Socrates says that virtue can make bad things good, whilst vice only makes good things bad. On the basis of this, he claims that virtue is sufficient for a good life.
Socrates’ claim is very challenging. It’s often laughed at by his interlocutors, as if it’s expressing a kind of simple-minded childlike innocence, not worthy of a grown up. It’s too easy for us to take the same attitude. It’s too easy to dismiss Socrates as a kind of arch moraliser, telling us to ‘be good’ from a place of idle words. This would miss Socrates’ point entirely. Socrates isn’t telling us anything, he’s just asking us questions.
Socrates doesn’t think he can tell you what to do, because he doesn’t think anyone can tell you what to do. The whole point of ethics is that you have to decide for yourself. The only thing he’s pointing out is that you do have to decide how to live. And you can decide thinkingly, or unthinkingly. Socrates believes if we follow the conversation where it leads, we too will conclude as he has concluded, that there’s nothing more important to us than living an ethically decent life.
He describes himself as a midwife: he doesn’t give us ideas, he just helps deliver ideas that are already in us. We already know that the most important thing to us is to live an ethically decent life, we just haven’t thought it through enough to realise it yet. His incessant questioning forces us to think it through for ourselves, and when we do this, he thinks we will realise our own mistakes and come to agree with him that virtue is the only thing that really matters.
Different Routes
Socrates argues for this in various different contexts, against various different targets, so his argument takes on a different form each time depending on who he’s talking to and what they’re talking about. Whoever Socrates is talking to, he meets them on their terms and moves them one step closer to a better understanding.
To someone who thinks there’s no reason to be virtuous, because being virtuous holds you back in the great competition of life, Socrates will point out the rewards that being virtuous brings – you are liked, respected, trusted, etc. – and he will encourage us to see the value in these things. But to someone who thinks that the only reason to be virtuous is to be liked, respected, trusted, etc., Socrates will say that anyone who really understands virtue wouldn’t need these rewards because virtue is its own reward.
It’s easy to get confused here, because Socrates seems to have said two different things. This difference in Socrates is a product of the particular conversation he was having. To one person, you say this; to another, you say that. The one thing common to all these conversations is the priority of the ethical, but this is argued for in as many different ways as there are different people to talk to.
As such, finding one argument for this claim is difficult. The most I could say is that a general argumentative theme emerges, which is a kind of negative argument: all answers to the question ‘what is it to live well?’ fail, except virtue. For all things in life: when it is virtuous, then it is valuable, but only then.
Virtue is Necessary for Value
The value of all other things can be shown to be dependent on virtue, but the value of virtue depends only on itself. As a philosopher might put it, virtue is a necessary condition for anything to be of any real value, and virtue is a necessary and sufficient condition for its own value. No other candidates for what is really valuable in life meet this criteria, so virtue wins by default as the last answer standing.
A previous post has already covered one type of argument: consider anything that you think is ‘good’ in life and you will find it can be made ‘bad’ if it is not used virtuously. Strength, wealth, and intelligence are good when used for good, like a comic-book hero (Batman, Iron Man, Superman, e.g.), but bad when used for bad, like a comic-book villain (Bane, Thanos, Lex Luther, e.g.). Since anything good can be made bad by being bad, and anything bad can be made good by being good, then being good is all that really matters; everything depends on it.
When it is virtuous, then it is valuable, but only then.
There are other arguments along similar lines. Pleasure, for instance, can’t be what determines things being ‘good’ in life, since both pleasures and pains can be experienced in equal measure by the wise or the foolish, the courageous or the cowardly, and we would still say that the wise and courageous are better off than the foolish and cowardly. It follows that there must be something more than pleasure (or the avoidance of pain) that determines the value of things in life. And that means that pleasure is not what determines things being good in life.
Even if you were to believe that pleasure was the only good (and pain the only evil), and that the pursuit of happiness via the maximisation of pleasure and minimisation of pain is the only real aim in life, Socrates will still point out that knowledge is the only way to ensure you will get the best out of life, because you need to know what you’re doing in order to find pleasure and avoid pain – you need to choose the best food and wine, the best entertainments, etc. There’s a certain know-how to enjoying life. And therefore, if you want to experience the greatest pleasure, pursuing knowledge is more important than pursuing pleasure.
But once you pursue that knowledge, you will find that being ‘temperate’ and exerting self-restraint is better for you than not: unless you’re temperate in your pleasure-seeking, you will tend to overdo things and end up making yourself sick, causing yourself pain; whereas if you are temperate, you can get the most pleasure out of life without making yourself sick. Once again we have found something more important than the pursuit of pleasure: temperance or self-control. And this is a kind of virtue, a kind of ‘being good’. Once again, being good makes good things good, but being bad makes good things bad, so everything depends on being good.
However you come at it, if you persevere with your investigations you will find that being good is all that really matters. Everything depends on it.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
tobybetenson.com 