Rational and Nonrational Desires in Meno and Protagoras

Abstract

A standard account in Socratic scholarship has it that Plato’s Socrates is an intellectualist about motivation, in that Socrates accepts that both one’s actions and one’s desires always follow one’s concurrent beliefs about what is in one’s overall best interest. Brickhouse and Smith offer an alternative intellectualist interpretation of Socrates, on which Socrates accepts the standard account’s claim with respect to actions but rejects it with respect to desires. On this alternative view, there are nonrational desires that are not always responsive to belief and may even affect belief. As part of their alternative account, Brickhouse and Smith offer interpretations of two important passages: Meno and Protagoras. I argue that the standard account makes better sense of Meno, and that an argument Brickhouse and Smith make against the standard account using Protagoras fails.