Table of Contents
Cover
Preface Note
Acknowledgments
1: Socrates’ Times and Trial Socrates the Man: His Life and Times
The Intellectual Revolution of the Fifth Century
Socrates’ Trial
Why was Socrates Tried?
Was Socrates Guilty?
The Death Penalty
The Trial: Conclusion
Socrates the Man: Conclusion
Notes
2: Socratic Method The “Socratic Problem”
The Nature of Socrates’ Philosophy
Socratic vs. Platonic Philosophy
Socratic Dialogues
The Socratic Elenchus
The Apology and the Elenctic Dialogues
Elenchus in the Apology
Why Pursue Philosophy?
The Logic of the Elenchus
Elenchus in the Sophist
The Structure of the Elenctic Dialogue: The Charmides
Two Questions about the Elenchus
Elenchus in the Meno
The Doctrine of Recollection
The Examination of the Slave
The Apology vs. the Meno
Two Faces of Socrates in the Elenctic Dialogues
Recollection and the Elenctic Dialogues
Notes
3: Knowledge and Ignorance Socrates’ Profession of Ignorance
The Nature of Knowledge
Definition
The “Priority of Definition” Principle
Belief and Perplexity
Socrates as Midwife
The “Barren” Socrates
The “Fertile” Socrates
The Ironic Solution: Thrasymachus
The Ironic Solution: Alcibiades
Notes
4: Piety The Euthyphro
The Setting of the Dialogue
Euthyphro
Euthyphro's Case and its Justification
What Socrates wants from Euthyphro: Forms
Euthyphro's Attempts to Define Piety. Their Refutation
Euthyphro's Perplexity
Socrates’ Constructive Contribution
The Conclusion of the Dialogue
Why do Euthyphro and Socrates Disagree?
Is Progress toward a Definition of Piety made in the Dialogue?
The Euthyphro and other Elenctic Dialogues
Notes
5: Virtue The Laches: What is Courage?
The Laches: Virtue is Knowledge
The Protagoras: Protagoras’ Conception of Virtue
Socrates’ Conception of Virtue: Virtue is Knowledge
Hedonism and the Strength of Knowledge
The Argument with the Many: Moral Weakness vs. Cognitive Error
Hedonism and Moral Weakness
Virtue as Practical Wisdom
The Meno
What is Virtue?
Definition and Form
Meno's Perplexity and Paradox; Recollection
The Hypothesis that Virtue is Knowledge
Objection: Where are the Teachers?
Reply: Virtue as Right Opinion
Conclusion
Notes
6: Happiness Virtue and Happiness
The Problem: What Knowledge Produces Happiness?
The Problem of the Crito
The Crito as an Atypical Elenctic Dialogue
Socrates’ Response to Crito
Virtue and Happiness: The Gorgias
Socrates and Gorgias on Rhetoric
Socrates and Polus
The Refutation of Polus
Critique of the Argument against Polus
Callicles
Conventional vs. Natural Justice
Callicles’ Critique of Philosophy
Socrates’ Response to Callicles: Who is the Superior Person?
Callicles’ Hedonism
Socratic Self-Control
Rhetoric vs. Philosophy
Socrates’ Defense of the Self-Controlled Life
The Myth of the After-Life
Is Callicles Refuted?
Conclusion: The Crito and Gorgias vs. the Protagoras
Notes
7: The State The Speech of the Laws
The Crito and Civil Disobedience
The Social Contract
Socrates’ Response to the Speech of the Laws
Why Treat Others Justly?
Socrates as Critic of Athenian Democracy
Socrates’ Political Views
The Moral Expert
The Ruling Art in Republic I
Thrasymachus
Socrates’ Defense of the Just Ruler
Critique of Socrates’ Arguments
Conclusion
Notes
8: From Socrates to Plato The Apology vs. the Republic
Method
Metaphysics: the Theory of “Separate” Forms
Metaphysics: Being and Becoming
Metaphysics: The Form of the Good
Epistemology
Psychology
Moral Theory
Political Theory
Conclusion
Notes
9: Socrates’ Legacy Xenophon's Socrates
The Reception of Socrates in the Ancient World
The Christian Reception of Socrates
Socrates from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
The Nineteenth Century
Hegel
Kierkegaard: Socrates as an Individual
Nietzsche
The Twentieth Century
Karl Popper's Socrates
I. F. Stone's Socrates
Notes
Bibliography Ancient Sources
Modern Sources
Recommended Reading General historical background
On Socrates’ Athens
On Athenian law
On Socratic piety
On definition and Forms
On reverence
On the Gorgias
On Socratic perplexity
On ancient philosophy as a way of life
On Socratic moral psychology
On the Republic
On the death of Socrates, with special emphasis on its treatment through history
Index
End User License Agreement
Classic Thinkers
Richard T. W. Arthur, Leibniz
Terrell Carver, Marx
Daniel E. Flage, Berkeley
J. M. Fritzman, Hegel
Bernard Gert, Hobbes
Thomas Kemple, Simmel
Ralph McInerny, Aquinas
Dale E. Miller, J. S. Mill
Joanne Paul, Thomas More
A. J. Pyle, Locke
James T. Schleifer, Tocqueville
Céline Spector, Rousseau
Andrew Ward, Kant
Socrates
William J. Prior
polity
Copyright © William J. Prior 2019
The right of William J. Prior to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Polity Press
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Names: Prior, William J., author.
Title: Socrates / William J. Prior.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2019. | Series: Classical thinkers | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009943 (print) | LCCN 2019015932 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509529766 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509529735 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509529742 (pbk.)
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For my grandchildren
Preface
A story is told about an institutional review at Oxford in the 1990s. “When … the visiting team of assessors met the philosophers, they asked them what innovations in teaching methods had been developed over the last two or three years. It is reported that the stunned silence that followed was broken by Christopher Peacocke, then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics, who observed that Socrates had discovered the right way to teach philosophy 2,500 years ago, and nobody had ever been able to make any significant improvements to it since.”1
This is a book intended for beginners in the study of Socrates. It is not a book for scholars. It contains views, some of them controversial, on some issues of concern to scholars, but it generally avoids debate on those views. Nothing in this book presupposes familiarity with the scholarly literature on Socrates. The book does presuppose some familiarity with Plato's works, including the Apology, Crito, Republic, and some other dialogues. It should be read in conjunction with those. The first chapter should be read in connection with Plato's Apology, the fourth in connection with the Euthyphro, the seventh in connection with the Crito, and so on with the other chapters. There are many good translations of Plato's works available today. The book draws quotations from the Hackett edition of Plato's complete works, because it is the version most familiar to today's readers, but it refers to the passages in the way that is standard among scholars, using the Stephanus pagination in the margins of the pages of most translations. The reader can check the Hackett translations against any others that are available.
Most of this book concerns the character Socrates, as he is depicted in a certain set of Platonic works, which I refer to as the elenctic dialogues. The first chapter is concerned with the life of the person who stands behind that character, and attempts to place that life in the context of the major events of its time. Because Socrates left no written record of his philosophical views it is impossible to state definitively what the relation is between the historical Socrates and the character in Plato's works. This is the “Socratic problem” and it has no solution. Even when we read about the trial of Socrates, a public event witnessed by approximately five hundred jurors as well as by other Athenians, we rely on accounts of Plato and another associate of Socrates, Xenophon, for our understanding of that event.
Beginning with the second chapter, the book offers an account of the nature of the philosophy presented as Socratic in a set of dialogues in which Socrates practices a distinctive method of inquiry, the elenchus. The elenchus is a negative method, aimed at the refutation of the people Socrates has conversations with, his interlocutors, most of whom claim to have expert knowledge on a moral subject, usually the definition of a moral term. In certain dialogues, such as the Crito, this method is put to a positive use; in the Meno this positive use is justified by the introduction of a theory concerning the acquisition of knowledge, the doctrine of recollection. The doctrine of recollection changes our understanding of the elenchus.
Socrates typically professed ignorance concerning the answers to the questions he raised for others. He presented himself, not as a moral expert, but as an inquirer. In the Theaetetus he describes himself as “barren.” He says that he does not express his view concerning the issues he raises because he is aware that he lacks wisdom. At the same time, however, he suggests possible answers to those questions. He is, in terms of the contrast drawn in the Theaetetus, fertile. Yet he cannot be both. One way of reconciling these two portraits is through the claim that Socrates’ profession of ignorance is ironic, a claim made by Thrasymachus in the Republic and Alcibiades in the Symposium. Most interpreters do not accept this ironical interpretation; it is not clear, however, that the tension between the two portraits can be resolved in any other way.
Beginning with the fourth chapter of the book, we consider how these two portraits of Socrates characterize several of Plato's elenctic dialogues, beginning with the Euthyphro, a dialogue on the nature of piety. In Chapter 5 the book discusses a well-known view of the fertile Socrates, known as intellectualism. According to this view, virtue is a matter of knowledge, produced by an art of measurement. Socrates describes vice as ignorance and denies the possibility of moral weakness. This is the moral theory most often associated with the Socrates of the elenctic dialogues. This theory has a problem, however, with stating the end that virtue seeks. This end is happiness. In one dialogue, the Protagoras, it is suggested that happiness is pleasure, but this suggestion is rejected in another dialogue, the Gorgias. In the Gorgias and Crito a different conception of happiness is defended, based on psychological health. In the Gorgias this conception is associated with the idea of proper order among parts of the soul, including reason and appetite. Socrates defends this conception of happiness against the views of two of his interlocutors, Polus and Callicles. The happy life, according to this view, is the just life, which is identified as the life devoted to philosophy. This conception of happiness is discussed in Chapter 6.
Chapter 7 is devoted to a question generated by Socrates’ conception of the just life, namely the relation between Socrates and the state. This was a question that arose after Socrates’ trial: it has been claimed that Socrates was tried as an enemy of the democratic government of Athens. This chapter considers an argument put forward in the Crito by the laws of Athens in favor of civic obedience. Plato presents Socrates as a loyal citizen of Athens; he was also, however, a critic of democracy. Socrates wanted the Athenians to care about virtue rather than wealth or power. He thought that it was moral knowledge that qualified one to rule in the state, and he retains this view in the Republic. The eighth chapter discusses the relation between the Socrates of the elenctic dialogues and the Socrates of the “middle” dialogues, who is generally thought to be a spokesman for Plato's own views. The chapter compares the two sets of dialogues with respect to several issues: method, metaphysics (including the theory of Forms and the conception of the good), epistemology, psychology, moral theory, and political theory. I argue that the views of the “middle” dialogues in general grow out of the views expressed in the elenctic dialogues in a gradual manner.
The final chapter discusses the philosophical legacy of Socrates from his time to the twentieth century. It pays special attention to his influence in ancient philosophy and in the nineteenth century. Socrates, the virtuous man, the barren inquirer, the fertile theoretician, and the martyr, has been one of the most influential philosophers in the Western intellectual tradition. Not everythi
ng he said was true, but nearly everything he said was worth, and has received, philosophical discussion. This book attempts to portray Socrates’ views on a variety of topics, so that readers may judge them for themselves. It also tries to show why Socrates has been regarded throughout the history of Western philosophy as a model of the philosophical life.
Note
1 Malcolm Schofield, “Socrates on Trial in the USA,” in T. P. Wiseman, ed., Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 282.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Nick Smith, who suggested that I put my thoughts on Socrates in a book. I am also grateful to three anonymous referees for this press, who offered many valuable suggestions. I also want to thank my colleague Philip Kain, who helped me with the interpretation of Hegel in Chapter Nine, and my former colleague Justin Remhof, who helped me with the interpretation of Nietzsche. I am especially grateful to the editor of this book, Pascal Porcheron, who guided the project from start to finish. Of course, none of these people are responsible for whatever errors the book may contain.
1
Socrates’ Times and Trial
The Athenian philosopher Socrates is a cultural hero in Western civilization. Tried in 3991 on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, convicted and put to death, he is seen by his admirers, and even by his critics, not as a criminal but as a martyr on behalf of free speech and the unfettered pursuit of truth. If philosophy made saints, he would be considered a saint. The ancient Roman orator and philosophical writer Cicero credited him with changing the course of Western philosophy. Before Socrates, philosophy was primarily concerned with the explanation of nature. Socrates, said Cicero, “was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and to place it in cities, and even to introduce it into homes and compel it to inquire about life and standards and goods and evils” (Tusculan Disputations V.10). Socrates made philosophy, we would say today, relevant to human life. These claims alone make Socrates worthy of study.
Socrates Page 1