There is a joke in academia that Socrates could never get tenure at a modern university because he never published. All we know of his philosophy is what was preserved by his students, notably Plato and Xenophon.
Socrates (469-399 b. c.e.) was an Athenian citizen of modest means who, during the Peloponnesian War (see chapter 4), served as a hoplite in the Athenian army. When not fighting, he involved himself deeply in the contemplation of philosophy (and somewhat less deeply in the care of his wife and children). According to his/Plato's Apology (§21), or court defense, Socrates's friend Chaerephon once asked the Delphic oracle (see chapter 8) if there were any man wiser than Socrates, to which the oracle answered "No." When Socrates heard this, he took it as a moral obligation to test the meaning of the oracle, and so he began to probe the wisdom of the great thinkers of his day. His quest led him to the discovery that much of the so-called wisdom of his contemporaries was faulty, based on opinion rather than fact. Socrates came to the conclusion that all he (or anyone else, really) knew was that he knew nothing, but that this bit of self-realization gave him an edge over his contemporaries, who were calculating doctrines based on inaccurate data.
Socrates's method of inquiry was through dialogue: He asked questions of philosophers, teachers, and students alike, and then subjected their replies to vigorous scrutiny to see if their thoughts or ideas were logical, consistent, and possibly even accurate. Each idea was broken down into its constituent parts and tested individually, then put back together again to see if the ideas, functioning independently, would also function as a whole. Such philosophical probing is now called the Socratic Method.
What we know of Socrates through Plato and Xenophon is that he was especially concerned with ethics and how to lead a "good" life. He believed that all people were innately good and they only acted badly through lack of knowledge. If people truly understood what was good, right, and beneficial, they would always act with virtue. However, because people were confused about what was truly good, overvaluing money, power, and prestige, they acted with vice (Luce 1992, 91). Socrates also believed that the gods were ideally good, being all-knowing, and he disapproved of their portrayals in Homer and Hesiod as being subject to the weaknesses and failings of mortals.
This reproach led some to suggest that Socrates was an atheist. Furthermore, his tendency to teach nonmaterialistic ideals to the youth of Athens, and to uncover the inadequacies of their teachers, bought Socrates several enemies. He was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth, brought to trial in 399 b. c.e., found guilty, and condemned to death. Proving his lifelong loyalty to his city, he willingly accepted the verdict and drank hemlock in the company of his friends, including Plato.
Plato (427-347 b. c.e.) was an aristocratic Athenian who was very hard hit by Socrates's death. After traveling to Magna Graecia, and after a brief love affair with Dion of Syracuse, he returned to Athens to dedicate himself to philosophy and teaching. Unlike Socrates, Plato was an avid writer, and all of his treatises and one of his letters are preserved to the present day. Many scholars have attempted to arrange his dialogues, as they are called, into some chronological order, to see how Plato's theories evolved over time. His early works revolved mainly around Socrates. These include the Apology, Crito, Protagoras, and Gor-gias. In his "middle" period, he composed the Republic, his most influential work, as well as the Phaidon, Symposion, Parmenides, and Theaeteus. In his later years came such works as the Sophists, Statesman, Timaeus, and the Laws. He was working on revisions to this last dialogue when he died (Luce 1992, 97-98).
Plato's inquiries touched on all aspects of knowledge, including mathematics (Meno), the nature of the universe (Timaeus), the nature of love (Symposion), and linguistics (Kratylos). However, some of his more influential, overarching ideas were metaphysical in nature, focused on the nature of reality and the soul.
One of Plato's most important themes was that of the Ideal Forms. Plato, influenced by the works of the Presocratic philosophers, was caught in the debate between the changeability and unchangeability of reality. Was the universe always in a state of flux? Or was the Real permanent and unchanging? Plato opted for both. He believed that the physical world around us was always changing, always, technically, in some state of decay. However, he also thought that the universe perceived by human senses was only a reflection of the "true," everlasting, unchanging reality, the reality of the Ideal Forms. The chair we see and sit on is only an imperfect, temporary manifestation of the Ideal Form of Chair. When we perceive something as being pretty, it is because we vaguely perceive the Ideal Form of Beauty emanating through it.
For Plato, the Forms were more real than physical reality, and he thought that it was a sorrowful aspect of the human condition that we could perceive only the changeable, physical forms instead of the true Ideal Forms. As such, humans did not perceive reality, but shadows of reality. This ideology was best presented in his Republic in the allegory of the prisoners in the cave. At the beginning of Book 7, Plato paints a picture of "prisoners" who have spent their entire life in a cave, chained at the neck, with the light of the outside world behind them. All they can see are the shadows of things against the wall they face, and, being used to this portrayal of reality all their lives, they assume that this is an accurate portrayal of the world. Then one of them is brought up to the outer world. At first, the brightness of the sun dazes and confuses him, but over time, he becomes accustomed to the light. He first sees reflections of this upper reality in water and in shadows, but after a while, his eyes grow accustomed to the light, and he can see reality as opposed to the mere shadows on the wall. Such, Plato argued, was the quest of the philosopher, to seek out the higher, "realer" truth, recognizing the shadows of common "reality" for what they are. Such higher truth was accessible only through the mind, Plato taught, for the physical senses were inevitably tied to the "shadowy" world of temporary existence.
How, then, could a physical person perceive and learn of the Forms? In this question, Plato was influenced by the Pythagoreans, especially their ideology of metempsychosis. As Plato understood it, in between lifetimes, the soul traveled to the realm of Ideal Forms. Once shoved back into a body, the soul forgot most of these Forms, but it was still capable of vague recollections of that ideal plane. Through the study of philosophy, the mind was capable of recollecting some of what it knew between lives, and thus the process of learning was really just the process of remembering. This was most clearly discussed in the dialogue Phaidros, which presented the soul as a charioteer with flying horses. The soul attempts to soar to the divine plane of Ideal Forms, where the deities live (§248A-B, 249C-D):
. .. but of the other souls: The best of them, following after and resembling a deity, raises the head of the charioteer to the upper path, and is carried about the higher plain. But being tossed about by the horses she can barely perceive reality. At one point she rises, then falls, through the unruliness of the horses, so now she sees, then not. And indeed all the other souls being eager for the upper realms follow, but are unable, being carried about as under water; they fly about crashing into each other, each striving to get ahead of the others. And so the uproar and striving and sweat become extreme; many indeed are lamed by the evil of the charioteers, many have their wings completely broken. But all having great toil depart unfulfilled from god's reality, and departing they are subject to the food of semblance. . . Therefore, only the mind of the philosopher justly is bewinged, for it is always to the best of their power to be in memory before such things by which god is godly. And indeed by such things a man using memory well, always completing the mysteries in perfection, alone becomes perfect. And standing apart from the mundane hurley-burley and being near the divine, he is reprimanded by the masses for being a trouble-maker, and they do not see that he is divinely inspired.
Plato also wrote copiously about the ideal organization of a political body. This is the subject of his two longest works, the Republic and the Laws. The Laws is perhaps the more pragmatic of the two, considering issues of population density, education, and the like. Of general amusement, in Book 2 Plato suggests that all the men of all cities should get together once each month and drink to excess (making certain that sober guards are about, to prevent any real damage). As men are more open and honest when intoxicated, such gatherings would allow all male citizens to speak honestly to each other, thus serving as some manner of civic catharsis and allowing for greater friendship among the people.
The Republic, although couched in terms of politics, is actually an inquiry into the nature of justice and the human psyche. In it, Plato posits that a man's self-control is similar to the administration of a state. A person who exhibits self-control and temperance is like a state ruled by a philosopher-king, a wise monarch looking out for the welfare of all citizens. By contrast, a person eternally subject to irrational passions is like a city ruled by a mob, where instability and chaos are the norm.
This ideology got Plato a reputation for being opposed to democracy, which was not altogether untrue, as he was not at all fond of the democratic "rabble" that had condemned Socrates. On a psychological level, though, one sees in the Republic an early version of Freud's theories about the ego, the superego, and the id. Plato claimed that each psyche is composed of three levels: the appetitive element, much like the base, physical id; the spirited element, where emotions and sense of self reside—the ego; and the rational element, the mind or superego (Luce 1992, 103). Plato suggested that all were necessary for sur-vival—the population would crash without a sex drive—but the lower faculties were ideally under the control of the higher, just as a good society thrived under the direction of a philosopher-king.
To instruct as many people as possible in the way of philosophy, Plato, in 388/387 b. c.e., established the Academy, named for a nearby sanctuary of the hero Academus. Created as a corporation, the institution endured long after Plato's death. "Deanship" of the Academy passed from elected scholar to elected scholar until the school was finally closed by Emperor Justinian in 529 c. e. At this site, Plato had a building constructed that housed classrooms, a gymnasium, and a common dining hall. Here, men and women congregated to study philosophy and share their thoughts. The reputation of the Academy was such that students came from all over the Greek world to study there, making it one of the first truly cosmopolitan centers of the West. Its most famous student, the hallmark of late Classical philosophical inquiry, was Aristotle.
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