Socrates
Page 16
The Myth of the After-Life
The dialogue concludes with the myth of judgment in the underworld. Socrates says that Callicles may think of it as “a mere tale” but, he says “I think it's an account, for what I'm about to say I will tell you as true” (523a). Those who have lived pious and just lives go to the Isles of the Blessed, while those who have lived in an unjust and godless way go to Tartarus for punishment. Death, as Socrates defines it, is “nothing but the separation of two things from each other, the soul and the body” (524b). After death the souls of the dead bear the marks of the lives they have led. Those who have led bad lives are either reformed by punishment or, if they are judged to be incorrigible, are set up as examples for others. Such a person would be Archelaus, whose life Polus had praised as happy. Most of the incorrigible bad come from the ranks of rulers, because their opportunity to do evil is greater than that of ordinary people. When the judges in the underworld see “one who has lived a pious life, one devoted to the truth … a philosopher who has minded his own affairs and hasn't been meddlesome” (526c), they send him to the Isles of the Blessed. Clearly Socrates is anticipating his own fate, though whether his life could be described as not meddlesome might be debated. When someone who has lived a bad life comes before these judges he will be as disoriented, and will suffer the same fate as Socrates was to suffer before his earthly judges. Maybe Callicles will dismiss this myth as “an old wive's tale” (527a), but Socrates again refers to it as an account. He urges Callicles to follow it and practice “justice and the rest of excellence both in life and death … and let's not follow the one that you believe in and call on me to follow. For that one is worthless, Callicles” (527e).
Is Callicles Refuted?
The main argument of Socrates against Callicles is certainly complete at 514d if not at 508a; at any rate before the final myth. Socrates’ argument is in favor of the view that it is “the possession of justice and self-control that makes happy people happy and the possession of badness that makes miserable people miserable” (508b). Is the argument a success? Socrates says that his conclusion is “bound by arguments of iron and adamant,” and that “anyone who says anything other than what I'm now saying cannot be speaking well” (508e–509a), so clearly he regards it as successful in that respect. On the other hand, the purpose of the elenchus is to convince Socrates’ interlocutor, and Callicles, as we have seen, says he is not really persuaded. Judged by that standard, the elenchus of Callicles, like the elenchus of Polus, is a failure.
Does Socrates fail to persuade Callicles because Callicles is irrational, refusing to see the implications of his own admissions? The argument suggests that it is because Callicles and Socrates have radically different conceptions of the good life. For Callicles, the good life is one in which one has political power, so that one can preserve one's life at all costs. The extension of the argument to the underworld in the final myth may be necessary to establish that self-preservation is not the be-all and end-all of life. What does one do with political power, besides survive? Callicles’ answer is that one pursues pleasure in the form of appetite satisfaction. Socrates’ reply to this claim is twofold. First of all, the pursuit of appetite satisfaction is self-defeating: the more one expands one's appetites, the less able is one to satisfy them. But secondly, there must be more to life than the satisfaction of one's physical appetites. Socrates spoke at 493a–b of parts of the soul. The reference was brief, and the Greek does not in fact contain the word for “part”; it merely says, “that of the souls of fools where their appetites are” (493b1; my translation). Earlier, at 491d–e, he describes “being self-controlled and master of oneself” as “ruling the pleasures and appetites within oneself.” Presumably, the part of the soul that rules the appetites, persuades them as 493a–b suggests, is reason. Socrates does not develop this picture of the soul, with its contrast between reason and appetite, or perhaps between the person or self and its appetites, in the Gorgias; for that development we need to look to Book IV of the Republic. Some such division of the self is needed, however, to make sense of self-control as something other than mere wisdom, which is how it was portrayed in the Protagoras (358c). Self-rule must mean something like the rule of one part of the soul over another. Discipline is this rule of the appetites by reason. It is this conception of discipline and proper order that creates the analogy between the health of the soul and the health of the body and that gives self-control the central role it plays in the Gorgias.
Conclusion: The Crito and Gorgias vs. the Protagoras
The Crito and the Gorgias present a different account of virtue and its relation to happiness than does the Protagoras. The Protagoras contains the clearest statement in Plato of the intellectualist position. The good is pleasure; wisdom is the essence of the virtues; wisdom consists in the art of measurement, which determines which of two pleasures is greater. The other virtues are identical to wisdom. Wrongdoing and vice are the result of ignorance, error, produced by the power of appearance. The Gorgias is opposed to all of these statements. The good is not pleasure, but psychic health. The central virtue, essential for establishing order within the psyche, is self-control. Self-control enables justice, but justice, piety, and courage are treated as distinct virtues. Socrates agrees with Callicles that the superior individual is wise – that is the basis for the political theory of the Republic – but wisdom consists, not in finding the action that maximizes pleasure but in knowing the value of psychological order. The intellectualist theory of the Protagoras may be a theory of the historical Socrates, but the theory of the Crito and Gorgias points the way toward the Republic. As Daniel Devereux states, “these different ways of understanding virtue do not fit together to form a unified conception. The presence of the two incompatible conceptions of virtue in the Socratic dialogues is just one of several inconsistencies and ambivalences … The lesson to be drawn is that Plato is not setting out a systematic, unified, ‘Socratic’ theory of the virtues in these dialogues; rather, he is exploring and developing provocative claims and ideas of his mentor – claims and ideas that are not always consistent with each other.”7
Notes
1 It is a strange comment by someone who listens to what he regards as his divine voice. The apparent conflict between these two aspects of Socrates: his rationalist approach to philosophy and his reliance on his sign, has been the target of much critical discussion. For an example see the essays in Smith and Woodruff, eds. Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
2 Gregory Vlastos calls this Socrates’ rejection of the lex talionis, the principle of “an eye for an eye,” and he regards it as one of the most significant features of his ethical theory. See his Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 179–199. Specifically, however, it is not a rejection of reciprocity or retribution (though Socrates does reject the retributory theory of punishment) but the rejection of returning a wrong for a wrong. Two wrongs, Socrates holds, don't make a right.
3 For instance see Benson, Socratic Wisdom, 82.
4 In Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy won't go Away (New York: Pantheon, 2014), 9, 126, Rebecca Goldstein attributes to the Athenian people an “Ethos of the Extraordinary,” a belief that “the unexceptional life is not worth living.” This belief that it is the exceptional life that matters, which she traces back to Achilles in the Iliad, links the Socratic and the Calliclean conception of morality. It is interesting to note that Socrates was the mentor of Alcibiades, Goldstein's favorite example of the ethos of the extraordinary, and perhaps the best example from Athenian history of a man answering to Callicles’ description of the superior man.
5 Plato made the first of three voyages to Sicily in about 387. It is thought that he was influenced by Pythagorean philosophers he met in Italy on this voyage, and that this influence shows up in the myths of the Gorgias and the doctrine of recollection in the Meno. If that is so, it would date
these two dialogues to after 387, perhaps around the time Plato founded the Academy.
6 As Goldstein notes, “There is an entire moral theory contained in this passage” (392).
7 “Socratic Ethics and Moral Psychology,” in Fine, ed. The Oxford Handbook to Plato (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 162. Other scholars who see an inconsistency between the moral psychology of the Protagoras and that of the Gorgias include Terence Irwin, Plato's Ethics (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 111–116, and John Cooper, “Socrates and Plato in Plato's Gorgias,” in Cooper, Reason and Emotion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), esp. 51–75. Cooper attributes the change in moral psychology in the latter part of the Gorgias to Callicles and not Socrates. That is a view I do not accept.
7
The State
In Chapter 1 we discussed briefly the “political” interpretation of Socrates’ trial. Neither Plato in his Apology nor Xenophon in his brought up any specifically political charges against Socrates, but Xenophon, in his Memorabilia, responded to a couple of charges against Socrates of a political nature: that Socrates “taught his companions to despise the established laws by insisting on the folly of appointing public officials by lot” (I.II.9) and that “among the associates of Socrates were Critias and Alcibiades; and none wrought so many evils to the state” (I.II.12). It is thought that Xenophon is responding, not to the prosecution at the trial, but to a pamphlet circulated several years after the trial by a certain Polycrates (though Polycrates is thought in this pamphlet to have presented his charges in the form of a speech by Anytus, one of the three prosecutors). Xenophon tried to show that Socrates was innocent of these charges, but the suspicion has persisted among interpreters that Socrates may have harbored anti-democratic sentiments and transmitted those sentiments to his associates. In this chapter we shall return to the question of Socrates’ political views, in relation to the trial but also in a broader context. We shall examine three questions: first, was Socrates disloyal to Athens? Second, was he a critic of Athenian democracy? Third, what were his views concerning the nature of the state? These questions have become a subject of debate, particularly in the last century.1
Plato was concerned to show that Socrates was a loyal Athenian citizen. His argument was grounded in the historical fact that Socrates remained in prison and faced execution. Plato wrote the Crito to make a philosophical case for Socrates’ loyalty to Athens. As we discussed in the previous chapter, the dialogue portrays Crito as coming to Socrates with a plea that he should escape from prison, and the dialogue attributes to Socrates a philosophical justification for his refusal to escape. How much of this philosophical justification is based on an actual Socratic conversation with Crito and how much is Platonic invention we cannot know. The dialogue, after all, describes a private conversation between the two men. Socrates, the character in the dialogue, bases his case, as we saw, on an account of justice. Justice is one of the essential features of the good life, and justice involves not doing wrong to another, even in retaliation. When the question arises whether it would be doing wrong to the state if Socrates should try to escape, Crito says he cannot answer.
The Speech of the Laws
It is at this point in the argument that Socrates imagines “the laws and the state” (50a) confronting them and asking whether Socrates intends to destroy the state: “or do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of the courts have no force but are nullified and set at naught by private individuals?” (50b). Socrates asks Crito, what should we say in response to this and other arguments, “for many things could be said, especially by an orator on behalf of this law we are destroying, which orders that the judgments of the courts shall be carried out” (50b–c; my italics). Some interpreters have been suspicious about the speech of the laws that follows, in part because it seems to be something an orator might say, and we know from the Gorgias that Socrates has no respect for orators.2 Socrates’ remark about what an orator might say does put the reader on notice that what follows is a rhetorical defense of the laws of the city; still, the speech as a whole is presented as a series of challenges to Socrates, to which he has no answer.
Shall we say, “the city wronged me, and its decision was not right …,” Socrates asks on Crito's behalf. The laws reply, “was that the agreement between us, or was it to respect the judgments that the city came to?” (50c). At this point the laws actually invoke Socrates’ own method of elenchus on their behalf: “Socrates, do not wonder at what we say but answer, since you are accustomed to proceed by question and answer” (50c–d). The laws ask Socrates if he has any complaint against them. Is he dissatisfied with the laws on marriage, under which Socrates’ mother and father brought him to birth? Does he have any complaint concerning the nurture of infants and education? Does he deny that he is as much their offspring as his parents’, or that he is on an unequal footing with them, as he is on an unequal footing with his parents? Does he think that he has a right to retaliate against his country and its laws? If they attempt to destroy him does he think he can attempt on his part to destroy them? Doesn't he realize that “your country is to be honored more than your mother, your father and all your ancestors, that it is more to be revered and more sacred, and that it counts for more among the gods and sensible men, that you must worship it, yield to it and placate its anger more than your father's?” (51a–b). The laws continue:
… you must either persuade it or obey its orders, and endure in silence whatever it instructs you to endure, whether blows or bonds, and if it leads you into war to be wounded or killed, you must obey. To do so is right, and one must not give way or retreat or leave one's post, but both in war and in courts and everywhere else, one must obey the commands of one's city and country, or persuade it as to the nature of justice. It is impious to bring violence to bear against your mother or father; it is much more so to use it against your country.
(51b–c)
Both Socrates and Crito accept these assertions of the laws. The laws here echo one of the few statements of Plato's Apology that Socrates professes to know: that it is wrong to disobey a superior, even in the face of death (29b).
The laws give everyone the right, if he is not pleased with them, to emigrate to another state, taking his property with him. “We say, however, that whoever of you remains, when he sees how we conduct our trials and manage the city in other ways, has in fact come to an agreement with us to obey our instructions … We only propose things, we do not issue savage commands to do whatever we order; we give two alternatives, either to persuade us or to do what we say” (51e–52a). This is the third time that the “persuade or obey” alternative has occurred in the speech of the laws. Socrates, say the laws, is “among the Athenians who most definitely came to that agreement with them … You have never left the city, even to see a festival, nor for any other reason except military service” (52a–b). Moreover, “you have had children in this city, thus showing that it was congenial to you” (52c). At his trial Socrates might have proposed exile as his penalty, but now he would be trying to do without the consent of the city what he might then have done with its consent. Again, Socrates and Crito both agree that Socrates has made a contract with the laws, to live in accordance with them.
Socrates has had all of his adult life to leave Athens if he so desired. He might have gone to Sparta or Crete, which he has often said are well governed. By remaining in the city he has shown that it and its laws are “outstandingly … congenial” (53a) to him. If he leaves now he will become a laughingstock. If he goes to a well-governed city he will be perceived as a destroyer of the laws. If he goes to a city that is badly governed, “will your life be worth living?” (53c).3 Will Socrates continue to say “that virtue and justice are man's most precious possession, along with lawful behavior and the laws?” (53c–d). Or will he adopt the uncivilized customs of those in Thessaly? “Will there be no one to say that you, likely to live but a short time more,
were so greedy for life that you transgressed the most important laws?” (53d–e). What will become of his conversations about justice and virtue then? If Socrates cares for his children, he will not drag them off into exile. If they can survive in Athens in his absence, they will survive after his death; his friends will care for them. The laws urge Socrates not to value his life or his children more than goodness, “in order that when you arrive in Hades you may have all this as your defense before the rulers there” (54b). Socrates has not been wronged by the laws, but by men; “but if you depart after shamefully returning wrong for wrong and mistreatment for mistreatment, after breaking your agreements and commitments with us, after mistreating those you should mistreat least – yourself, your friends, your country and us – we shall be angry with you while you are still alive, and our brothers, the laws of the underworld, will not receive you kindly, knowing that you tried to destroy us as far as you could” (54c).