ABSTRACT
Students of Plato have found these doctrines puzzling and paradoxical. It is not difficult to see why. We commonly think that men sometimes harm themselves knowing that they are doing so, and that often they do what is morally wrong knowing that it is morally wrong when it is in their power to do otherwise. Incontinence and moral weakness are supposed to be familiar facts of experience; yet the doctrines just mentioned seem to contradict these facts. How are we to account for this? Are we to suppose that Plato held, and held most persistently through several Dialogues, views that contradict facts with which presumably everyone is acquainted?
