Stephen J. Marotta
A Brief History of the Totality of Western Thought
Part 3: Thales to Aristotle
The lectures from here on out are going to continue the same way, but with added features at the end.
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There are so many books we have preserved to us from Plato and Aristotle, and libraries of books written about those books.
What will change, what will not:
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We will continue our story and keep extracts from the authors we consider which help us to view their contributions to the history of philosophy through the lenses of "exponentially increasing questionability," "development of rules of thought," "adherence of propositional analytical program and denial of experiential subjective (and exceptions to this rule)," and "revolutions as dissolutions of previous crises that threaten to make the continuation of the game impossible," "all philosophers as members of one of two psychological camps, and few as attempted synthesizers of these inclinations," etc.
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We will keep referencing ideas with which N specifically or implicitly disagreed so that when we do our "rewind" in part 7 we will not have to consider new ideas to do it.
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We will provide a LIST of works which are LINKED in the lecture, full works which are worth reading if you really want to know the following figures and their thoughts (I am considering going back and doing this for some of the previous thinkers as well, when I revamp all of this which is being written in "first-draft" form right now.)
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I will pick 1 to 3 significant ideas or arguments developed by each philosopher, and give some time to those ideas.
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This has to be summary, so if you want more discussion on any specific part, argument, idea... JUST COMMENT about it, I promise the material we are briefly reviewing here is fertile ground for endless and the best conversations. That's why they have been preserved in the history of philosophy, one of the best ongoing conversations ever recorded.
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I'm going to start out each philosopher with a bullet-point list of take-away points.
A Brief History of the Totality of Western Thought
Part 3 of 8: Thales through Aristotle
* Socrates
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Socrates never wrote anything on his own
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Everything we have about who he was and what he said comes to us through others (we rely mostly on Plato)
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Partially this is due to his belief that: Philosophy had to be done one-on-one, face-to-face, person-to-person... he did not think one could do it unless in the same physical space as the person with which one was conversing.
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Plato, his student, is sympathetic to this belief, so he wrote dialogues. Narratives about two people talking with a dramatic backdrop to it.
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Sources we have on him?
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Aristophanes
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Comic Playwright: Gave us The Clouds where he depicts Socrates as the embodiment of all philosophical thought, and shows these creatures have their "heads in the clouds"... South Park level satire
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Xenophon
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Historian: Picks up on the end of the Peloponnesian War from Thucydides. Kind of a propagandist instead of a historian. Recounts other historical stories
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Wrote a The Memorabilia (recollections) based on Socrates
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Wrote Economicus (on household management) featuring Socrates
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And he wrote an apology (defense) of Socrates called The Apology (not to be confused with "Apology" by Plato on same subject.)
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Plato
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The one we will focus on most. He was Socrates's most famous and devout student, he was a successful wrestler and very attractive (as opposed to Socrates, who was famously ugly).
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He wrote 28 dialogues with a character named "Socrates" as the main character in 25 of them. (with an "Athenian Stranger" as the main character of the other 3, and some thing this was also Socrates).
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We have the full text of every one of these, and we believe there were no others. We don't even own the entirety of the works of Aristotle. People thought Plato's works were very important even from the start and all throughout history... that's how we have them, obviously.
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His works are divisible into three time periods: Early, Middle, Late; Socratic, Doctrinal, Analytic (respectively). We will not list all his works, just the ones you should start with if you want to start reading Plato:
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Early (Socratic): We have reason to believe that Plato is trying to give us an HISTORICAL account of the real Socrates. [Apology. Euthyphro. Crito. First half of Meno.]
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Middle (Doctrinal): Socrates has become a mouthpiece for Platonic Doctrines. [Second half of Meno (it is a transitional work). Phaedo. Symposium. The Republic.]
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Late (Analytic): Socrates is STILL a mouthpiece for Plato, but he begins to disappear as well from the dialogues; and it becomes very analytical.
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If you are going to read only ONE, read The Republic
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If you are going to read only Two: read Apology and The Republic
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If you want ONE SHORT ONE to taste and see if you want to read more: read Crito
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The problem with our sources, is that they disagree. They give us three QUITE DISTINCT portraits of the character of Socrates. The problem is of sorting out these judgements, and finding reasons for which is more reliable of a source. We should not care much for the first two, and only mostly go with Plato: Then we will see that in some respects they do all agree.
A Brief History of the Totality of Western Thought
Part 3 of 8: Thales through Aristotle
Aristophanes on Socrates
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In “The Clouds” we have the best picture of Socrates in his works.
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Aristophanes was a contemporary of the same generation as Socrates.
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They would have known one another from birth
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Around 100,000 living in Athens; with only around 10,000 citizens, and only around 5,000 male.
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You are at least aware of each person on a small campus like that.
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Socrates is portrayed as someone who runs a school and who charges fees to students on how to win arguments regardless of what the issue is. He is made out to be a sophist who teaches for money.
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Socrates denies teaching let alone teaching for money in the apology, and Xenophon backs that up.
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Aristophanes' Socrates studies the world. In comedic ways. Thunder is Zeus farting, according to this depiction.
Xenophon on Socrates
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Socrates (like Plato’s Socrates) has NO INTEREST in the natural world at all!
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The pre-Socratics are called pre-Socratics BECAUSE he revolutionizes what people are concerned with AWAY from the natural world and onto ethics and such.
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We shouldn’t believe Aristophanes because he’s making people laugh, the joke requires he give us the opposite of the real Socrates, which he seems to have done. A general trope is making fun of something for being its opposite. There was no more prominent person than Socrates in this field, so Aristophanes takes him and makes him stand in for the whole. Good satire. If you understand Socrates you will laugh heartily at Aristophanes.
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Argument against Xenophon: This version of Socrates was an aristocrat, born into lots of money, born into privilege; and he was deeply concerned with the spread of democracy; he was pro Spartan. His Socrates is someone who wanders around Athens and gives advice.
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Peddle moral commonplaces. Never say anything that’s going to shock you or shock the moral order; they are peddlers of the moral mainstream.
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So is Xenophon's Socrates. An ancient Ann Landers.
This serves Xenophon’s agenda to say that Athens is morally monstrous in their democratic madness to kill him. There is clearly some truth to this version of the story, though. It seems to me that Plato gives us the philosophical lens through which to understand Socrates; but Xenophon gives us the political dimension to all he was doing. The political lens is necessarily a lesser lens to use, but it is one which must be taken into account.
So, if we want to understand Socrates, we will turn away from Aristophanes, give a little attention to Xenophon; and spend most of our time digging into Plato.
Plato on Socrates
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Apology was written within 20 years of Socrates's death; it was distributed widely across Athens (Plato’s). No evidence that there were people protesting Plato’s account of the trial; even though there were 500 jurors and probably at least that many spectators; philosophical and literary geniuses make really shitty reporters; he says.
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Once we realize that the overall of what Plato is saying was really very accurate; then we can go mine Xenophon.
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Nietzsche on Socrates
Socrates was ugly; flat nosed, pop-eyed, bot bellied, shot, not very pleasant to look at. This would have been striking; the Greeks held that moral goodness and physical beauty were deeply intertwined; there’s a Greek word that combines beautiful and moral: “KalosKaiAgathos” “the beautiful and the good”.
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It is noteworthy that his most famous student did embody the totality of strength and beauty virtues.
The historical story is relevant here.
We are in a context where people eat free for the rest of their lives if they win the Olympics... Socrates invents a new kind of beauty and wrestling match, all done in words; and he takes down the best boxer and makes him say "Uncle".
A Brief History of the Totality of Western Thought
Part 3 of 8: Thales through Aristotle
More Historical Context
Socrates was a first-rate soldier.
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He saved the life of one nobleman in battle, according to that man.
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And he held the line for an orderly retreat at another battle.
Socrates was given to going into trances.
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He suffered from one of the various forms of epilepsy, some speculate.
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Once on the eve of a battle, he just sort of spaces out, and they go to bed leaving him sitting there and when they wake up in the morning he is still in the same position.
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A symposium is a drinking party; he was at one once, on the way to that place he spaces out in a doorway, and they leave him there, and they decide they are not going to drink, and a while later they send a slave to find him and he is in exactly the same place they left him. Some have said that when he had something serious to think about he lost connection to all other worldly considerations and just stood still until he had worked out what needed working out.
Physical deprivation.
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He was known to eat very little
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The cold didn’t seem to bother him
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He drank excessively without any ill effect. At the symposium, at Plato’s, at a party the night before, they decided not to drink, they gave speeches on the nature of love, Alcibiades shows up; they decide to start drinking; the dialogue ends with Socrates conversing with Agathon everyone else passes out, Agathon passes out, Socrates gets up and walks out. Drinking same as all the others, he is fine to start his day.
Socrates had a Daemon
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a spirit
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which holds him back from certain courses of action
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it never tells him what to do, but it tells him NOT to do certain things
This wasn’t out of what was normal for some people to think at that time. (or today).
It may have been a part of why they accused him of not believing of the gods, but having his own.
The source, he thought, was external or internal, no one knows.
These are all the things that all of our sources basically agree on.
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If we ask about his life, the sources get very thin.
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He was born in 469-470 BC. (their years cross our years, so that’s how they write it.)
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He studied some of the pre-Socratic philosophers in his youth. But he found their whole approach to be dissatisfying. The pre-Socratics thought that there were no limits to the bounds of human knowledge, until Parmenides who throws a wrench in that. They recognized very few limitations on reason, Parmenides deifies reason.
A taste of the philosophy amidst all this history and biography
Socrates revolutionizes philosophy by turning it back from the examination of the world to the examination of the self. The guiding philosophical question, for Socrates, is
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“What is the good life for a human being and how are we to live it?”
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That’s the Greek way of raising the fundamental question of ethics
This leads to his statement:
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“Virtue is knowledge”
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with the IS of identity.
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He means: “Virtue is MORAL knowledge”
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Having moral knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for being excellent/virtuous.
This explains what he is up to in the early dialogues; he’s trying to answer the questions “what is justice, what is right, etc.” because if he uncovers that knowledge then he will be excellent/virtuous/moral.
He’s interested in moral knowledge; he admits that the craftsmen know things, they know how to do their crafts; but they think this means that they know many other things as well. The ones like the judges who are supposed to know what justice is, and asks them what justice is; he asks the poets what beauty is, and no one knows anything.
A Brief History of the Totality of Western Thought
Part 3 of 8: Thales through Aristotle
Socrates takes this as his mission to make it clear to everyone that they don’t know anything.
His intellectual mission for the rest of his life. Trying to convince people that they don’t know what they think they know. It’s that mission that is the main reason why they kill him, he says.
The Elenchus; the Socratic cross-examination.
Back to some historical context
Greeks get rid of Persians; then they realize that the Persians can never attack again if they can’t control the seas. So they have to build a massive fleet and protect the Aegean Sea; this is what the Delian League comes up with and for. The Spartans kicked ass on land, but thought that sea things were not the manly way. The Athenians had to do the sea thing.
The money was originally kept in Delos; but then it was brought to Athens, they built all their major buildings and things with it, even though it was for the navy. Over time the Athenian empire is born out of this, that’s how it comes about.
What was once a League, became an Athenian Empire.
The Spartans felt dissed by all of this, and formed the Peloponnesian league on land as a result. Not nearly as large as the Athenian one.
Open warfare between Sparta and her allies, with Athens and her allies. This war lasts 28 years. We have a war between the world’s premier land-fighting force, with the world’s premier naval force; the Spartans don't even start out with a navy (they figure this out by the end of the war, though); the Athenians run behind the walls of Athens when the Spartans invade Attica into the walls of Sparta, and they used the Aegean to get supplies.
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Spartan’s burn the crops and then go home eventually because there is no effective siege warfare.
The Athenians would come and burn some crops and then get in their ships and sail away as soon as the Spartans showed up.
Alcibiades and Critias
Both of these are Socratic acquaintances.
Al was sort of a disciple of Socrates. Rich young men, without anything better to do, would follow Socrates around and watch him cross examine people. Al was one of those kids; he was enormously wealthy and influential family, then when his parents died he became Pericles’ adopted son. He was enormously ambitious, a great diplomat, a decent military man; and a complete slime-ball; he was willing to do almost anything at all to support his own ambition.
He runs for general in his early 20s and he is elected for a couple of years. He comes up with a “brilliant plan” he thinks it has hit this stalemate. A decisive blow to be struck against Sicily; the Greek colonies in the northern part of Sicily; and Syracuse, the most important Greek city-state there, and they were supporting Sparta with both men and ships and money; and he thought, if we can take Syracuse out of the war, we can force them to sue for peace, and we will win.
And, this is a massive invasion here; what was required was the largest fleet the Athenians had ever put to sea.
Paracles actually died in plague because there was plague in Athens due to hiding behind all the walls and stuff all the time.
Al proposes this in the assembly, and he can never get it passed, and there is an older person who becomes the enemy of this plan. This guy proposes the plan with twice the cost and men in the plan thinking everyone will vote against it, but they LOVE IT and so they elect the two of them to be in charge of making it happen. They build the ships. Just on the day of leaving, there is an incident with the Hermes. There to keep the buildings away from evil spirits. Al was accused, and never found guilty, the ships set sail. But the investigation revealed that they were profaning the Eleusinian mysteries. [Possibly means that they were accused of breaking into the temple and taking the hallucinagenic drugs which were reserved for a once-a-year group civil project under tight controls as a means to enlightenment and insight for the community and not meant for recreation.]
Finishing history part
The long and the short of it is that when they accused Socrates of corrupting the youth, the first name that would have popped into everybody’s mind would have been Alcibiades.
The trial of the 10 generals, that’s another incident that would have affected the Jury’s view of Socrates.
There was a naval battle between the Spartan and the Athenian fleets once the Spartans finally built a navy. Sparta lost, but the Athenians lost a LOT of ships; and rumor was that the Athenians left the sailors to drown. They were recalled to Athens to stand trial for dereliction of duty for failing to save their own sailors. The Athenians decided that these generals would be tried en masse; and in absentia for those that refused to return.
This was against Athenian law which would have provided for their own separate and individual trial. Socrates was in charge of the small group that brought forward charges officially to the courts. And he refused to do so on the grounds that this was unconstitutional. They threw him out of the meeting. They convicted the 4 that showed up with the others to death and they eventually came to regret what they did here. It gets hard to recruit generals if you are going to put them to death even if they win the battle.
Here’s a case where Socrates has stood between the will of the Athenian people who got swept up in the moment in defense of the laws and an abstract principle.
The last battle of the Peloponnesian war; the Athenians were beached on one side of the Hellespont, and the Spartans were on the other side; the Athenians had access to water but not to supplies. Alcibiades came down and told them that this was really stupid, and they ignored him.
Spartans would sail out; the Athenians would sail out; the Spartans would retreat. This happened four days in a row. Then the Athenians got complacent and one day the Spartans came out and the Athenians didn’t meet them, and they were destroyed on the beaches.
Athenians are broke now, and they have no choice and they sue for peace.
Spartans give them fairly generous terms in the treaty. They didn’t slay everyone. They set up a pro-Spartan puppet government of an oligarchy.
Thirty tyrants; they are there to set up a new constitution. The Spartans forced the Athenians to dismantle their walls. Many democrats fled the city, they went to Eleusis (where the mysteries take place; and exiled themselves) then what happens is a reign of terror by the 30 tyrants.
Critias and Charmides were the worst of them all; and Critias was like the top guy, basically.
They began to persecute Democrats who lived in or out of the city. They would confiscate the lands of the Democrats, and often just keep it for themselves instead of even giving it to the state. And they would use trumped up charges against them to seize their property.
Charges are almost never brought by the government against people; they are almost always people charging other people with breaking laws, even if the government is who was “harmed” by the laws.
Critias fancying himself a poet and a philosopher and hung out with Socrates.
One of Plato’s dialogues is called Charmides, and it features Critias and Charmides and it’s about “self-control”.
Critias and the 30 called Socrates in and demanded he go and arrest some person. Socrates ignored the order and went home.
30 tyrants only last 9 months, then there is a democratic coup. 1,750 people were put to death (Athenian citizens, that many; over 10% of the population of citizens!) a reign of terror.
Thebes helps a group take power away from them in a bit, and there is a stalemate, and Critias is killed; and the Spartans then decide that this just isn’t worth it anymore.
Some have fled to Eleusis, and these democrats come back and set up a new oligarchy in Athens. The 30 run, the equally nasty ones leave. A bunch of aristocrats leave, but a bunch of other ones stay in the city.
An Amnesty is declared that no one can be tried for what happened during the war or during the reign of the 30 tyrants. But this means that Socrates can’t be brought up on trial for his association with Critias or with his association with Alcibiades.
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Some people thought he was complicit with the 30 tyrants even though he refused to do what they ordered him to do.
At the age of 70, 30 years or so later, he is brought to trial; the democracy went on, but it was a bitter democracy. Athens is broke and in a desperate position; it is under a democracy that Socrates is brought to trial.
Here’s how the trial works: The structure of a potential capital punishment trial; 500 jurors; one person, the Archon, oversees the process. This person brings charges forward formally, and can be punished for bringing frivolous charges forward. And this person can cast the tie-breaking vote if necessary. The archon has to agree to bring the charges.
Prosecution gets up and gives a speech.
Defense gives a speech.
You have to represent yourself in an Athenian court of law; you can hire someone to write a speech for you to deliver; but you have to speak on your own behalf.
And then there is a vote. Guilt or innocence. 280-220.
Melanis Anton and Lychon would have been charged with a serious fine, and the Archon as well would have been fined for bringing a frivolous lawsuit before the courts had he not been found guilty.
Then the prosecution comes out and proposes a penalty. They propose death.
Then Socrates (the defendant) is supposed to propose a penalty; he does so.
The jury has to choose one or the other penalty. Meletus may have not wanted him to be put to death; because they thought he would present a reasonable alternative.
Like: We propose he be put to death... He proposes a 10,000 dollar fine... you vote for that one, obviously.
This is not what Socrates did.
Socrates proposed that since he was found guilty of speaking truthfully and educating people, the greatest gift that a life can give to the state, that he be punished with the awards given to the Olympic champions! To eat free in Athens the rest of his days.
Death or reward? The same Jury that almost voted against conviction then voted 360-140 for death.
Socrates kind of gave them no choice.
Now that you have that context: Go read the Apology and the Crito. You will be happy you did.
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ENOUGH with the historical and dramatic context
* Ideas
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wants to know the thing in itself, not the way things appear or what they do
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he wants the DEFINITION, the necessary and sufficient conditions that make one thing be the thing it is
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he is driven to this because he thinks that excellent goodness is achievable through moral education; If I knew what was right I would do it (no one does evil except that he is mistaken that it is good, thinks Socrates)
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The Elenchus (The Socratic Method)
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to cross examine with the intention of refuting your claim
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in Socrates it takes on a very formal logical structure
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Socrates asks a primary question; then he asks that the answer be explained and looks for deductions.
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The primary question is always possible to put in the form: “What is x?” even if it is not written that way.
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Euthyphro: What is piety?
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Meno: What is virtue?
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Charmides: What is self-control?
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Laches: What is courage?
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The Republic: What is justice?
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Interlocutor answers the question. “X is Y.”
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Then Socrates sets off on a series of secondary questions.
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Sometimes the relation between the secondary questions and the primary one are not clear.
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Eventually Socrates gets the interlocutor to say something which is in conflict with the original response.
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At which point Socrates says: that X obviously can’t be Y, then
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And so they start off with another one: “X is Z”
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lather rinse repeat
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In the Euthyphro, for example
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4 or 5 answers to what piety is are proposed and shot down
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And we end in Aporia
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Aporia
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A state of perplexity and in confusion
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Poria is Greek for passage
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A-poria is "no way forward"
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We do NOT know what piety is at the end of the Euthyphro
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Mark of all the Early Socratic dialogues
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They are aporetic
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They end in bewilderment
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No answer is given to the question that they are setting out to answer
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We may have said before; most scholars agree that Plato's early dialogues more closely represent the actual Socrates; his last ones are more Plato's philosophy put in the mouth of a character named Socrates; Plato was seeing his work as taking Socrates's ideas further, interpreting them properly, finding consequences he never found and answers he may have not even been wanting.
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The Republic comes right in the middle of this continuum, and is one of the 5 books every educated literary Western man needs to have read, IMO.
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Eironeia is first used in Greek to describe Socrates.
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Irony.
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He is pretending to be ignorant and asking to be taught all because he is trying to show that his teacher knows nothing. There is a discontinuity between his stated purpose and his actions and what they actually accomplish! We need a word for that!
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But perhaps this is unfair, I mean, maybe it applies to Plato, but Socrates may have genuinely ended in a state of aporeticism. He said he didn't know, and he proved it, and consistently held to it... the only change is he showed you don't know either.
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Time to tell a story we should have told at the beginning
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There was once a man who went to the Temple of Apollo, to the Oracle there in Delphi; and asked the question: Who is the smartest, most knowledgeable man in Athens. The Oracle did her thing with the drugs and chanted and whatever and returned the answer: Socrates is the smartest man in Athens.
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Socrates heard of this, and he thought to himself: That is not true. I have examined what I know carefully and found that I know NOTHING.
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He then set out on a mission to prove the Oracle wrong. He would walk around Athens and find someone just anyone who was likely to know something. Ask that person about that thing. Learn from them what that thing was, and then he would have proven that someone had known something he didn't know at the time the Oracle spoke, and so disprove the Oracle at Delphi.
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He would find a judge, and ask him: What is justice? I do not know, please teach me.
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The judge would give an answer. Socrates was not content with the answer because he had to understand it well enough to have actually learned what justice was from this person, so he would ask questions.
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Eventually, it would be clear to anyone who was listening, and clear to Socrates himself, that the man did not actually know what justice was, but only thought he had known.
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Socrates would be sad about this, because he was hoping to learn something.
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This happened again and again and again until Socrates finally had a revelation.
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I was the smartest man in Athens all the time. I knew that I didn't know anything.
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Nobody else knows anything either, but they think they know things.
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I am the only man who knows that he doesn't know anything.
He made it his life's mission to disprove the Oracle, and his attempts to disprove it became the development of philosophy as we know it today; or at least the origin of that philosophy.
Wrapping up Socrates
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There’s a potential problem with the Elenchus method; it he’s really ignorant, how would he know the right answer if he came across it? There’s an assumption being made in the Socratic method itself which Plato becomes aware of, even if Socrates may not have been. We will talk about that more with the Meno.
What kinds of answers does Socrates accept? He doesn’t seem to accept any.
“What is X?” questions, first. What is soc looking for as an answer to these questions? What kinds would be accept
Things Soc assumes or takes for granted but never adequately argues for:
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Euthyphro: You didn’t teach me what the pious was, but what you are doing is pious. What are the many other things you call pious? I want to know the form itself by which all of the pieties are pious.
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He’s looking for the “form” or the “essence” or the “nature” of what is pious, so that he can tell all the things that are pious from this understanding and distinguish from those which are not on the same knowledge.
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What is the one over the many that makes things count as “chairs” as “things of that sort” what about what all things that are pious that make them count as pious?
71D: Meno has just repeated Gorgius’s definition; Socrates says he isn’t interested in that. “Tell me what you think, I said I had never met anyone who knows this, maybe you do know it, maybe Gorgious does with you.” what is virtue? “I can tell you all those things, what women’s virtue is what dog virtue is, etc.” Socrates has come across a great fortune of many virtues instead of one. All bees are different, but they are all bees. All virtues are different, but they are all virtue, what is that, Socrates wants to know. What is it that they are all the same in that makes the bees bees, and with the virtues as well, in that way they have all identical form of what makes them virtue.
Socrates wants the “one over the many” he wants the form, the essence, the nature of what these Xs are. “What is X?” he doesn’t want examples, he wants a definition, the necessary and sufficient conditions for having X. a strict definition.
Definition of a square: equilateral rectangle. With that definition you can distinguish in the world all squares from all things that are not squares. This is what definitions do for us. Socrates wants a definition of piety so that he can use it in this way as a guide to knowing what things are pious and what are not.
Socrates makes some strange assumptions here. How do I even know that virtue is teachable if I don’t know what it is. We can’t even know if justice is a virtue or teachable or anything else unless we have defined the term. Is this true?
What comes first, recognition or definition?
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Seems to be recognition comes first, and yet Socrates says we need the definition before we can recognize X.
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You rely upon an authority to point out paradigmatic examples of a thing in order to gain recognitional knowledge.
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So, the first assumption is that definitional knowledge is prior to recognitional knowledge.
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Another assumption is that there is such a thing as the one over the many.
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He also assumes “moral realism” he assumes there are such things as Moral Truths.
He uses his method for getting to those truths, or for exposing wrong answers anyway.
The result of finding the kind of justification (definitions) would be to come to know what X is (courage, justice, piety, etc.).
If virtue is knowledge, this means that it is equivalent to being virtuous. If I can answer the definitional question of what X virtue is, I would know what it is, if I know what it is I would be virtuous.
Socrates wants to discover what the justification or grounding is for our moral terms. To answer that question would be to have a definition, and to have a definition would be to be moral.
Grounding out, justifying, our moral realism, this is his whole project.
Really finishing Socrates?
Let’s discuss the “virtue is knowledge” thesis.
Usually what he defends are corollaries of this view, only one place in which he actually defends this view itself. This is known as the Socratic Paradox, if we include the corollaries we can talk about the “Socratic Paradoxes”.
It goes against common opinion, not that it is self-contradictory. It is only in this way that it is a “paradox”.
People usually think that in order to be moral you need some moral knowledge, BUT Soc thinks that it is ALL you need, that it is necessary AND SUFFICIENT for being moral.
A couple of the corollary paradoxes:
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Corollary, no harm can come to a good person.
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No one does wrong willingly or knowingly.
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Usually we hold that bad can even more easily come to good people. And we also think that people do wrong willingly or knowingly all the time. So Socrates is going to have to give us some strong argument for all this.
The Apology:
41D1: speaking to his true jurors, after he was sentenced to death, those who voted rightly for his innocence and for his fine: “you too should be a good hope in the face of death, nothing bad can happen to a good man in life or death, and the gods are concerned with his troubles.” he is asserting it of himself that he is not going to be harmed by being put to death.
Let’s construct an argument for this claim.
Define: Harm: Deprivation of a true good.
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Define: true good:29D, telling the jury what he would say if the jury were to offer him freedom if he were to cease philosophizing. “If you were on these terms, i would reply to you that I would with the utmost respect to you obey the gods and not you and carry on as I have. Are you not ashamed to care for all these other prizes wealth and reputation etc., but you care not about wisdom and truth.
”True good is wisdom and truth not wealth and honors; you can take those away, but not the true goods.
Goods of the body and goods of the soul are two distinctions, but they are troublesome; how about “external goods” and “internal goods”. Wisdom and truth are equivalent to virtue. It is virtue that is the internal good, and it is equivalent to knowledge. The second premise can be:
The only true goods are the internal goods (virtues).Define: Good man: virtuous man, the knowledge of what is truly good.
So, soc is saying: “No one can deprive another of their internal goods.” So, no harm can come to a good person.
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If the premises are true, then the conclusion is true:
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To be harmed is to be deprived of some true good.
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The only true goods are the internal goods
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A good person is one who possesses the internal goods
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No one can deprive another of their internal goods
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Conclusion: no harm can come to a good person.
2 is questionable, and it seems like the unacceptableness and horror of the idea that the “good life” is out of our control.
4 is questionable as well
Actually wrapping up Socrates?
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Socrates’ whole moral view (his “moral psychology”) here is: something which should send up a red-flag. It is internally coherent and consistent, but it doesn’t seem to be falsifiable.
You try to bring up a counterexample of someone not willing the good, and he brings it up as an example of the person never having had moral knowledge in the first place. You bring up an example where someone willingly and knowingly does wrong, and Socrates can redefine the situation as one where the guy didn’t really know.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, what do we do when we are faced with two competing theories, each of which seems to give us a coherent and consistent account of the phenomena.
A psychology explains to us why human beings do the kinds of things that they do. Moral psychology explains why people behave in moral ways based on why they make their own moral values.
True belief is just as good a guide to action as is knowledge, and so either can explain why someone does good. Why someone does bad, according to Socrates, is that they are ignorant of the good.
Socrates believes that there is a rigid wall between the internal and the external goods, and never can one affect the other.
There’s the dichotomy between flesh and spirit in Socrates’s ideas. Don’t let the appetites play a role in your moral deliberations, you will go astray.
This is going to translate into the Meno. In the Meno trying to get out of the conversation in the first half, he says he’s too confused to answer the question. But then Meno raises (like his definition of virtue earlier on, he might not understand what he is saying here) a paradox of inquiry which raises a fundamental problem with the whole Socratic Method. This is an indication that what we have is Plato taking over here.
Rewind on Socrates
The Short Version
I realized that I started out the last lecture promising to do the following things, which I did not do:
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We will continue our story and keep extracts from the authors we consider which help us to view their contributions to the history of philosophy through the lenses of "exponentially increasing questionability," "development of rules of thought," "adherence of propositional analytical program and denial of experiential subjective (and exceptions to this rule)," and "revolutions as dissolutions of previous crises that threaten to make the continuation of the game impossible," "all philosophers as members of one of two psychological camps, and few as attempted synthesizers of these inclinations," etc.
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We will keep referencing ideas with which N specifically or implicitly disagreed so that when we do our "rewind" in part 7 we will not have to consider new ideas to do it.
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We will provide a LIST of works which are LINKED in the lecture, full works which are worth reading if you really want to know the following figures and their thoughts (I am considering going back and doing this for some of the previous thinkers as well, when I revamp all of this which is being written in "first-draft" form right now.)
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I will pick 1 to 3 significant ideas or arguments developed by each philosopher, and give some time to those ideas.
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This has to be summary, so if you want more discussion on any specific part, argument, idea... JUST COMMENT about it, I promise the material we are briefly reviewing here is fertile ground for endless and the best conversations. That's why they have been preserved in the history of philosophy, one of the best ongoing conversations ever recorded.
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I'm going to start out each philosopher with a bullet-point list of take-away points.
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I will make a new post after this one with excerpts of some passages on or by the philosopher we are currently considering.
I realized that I got sucked into giving a full undergrad level review of Socrates as person in historical context and the role he played in the history of philosophy.
However, the point of this review of western thought was to provide context for Zarathustra.
So, this is not a summary version of that longer post, but something different entirely. One can skip the last one entirely, and just read this one for the purposes of this review of Western Thought.
Read the last post to get a full picture of Socrates as man, and a reason to read selected works on him.
This is the post where I will ONLY do the checklist of viewing Socrates through the lenses we have identified so far in our discussion of the history of thought in the West.
Who is Socrates to us?
Recap on everything before and the Thalesian Revolution:
Thales shows up in a world where artists are starting to use conscious reasoning to manipulate their stories for purposed ends.
The world of arguments has started to open up, since one could disagree, even in one's own mind, with what are the right propositions to advance and how to advance them.
This came out of tens of thousands of years of dramatic understanding of ourselves in a personal subjective world. underpinned by hundreds of thousands of years of image-driven (imaginary) artistic underpinnings of who we are and what personalities and personal forces constitute the world around us.
This image-driven thought was all unconscious, or almost all unconscious; and it was predated and couched in a world of Behavioral manifestations of truths that did not exist in anyone's minds but which were operative and coded into us by the millions and billions of years of harsh natural selection working on evolving creatures to produce creatures with dreams and visions.
Thales shows up with a revolution. We can understand the world propositionally. We can find the words which accurately map onto being. He invented philosophy for us.
But a crisis emerged. Did he really succeed at identifying the Arche? Not everyone who came after him was happy with his answers. Debates flourished. In that milieu of debate a crisis emerged. Is there something fundamentally different about the things in our heads which makes it impossible to map them onto the world perfectly? Is there an inescapable dualism between the mental and the physical which cannot be crossed? Parmenides and Zeno push the rational to a point where it seems absurd to even try to use it to understand the world.
Two camps emerge. Those who run to the materialism, the atomists; and those who run the other direction to idealism and rationality, the Eleatic purists. Their inability to find a common language, approach, vocabulary, agreement makes the whole philosophical project seem doomed already. (It is in this context that the sophists show up, with their conscious hypocrisy and cynicism (in the modern sense of the word) and set up schools of rhetoric where one can learn to win any argument no matter which side.)
The Socratic Revolution:
It is in this mess that Socrates enters the stage. Like Thales, he will start a new game for us, revive the game of Thales. Socrates also wants the PURE the INTELLECTUAL the FORMS (or, maybe this is Plato putting words in Socrates's mouth). At any event, he turns away from the material, into the internal, BUT he does so because this is the way, he believes, to the TRUTH about what is really real.
Socrates values the infinite. The unlimited. That which is not subject to corruption (he argues that the soul is immortal, as we will see soon). He despises the body, the temporal, the limited, that which is subject to a mortal end. The concerns of the body mean nothing to him. (There are stories of him getting stuck on an idea or mental problem and simply standing still for many hours until he worked it out; even if he was standing in a doorway with people waiting for him inside, or when he was supposed to be sleeping before a battle the next day (he was an excellent and brave soldier, by all accounts)). From a Fichte perspective, Socrates is in the camp of the ideas and the ideal and not the material and the objective.
If there are two languages, as Spinoza says: the subjective and the objective; each capable of fully and consistently describing the entirety of phenomena in the Universe; then SOCRATES is in the camp which wants the INTERNAL not the external language.
A bit more on those two languages now:
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There is a chair before me... I can quantify it and describe it in space. It has length, breadth, width, qualities of impenetrability, it reflects light of certain wavelengths... etc.
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This is all the objective language; the language of things as external to the mind
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Then there is another language: There is the "chair in my mind". the concept of the chair. Actually, all the ideas I have of the first language are really ideas in my head. It is impenetrable to me. (not to a neutrino passing through it and the rest of the earth as many are every second once expelled from the sun as if nothing were solid to stop them). But the idea of the chair is functional it is "something one might sit upon" so a bean-bag and a stump are also chairs, a high-chair is NOT a chair to me, but I can conceive of it as being one for someone small in my life.
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This is the subjective internal language.
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Socrates is looking for the "one over the many" he is looking for the thing which is true of ALL CHAIRS. the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a chair.
Socrates wants definitions of things.
A definition, for Socrates:
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The necessary and sufficient conditions for being X
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The definition of X should be terms other than X which apply to ALL the things we should call X and to NOTHING which we should not call X
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we can see the precursors of the "Platonic forms" here
He wants these things, but he turns the conversation of philosophy away from material questions to ethical questions.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy, and it is the one Socrates thinks is the most important.
For Socrates, the purpose of philosophy is to give men the answer to the question: How shall we live the Good life (with a capital G)
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How shall we then live?
Socrates believes that NO ONE does wrong on purpose... the errors we make are just MISTAKES. We think we are doing what is good, but we are not clear on what is really good. If we knew what the right thing to do way, and WHY it was the right thing, if we UNDERSTOOD the propositional truths and definitions of GOOD then it follows that we would do those things. Our falsehoods and errors and sins and mistakes are all just attempts at doing what we think is good, but we fail because we LACK KNOWLEDGE.
(I think he is wrong about this, by the way: Edgar Allen Poe once said that there was one thing all the philosophers missed in their examinations of the world: Perversion... doing what is wrong for its own sake. I have had many arguments with philosophers who think that Socrates was right about this belief of his; but I have walked away from them concluding that the contortions one has to do to hold to this view reduce the proposition to a meaningless tautology; and I suspect those who adhere to it do so out of motivation. But I always tell them that the reason they hold to it is that it is true of them (although I suspect this is not the case) and that they are just too good to understand evil.)
The most important story about Socrates
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The Oracle at Delphi was a seriously important person in Greece.
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She was consulted whenever there were serious questions at stake.
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Famously:
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Croesus asked of the Oracle if he should go to war with the Persians or not.
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The answer was: If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire
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He went to war, and the empire he destroyed was his own
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Who was the Oracle?
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She was part jester/fool (in the courtly sense: figure who can tell any truth to any man without regard to powerful station)
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Part Shaman (figure who contacted the divine forces directly and had coded things to tell us which require interpretation to make proper use of) There is evidence that she used psychedelics to achieve her visions. geologic, even, yes geological
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She was part mass-media (in the sense that she had massive influence over the narratives about current events and great figures that had hypnotic influence over the population in Greece like a single figure having the same effect of FOX News and CNN with their 24 hour "coverage")
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She was part "office of prophet" (as in the Old Testament sense: no one would imagine insulting her in any way (not that anyone would have been inclined to, the point is that it would not have been imaginable to consider it), she had authority, even though it was not authority in a political power sense; it was higher than that, like Elijah or Nathan)
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Her position of authority even above the highest military or political power-figures is also underlined as a truth because the temple in which she dealt and performed her prophetic office was the Temple of Apollo, the God of muse-dwelling higher culture, supreme court level justice, orchestral non-lyrical mathematical music, and institutions of higher learning and science and medicine. We can expand on this elsewhere.
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The story
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A friend of Socrates once asked the Oracle who was the smartest (most knowledgeable) man in all of Athens.
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The Oracle said: Socrates.
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Socrates believed that he knew NOTHING. He had consistently tried to find knowledge, and had never been satisfied that he had come to the kind of definitional propositional understanding which would have counted for him as knowledge.
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The story goes that it was this prophesy which started Socrates on his philosophical mission.
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His mission was to prove the Oracle wrong!
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How would he do this? Simple. If he, Socrates, was sure that he knew nothing, then all he would have to do is find one person who knew ONE THING which he didn't know, and that would prove the Oracle was wrong.
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But there was a problem with this idea: Socrates did know one thing. He knew that he didn't know anything.
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It turns out that in his journey to find a learned judge who could tell him what Justice was, or a successful businessman who could tell him what friendship was, or a political leader who knew what goodness was... everyone who PRETENDED (to themselves and/or to others) that they knew something WAS WRONG
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Socrates determined this by asking them what their definitions were, and then asking enough questions to be sure that he, Socrates, accurately understood what the person was trying to tell him... these conversations always ended the same: with the questions and their responses revealing to all participating in this conversation or even listening to it that the supposed teacher himself didn't actually know the answer to the question.
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The conversation ended with Socrates maintaining that HE DIDN'T know the answer either, and the conversation ended in confusion and an understanding that the answer to the important question was elusive to all.
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Eventually, Socrates realized that the Oracle was right. He knew more than all other people in Athens because he was the ONLY ONE who knew that he didn't know anything. No one else knew anything either, but they all thought they did.
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So, the one thing Socrates did know, which was that he was ignorant, was enough for him to know more than all others.
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You can imagine how this kind of behavior could have pissed off more than a few people.
Socrates was ugly
It has to seem weird that this is a point at all in the discussion of philosophical ideas and how they develop, but it is actually a really important fact.
Let us start with the opening to The Republic:
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I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.
I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.
Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.
Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city.
You are not far wrong, I said.
But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?
Of course.
And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are.
May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go?
But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.
Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?
With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one to another during the race?
Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will be celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.
Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
Very good, I replied.
Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers...
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The point is to understand the valuing system of the Greeks at the time when Socrates emerges with his new strange game.
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What is beautiful, what is strong, what is healthy... these are what is Good. Obviously! think the Greeks.
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Notice the threat of physical violence if Socrates is not willing to stay and hang out and talk with his old friends. (there is a loving undertone in all of this, and it shouldn't be taken as actual animosity between them); but understand the clash of different values that Plato is offering to us in dramatic form as he presents to us Socrates and his project.
Socrates offers a third way: Instead of you overpowering me, or me winning a fight against you (unlikely)... might I not use words to convince you to let me go?
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But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
Could not be clearer.
Nietzsche's criticism (unfair if understood in a simple way, but perhaps psychologically very profound): Socrates couldn't gain honor and esteem in Athens because he was Ugly and not powerful... so he invented a new wrestling match, a game of words that he could win... and he dominated all of Greece with this new game.
There is an historical confirmation of this kind of interpretation. It is significant that the best and most important of the students of Socrates was Plato. Plato was the MMA champion of ancient Athens. He was gorgeous and powerful; strong fit healthy beautiful... his life was completely dominated by Socrates and his new game of thinking in words.
Socrates slept with a copy of Aristophanes under his pillow
We talked about Aristophanes in the previous long version of this lecture. We won't repeat a lot of it here. Short summary: The Clouds was a South Park style and quality satire production of Aristophanes which turned Socrates on his head for fun or maybe as a way of exposing him as the consistent and brilliant charlatan he was?
Nietzsche said that Plato (from whom we have most all of what we know of Socrates) slept with scrolls of Aristophanes under his pillow
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And with regard to Aristophanes—that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity ALL that there requires pardon and transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO'S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no "Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without an Aristophanes!
-- Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil, The Free Spirit (emphasis mine)
You can see that this is a serious and considered analysis of the works of Plato and Aristotle and is not just a joke (though it is a fantastic joke).
Not to say that we agree or disagree with this analysis, but just to leave it there.
Socrates as hero:
The definition of an educated man as someone who has some small conception of how little he knows
Socrates seems serious to me. His project was proper.
Why not hold ideas with an open hand? (It isn't really until later Plato that Socrates is made to affirm doctrines); the life of Socrates started and ended in consistent aporiaticism.
If you take this view, you can passionately argue for whatever is the best view you have so far heard, and immediately abandon that view the second that you find a better argument, your consistency is in the method and not in the dogma you affirm.
Perhaps you have to be murdered early if you are going to live this way without collapsing back into a premature certainty of some sort; maybe that is why Socrates made it so likely that he would face the death penalty and avoided escape when everyone wanted him to take this option instead of the Hemlock.
This is dissatisfying to most, including to Socrates's most famous student, Plato, who is really the founder of the game we all played after Socrates. But Socrates's game was purer and more appropriate in my view. It just isn't satisfying to most... but the rest of philosophy can be thought of as proof demonstrated in the pointlessness of doing more with words than Socrates was willing to do.
Selected Texts on Socrates
I cannot stress enough how much good you will do yourself if you read some of Plato's dialogues about Socrates.
Especially now that you have some of the historical and philosophical and dramatic context given in the previous two classes.
Recommendations:
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Crito for a short first work to wet your palette and see if you want to read more
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The Republic for a work which counts in my view as one of the 5 most necessary books to read before you die if you want the best of what you can get in written form
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Apology for the bare minimum, with The Republic, if you want to know Socrates and Plato both.
However, against my better judgement, I am going to fill this post with excerpts of texts from the works of Plato (remember, Socrates never wrote anything down, believing that conversation between two persons in immediate physical proximity to one another was a necessary condition for doing philosophy) so what we have of Socrates comes from Plato, and his early works (Euthyphro, Charmides, Apology, and Crito among the best with which to start), give us the most "Socratic" picture of Socrates... the later works the voice of Plato begins to emerge, this starts in the middle of the Meno where a challenge to the method of Socrates is put forward and a response (likely from Plato) is given to that challenge and the debate is taken further than (an in a different direction than) Socrates was likely to have ever taken it).
We will save the Republic, which comes right in the middle of his works between what most scholars regard as the "Most Socratic" first works and the "Most abstract and Platonic" last works, for our talk on Plato. We will only have two excerpts here from The Republic, which give us a sense of the character of Socrates, and touch on the dramatic significance of his life in relation to the philosophy he was putting forward.
For now, let us focus on the trial and death of Socrates, and some of the more beautiful passages and philosophically powerful ones from the early works of Plato.
Selected Texts on Socrates
The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)
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Socrates has been charged by the state for corrupting the youth.
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He meets a man in front of the courthouse who asks him why he is there, and they talk. It turns out this man is also at the court for prosecutorial purposes.
The text
Euthyphro. Why have you left the Lyceum, Socrates? and what are you doing in the Porch of the King Archon? Surely you cannot be concerned in a suit before the King, like myself?
Socrates. Not in a suit, Euthyphro; impeachment is the word which the Athenians use.
Euth. What! I suppose that some one has been prosecuting you, for I cannot believe that you are the prosecutor of another.
Notice the assumption that there is something wrong about a person who is suing someone.
I believe that the assumption here is that there is something small about your character if you are taking someone to court.
I remember leafing through a collection of curse-words and insults in the past... there was one from the Shakespearean era in it... "action-taker". In "King Lear" there is a scene, Act 2 scene 2, where Kent is trying to pick a fight with a man he knows to be a rogue. He offers a list of invectives:
Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking**, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.**
To be an "action-taker" is to be too pathetic a man to settle your disputes with words or fists, you go crying to the state to help you out... this is the idea
Notice that Euthyphro is already betraying his understanding that you better have good reason to justify taking someone to court because if you do it over any little thing, that speaks poorly of your character in some way.
Soc. Certainly not.
Euth. Then some one else has been prosecuting you?
Soc. Yes.
Euth. And who is he?
Soc. A young man who is little known, Euthyphro; and I hardly know him: his name is Meletus, and he is of the deme of Pitthis. Perhaps you may remember his appearance; he has a beak, and long straight hair, and a beard which is ill grown.
Euth. No, I do not remember him, Socrates. But what is the charge which he brings against you?
I believe there is something funny going on here. We talked about the fact that there were only about 5,000 male citizens in Athens at the time (and that on a campus that small, you will have at least heard of anyone you might meet); and Meletus was a known poet. Probably the whole conversation about what he looks like in a dismissive way and the lack of knowledge of who he is as an unimportant person. There is a story that the Athenians were so distraught after the prosecution and death of Socrates that Meletus was himself executed and his associates banned from Athens. Plato is probably writing these lines after all of that had happened, if it did; and so it gives more context to the judgement of Plato as he constructs this conversation for us.
Soc. What is the charge? Well, a very serious charge, which shows a good deal of character in the young man, and for which he is certainly not to be despised. He says he knows how the youth are corrupted and who are their corruptors. I fancy that he must be a wise man, and seeing that I am the reverse of a wise man, he has found me out, and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends. And of this our mother the state is to be the judge. Of all our political men he is the only one who seems to me to begin in the right way, with the cultivation of virtue in youth; like a good husbandman, he makes the young shoots his first care, and clears away us who are the destroyers of them. This is only the first step; he will afterwards attend to the elder branches; and if he goes on as he has begun, he will be a very great public benefactor.
The tyrants were gone, but Socrates never liked Democracy too much, and is saying, in effect: "I may be the first, but democracy can become tyrannical, and if they get away with this, do not think I will be the last."
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)
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Euth. I hope that he may; but I rather fear, Socrates, that the opposite will turn out to be the truth. My opinion is that in attacking you he is simply aiming a blow at the foundation of the state. But in what way does he say that you corrupt the young?
Soc. He brings a wonderful accusation against me, which at first hearing excites surprise: he says that I am a poet or maker of gods, and that I invent new gods and deny the existence of old ones; this is the ground of his indictment.
There were two charges brought against Socrates, and these were them. That he denied the Gods of the state, and replaced them with his own; and that he was a corruptor of the youth.
Euth. I understand, Socrates; he means to attack you about the familiar sign which occasionally, as you say, comes to you. He thinks that you are a neologian, and he is going to have you up before the court for this. He knows that such a charge is readily received by the world, as I myself know too well; for when I speak in the assembly about divine things, and foretell the future to them, they laugh at me and think me a madman. Yet every word that I say is true. But they are jealous of us all; and we must be brave and go at them.
We see a few things here. Euthyphro is a man who believes himself to have special connection with the Divine. He claims to know what Piety is.
He is associating himself and his cause of making those around him more pious with Socrates and his mission to promote moral excellence through knowledge of the Good.
There is also a lot of friendliness between these two. This will not last. Socrates is a friend to the truth, and isn't looking to make more friends if his relationship to truth is thereby threatened.
Soc. Their laughter, friend Euthyphro, is not a matter of much consequence. For a man may be thought wise; but the Athenians, I suspect, do not much trouble themselves about him until he begins to impart his wisdom to others, and then for some reason or other, perhaps, as you say, from jealousy, they are angry.
Notice that Socrates is aware of the political and pride dimensions of what he is doing. It is not like Nietzsche with his "Socrates was ugly and just wanted honor among a people who valued beauty" is such a devastating criticism. He (Socrates) sees the psychological and personal and political dimensions which truly govern what most men choose to affirm or deny as propositions in public... Socrates is presented to us as one who has other concerns than those.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
Euth. I am never likely to try their temper in this way.
Soc. I dare say not, for you are reserved in your behaviour, and seldom impart your wisdom. But I have a benevolent habit of pouring out myself to everybody, and would even pay for a listener, and I am afraid that the Athenians may think me too talkative. Now if, as I was saying, they would only laugh at me, as you say that they laugh at you, the time might pass gaily enough in the court; but perhaps they may be in earnest, and then what the end will be you soothsayers only can predict.
Euth. I dare say that the affair will end in nothing, Socrates, and that you will win your cause; and I think that I shall win my own.
I mean, Plato knew he was putting inaccurate future predictions in the mouth of a self-proclaimed prophet here... his readers would have understood that, too. And so should we.
Soc. And what is your suit, Euthyphro? are you the pursuer or the defendant?
Euth. I am the pursuer.
Soc. Of whom?
Euth. You will think me mad when I tell you.
Soc. Why, has the fugitive wings?
Euth. Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life.
Soc. Who is he?
Euth. My father.
Soc. Your father! my good man?
Euth. Yes.
Dude. The man is suing his sickly elderly FATHER in court... it is one thing to have too little honor among your peers to be able to settle your disputes with words, or fists, or pistols at dawn... but to sue your own FATHER? a man you know is elderly?
This is another dimension of wickedness, and the people living at the time would have seen it this way, and Plato saw it this way, and his readers saw it this way; and we shouldn't miss out on it.
Even Euthyphro says: "You will think me mad" and feels he has to give a pretty damned impressive explanation of what brought him to do this.
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Soc. And of what is he accused?
Euth. Of murder, Socrates.
Soc. By the powers, Euthyphro! how little does the common herd know of the nature of right and truth. A man must be an extraordinary man, and have made great strides in wisdom, before he could have seen his way to bring such an action.
The assumption here, from Socrates, is that even if your father murders your best friend, or your close relative... it would take a man of serious commitment to moral and ethical principles to turn against his father in this way and try to get him in trouble.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
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Euth. Indeed, Socrates, he must.
Soc. I suppose that the man whom your father murdered was one of your relatives-clearly he was; for if he had been a stranger you would never have thought of prosecuting him.
Euth. I am amused, Socrates, at your making a distinction between one who is a relation and one who is not a relation; for surely the pollution is the same in either case, if you knowingly associate with the murderer when you ought to clear yourself and him by proceeding against him. The real question is whether the murdered man has been justly slain. If justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone; but if unjustly, then even if the murderer lives under the same roof with you and eats at the same table, proceed against him.
Euthyphro says: Not so, Socrates. right is right and wrong is wrong; and murderers need to be punished no matter who they murder. (He is asserting ethical principles above what the Greeks would have felt were normal familial ties).
Now the man who is dead was a poor dependent of mine who worked for us as a field labourer on our farm in Naxos,
He is prosecuting his father for having killed a slave! not even a free man. was this even considered "murder" in that time? None of that matters to Euthyphro. What matters to him is whether or not what happened was JUST and RIGHT or if it was a SIN AGAINST THE GODS.
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and one day in a fit of drunken passion he got into a quarrel with one of our domestic servants and slew him.
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The slave his father killed WAS HIMSELF A KILLER of another slave first!
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My father bound him hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a diviner what he should do with him. Meanwhile he never attended to him and took no care about him, for he regarded him as a murderer; and thought that no great harm would be done even if he did die.
IT WASN'T EVEN like direct passionate act of homicide but some kind of mix between indifference and negligence his father seemed to have thought that the man was probably fine, and was too disgusted to go and check after him to make sure he was alright (which was wrong, sure) and it was kind of accidental that the man died, to some degree... there is even a hint that his father was sending for word from a diviner because his father was taking so seriously the idea that someone shouldn't kill a person even if that person is a slave. So he wanted wisdom from the gods on the right way of dealing with this servant of his who took a life. (If the father was just concerned with the fact that "his property" was killed by his other "property" why would he need a prophet to help him figure out what to do?
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
Now this was just what happened. For such was the effect of cold and hunger and chains upon him, that before the messenger returned from the diviner, he was dead. And my father and family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting my father. They say that he did not kill him, and that if he did, dead man was but a murderer, and I ought not to take any notice, for that a son is impious who prosecutes a father. Which shows, Socrates, how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.
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This is the case laid out by Euthyphro himself. He stands in the dramatic narrative as the man who CARES ONLY for what is right in even the most difficult of situations. This is how Socrates will be used by Plato to TEST our knowledge of what is real respect for the gods, and what is really right... the path to moral knowledge so that we will act morally and be virtuous.
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Soc. Good heavens, Euthyphro! and is your knowledge of religion and of things pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an action against your father?
Euth. The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?
Soc. Rare friend! I think that I cannot do better than be your disciple.
Here is the example of the formula we have talked about before. Socrates believes he knows nothing; sees a man who claims to REALLY KNOW something (in this case, what is the godly or pious thing to do) and so wants to learn from him.
Then before the trial with Meletus comes on I shall challenge him, and say that I have always had a great interest in religious questions, and now, as he charges me with rash imaginations and innovations in religion, I have become your disciple. You, Meletus, as I shall say to him, acknowledge Euthyphro to be a great theologian, and sound in his opinions; and if you approve of him you ought to approve of me, and not have me into court; but if you disapprove, you should begin by indicting him who is my teacher, and who will be the ruin, not of the young, but of the old; that is to say, of myself whom he instructs, and of his old father whom he admonishes and chastises. And if Meletus refuses to listen to me, but will go on, and will not shift the indictment from me to you, I cannot do better than repeat this challenge in the court.
By the time we get to the end of this work, we will see why the Greeks had to invent the word Irony for Socrates (for whom the word was first used, I believe).
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
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Euth. Yes, indeed, Socrates; and if he attempts to indict me I am mistaken if I do not find a flaw in him; the court shall have a great deal more to say to him than to me.
Soc. And I, my dear friend, knowing this, am desirous of becoming your disciple. For I observe that no one appears to notice you- not even this Meletus; but his sharp eyes have found me out at once, and he has indicted me for impiety. And therefore, I adjure you to tell me the nature of piety and impiety, which you said that you knew so well, and of murder, and of other offences against the gods. What are they? Is not piety in every action always the same? and impiety, again- is it not always the opposite of piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety, one notion which includes whatever is impious?
Euth. To be sure, Socrates.
Here we have the DEFINITIONAL aspect of Socrates's ambition. He asks: "What is pious?" and he outlines the kind of answer that he wants:
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Whatever we decide is the definition of "pious" it has to apply ALWAYS to all things that are pious
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and NEVER to anything that is not pious
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We can expect to do this because all pious things must be alike in some way which allows us to group them as "the pious actions"
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and because what is impious is also sharing a quality with all other impiety... if we have a definition, we will know what this "one-over-the-many" thing is which unites each
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and because the two stand as opposites to one another.
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Euthyphro agrees with all of this, so the chess set is on the table, the pieces placed, and the rules agreed to. let the game begin: (notice also that all this is being done in the context of great stress of capital crime accusations hanging over the head of Socrates, yet these things seem not to concern him at all... what he wants is the truth)
Soc. And what is piety, and what is impiety?
Euth. Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime-whether he be your father or mother, or whoever he may be-that makes no difference; and not to prosecute them is impiety. And please to consider, Socrates, what a notable proof I will give you of the truth of my words, a proof which I have already given to others:-of the principle, I mean, that the impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?-and yet they admit that he bound his father (Cronos) because he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too had punished his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, they are angry with me. So inconsistent are they in their way of talking when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.
Soc. May not this be the reason, Euthyphro, why I am charged with impiety-that I cannot away with these stories about the gods? and therefore I suppose that people think me wrong. But, as you who are well informed about them approve of them, I cannot do better than assent to your superior wisdom. What else can I say, confessing as I do, that I know nothing about them? Tell me, for the love of Zeus, whether you really believe that they are true.
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Euthyphro gives an argument which is kind of based in scriptural authority in some way.
Socrates points out that if everyone around him were not so religious, he would have fewer troubles in life (he is being tried for blasphemy, after all)
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But he does not dismiss the argument because it is religious in origin, but seeks to inquire further into it as if it may have something to teach, until and unless it proves otherwise. (this may have also been the only way to keep the conversation going, which is what Socrates values more than anything) We can talk about the fact that he (Socrates) mentioned earlier that he would PAY to have students, so much he likes to converse with people; and he famously would never take payment for his teachings. Nietzsche once said: Is giving not a necessity; is receiving not ... mercy.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
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Euth. Yes, Socrates; and things more wonderful still, of which the world is in ignorance.
Soc. And do you really believe that the gods, fought with one another, and had dire quarrels, battles, and the like, as the poets say, and as you may see represented in the works of great artists? The temples are full of them; and notably the robe of Athene, which is carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea, is embroidered with them. Are all these tales of the gods true, Euthyphro?
We talked about the mythopoetic underpinnings that predated the emergence of philosophy... we have barely gotten into the first page of text in philosophy by the man most consider to be the founder of philosophy in the West, and could it not be any clearer that he is at WAR with that old way of thinking? What is new and wants to be birthed into the world is pushing back against what previously took up the space.
His accuser is a poet.
In the Republic we will see that Socrates (or Plato) argued that all poets should be banned from the perfect city because they spread lies that the people fix on and enjoy and are led astray by.
It is the stories of the poets, the theologians and their myths which are the basis of the charges against him which bring about his death! (but this is the kind of death the poets and mythologists talked about, a Christ-like kind of death, which once and at the same time is both the death of the hero AND the manifestation of that hero conquering the entire world. Socrates exists today, he has transcended death... not just because his words exist and are read, that is true of many... but his spirit lives on, his daemon torments many who are tempted to be a little dishonest for expedience sake. If you think I am being hyperbolic here, I am not. You, dear reader, have done nothing to inspire people in 2020 compared to what Socrates is doing in his life today, breathing in our ears. I mean every word of this.
Socrates wants to start a new game, and the poets are taking up too much room for him to play... he is in all ways in opposition to them.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
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Euth. Yes, Socrates; and, as I was saying, I can tell you, if you would like to hear them, many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.
Soc. I dare say; and you shall tell me them at some other time when I have leisure. But just at present I would rather hear from you a more precise answer, which you have not as yet given, my friend, to the question, What is "piety"? When asked, you only replied, Doing as you do, charging your father with murder.
This is the first time in this dialogue that Socrates starts the next move of his game: inquiring further into the answer to see if it is sufficient.
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"What is X?" give me a definition of necessary and sufficient conditions for all X and for no ~X (not X)
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"x is an example of X"
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That's not what I asked for, I want the definition.
Euth. And what I said was true, Socrates.
Soc. No doubt, Euthyphro; but you would admit that there are many other pious acts?
Euth. There are.
Soc. Remember that I did not ask you to give me two or three examples of piety, but to explain the general idea which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not recollect that there was one idea which made the impious impious, and the pious pious?
Euth. I remember.
Soc. Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then I shall have a standard to which I may look, and by which I may measure actions, whether yours or those of any one else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an action is pious, such another impious.
Euth. I will tell you, if you like.
Soc. I should very much like.
Euth. Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.
What an amazing answer.
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Soc: What is X
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Euth: X is Y
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Soc... let's unpack that a bit.
Soc. Very good, Euthyphro; you have now given me the sort of answer which I wanted. But whether what you say is true or not I cannot as yet tell, although I make no doubt that you will prove the truth of your words.
Euth. Of course.
Soc. Come, then, and let us examine what we are saying. That thing or person which is dear to the gods is pious, and that thing or person which is hateful to the gods is impious, these two being the extreme opposites of one another. Was not that said?
Euth. It was.
Soc. And well said?
Euth. Yes, Socrates, I thought so; it was certainly said.
The comedy here is fun. First: Did Euth really say the NOUNS are what are pious? He said that that which the gods hold dear is pious; Soc interprets that as the THINGS or PEOPLE the gods like are what are pious... but is there not a more charitable interpretation of EYTH's initial definition which is: "The actions which make the gods smile" or "The behaviors of which they approve"? Charity is an important logical principle (we won't get the invention of formal logic until Aristotle, though; so lets just leave this question in our minds for later.)
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Euthyphro. (Could be titled: What is Piety?)​
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Soc. And further, Euthyphro, the gods were admitted to have enmities and hatreds and differences?
Euth. Yes, that was also said.
Soc. And what sort of difference creates enmity and anger? Suppose for example that you and I, my good friend, differ about a number; do differences of this sort make us enemies and set us at variance with one another? Do we not go at once to arithmetic, and put an end to them by a sum?
Euth. True.
Soc. Or suppose that we differ about magnitudes, do we not quickly end the differences by measuring?
Euth. Very true.
Soc. And we end a controversy about heavy and light by resorting to a weighing machine?
Euth. To be sure.
Soc. But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel, when we do quarrel?
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We can see the "conflict" between the Socratic way of thinking and the scientific... all that nitty-gritty measuring empirical consequence work... not of interest to Socrates; he wants to know what is the Good life. Ethics is where philosophy should dwell longest, from a personality inclination dimension in Socrates. Soc likes argument. things that can be easily settled are not interesting.
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Euth. Yes, Socrates, the nature of the differences about which we quarrel is such as you describe.
Soc. And the quarrels of the gods, noble Euthyphro, when they occur, are of a like nature?
Euth. Certainly they are.
Soc. They have differences of opinion, as you say, about good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable: there would have been no quarrels among them, if there had been no such differences-would there now?
Euth. You are quite right.
Soc. Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them?
Euth. Very true.
Soc. But, as you say, people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust,-about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them.
Euth. Very true.
Soc. Then the same things are hated by the gods and loved by the gods, and are both hateful and dear to them?
Euth. True.
Soc. And upon this view the same things, Euthyphro, will be pious and also impious?
Euth. So I should suppose.
There you have it. Socrates takes NOT JUST the definition from his interlocutor BUT THE WAY IN WHICH HE THINKS and examines that definition according to the rules of thinking which matter to that person (in this case, a person who cares much about the stories of the gods and what we are supposed to learn from them)... Socrates isn't turning away from the mythopoetic... he is USING PHILOSOPHY to JUDGE the supposed truths individuals feel they have derived from it... he is IMPROVING THEOLOGY (in the mind of Euthyphro, at least) and doesn't see any reason why propositional statements of ANY kind, even those supposedly coming from the poets and mystics shouldn't be subject to his analysis.
We will leave the text here... Socrates continues to ask for definitions, examines the ones proposed, shows that they lead to a contradiction... by the end Euthyphro is in a bad place. And Socrates has FAILED in his mission to learn anything and maintains throughout that he is ignorant and has no knowledge, but desperately want it, if only he can find a tutor.
If you don't want to read the rest on your own by now, no more talk from me will convince you.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Apology (What Socrates Said at his Trial)​
Unlike the dialogue before, this is more monologic.
Go read it and ask questions in the comments, if you like... I am going to start limiting myself to the 40k characters of these posts and not making them any longer, except for a little in the comments from now on. I just hit that.
Selected Texts on Socrates
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The Crito (Socrates awaiting death in person with a friend with which he discourses)​
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http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html
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If that wasn't intense enough for you: Phaedo
Selected Texts on Socrates
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For more on Socrates, Book I of The Republic is a great source.
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You could stay here forever, and it would be a good life... but we should move on to Plato.
