278e3.

(49) Euthydemus 280b6.

(50) Gorgias 470e4-11.

(51) Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), trans. H. J. Paton, 21-22; emphasis added; see also Frankena, Ethics, 2-5, 17.