The art of the good life

Plato’s Gorgias and the technicity of ethics

Authors

  • Frederik-Emil Friis Jakobsen Independent researcher

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59391/inscriptions.v4i1.79

Keywords:

Plato, Gorgias, artifice, techne, ethics

Abstract

Plato’s Gorgias sees Socrates frequently compare justice to the practice of a techné. This comparison has traditionally been taken to express the so-called doctrine of Socratic intellectualism, according to which knowledge of the good necessarily leads to living a good life. But such interpretations overlook how crucial techn? is to Socrates’ conception of justice — justice is not merely analogous to techn? but governed by the same logos. What we find is thus not so much an argument for a particular moral psychology, as it is an account of an inherent technicity of ethics. This article uncovers Plato’s account of ethics’ relationship with artifice, both in Gorgias and The Republic as well as in the ethical philosophy of Aristotle, suggesting that the question of ethics and artifice has always held high importance in Western philosophy, and that we should regard it with the same importance today.

Author Biography

Frederik-Emil Friis Jakobsen, Independent researcher

Frederik-Emil Friis Jakobsen (b. 1993), MA in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen and The European Graduate School. Areas of research include parody and aesthetics in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the themes of otherness, ontology, and phenomenology in the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas.

References

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Franklin, Lee. “Techn? and Teleology in Plato’s Gorgias”. In Apeiron 38, no. 4: 229-256. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Plato. Gorgias. Translated by. W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.

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Schirmacher, Wolfgang. “Ethics and artificiality”. Translated by Daniel Theisen. Inscriptions 1, no. 1 (2018): 33-41. https://www.tankebanen.no/inscriptions/index.php/inscriptions/article/view/inscriptions.11/22

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Published

2021-01-28

Issue

Section

Academic articles