404 Ethics January 2019 I. TOPICS II. METHODOLOGY

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1 404 Ethics January 2019 Kamtekar, Rachana. Plato s Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul, and the Desire for the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp $55.00 (cloth). I. TOPICS Kamtekar begins her exploration of Plato s moral psychology (1) by observing that Plato seems to commit himself to several theses with respect to moral psychology: 1. Virtue is knowledge. 2. Wrongdoing is involuntary. 3. We always do what we believe is the best of the things we can do. She then goes on to note that many scholars at least used to suppose that these three theses implied a further thesis, namely: 4. There are no nonrational or good-independent motivations. II. METHODOLOGY These theses generate problems of interpretation. So, for example, while (1) seems to be the view given in several of Plato s so-called early or Socratic dialogues, it seems to be rejected in, for example, the Republic. There, justice is explicitly identified with the harmonization of the three parts of the soul and therefore cannot plausibly be understood in wholly cognitive terms. The same inconstancy in Plato s support seems to apply to (3), as well: whereas the early dialogues indicate support for (3), the case of Leontius in Republic 439e 440a is often regarded as evidence that Plato moved away from this view. Kamtekar recognizes that scholars have often tried to explain the apparent inconsistencies in Plato s support for positions such as (1) through (4) by invoking what has come to be known as a developmentalist reading of the dialogues. Roughly, developmentalists have argued that a number of the positions supported in the early or Socratic dialogues are modified or rejected in later dialogues. In barely a half page of discussion (7), Kamtekar dismisses this approach (citing a single, well-known critic of the approach as decisive; 27 n. 3). Kamtekar reduces the evidence given in support of this approach to the method of stylometry, which groups dialogues based on frequencies of various stylistic elements, and concludes that the evidence thus provided is simply inadequate to support the developmentalist approach. Missing from her discussion are the many careful studies of the philosophical contents of Plato s works, which have independently resulted in groupings that overlap to a significant degree with the findings of the stylometrists. Traditionally, opposition to developmentalist readings has tended to come from so-called unitarian scholars who have argued that the apparent shifts in Plato s views which developmentalists have understood as changes in his philosophical development are only apparent and can be explained away. Kamtekar has nothing to say about this approach or its various defenses by others.

2 Book Reviews 405 Both of these traditional approaches have two things in common: (i) Both have tended to identify Plato s views with those expressed by, or plausibly attributed to, the main speaker of the dialogues usually Socrates, but in some later works others play the lead. This assumption has been derided as the mouthpiece theory, according to which Plato uses his main characters as his own philosophical mouthpieces. (For a sustained attack on this approach, see Debra Nails, Mouthpiece Schmouthpiece, in Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, ed.g. Press [Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000], ) Developmentalists have often supposed that the Socrates of the early dialogues was intended to represent the historical Socrates, but even when this assumption is in play, those making the assumption are generally inclined to suppose that Plato sought to present Socratic views because Plato found them plausible. When his view changed, according to developmentalists, Plato simply put different views into the mouths of his main characters. In most versions of the unitarian approach, too, the main character of a dialogue always speaks for Plato. (ii) Developmentalists and unitarians have also agreed on what Kamtekar characterizes as taking a doctrinal approach: both agree that the arguments given by the main characters identify Platonic doctrines, that is, views that Plato sought to promote. Kamtekar appears to call for a different interpretive approach, which does not make the assumptions common to both developmentalist and unitarian practices. Her own method, as she characterizes it, recognizes the dialectical dependence of what is said, especially by principal speakers, in order to determine Plato s relationship to various substantive theses p that are presented and argued for in the dialogues. Dialectical here requires explication, which Kamtekar is careful to provide: The basic idea is that the interpretation of sentences that seem to express psychological doctrine should be informed by an understanding of what role these sentences play in the dialogue: for or against what are they used? Are they adopted because the interlocutor, or most people, or the main speaker himself, believes them? Or because they explain something that one of the parties believes? (11). It has become quite fashionable in Plato studies to promote nondoctrinal interpretive approaches, and so many will find Kamtekar s nondoctrinal readings appealing. She does not, however, offer any explanation for the fact that none of Plato s ancient readers had any problem with attributing to Plato the views (or doctrines ) for which his main characters argue. Aristotle, for example, reads Plato as a developmentalist (including the additional historical claim about the view of the historical Socrates being represented in the early dialogues). In reporting Plato s views, Aristotle unabashedly identifies them with the arguments of Socrates in later dialogues, such as the Republic (see his critique of Plato in bk. 2 of the Politics). Strong support for the unitarian approach, by contrast, can be derived from the fact that all of the later members of Plato s Academy did not seem to recognize any instances of inconsistency in the view Plato presents in his works. So if Kamtekar s flirtation with contemporary interpretive innovations has any basis in truth, it seems very odd that none of Plato s intellectual heirs over so many centuries managed to recognize that Plato s main characters did not invariably promote views Plato sought to endorse. But it is not just the ancients whom Kamtekar ignores here. On any given topic engaged in this book, one finds a smattering of citations of some few other

3 406 Ethics January 2019 scholars mostly recent works even when the topic under discussion is one that is extensively debated in a large scholarly literature. Kamtekar has made no attempt at broad engagement with the works of other scholars, and the slight and sparse notices of others works that she does provide are usually buried in endnotes rather than footnotes (which must have been an authorial decision: Oxford University Press does not require endnotes), which thus adds difficulty for those who might like to assess the place of Kamtekar s work within the existing scholarly literature. Accordingly, I certainly cannot recommend this book on the basis of the thoroughness of its author s scholarship. III. GENERATING UNITY IN PLATO S MORAL PSYCHOLOGY In spite of her promotion of the new interpretive methodology, the net effect of her application of this methodology ends up being a version of unitarianism: Kamtekar argues that Plato s views on moral psychology never actually change. To avoid drawing the conclusion that Plato s dialogues really do present inconsistent doctrines, Kamtekar uses two distinct strategies. The first of these is to insist, again, that just because Plato s Socrates seems to endorse a view, it does not follow that Plato actually accepts that view. After all, given Socrates s frequent professions of ignorance, we should be open to the idea that he entertains certain views at times when he argues, without any conviction that such views are true. Kamtekar goes much further with this supposition, however, than most scholars do: not only does she claim that we should not suppose that Plato is a hedonist, simply because Socrates in the Protagoras argues from a hedonistic point of view, but she also finds all of the other important apparent philosophical innovations of the dialogues to be only hypotheses that Socrates entertains, without necessarily being committed to any of them. Accordingly, she finds no good reason to attribute to Socrates (or given her tacit acceptance of the mouthpiece theory Plato) any of the positions Plato puts into Socrates s mouth in the dialogue. Thus lost, as Socratic or Platonic views, is not just hedonism but also the unity of virtue, the claim that virtue is knowledge, the denial of akrasia, the endorsement of the measuring craft, and everything else for which the dialogue is often cited as evidence of Socratic or Platonic philosophy. As interpreters, we need to abandon the idea of attributing any of these views to Socrates or Plato, according to Kamtekar, so that we can understand the real role Plato gives to Socrates in the Protagoras as an extended attempt to explain how Protagoras can teach virtue and make students good (35). Even where Socrates may be seen as refuting Protagoras, Kamtekar still sees Socrates s primary aim in the dialogue as providing Protagoras with some help in theorizing his sophistic practice. This is surely a case of the cure being worse than the disease. I would rather suffer the risk of attributing hedonism to Socrates or Plato than to achieve relief from such discomfort by making the entire Protagoras an exercise in Socrates attempting to assist Protagoras in his con games. Here, too, we would do better if we stop and consider how Plato s presumably best student, Aristotle, responded to what he found in the Protagoras: It would be strange so Socrates thought if when knowledge was in a man something else could master it and drag it about like a slave (Nicomachean Ethics Η b23 24; compare Protagoras 352c1 2: talking about what the many believe, they

4 think of knowledge as being utterly dragged around by all these other things as if it were a slave ). I take it that it is simply obvious that Aristotle got the expression like a slave (ὥjpεra ndrapódοu) straight from Plato s Protagoras and saw no problem with regarding what Socrates says there as expressing Socrates s actual view of things. So, too, Kamtekar mounts an extended assault against attributing to Socrates or Plato any conviction about psychological eudaimonism. Her dodge of the apparent endorsement of this view in the Protagoras is thus carried over (in an appendix to chap. 2) to an evasion of what seems to be the plain sense of Euthydemus 278e3 6. Once again, she avoids accepting what the text has Socrates say by claiming that he says it only to reveal to Dionysodorus and Euthydemus what are the presuppositions of their teaching and how they should approach potential students (59). In this instance, Socrates is supposed to be offering theoretical assistance to eristic practices. We thus may avoid supposing that Socrates actually accepts the view from which he generates his famous protreptic arguments in that dialogue. Never mind that when he states his commitment to psychological eudaimonism in this text, he seems to make the point emphatically, asking rhetorically, Who among human beings doesn t want to do well? Gorgias 468b8 c7 also appears to express the same view. IV. THE UNWILLINGNESS OF WRONGDOING Book Reviews 407 Certainly the best part of Kamtekar s book is her careful review of the various expressions of the view that wrongdoing is always involuntary. For this topic, she does not need to invoke unusual interpretive principles or blur what seems to be the plain sense of our texts. Instead, Kamtekar can find numerous texts from the entirety of his philosophical career that support attributing to Plato the view that wrongdoing is unwilling because it makes us unhappy (70). As she notices near the beginning of chapter 3, there is actually only one text that seems to indicate that Socrates recognized the possibility of voluntary wrongdoing. In the Apology (26a2 8), Socrates scolds Meletus, If I corrupt them [the youth] unwillingly, the law here isn t to bring people to trial for errors of this sort, namely unwilling ones, but to take them aside in private to teach and admonish them. For it s clear that once I learn, I ll stop what I m doing unwillingly. But you ve avoided associating with me and you didn t want to instruct me, and instead you bring me here to trial where it s the law to try those who need punishment, not instruction (translation modified from Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]). Kamtekar avoids concluding that Socrates is simply misleading Meletus or the jurors here, which he would be doing if we simply assume that it is his (and/or Plato s) view that all wrongdoing is unwilling, full stop. Instead, she notices that in this argument ignorance of the fact that corrupting one s associates makes them vicious, and so such as to harm one, is what would make it possible for one to corrupt them willingly (72; emphasis in original). Such actions thus allow that there is a sense in which one can do wrong willingly insofar as one forms and acts successfully on the intention to harm others. Even so, such actions count for Plato as unwilling insofar as they also always harm those who perform such actions, and

5 408 Ethics January 2019 such self-harm is always unwilling. While I accept Kamtekar s general explanation here, I would also note that this explanation is (obviously) entirely compatible even with developmentalist views about there being changes in other aspects of Plato s moral psychology from the early to the later dialogues. In fact, here, too, the explanation given is entirely consistent with the acceptance of psychological eudaimonism such wrongdoers may still be understood as doing what they believe is best for them at the time of action, from among the options of which they are aware. Nicholas D. Smith Lewis & Clark College Marin, Mara. Connected by Commitment: Oppression and Our Responsibility to Undermine It. New York: Oxford University Press, Pp $65.00 (cloth). Mara Marin describes the notion of commitment as relationships of obligations that develop over time, through the long-term open-ended responsive action between two or more persons (3). Developing this notion, Marin proposes an account of responsibility for structural oppression and the obligations of commitment to ameliorate social injustice. Connected by Commitment argues that habitual actions play a role in maintaining oppressive systems, but that individuals have power to respond and, when joined with the individual actions of others, to create joint action for social change. The strength of the book is in its contribution to a growing literature on normative justifications for obligations to redress oppression. Numerous theorists have addressed the problems of structural injustice, both the responsibility for it and the obligation to transform it into social relations marked by justice. Commitment, too, is a theoretically rich concept, with accounts emerging from literatures as diverse as existentialist, liberal democratic, socialist, and conservative Christian. Marin s account falls into the liberal democratic tradition, with clear influences from phenomenology and critical theory. Like Iris Young, to whom the book is dedicated, Marin offers a way to think about the ties that bind us together, as well as a way to think through some of the obligations for responding to oppression that those ties inform. Five features of commitment offer what Marin calls a phenomenological account of commitment that informs normative requirements. The first feature is that commitments are relationships we make through our actions (32). Accordingly, commitments are not promises or contracts; they are actions, and the obligations of commitment emerge as implications of the patterned accumulation of many individual actions (33; emphasis in the original). The example used throughout is that of spouses: an individual action does not itself create the commitment between spouses, but chains of actions (and responses) do. This leads to the second feature of commitment: the actions that form a commitment are open-ended and responsive (34 36). The open-ended nature of actions and responses allows for circumstances to factor into the specific content or