Socrates

by William J Prior

  Socrates the Man: His Life and Times

  Socrates was both a creature of his times and a shaper of those times. In order to understand his philosophy we must understand the events that shaped his life. Socrates was born in about 469, and he was an Athenian citizen. His father Sophroniscus was a stone­cutter, who would surely have passed on his trade to his son. We do not see Socrates practicing this trade in Plato's dialogues, though he does refer to the legendary sculptor, Daedalus, as his ancestor at Euthyphro 11b–c. His mother Phainarete, whose name means something like “brings virtue to light,” was a midwife. It is his mother's trade to which he refers as being similar to his own at Theaetetus 149a–151b. Socrates grew up in a period of Athens’ greatest power and glory, and experienced her downfall in his adulthood. The rise to power of Athens is described by the Greek historian Herodotus. In 490 the Athenians at the battle of Marathon defeated an invading force sent by the Persian king Darius. In 480, under the leadership of the Athenian statesman Themistocles, a Greek fleet, made up primarily of Athenian ships, defeated another, much larger, Persian fleet under the command of Darius’ son Xerxes at the battle of Salamis. In the following year, the Persians were defeated again in battle and expelled from Greece. The leading Greek military power at the time was Sparta, with whom the Athenians fought in coalition against the invading Persians. Following the defeat of the Persians the Athenians organized an alliance of Greek city-states in the area around the Aegean Sea to prevent another Persian invasion. This alliance became an Athenian empire, and Athens became the leading naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. The rise of Athenian power threatened the Spartans, and tensions grew between Athens and Sparta throughout the fifth century, culminating in the Peloponnesian War (431–404), the story of which is told by Thucydides (down to 411) and Xenophon (after that date). This war led to the complete defeat of Athens and the loss of her empire.

  Socrates was born following the great victories of the Persian Wars, and lived as an adult during the Peloponnesian War. Plato tells us that he served in the Athenian army in three campaigns; two characters in Plato's dialogues, the general Laches and Alcibiades, praise him for his courage. Following the Athenian defeat in 404 the Spartans imposed on Athens, which had been the leading democracy in Greece, an oligarchic government known as “the Thirty.” This government was so hated and feared by most of the citizens of Athens that it acquired the name, “the Thirty Tyrants.” The Thirty ruled in Athens only briefly, from 404 to 403, but their rule was a reign of terror, in which many innocent Athenians were put to death and their fortunes confiscated. Many partisans of democracy went into exile. In 403 the democratic exiles defeated the forces of the Thirty in battle and restored the democracy. Socrates remained in Athens throughout this time, which may have caused some resentment among the exiles. The restored democracy passed an amnesty for all who might have participated in the crimes committed prior to or during the rule of the Thirty, except for the Thirty themselves and their associates.

  The Intellectual Revolution of the Fifth Century

  The latter half of the fifth century was a period of intellectual ferment in Greece, and especially in Athens. Numerous Greek city-states, following the lead of Athens, established democratic governments, supplanting older monarchies and oligarchies. Ancient Greek democratic government was direct, not representative. That is, the citizens of a democracy did not elect representatives to vote on laws for the state; rather, they met in assemblies themselves to vote. These public meetings could be tumultuous. A great premium was placed in a democratic government on the ability of a speaker to express his views clearly and persuasively. This gave rise to a group of teachers who traveled among the city-states, especially the democratic ones, offering courses on rhetoric, the art of public speaking. Some of these teachers also taught other subjects as well, including in some cases mathematics, natural science, and political theory. These itinerant teachers were known collectively as “Sophists,” a term that literally means “wise men.” In Plato's dialogues we meet several of these Sophists. Plato contrasted Socrates strongly with the Sophists, and he had a rather low opinion of them as a group. As a result the term “sophist” has acquired a negative connotation. To some extent this negative view of the Sophists could be found among the ordinary citizens of Athens. The Sophists taught people how to argue persuasively; some people charged that they made the worse or weaker argument appear the better or stronger. That is, they thought the Sophists were guilty of some form of intellectual chicanery. In the minds of many Athenians Socrates was indistinguishable from the Sophists. Plato, of course, thought this confusion completely unjustified, but not many Athenians knew Socrates as well as he did.

  Though some Athenians distrusted the Sophists, what they promised – the ability to speak persuasively in public – was highly prized, and the Sophists commanded large fees for their teaching. Socrates was an exception to this practice; he did not charge his associates2 for conversing with him, and he denied being a teacher. The Sophists brought new ideas, and not just ideas concerning rhetoric, wherever they went. The most famous member of the group, Protagoras, professed agnosticism about the traditional gods, and famously declared that “man is the measure of all things.” These new ideas prompted much discussion, both in public and in private, as new ideas continue to do today. In the latter half of the fifth century the Sophists and Socrates, with the help of a few philosophers of nature, such as Anaxagoras, brought an intellectual revolution to Athens.

  The best “snapshot” of this intellectual revolution may well be found in the opening pages of Plato's dialogue, the Protagoras. The dramatic date of this dialogue is usually thought to be just before the start of the Peloponnesian War. In this dialogue Socrates narrates a conversation he has just had with Protagoras, “the wisest man alive” (309d).3 His narration begins with an account of a visit to Socrates’ home from a young man named Hippocrates, who desires an introduction to Protagoras. Hippocrates wants to study with Protagoras, to acquire his wisdom, and he is willing to pay dearly for it, though it turns out that he has no idea what Protagoras teaches. After a warning from Socrates about receiving into his soul the teachings of the Sophists without having them tested by an expert, Socrates and Hippocrates go to the house of Callias, one of the richest Athenians and a man noted for spending money on the Sophists. After eventually gaining entrance, they are greeted with a sight that Socrates describes, complete with echoes of Homeric poetry. First there is Protagoras, walking back and forth followed by a group that parts ways when he changes direction; then Hippias of Elis, answering questions on physics and astronomy; and Prodicus, in a former storeroom and still in bed, speaking to others with a deep, reverberating voice that obscures what he says. Other intellectuals, some familiar from other Platonic dialogues, are present in attendance on these teachers. No doubt Socrates’ description, with its Homeric overtones, is somewhat ironic, but the impression it gives is that of an assemblage of intellectuals, conversing freely on matters that might engage a university audience today. For a lover of such conversation, it must have seemed like heaven; and Socrates, however much Plato wants to distinguish him from the Sophists, is right at home in it. This account is a Platonic description of an assemblage that may never in fact have occurred, but the atmosphere of free discussion and inquiry is one that, he wants to tell us, characterized this period of Athenian life.

  The loss of the Peloponnesian War produced a backlash against this intellectual revolution. Part of the evidence for this backlash is the trial of Socrates. The kind of free thought that the Sophists and other intellectuals, such as Anaxagoras, displayed toward traditional religion came to be seen by some as undermining Athenian values. The ability of the Sophists to teach people to argue both or all sides of important questions was also thought to undermine traditional values. By the end of the war in 404 most of the first generation of Sophists were dead and the tradition of free public and private debate seems largely to have died with them. The atmosphere
of intellectual inquiry that characterized Athens in the period before the war was now a thing of the past. Athenians were searching for reasons for the loss of the war, and some fastened on the influence of intellectuals on traditional beliefs. Socrates, unlike most of the Sophists a native Athenian, was unusual in that he was still carrying on the tradition of inquiry that characterized the earlier age. Socrates was hardly unaware of the war; as noted above, he had served in the army. He had been through the Athenian defeat and the rule of the Thirty that followed it, but he seemed unaffected by these events. As both Plato and Xenophon portray him, he continued to philosophize as if the war and its catastrophic conclusion had not occurred. The Athenians were noted for their love of free speech, but the circumstances that brought on their defeat, including a blockade of Athens and the resulting starvation of numerous Athenians, no doubt led many Athenians to question whether there were not limits to such speech. The circumstances in which the Athenians found themselves at the end of the fifth century no doubt contributed to the trial of Socrates.

  Socrates’ Trial

  Four years after the restoration of democracy in Athens, Socrates was brought to trial. The bare facts of the trial as we know them today are these: Socrates was charged with impiety – literally, not believing in4 the gods the city believed in, but in other new (strange) spiritual things – and corrupting the youth. His chief accuser was an otherwise unknown man named Meletus; his other accusers were Lycon, also obscure, and Anytus, a well-known Athenian politician. Athenian juries were quite large, to protect against corruption and to reflect the diversity of the Athenian population. Socrates was tried by a jury of approximately five hundred members. He was convicted by a majority of jurors and sentenced to death. Beyond these facts we have to deal in speculation. Athenian trials consisted of speeches by and for the prosecution followed by speeches by and for the defense. We do not possess the speeches of the prosecutors. We do not know what they said, and we do not know their motives in prosecuting Socrates. We do have two accounts of Socrates’ defense speech, both entitled Apology of Socrates, one written by Plato and another by Xenophon. Plato and Xenophon were both associates of Socrates during the last decade of his life. Plato was present at the trial, but Xenophon was not. We also have a discussion of the trial in Xenophon's memoirs of Socrates, his Memorabilia. Neither Plato nor Xenophon was a neutral, objective reporter of the trial; they were partisans of Socrates. Both were convinced of his innocence. Xenophon's Apology does not pretend to be a verbatim account of what Socrates said at his trial. Plato's Apology does, but it may instead be Plato's attempt to say what he thought Socrates should have said. We are not in a position to know how much of Plato's Apology is reportage and how much is Platonic invention. This is a problem we have with all those of Plato's works that feature Socrates. From the time of the trial to the present day the conviction of Socrates has been controversial. Were the official charges against Socrates the real reasons for his trial? Was he guilty of those charges? Did he deserve the death penalty? Was the entire trial a miscarriage of justice? In the remainder of this chapter I want to examine these questions.

  Why was Socrates Tried?

  The official charges against Socrates were impiety and corrupting the youth. Were these the real reasons he was brought to trial? To a contemporary reader it may seem implausible that so much could be made of the charge of impiety. We tend to think of piety and impiety today as matters of personal conviction, or lack of it. In ancient Greece matters were different. Religion was thought to be the foundation of the state. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was the patron deity of Athens. Religion was not a matter of private belief, but of public observance. There were numerous occasions during the year where it was expected for Athenians to honor the gods, and in particular Athena, with prayer and sacrifice. Athena was part of a pantheon of gods, including twelve who were thought to have their homes on Mount Olympus. These Olympian gods had their own particular functions or domains of influence: Zeus was the god of justice and the leader of the gods, Aphrodite was the goddess of love, Ares the god of war, Hades the god of the underworld, and so on. From the time of Homer, the first and greatest of the ancient Greek poets, this pantheon was commonly accepted or recognized. If one's city was at war, which was a common condition among Greek cities, one prayed and sacrificed to the gods, and especially to the patron deity of one's own state, for success. Not to do so would be suspicious: it would make people think that one did not wish for one's city to succeed, that one was disloyal to the state. Impiety, not believing in, recognizing or honoring the gods of the city, would be akin to treason. This is what the charge of impiety would have meant to the jurors. It would have been for them a most serious matter, especially if Socrates was thought to be trying to spread his disbelief in the city's gods.

  What was meant by the phrase, “other new (strange) spiritual matters?” One hypothesis was that this referred to a “divine sign” that Socrates says appeared to him from time to time. According to Socrates, his divine sign only deterred him from actions he was about to perform; perhaps it consisted of the single word, “no” or “don't.” Socrates was convinced that this sign was a communication with the divine. This should have been sufficient to show that he was not an atheist, a complete disbeliever in the gods; and traditional Greek religion allows for the possibility that the gods on occasion communicated with human beings. Still, Socrates’ sign was not a common experience among his fellow Athenians. It may have seemed strange to them. Was Socrates claiming to have his own god or demigod who spoke only to him? Did he have a private cult, not a part of the state's religion? The Athenians were in general willing to introduce new divinities into the state religion. At the beginning of Plato's Republic Socrates says that he had gone to the Piraeus, the port city of Athens, to celebrate the inauguration of worship of the Thracian goddess Bendis. The Athenians, like other Greeks, were polytheists. They not only worshiped the twelve Olympian gods, but many other gods and demigods. There was always “room for one more” in the pantheon. But Socrates did not try to have his sign recognized as a new divinity.

  Did a majority of the jury believe that Socrates rejected traditional Greek religion in favor of a personal divine voice unique to himself? To Xenophon this seemed preposterous. No one was more faithful in both public and private sacrifice to the gods, he argued, and Socrates’ private divine voice was no different from other forms of divination. What arguments could the prosecution have made for impiety? Nor, he thought, was Socrates guilty of corrupting the youth. He showed by his own conduct the greatest self-control and this led his associates to follow his example. Xenophon mentions the fact, not mentioned in Plato's Apology, that Critias, the ringleader of the Thirty, and Alcibiades, a brilliant but uncontroled Athenian democratic political and military leader, had been associates of Socrates, but he denies that Socrates was responsible for their corruption. Socrates “showed his companions that he was a gentleman5 himself, and talked most excellently of goodness and of all things that concern man” (Memorabilia I.II.17). Socrates restrained the bad impulses of these men, so long as they associated with him; they were corrupted by others.

  Xenophon's mention of Critias and Alcibiades raises an interpretation of the trial that arose shortly after the event, and that has persisted to this day. According to this “political” interpretation the charge of impiety was just a smokescreen for the real reason that Socrates was tried: his opposition to the democracy.6 Socrates criticized the Athenian practice of electing most public officials by lot, and this, it was thought, “led the young to despise the established constitution” (Mem. I.II.9). This may have been the real source of the charge of “corrupting the youth.” Critias and Alcibiades were examples of this corruption, though Critias was not a youth when Socrates knew him. Because of the amnesty, Socrates could not have been officially charged with corrupting either of them, but his prosecutors still may have mentioned their names during their speeches. Socrates was no friend of the government of
the Thirty, but he had, as noted above, remained in the city during their reign of terror. Anytus, one of the prosecutors, was a prominent Athenian politician at the time of the trial. He may have thought that Socrates, as a critic of democracy, was a danger to the state. For all these reasons the jurors, or at least some of them, may have harbored resentment against Socrates.

  Plato in his Apology does not specifically raise the political interpretation of Socrates’ trial, but he also thought that there were reasons for the trial that were not stated in the official indictment. He distinguishes Socrates’ current accusers – Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon – who charge him with impiety and corrupting the youth – from his “first accusers,” who have been prejudicing the Athenians against him for decades, saying, “there is a man called Socrates, a wise man, a student of all things in the sky and below the earth, who makes the worse argument the stronger. Those who spread that rumor, gentlemen, are my dangerous accusers, for their hearers believe that those who study these things do not even believe in the gods” (18b–c). What Socrates is saying is that there is a long-standing prejudice against him, that he has already been convicted in the court of public opinion of being an atheist, and that given this longstanding prejudice it is impossible for him to get a fair trial.

  Though these first accusers are the dangerous ones, in Socrates’ view, they are largely anonymous. The one exception is the comic poet Aristophanes, whose play the Clouds, originally written in 423, is very probably the only work featuring Socrates written in Socrates’ own lifetime. In the Clouds Aristophanes has Socrates tell his would-be student Strepsiades that the gods of the tradition do not exist, beginning with Zeus. The only gods worshiped in Socrates’ school, he tells Strepsiades, are Chaos, the Clouds, and Tongue (i.e. the god of rhetoric). This disavowal of the traditional gods plus the introduction of strange or new divinities would have been a more serious matter than claiming to hear a private voice.