Ignorance, Irony, and Knowledge in Plato

Kevin Crotty is professor of foreign languages at Washington and Lee University.

• Introduction: On Self-Constitution and IgnorancePart I: Ignorance and IronyChapter One. The Origins of Socratic IgnoranceChapter Two. Socratic Ignorance in the MenoChapter Three. Ignorance, Irony, DialoguePart II: KnowledgeChapter Four. Knowledge and PerceptionChapter Five. Knowledge and Expertise IChapter Six. Knowledge and Expertise II: Plato and Protagoras on ExpertiseChapter Seven. Knowledge and Dialogue Chapter Eight. Knowledge, Ignorance, WisdomConclusion: Inconclusion

This is a refreshing and persuasive book. Crotty starts by taking Socrates’s disavowals of wisdom in the Apology seriously. Socrates’s ignorance motivates his virtuous search for wisdom through dialogue. Crotty argues that the irony in Socrates’s famous method is not that Socrates already knows the answers; rather ignorance motivates sincere, ongoing dialogue and is itself a source of moral action and wisdom. Crotty takes issue with a scholarly tradition (and with an impressive array of scholars—Gregory Vlastos, Paul Woodruff, Charles Kahn, Julius Moravcsik, among others) that focuses on the objects of knowledge—eternal, immutable Platonic forms. To grasp a form, Crotty suggests, would mean closure, whereas Socratic virtues emerge in process—engaging other thinkers while admitting ignorance and refraining from actions (e.g., politics) about which one can know almost nothing. A sticking point, if there is one, comes in Crotty’s fluid comparisons of dialogues from different periods of Plato’s presumed theoretical development. Crotty sees an ethical theory across the Phaedo, Meno, and Charmides, and a theory of the relation of perception to knowledge across Theaetetus, Phaedrus,and Republic, for example. But Crotty’s wholistic interpretation is lucid, erudite, and challenging. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.