Platonic know‐how and successful action

Abstract

In Plato's Euthydemus, Socrates claims that the possession of epistēmē (usually construed as knowledge or understanding) suffices for practical success. Several recent treatments suggest that we may make sense of this claim and render it plausible by drawing a distinction between so-called "outcome-success" and "internal-success" and supposing that epistēmē only guarantees internal-success. In this paper, I raise several objections to such treatments and suggest that the relevant cognitive state should be construed along less than purely intellectual lines: as a cognitive state constituted at least in part by ability. I argue that we may better explain Socrates' claims that epistēmē suffices for successful action by attending to the nature of abilities, what it is that we attempt to do when acting, and what successful action amounts to in the relevant contexts.These considerations suggest that, contrary to several recent treatments, the success in question is not always internal-success. | INTRODUCTIONWhat is the relation between knowledge and successful action? And what do we aim at in action and what makes for a successful action? This paper aims to make sense of the answers to these question put forward in Plato's Euthydemus where Socrates seems to claim that a certain sort of cognitive state is sufficient for some sort of practical success. My discussion is not, however, exclusively restricted to the Euthydemus, or indeed Plato (Aristotle and Ryle make prominent appearances). Neither is it exclusively historical as it is concerned at least in part with the nature of knowledge-how and abilities, the nature of practical success, and what precisely we attempt or aim at in action.Early on in the Euthydemus, Socrates offers an exhortation to a life of virtue and philosophy. Assuming that all people wish to do well (eu prattein, Euthydemus 278e3), Socrates wonders how we do well (279a1-2). In what follows, he considers the relation between good fortune, successful action, and various crafts (or kinds of know-how) and claims that flute players have good fortune (eutuchia) when it comes to success or doing well (eupragia) in flute music (279e1-2), and that something similar applies to knowing how to write (279e2-4) and various other kinds of knowledge. Socrates goes on to also claim that wisdom (sophia) does not require luck in order to succeed (280a6-b3) and that "knowledge (epistēmē) seems to provide men not only with good fortune (eutuchia) but also with success or doing well (eupragia) in every case of possession or action" (281b2-4).This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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