IV

Socrates and Some Socratic Successors

1. THE LIFE OF SOCRATES

Alcibiades: Well, gentlemen, I propose to begin my eulogy of Socrates with a simile. I expect he’ll think I’m making fun of him, but, as it happens, I’m using this particular simile not because it’s funny, but because it’s true. What he reminds me of more than anything is one of those little Sileni that you see on the statuaries’ stalls: you know the ones I mean—they’re modeled with pipes or flutes in their hands, and when you open them down the middle there are little figures of the gods inside.

                                                                                             Plato, Symposium 215ab

             Socrates of Athens (470 - 399) was born about ten years after the battle of Salamis, in which the Athenians and their allies had destroyed the Persian fleet. His family, despite his own protestations of poverty, seems both to have been of some antiquity and to have enjoyed some prosperity, for Socrates was able to afford the arms of a heavy infantryman, and was not relegated, like the poorer citizens, to the light infantry, or service as an oarsman in the fleet. Probably he was poor only in comparison to his aristocratic friends, though, characteristically, he made a standing joke of his poverty. He inherited upper class connections from his father, and was intimate with members of the Periclean circle. Late in life he married Xanthippe, whose name suggests she was of good family, and had three sons by her, the eldest of whom was in his teens when his father was executed, at the age of seventy-one. Plato’s Phaedo reports that Xanthippe, with the children, had been with Socrates from very early in the morning when his friends arrived for the discussion, and she spent time with him again just before the execution. She wept, observing that this would be the last time Socrates could talk with his friends. Probably the stories of her shrewishness, which receive no support from Plato or Xenophon, were a later invention, a plausible misogynist deduction from Socrates’s professed poverty, and from remarks of Plato in the Republic about how the inevitable poverty of a virtuous man draws contempt from his family.

             Though our sources may exaggerate, Socrates was notoriously ugly, with a pot belly, pug nose, pop eyes and ‘pelican gait’, and he made a joke of his appearance. At the performance of one of Aristophanes’s comedies in which he cut a figure, he stood up so the audience could compare the character’s mask to his actual face. He was eccentric, always going barefoot, almost never found outside the city walls except on military service, and given to fits of abstraction in which he would stand stock still, as though senseless, sometimes for hours. This last does not fit the pattern of petit mal, though it certainly suggests some sort of nervous seizure. Socrates gave no explanation of his fits, and his friends politely behaved as though they were nothing outside the ordinary. His nervous malady and his ugliness (in a culture that greatly valued male beauty) may have taken their toll on his character, which, though noble, sensitive, kindly, sociable, and passionate, was also guarded and reserved. He concealed his deepest concerns behind irony, humorous self-deprecation, sarcasm, even rudeness, and his high principles and critical attitude toward the way of life of his fellow citizens distanced him from dependence on the regard of others. To explain his refusal to get involved in party politics, he claimed that he occasionally received a divine sign from a daimon (a lower divine power that might communicate with men), forbidding him to continue some action he had begun, and that this daimon always forbade partisan activity.

             In manner, Socrates was said to be ‘eiron’, that is, sly or canny, a word suggesting sophistry as well as the concealment of one’s true views, and many must have taken his talk of divine communications as an example of his ‘irony’. He was indeed ironic, going by Plato’s dialogues, but not because of a desire to deceive. He resorted to sarcasm when annoyed, which is a low form of irony (one says the opposite of what one means), but Socratic irony is not to be found there. Rather, it occurred when he spoke truths that others might be expected to misinterpret, taking him to be lying or indulging in sarcasm. Socratic irony is akin to that dramatic irony in which the audience understands the meaning or implication of the action or words, but the actors in the drama, due to some flaw of character, do not. This was a common device in Athenian tragedy, and Socratic irony was no doubt deliberately modeled on such dramatic irony, both by Socrates himself, and by Plato in his dialogues. Consider, in Sophocles’s play, Oedipus’s curse on whoever it was that had murdered the King—the audience realizes he is in fact cursing himself, but Oedipus does not, nor does any other character in the play except for the seer Teiresias. Moreover, the blindness of Oedipus to the meaning of his action is, in the end, due to a certain deficiency of character. Like a number of victims of Socratic irony, in the pride of his own supposed wisdom he simply will not listen or understand. Similarly, when Socrates said he knew nothing about any matter of real importance, someone, especially a person proud of his own extensive knowledge, might take this to mean that Socrates was confident of none of his views, or that he had made no examination of the matter, or knew less than others about it. None of this would be true, and none of it followed from his assertion that he knew nothing about fine matters. Like the god at Delphi, Socrates took such misinterpretations of what he had said in all earnestness to be the fault of the hasty and inaccurate thinking of his auditor, thinking rooted in a flawed character, and he did not consider that he had a duty to straighten out anyone who asked no further questions. Further questions here would have revealed that he also thought that no one else knew anything of importance, that no amount of investigation would provide us with such knowledge, but that confidence was reasonable, even in the absence of such knowledge, as long as one’s views on important matters were well tested and seemed adequate to experience. As far as divine communications go, a mere reluctance could be a divine sign, and given Socrates’s unorthodox picture of the gods as perfectly benevolent and ethical, a reluctance rooted in moral misgivings would be, for him, divine enough a sign that he ought not to do the thing.

             Socrates’s irony risked misunderstanding, and when misunderstanding occurred, he allowed it to stand. But why? Was he playing with his young men? No—rather, he attached the utmost importance to their coming to the truth of themselves. He would discuss important matters with them, searching out objections to their views, and he would insist that they hazard conjectures on these matters and try to work out the truth, but he would not tell them what to think, and this often meant that he could not tell them what he thought, at least not in any straightforward manner. Moreover, if they misinterpreted what he said because of their own presuppositions, Socrates would not straighten them out, except, perhaps, by deepening their confusion. We must learn ourselves how much our reactions arise from our own stubborn presuppositions, and teach ourselves not to read more into what is said than is there. This is one piece of self–knowledge to be derived from the experience of Socrates’s repeated refutations. In the end, Socrates is convinced that only the self-taught ever learn.

             It has been suggested that Socratic irony betrayed a lack of charity. He was not willing to help others out of their perplexity. But it betrays a certain robust respect for others’ self-determination as well, and along with the conviction that people have to think through things themselves goes a certain optimism and favorable opinion of others, whom Socrates thought capable of doing just that. Perhaps it even reflects his humility, for Socrates was unwilling to teach dogmatically what he knew may not even be correct. Plato, Socrates’s famous student, is perhaps more compassionate and willing to help when he proposes all sorts of non-intellectual means of instruction in the Republic, suitable even for that vast majority of people unable to discover the truth, and lays out in the clear a positive view as to what is good, so that we don’t have to puzzle it out for ourselves. But he is also far more cynical about human nature, and far more controlling. He doesn’t trust us to arrive at the right answers ourselves, and the oppressive character of his ideal states in the Republic and the Laws is the inevitable accompaniment of his compassion for those who cannot figure it out. In any case, despite his irony and his sarcastic demeanor, Socrates had many devoted friends, and most of those who knew him must have been convinced of his good intentions.

             Socrates was not homosexual, but liked to play at mock homosexual love, and often professed to be struck quite witless at the sight of some beautiful young man. No doubt he intended to mock the upper classes and their pretentious love making, but he had gentler motives, too, for though Socrates was chiefly interested in philosophical discussion with his young men, they must often have expected romantic interest. He wanted to put them off without insulting them, and they could figure out what he really wanted in their own time.

             According to Plato’s Apology, when Socrates returned from the battle of Potidiae at the age of thirty-five (in 435 bce) the Delphic Oracle, questioned by Chaerephon, pronounced him the wisest of men. Socrates himself professed to find the pronouncement ironic, indicating that the wisest of men were those who, like himself, professed to know nothing. But his moral views might have appealed to the oracle, and there may also have been political import, for Delphi favored oligarchy and might have been responding to the Socratic criticism of democracy. In any case, Socrates must already have been philosophically active for his views to be known, even though he says it was only at this time that he began to question supposed experts, uncovering their ignorance and incurring their dislike. All this was in service of the god, to establish that the oracle was right, or else find someone wiser than Socrates who could challenge the oracle and discover its true meaning. Socrates states that he would continue questioning his fellow citizens, obeying God rather than the Athenians, even if the court ordered him to desist from his activity. This may be taken to mean that he thought the state could not ethically command him to ignore his religious duties. Or it might be taken to mean he had an ethical duty to continue his questioning (the God would, of course, command him to perform his ethical duty), a duty of serious enough import so that the state could not ethically command him to ignore it. The root of the ethical duty would presumably be the nature of human beings as rational agents, so that the state may not make laws against free inquiry into the important issues bearing on the best way to live, since that would be contrary to the most essential interests of its citizens as rational beings. The unexamined life is not worth living.

             Socrates was said to have studied under Archelaus, Prodicus and Anaxagoras. He seems, from Plato’s Protagoras, to have been friendly with Prodicus, but not above poking fun at his fussiness about the precise meanings of words. Given Socrates’s personality, such behavior does not preclude genuine respect for the man. The physical thinker Archelaus, too, was a personal acquaintance, but Plato says Socrates knew Anaxagoras not personally, but through his book. The Phaedo’s story of an intense early interest in the physical sciences is perhaps intended as typical Socratic sarcasm, for, though we should not doubt that Socrates was well acquainted with all the intellectual movements of his day, he seems to have deliberately avoided forming theories on scientific matters. On the other hand we shall see that Socratic Forms bear a considerable resemblance to the pure qualities and kinds of stuff found in Anaxagoras, and perhaps he meant to acknowledge a real debt here.

             Socrates is also associated with various Pythagoreans in Plato’s works, most especially Simmias and Cebes, students of Philolaus, who came to Athens with money to aid his escape. In addition, some of Socrates’s disciples, including Plato, took temporary refuge with Euclides and Terpsion at Megara after their master’s death. Socratic thought is more closely related to the Sophists than the Pythagoreans, though we cannot discount Pythagorean influence. Socrates’s ethics, in particular, with its pacifistic bent, and possibly his teleological approach to the world as well, may have Pythagorean predecessors. (One of Socrates’s professed followers, Euclides, equated the primal Pythagorean One and the Good.) Moreover, Socrates’s conviction that everything real has a real definition, which we will examine below, seems a natural development of views like those of Philolaus. But he certainly did not swallow Pythagoreanism whole in the way Plato did, and perhaps the visit of Simmias and Cebes was due simply to the concern of intellectuals for one another’s welfare, somewhat like the occasional help provided to dissident East European academics by Western scholars during the years of Communism. No Sophist is reported to have offered to help Socrates escape, or to have been in attendance on him in his final days, but the Sophists had reason to avoid annoying the Athenians, and the Pythagoreans did not. (There may also be some effort in our sources to guard against the association of Socrates with the Sophists, though Plato’s dialogues suggest that he was on good terms with some of them, despite his skepticism about their ability to teach their young men virtue.)

2. SOCRATES’S TRIAL

I tell you, my executioners, that as soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me. You have brought about my death in the belief that through it you will be delivered from submitting your conduct to criticism, but I say that the result will be just the opposite. You will have more critics, whom up till now I have restrained without your knowing it, and being younger they will be harsher to you and will cause you more annoyance. If you expect to stop denunciation of your wrong way of life by putting people to death, there is something amiss with your reasoning. This way of escape is neither possible nor creditable. The best and easiest way is not to stop the mouths of others, but to make yourselves as good men as you can.

Plato, Apology 39 cd.

             The condemnation of Socrates by the Athenians has highlighted his politics for later generations. The accusation was that Socrates was an atheist who failed to show proper respect to the city’s gods, introduced new divine beings of his own, and corrupted the city’s youth, presumably by teaching his atheistic opinions. Socrates replied that he believed there were gods, and sacrificed to the gods of the city, pointing up the inconsistency of taxing him with his odd belief in his Daemon while accusing him of atheism. This was no doubt true, but did not answer the unstated sense of the charges. Even if no act of impiety could be pinned on Socrates, and even if he did not introduce new divine beings, whether they might be his familiar Daemon or beings of the sort the physical philosophers favored, divine beings such as Anaximenes’s air or Empedocles’s Love, clearly he was skeptical about the traditional stories of the gods, and he certainly aired his opinions among the young. The Daemon who prevented his engaging in politics, and, Xenophon tells us, forbade his preparing a defense in the final trial, seems to represents Socrates’s own moral doubts, the higher morality of the intellectuals elevated to a divine sign, and is of a piece with the moral criticism of traditional myths. Socrates was able to answer the letter of the formal charges, and, tying his chief accuser to the letter of the charges, he cross-examined him effectively. But for the religious conservatives in the jury his defense must not have carried much weight, and his cross-examination of Meletus must have looked like mere trickery.

             As for corrupting the youth, the formal intention was that he taught young people atheism, but in the background of the formal charge lay the suspicion that Socrates, by teaching an anti-democratic political theory, undermined the faith of his students in the democracy and its institutions. How serious were Socrates’s oligarchic leanings? Socrates was probably opposed to politics in general, democratic as well as oligarchic, because of the corrupting influence of power. Although Critias was an admirer and Charmides a pupil, both of them members of The Thirty, the oligarchic oppressors of 404, Alcibiades, a democratic hero if ever there was one, also associated with him. His principles, which included a steadfast adherence to the law, were bound to put him in opposition with whoever was in power, and as it happened, most of his life the democrats were running things. Socrates says in the Apology that some democratic hostility towards him arose from an incident in 406, when he was presiding over the Assembly of 500, and opposed the assembly’s wishes in the case of the generals at Argusinae. The generals were being tried for failing to pick up the men in the water after a battle when a sudden storm came up, with the result that most of the men drowned. The assembly wanted to try all the generals together, but Socrates refused to allow it since Athenian law specified that they be tried separately. He was nearly impeached. On the other side, Socrates pointed out that he refused to cooperate with the Thirty in 404, when ordered to put another man under arrest. Socrates went home and did nothing, for the action was illegal, and he would surely have suffered for this had the Thirty not been overthrown shortly afterwards, and, perhaps, had not his student Plato, nephew of Critias, intervened on his behalf.

             The very fact that Socrates remained in the city during 404, rather than withdrawing to the hills with the democrats, may have hurt him, though, even if his claim that he never left the city at all if he could help it is not much of an excuse, he was surely rather old for the life of a guerilla. Was Socrates a lukewarm fellow that would put up with whatever government he had to? It is more to the point to say that he saw all actual governments as seriously defective, and considered the loyalty of a citizen to the state and its laws not to be contingent on the state’s success in realizing the ideal government. His primary loyalty was to the community and its laws, not to any particular party, in or out of power. Some of the criticisms of democracy in Plato, in particular the criticism of offices selected by lot, must be drawn from Socrates, but Plato’s view that an aristocracy was the best form of government probably was not. It would have been easy for most to miss the subtleties of Socrates position, and, like Xenophon, observing his criticism of the existing democracy, presume a preference for oligarchy.

             In any case, it seems likely that Socrates was condemned because, in the old way, he continued criticizing democratic institutions when speaking to his young men. He was probably condemned for actions occurring after the amnesty extended to all following the democratic coup of 404, but the condemnation nonetheless violated Athenian democratic ideals, which insisted on freedom of speech. No doubt, it was expected Socrates would go into exile, even that he would do so without waiting to be tried, but he stayed for the trial and defended himself in a most unorthodox manner, refusing to break off his discussions with the young or to curb his tongue in criticizing the democracy, then provoking the jury to the death penalty by proposing a reasonable fine only under pressure from his friends, after first suggesting that he should be publicly maintained by the state. Finally, he refused to make his escape, just as he had refused to leave under the Thirty. He wanted to rub the Athenians’ noses in the injustice they were perpetrating. This is not to say that he did not attempt a real defense. Within the limits of what he saw as just and right, Socrates’s defense was quite thorough and competent. But he stayed within the limits of what he saw as just and right—quite willing to give his life in service to his ideals, Socrates devoted himself right to the end to instructing his fellow citizens in virtue.

3. NIETZSCHEAN CRITICISMS

Callicles: Somehow you keep twisting our arguments this way and that, Socrates.

                                                                                             Plato, Gorgias 511a.

             Socrates became a hero to the philosophers of later Antiquity because of his courageous death, and his insistence, in the face of Sophistic relativism, on the existence of objective ethical ideals accessible to reason, but since Nietzsche he has not always been looked on so favorably. Nietzsche objected that Socrates’s identification of virtue, skill and power with knowledge, in particular, with knowledge of such objectively valid ideals as the good and the just, was a psychological ploy. It was a self-deceptive attempt to gain a sense of power over others through knowledge, and actual power over them by drawing them into a game of intellectual investigation in which one can force them to change their views, or at least to become ashamed of their views, eroding their old commitments. If they will not play the game, then one can bring all the energy of Socratic sarcasm to bear on this refusal, and gain at least a sense of power through pity or contempt reinforced by justificatory argument for those critical attitudes. Usually one gets more than a mere sense of power, since others can be seduced into the game of ridicule, so that the objects of one’s attack are forced to give in and seek intellectual justification, or else to endure a loss of public influence and prestige. One can gain a sense of power even over the world itself by knowing it in all its shortcomings. Contempt for the world’s poor showing in comparison to the objectively valid ideal often sustains us psychologically despite our impotence to remedy the situation. We treat the world as a person who, though powerful, could benefit from our instruction. So intellectualization of the Socratic sort is an ideal defense against the recognition of our impotence (after all, the ideal, from which the world arises, is on our side), as well as an underhanded way of seeking power in human affairs while pretending an interest in higher things.

             Surely Socrates’s disclaimer of knowledge was insincere. After all, the man did have definite views about the good, to which he held tenaciously, even as he asserted he had no right to such firm beliefs. Moreover, a certain will to power, and lack of charity, is revealed in Socrates’s insistence that people work things out for themselves. The hidden, unadmitted strategy, is to produce a humiliating sense of incompetence, softening his audience up so they will accept his own views out of admiration at his skill or identification with the aggressor. If he had had real compassion for his young men, and real doubts about his own ability to know, Socrates would not have been so ironic. Indeed, by disclaiming power as his aim, and subjecting himself to the ideal of knowledge (an ideal of his own making!), and then seeking to ‘help’ others realize their ‘true’ selves by bringing them into conformity with that ideal, Socrates introduced a dangerous strategy of self-deception into life and thought, corrupting the straightforward instinctual life embodied in the philosophies of his predecessors. Henceforth, one could only seek power under the cover of other aims. Henceforth one must lie.

             As psychological analysis, this contains uncomfortable truths for any intellectual, especially one with some experience of teaching. But perhaps Socrates was not so bad a person. In learning any excellence, be it intellectual or not, one has to face the humiliating experience of falling short of the ideal. Middle and upper class children in our own society often deal with this experience in music lessons. We can simply repudiate the ideal, and treat the lessons as an infringement of freedom, but if we are attracted to the image of ourselves as a good musician, that strategy has serious drawbacks. To become good at the difficult task of playing the instrument, we must subject ourselves to the ideal, learn to take criticism and respond to it constructively, and learn how to respect ourselves for our efforts and commitment even if accomplishments come slowly. Of course, one need not undertake anything difficult in life (a truth often missed by ambitious parents of youthful music students), but many natural aims require the learning of difficult skills, a good deal of prestige can be acquired in this way, and the natural urge to power is satisfied in part by the possession of such skills, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that most people would do well to learn how to live with the commitment to unattainable ideals that is required to get them. Nietzsche certainly thought it worth the trouble. His objection was not so much to Socrates’s urging his students to meet high standards as to Socrates’s insistence that his standards are somehow built into the world, and required of us whether we choose them or not, and, more particularly, his insistence that there was a standard of truth, an absolute reality in which a justification of only one choice of ideals could be grounded.

             Was Socratic skepticism insincere? Socrates claimed that his more theoretical views had withstood all attempts at refutation to date, and that he had taken considerable trouble to seek out refutations, and thus he had good reason to commit himself, provisionally, to the views he held. He did not claim that his views were, like those of a professed expert or technocrat, rooted in an infallible grasp of ultimate reality, or absolutely reliable and certain for some reason that he was able to set forth. That is, he rejected the claim that there were views that it is unreasonable to subject to further examination, and he expected any true view to survive repeated examination. It may be that the ideals of free and open discussion advanced by this Socratic liberalism are self-serving. Perhaps the Socratic world view stands up well to such discussion while other world views do not, even though they might do better on other tests. Still, plausible assumptions underlie the liberal commitment to discussion, and the provisional commitment to what has survived discussion so far. Surely in time we do learn better, if allowed to investigate so that truer or better views eventually establish themselves, and the refusal to look at the justification for one’s views surely serves the purposes of self-deception and intellectual tyranny over others far more effectively than a free market of ideas.

             Again, it may be that Socrates’s insistence on self-restraint and humility, rooted in the suspicion that one may have gotten things wrong, is a paradoxical assertion of power, but that does not rule out altruistic aims. Even if we seek power in all we do it does not follow that we seek power only for selfish aims, and never for the sake of our friends or the realization of our ideals (though perhaps it may be suggested that we identify with our friends and ideals, so that our aims are not so altruistic as all that, after all). As for the philosophical mistake that Nietzsche wishes to uncover, the failure to recognize that there are no absolute ideals provided by the world, and that no ideal at which we aim, including knowledge and reality, is anything more than a construction of our own to give shape to our lives and further our own power—it was not evident to Socrates that it was a mistake. Indeed, if it be suggested that Socrates believed in objective ideals because he wanted to, since it enhanced his power to do so, the same point can be brought against Nietzsche’s skepticism about such ideals. Isn’t this simply one more gambit? He argues that we invented the ideal of truth for our own aims, and so joins in the intellectuals’ game, a game he knows well, and turns his opponents’ weapons on themselves.

             But Nietzsche was subtle. He knew what he was doing, and would simply grant our point. He is not as critical of Socrates as some think, for he does not despise the more complex accomplishments of higher culture in favor of the barbarians, as some think. Without the invention of truth, and the games that go with it, we would not have the sciences and the intellectual disciplines, and that would be a great loss. But Socrates’s invention creates not only the opportunity for great systems of thought, and discoveries in the crafts, but also new opportunities for bullying and oppression. We may turn from the creation of thought and the discovery of truth, in awareness of our own weakness, to the corrupt assertion of power over those who have not the intellectual training and ability to defend their views of the world. Nietzsche wants to warn us against our smug confidence that our views are right because we are so good at defending them, and against intellectual oppression, but he does not intend to stop the genuinely powerful intellect from creating its own truth.

             So what shall we say of Socrates? Was he an intellectual oppressor, hiding his game from himself? Cautiously, I think not. Not everyone who seeks the truth and insists on subjecting untested common views to examination is an oppressor. One might well leave others alone in their views, unless they seem to be worthy opponents (that is, worthy allies) in the enterprise, able and anxious to hold up their end of the argument, or are students sincerely seeking training in the severe discipline of truth-seeking. Of course, Socrates’s views about the good and the urgency of seeking it pushed him farther than this. He actively goaded others into taking up the game, and recommended the search for truth to all. But there are signs of a gentle respect for his interlocutors, nonetheless. The very inconclusiveness of the Socratic dialogues suggest that he left room for his auditors to pursue their own views and their own lines of investigation, and his irony arose in good part out of a respect for intellectual independence. He was willing to point up difficulties, but seems to have avoided pressing his own opinions. Rather, he challenged people to form views of their own that would stand up to his, or anybody else’s, criticism. Moreover, he seems to have been convinced that everyone was competent to investigate the truth. He makes the experts’ theories responsible to common sense and everyday experience, authorizing common people to make their own judgments about the accuracy of theoretical opinions, especially in questions of morality and politics, thus freeing them from the tyranny of that invention of the Greek enlightenment, the scientifically (or Sophistically) trained expert. So he proclaimed that the unexamined life was not worth living, recommending to all the pursuit of philosophy. Socrates was more a liberator than a tyrant, and it was perhaps for that reason he earned the enmity of the self-styled political experts of Athens, and their followers.

             But he also made enemies of those who wish to be right without taking the trouble to examine their views. In Plato’s Apology Socrates is made to argue that, though he had been accused of intellectual pride, it was actually his accusers who suffered from that fault. He easily maneuvers his accuser, Meletus, into the assertion that every Athenian except Socrates is an authority on the right way to live, which not only reveals the man as a flatterer, but also makes clear the central notion of anti-intellectualism, the conviction that nothing of real importance is of any difficulty, and that every man, as long as he follows ordinary views, is bound to be right. The anti-intellectual is generally more presumptuous than the intellectual, and easily as presumptuous as anyone claiming expertise. He is less likely to listen to criticism, and more sure of himself. What really rankles him about the intellectual is the fellow’s doubt where everybody else (everybody who counts) is so sure. How dare he throw our view of the world, our way of living, into doubt? The dogmatism and arrogance perceived in the freethinker by the anti-intellectual is more often than not projected. He cannot imagine someone actually suspending judgment, or committing himself, perhaps passionately, as Socrates did, to a way of life while remaining willing to re-examine its intellectual foundations at any time. If we avoid romanticizing the anti-intellectual, we see more clearly Socrates’s true worth.

4. SOCRATES AND SOPHISTIC RELATIVISM

             In his Euthydemus, Plato considers Socrates’s response to Sophistic notions about reality. In the dialogue, Socrates meets up with Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, brothers entranced with Sophistic techniques that promise invincibility in argument. Their refutations are for the most part the stuff of low comedy, depicting the evil effects of Sophistic pragmatic relativism on its less talented practitioners, and illustrating the absurdities to which the doctrine leads. But the brothers also present more serious arguments, those which form the groundwork for the Protagorean position. So they argue that no one can say anything false, for whatever one says, one says one of the things that are, since things that are not are not there to be said. They then draw the further conclusion that no one can contradict anything that has been said. The positive side of Protagoras’s views, however, is not presented in the dialogue, and the apparent absurdity of the Sophists’ ideas is at least in part due to the fact that Plato never mentions the pursuit of pragmatic values within the world of appearances that Protagoras wishes to substitute for the pursuit of truth and reality.

             Many of the absurdities defended by the two Sophists arise when they argue that opposite qualities cannot be attributed to one and the same thing, and resist all Socrates’s attempts to attribute opposites to a single thing, but in different respects. For instance, if one is a knower of some things, they argue, she must know all things, else she would be both a knower and not a knower. Plato traces this style of argument to the refusal to recognize a common underlying reality to which contrary characteristics might attach in different respects. Socrates is a reality which can be a knower in respect of one truth, and not a knower in respect of another, but the Sophists insist that each of the two sentences asserting Socrates’s knowledge and ignorance refers to a different fact, each fact having nothing in common with the other, and in no way involving any of the same things. It is as though Socrates₁ is a knower, Socrates₂ is ignorant, and Socrates₁ is an entirely different person from Socrates₂. Since the fact of Socrates’s knowledge has nothing in common with the fact of his ignorance, and so they do not involve one and the same Socrates, one doesn’t need to qualify the ignorance or knowledge to avoid conflict between the two facts. Two facts can no more involve the same subject than two tables can have the same legs.

             Plato suggests that the two sentences refer not to facts, but instead to a single thing, but describe it differently, assigning contrary properties to it in different respects. This is the basis of his own defense of realism against the Sophists in the Theaetetus, but here in the Euthydemus he does not attribute the central insight’s clearest formulation to Socrates, but to his companion Ctessipus, who argues that one can speak falsely, for one who speaks falsely does not speak (i.e. refer to) things that are not (for then their utterances would be meaningless), but “speaks things that are, only in a certain way and not as really is the case.” Plato, it seems, thought Socrates saw clearly that contrary characteristics may belong to the same thing in different respects, as his use of distinctions in the dialogue to avoid charges of self-contradiction reveal. He presumably thought Ctessipus’s point implicit in this practice, and meant to indicate that Socrates presupposed the subject-predicate theory of the sentence in his argumentative technique, even if he never clearly formulated it, a theory that could be used to make out how a false statement was possible.

             Plato has Socrates himself attack the Sophistic view using the ‘table-turning’ argument, as it has been called. After the duo proposes that no one can ever be mistaken about anything, Socrates gets them to say that he has actually made a mistake, and so has been refuted by their argument, and then says: “So, Dionysodorus and Euthydemus, . . . it looks as if this argument has made no progress and still has the old trouble of falling down itself in the process of knocking down others.” Socrates’s reply to the Sophists in the Euthydemus is in its essentials the same as Plato later presents in the Theaetetus and the Sophist, if not as well developed. Clearly, Plato thought Socrates held that there was truth out there to be known, truth which can be gotten right, or wrong, and that it was a truth independent of mere appearances that for the most part forms the subject of our discourse. Moreover, he tries to make it clear that the two Sophists believe this too, but they are interested in victory alone, and so, except for one or two revealing lapses, shamelessly confess to the greatest absurdities to avoid admitting defeat. The trick is to get them to be honest enough, and enough in touch with their own beliefs (rather than the needs of the argument), to say what they really think.

5. SOCRATIC SKEPTICISM

...one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don’t know we can never discover.

                                                                                             Plato, Meno 86 bc.

It is right that a person who correctly claims to know about matters should maintain his account victorious always, if he knows what is and he presents it correctly.

                                                                                             Ps.-Hippocrates, The Nature of Man 1

             Socrates’s realism may seem to mark him as an apostle of common sense, but this impression is undermined, at least at first, when we learn of his skepticism. It scarcely helps to admit that there is a reality to be known if we then insist that no one can know anything about it. But Socrates’s skepticism is in fact another sign of common sense—it is allied to the skepticism of the common man faced with the self-styled experts of the new enlightenment. What Socrates argued was that no human being can truly know anything with certainty, especially about the underlying real causes why things are the way they. So, in the Gorgias, he asserts what he does “not as one who knows,” for he does not know “how it is that these things are.” He rejected the possibility of the expert’s knowledge, but not the more vulgar, everyday cognition disconnected from theory, both of particulars and of general truths, that we gain from experience and the senses.

             We often say casually that we know something, confident that we are right, but withdraw the claim when challenged—“Do you know that to be true?” What happens, of course, is that we reflect on our justification, and, even if we remain quite confident, we recognize that we can’t show that we are right, as one might, say, in mathematics, using the expert’s powerful techniques of proof. The Enlightenment expert, like the modern scientist, demands more in the way of proof, and professes to have more, than we ordinary folks are prepared to give. Socrates questions whether he in fact can meet his own higher expectations for justification, and so, in response to the expert’s challenge, ‘do you know that?’, he confesses he does not, but neither does anyone else.

             The second point is related to this first. The expert claims to know not only that things are the case, but why they are the case. Socrates’s skepticism concerns what we should now call scientific knowledge, that sort of knowledge which involves a theoretical understanding of what is known, relating to the realities lying behind and accounting for the phenomena. Such knowledge is not of particular objects, the courage of Laches, say, except accidentally, that is, insofar as the particular falls under the universal. Expert, scientific knowledge of courage will be, first of all, of courage as such, and there is scientific knowledge of Laches’s courage only if it is derived from knowledge of courage as such. To have expert knowledge of Laches’s courage we must rely on general principles about courage that we know to be true, rooted in knowledge what courage really is. Of course, we might know a great deal about Laches’s courage without this knowledge of general principles, and identify many instances of courage quite reliably without any knowledge what courage really is, just as we might know a great deal about various instances of alcohol, and reliably identify instances of alcohol in many situations, without knowing what alcohol really is (that is, without knowing its chemical formula or how to use that formula to work out its behavior). We will also have some reliably formed true beliefs about courage, these beliefs will not have their root in an understanding what courage really is. So, Socrates professes to know that courage is always a good thing. This is not known inductively, and it does not rest on an understanding what courage really is, for he uses the principle to rule out some putative cases of courage, and he knows it in advance of knowing what courage is, and uses the principle as a way to an understanding of this. The only way to test proposals about what courage is in itself, Socrates thought, was to see if they can account for our well-founded true beliefs about both the general characteristics of courage and its particular instances, and so we can only obtain theoretical knowledge if we have such true beliefs first.

             Such beliefs are acquired from the senses and from experience (as opposed to theory) when they do not mislead us. But only particulars are experienced, and so these beliefs concern particulars, or are at least rooted in beliefs about particulars, based on appearances, and attainable only when the appearances do not mislead. Such well founded beliefs based in experience turn out to be true or reliable only in a certain respect. We experience Laches’s courage, but, of course, we do not see that he is perfectly courageous, always courageous, courageous in every respect, but only that he is courageous in certain circumstances and situations, the circumstances and situations in which we have experienced his courage. Our view of Laches’s courage is not a view of courage as it is in itself, of courage as such, but only of courage as it reveals itself in our acquaintance with Laches. This would even be true if Laches were in fact perfectly courageous, and courage always informed his behavior, but presumably there is a second problem as well, for courage as it occurs in Laches is not perfect courage—Laches is not always courageous. His courage, like the pure elements of Anaxagoras, is mixed in Laches with other things that prevent it from producing all the appearances and symptoms of itself that it might. Our knowledge of courage is rather like our knowledge of a person when we know that person only in some of her moods and roles, and, moreover, she is not always her own truest self. If we have well-confirmed, true belief concerning courage itself, it is only by forming a true belief about courage on the basis of induction from a number of particular experiences of impure courage, and does not arise from an acquaintance with the real nature of courage as it is in itself.

             The Sophists, unlike Socrates, made no distinction between expert and well-confirmed true belief. They took it that any attempt to speak of reality is an attempt to speak of the ultimate underlying reality, known, if to anyone, to the scientist. Socrates’s distinction, if it is supportable, provides a way to get at the scientist’s reality, since we can test our scientific hypotheses against our true beliefs about the everyday facts that they explain. Perhaps we don’t go far enough in calling this belief “well-confirmed,” and we should rather say that it is reliably produced in us, so that it is no accident that we got it right, and it can be trusted. It may be produced, for instance, by the senses, but the senses will then have been operating properly under favorable conditions, so that the belief they produced would be accurate. This does not mean that the one who has such reliable belief will be able to show that it is accurate. He may not know how his senses operate, and though he will no doubt be able to identify the most common conditions under which they would mislead, he might not be able to list all such conditions, simply because he does not know the details of their operation, and so only knows about those problems that may arise of which he has sufficient experience. This is not mere appearance or belief, then, but involves a stroke of luck, and we cannot verify that we have it from within. If pressed as to whether we know, we will reflect that we don’t know how our senses operate, that there are no doubt things that could go wrong that we know nothing about, and back off, confessing that we don’t. Moreover, we may know that Laches is courageous through certain signs of courage, which are in fact reliable signs, in the current situation, at least, but without knowing why they are reliable signs, since we don’t know what courage is, and therefore don’t know, scientifically speaking, what external signs courage will produce alerting us to its presence. This reliable true belief, then, lacks scientific understanding and scientific certainty, even though it is in fact correct, and we believe it for what are, as it happens, good reasons.

             Socrates assumes, then, that reliable true beliefs about particulars, rooted in the senses and experience, is commonplace. What he seeks in his investigations is something better, scientific knowledge which will provide both an understanding why his beliefs are true, and justified certainty that they are. This is why the examination in Plato’s dialogues always begins with Socrates’s insistence that his interlocutor argue from theoretical generalizations (almost always, from a real definition) rather than using induction on particular cases to decide whatever question is at issue. So in the Laches it is asked whether practice in the art of fighting in armor is likely to make a young man courageous. To answer the question, Socrates does not undertake a review of our experience with those trained in the art, even though such a review might well give us reliable true belief concerning the matter. Rather, he insists that someone tell him what courage is, so that he can then deduce from the definition whether fighting in armor will produce courage or not. We cannot have knowledge, that is, expert knowledge, whether it will produce courage or not unless we know what courage is in the first place. It would be easy to avoid Socratic refutation if one advanced no view of theoretical consequence, but Socrates insists on seeking expert knowledge. What made things difficult was that he also wanted to tie this knowledge to the everyday world observed by the senses, to make it practical and useful. He was not satisfied simply to discover the mere being of a world beyond sensibles, like the Eleatics, nor did he want to take refuge in the pragmatic relativism of Protagoras, making the real world essentially irrelevant to our lives. He wanted theoretical knowledge about sensibles. So Socrates refused to let the people he had button-holed get off the hook. He demanded accounts of the underlying reality, which he then tested against what we know about particular cases. If we want to know if virtue is teachable, we must know first what virtue is. If we want to know how one becomes a friend of another person, we must find the definition of friendship. If we want to know how courage is to be acquired, we must first find out what courage is.

             One Socratic test of an expert’s knowledge is his ability to account for the particular cases. Another is his ability to instruct others—one must be able to express the knowledge.