Socrates

OCR special

Socrates

OCR students will be familiar with Plato and Aristotle. Jon Mayled explains that you will benefit from an understanding of how they were influenced by Socrates

OCR A2 Unit G581: Philosophy of religion

There are plenty of interesting quotations from Socrates, including the following:

‘By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.’

Socrates

‘The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways —I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.’

Socrates, in Plato’s Dialogues, Apology

‘I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.’

Socrates, from Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

The real question is: Did he actually say any of these things? The difficulty with Socrates is that, although he is known as the teacher of Plato and the creator of the concept of elenchus — the Socratic method — he wrote nothing, or at least nothing that he did write survives in any original form. He is known best through the writings of his students Plato (427 BCE–347 BCE) and Xenophon (431 BCE–355 BCE), and through the plays of Aristophanes (466 BCE–386 BCE).

The Platonic Socrates

Socrates’ contribution to ethics is found in Plato’s Dialogues, which is described by some as the Platonic Socrates. This is where the ideas of Socratic irony and the Socratic method come from. It is this Platonic Socrates which made long-lasting contributions to epistemology and Western philosophy.

Plato is often portrayed as the most reliable source dealing with Socrates’ life and philosophy, but it can be argued that Xenophon, being a historian, is possibly more reliable. Plato, the idealist, offers ‘an idol, a master figure, for philosophy. A Saint, a prophet of the “Sun-God”, a teacher condemned for his teachings as a heretic’ (Cohen 2008). However, it would seem clear from Xenophon, Aristotle and Aristophanes that Socrates was not simply an invention of Plato.

Socrates initially followed his father’s profession as a stonecutter. According to Xenophon, after retirement Socrates said that he devoted himself only to what was the most important occupation: discussing philosophy. Aristophanes shows Socrates as running and teaching at a Sophist school in Athens with Chaerephon (c. 470/460 BCE– c. 403/399 BCE), though far less is known of Chaerephon than of Socrates. In Plato’s Apology and Symposium, as in Xenophon’s accounts, Socrates states that he never accepted money for teaching.

The Platonic Socrates also had a military career, and is said to have served in the Athenian army during three campaigns: at Potidaea (363 BCE), Delium (424 BCE) and Amphipolis (422 BCE).

Influences

Xenophon wrote that Socrates had a strong belief about God and was a teleologist who believed that God arranged everything for the best. According to the sources, Socrates frequently says that his ideas are not his own but those of his teachers. Among these he names:

■ Prodicus of Ceos (c. 465 BCE–c. 395 BCE)

■ Archelaus (fifth century BCE)

■ Diotima of Mantinea, a witch and priestess who taught him all he knew about eros, or love

■ Aspasia (c. 470 BCE–c. 400 BCE), from whom he learned the art of rhetoric

The Socratic paradox

The most famous of the Socratic paradoxes is:

‘I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.’

However, there are others attributed to him, which, like the one above, all seem to be opposite of common sense:

‘No one desires evil. No one errs or does wrong willingly or knowingly. Virtue — all virtue — is knowledge. Virtue is sufficient for happiness.’

The Socratic method

This is a dialectic method of enquiry and was largely applied by the Platonic Socrates to key moral concepts such as good and justice. It is first found in the Dialogues. Modern scientific method, beginning with a hypothesis, is a development of this. A whole series of questions are presented so that an individual or group can find their underlying beliefs and knowledge. Better hypotheses are found by identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. By a process of questioning, the soul can be brought to remember the ideas in their pure form, thus bringing wisdom. Karl Popper wrote that it was ‘the art of intellectual intuition, of visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances’.

One of the best-known sayings attributed to Socrates is ‘What I do not know I do not think I know’. However, he did claim to have knowledge of ‘the art of love’, which he connected to ‘the love of wisdom’ — philosophy. He therefore appears to be saying not that he was wise but that he understood the path a lover of wisdom must follow in pursuing it. Although Socrates drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge, in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave a method for ascending to wisdom is described.

Demonic sign

One of the most interesting facets of Socrates’ views is his reliance on what the Greeks called his ‘demonic sign’. This was an inner voice which he was said to hear only when he was about to make a mistake. According to the Phaedrus, Socrates thought this was a form of ‘divine madness which was a gift from the gods bringing poetry, mysticism, love, and eventually philosophy itself. It might be regarded as simply intuition but Socrates saw it as divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts.

Virtue ethics

Socrates taught that people should focus on the pursuit of virtue rather than the pursuit of, for example, material wealth. He encouraged people to concentrate on friendships and the community. Socrates’ virtues represented what he thought were the most important qualities for a person to have — the first of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living [and] ethical virtue is the only thing that matters’.

Political views

It is sometimes argued that Socrates believed ‘ideals belong in a world only the wise man can understand’. This is a view presented in Plato’s Republic. However, it is possible that this later work of Plato represented his own anti-democratic thinking rather than that of his mentor.

It is clear Socrates thought the rule of the Thirty Tyrants (a pro-Spartan group installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE) was objectionable: when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown. It seems that he thought the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was less legitimate than the democratic senate that sentenced him to death.

On the stage

Socrates was portrayed as a figure of fun by contemporary playwrights. Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds, produced when Socrates was in his mid 40s, showed him as a clown. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote that he thought this play was a more accurate representation of Socrates than came from his students. In The Clouds Socrates is a figure of fun for his lack of cleanliness: this may have come from the popularity of Laconising (to imitate the manner of the Laconians, especially in brief, pithy speech, or in frugality and austerity). Comical portrayals are also found in the plays of Callias, Eupolis and Telecleides and in the poetry of Mnesimachus and Ameipsias.

Trial and death

There are various stories, theories and interpretations of Socrates’ trial and death sentence. It appears that Socrates may well have been a critic of democracy and that his trial was the result of political infighting in the Athenian government. He was also a social and moral critic of Athenian society. He apparently did not accept what was seen as the growing immorality of Athenian life. It was for this reason that Plato described him as the ‘gadfly’ of the state.

A gadfly is a fly (usually a horsefly or a bot-fly) that annoys horses and other animals. Plato used the term in the Apology to describe Socrates’ relationship with the Athenian political scene, which he had compared to a slow and dim-witted horse. According to Plato, during his defence Socrates pointed out that dissent, like the gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of simply silencing individuals could be great: ‘If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me.’ He said that his role was that of a gadfly, ‘to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth’.

In the Apology, this ‘gadfly’ behaviour began when Chaerephon asked the Delphic Oracle if anyone was wiser than Socrates. The Oracle said that no one was wiser. Socrates then tested this statement by approaching the wise men of Athens. However, he found that while each man thought they were knowledgeable and wise they were just the opposite. Socrates knew that he was not wise himself, which he concluded was a paradox because, as the only person aware of his own ignorance, this made him the wiser one.

At the end of his trial Socrates was asked to suggest his own punishment. He proposed that he should be paid a wage by the government and receive free meals for the rest of his life to reward him for the time he had spent as Athens’ benefactor. However, he was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety (‘not believing in the gods of the state’). He was then sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poisonous hemlock (Conium maculatum). According to Xenophon’s version, Socrates gave a defiant response to the jury because ‘he believed he would be better off dead’.

Plato gives an account of Socrates’ death at the end of Phaedo. Socrates turned down the entreaties of his friend Crito of Alopece (c. 469 BCE–fourth century BCE) to attempt to escape from prison. Just before his death, Socrates said: ‘Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Please, don’t forget to pay the debt.’ Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing and it could be that Socrates’ last words meant that he saw death as the cure by freeing the soul from the body.

The legacy of Socrates

■ Plato founded the Academy in 385 BCE and his pupil Aristotle founded the Lyceum in 335 BCE — both academic institutions. Plato emphasised mathematics and metaphysics, as did Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE– c. 495 BCE). Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) was as much a philosopher as he was a scientist.

■ Socratic thought, rather than Plato’s probable reworking of the teachings, was taken on by another of his students, Antisthenes (c. 445 BCE–c. 365 BCE), who developed Cynicism as a school of thought.

■ With further study of Socrates as well as the Cynics, Zeno of Citium (c. 334 BCE– c. 262 BCE) developed Stoicism.

■ Socrates has continued to influence philosophy, including the Arabic philosopher Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 CE) and the Jewish philosopher Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (c. 1075– 1141 CE).

■ The European Renaissance and the Age of Reason saw Socrates’ influence on thinkers such as Locke and Hobbes.

This ‘OCR special’ is the responsibility of RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW and has been neither provided nor approved by OCR.

Jon Mayled is the author of many religious studies textbooks.