Socrates

by William J Prior

  They gave many such orders to many people, in order to implicate as many as possible in their guilt. Then I showed again, not in words but in action, that, if it were not rather vulgar to say so, death is something I couldn't care less about, but that my whole concern is not to do anything unjust or impious. That government, powerful as it was, did not frighten me into any wrongdoing. When we left the Hall, the other four went to Salamis and brought in Leon, but I went home. I might have been put to death for this, had not the government fallen shortly afterwards.

  (32d–e)

  One can only imagine how the democratically inclined members of the jury reacted to having the injustice of the democratic government placed side by side with the injustice of the hated Thirty.

  It was the injustice of both governments that convinced Socrates that he, as a just man, could play no role in the government of Athens. Still, Socrates did not withdraw altogether from the attempt to influence his fellow citizens to behave justly. He merely attempted to change the minds of his fellow citizens one by one, rather than en masse. The problem with the Athenians, he thought, was that they had the wrong conception of how they ought to live. In the language of the Gorgias, they did what they saw fit to do, but not what they wanted. What they wanted was to be happy, eudaimōn. They did not understand, however, how to achieve this condition. Socrates therefore urged them to pursue the genuine good, not the false idols they had been pursuing. He describes his activity as haranguing his fellow citizens, asking them:

  “are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?” Then, if one of you disputes this and says he does care, I shall not let him go at once or leave him, but I shall question him, examine him and test him, and if I do not think that he has attained the goodness that he says he has, I shall reproach him because he attaches little importance to the most important things and greater importance to inferior things.

  (29e–30a)

  What Socrates wants to do, first, is to reorient the Athenians away from the pursuit of wealth and power and toward the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and the best state of their souls. This is a point mentioned several times already in this book. Second, he wants to get them to argue elenctically about how to attain these goods. He wants to make all of the Athenians active pursuers of the good. That is his goal. That is why he describes himself in the Gorgias as the only Athenian of his generation to “take up the true political craft and practice the true politics” (521d). He doesn't flatter the Athenians by attempting to gratify their desire for the pleasant, in the manner of other Athenian political leaders, including men like Pericles, Cimon, Themistocles, and Miltiades – all considered among the greatest political leaders in Athenian history. Rather, he attempts to get his fellow citizens to pursue the good. The city that Socrates desires to create would not be a wealthy or a renowned city, for its citizens would not pursue wealth, reputation, and honors. It would, however, be a city in which all of the citizens were in active pursuit of virtue. It would be a city in which everyone behaved in the way Socrates behaves in the elenctic dialogues. Public debate about the best state of the soul would be the business of the city. It would be a city in which everyone pursued the examined life, the only life that Socrates thought worth living for a human being. It would be a city in which everyone was a philosopher. It would not look like Athens. Neither would it look much like Sparta or Crete.

  The Moral Expert

  What would happen in a republic of moral inquiry, a city in which everyone was actively pursuing wisdom, truth, and the best state of his or her soul? One possibility would be that different citizens would have different conceptions of virtue, and the republic would be occupied with intense philosophical debate. That, I suspect, was the actual situation in the Socratic circle, with some members, such as Antisthenes, advocating a life of moral strength and others, such as Aristippus, advocating a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.7 I imagine, however, that Socrates has a different outcome in mind, which is that individual pursuers of wisdom and virtue will converge on a single understanding of those topics. The doctrine of recollection indicates that with repeated elenctic examination inquirers could eventually recover the wisdom latent in their souls. Someone who actually succeeded in the recovery of wisdom concerning the human good would meet Socrates’ qualification for rule: knowledge of virtue and its relation to the good.

  We get glimpses of such a person in several of the elenctic dialogues we have already examined. What Socrates is seeking is a moral expert, someone with ethical knowledge. In the Apology this seems to be an impossible ideal, as every interlocutor Socrates examines turns out to be ignorant and Socrates declares his own ignorance. Moreover, he states that genuine wisdom concerning the nature of virtue is in the domain of the gods; all human beings can be aware of is the extent of their ignorance. Still, he exhorts his fellow citizens to pursue this knowledge, and he even describes himself as continuing his elenctic examination with those in Hades. In the Crito, however, the moral expert seems to be more of a possibility. Socrates urges that we turn to such a moral expert, if one can be found, someone who plays a role analogous to that played by the physical trainer in the care of the body, and although he does not state that he is such an expert he presents a number of principles of ethical life that contrast with the views of the many. In the Laches, when asked to cast the deciding vote on the question whether the sons of Melesias and Lysimachus should learn the art of fighting in armor, Socrates replies that this is not a matter to be decided by a majority vote but by a moral expert, which he is quick to deny that he is.

  In the Protagoras Socrates initially proposes that virtue cannot be taught. He challenges Protagoras with the fact that, when a technical issue is debated in the assembly, the Athenians only allow experts to speak, but “when it is a matter of deliberating on city management, anyone can stand up and advise them, carpenter, blacksmith, shoemaker, merchant, ship-captain, rich man, poor man, well-born, low-born – it doesn't matter – and nobody blasts him for presuming to give council without any prior training under a teacher. The reason for this is clear: They do not think that this can be taught” (319d–e). Socrates’ point appears to be that he does not think virtue is a matter of expert knowledge: that is why he compares deliberation on technical issues with deliberation on public policy. To this Protagoras replies in his Great Speech with the claim that virtue is a different kind of knowledge, common to all people rather than the possession of a few experts. As I stated in Chapter 5, Socrates never really responds to this defense of democracy. He does, however, argue for the claim that virtue is in fact a matter of expert knowledge, a claim he states finally at the end of the dialogue. Socrates also describes the art of measurement as an art that would give its possessor expert knowledge of good and evil and that would overcome the power of appearance.

  In the Gorgias Socrates argues that it is not the business of every person to decide which pleasures are good, but that “it requires a craftsman” (500a). After having criticized some of the great heroes of Athenian democracy for having corrupted the city by teaching the citizens to pursue pleasure rather than the good, Socrates says, “I believe that I'm one of a few Athenians – so as not to say I'm the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries – to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what's best” (521d–e). Socrates does not claim to be a moral expert, only to be pursuing the same goal that a moral expert would achieve.

  Finally, as stated in Chapter 5, Socrates qualifies the claim that virtue is not knowledge but right opinion, made at the end of the Meno, by holding out the hope that there might be a statesman who could make another like himself: such a person, he states, “could be said to be among the living as Homer said Tiresias was among the dead, … the only true reality compared
, as it were, with shadows” (100a). In discussing this passage we considered two possibilities: first, that Socrates himself might be such a person, that he might be the true reality among the shadows, and second, that Socrates is anticipating the philosopher-king of the Republic. The most explicit anticipation of the philosopher-king outside of the Republic is to be found in Socrates’ second elenctic examination of Clinias in the Euthydemus. There Socrates argues that the kind of knowledge that is valuable is not that of the ordinary artisan or the rhetorician or the general but “the kingly art” (291b), which Socrates identifies with the art of the statesman and which he says makes people happy. The problem raised in the Euthydemus is of giving an account of this art. It is argued that knowledge makes people happy, but Socrates cannot identify the kind of knowledge that does this. This is a problem that is only solved in Republic IV, when Socrates identifies human happiness with psychological health, the position that we saw in Chapter 6 was stated in the Crito and developed in the Gorgias.

  The Ruling Art in Republic I

  The most explicit anticipation of the philosopher-king in the elenctic dialogues is in Republic I. This is no surprise, as the Republic as a whole is aimed at explaining who the philosopher-king is by way of explaining the nature of justice. Interpreters differ on the question whether the first book of the Republic was originally a separate dialogue, to which the rest of the Republic was later added.8 Whether or not that is the case, Republic I has the form of an elenctic dialogue, similar to the Euthyphro, Laches, and Charmides in that it is a search for the definition of a particular virtue, in this case justice. As in the Gorgias, a succession of speakers, three in number, present ever more radical ideas of justice. As in most other elenctic dialogues, Republic I ends in an expression of perplexity on Socrates’ part:

  Before finding the answer to our first inquiry about what justice is, I let that go and turned to investigate whether it is a kind of vice and ignorance or a kind of wisdom and virtue. Then an argument came up about injustice being more profitable than justice, and I couldn't refrain from abandoning the previous one and following up on that. Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.

  (354b–c)9

  This is a reasonable summary of the progress of the argument in the book, but although the dialogue does not succeed in defining justice, a task addressed in the rest of the Republic, it does display several of Socrates’ assumptions about the nature of justice and the ruling art.

  The first book of the Republic begins with a fairly elaborate mise-en-scène, in which Socrates describes his visit, accompanied by Plato's half-brother Glaucon, to the Piraeus, Athens’ port, to see a festival honoring the Thracian goddess Bendis. The two are persuaded to go to the house of Cephalus, a rich metic (a resident alien), where there are several other people present. Socrates begins what initially appears to be an innocent conversation with Cephalus (recall the warning of Nicias in the Laches that no conversation with Socrates is innocent, but that all lead inevitably to a defense of the interlocutor's life) on the topic of old age and wealth. When Cephalus states that the greatest value of wealth is that it enables one to avoid injustice by paying one's debts and not cheating others, Socrates asks if that really can be the correct definition of justice: ought we to tell the truth or return borrowed weapons to someone who is out of his mind? At this point Polemarchus, Cephalus’ son and heir, takes Cephalus’ place as interlocutor. He offers a traditional definition of justice, borrowed from the poet Simonides, that justice is “to give to each what is owed to him” (331e). Polemarchus interprets this to mean that one should return good to one's friends and bad to one's enemies. Socrates launches a series of arguments against this view, the first of which compares justice to a craft. The doctor benefits friends in matters of medicine, and the ship's captain in a storm at sea, but when does the art of justice benefit people? Polemarchus suggests that justice is beneficial “in wars and alliances” (332e), but what about in peacetime? Polemarchus suggests that it is in partnerships, but Socrates argues that someone with particular knowledge is more beneficial than the just man in those arrangements: when buying a horse or a boat, one wants as a partner someone who is knowledgeable about horses and boats. (Of course one wants both, which is a possibility Socrates does not consider.) They reach the conclusion that justice is useful only for keeping things safe when they are not in use, in which case “justice isn't worth much, since it is only useful for useless things” (333e). Further, as the person who is skilled at helping one's friends, such as the doctor in the case of illness or the general in time of war, will be most skilled at harming his enemies, the just man, skilled at guarding money, will be most skilled at stealing it, so that “a just person has turned out, then, it seems, to be a kind of thief” (334a). At this point in the argument Polemarchus makes a remark familiar to us from other Socratic encounters: “I don't know any more what I did mean” (334b).The argument with Polemarchus continues through two more Socratic attacks: first, does Polemarchus mean that one should benefit those who are truly one's friends, or those who one believes, perhaps falsely, are one's friends? Second, is it the task of the just person to harm anyone? If justice is “human virtue” (335c, a point to which Socrates returns at the end of Book I), it must work to make people more just, not to harm them. “It is never just to harm anyone” (335e), he concludes, repeating a point made in the Crito.

  Thrasymachus

  At this point Thrasymachus, a teacher of rhetoric, bursts into the conversation with the comments about Socratic irony discussed in Chapter 3. He tries to get Socrates to answer his own question and explain what he thinks justice is, but he is eventually persuaded to give his own view, which is that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger”(338c). That is, in each state the rulers make laws to their own advantage: “democracy makes democratic laws, tyranny makes tyrannical laws, and so on with the others” (338d–e). When confronted by Socrates with a question similar to that he raised with Polemarchus about whether rulers seek what they believe is to their advantage or what is really to their advantage, Thrasymachus answers that the true ruler does not err: just as we don't call a doctor a doctor or an accountant an accountant when they make mistakes, we don't call a ruler a ruler when he formulates a law that is not to his advantage.

  It is worth noting that Thrasymachus and Socrates agree on several points. They both see the question of justice as connected with ruling; they both see ruling as an art, and they both agree that the true ruler, the ideal ruler, the one with knowledge, will not make a mistake. What Socrates and Thrasymachus disagree about is the aim of the ruling art. For Thrasymachus, ruling is for the advantage of the ruler; for Socrates, it is for the advantage of the ruled. The doctor and the ship's captain do not seek their own advantage, but the advantage of their patients or crew. Socrates generalizes the point: “no one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subject, that on which he practices his craft” (342e). Thrasymachus responds with an insult – he asks Socrates whether he has a wet nurse – but also with his own account of the ruling art. Rulers are like shepherds or cowherds: they fatten the flock for their own ends, not those of the cows and sheep. Thrasymachus assumes that the law must be to the advantage of some and to the disadvantage of others, that it must make some happy and others unhappy. His assumption is that the happiness of one group must come at the expense of the happiness of the other – in other words, that legislation is a zero-sum game. Interestingly, Socrates seems to make a similar assumption. He assumes that the rulers benefit the subject population, not themselves, and that therefore they need to be compensated in some way for their activity as rulers. Actually, there is no necessity in either view. It does not follow from the fact that the rulers benefit from justi
ce that the ruled should suffer. There is no reason why laws could not be made that benefit both ruler and ruled; indeed, this might be thought to be a feature of the account of a just law: that everyone benefits from it. That position would fit well with what the laws had argued in the Crito, when they claimed that Socrates benefited from their rule. Socrates and Thrasymachus look at the shepherd and his sheep from the perspective of their different notions of rule: Socrates thinks that the shepherd aims at the well-being of the sheep, whereas for Thrasymachus the shepherd is only preparing them to be sheared, or worse, slaughtered.

  Now Thrasymachus says something that makes it seem as though he has changed his view: “Justice is really the good of another” (343c). As he follows this immediately by repeating the phrase, “the advantage of the stronger and the ruler,” though, it seems clear that he does not mean to be changing his view, but at most his perspective. From the perspective of the rulers in the state, justice is self-interest, what is to their own advantage. From the perspective of the ruled, the subject population, justice is “the good of another,” namely the rulers, and it is to their disadvantage. Justice makes the rulers happy, and the subject population unhappy. The same is true when Thrasymachus claims that “injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice.” Again, immediately after saying this he repeats the claim that “justice is what is advantageous to the stronger” (344c), indicating that he does not think that he has changed the subject. When he praises injustice as “stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice,” he is speaking of justice and injustice in the common, conventional sense, justice and injustice as seen from the perspective of the ruled. What he calls “injustice” in this passage is what he calls “justice” from the perspective of his own particular theory. A full statement of his position would be, “justice, which is the advantage of the stronger or the ruler, appears to be injustice from the perspective of the ruled.”