Definition
Socrates believed that knowledge began with definitions. He was not seeking what are called “nominal definitions,” definitions such as “a bachelor is an unmarried man,” which explain the meaning of words, but what are called “real definitions,” definitions that express the real nature of a thing, what it is essentially. As Aristotle says, Socrates “was seeking to deduce, and the essence is the starting point of deductions” (Metaph. M.4, 1078b24–5). This is why so many of the elenctic dialogues are directed toward definitions. What Socrates is looking for is a set of definitions that do not merely state that something is the case, but explain why it is the case. Socrates wants an account of eudaimonia that explains not just what eudaimonia is, but why it is the first principle that he is seeking. The kind of definition of virtue that he is seeking will not just state the nature of virtue; it will explain how virtue is relevant to eudaimonia. Some interpreters have suggested that a better term than “knowledge” for the object of Socrates’ search is “understanding.” Another term that is sometimes used is “science.” What Socrates wants is a science of ethics, something like geometry, which will enable him to understand how all the parts of the subject are interrelated.
The “Priority of Definition” Principle
Such a science is hard, if not impossible, to obtain. Today, over 2,400 years after Socrates, we have several rival ethical theories that attempt to explain the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, but no single theory that is accepted by everyone. Mathematics has been a science since the time of Socrates, but ethics is still not a science. It is no wonder that Socrates professed his ignorance, his perplexity, concerning the subject. Socrates may have accepted a principle that made the discovery of such a science especially difficult. In the Meno, Socrates asks Meno how he could know anything about virtue if he did not know the definition of virtue: “if I do not know what something is, how could I know what qualities it possesses?” (71b) In other places he suggests that if one does not know the definition of a term, one cannot know whether an alleged example is really an example of the term. These two principles together generate what has been called the “priority of definition” principle: until one knows the definition of something, one cannot know anything at all about that thing. This principle has been called the “Socratic fallacy.” It is what gives rise to Meno's question to Socrates: if you don't know anything about a subject, how will you look for it? If one cannot at least identify examples of some term such as “water,” how will one ever be able to discover the nature of water? This problem may not be as difficult to solve as it sounds – after all, it does seem to be the case that whether a given action is courageous or pious might depend on the definition of courage or piety, and so might the answer to the question whether courage or piety is advantageous or capable of being learned. It does, however, make knowledge difficult to obtain. Most people think they know, in the sense of being able to identify, instances of courage and piety, even if they can't define those terms. The priority of definition principle says that they are mistaken. It is not clear that Socrates accepts the priority of definition principle, but he says things in various places in the dialogues that suggest that he does.1
Belief and Perplexity
Socrates, as I have said, repeatedly denies that he has knowledge of the first truths of ethics. He does not know how he ought to live; he does not know the nature of virtue. Interpreters have noted that this does not mean that Socrates does not have beliefs, even very strong beliefs, about these matters. If he does, this might explain how Socrates can claim ignorance about these matters and yet express beliefs, including strong beliefs, about them. This point is, as far as it goes, correct. But when Socrates pleads ignorance he on occasion says things that go beyond the mere disavowal of knowledge: he says he is perplexed about the answers to his questions. Perplexity involves uncertainty: it involves not knowing what to believe about the answer to his questions. When Socrates says he is perplexed he is saying that he does not have a fixed belief about the answer. As he says at the end of the Hippias Minor, “I waver back and forth and never believe the same thing” (376c). Socrates may disavow knowledge and still have strong beliefs about some question, but he cannot admit perplexity and still have strong beliefs. The two perspectives are strictly incompatible.
Socrates as Midwife
Socrates on occasion uses his lack of knowledge as a reason for refusing to answer his own questions. As Aristotle put it, “This was why Socrates used to ask questions and not to answer them – for he used to confess that he did not know” (De Sophisticis Elenchis 183b7–8). We find a striking explanation of this refusal to answer in Plato's Theaetetus. Socrates is introducing his method of philosophizing to Theaetetus, a young student of the mathematician Theodorus. He compares his method to his mother Phainarete's practice of the midwife's art. “One thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives,” he says, “is that I myself am barren of wisdom. The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough … I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim as the child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom” (150c–d).
Now the Theaetetus is not usually considered a Socratic dialogue, because it is not among the dialogues written early in Plato's career; still, as has been noted, it has the structure of one: it is “a dialogue in which a confessedly ignorant Socrates asks for a definition of a problematic item, dialectically examines a series of candidate answers, and at the end admits failure.”2 That is, it fits the description of what I have called an elenctic dialogue. The comparison between Socrates and a midwife, it has been argued, is a Platonic invention rather than something traceable to Socrates himself;3 but the structure of the dialogue and the midwife analogy indicate that Plato, later in his life, returned to the figure of the Socrates of his earlier works and offered us a commentary on him as a philosopher, a reflection on the nature of his philosophical activity.
The “Barren” Socrates
In light of this comparison I shall refer to the portrait of the Socrates who examines others but who refrains from attempting to answer his own questions as the “barren” Socrates. I contrast this portrait with that of the Socrates who does not refrain from stating his opinions; sometimes he states them tentatively, in the form of a suggestion, and sometimes he states them with great passion and conviction. Only on rare occasions, as at Apology 29b, where he says that he knows that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong, to disobey one's superior, does Socrates state his view as something he knows. In the Gorgias, after having described his views as “held down and bound by arguments of iron and adamant,” (508e) Socrates says, “yet for my part, my account is ever the same: I don't know how these things are” (509a). Though he does not know them, he says, “I set it down that these things are so.” In other words, Socrates claims true belief, not knowledge. The contrast I am drawing is not between a Socrates who has, and one who disavows, knowledge; it is the contrast between a Socrates who refuses to state his opinions and one who states them.
The “Fertile” Socrates
The Socrates who does not refrain from stating his opinions, who believes that these opinions are true, I refer to as the “fertile” Socrates. In the Theaetetus Socrates contrasts himself with his followers in this respect. Though he is barren, Socrates says, and therefore never expresses his opinion about anything, some of those who associate with him express their opinions; and, though some of these opinions are errors, “phantoms,” some of them are fertile truths: “they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light” (150d). Socrates’ role, that of an intellectual midwife, is to “deliver them of this offspring” (150e) and to test it in in all possible ways to determine whether it is a phantom or a fertile truth. Though Socrates does not possess such truths himself, he is able to determine what kind
of offspring his followers produce. It seems clear that what Socrates is talking about is his practice of the elenchus, understood in light of the doctrine of recollection. Though the doctrine of recollection is not referred to directly, it seems to be part of the background assumed in this passage. The only example in the elenctic dialogues of a Socratic interlocutor bringing forth a “fertile truth” is the slave in the Meno; Socrates’ other interlocutors produce only phantoms. Despite what Socrates says about having fertile companions, it is Socrates who proves to be fertile.
The Socrates who refuses to express his opinion, because he says he lacks wisdom, is barren; the Socrates who expresses his opinion, though he may also say that he lacks wisdom, is fertile. The fertile Socrates puts forward his opinion, however tentatively or forcefully he may state it, not necessarily as something he knows, but as the truth. When we ask whether the Socrates of the elenctic dialogues is barren or fertile, the answer seems to be that he is both. He frequently disavows knowledge and expresses perplexity, and the elenchus is designed to examine the beliefs of the interlocutor, not Socrates’ beliefs; but he also on occasion expresses his own opinion. But Socrates cannot be both barren and fertile: he cannot refuse to state his opinion and state it. He cannot be perplexed and at the same time have strong convictions about what he says perplexes him. Can this inconsistency be resolved?
The Ironic Solution: Thrasymachus
One solution to the tension between the barren and the fertile Socrates can be found in book I of the Republic. As in a typical Socratic dialogue, Socrates has been examining the views of his interlocutors, in this case about the nature of justice. He has refuted the claim of Cephalus that justice is telling the truth and paying one's debts and the claim of Cephalus’ son and heir Polemarchus that justice is helping one's friends and harming one's enemies. At this point, Thrasymachus breaks into the discussion with a challenge to Socrates: “if you truly want to know what justice is, don't just ask questions and then refute the answers … Give an answer yourself, and tell us what you say the just is” (336c). When Socrates responds that he is seeking an answer to the question, but is incapable of finding it, Thrasymachus responds with “a loud, sarcastic laugh. By Heracles, he said, that's just Socrates’ usual irony. I knew, and I said so to these people earlier, that you'd be unwilling to answer and that, if someone questioned you, you'd be ironical and do anything rather than give an answer” (337a). According to Thrasymachus, Socrates’ refusal to answer his own question is ironic; Thrasymachus believes that Socrates is pretending not to have an answer but that he has one that he refuses to give. In other words, Socrates is dissembling. Thrasymachus does not, of course, think that Socrates has the correct answer; he thinks that he, Thrasymachus, has that. He does not explain why Socrates refuses to answer; perhaps it is a ploy to lure others into the conversation, perhaps it is simply due to reluctance on Socrates’ part to subject himself to questioning. Moreover, Thrasymachus thinks that this Socratic coyness is a well-known trait: he refers to it as Socrates’ “usual” irony. Socrates, thinks Thrasymachus, is a known dissembler, a hypocrite. His pretence of ignorance is just a mask that he wears to keep others from criticizing views that he pretends he does not have, but that others know he does have.4
The Ironic Solution: Alcibiades
Thrasymachus is no friend of Socrates, and his charge that Socrates is being ironic in concealing his own answer to the question, what is justice, is intended as a criticism. In Plato's Symposium, however, Alcibiades, who is favorably disposed toward Socrates – in love with him, in fact – makes the same charge. Plato's Symposium is one of the best-known Platonic dialogues. It is not considered a Socratic dialogue, because it contains an exposition of the Platonic theory of separate Forms, but it is among those dialogues that are considered stylistically early. Like the Theaetetus, it seems to contain a Platonic reflection on the nature of Socrates, but it is a reflection that is radically opposed to the Theaetetus portrait of Socrates as barren. The Symposium is set in 416; the poet Agathon is celebrating his first victory in a competition of tragic plays and several guests, including Socrates, assemble at his house for drinks and a meal. (A year later Alcibiades would end up in Sparta, having escaped from emissaries sent to recall him from Sicily to stand trial for profaning the Eleusinian mysteries.) The guests decide to give a series of speeches in behalf of Love. The kind of love that they are particularly interested in is a form of homosexual love in which men in mid-adulthood pursue youths, who trade sexual favors for an introduction into Athenian adult life. The series of speeches culminates in a speech given by Socrates, which describes his introduction into the nature of love by a priestess of Mantinea, Diotima, who describes a ladder of ascent from the love of a single beautiful body through several stages to the experience of the separate, Platonic, Form of Beauty itself.
At this point a very drunk Alcibiades, accompanied by several other revelers, breaks into this hitherto solemn and sober affair and completely disrupts it. He is invited to offer a speech of his own on behalf of Love, but he says he will only speak in praise of Socrates, whom he has discovered sitting next to Agathon. Now Socrates and Alcibiades are described in several places in the dialogues as being in a relationship of the sort just described, and the normal assumption would be that Socrates is the pursuer of Alcibiades. It turns out, ironically, however, that it is Alcibiades who is the one who is in love with Socrates, as he states at 213b. Alcibiades compares Socrates to a statue of Silenus, a satyr, a comical figure from Greek mythology, half human and half horse. This kind of statue is “split right down the middle, and inside it's full of tiny statues of the gods” (215b). Alcibiades also compares Socrates to the satyr Marsyas, who enchanted people with his flute. Unlike Marsyas, however, Alcibiades says Socrates needs no instruments to enchant people; he does it with words alone. Even a poor, second-hand account of Socrates’ words leaves people “transported, completely possessed” (215d). Socrates tries to convince Alcibiades that his “political career is a waste of time” (216a), just as he tried to convince the citizens of Athens not to pursue wealth, power, and honors, but the best state of their souls; but Alcibiades’ response is to cover his ears and flee: “the moment I leave his side, I go back to my old ways: I cave in to my desire to please the crowd” (216b).
The key feature of the Silenus is the contrast between its ugly, comical exterior and the divine images within. Likewise, the key feature of Socrates is the contrast between his outward appearance and his inner reality. His appearance is that of a pursuer of handsome youths: “to begin with, he's crazy about beautiful boys; he constantly follows them around in a perpetual daze” (216d). The reality, however, is quite different: “I wonder, my fellow drinkers,” Alcibiades asks
… if you have any idea what a sober and temperate man he proves to be once you have looked inside. Believe me, it couldn't matter less to him whether a boy is beautiful. You can't imagine how little he cares whether a person is beautiful, or rich, or famous in any other way that most people admire. He considers all these possessions beneath contempt, and that's exactly how he considers all of us as well. In public, I tell you, his whole life is one big game – a game of irony.
(216d–e)
To this Alcibiades adds, “also, he likes to say he's ignorant and knows nothing” (216d). In reality, however, things are once again different: “I don't know if any of you have seen him when he's really serious. But I once caught him when he was open like Silenus’ statues, and I had a glimpse of the figures he keeps hidden within: they were so godlike – so bright and beautiful, so utterly amazing – that I no longer had a choice – I just had to do whatever he told me” (216e–217a). The figures Socrates keeps within, concealed from the outer world, are his virtues: “his natural character, his moderation, his fortitude – here was a man whose strength and wisdom went beyond my wildest dreams!” (219d). The occasion on which Socrates revealed himself, Alcibiades relates, was that of his failed seduction attempt. Alcibiades is, on the one
hand, angry that Socrates had rejected this attempt; he describes Socrates as arrogant and insolent for refusing him (“he spurned my beauty, of which I was so proud,” he says at 219c); but on the other hand he admires Socrates’ virtue, including his wisdom.
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