Socratic therapy for the criminal, the glutton, and the coward.

Abstract

Why do we sometimes fail to do the right thing? Socrates is known for his intellectualistic answer to this question: wrongdoers are ignorant. I argue that Socrates' longer explanation of wrongdoing also assigns importance to our non-rational mental states, i.e., our emotions, appetites, pleasures, and pains. In a Socratic account, non-rational states are felt evaluations that can influence our beliefs about what is best to do and, thereby, influence our actions. While someone who knows what is good and bad does not take her non-rational states to be true, the ignorant person takes them to be true, and so she fails to do the right thing.