MARK MOESests, and level of knowledge of his interlocutor, so that the interlocu-
tor might come to recognize not merely his own intellectual errors and
inconsistencies, but also his own character fl aws generally.^12 Thus there
is an important disanalogy between medical diagnosis and cure on the
one hand and Socratic conversational practice on the other. In an ordi-
nary physician-patient relationship, a physician is often able to achieve
a successful diagnosis without the patient understanding the nature of
the disease diagnosed or the principles in accord with which the di-
agnosis is carried out. But when a Socratic moral guide diagnoses a
twist or fl aw in character, it is all-important that his interlocutor come
to recognize the fl aw in himself; otherwise he will be unable to return
to fl ourishing self-consciously, responsibly, and freely on the basis of his
own deliberate choices.^13 The diagnosis must be achieved by the inter-
locutor and not only by the guide. The interlocutor must recognize and
acknowledge his own real defi ciencies, and a guide must help him to do
this without being insulting or threatening, without violating his trust.
Therefore, the sage employing medicinal rhetoric often must work by
indirection. This is one aspect of Socrates’ use of irony in conducting
his conversations.^14 The practitioner will often say less than he knows,
dissemble, and hide himself.^15 Furthermore, just as the ailing person
must be actively engaged in his own diagnosis, so he must be actively
engaged in his own therapy.^16 This is a sixth implication of the model.
To model virtue and vice on health and illness need not commit one to a
view that vicious persons are exempt from (some degree of) responsibil-
ity for their own conditions.^17
A seventh implication of the view we have been discussing comes
to light when one thinks about the role that Socrates thinks e[rw~ plays
in bringing persons back to health. The human body possesses an urge
for self-construction, self-repair, and self-maintenance. It can heal its
own wounds, it is attracted to things that will sustain it and satisfy it as
an individual body, and it is disposed toward sexual reproduction in or-
der to sustain family, race, and species. A main work of the good doctor
is to remove obstacles to the right functioning of this urge.^18 Socrates
seems to suggest in various contexts that this urge functions in a special
way on the level of mind and intellect, so that if it is released and prop-
erly directed by a philosophic guide, it leads to the gestation of true vir-
tue at the core of the personality. There is in a man a structure of desire
and interest that directs the attention of his intellect to some things and
a spect s of t hings and away from ot hers t hat he does not w ish to see. Con-
sequently, a man’s capacity for apprehending the truth depends upon
his having right order in the structure of his desires and interests.^19 And
the philosophic guide must help him to achieve this right order so as to