Knowledge of the Future and Knowledge of the Good: Isocrates and the Heirs of Socrates
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David J. Murphy
Abstract
Isocrates is usually excluded from histories of philosophy. Two likely reasons are his tendency not to formulate rigorously structured arguments and his tendency not to deploy such arguments in support of universalizing positions that he takes – for example, about virtue or the good life. Nonetheless, Isocrates does come close to performing these functions, typical of what we expect from philosophers today, in Against the Sophists, written in the late 390s. In this work Isocrates criticizes, among others, educators who, he says, ‘involve themselves in disputations’. It is clear that these include followers of Socrates – at the least, Antisthenes and perhaps Plato. The disputers, Isocrates says, claim to teach a knowledge, ἐπιστήμη, that tells us what to do and thereby guarantees happiness. Against this claim, Isocrates does formulate a structured argument in service of universalizing claims, viz., his argument from Foreknowledge. He argues that the disputers’ purported knowledge requires that we foreknow outcomes of the actions about which we deliberate, if we are to attain happiness as promised. But humans do not have foreknowledge. Therefore, the disputers’ claims are false, and the cognitive attitude that we need for a happy life is not knowledge. Isocrates does not invent his rivals’ Foreknowledge premise, for Antisthenes, Plato and Xenophon present versions of it. As I ‘steelman’ and analyze Isocrates’ Foreknowledge argument, I find it sound if happiness consists in enjoying external goods, as in some Socratic dialogues, but not sound if genuine happiness is immune to fortune, as later in Plato and certain works of Antisthenes. I argue for dating those Antisthenic works later than Against the Sophists. Although certainty is elusive, it is attractive to think that Isocrates’ Foreknowledge argument played some role in pushing Plato, and perhaps Antisthenes, to seek to inoculate happiness and the good against fortune and to bring the virtuous one close to the divine.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Anaximander Without the Apeiron: Making Sense of Aristotle’s and Theophrastusʼ Reports
- Knowledge of the Future and Knowledge of the Good: Isocrates and the Heirs of Socrates
- Being Per Se and Categorical Predication
- The Visibility of the Aorta. Anatomical Ideas Behind an Ancient Etymology (Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 3, 513a)
- Tragic Pharmacy: The ‘Noble’ Lie and the Fall of Kallipolis
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Anaximander Without the Apeiron: Making Sense of Aristotle’s and Theophrastusʼ Reports
- Knowledge of the Future and Knowledge of the Good: Isocrates and the Heirs of Socrates
- Being Per Se and Categorical Predication
- The Visibility of the Aorta. Anatomical Ideas Behind an Ancient Etymology (Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 3, 513a)
- Tragic Pharmacy: The ‘Noble’ Lie and the Fall of Kallipolis
