Ancient Philosophy
Socrates
Founding martyr of the philosophical movement. Despite enormous influence of Socrates himself, nothing from him himself. Very many sources that are inconsistent.
Four main sources:
Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle.
Aristophanes was a playwright of political satire. In his play ’the clouds’ from 423 bce Socrates is a weird professor and a director of a school in which he hangs on a hammock on the ceiling, giving strange theories on cosmology. For Aristophanes, Socrates is basically just one of the sophists.
We have two apologies of Socrates, that of Plato and that of Xenophon. They are entirely different texts. There is not really anyone rendering the speech as it was delivered. Basically both Xenophon and Plato just put their own words into Socrates’ mouth.
Plato points out Aristophanes as someone who teaches people that Socrates was a bad person that is fine to put on death trial.
Xenophon was an aristocratic youth who was committed to the aristocratic cause, and was convinced that he would serve that cause by going to Persia and dethroning the king there and putting Cyrus the Younger on the throne. Leaving in 401 and returning 399-98. Xenophon was a historian and wrote the history of Greece after Pelopenesian war. He was a chronicler of the expedition to Persia. 10 000 Greek soldiers joined the pretender war. And so was absent during Socrates’ crime and execution. What he presents Socrates as saying is something much more aristocratic. A totally different person who is not comitted to philosophy but public decency.
Xenophon also writes a symposium.
Socrates himself wasn’t really interested in founding a school with doctrines. But rather it seems he wanted to teach his pupils to question everything. It seems he often would visit Gymnasia where he would watch the beautiful youth and their bodies, and would teach children in exchange for sexual services. He would question the youth about their beauty of their soul however rather than their body.
Karl Popper, 1944, the open society and its enemies
’Plato didn’t understand what Socrates was teaching’, then quotes Socrates from Plato, and explains why Plato misunderstands him. Incredibly strange method.
Aristotle was born in Stageira so came to Athens as a non-citizen, but came to study with Plato in the academy. When he gets to learn what Socrates was saying, he only provides what Plato says or what other academicians say. Though he says that Socrates was the first one to detach Natural Philosophy and Science and the first to look for definitions.
In philosophy, Socrates/Plato, is the one that made a turn to ethics/politics rather than natural philosophy and opens up a new playing ground for Logos which was only embryonically present before.
There were a few so-called ’minor socratics’ who have entirely opposite ideas about Socrates. Aristippus, Antisthenes, and Euclid of Megara.
Aristippus was a hedonist who argues that Socrates already had a clear school of thought that he taught as doctrines.
Antisthenes says the opposite of hedonism.
Euclid houses Plato after Socrates death. He thinks Socrates has a methodology of Aristic discussion. A polite way of making argument in fierce discussion. In Plato aristic discussion is critiqued.
The stoics who have nothing to do with Socrates would put Socrates as a label of quality on their philosophy.
Socrates’ father was a sculptor, and his mother was a midwife.
The image of midwifery is taken up by Plato, and says that Socrates himself is doing a midwifery of thought: delivering the thoughts that were their own. This already has a very Platonic ring to it; ie. that recollection is how we come to know things.
Plato adds to the Socratic turn the epistemology related to the forms. In Theaitetos Plato makes Socrates explain what he is actually trying to do with young people.
He was a fierce critic of democracy. He found it difficult to understand in Athenian democracy that the best specialist of rule is the one that can talk best. When it is about the most important tasks of life we don’t look for specialists. He attacked all the positions of athenians with the idea that none of them knew what they were talking about.
Socrates meets a guy called Euthyphro. He accuses his father of impiety for killing a kid, then Socrates says that maybe he doesn’t know what piety is. And Euthyphro later realises that he doesn’t know what piety is. Socrates is trying to prove the ignorance of those who make decisions in moral issues.
Athens is defeated in 404 by Sparta, and the 30 tyrants are instated. It is supposed to reinstate the traditional insitution of oligarchy of Aristocrats. 8 months later this regime is defeated by the democrats. Members of these 30 were youths who had been associates of Socrates. Critias, Charmides. Critias was the leader of the 30, and was an uncle of Plato. Charmides was a nephew of Plato. Critias was responsible for the city, and Charmides for the harbour. They slayed anyone who were against their power.
This is probably why Socrates is accused in 399. Even if there was an amnesty declared, for everyone except the 30 themselves.
Death penalty for not respecting the gods of the city and for corrupting the youth.
Alcibiades, a beautiful young man, a narcissist, opportunist and so on. He betrayed the athenian state multiple times. Supported both democrats and aristocrats. He made sure an exepdition would be sent to Sicily but just before they shipped off he and a couple of friends, including Charmides, dessecrated sacred things of the Athenian public space, the Herms. They cut off the genitalia. He also gave away a bunch of secrets to Sparta, and then betrayed them too and had to flee to Persia.
He was murdered in 404, and was not part of the regime itself. It seemed that the pupils of Socrates were the worst traitros of the athenian state to have ever lived. So the accusation of corruping the youth was not entirely wrong.
In the apology, Socrates argues that he has the Daimonion. It is the derived adjective of this word, which can refer to everything that is supernatural. Socrates means that he has something supernatural about him. In Xenophon Socrates has a conversation with his daimonion, so Xenophon portrays him as babbling to himself with a kind of spirit that gives him moral advice.
In Plato it is something that never talks, it only prevents him from ever doing wrong. And in the Apology Socrates is convinced by the Daimonion not stopping him from going into the place of death sentence, that it is something good and desirable.
Many early dialogus of Plato, are placing a philosophical rhetoric in search of the truth over and against the sophistic rhetoric of just convincing people.
What we have is two meanings of the word Logos: Ratio and Oratio. Reason and Rhetoric. Over against the logos of the sophists, Socrates places ratio as your own personal reasoning, and whenever we have an outcome of a debate that satisfies both it is the result of both’s proper reasoning. Always in the early dialogues, when Socrates unmasks self-declared specialism which is just an outward appearance, the discussion fails to leave a proper ratio on the part of the interlocutor.
Let’s look at Socrates as developing a method of inquiry.
Plato calls it midwifery. Maieutics.
What does it consist in?
The goal is to unmask the pretended knowledge of ’specialists’.
In doing so he has to take the first stance to elicit this discussion, and he does so by presuming himself to know nothing.
I accept the position that the other hasn’t reached yet, so Socrates always puts himself one step ahead of the other. He takes on the position that he wants the other to assume at the end of the discussion.
Ironeia understatement. Stating less than what is there.
Then follows the refutation, the elenchus, of the interlocutor. In the end Socrates knows already that the interlocutor will acknowledge that they know nothing. And this is the truest sense of wisdom we find in the story of the oracle.
This is then made to do some actual positive work as well. When we don’t know what something is, it’s good to then start to fill it out after we have bulldozed.
The buildup that is done in many dialogues but not in the early, is probably Plato’s work.
In Clitopho Socrates is critiqued for not providing a positive alternative. It is a very short work, only four pages.
The definition of wisdom is both theoretical and practical. Knowing how to do things = knowing what the thing is. Virtue is understanding. If you want to be just you need to know what justice is.
In Homeric times it didn’t matter if you were virtuous as such, only if you were seen as virtuous. Socrates is trying to question people’s inner convictions, to test whether they really are virtuous, to show that there should be a continuation between the outer deed and the inner conviction.
This is argued against by Aristotle. He says this is impossible. What explains bad behaviour is not a lack of knowledge, but rather akrasia, a lack of a good mixture, or acting against my better judgement. Knowing what is good doesn’t necessarily reflect what I do. Socrates would retort against anyone who acts against their better judgement is that they do not know or have the conviction to be just. The argument of intellectualism is based on the view that any deed is a reflection of an inner disposition. You need to believe there is no distinction between practical and theoretical wisdom to make this claim. Aristotle however is the one that introduces the distinction. He makes the point more or less anachronistically, because he presupposes something they wouldn’t have presupposed on their own.