The Socrates of the early and presumably more historical Platonic documents is sometimes portrayed as naive. The thinking is this: Socrates identified knowledge with virtue, and thus inferred that people only do wrong things because they are insufficiently well informed. With that naive view of human nature Plato also began, so the early dialogs are faithful to it. But as Plato grew older and wiser, he modified this view and allowed for untamed passions in the human soul that cause trouble not attributable to ignorance. [See the angry fellow portrayed above.] And the "Socrates" who continued to serve as Plato's mouthpiece represented this chastened view. But the story is not faithful to the texts. Socrates, even the Socrates portrayed in the dialogues often used to tell this story, was never that naive. A discussion: https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/appetite-anger-harmonized-knowledge-talking-rachana-kamtekar/ That's the review, in the Los Ange...
