Socrates

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As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

Socrates [Σωκράτης] (c.470 BC - 399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.

Contents [hide] 1 Sourced 1.1 Plato 1.1.1 Apology 1.2 Xenophon 1.3 Plutarch 1.4 Diogenes Laertius 2 Misattributions 3 Quotes about Socrates 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Sourced

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates left no writings of his own, thus our awareness of his teachings comes primarily from a few ancient authors who referred to them in their own works.

[edit] Plato

The words of Socrates, as quoted or portrayed in Plato's works, which are the most extensive source available for our present knowledge about his ideas.

• By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give — that by means of beauty beautiful things become beautiful.
  • Phædo

• False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
  • Phædo 91

• In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.
  • Phaedrus

• Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
  • Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus, 279

• Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?
  • Crito

• As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.
  • Republic, 354b, (conclusion of book I)

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.

[edit] Apology

Plato's famous account of the trial and death of Socrates.

• When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

• And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, O Athenians! in this, perhaps, differ from most men; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge of the things in Hades, I also think that I have not such knowledge.

• The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. (ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpôi — ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ)
  • Variant translations:
    More closely 'The unexamining life is not worth living for a human being'
    The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
    An unexamined life is not worth living.
    The unexamined life is not the life for man.

• I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

• I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say.

• If my life is to be prolonged now, I know that I must live out my old age, seeing worse, hearing less, learning with more difficulty, and forgetting more and more of what I have learned. If I see myself growing worse and reproach myself for it, tell me, how could I continue to live pleasantly? Perhaps even the god in his kindness is offering to end my life not only at the right time, but also in the easiest way possible...

• So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another.

• Not I, but the city, teaches.

• The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.
  • Last words of his speech following the sentence of death.

• Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
  • Last words.

[edit] Xenophon

Words of Socrates as quoted by Xenophon

• You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.
  • Memorabilia I. 4.18

• If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?
  • Memorabilia IV. 8.8

• Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: "Does teaching consist in putting questions?" Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of.
  • Oeconomicus (The Economist) as translated by H.G. Dakyns.

[edit] Plutarch

Socrates as quoted by Plutarch

• I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. (Note: This seems to Contradict much of what is said by Socrates in Crito.)

• Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

[edit] Diogenes Laertius

Socrates as quoted in Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

• Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!"

• Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

• There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
  • Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

[edit] Misattributions

• Know thyself.
  • This statement actually predates Socrates, and was used as an Inscription at the Oracle of Delphi. It is a saying traditionally ascribed to one of the "Seven Sages of Greece", notably Solon, but accounts vary as to whom. Socrates himself is reported to have quoted it although it is very probable that Thales was in fact the one who first stated it.
• I drank what?
  • This is a humorously dark punchline to the death of Socrates, which implies he didn't realize hemlock was poison. In truth he knew full well what he was drinking. Val Kilmer mentions this in the film Real Genius.

• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
  • Apparently dates from 1953: see Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service, Edited by Suzy Platt, 1989, number 195.
  • See also this discussion about the topic.

• Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
  • No findable citation to Socrates. First appears in this form in the 1990s, such as in the Douglas Bradley article Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley^[1]. It appears to be a variant on "The understanding is not a vessel which must be filled, but firewood, which needs to be kindled; and love of learning and love of truth are what should kindle it", which appears in early 1860s US educational books ^[2] - with equally untraceable attribution to Plutarch.

[edit] Quotes about Socrates

• This man here is so bizarre, his ways so unusual, that, search as you might, you'll never find anyone else, alive or dead, who's even remotely like him. The best you do is not to compare him to anything human, but liken him, as I do, to Silenus and the satyrs, and the same goes for his ideas and arguments.
  • Alcibiades, as quoted in Symposium by Plato

• I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
  • Steve Jobs in Newsweek (29 October 2001)

• Socrates gave a lot of advice, and he was given Hemlock to drink.
  • Rose Kennedy, in an interview with Barbara Walters, (November 1968)

• It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
  • John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism Ch.2

• If anyone thinks that Socrates is proven to have lied about his daimon because the jury condemned him to death when he stated that a divinity revealed to him what he should and should not do, then let him take note of two things: first, that Socrates was so far advanced in age that he would have died soon, if not then; and second, that he escaped the most bitter part of life, when all men's mental powers diminish.
  • Xenophon in Memorabilia IV. 8.1

[edit] References

1. ↑ Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley, Douglas Bradley, Wisconsin Ideas, UW System, 1994
2. ↑ For instance, p.117, The American journal of education, Volume 10, Henry Barnard, pub. F.C. Brownell, 1861 Google Books

[edit] External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Socrates

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Socrates

• Socrates at Washington State University
• Project Gutenberg e-texts on Socrates:
  • The Dialogues of Plato (see also Wikipedia articles on Dialogues by Plato)
  • The writings of Xenophon, such as the Memorablia and Hellenica.
  • The satirical plays by Aristophanes
  • Aristotle's writings
  • Voltaire's Socrates
  • The Second Story of Meno; a continuation of Socrates' dialogue with Meno in which the boy proves root 2 is irrational (by an anonymous author)

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The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.),^[1] an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic for the philosophic life and, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the admiration and emulation normally reserved for founders of religious sects—Jesus or Buddha—strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.

So thorny is the difficulty of distinguishing the historical Socrates from the Socrateses of the authors of the texts in which he appears and, moreover from the Socrateses of scores of later interpreters, that the whole contested issue is generally referred to as the Socratic problem. Each age, each intellectual turn, produces a Socrates of its own. It is no less true now that, “The ‘real’ Socrates we have not: what we have is a set of interpretations each of which represents a ‘theoretically possible’ Socrates,” as Cornelia de Vogel (1955, 28) put it. In fact, de Vogel was writing as a new analytic paradigm for interpreting Socrates was about to become standard—Gregory Vlastos' model (§2.2), which would hold sway until the mid 1990s. Who Socrates really was is fundamental to Vlastos' interpretation of the philosophical dialogues of Plato, as it is to virtually any interpretation, because Socrates is the dominant figure in most of Plato's dialogues.

• 1. Socrates' strangeness
• 2. The Socratic problem: Who was Socrates really?
  • 2.1 Three primary sources: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato
  • 2.2 Contemporary interpretative strategies
  • 2.3 Implications for the philosophy of Socrates
• 3. A chronology of the historical Socrates in the context of Athenian history and the dramatic dates of Plato's dialogues
• 4. The Socratic tradition and its reach beyond philosophy
• Bibliography
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Socrates' strangeness

Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates' time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty. Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man's political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man—and resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books. He had wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn't change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered himself with at night. Something was peculiar about his gait as well, sometimes described as a swagger so intimidating that enemy soldiers kept their distance. He was impervious to the effects of alcohol and cold, but this made him an object of suspicion to his fellow soldiers on campaign. We can safely assume an average height (since no one mentions it at all), and a strong build, given the active life he appears to have led. Against the iconic tradition of a pot-belly, Socrates and his companions are described as going hungry (Aristophanes, Birds 1280–83). On his appearance, see Plato's Theaetetus 143e, and Symposium 215a-c, 216c-d, 221d-e; Xenophon's Symposium 4.19, 5.5–7; and Aristophanes' Clouds 362. Brancusi's oak sculpture, standing 51.25 inches including its base, captures Socrates' appearance and strangeness in the sense that it looks different from every angle, including a second “eye” that cannot be seen if the first is in view. (See the Museum of Modern Art's page on Brancusi's Socrates which offers additional views.) Also true to Socrates' reputation for ugliness, but less available, are the drawings of the contemporary Swiss artist, Hans Erni.

In the late fifth century B.C.E., it was more or less taken for granted that any self-respecting Athenian male would prefer fame, wealth, honors, and political power to a life of labor. Although many citizens lived by their labor in a wide variety of occupations, they were expected to spend much of their leisure time, if they had any, busying themselves with the affairs of the city. Men regularly participated in the governing Assembly and in the city's many courts; and those who could afford it prepared themselves for success at public life by studying with rhetoricians and sophists from abroad who could themselves become wealthy and famous by teaching the young men of Athens to use words to their advantage. Other forms of higher education were also known in Athens: mathematics, astronomy, geometry, music, ancient history, and linguistics. What seemed strange about Socrates is that he neither labored to earn a living, nor participated voluntarily in affairs of state. Rather, he embraced poverty and, although youths of the city kept company with him and imitated him, Socrates adamantly insisted he was not a teacher and refused all his life to take money for what he did. The strangeness of this behavior is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students. Because Socrates was no transmitter of information that others were passively to receive, he resists the comparison to teachers. Rather, he helped others recognize on their own what is real, true, and good (Plato, Meno, Theaetetus)—a new, and thus suspect, approach to education. He was known for confusing, stinging and stunning his conversation partners into the unpleasant experience of realizing their own ignorance, a state sometimes superseded by genuine intellectual curiosity.

It did not help matters that Socrates seemed to have a higher opinion of women than most of his companions had, speaking of “men and women,” “priests and priestesses,” and naming foreign women as his teachers: Socrates claimed to have learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletus, the lover of Pericles (Plato, Menexenus); and to have learned erotics from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea (Plato, Symposium). Socrates was unconventional in a related respect. Athenian citizen males of the upper social classes did not marry until they were at least thirty, and Athenian females were poorly educated and kept sequestered until puberty, when they were given in marriage by their fathers. Thus the socialization and education of males often involved a relationship for which the English word ‘pederasty’ (though often used) is misleading, in which a youth approaching manhood, fifteen to seventeen, became the beloved of a male lover a few years older, under whose tutelage and through whose influence and gifts, the younger man would be guided and improved. It was assumed among Athenians that mature men would find youths sexually attractive, and such relationships were conventionally viewed as beneficial to both parties by family and friends alike. A degree of hypocrisy (or denial), however, was implied by the arrangement: “officially” it did not involve sexual relations between the lovers and, if it did, then the beloved was not supposed to derive pleasure from the act—but ancient evidence (comedies, vase paintings, et al.) shows that both restrictions were often violated (Dover 1989, 204). What was odd about Socrates is that, although he was no exception to the rule of finding youths attractive (Plato, Charmides 155d, Protagoras 309a-b; Xenophon, Symposium 4.27–28), he refused the physical advances of even his favorite (Plato, Symposium 219b-d) and kept his eye on the improvement of their, and all the Athenians', souls (Plato, Apology 30a-b), a mission he said he had been assigned by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, if he was interpreting his friend Chaerephon's report correctly (Plato, Apology 20e-23b), a preposterous claim in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Socrates also acknowledged a rather strange personal phenomenon, a daimonion or internal voice that prohibited his doing certain things, some trivial and some important, often unrelated to matters of right and wrong (thus not to be confused with the popular notions of a superego or a conscience); the implication that he was guided by something he regarded as divine or semi-divine was suspect to other Athenians.

Socrates was usually to be found in the marketplace and other public areas, conversing with a variety of different people—young and old, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor—that is, with virtually anyone he could persuade to join with him in his question-and-answer mode of probing serious matters. Socrates' lifework consisted in the examination of people's lives, his own and others', because “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being,” as he says at his trial (Plato, Apology 38a). Socrates pursued this task single-mindedly, questioning people about what matters most, e.g., courage, love, reverence, moderation, and the state of their souls generally. He did this regardless of whether his respondents wanted to be questioned or resisted him; and Athenian youths imitated Socrates' questioning style, much to the annoyance of some of their parents. He had a reputation for irony, though what that means exactly is controversial; at a minimum, Socrates' irony consisted in his saying that he knew nothing of importance and wanted to listen to others, yet keeping the upper hand in every discussion. One further aspect of Socrates' much-touted strangeness should be mentioned: his dogged failure to align himself politically with oligarchs or democrats; rather, he had friends and enemies among both, and he supported and opposed actions of both (see §3).

2. The Socratic problem: Who was Socrates really?

The Socratic problem is a rat's nest of complexities arising from the fact that various people wrote about Socrates whose accounts differ in crucial respects, leaving us to wonder which, if any, are accurate representations of the historical Socrates. “There is, and always will be, a ‘Socratic problem’. This is inevitable,” said Guthrie (1969, 6), looking back on a gnarled history between ancient and contemporary times that is narrated in detail by Press (1996), but barely touched on below. The difficulties are increased because all those who knew and wrote about Socrates lived before any standardization of modern categories of, or sensibilities about, what constitutes historical accuracy or poetic license. All authors present their own interpretations of the personalities and lives of their characters, whether they mean to or not, whether they write fiction or biography or philosophy (if the philosophy they write has characters), so other criteria must be introduced for deciding among the contending views of who Socrates really was. A look at the three primary ancient sources of information about Socrates (§2.1) will provide a foundation for appreciating how contemporary interpretations differ (§2.2) and why the differences matter (§2.3).

One thing is certain about the historical Socrates: even among those who knew him in life, there was profound disagreement about what his actual views and methods were. Apart from the three primary sources below, there were those called ‘minor Socratics’, not for the quality of their work but because so little or none of it is extant, about whose view of Socrates we shall probably never know much.^[2] After Socrates' death, the tradition became even more disparate. As Nehamas (1999, 99) puts it, “with the exception of the Epicureans, every philosophical school in antiquity, whatever its orientation, saw in him either its actual founder or the type of person to whom its adherents were to aspire.”

2.1 Three primary sources: Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato

Aristophanes (±450-±386)

Our earliest extant source—and the only one who can claim to have known Socrates in his early years—is the playwright Aristophanes. His comedy, Clouds, was produced in 423 when the other two extant sources, Xenophon and Plato, were infants. In the play, the character Socrates heads a Think-o-Rama in which young men study the natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick argumentative techniques as well, lacking all respect for the Athenian sense of propriety. The actor wearing the mask of Socrates makes fun of the traditional gods of Athens (lines 247–48, 367, 423–24), mimicked later by the young protagonist, and gives naturalistic explanations of phenomena Athenians viewed as divinely directed (lines 227–33; cf. Theaetetus 152e, 153c–d, 173e–174a; Phaedo 96a-100a). Worst of all, he teaches dishonest techniques for avoiding repayment of debt (lines 1214–1302) and encourages young men to beat their parents into submission (lines 1408–46).

In favor of Aristophanes as a source is that Xenophon and Plato were some forty-five years younger than Socrates, so their acquaintance could only have been in Socrates' later years. One may reasonably doubt that the life and personality of Socrates was so consistent that Plato's characterization of a man in his fifties and sixties should utterly undo the lampooning account of the younger Socrates found in Clouds and other comic poets. More to the point, the years between Clouds and Socrates' trial were years of war and upheaval, so the Athenian intellectual freedom of which Pericles boasted at the beginning of the war (Thucydides 2.37–39) had been eroded completely by the end (see §3). Thus, what had seemed comical a quarter century earlier, Socrates hanging in a basket on-stage talking nonsense, was ominous in memory by then.

Comedy by its very nature is a tricky source for information about anyone. A good reason to believe that the representation of Socrates is not merely comic exaggeration but systematically misleading is that Clouds amalgamates in one character, Socrates, features now well known to be unique to other particular fifth-century intellectuals (Dover 1968, xxxii-lvii); perhaps Aristophanes chose Socrates to represent garden-variety intellectuals because Socrates' physiognomy was strange enough to be comic by itself. Aristophanes genuinely objected to what he saw as social instability brought on by the freedom Athenian youths enjoyed to study with professional rhetoricians, sophists (see §1), and natural philosophers, e.g., those who, like the presocratics, studied the cosmos or nature. That Socrates eschewed any earning potential in philosophy does not seem to have been significant to the comic playwright. Aristophanes' depiction is important because Plato's Socrates says at his trial (Apology 18a-b, 19c) that most of his jurors have grown up believing the falsehoods spread about him in the play. Socrates calls Aristophanes more dangerous than the three men who brought charges against him in 399 because Aristophanes had poisoned men's minds while they were young. Aristophanes did not stop accusing Socrates in 423 when Clouds placed third behind another play in which Socrates was mentioned as barefoot; rather, he soon began writing a revision, which he published but never produced. Aristophanes appears to have given up on reviving Clouds in about 416, but his attacks on Socrates continued. Again in 414 with Birds, and in 405 with Frogs, Aristophanes complained of Socrates' deleterious effect on the youths of the city, including Socrates' neglect of the poets.^[3]

Xenophon (±425-±386)

Another source for the historical Socrates is the soldier-historian, Xenophon. Xenophon says explicitly of Socrates, “I was never acquainted with anyone who took greater care to find out what each of his companions knew” (Memorabilia 4.7.1); and Plato corroborates Xenophon's statement by illustrating throughout his dialogues Socrates' adjustment of the level and type of his questions to the particular individuals with whom he talked. If it is true that Socrates succeeded in pitching his conversation at the right level for each of his companions, the striking differences between Xenophon's Socrates and Plato's is largely explained by the differences between their two personalities. Xenophon was a practical man whose ability to recognize philosophical issues is almost imperceptible, so it is plausible that his Socrates appears as such a practical and helpful advisor because that is the side of Socrates Xenophon witnessed. Xenophon's Socrates differs additionally from Plato's in offering advice about subjects in which Xenophon was himself experienced, but Socrates was not: moneymaking (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7) and estate management (Xenophon, Oeconomicus), suggesting that Xenophon may have entered into the writing of Socratic discourses (as Aristotle labeled the genre, Poetics 1447b11) making the character Socrates a mouthpiece for his own views. His other works mentioning or featuring Socrates are Anabasis, Apology, Hellenica, and Symposium.

Something that has strengthened Xenophon's prima facie claim as a source for Socrates' life is his work as a historian; his Hellenica (History of Greece) is one of the chief sources for the period 411–362, after Thucydides' history abruptly ends in the midst of the Peloponnesian wars. Although Xenophon tends to moralize and does not follow the superior conventions introduced by Thucydides, still it is sometimes argued that, having had no philosophical axes to grind, Xenophon may have presented a more accurate portrait of Socrates than Plato does. But two considerations have always weakened that claim: (1) The Socrates of Xenophon's works is so pedestrian that it is difficult to imagine his inspiring fifteen or more people to write Socratic discourses in the period following his death. (2) Xenophon could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable informants. He lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the Hymettus mountains from Socrates' haunts in the urban area of Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a still valuable treatise) seem to have taken up considerable time. He left Athens in 401 on an expedition to Persia and, for a variety of reasons (mercenary service for the Thracians and Spartans, exile), never resided in Athens again. And now a third is in order. (3) It turns out to have been ill-advised to assume that Xenophon would apply the same criteria for accuracy to his Socratic discourses as to his histories.^[4] The biographical and historical background Xenophon deploys in his memoirs of Socrates fails to correspond to such additional sources as we have from archaeology, history, the courts, and literature. The widespread use of computers in classical studies, enabling the comparison of ancient persons, and the compiling of information about each of them from disparate sources, has made incontrovertible this observation about Xenophon's Socratic works. Xenophon's memoirs are pastiches, several of which simply could not have occurred as presented.

Plato (424/3–347)

Philosophers have usually privileged the account of Socrates given by their fellow philosopher, Plato. Plato was about twenty-five when Socrates was tried and executed, and had probably known the old man most of his life. It would have been hard for a boy of Plato's social class, residing in the political district (deme) of Collytus within the city walls, to avoid Socrates. The extant sources agree that Socrates was often to be found where youths of the city spent their time. Further, Plato's representation of individual Athenians has proved over time to correspond remarkably well to both archaeological and literary evidence: in his use of names and places, familial relations and friendship bonds, and even in his rough dating of events in almost all the authentic dialogues where Socrates is the dominant figure. The dialogues have dramatic dates that fall into place as one learns more about their characters and, despite incidental anachronisms, there turns out to be more realism in the dialogues than most have suspected.^[5] The Ion, Lysis, Euthydemus, Meno, Menexenus, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, the frame of Symposium, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (although Plato says he was not himself present at Socrates' execution), and frame of Parmenides are the dialogues in which Plato had greatest access to the Athenians he depicts.

It does not follow, however, that Plato represented the views and methods of Socrates (or anyone, for that matter) as he recalled them, much less as they were originally uttered. There are a number of cautions and caveats that should be in place from the start. (i) Plato may have shaped the character Socrates (or other characters) to serve his own purposes, whether philosophical or literary or both. (ii) The dialogues representing Socrates as a youth and young man took place, if they took place at all, before Plato was born and when he was a small child. (iii) One should be cautious even about the dramatic dates of Plato's dialogues (§3) because they are calculated with reference to characters whom we know primarily, though not only, from the dialogues. (iv) Exact dates should be treated with a measure of skepticism for numerical precision can be misleading. Even when a specific festival or other reference fixes the season or month of a dialogue, or birth of a character, one should imagine a margin of error. Although it becomes obnoxious to use circa or plus-minus everywhere, the ancients did not require or desire contemporary precision in these matters. All the children born during a full year, for example, had the same nominal birthday, accounting for the conversation at Lysis 207b, odd by contemporary standards, in which two boys disagree about who is the elder. Philosophers have often decided to bypass the historical problems altogether and to assume for the sake of argument that Plato's Socrates is the Socrates who is relevant to potential progress in philosophy. That strategy, as we shall soon see, gives rise to a new Socratic problem (§2.2).

What, after all, is our motive for reading a dead philosopher's words about another dead philosopher who never wrote anything himself? This is a way of asking a popular question, Why do history of philosophy? —which has no settled answer. One might reply that our study of some of our philosophical predecessors is intrinsically valuable, philosophically enlightening and satisfying. When we contemplate the words of a dead philosopher, a philosopher with whom we cannot engage directly—Plato's words, say—we seek to understand not merely what he said and assumed, but what his propositions imply, and whether they are true. Sometimes, making such judgments requires us to learn the language in which the philosopher wrote, more about his predecessors' ideas and those of his contemporaries. The truly great philosophers, and Plato was one of them, are still capable of becoming our companions in philosophical conversation, our dialectical partners. Because he addressed timeless, universal, fundamental questions with insight and intelligence, our own understanding of such questions is heightened. That explains Plato, one might say, but where is Socrates in this picture? Is he interesting merely as a predecessor to Plato? Some would say yes, but others would say it is not Plato's but Socrates' ideas and methods that mark the real beginning of philosophy in the West, that Socrates is the better dialectical guide, and that what is Socratic in the dialogues should be distinguished from what is Platonic (§2.2). But how? That again is the Socratic problem.

2.2 Contemporary interpretative strategies

If it were possible to confine oneself exclusively to Plato's Socrates, the Socratic problem would nevertheless reappear because one would soon discover Socrates himself defending one position in one Platonic dialogue, its contrary in another, and using different methods in different dialogues to boot. Inconsistencies among the dialogues seem to demand explanation, though not all philosophers have thought so (Shorey 1903). Most famously, the Parmenides attacks various theories of forms that the Republic and Phaedo develop and defend. In some dialogues (e.g., Laches), Socrates only weeds the garden of its inconsistencies and false beliefs, but in other dialogues (e.g., Phaedrus), he is a planter as well, advancing structured philosophical claims and suggesting new methods for testing those claims. There are differences on smaller matters as well. For example, Socrates in the Gorgias opposes, while in the Protagoras he supports, hedonism; the details of the relation between erotic love and the good life differ from Phaedrus to Symposium; the account of the relation between knowledge and the objects of knowledge in Republic differs from the Meno account; despite Socrates' commitment to Athenian law, expressed in the Crito, he vows in the Apology that he will disobey the lawful jury if it orders him to stop philosophizing. A related problem is that some of the dialogues appear to develop positions familiar from other philosophical traditions (e.g., Heraclitus in Theaetetus and Pythagoreanism in Phaedo). Three centuries of efforts to solve the Socratic problem are summarized in the following supplementary document:

Early Attempts to Solve the Socratic Problem

Contemporary efforts recycle bits and pieces—including the failures—of these older attempts.

The Twentieth Century

Until relatively recently in modern times, it was hoped that confident elimination of what could be ascribed purely to Socrates would leave standing a coherent set of doctrines attributable to Plato (who appears nowhere in the dialogues as a speaker). Many philosophers, inspired by the nineteenth century scholar, Eduard Zeller, expect the greatest philosophers to promote grand, impenetrable schemes. Nothing of the sort was possible for Socrates, so it remained for Plato to be assigned all the positive doctrines that could be extracted from the dialogues. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, there was a resurgence of interest in who Socrates was and what his own views and methods were. The result is a narrower, but no less contentious, Socratic problem. Two strands of interpretation dominated views of Socrates in the twentieth century (Griswold 2001; Klagge and Smith 1992). Although there has been some healthy cross-pollination and growth since the mid 1990s, the two were so hostile to one another for so long that the bulk of the secondary literature on Socrates, including translations peculiar to each, still divides into two camps, hardly reading one another: literary contextualists and analysts. The literary-contextual study of Socrates, like hermeneutics more generally, uses the tools of literary criticism—typically interpreting one complete dialogue at a time; its European origins are traced to Heidegger and earlier to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The analytic study of Socrates, like analytic philosophy more generally, is fueled by the arguments in the texts—typically addressing a single argument or set of arguments, whether in a single text or across texts; its origins are in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was the doyen of the hermeneutic strand, and Gregory Vlastos (1907–1991) of the analytic.

Literary contextualism

Faced with inconsistencies in Socrates' views and methods from one dialogue to another, the literary contextualist has no Socratic problem because Plato is seen as an artist of surpassing literary skill, the ambiguities in whose dialogues are intentional representations of actual ambiguities in the subjects philosophy investigates. Thus terms, arguments, characters, and in fact all elements in the dialogues should be addressed in their literary context. Bringing the tools of literary criticism to the study of the dialogues, and sanctioned in that practice by Plato's own use of literary devices and practice of textual critique (Protagoras 339a-347a, Republic 2.376c-3.412b, Ion, and Phaedrus 262c-264e), most contextualists ask of each dialogue what its aesthetic unity implies, pointing out that the dialogues themselves are autonomous, containing almost no cross-references. Contextualists who attend to what they see as the aesthetic unity of the whole Platonic corpus, and therefore seek a consistent picture of Socrates, advise close readings of the dialogues and appeal to a number of literary conventions and devices said to reveal Socrates' actual personality. For both varieties of contextualism, the Platonic dialogues are like a brilliant constellation whose separate stars naturally require separate focus.

Marking the maturity of the literary contextualist tradition in the early twenty-first century is a greater diversity of approaches and an attempt to be more internally critical (see Hyland 2004).

Analytic developmentalism^[6]

Beginning in the 1950s, Vlastos (1991, 45–80) recommended a set of mutually supportive premises that together provide a plausible framework in the analytic tradition for Socratic philosophy as a pursuit distinct from Platonic philosophy. Although the premises have deep roots in early attempts to solve the Socratic problem (see the supplementary document linked above), the beauty of Vlastos's particular configuration is its fecundity. The first premise marks a break with a tradition of regarding Plato as a dialectician who held his assumptions tentatively and revised them constantly; rather,

1. Plato held philosophical doctrines, and
2. Plato's doctrines developed over the period in which he wrote,

accounting for many of the inconsistencies and contradictions among the dialogues (persistent inconsistencies are addressed with a complex notion of Socratic irony.) In particular, Vlastos tells a story “as hypothesis, not dogma or reported fact” describing the young Plato in vivid terms, writing his early dialogues while convinced of “the substantial truth of Socrates' teaching and the soundness of its method.” Later, Plato develops into a constructive philosopher in his own right but feels no need to break the bond with his Socrates, his “father image.” (The remainder of Plato's story is not relevant to Socrates.) Vlastos labels a small group of dialogues ‘transitional’ to mark the period when Plato was beginning to be dissatisfied with Socrates' views. Vlastos' third premise is

3. It is possible to determine reliably the chronological order in which the dialogues were written and to map them to the development of Plato's views.

The evidence Vlastos uses varies for this claim, but is of several types: stylometric data, internal cross references, external events mentioned, differences in doctrines and methods featured, and other ancient testimony (particularly that of Aristotle). The dialogues of Plato's Socratic period, called “elenctic dialogues” for Socrates' preferred method of questioning, are Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras, and book 1 of the Republic. The developmentalists' Platonic dialogues are potentially a discrete sequence, the order of which enables the analyst to separate Socrates from Plato on the basis of different periods in Plato's intellectual evolution. Finally,

4. Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates only what Plato himself believes at the time he writes each dialogue.

“As Plato changes, the philosophical persona of his Socrates is made to change” (Vlastos 1991, 53)—a view sometimes referred to as the “mouthpiece theory.” Because the analyst is interested in doctrines (particularly as conclusions from, or tested by, arguments), the focus of analysis is usually on a particular philosophical position in or across dialogues, with no special attention given to context or to dialogues considered as wholes; and evidence from dialogues in close chronological proximity is likely to be considered more strongly confirming than that from dialogues of other developmental periods. The result of applying the premises is a firm list (contested, of course, by others) of ten theses held by Socrates, all of which are incompatible with the corresponding ten theses held by Plato (1991, 47–49).

Many analytic ancient philosophers in the late twentieth century mined the gold Vlastos had uncovered, and many of those who were productive in the developmentalist vein in the early days went on to constructive work of their own (see Bibliography).

2.3 Implications for the philosophy of Socrates

It is a risky business to say where ancient philosophy is now, but an advantage of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is that authors are allowed, nay, encouraged to update their entries to reflect recent scholarship and sea changes in their topics. For many analytic philosophers, John Cooper (1997, xiv) sounded the end of the developmentalist era when he described the early- and middle-period dialogue distinctions as “an unsuitable basis for bringing anyone to the reading of these works. To use them in that way is to announce in advance the results of a certain interpretation of the dialogues and to canonize that interpretation under the guise of a presumably objective order of composition—when in fact no such order is objectively known. And it thereby risks prejudicing an unwary reader against the fresh, individ