Socrates

As already seen, the central character in The Clouds was none other than Athens’s most celebrated contemporary philosopher, Socrates. Socrates was born in Athens in 469 and had spent almost all his life in the city, although he seems to have served, bravely the accounts suggest, as a hoplite on occasions in the Peloponnesian War. He played virtually no part in politics, claiming that to have done so would have compromised his principles. He was an isolated, self-centred figure, capable of withdrawing from all human contact (there is one story that he once stood motionless and lost in thought for twenty-four hours) and for this reason vulnerable in a city where public participation was so highly valued. (See now Bettany Hughes’s wide-ranging The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life, London and New York, 2011, that provides the background to Socrates’ life and ideas.)

Socrates himself wrote nothing and what is known of his ideas is drawn from three sources. The first, Aristophanes’ portrayal in The Clouds, is probably distorted by the demands of the comedy, although some have seen its references in the play to Socrates’ interests in private religious cults as valid. The historian Xenophon provided some Memorabilia which arose from direct personal contact with Socrates and which contain a narrative with some verbatim extracts from Socrates’ trial, but by far the most important source, and virtually the only one for Socrates’ philosophy, is Plato. Although the range of material is rich and wide-ranging, it too has its limitations. Plato was forty years younger than Socrates and only knew him in the closing years of a long life. Socrates is always allowed to speak directly, but it is often difficult to distinguish between Socrates’ own thoughts and those of Plato. (Plato’s works are termed ‘Dialogues’ because Plato records conversations in which Socrates is usually the dominating speaker. They are conventionally divided into three groups, the Early, Middle, and Late Dialogues. Socrates appears in almost every one of the Dialogues but it is assumed that Plato’s views predominate in the Middle and Late Dialogues and that Plato has moved away from any historical portrayal of the man himself.)

For Plato Socrates was a hero. He is presented as someone who lives for philosophy itself, searching for the truth without any regard for material gain, in the end dying for his beliefs. These beliefs centre on the human soul and its search for ‘the good’. The soul is not just a disembodied spirit, argues Socrates, it is the character of a person, an integral part of his personality. It can be corrupted by the glamour of the world and has to discover for itself that there is something called ‘the good’ which can be grasped through the use of reason. Once ‘the good’ has been found the soul will recognize and be naturally attracted to it. In effect Socrates was shifting the attentions of philosophy away from attempts to understand only the physical world towards something very different, individual self-discovery. It is better, he is recorded as saying, to be alone in one’s convictions when these are aligned with the fruits of personal reasoning, than simply to be one of the crowd at the expense of one’s integrity. This was a new start in the history of philosophy, and in recognition of this all earlier thinkers are conventionally described as ‘pre-Socratic.

The first step to finding ‘the good’ is to recognize the limitations of one’s present life, and this means examining the conventions by which it is lived. (‘An unexamined life is not worth living’ is perhaps the most famous of Socrates’ statements.) In the typical Socratic dialogue, Socrates allows the person he is addressing to express a view, about bravery or friendship, for instance. Socrates then breaks down the statement, showing how one example of friendship is inadequate as a means of understanding the essence of what friendship means.

In one dialogue Socrates talks with the general Laches in an attempt to define bravery:

SocRATES to LACHES. I wanted to get your opinion not only of bravery in the hoplite line, but also in cavalry engagements and in all forms of fighting; and indeed of bravery not only in fighting but also at sea, and in the face of illness and poverty and public affairs. And there is bravery not only in face of pain and fear, but also of desire and pleasure, both fearsome to fight against whether by attack or retreat—for some men are brave in all these encounters, aren’t they, Laches?

LACHES. Yes, certainly, Socrates. Then aH these are examples of bravery, only some men show it in pleasure, some in pain, some in desire, some in danger. And there are others who show cowardice in the same circumstances.

Socrates to laches. Now what I want to know was just what each of these two qualities is. So try again and tell me first, what is this common characteristic of courage which they all share? Do you understand now what I mean? laches. I am afraid I don’t.

(Translation: Desmond Lee)

Socrates assumes that there is a concept, ‘bravery, which is somehow there waiting to be discovered by reason. Discovery would lead to there being real knowledge of what bravery is, at a level beyond that held in the opinions of ordinary men in the sense that the knowledge could be defended rationally. However, in the Dialogues Socrates seldom reaches this point. Socrates even suggests that it is not his job to provide this kind of knowledge. It has to be discovered by the individual for himself. (It could not, therefore, be taught.) In the Theaetetus he is recorded as follows: ‘I cannot myself give birth to wisdom, and the criticism which has so often been made of me, that though I ask questions of others I have no contribution to make myself because I have no wisdom in me, is quite true.’ On another occasion Socrates said that his wisdom lay in the fact that he was the only man who fully realized his own ignorance.

The experience of meeting Socrates must have been both inspiring and frustrating. Here is the portrait given in Plato’s Symposium by a drunken Alcibiades, the egocentric aristocrat who will reappear later:

When I listen to him, my heart pounds. . . it’s a sort of frenzy. . . possessed. . . and the tears stream out of me at what he says. And I can see a lot of other people that he’s had just the same effect on. I’ve heard Pericles, I’ve heard plenty more good speakers, and I thought they did pretty well, but they never had an effect like this on me. My soul wasn’t turned upside down by them and it didn’t suffer from the feeling that I’m dirt. But that’s the feeling I get from him and I know very well, at this moment, if I were prepared to lend him my ears, I couldn’t hold out, he makes me admit that when there’s so much I need, I don’t look after myself. (Translation: Kenneth Dover)

It was probably inevitable that Socrates would get into trouble in the deeply unsettled times of the late fifth century. In 403 the democrats had just regained the initiative in the city (after the rule of the Thirty Tyrants) and their suspicions of Socrates rested partly on his association with discredited aristocrats such as Alcibi-ades. Socrates made it quite clear that he regarded popular opinion as something inferior to the reasoned findings of intellectuals. However much he professed that he himself was ignorant, the charge of intellectual elitism was bound to stick. The actual charges of ‘corrupting the young’ and ‘neglect of the gods whom the city worships’ brought by a number of his enemies in 399 may have been trumped-up ones but they reflected the uneasiness of a city where communal values continued to be strongly valued and religious sensitivities remained acute. It is certainly possible that Socrates had dabbled in private cults at a time when it was unwise to do so.

At his trial Socrates appears to have been in no mood to compromise and, in Plato’s account, the Apology, he put his case clearly and consistently but seems only

To have aroused greater anger among his listeners. He simply refused to play according to the conventions, suggesting he had a mission to undermine the misguided thoughts of others and might even be supported by the city (with free meals for life!) for his efforts. The guilty verdict (apparently by 280 votes to 220) did not necessarily mean a death penalty but Socrates’ refusal to suggest an alternative eventually made it inevitable. According to Plato, Socrates met his end calmly, sharing his thoughts while the hemlock steadily spread through his body (although death by hemlock was in reality painful). Plato’s accounts of his last days (the Phaedo) have left one of the most enduring images of western cultural and political history. The issues involved, community versus the individual, ‘truth’ and knowledge versus popular opinion, continue to haunt, and, it is fair to say, honour, his memory.