In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates clearly indicates
that he is a cognitivist about the emotions—in
other words, he believes that emotions are in
some way constituted by cognitive states. It
is perhaps because of this that some scholars
have claimed that Socrates believes that
the only way to change how others feel about
things is to engage them in rational discourse,
since that is the only way, such scholars claim,
to change another’s beliefs. But in this paper
we show that Socrates is also responsive to,
and has various non-rational strategies for
dealing with, the many ways in which emotions
can cloud our judgment and lead us into poor
decision-making. We provide an account of
how Socrates can consistently be a cognitivist
about emotion and also have more than purely
rational strategies for dealing with emotions.
