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Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

a
PAUL WOODRUFF
a
The University of Texas , Austin
Published online: 01 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: PAUL WOODRUFF (1976) Socrates on the Parts of Virtue, Canadian
Journal of Philosophy, 6:sup1, 101-116

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 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Supplementary Volume II (1976)

Socrates on the Parts of Virtue 1

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PAUL WOODRUFF, The University of Texas at Austin

Plato represents Socrates as believing in the unity of the virtues,

quarreling with those who, like Protagoras or Meno, wish to treat the
virtues as distinct objects of inquiry (Protagoras 329c2ff., Meno
71e1ff.). On the other hand, there is good reason to deny that Plato's
Socrates believed in the numerical identity of the virtues (cf. Meno
79a3-5). What Socrates did believe, I shall argue, is that the various
virtues are one in essence. I shall show what this means and how it
clears up prima facie inconsistencies among Plato's early dialogues.
If I am right, Socrates' theory has startling consequences. Since
essence is exactly what Socrates wants a definition to state, it follows
that all virtues will have one and the same definition. And if this is so,
no wonder the quest for separate definitions of virtues fails in every
case! For example in the Laches the generals are baffled by Courage
because Courage has no private essence and cannot be marked off
from the other virtues by stating its essence. Its essence is Virtue entire.
That is a radical view, but there are good reasons for attributing it to
Socrates.

1 For the problem I address in this essay I am indebted to Gregory Vlastos' article,
"The Unity of the Virtues in the Prot agoras," Review of Metaphysics 25(1972) pp.
415-458. References are to the corrected version in his Platonic Studies,
Princeton, 1973, pp. 221-269. For a different point of view, see Terry Penner,
"The Unity of Virtue," Philosophical Review 82(1973) pp. 35-68.
I am grateful for useful comments to Michael Gagarin, David Furley, Jeffry
Pelletier, A.P.D. Mourelatos, Leslie Martinich, and the editors of the Canadian
journal of Philosophy.

101
 Paul Woodruff

One in Essence
Is Virtue one, and are Justice, Temperance and Piety parts of it? Or are all those
[words] I have just mentioned names of the same thing, which is one thing?
(Prot agoras 329c6-d1 )l

With this question Socrates introduces the great debate between

Protagoras and himself on the unity of the virtues. The difference
between the two seems simple: Protagoras believes that Justice,
Temperance and the like are parts of Virtue, whereas Socrates holds
that "Justice," "Temperance" and the like are names of the same
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thing. But the matter is far from simple, for Socrates elsewhere bases a
crucial argument on the premise that Justice, Temperance and the like
are parts of Virtue (Meno 78d1-79e5). Apparently Socrates and
Protagoras agree that the diverse virtues are parts of Virtue, and must
disagree on how to understand "parts." Hence in the Protagoras
Socrates proceeds directly to distinguish by analogies two ways in
which "parts of Virtue" may be understood:
Are they parts, I said, in the same sense in which mouth, nose, and eyes, and ears,
are the parts of a face; or are they like the parts of gold, which differ from one
another only in being larger or smaller? (329d4-8, Jowett's translation.)

Protagoras adopts the face analogy, and since Socrates goes on to

disagree with him, we may assume Socrates has some inclination to
believe that the parts of Virtue are like the parts of gold.
Vlastos warns us against taking the gold analogy at face value. If we
were to do so, we would have to take Socrates to mean that "the
virtues are alike in respect of all their qualities." 3 But if Socrates
believed that, he could not hope to define the different virtues
differently, as he sets out to do in the dialogues of search. Vlastos
concludes that Socrates means to claim no more than the bicon-
ditionality thesis: "Having one virtue entails having every virtue." 4
In view of the Meno's doctrine that the various virtues are parts of
Virtue, Vlastos is surely right that Socrates does not mean to overlook
the differences among them. The thesis that Socrates simply identifies
the virtues, though ably defended from other texts by Terry Penner, 5 is

2 Vlastos' translation, op. cit., p. 224. Except where noted, translations are mine.

3 Vlastos, op. cit., p. 230.

4 Ibid., p. 252, and passim.

5 Terry Penner, op. cit. Penner's thesis is that "when Socrates said 'Virtue is one,'
he meant it quite literally!" (p. 35) For a brief history of the opposing views, see
Penner's note 3, p. 37.

102
 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

too strong to fit the Meno. On the other hand, Vlastos' contention that
Socrates did not go beyond the biconditionality thesis does not square
with what happens in the Laches. There, as we shall see, Socrates
argues from premises he seems to accept to the conclusion that
Courage is Virtue entire, a conclusion much stronger than the
biconditionality thesis. 6 There ought to be a way of making the Meno
and the Laches consistent with each other and with the Protagoras, for
all three appear in other respects to represent the same early stage in
Plato's development. In this paper I shall try to explain and reconcile
the three relevant passages.
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My strategy is to introduce a distinction between essence and

accident that allows Socrates to hold without contradiction that the
various virtues are both one and many. They are one, I propose, in
having the same essence; and they are many in having different
accidents. Let me say what I mean by "essence" and "accident." The
distinction I have in mind is metaphysical. Essences belong not to
words but to things (strictly speaking, to things under descriptions).
The essence of something is what it primarily or most importantly is.
For example, the essence of gold-in-ignots is the essence of gold, and
has nothing to do with what it is to be in the form of ingots. Being in
ingots is an accident of gold-in-ingots, for what it is primarily and most
importantly is gold. That elementary truth of metaphysics is familiar to
gold-smugglers, and indeed facilitates their operations. I shall say that
a real definition is a statement of the essence of the thing it defines;
later I shall argue that the definitions Socrates asks for in the dialogues
of search are real in this sense. Notice that the real definition for gold-
in-ingots will not distinguish between gold in ingots and gold in any
other form. The property of being in ingots is what I shall call an
accidental differentia of gold-in-ingots; that is, it always belongs to
gold-in-ingots and differentiates that from other sorts of gold, but it
does not belong to the essence of gold-in-ingots. It follows that having
all the essential properties of something does not entail being that
thing. This conclusion holds only for peculiar things like gold-in-
ingots; its strangeness is one reason why we are reluctant to speak of
gold-in-ingots as if it were on a par with, say, silver. To have the
essential properties of silver is to be silver. I understand Socrates'
doctrine of the unity of the virtues to be that Courage, Justice, and the
like have the peculiar status of gold-in-ingots. Notice also that the real

6 This is controversial. See below, p. 111, ff., and note 14. To the Laches we can add
the evidence of Aristotle, who holds the biconditionality thesis but finds
Socrates' unity of the virtues thesis too strong. It follows that Aristotle
understood Socrates to be committed to something stronger than the
biconditionality thesis. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI, 1144b18, ff.)

103
 Paul Woodruff

definition of gold-in-ingots identifies not the meaning of "gold-in-

ingots" but the essence of gold-in-ingots, and that these are different.
You could know the real definition of gold-in-ingots without knowing
that it is always in ingots. But if you did not know that gold-in-ingots is
always in ingots, you would not know what "gold-in-ingots" means.
Now suppose that our word for gold-in-ingots was "hat", and our
word for gold-in-coins was "coat". Then to show that hat and coat
have the same essence would be progress, and to introduce a word for
their common essence ("gold") would be still better. Our having the
word "gold" makes it odd for us to speak about gold-in-ingots as I
have been doing; and our not having words like my "hat" and "coat"
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safeguards us from supposing that hat and coat have separate

essences. But if "hat" and "coat" were in common use, and if you
thought that the essence of something was what the word for it meant,
then you would be unable to understand the sort of progress I am
talking about. You would never learn that hat and coat have the same
essence from lexicography, for that lesson is in elementary
metaphysics.
Socrates' disagreement with Protagoras is over this sort of issue.
Socrates, I think, would say that Courage, Justice, and the like have as
their common essence knowledge of good and evil. Protagoras, more
loyal to common usage and common opinion, cannot agree that
words with different meanings name things with a common essence.
Indeed, his allegiance to common usage prevents him from
understanding the sort of progress Socrates has in mind.
When Socrates says that the virtues are one, I think he means they
have one essence. And when he talks as if they were distinct parts of
Virtue, I think he supposes that there are different things true of the
different virtues that do not belong to their essence. That is to say that
the differences among the virtues are not of primary importance to
any of them. As I understand it, the doctrine of the unity of the virtues
has these consequences:

1. To have one virtue is to have the essence of every virtue.

2. The real definition of one virtue really defines every virtue.

The first is a weak version of the biconditionality thesis. It has the

advantage over that thesis of being somewhat more plausible. Having
one virtue does not guarantee satisfying the differentia of another. For
example, a very pious person may never have a chance to be virtuous
in the way peculiar to Courage, if his life is safe and comfortable. His
piety, however, may be taken as evidence that he has the strength of
character to be courageous. Similarly, we would expect a good
baseball player to turn out to be good at cricket if given a chance,

104
 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

though we would not expect him to be a cricket player. So a better

case can be made for (1) than for the biconditionality thesis. From (1) it
follows that the vice opposed to one virtue is incompatible with every
virtue, if (as seems likely) the essence of a virtue cannot occur in
conjunction with the vice opposed to it. Thus if the essence of Wisdom
is the same as the essence of Courage, no coward could be wise. That is
the kernel of Socrates' doctrine on the unity of the virtues, and that is
what Protagoras cannot accept/ It counts in favor of my interpretation
of Socrates that I keep the kernel without committing Socrates to the
clearly false view that every wise person is, in the proper sense of the
word, courageous. One does not have, in virtue of being wise,
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anything to be brave about.

The second consequence is harder to swallow. I must deal with the
objection that it is plainly absurd. Socrates proceeds as if defining each
virtue were a separate job. And it seems that he is right to do so, for the
virtues are not the same. If they were, we would have to tolerate such
sentences as, "The soldiers of the Fifth displayed cool Justice under
fire;" and, "The judge had a fine sense of Courage." To meet the
objection, I must show how the theory I attribute to Socrates blocks
such substitutions. It certainly does not invite them, for the thesis that
Courage and Justice have the same real definition does not imply that
they are the same thing. It is consistent with (2), and part of Socrates'
view as I understand it, that the virtues are different. Courage may be
as different from Justice as gold-in-ingots is from gold-in-coins. If real
definition is what I say it is, the objection fails. Different things can
have the same real definition, if, of course, what differentiates them is
accidental to both.
But what of the objection that Socrates sets out to define the virtues
piecemeal? Certainly he does that in such works as the Laches and the
Euthyphro. The failure of those efforts, however, should incline his
partners (and his readers) to an approach more in keeping with the
unity of the virtues. Besides, the argument at Meno 78d1-79e5 assumes
that one must know what Virtue is to know what any of the various
virtues is. Generally, Socrates is not interested in how to tell the virtues
apart. In the one case in which he does exert himself to distinguish one
virtue from another (Piety from Justice in the Euthyphro) he frustrates
himself deliberately, as if to prove that the enterprise cannot succeed.s

7 I offer an explanation for Socrates' holding this part of the doctrine in my "The
Socratic Approach to Semantic Incompleteness," forthcoming in Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research.

8 In the Euthyphro Socrates apparently insists that Piety be defined through its
genus (Justice) and its differentia (not discovered). He does this, I think, so he
may exhaust the possibilities for relevant differentiae. The final aporia suggests

105
 Paul Woodruff

A word of caution is in order. We cannot be sure what Socrates

would accept as a definition for a virtue. The closest he comes is with a
formula for Courage at Protagoras 360d4-5: "Knowledge of what is
and is not to be feared is courage." But the discussion breaks off in
midstream, and the formula is rejected in the Laches. So there is no
direct evidence bearing on the question of whether Socrates expected
the virtues to share one real definition. The best evidence for the view
I impute to Socrates is that it explains consistently the relevant
passages from the Protagoras, Laches, and Meno, as I shall show from
the text. I have, besides, independent reasons for thinking that
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Socrates should hold a theory like the one outlined above.

First, Socrates should be interested in real definition; when he asks,

for example, "What is Courage?", he should want to know the essence
of Courage (which may not be just what "courage" means). In almost
every case of such a question, a practical moral decision hangs on the
outcome. In the Laches, the moral development of two young men is
at stake. Socrates wants to know if anyone present is "skilled in the
care of the soul" (185e4). As a test for the desired skill he proposes that
the expert must know what it is that is to be added to a person's soul to
make him courageous. He must know what Courage is. What should
you ask someone who proposes to make your offspring courageous?
Should you ask him to define "courage," or to say what Courage
primarily is? The latter course recommends itself. The teacher should
know what is important and valuable about Courage in any case. And
if Socrates is right that virtue is knowledge, our teacher must be able to
make people courageous by imparting knowledge to them. What sort
of knowledge could that be? Socrates' thesis that the knowledge he
seeks amounts to virtue is paradoxical at best; but at best it should
refer to knowledge of essences. Other sorts of knowledge (knowing
the difference between Courage and Justice, for example) are far too
common. But the knowledge of essences seems to be as rare as virtue
itself. No one under Socrates' scrutiny turns out to have either in the
full sense. If I am right, Socrates ought to concentrate on real
definition. To make a case that he actually does this, I would have to
attach a study of Socrates' procedure in testing the bad answers he is
given. Such a study would fill a small volume, and I must omit it here. I

that the genus-differentia strategy is hopeless. What is different about Piety is

that it has to do with the gods; but nothing to do with the gods makes any
difference to the question of how Euthyphro should treat his father. It is a
question of justice, and it is Justice that Euthyphro should try to understand. In
the context of Socrates' question about Piety, its differentia is not important. and
so (on my interpretation) not part of the essence of Piety.

106
 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

can, however, assure the reader that I have done the work and that I
find support for my conclusion. 9
Second, Socrates ought to think that the virtues are one in
essence. The distinction between essence and accident is one
Socrates uses elsewhere in an early Platonic dialogue,10 so it is
available in the present context. That it is also appropriate here is
shown by the following argument. Since virtue is knowledge, we
would expect virtue to be cut up the way knowledge is, according
to the divisions proper to what is known. (Cf. Sophist 257c7-d2.) But
there is just one subject of the knowledge that is virtue- good and
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evil. If you have mastered that, you will be able to tell of anything
whether it is good or evil. You may use your knowledge at one time
to judge a certain sort of death in battle and at another the violation
of a contract; it is the same knowledge in both cases, just as it is the
same knowledge of red that you use for stoplights and fire engines.
If the analogy seems forced, it is because we tend to think of
"good" as logically attributive; i. e., as having different meanings
depending on the substantives that follow it. Socrates, however,
consistently refuses to admit the possibility that "good" might mean
different things in different contexts. 11 So the knowledge employed
in both judgments is the same; if you act according to those
judgments, you will instantiate a different virtue in each case -
Courage when you face death and Justice when you keep to your

9 In my unpublished dissertation, "Two Studies in Socratic Dialectic: The

Euthyphro and the Hippias Major," Princeton, 1973. The sort of study I have
in mind was carried out for the Euthyphro by R. E. Allen in his Plato's
Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms, London, 1970. Although I applaud
R. E. Allen's approach, and agree with him on many points, on the crucial
issue I come to a different conclusion. Allen argues that the Euthyphro
envisages, and the other early dialogues permit, definition of the virtues per
genus et differentiam. I find the evidence of the Euthyphro inconclusive on
this point, but that it points in another direction. (See above, note 8.) Allen's
reading of the other dialogues depends on his interpretation of the doctrine
of the unity of the virtues, for which see his pp. 93-100.

10 At Euthyphro 11ab, where he finds that an answer identifying an accident

(pathos) of what is to be defined does not state its essence (ousia). The
passage is difficult and its interpretation controversial. On my view, when
Socrates denies that Euthyphro has defined Piety he does not mean to deny
that Piety (and only Piety) is loved by all the gods, but only that being loved
by all the gods defines (states the essence of) Piety. My interpretation is close
to S. Marc Cohen's, in his "Socrates on the Definition of Piety: Euthyphro
10A-11B," journal of the History of Philosophy, IX (1971) pp. 1-13.

11 The refusal is documented and explained in my "The Socratic Approach to

Semantic Incompleteness."

107
 Paul Woodruff

contract. But if virtue is knowledge of good and evil, how can there
be different sorts of virtue but not different sorts of that
knowledge? The only solution, I think, is to conclude that each
virtue is essentially knowledge of good and evil, and that their
differences are irrelevant to their common essence. That solution is
recommended by its similarity to the solution Plato develops in later
dialogues to a problem about the method of division. If you are
going to investigate the nature of things by the method of division,
you cannot divide your subject arbitrarily, nor can you blindly
follow distinctions between words. You may accept only those sub-
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divisions which correspond to forms. Between Greeks and

barbarians, for example, there is not a proper division; for there is
no form for barbarians (Statesman 262c10, ff.). In the language I
have been using, the difference between barbarians and Greeks is
accidental. We do not have to accept the theory of forms to agree
with Plato on this point; it is the most attractive and most
elementary sort of metaphysical judgment that we make when we
say that Greeks and barbarians are essentially the same. That is the
sort of naive metaphysics I think Socrates undertakes when he urges
the unity of the virtues. Later came the sophisticated underpinning
of the theory of forms. In terms of that theory, Socrates would say
that there is just one form for the various virtues. Of course, he
never puts the thesis of the unity of the virtues that way. By the time
Plato had the metaphysical apparatus of the forms well enough
developed, at the time he wrote the Republic (Cf. 454a4-9), he
apparently had lost interest in Socrates' radical unity thesis. In the
Republic Plato does define the virtues as essentially different from
one another. That fact does not count against my interpretation of
the unity thesis in the Protagoras and other early dialogues, for no
other interpretation, so far as I know, reconciles the thesis fully with
the definitions of the Republic.
Now that I have laid out the theory I attribute to Socrates and done
my best to make it attractive, I should turn to the texts from which it is
derived.

The Parts of Gold

In the Protagoras both sides agree that the various virtues are parts
of Virtue, but disagree on how "parts" is to be understood, for
Socrates asks:

Are they parts ... in the same sense in which mouth. nose. and eyes. and ears, are
the parts of a face; or are they like the parts of gold. which differ from one another
only in being larger or smaller? (329d4-8. Jowett's translation )

108
 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

Protagoras adopts the face analogy; Socrates by opposition to him

apparently chooses the gold. In each case we must translate talk about
concrete objects into talk about virtues. Socrates gives us a partial
explanation of the face analogy, pointing out that each part of the face
has its own power (dunamis) and is not like any other part of the face. It
should follow that different parts have different definitions in terms of
their essential powers. Each definition of a basic part would be
independent - eye, for example, would be defined functionally
without mention of ear or even face. We may add that the parts
constitute their face. That means you need every part to have a
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complete face, and if you have every part you have a complete face.
Since each basic part can be defined, and so conceived of,
independently, we can imagine a face being built up out of its parts. If
the virtues were constitutive parts of Virtue, we would have:

3. Courage, Justice, and the like

a) are severally necessary and jointly sufficient for Virtue;

b) have distinct essences; and
c) can occur independently of one another and of Virtue
entire.

Protagoras would certainly have agreed to this, for (c) is the major
cause of disagreement with Socrates, (b) is a consequence of (c), and
(a) or something like it is necessary to establish a connection between
each virtue and Virtue entire.
By contrast, the parts of something gold do not constitute gold.
Take away what you will from something gold; what remains is still
gold in the full sense. For gold is a mass substance, and every bit of it
has all the essential properties of gold. Chop up gold and you have
gold; but chop up a face and you have mincemeat. The different parts
of something gold differ in ways that are accidental to their glittering
essence. Surely that is what Socrates means when he describes them
as,

the parts of gold which differ from the whole and from one another only in being
larger or smaller. (329d6-8)

Obviously he overstates his case, for the parts of gold are not alike in all
their other attributes. 12 The left half of a bar of gold differs from the
right in position, and may also differ in texture, temperature, or purity.
Yet both are yellow, malleable and (most important) precious. If

12 That is the consequence Vlastos fears, op. cit., p. 230.

109
 Paul Woodruff

Socrates asked "What is it?" of either half he would expect the answer
"Gold!" and not be content until he knew what gold really is. Every
part would have the same Socratic definition. If the diverse virtues
were as the parts of gold, we would have:

4. Courage, Justice, and the like all have the same essence (the
essence of Virtue) and are differentiated by attributes not
essential to them.13

Since it is not certain that Socrates subscribed to the gold analogy, and
since I cannot claim finality for my interpretation of that analogy, the
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present passage does not by itself justify my attribution of (4) to

Socrates. But we have seen that Socrates had reasons for holding (4),
and we shall see that (4) smooths our understanding of the Laches.

Knowledge of Future Goods and Evils

In the Laches Socrates asks, "What is Courage?". Laches first takes

up the challenge and is routed. Socrates summons Nicias to the aid of
his comrade. Nicias has heard Socrates speaking well on the subject,
associating virtue and wisdom. Putting two and two together, Nicias
ventures,

5. Courage is the knowledge of what is and is not to be feared.

(194e11)

This is interpreted to mean that Courage is the knowledge of future

goods and evils (198c2).
We know from the Protagoras (360d4-5) that Socrates believed (5)
to be true. But we should not be surprised if he rejects it as the
definition of Courage. For not every truth about Courage states the
essence of Courage (d. the discussion of pp.103 ff. above). Besides, the
discussion in the Protagoras is incomplete. Socrates means to derive
from (5) an argument for the unity of virtue, but Protagoras falls silent

13 Two passages from other dialogues support my reading of the gold analogy.
At Meno 72a8-b6 Socrates compares the various virtues to bees, which all
have the same essence while differing in beauty, size, etc. In the Timaeus, at
50a5,ff., Plato makes a similar point specifically about gold, to illustrate the
role of the receptacle. If a variety of shapes is produced from gold, what each
of them really is is gold. So the answer to one of Socrates' essence-seeking
questions about a golden triangle would be not "golden triangle" but
"gold."

110
 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

and the conversation ends. A weaker one would do, but the missing
argument could well be the one we are about to examine in the
Laches, where Socrates refutes (5) by deriving from it and other likely
premises a statement of the unity of the virtues too strong for Nicias.
Is the argument sound? And (more importantly) does Socrates
consider it sound? Does he mean to refute (5) or to prove Nicias'
vulnerability to fallacy? There has been much debate on these
questions, mostly dominated by the assumption that if Socrates
accepts his own argument, he must deny the truth of (5). 14 But as in the
Euthyphro (11ab) the distinction between essence and accident lets us
see how Socrates can reject a formula as a definition without denying
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its truth. The argument is sound, I think, according to Socratic

principles, and gives good grounds for rejecting (5) as the definition of
Courage.
The crucial premise is,

6. The same knowledge covers the same subjects, whether past,

present, or future. (199a6)

Premise (6) observes that if and only if you really know a subject, your
knowledge holds good whenever the subject comes up. For example,
the ability to tell good from evil is what you need to tell whether things
to come are good or evil. By (5) the ability to do that is Courage, and so
Courage turns out to be the knowledge of good and evil. That
knowledge, by familiar Socratic principles, is Virtue. 1 s So Socrates
arrives at the conclusion,

7. Courage is not a part of Virtue, but is Virtue entire. (199e3-4)

That appears to contradict the prior assumption,

8. Courage is a part of Virtue (198a1),

making the argument a reductio ad absurdum.

14 For a history of the problem see R. Meister, "Thema und Ergebnis des
platonischen Laches," Wiener Studien XLII (1921) p. 9 and p. 103. Recent
works in English are G. Santas, "Socrates at Work on Virtue and Knowledge in
Plato's Laches," Review of Metaphysics 22(1969) p. 433; Vlastos' appendix to
the work cited, p. 266; and Penner's discussion, op. cit., p. 60, ff. I am largely
in agreement with Penner. For Vlastos' view see below, note 16. Santas
blames Socrates for poor analysis of the concept Courage; but of course
analysis may not be Socrates' object.

15 For this much of my interpretation I am much indebted to Penner, op. cit.,

pp. 60-62.

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The argument is valid as I have presented it and sound according to

what Socrates believed. But what are we to make of it? Socrates surely
believed (5) to be true (Protagoras 360d4-5). We may be equally certain
he believed the crucial premise (8) (Meno 79a3-5). But if the derivation
of (7) from (5) is sound, and if (7) contradicts (8), then either (5) or (8)
must be abandoned. Since Socrates is apparently committed to both
(5) and (8), he must have thought either that the derivation of (7) was
unsound or that (7) did not actually contradict (8).
It is tempting to look for a deliberate fallacy in the argument for (7),
as Vlastos does. 16 But out of charity we ought not to make out Socrates
to be any more devious than we must. So let us turn to the alternative
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that Socrates did not understand premises (7) and (8)ascontradictory.

If Socrates thought (7) contradicted (8), he should have inferred
that (7) and its questionable premise were false. But what he says is
this:
Socrates: Then what you just now mentioned, Nicias, would
not be part of Virtue, but Virtue entire.
Nicias: So it seems.
Socrates: But we said that Courage was one of the parts of
Virtue.
Nicias: We did.
Socrates: And what you just now mentioned turns out not to
be [Courage]Y

16 Vlastos sees a fallacy in the inference from (5) and (6) to, "Courage is the
knowledge of all goods and evils." (Op. cit., pp. 267-8) From these premises,
he argues, all that follows is that Courage requires the knowledge of all goods
and evils. He seems to understand (6) as,
6a. The knowledge of future x'es requires
the knowledge of all x'es.
But the natural reading is,
6b. The knowledge of future x'es is the same
thing as the knowledge of all x'es.
With (6b) as a premise the argument is valid, so we should take (6) that way
unless there is a good reason not to. Vlastos eschews (6b) because it would be
false if knowledge were no more than a disposition to behave. Then types of
knowledge would be divided not by subject matter but by behavior patterns.
But there is no reason to believe Socrates thought that way about knowledge.

17 By itself this line (199e9) ~dmits the translation, "But what was just now said
turns out to be false," TO ).E:Y~f.IE:VOV being ambiguous between "what
was said" (i.e., the sentence) and "what was mentioned" (in this case, Virtue).
The context establishes at 199e3-4 that T~ AE:Y~f.IE:VOV is what Nicias'
formula is a formula of. So I have supplied "Courage" at 199e9 to make that
clear.

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 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

Nicias: It seems not.

Socrates: Then, Nicias, we have not discovered what Courage
is. (199e3-11)

Socrates concludes only that they have failed to say what Courage is; in
the language of the Euthyphro, they have failed to state the essence of
Courage. The conclusion leaves alive the possibility that what they said
about Courage is true. So the text of the Laches does not support the
view that if Socrates were convinced by his own argument he would
have to deny the formula in (5).
But how could (7) and (6) fail to be contradictory? There must be an
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equivocation on "parts." Consider first the premise that Courage is a

part of Virtue (6). An adequate interpretation of (6) must entail,

9. The set of courageous things is a proper subset of the set of

virtuous things.1B

The truth of (9) must be grounded in the essences of Courage and

Virtue. Since (6) occurs as part of an answer to Socrates' essence-
seeking question, it ought to say something about the essence of
Courage. Therefore (9) is not a complete paraphrase of (6). The
deficiency may be made up in either of two ways:

10. The essence of Courage is composed of theessenceofVirtue

and a differentiating property.

11. The essence of Courage is the same as the essence of Virtue;

and there is something true of Courage that is not true of
Virtue.

I shall call these two relations "essential" and "accidental" partition

respectively. The second is the relation suggested by the gold analogy
(4). (Above, p. 110) Plato distinguishes these two types of partition in
the Statesman at 263a2,ff. There he argues that not every part is a form
(genos or eidos) but that every form is a part, and implies that true
partition yields parts that are forms. This true (essential) partition is the
type to be used in definition by the method of division. The question
before us is whether Socrates thinks Courage is to be defined by that
method as an essential part of Virtue.
There is no direct evidence to decide the question. But Socrates'
failure to observe a contradiction between (7) and (6) argues that he

18 Cf. Euthyphro 11e4, ff., and Protagoras 322b5.

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took (8) in the sense compatible with (7). Clearly (7) identifies the
essence of Courage (what you must acquire to have Courage) with
Virtue, and leaves room for Courage to have accidents peculiar to it.
Since (7) then denies that Courage is an essential part of Virtue,
Socrates probably meant by (8) that it is an accidental part. This result
happily lets us reconcile the testimony of the Protagoras with the
Meno. Socrates may consistently hold all of (5), (7), and (8).
Unhappily, the refutation of Nicias' formula now looks like a fallacy
of equivocation. If no contradiction emerges, what is wrong with (5)?
To see how (7) discredits (5) we must review the criteria for success in
definition. We want any definition to mark off what it defines from
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everything else. A real definition (what Socrates seems to want) states

the essence of what it defines. The essence of Courage turns out to be
the same as the essence of Virtue. So a statement of the essence of
Courage cannot mark off Courage from the other virtues or from
Virtue itself. The real definition of Courage is not what we want, since
there is no essence peculiar to Courage. There is, it turns out, no
definition for Courage that would satisfy both us and Socrates. That
there is such a definition for Virtue argues that Courage is defective in
this regard. That is how the strong statement of the unity theses (7)
descredits Nicias' formula (5). The formula states the essence of
Courage, but that is peculiar not to Courage but to something else-
Virtue. So Socrates' conclusion is justified:

And what you just now mentioned turns out not to be [Courage[ .... Then. Nicias.
we have not discovered what Courage is. (199e9-ll)

Parts of Virtue

It remains to see whether the Meno's division of the virtues into

parts is consistent with their being one is essence (Me no 79a3-5). 19 The
division occurs as a premise in Socrates' numbing refutation of an
account of Virtue as whatever is performed with Justice (78e6-79a1.
Socrates reminds Meno, who is defending the account, that,

12. Justice, Temperance and the like are parts of Virtue (79a3-5,
cf. 73e1, ff.),

19 Vlastos uses this passage as the only direct evidence that Socrates was
committed to considering the various virtues as parts of Virtue. (Op. cit., p.
225 in note 8, and p. 267.)

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 Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

and that an account of Virtue should not break it into parts (79a9-10, cf.
72c6-d1 and 775a5-9). By substitution he makes Meno's account into,
"Virtue is doing whatever you do with a part of Virtue" (79b4-5). He
then elicits Meno's assent to,

13. No one knows what a part of Virtue is unless he knows what

Virtue is (79c7-9),
and follows with a quick reminder,

14. An answer is unacceptable if it employs things we are still

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seeking for and have not yet agreed on. (79d1-4)

He concludes that Meno's account is unacceptable by (14), for in

seeking to give an account of Virtue it employs Virtue, raising again the
question it was supposed to answer.
Our question is about the interpretation of Socrates' division of the
virtues in (12). We have seen three ways in which the various virtues
may be thought to be parts of Virtue: They may be thought
constitutive (3), accidental (4, 11) or essential (10) parts. Constitutive
parts are independently definable like the parts of a face; accidental
parts share one essence as do the parts of gold; and essential parts
have something, but not everything essential to them, in common.
Two sources shed light on the interpretation of (12). First, (12) is cast as
a reminder of an agreement reached earlier between Meno and
Socrates, and stated differently. (73e1, ff.) Second, the argument
containing (12) limits our range of interpretation if we are moved by
charity to try to make it out to be sound.
Premise (12) harks back to the discussion at 73d9, ff., where
Socrates brings home to Meno the distinction between ap e:ni' and
ap e:T~ T Ls:' between Virtue and a virtue. Justice, it turns out, is a
virtue because it is not the only thing that is Virtue, but shares the
honor with Courage, Temperance and the like. Digesting the shape
analogy Socrates introduces to clarify the point, we find that the
relation Socrates proposes between Justice and Virtue is little more
than that of subject to predicate: Justice is a virtue and not Virtue if
"virtue" is true severally of Justice and of something other than
Justice. 20 This excludes the possibility that Justice is a constitutive part

20 It is an open question how much otherness there is between Justice and the
other virtues; so Socrates' point here does not imply that the virtues have
distinct essences. What Socrates means to do is to warn Meno against evading
definition by giving answers that (on Meno's own view) are parts of a list.

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of Virtue on the analogy of the parts of a face, for "face" is not a

predicate true of Nose. The other possibilities remain.
The same result, happily consistent with my reading of the
Protagoras, comes from analysis of the argument containing (12).
Premise (13) holds the key. For you need not know the whole to know
the constitutive part; for example, you can define nose before face.
Socrates must be supposing that the essence of Virtue is included in
the essence of justice. That would make it necessary to know Virtue
before justice (13), and is compatible with Justice's being either an
accidental or an essential part of Virtue. It makes no difference
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whether its differentia belongs to its essence; either way the essence
of Justice would include that of Virtue.
We can go further. It is most likely that Socrates considered the two
essences identical. That would make Meno's account as blatantly
circular as Socrates implies it is (79d3). Besides. the bee analogy
suggests that Socrates thinks of Virtue as having one indivisible
essence (72a8-b6, c6-d1). And the scorn Socrates heaps on Meno's
poor attempts to specify the kinds of Virtue argues that Socrates
deemed such divisions as could be made to be quite trivial (77a5-9,
79a9-10). But if the distinctions among them are trivial, then the parts
of Virtue are one in essence. I hesitate, however, to draw conclusions
about the unity of the virtues from the Meno. Since the object of
inquiry there is Virtue itself, and since Meno's divisions are evasions of
the question, Socrates would stress the importance of Virtue whatever
his view on the unity question.
I conclude that nothing in the Meno contradicts the view I
attribute to Socrates, that the various virtues are one in essence. On
the contrary, if the Meno supports any interpretation of Socrates'
doctrine of the unity of the virtues, it is the one I have presented in this
essay.

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