Two Kinds Of Knowledge In Plato's Gorgias
Provoked by some Facebook posts by Jason Stanley (Yale) and an ensuing discussion with Jason and Michael Morris (Sussex), I've been arguing for a certain interpretation of Plato's distinction between medicine and cookery, or, more generally, between crafts and knacks. By "crafts" we might take Plato to mean arts or skills, or perhaps even what today would be called "sciences." The difficult question concerns what Plato means by "knacks," and whether or not they entail a particular kind of knowledge. In Gorgias (463a), Socrates refers to knacks as parts of flattery, which he calls "the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind." In another translation, flattery is defined as "a shrewd, gallant spirit which has a natural bent for clever dealing with mankind." Both translations indicate that flattery entails knowledge: either it is knowledge how to manage mankind, or it is whatever knowledge is required...