Why Pursue Philosophy?
Socrates says that he pursues this investigation in service to the god. It is, he believes, his mission. He continues to pursue it, “as the god bade me” (23b): he seeks out people who seem to be wise, and shows them that they are not. Those who hear his conversations believe he must know the answers to the questions he asks, but he insists he does not. No one does. He also says he pursues it because he believes “the unexamined life is not worth living,” (38a) and that it is the greatest good for people to discuss “virtue … and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others” (ibid.). It is natural to wonder why he thinks this. Does he think that, despite the fact that no one has yet answered his questions satisfactorily, someday someone might? Might Socrates meet someone with the wisdom that up to now he has believed only the god possesses? Does he think we might somehow approximate divine wisdom, even if we can't actually possess it? Does he think that it is not the attainment of wisdom, but the pursuit of it that is actually valuable? Socrates does not answer these questions. Perhaps the value of constantly searching for wisdom is just the humility that results from the awareness that one lacks it. Perhaps Socrates is a skeptic about the possibility of knowledge of the “most important pursuits.” Perhaps he believes it is impossible for a human being to acquire this knowledge. If so, one might respond, why should one continually pursue questions that one cannot answer? Might it not be better to give up on the pursuit of wisdom and truth, and pursue wealth, reputation, and honors instead? This is not an idle question. In the Gorgias, Socrates encounters two figures, Polus and Callicles, who are proponents of the pursuit of pleasure and political power. Socrates argues for the pursuit of justice and in favor of the life of philosophical inquiry instead. This issue of what life one should pursue was on Plato's mind.
The Logic of the Elenchus
The issue of what life to pursue arises from what Socrates says in the Apology and elsewhere about his examination of others. What we have seen so far describes the results of this examination, namely the refutation of others and the resultant awareness of one's ignorance. The Apology does not tell us much about how those results are achieved. It does not tell us how Socratic examination, the elenchus, actually works. In order to understand the results of the elenchus, we must try to understand this. The elenchus starts with a question, the “primary question,”4 asked by Socrates. The nature of this question varies from dialogue to dialogue, but in several dialogues it is a question about the definition of a term that has ethical significance. In the Euthyphro the question is, “what is piety?” In the Charmides it is, “what is temperance (moderation)?” In the Laches it is, “what is courage?” In the first book of the Republic it is, “what is justice?” In the Meno it is, “what is virtue?” Socrates never asks, “what is wisdom?” but in the Protagoras he attempts to show that all of the above virtues are in fact wisdom or knowledge. Defining the virtues was a project to which Socrates was devoted. Not all of the questions Socrates asks are questions about the nature and correct definition of an ethical term, but all have some connection to ethical concerns.
The primary question is usually directed at someone who professes to have knowledge of the answer. Euthyphro is a self-proclaimed expert on piety; Charmides is praised by his mentor Critias as a young man who excels in temperance; Laches is a general and so is his fellow interlocutor, Nicias. Thrasymachus in the Republic has a theory about the nature of justice; Meno claims to have learned from the rhetorician Gorgias what virtue is; Protagoras claims to know, and be able to teach, personal and civic virtue. Usually this person regards answering Socrates’ question as a simple matter, not requiring much deliberation, and as a result he responds confidently. Socrates then proceeds to refute his interlocutor's answer. Sometimes he says that the answer is not of the right sort: it describes an example or a part of the virtue in question, and not the virtue itself. Many other things exhibit the virtue as well. Once the interlocutor gets the point of the question, and responds appropriately, Socrates proceeds to show him that his answer conflicts with other beliefs that he has. He elicits from the interlocutor answers to these “secondary questions,” and shows that his answers conflict with his primary answer. The interlocutor has a choice as to which statement to withdraw, but he always withdraws his answer to the primary question. It is not clear why the interlocutor prefers to retain his answers to Socrates’ secondary questions, but he does. At this point Socrates repeats the primary question, and the interlocutor makes a new attempt to answer it, at which point again Socrates elicits from him answers to secondary questions that conflict with it, again refuting the attempted answer. This process repeats until the interlocutor expresses perplexity and admits that he does not know the answer. Eventually the dialogue ends in a state of perplexity; both Socrates and the interlocutor admit that they do not know the answer to Socrates’ primary question.
Elenchus in the Sophist
This is the way the elenchus works, at least in theory. The elenchus, thus understood, is a method of refutation. It shows an interlocutor that he is mistaken in his attempt to answer Socrates’ primary question. It does not prove that the interlocutor's primary answer is actually incorrect; it only shows that this answer conflicts with other statements that the interlocutor prefers to retain. It shows that his answer is inconsistent with other statements he believes. This point is made very clearly in a passage from Plato's dialogue the Sophist. Like the Apology, the Sophist contains one of the few places in which Plato attempts to explain and justify the elenchus. The Sophist is not an early dialogue, nor is it a Socratic dialogue: the main role in the conversation is taken, not by Socrates, but by an “Eleatic Visitor.” The method of elenchus is not even attributed to Socrates in the passage in which the method is explained. The Eleatic Visitor attributes it to certain unnamed practitioners of what he calls “noble sophistry” (231b). What these noble Sophists try to do is to remove people's false beliefs in their own wisdom:
They cross-examine someone when he thinks he's saying something though he's saying nothing. Then, since his opinions will vary inconsistently, these people will easily scrutinize them. They collect his opinions together during the discussion, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects in relation to the same things and in the same respects. The people who are being examined see this, get angry at themselves, and become calmer toward others. They lose their inflated and rigid beliefs about themselves that way, and no loss is pleasanter to hear or has a more lasting effect on them.
(230b–c)
Though this method is not attributed to Socrates, it is clearly the method of elenchus, and it is clearly described as a method of bringing out inconsistencies in the beliefs of someone who falsely believes that he has knowledge. Since no genuine expert will hold inconsistent beliefs about his or her area of expertise, this method proves that the interlocutor is no expert.
The Structure of the Elenctic Dialogue: The Charmides
The elenchus thus described is, as I have said, an engine of refutation. It can show an alleged expert that he does not know what he is talking about. The repeated application of the elenchus produces a dialogue with a certain structure: Socrates asks his primary question, the interlocutor makes several attempts to answer it, all of which fail, the interlocutor admits perplexity and the dialogue ultimately ends inconclusively. Several of the dialogues listed above follow this pattern, with variations. Sometimes there is more than one interlocutor. Sometimes the interlocutor does not admit perplexity, but only frustration. Still, the pattern is there. Consider, for example, the Charmides. Socrates has just returned from the battlefield at Potidaea, where many Athenians have been killed. He passes briefly over the war, however, because what he really wants to discuss is the state of philosophy at Athens. At this point a youth named Charmides arrives, whom Critias introduces as his cousin. (Charmides and Critias, incidentally, are both relatives of
Plato.) Charmides is distinguished for his beauty, but also for the state of his soul, which Critias praises. Eventually, after some badinage about a headache remedy and a question about whether Charmides possesses the virtue of temperance, Socrates gets down to business, asking Charmides what temperance is. “If temperance is present in you,” Socrates states, “you have some opinion about it” (159a). Charmides offers a couple of attempted definitions of temperance – temperance is quietness and temperance is modesty – each of which Socrates quickly refutes. Charmides then states that “I have just remembered having heard someone say that temperance is minding one's own business” (161b; this is close to the definition of justice as doing one's own work given by Socrates in Republic IV, at 433a–b). Socrates suggests that he must have heard this from Critias; and, though Critias initially denies it, it turns out that this is the case. Socrates initially attempts to refute this definition too, at which point Charmides admits that he is “at a total loss” (162b) and Critias takes over the argument.
Critias at first attempts to defend his definition, but then he switches to the claim that temperance is self-knowledge. He looks to Socrates for agreement, but Socrates replies, “You are talking to me as though I professed to know the answers to my own questions and as though I could agree with you if I really wished. This is not the case – rather, because of my own ignorance, I am continually investigating in your company whatever is put forward” (165b–c). A little later he asks Critias, “how could you possibly think that even if I were to refute everything you say, I would be doing it for any other reasons than the one I would give for a thorough investigation of my own statements – the fear of unconsciously thinking I know something when I do not?” (166c–d). Socrates asks Critias two basic questions about temperance, as Critias defines it. His first question is, “If temperance is knowledge, what is it knowledge of?” His second question is, “Of what benefit is temperance, if it is as he defines it?” Critias proves unable to answer either question. The other arts, argues Socrates, have objects different from themselves; medicine is knowledge of health, and its benefit is that it produces health. What is the object of temperance? Critias answers that, unlike the other arts, temperance is the knowledge of knowledge. (This shift from temperance as knowledge of oneself to temperance as knowledge of knowledge leads Critias into all sorts of trouble, but it may not be as strange as it sounds. The temperate person, on Critias’ account, is one who knows what he knows and what he does not know. He won't attempt to act beyond his limitations: he won't attempt to cure a serious disease, if he knows that he doesn't know medicine, but will leave that to a doctor.)
Socrates argues against Critias’ definition. There are no other psychological properties that have themselves as objects: there is no vision of vison, no hearing of hearing, no desire of desire, and so on. By analogy, it would seem that there can be no knowledge of knowledge. When Critias seems unable to handle this objection, Socrates says, suppose we just accept that such a thing as knowledge of knowledge is possible; how will it benefit us? The temperate person will know what subjects are kinds of knowledge, but won't be able to tell whether another person has that knowledge or not. The temperate person will know that medicine is a science, but will not know what the doctor knows. It is the art of medicine that benefits people, not temperance. (In this respect temperance seems to be like a branch of philosophy known today as the philosophy of science. The philosopher of science investigates what science is, and whether a supposed science is really a science, but it does not follow that the philosopher of science knows what the actual scientist knows.) But let us concede even that. Let us suppose, says Socrates, that we can know not merely what a doctor is, but how to distinguish a genuine doctor from a quack, and so on with the other arts and sciences. Still, all the sciences are not equally important.
What we really want to know is the science that will make us happy, and that, says Critias, is the science of good and evil. Even if we organize our lives as scientifically as possible, if we don't know what is good and what is evil we will not benefit from our organization. Temperance, as Critias has defined it, will not benefit us. Socrates concludes: we couldn't show that the knowledge of knowledge was even possible, or that the temperate person could pick out genuine experts, but we conceded both points; yet we still couldn't show that temperance, defined as the knowledge of knowledge, was beneficial. And yet, he says to Charmides, “I think that temperance is a great good, and if you truly have it, that you are blessed” (176a). Charmides says he doesn't know whether he is temperate or not; he asks, “how would I know the nature of a thing when neither you nor Critias is able to discover it?” (176a–b), but he promises Critias that he will continue to associate with Socrates every day, even if he must do so by force, and Socrates says he will not oppose him.
The arguments in this dialogue are fiendishly difficult at times, but the structure of the dialogue is clear. There is the primary question, “What is temperance?” and a series of attempts to answer it, each of which is refuted. Charmides at one point expresses his perplexity, and so does Socrates. Critias never does, though he is unable to answer Socrates’ objections to his definition of temperance as knowledge of knowledge. It certainly seems as though that definition, like the previous ones, has been refuted. The dialogue ends in perplexity. It is hard to see what positive results might be drawn from it. We don't know whether Charmides fulfilled his pledge to Critias to associate with Socrates daily. We do know that he ended up badly, as an associate of Critias who died with him in the battle to restore the democracy. Whatever high promise he had was not fulfilled.
Other elenctic dialogues closely resemble the Charmides in this respect: the Euthyphro, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras, and Republic I all end in perplexity after several rounds of elenctic argument. This is what we would expect from the method as described in the Apology, whose purpose is to display the ignorance of the interlocutors. There are variations in the pattern: in the Hippias Major Hippias never seems to understand the kind of answer Socrates wants. In the Lysis the young interlocutors, Lysis and Menexenus, are not experts in the nature of friendship; they are just friends, as Charmides is not said to be an expert in temperance, but temperate. Some dialogues do not fit the pattern: The Euthydemus contains two elenctic passages between Socrates and a youth named Clinias, but they are sandwiched in between the clowning performance of two self-proclaimed experts in dialectic, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who won't sit still to be examined by Socrates. Not all dialogues in which the elenchus is featured end in perplexity: the Meno does not, nor does the Crito or the Gorgias. I shall have more to say about these three dialogues.
Two Questions about the Elenchus
These dialogues raise two serious questions about the elenchus. The first is whether an interlocutor has to have certain characteristics in order to be a candidate for the elenchus. If an interlocutor refuses to “play Socrates’ game,” so to speak, can the elenchus get off the ground? Can someone be, by temperament or conviction, impervious to Socrates’ method of examination? Euthydemus and Dionysodorus seem to be so; so, ultimately, is Callicles in the Gorgias. The second question is whether the elenchus can be put to a positive use. We have seen that it can play a negative role in refuting hypotheses; can it play a positive role in supporting them? There are two passages that indicate that it can. In a passage in the Sophist at the end of the excerpt quoted above, the Eleatic Visitor says that
Doctors who work on the body think it can't benefit from any food that's offered to it until what's interfering with it from inside is removed. The people who cleanse the soul, my young friend, likewise think the soul, too, won't get any advantage from any learning that's offered to it until someone shames it by refuting it, removes the opinions that interfere with learning, and exhibits it cleansed, believing that it knows only those things that it does know, and nothing more.
(230b–c)
If treatment of the soul is like treatment of
the body in illness, it would seem to be a two-stage process. In the first stage of healing the body, what is harmful to it within must be removed. In the second stage, the cleansed body can benefit from food offered to it. If the treatment of the soul is parallel to treatment of the body, then there would be a first, destructive phase of treatment in which the elenchus is at work, cleansing the soul of its false beliefs. Once this first stage is completed, then the soul can be offered true beliefs. If this is so, then learning is possible. The soul's best hope is not just to have its false beliefs illuminated and removed by the elenchus, and to be left in a cleansed state, but to somehow acquire true beliefs in place of the false ones. This passage does not indicate how that second stage of learning is accomplished.
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