著者

脇條 靖弘

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典学研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, pp.42-52, 1995

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<p>Despite his well-known confession of ignorance Socrates does claim somehow to have knowledge in several passages of Plato's early dialogues. The aim of this paper is to focus on one of such passages, 29b of the Apology, and investigate the nature of this claim and the way it relates to his ignorance. In Apology 29b Socrates is making knowledge claim at two stages. Firstly, he claims to know(1)that it is evil and disgraceful to do wrong and to disobey the one who is better than him. Secondly, using this knowledge(1) as a premise and also adopting a further premise(2)that disobeying God and quitting philosophy is the very act of doing wrong and disobeying the one who is better than him, he reaches a conclusion(3)that disobeying God and quitting philosophy is bad, and concerning this conclusion he seems to be claiming to have knowledge. It is my contention that the grounds on which Socrates claims to know(1) and(3) are distinct and both of them are such as to be compatible with, and explain, his constant confession of ignorance, and further that not only in the Apology but also in early dialogues in general, when Socrates announces his knowledge in the process of drawing a conclusion(often in his elenchus) , his knowledge is classified either in type (1)or type(3). I suppose that the best way to make Socrates' claim of knowledge concerning(1) compatible with his confession of ignorance is to limit his knowledge to the area of logical properties of certain moral expressions. That is to say, when Socrates says he knows(1)that it is evil and disgraceful to do wrong and to disobey the one who is better than him, what he means is that he knows that if something is described as an act of doing wrong or disobeying someone who is better than oneself, it necessarily follows that it is also described as an act that is evil and disgraceful. Thus I take it that type (1) knowledge concerns entailment relationship, or meta-ethical facts, concerning certain moral expressions, and Socrates declines to do what he takes to be an act of doing wrong, partly backed up by this kind of formal knowledge. As to type(3) knowledge, it seems at first sight that Socrates' knowledge concerns conclusion(3)itself, but this interpretation meets a difficulty : although he announces his knowledge of premise(1), premise(2)is mentioned only as what he believes(28e), and it is unlikely that Socrates takes the conclusion to constitute knowledge when one of its premises is only a belief. One possible way of avoiding this difficulty is to introduce the distinction between two levels of knowledge. For example, Vlastos distinguished between the stronger kind of knowledge whose hallmark is infallible certainty and the weaker kind which, although falling short of certainty, can be and has been acquired by Socrates through his habitual activities of elenchus. Thus, whereas(2) is strictly speaking only a belief, Socrates can say he knows(2)in this weaker sense and accordingly, can claim also to have knowledge of conclusion(3), which is drawn from(1) and(2). However this interpretation is rather complicated, and the solution I would like to propose is simpler and more straightforward. In my view, Socrates' knowledge does not concern conclusion(3) itself but the logical necessity of(3)following the acceptance of(1)and (2). What Socrates claims to know at 29b is that(3)necessarily follows if (1) and(2) are accepted, or that(3)is true provided that(1)and(2)are both true. Because "if" clause or "provided that" clause is omitted here, his statement gives a false impression that he is saying he knows(3)itself. Thus, according to my interpretation both types of knowledge are rather formal in that type(1)concerns the logical-semantic necessity of certain moral expressions and type(3)concerns the logical necessity of inference. Type(1)knowledge is not so useful if it is possessed without any</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>