Socrates on the Parts of Virtue

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
Paul Woodruff

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.


1876 ◽  
Vol 22 (98) ◽  
pp. 196-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Claye Shaw

There is a general idea expressed in text-books, and more or less freely asserted in practice, but which I shall prove to be a fallacy, that a high-arched palate is so frequently met with in idiocy and imbecility that it may be taken as a sign of their existence. Indeed, when a case of this kind is brought forward the patient is made to open his mouth, under the conviction that a high palate will be found as certainly as a superficial alteration of the tongue in gastric disturbance. We shall see that the connection is an accidental one; and there is, in reality, no relationship between the development of the intellect and the height and width of the palate. If we consider that the bones of the cranium are developed in a different manner from those of the face, and that ossification at the base is complete long before that of the bones forming the palate, it is clear that there can be no primâ facie reason for thinking that because a person has an imperfect brain he should therefore have an imperfect palate; yet such an interdependence is held. It is quite true that a constitutional taint, such as rickets or syphilis, which affects the ossification of the bones generally and the cranial sutures, would probably affect the palatine bones, and hence it is that many idiots and imbeciles are found to have high or imperfect palates: but on the other hand some modifying taint may dwarf the height of the body, may affect the shape of the head to such an extent as to make an idiot of the microcephalic type, and yet leave the palate untouched, perfect in all conditions of width, height, number, quality, and regularity of teeth.



2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
MICHELLE PANCHUK

AbstractThere has been little discussion of the compatibility of Theistic Conceptual Realism (TCR) with the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). On the one hand, if a plurality of universals is necessary to explain the character of particular things, there is reason to think this commits the proponent of TCR to the existence of a plurality of divine concepts. So the proponent of the DDS has a prima facie reason to reject TCR (and vice versa). On the other hand, many mediaeval philosophers accept both the existence of divine ideas and the DDS. In this article I draw on mediaeval and contemporary accounts of properties and divine simplicity to argue that the two theories are not logically incompatible.



JURNAL IQRA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-150
Author(s):  
Arnadi Arnadi

This article revisited the relevance of returning students home's national policy while avoiding the dangers of coronavirus 2019 in the school environment. There has been no medical certainty stating that the danger of the Coronavirus spread among schools is that the government must issue policies that are without good reason as the safest solution. On the other hand, the policy of returning students to study at home also raises some doubts. This study intended to examine various literatures on the suitability of government policies regarding school closures that have been running for almost one year. The data were then analyzed using a descriptive phenomenological approach to obtain medical reasons related to the risk of spreading the virus among school adolescents. Finally, the researchers found that the government policy to repatriate students is still motivated by excessive concern about the transmission of the epidemic among students in the school environment. Until now, the government has not had a strong reason to close schools to avoid the virus. On the other hand, this policy may impact on student learning and other socio-economic disadvantages. Thus, the government would consider these findings in evaluating policies related to overcoming the dangers of the pandemic in the school environment, which consider the disadvantages of education. Keywords:  Learning from Home, School Closure Policy, Learning in Covid-19 Condition



1959 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-232
Author(s):  
R. N. Gooderson

Some of the complexity of the English rules of evidence in criminal cases springs from a clash, probably dating back to the formative period of those rules, between two objects, laudable in themselves but antagonistic. One most fundamental principle, of which English lawyers are justly proud, stemming from a desire that a criminal trial should be conducted in a manner as fair to the accused as possible, was that evidence of his misdoings on other occasions should be prima facie inadmissible. On the other hand, courts of justice naturally desire that cogent and weighty evidence that the accused committed the crime with which he is charged should not be excluded from consideration by judge and jury, and consequently evidence, often called similar fact evidence, of other misconduct of the accused is sometimes receivable not because it shows his bad character but in spite of that fact.



1990 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Bosworth

The continuing and polemical debate over the authenticity of the Peace of Callias has become so complicated that it would be a positive service to scholarship to remove some of the more contentious evidence and reduce the scope of the argument. That is the object of this article. A fragment of Callisthenes has bulked very large in the modern literature. According to the received view the Olynthian historian denied the existence of a formal peace between Athens and the Persian King and alleged that the King observed a de facto limit to his empire, never venturing west of the Chelidonian islands. For sceptics this is grist to the mill. A writer of the mid-fourth century rejected the Athenian patriotic tradition, and it is assumed that he had good reason to do so. On the other hand defenders of the authenticity of the Peace stumble over Callisthenes' apparent denial and are forced to counter-denial or to sophistry. What is common to both camps is a tendency to refer to the evidence of Callisthenes without noting that the original text is lost. The ‘fragment’ (which it is not) is preserved by Plutarch in a sophisticated passage of source criticism and due attention needs to be paid to his mode of citation. Only then can we begin to elicit what Callisthenes may have said and reconstruct the probable context in his historical exposition. As always, we need to approach the unknown through proper study of the known.



1966 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-209
Author(s):  
Robert H. King

“The causal model emphasizes priority in respect to efficacy, but that is by no means the only kind of priority God exhibits. The elusive priority of the self in relation to its action, as well as the priority of persons in relation to one another, is also important and characteristic of religious apprehension of God in some of its modes anyway. On the other hand, the two more personal models, Schleiermacher's and Barth's, include a feature that is conspicuously lacking in the causal model, yet equally important to religious experience, the aspect of immediacy. So there may be good reason for preferring one model to another, while not excluding one or another. It is, after all, with a model that we have to do, and not with the thing itself. The relation of God and the world is unique and mysterious. It is not surprising that several different models have been used to interpret it.”



Tempo ◽  
1988 ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
Regina Busch

SPINNER only ever asked friends and, so far as we know, musicians he knew personally to further the cause of his music; at most he would accept the good offices of those acquaintances he trusted. His own initiatives consisted solely of submitting or sending out scores he thought had possibilities. Any sort of propaganda or publicity was alien to him. The object and basis of any negotiations was his music: it should speak for itself, it should be performed and, presumably, published for its own sake. He considered it sufficiently convincing not to require his powers of persuasion. Again, when it came to performances, he displayed an attitude characteristic of the composers and performers of the Schoenberg School: comparable instances are recorded of Schoenberg, Webern, Kolisch, and Stcuermann, and to some extent Berg. He willingly supported serious efforts on behalf of his music; on the other hand he refused to make the customary concessions to the music industry or to the conditions necessary for performances nowadays. He would not employ kindly euphemisms, and was loth to forgo the realization of the differentiations in interpretation vital to his music. He was never simply grateful just to be performed. All this with good reason: the approach to new music, including that of the Second Viennese School, is still made difficult or blocked by inadequately rehearsed, misleading, incomprehensible or merely boring performances. Spinner's music cannot be fully grasped at first hearing or playing, and looking at the notes leads to nothing—save the observation that some of them look ‘like Webern’. Unfortunately hardly any of Spinner's works have gone beyond the first performance, and as for the scores, all they got was a cursory glance.



Archaeologia ◽  
1895 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-398
Author(s):  
Charles Hercules Read

It is comparatively seldom that relics of antiquity from the American continent are laid before the Society. There is one good reason for this, in the impossibility, in most cases, of assigning any date to American antiquities. We may be able, from internal evidence, to show that an object was made after the discovery of the continent, and in that case it belongs to the beginning of modern times. If, on the other hand, there is reason for placing it before the time of Columbus, there is little to say beyond the bare statement of that fact. In the absence of intelligible history, it is difficult to see how we are to pass beyond this stage. Among the more civilised peoples, such as the Mexicans and Peruvians, it is easy enough to distinguish and classify the artistic productions of the several great tribes, but to discriminate between the buildings or sculptures of, for instance, the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries is another matter, and one as to which there would probably be as many opinions as men.



1992 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Catchpole

Recent discussion of the genre of Q suggests that a consensus is not yet emerging. On the one hand there is the view of John Kloppenborg that the stages in the development of Q were, firstly, the assembling of a number of wisdom speeches followed by, secondly, an expansion by various groups of sayings, many formed as chriae, and then, thirdly, a move in the direction of a bios by means of an historicizing tendency and the addition of the temptation story (Q 4.1–13).1 Within this approach traditions which seem prima facie to exhibit prophetic form or content are strictly subordinated to, or at least controlled by, their setting in a wisdom collection. That is, the wisdom Makrogattung determines how any prophetic Mikrogattungen are to be viewed. On the other hand there is the view of Migaku Sato that Q should be compared with prophetic books, and that it grew in several redactional stages, each of which was informed by the prophetic tradition and conditioned by prophetic mission.2 On this view the prophetic Makrogattung determines how any sapiential Mikrogattungen are to be viewed.



Legal Theory ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. Simester

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that,celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone (e.g., not to inflict harm), we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them (we owe, for instance, duties as parents to our own children). Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them.



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