“Socratic eudaimonia and the care for others”
June-July 2020
By Alessandro Stavru

The workshop “Socratic eudaimonia and the care for others” was sponsored by the University of Verona, the ISSS, and the SISFA (Italian Society for Ancient Philosophy). The event was organized by Linda Napolitano,  Don Morrison, and Alessandro Stavru, and scheduled to be held in Verona, on April 8-9, 2021. Due to the pandemic, it was postponed by two months and re-organized as an online event. It was held on Zoom platform on June 25 and 26, and July 2 and 3. The whole event was bilingual: the sessions on June 25 and July 2 were held in Italian, those on June 26 and July 3 in English. The workshop explored the role that the care for others plays in Socratic ethics. The working hypothesis was that despite the appearances given by certain texts (and the claims of several scholars) the moral psychology of Socrates does not imply selfishness. In fact, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon suggests that the egoist’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others. And since such welfare is part of the egoist’s own eudaimonia, the egoist has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others.

The first session (with papers by F. de Luise, S. Pone, L. Napolitano and A. Fermani) was devoted to the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonia if compared to “egoistic” or “ego-centred” theories of happiness. Special attention was paid to the tyrant’s understanding of happiness as portrayed by Plato, and to Aristotelian philautia. The second session was centered on altruism and knowledge. Papers (by R.E. Jones & R. Sharma, D. Morrison, C. Moore, and N. Charalabopoulos) discussed Socrates’ concern for friends, the foundations of Socratic altruism, the link between Socratic eudaimonia and sophrosune, and that one between knowledge and happiness. The third session (with talks by F. Trabattoni, G. Cusinato, A. Stavru, and S. Chame) dealt with dialectics and protreptics as ways to achieve happiness in both Socrates and his interlocutors. Due to his cunning dialectics, Socrates resembles Ulysses; thanks to his rhetorical ability, he makes others better, and thereby achieves happiness himself. The fourth session (with papers by C. Mársico, F. Pentassuglio, and M. Bergomi) tackled telos and predestination in the first-generation Socratics. The talks were devoted to the Cyrenaics’ understanding of telos, eudaimonia  in Aeschines and Alcibiades I, and fate in Xenophon and Plato.

A special volume of the online journal Thaumazein based on the workshop will be published this summer.