socrates

Socrates, herm from a Greek original, second half of the 4th century BC; in theCapitoline Museums, Rome.

© Araldo de Luca/Corbis

Socrates

Socrates, (born c. 470 BCE, Athens [Greece]—died 399BCE, Athens), Greek philosopher whose way of life, character,and thought exerted a profound influence on ancient andmodern philosophy.

Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure in his native Athens, so much so that he was frequently mocked in theplays of comic dramatists. (The Clouds of Aristophanes, produced in 423, is the best-known example.) Although Socrates himselfwrote nothing, he is depicted in conversation in compositions by a small circle of his admirers—Plato and Xenophon first amongthem. He is portrayed in these works as a man of great insight, integrity, self-mastery, and argumentative skill. The impact of hislife was all the greater because of the way in which it ended: at age 70, he was brought to trial on a charge of impiety andsentenced to death by poisoning (the poison probably being hemlock) by a jury of his fellow citizens. Plato’s Apology of Socratespurports to be the speech Socrates gave at his trial in response to the accusations made against him (Greek apologia means“defense”). Its powerful advocacy of the examined life and its condemnation of Athenian democracy have made it one of thecentral documents of Western thought and culture.

While Socrates was alive, he was, as noted, the object of comic ridicule, but most of the plays that make reference to him areentirely lost or exist only in fragmentary form—Clouds being the chief exception. Although Socrates is the central figure of thisplay, it was not Aristophanes’ purpose to give a balanced and accurate portrait of him (comedy never aspires to this) but ratherto use him to represent certain intellectual trends in contemporary Athens—the study of language and nature and, asAristophanes implies, the amoralism and atheism that accompany these pursuits. The value of the play as a reliable source ofknowledge about Socrates is thrown further into doubt by the fact that, in Plato’s Apology, Socrates himself rejects it as afabrication. This aspect of the trial will be discussed more fully below.

Soon after Socrates’ death, several members of his circle preserved and praised his memory by writing works that represent himin his most characteristic activity—conversation. His interlocutors in these (typically adversarial) exchanges included people hehappened to meet, devoted followers, prominent political figures, and leading thinkers of the day. Many of these “Socraticdiscourses,” as Aristotle calls them in his Poetics, are no longer extant; there are only brief remnants of the conversations writtenby Antisthenes, Aeschines, Phaedo, and Eucleides. But those composed by Plato and Xenophon survive in their entirety. Whatknowledge we have of Socrates must therefore depend primarily on one or the other (or both, when their portraits coincide) ofthese sources. (Plato and Xenophon also wrote separate accounts, each entitled Apology of Socrates, of Socrates’ trial.) Mostscholars, however, do not believe that every Socratic discourse of Xenophon and Plato was intended as a historical report ofwhat the real Socrates said, word-for-word, on some occasion. What can reasonably be claimed about at least some of thesedialogues is that they convey the gist of the questions Socrates asked, the ways in which he typically responded to the answers

Philosophical and literary sources

Table of ContentsIntroductionPhilosophical and literary sources

XenophonPlatoAristotle

Life and personalityBackground of the trial

Religious scandal and the coup of the oligarchsThe perceived fragility of Athenian democracyThe Athenian ideal of free speech

Plato’s ApologyThe public’s hatred of Socrates

The impression created by AristophanesThe human resistance to self-reflectionSocrates’ criticism of democracy

The charge of impietySocrates’ radical reconception of pietyThe danger posed by Socrates

Socrates versus PlatoThe legacy of Socrates

Socrates (Greek philosopher) -- Britannica Online... http://www.britannica.com/print/topic/551948

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he received, and the general philosophical orientation that emerged from these conversations.

Among the compositions of Xenophon, the one that gives the fullest portrait of Socrates is Memorabilia. The first two chapters ofBook I of this work are especially important, because they explicitly undertake a refutation of the charges made against Socratesat his trial; they are therefore a valuable supplement to Xenophon’s Apology, which is devoted entirely to the same purpose. Theportrait of Socrates that Xenophon gives in Books III and IV of Memorabilia seems, in certain passages, to be heavily influenced byhis reading of some of Plato’s dialogues, and so the evidentiary value of at least this portion of the work is diminished.Xenophon’s Symposium is a depiction of Socrates in conversation with his friends at a drinking party (it is perhaps inspired by awork of Plato of the same name and character) and is regarded by some scholars as a valuable re-creation of Socrates’ thoughtand way of life. Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (literally: “estate manager”), a Socratic conversation concerning household organizationand the skills needed by the independent farmer, is Xenophon’s attempt to bring the qualities he admired in Socrates to bearupon the subject of overseeing one’s property. It is unlikely to have been intended as a report of one of Socrates’ conversations.

Plato, unlike Xenophon, is generally regarded as a philosopher of the highest order of originality and depth. According to somescholars, his philosophical skills made him far better able than Xenophon was to understand Socrates and therefore morevaluable a source of information about him. The contrary view is that Plato’s originality and vision as a philosopher led him to usehis Socratic discourses not as mere devices for reproducing the conversations he had heard but as vehicles for the advocacy ofhis own ideas (however much they may have been inspired by Socrates) and that he is therefore far more untrustworthy thanXenophon as a source of information about the historical Socrates. Whichever of these two views is correct, it is undeniable thatPlato is not only the deeper philosopher but also the greater literary artist. Some of his dialogues are so natural and lifelike intheir depiction of conversational interplay that readers must constantly remind themselves that Plato is shaping his material, asany author must.

Although Socrates is the interlocutor who guides the conversation in most of Plato’s dialogues, there are several in which heplays a minor role (Parmenides, Sophist, Statesman, and Timaeus, all of which are generally agreed to be among Plato’s later works)and one (Laws, also composed late) in which he is entirely absent. Why did Plato assign Socrates a small role in some dialogues(and none in Laws) and a large role in others? A simple answer is that, by this device, Plato intended to signal to his readers thatthe dialogues in which Socrates is the major interlocutor convey the philosophy of Socrates, whereas those in which he is aminor figure or does not appear at all present Plato’s own ideas.

But there are formidable objections to this hypothesis, and for several reasons most scholars do not regard it as a seriouspossibility. To begin with, it is unlikely that in so many of his works Plato would have assigned himself so passive and mechanicala role as merely a recording device for the philosophy of Socrates. Furthermore, the portrait of Socrates that results from thishypothesis is not coherent. In some of the dialogues in which he is the principal interlocutor, for example, Socrates insists that hedoes not have satisfactory answers to the questions he poses—questions such as “What is courage?” (raised in Laches), “What isself-control?” (Charmides), and “What is piety?” (Euthyphro). In other dialogues in which he plays a major role, however, Socratesdoes offer systematic answers to such questions. In Books II–X of Republic, for example, he proposes an elaborate answer to thequestion, “What is justice?,” and in doing so he also defends his view of the ideal society, the condition of the human soul, thenature of reality, and the power of art, among many other topics. Were we to hold that all the Platonic dialogues in whichSocrates is the main speaker are depictions of the philosophy of Socrates—a philosophy that Plato endorses but to which he hasmade no contributions of his own—then we would be committed to the absurd view that Socrates both has and lacks answers tothese questions.

For these reasons, there is a broad consensus among scholars that we should not look to works such as Republic, Phaedo,Phaedrus, and Philebus for a historically accurate account of the thought of Socrates—even though they contain a speaker calledSocrates who argues for certain philosophical positions and opposes others. At the same time, we can explain why Plato uses theliterary character of Socrates in many of his writings to present ideas that go well beyond anything that the historical Socratessaid or believed. In these works, Plato is developing ideas that were inspired by his encounter with Socrates, using methods ofinquiry borrowed from Socrates, and showing how much can be accomplished with these Socratic starting points. That is why heassigns Socrates the role of principal interlocutor, despite the fact that he did not intend these works to be mere re-creations ofSocrates’ conversations.

Accordingly, the dialogues of Plato that adhere most closely to what he heard from Socrates are those in which the interlocutorcalled Socrates searches, without apparent success, for answers to questions about the nature of the ethical virtues and otherpractical topics—works such as Laches, Euthyphro, and Charmides. This does not mean that in these dialogues Plato is not shapinghis material or that he is merely writing down, word-for-word, conversations he heard. We cannot know, and it is implausible tosuppose, that in these dialogues of unsuccessful search there is a pure rendering of what the historical Socrates said, with noadmixture of Platonic interpretation or supplement. All we can reasonably suppose is that here, if anywhere, Plato is re-creatingthe give-and-take of Socratic conversation, conveying a sense of the methods Socrates used and the assumptions that guided

Xenophon

Plato


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him when he challenged others to defend their ethical ideas and their way of life.

The portrait of Socrates in these dialogues is fully consonant with the one in Plato’s Apology, and it serves as a valuablesupplement to that work. For in the Apology, Socrates insists that he does not inquire into natural phenomena (“things in the skyand below the earth”), as Aristophanes alleges. On the contrary, he says, he devotes his life to one question only: how he andothers can become good human beings, or as good as possible. The questions he asks others, and discovers that they cannotanswer, are posed in the hope that he might acquire greater wisdom about just this subject. This is the Socrates we find inLaches, Euthyphro, and Charmides—but not in Phaedo, Phaedrus, Philebus, or Republic. (Or, rather, it is not the Socrates of BooksII–X of Republic; the portrait of Socrates in Book I is similar in many ways to that in Apology, Laches, Euthyphro, and Charmides.) Wecan therefore say this much about the historical Socrates as he is portrayed in Plato’s Apology and in some of Plato’s dialogues:he has a methodology, a pattern of inquiry, and an orientation toward ethical questions. He can see how misguided hisinterlocutors are because he is extremely adept at discovering contradictions in their beliefs.

“Socratic method” has now come into general usage as a name for any educational strategy that involves cross-examination ofstudents by their teacher. However, the method used by Socrates in the conversations re-created by Plato follows a more specificpattern: Socrates describes himself not as a teacher but as an ignorant inquirer, and the series of questions he asks are designedto show that the principal question he raises (for example, “What is piety?”) is one to which his interlocutor has no adequateanswer. Typically, the interlocutor is led, by a series of supplementary questions, to see that he must withdraw the answer he atfirst gave to Socrates’ principal question, because that answer falls afoul of the other answers he has given. The methodemployed by Socrates, in other words, is a strategy for showing that the interlocutor’s several answers do not fit together as agroup, thus revealing to the interlocutor his own poor grasp of the concepts under discussion. (Euthyphro, for example, in thedialogue named after him, having been asked what piety is, replies that it is whatever is “dear to the gods.” Socrates continues toprobe, and the ensuing give-and-take can be summarized as follows: Socrates: Are piety and impiety opposites? Euthyphro: Yes.Socrates: Are the gods in disagreement with each other about what is good, what is just, and so on? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: Sothe very same actions are loved by some gods and hated by others? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: So those same actions are bothpious and impious? Euthyphro: Yes.) The interlocutor, having been refuted by means of premises he himself has agreed to, is freeto propose a new answer to Socrates’ principal question; or another conversational partner, who has been listening to thepreceding dialogue, is allowed to take his place. But although the new answers proposed to Socrates’ principal question avoidthe errors revealed in the preceding cross-examination, fresh difficulties are uncovered, and in the end the “ignorance” ofSocrates is revealed as a kind of wisdom, whereas the interlocutors are implicitly criticized for failing to recognize their ignorance.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that, because Socrates professes ignorance about certain questions, he suspendsjudgment about all matters whatsoever. On the contrary, he has some ethical convictions about which he is completelyconfident. As he tells his judges in his defense speech: human wisdom begins with the recognition of one’s own ignorance; theunexamined life is not worth living; ethical virtue is the only thing that matters; and a good human being cannot be harmed(because whatever misfortune he may suffer, including poverty, physical injury, and even death, his virtue will remain intact). ButSocrates is painfully aware that his insights into these matters leave many of the most important ethical questions unanswered.It is left to his student Plato, using the Socratic method as a starting point and ranging over subjects that Socrates neglected, tooffer positive answers to these questions.

Another important source of information about the historical Socrates—Aristotle—provides further evidence for this way ofdistinguishing between the philosophies of Socrates and Plato. In 367, some 30 years after the death of Socrates, Aristotle (whowas then 17 years old) moved to Athens in order to study at Plato’s school, called the Academy. It is difficult to believe that,during his 20 years as a member of that society, Aristotle had no conversations about Socrates with Plato and others who hadbeen personally acquainted with him. There is good reason, then, to suppose that the historical information offered aboutSocrates in Aristotle’s philosophical writings are based on those conversations. What Aristotle tells his readers is that Socratesasked questions but gave no replies, because he lacked knowledge; that he sought definitions of the virtues; and that he wasoccupied with ethical matters and not with questions about the natural world. This is the portrait of Socrates that Plato’s writings,judiciously used, give us. The fact that it is confirmed by Aristotle is all the more reason to accept it.

Although the sources provide only a small amount of information about thelife and personality of Socrates, a unique and vivid picture of him shinesthrough, particularly in some of the works of Plato. We know the names ofhis father, Sophroniscus (probably a stonemason), his mother, Phaenarete,and his wife, Xanthippe, and we know that he had three sons. (In Plato’sTheaetetus, Socrates likens his way of philosophizing to the occupation of hismother, who was a midwife: not pregnant with ideas himself, he assistsothers with the delivery of their ideas, though they are often stillborn.) With

Aristotle

Life and personality


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Socrates, Roman fresco, 1st century BCE; in the EphesusMuseum, Selçuk, Turkey.

DeAgostini/SuperStock

a snub nose and bulging eyes, which made him always appear to be staring,he was unattractive by conventional standards. He served as a hoplite (aheavily armed soldier) in the Athenian army and fought bravely in severalimportant battles. Unlike many of the thinkers of his time, he did not travelto other cities in order to pursue his intellectual interests. Although he didnot seek high office, did not regularly attend meetings of the AthenianAssembly (Ecclesia), the city’s principal governing body (as was his privilegeas an adult male citizen), and was not active in any political faction, hedischarged his duties as a citizen, which included not only military servicebut occasional membership in the Council of Five Hundred, which preparedthe Assembly’s agenda.

Socrates was not well-born or wealthy, but many of his admirers were, andthey included several of the most politically prominent Athenian citizens.When the democratic constitution of Athens was overthrown for a brief timein 403, four years before his trial, he did not leave the city, as did manydevoted supporters of democratic rule, including his friend Chaerephon,who had gone to Delphi many years earlier to ask the oracle whetheranyone was wiser than Socrates. (The answer was no.)

The expression of same-sex love was not unusual in Athens at this time, andSocrates was physically attracted to beautiful young men. This aspect of his personality is most vividly conveyed in the openingpages of Charmides and in the speech of the young and ambitious general Alcibiades at the end of Symposium. Socrates’ long fitsof abstraction, his courage in battle, his resistance to hunger and cold, his ability to consume wine without apparent inebriation,and his extraordinary self-control in the presence of sensual attractions are all described with consummate artistry in theopening and closing pages of Symposium.

Socrates’ personality was in some ways closely connected to his philosophical outlook. He was remarkable for the absolutecommand he maintained over his emotions and his apparent indifference to physical hardships. Corresponding to thesepersonal qualities was his commitment to the doctrine that reason, properly cultivated, can and ought to be the all-controllingfactor in human life. Thus he has no fear of death, he says in Plato’s Apology, because he has no knowledge of what comes afterit, and he holds that, if anyone does fear death, his fear can be based only on a pretense of knowledge. The assumptionunderlying this claim is that, once one has given sufficient thought to some matter, one’s emotions will follow suit. Fear will bedispelled by intellectual clarity. Similarly, according to Socrates, if one believes, upon reflection, that one should act in a particularway, then, necessarily, one’s feelings about the act in question will accommodate themselves to one’s belief—one will desire toact in that way. (Thus, Socrates denies the possibility of what has been called “weakness of will”—knowingly acting in a way onebelieves to be wrong.) It follows that, once one knows what virtue is, it is impossible not to act virtuously. Anyone who fails to actvirtuously does so because he incorrectly identifies virtue with something it is not. This is what is meant by the thesis, attributedto Socrates by Aristotle, that virtue is a form of knowledge.

Socrates’ conception of virtue as a form of knowledge explains why he takes it to be of the greatest importance to seek answersto questions such as “What is courage?” and “What is piety?” If we could just discover the answers to these questions, we wouldhave all we need to live our lives well. The fact that Socrates achieved a complete rational control of his emotions no doubtencouraged him to suppose that his own case was indicative of what human beings at their best can achieve.

But if virtue is a form of knowledge, does that mean that each of the virtues—courage, piety, justice—constitutes a separatebranch of knowledge, and should we infer that it is possible to acquire knowledge of one of these branches but not of theothers? This is an issue that emerges in several of Plato’s dialogues; it is most fully discussed in Protagoras. It was a piece ofconventional Greek wisdom, and is still widely assumed, that one can have some admirable qualities but lack others. One might,for example, be courageous but unjust. Socrates challenges this assumption; he believes that the many virtues form a kind ofunity—though, not being able to define any of the virtues, he is in no position to say whether they are all the same thing orinstead constitute some looser kind of unification. But he unequivocally rejects the conventional idea that one can possess onevirtue without possessing them all.

Another prominent feature of the personality of Socrates, one that often creates problems about how best to interpret him, is (touse the ancient Greek term) his eirôneia. Although this is the term from which the English word irony is derived, there is adifference between the two. To speak ironically is to use words to mean the opposite of what they normally convey, but it is notnecessarily to aim at deception, for the speaker may expect and even want the audience to recognize this reversal. In contrast,for the ancient Greeks eirôneia meant “dissembling”—a user of eirôneia is trying to hide something. This is the accusation that ismade against Socrates several times in Plato’s works (though never in Xenophon’s). Socrates says in Plato’s Apology, for example,that the jurors hearing his case will not accept the reason he offers for being unable to stop his philosophizing in themarketplace—that to do so would be to disobey the god who presides at Delphi. (Socrates’ audience understood him to bereferring to Apollo, though he does not himself use this name. Throughout his speech, he affirms his obedience to the god or tothe gods but not specifically to one or more of the familiar gods or goddesses of the Greek pantheon). The cause of theirincredulity, he adds, will be their assumption that he is engaging in eirôneia. In effect, Socrates is admitting that he has acquired a


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reputation for insincerity—for giving people to understand that his words mean what they are ordinarily taken to mean when infact they do not. Similarly, in Book I of Republic, Socrates is accused by a hostile interlocutor, Thrasymachus, of “habitual eirôneia.”Although Socrates says that he does not have a good answer to the question “What is justice?,” Thrasymachus thinks that this isjust a pose. Socrates, he alleges, is concealing his favoured answer. And in Symposium, Alcibiades accuses Socrates of “spendinghis whole life engaged in eirôneia and playing with people” and compares him to a carved figurine whose outer shell conceals itsinner contents. The heart of Alcibiades’ accusation is that Socrates pretends to care about people and to offer them advantagesbut withholds what he knows because he is full of disdain.

Plato’s portrayal of Socrates as an “ironist” shows how conversation with him could easily lead to a frustrating impasse and howthe possibility of resentment was ever present. Socrates was in this sense a masked interlocutor—an aspect of hisself-presentation that made him more fascinating and alluring to his audiences but that also added to their distrust andsuspicion. And readers, who come to know Socrates through the intervention of Plato, are in somewhat the same situation. Ourefforts to interpret him are sometimes not as sound as we would like, because we must rely on judgments, often difficult tojustify, about when he means what he says and when he does not.

Even when Socrates goes to court to defend himself against the most serious of charges, he seems to be engaged in eirôneia.After listening to the speeches given by his accusers, he says, in the opening sentence of Plato’s Apology: “I was almost carriedaway in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak.” Is this the habitual eirôneia of Socrates? Or did the speeches of hisaccusers really have this effect on him? It is difficult to be sure. But, by Socrates’ own admission, the suspicion that anything hesays might be a pose undermines his ability to persuade the jurors of his good intentions. His eirôneia may even have lentsupport to one of the accusations made against him, that he corrupted the young. For if Socrates really did engage in eirôneia,and if his youthful followers delighted in and imitated this aspect of his character, then to that extent he encouraged them tobecome dissembling and untrustworthy, just like himself.

The trial of Socrates in 399 BCE occurred soon after Athens’s defeat at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431–404BCE). Not only were Sparta and Athens military rivals during those years, they also had radically different forms of government.Athens was a democracy: all its adult male citizens were members of the Assembly; many of the city’s offices were filled by lot(election was regarded as undemocratic, because it effectively pronounced some citizens better qualified than others); and itscitizens enjoyed a high degree of freedom to live and speak as they liked, provided that they obeyed the law and did nothing toundermine the democracy and the public good. Sparta, by contrast, was a mixed regime based on a complex power-sharingarrangement between various elite groups and ordinary citizens, and it exerted far more control than Athens did over educationand the daily life of its citizens.

There was in Athens, particularly among the well-born, wealthy, and young, a degree of admiration for certain aspects of Spartanlife and government. These young men, who spent much of their time in the public gymnasia, prided themselves on theirtoughness, practiced a certain simplicity of style, and grew their hair long—all in imitation of Spartan ways. (As Plato andXenophon confirm, Socrates himself shared some of these qualities. In Aristophanes’ Birds [414], the young who express theiradmiration for Sparta are said to be “Socratizing.”) No doubt the fact that Athens, an empire-building city with vast resources anda large population, could not defeat smaller and poorer Sparta—and, in the end, lost its empire to that rival regime—added tothe allure of the Spartan political system and way of life.

Ordinary Athenians—people who had to work for a living and did not belong to any of the aristocratic families—were proud oftheir democratic institutions and the freedoms they enjoyed, and they were well aware that their form of government hadinternal as well as external enemies and critics. Furthermore, they did not think of civic and religious matters as separate spheresbut assumed instead that participation in the religious life of the city, as regulated by democratic institutions, was one of theduties of all citizens and that great harm could come to the city if the gods it recognized were offended or customary religiousprohibitions were violated.

During and soon after the war with Sparta, several events revealed how much damage could be done to Athenian democracy byindividuals who did not respect the religious customs of the community, who had no allegiance to the institutions of democracy,or who admired their city’s adversary. One night in 415, shortly before a major naval expedition to Sicily was to set sail, manystatues of the god Hermes (who protected travelers) were mutilated, presumably by those who wished to prevent the expeditionfrom proceeding. While the matter was being investigated, several men, including one of Socrates’ greatest admirers,Alcibiades—who had sponsored and helped to lead the Sicilian expedition—were accused of mocking a religious ceremony andrevealing its sacred secrets to outsiders. Some of them were tried and executed. Alcibiades, who had been charged withinvolvement in other religious scandals before, was called back from Sicily to face trial. The power of his enemies and thesuspicion of him was so great, however, that he decided to escape to Sparta rather than return to Athens to face the likelihood ofa death sentence. Athens condemned him and his associates to death in absentia, and he proceeded to offer counsel andleadership to Sparta in its fight against Athens. In 407 he returned to Athens and was cleared of the charges against him, though

Background of the trial

Religious scandal and the coup of the oligarchs


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he never fully regained the trust either of the democrats or their opponents. Alcibiades was only one of many followers ofSocrates mentioned in Plato’s dialogues who were involved in the religious scandals of 415.

In 411 a group of 400 opponents of Athenian democracy staged a coup and tried to install an oligarchy, but they wereoverthrown in the same year and democracy was restored. Some of them, who were associates of Socrates, went into exile aftertheir revolution failed. In 404, soon after the Athenians’ defeat, Sparta installed a group of 30 men (many years later dubbed theThirty Tyrants) in Athens to establish a far less democratic regime there. The leader of the most extreme wing of this group,Critias, was part of the Socratic circle; so, too, was Charmides, another of the 30. The democrats, many of whom had left Athenswhen the 30 came to power, defeated them in battle, and democracy was restored the following year. (In Plato’s Apology,Socrates refers to the reign of the 30 and their unsuccessful attempt to implicate him in their crimes.)

The year in which Socrates was prosecuted, 399, was one in which several other prominent figures were brought to trial inAthens on the charge of impiety. That is unlikely to have been a coincidence; rather, it suggests that there was, at the time, asense of anxiety about the dangers of religious unorthodoxy and about the political consequences that religious deviation couldbring. Two attempts to put an end to Athenian democracy had occurred in recent years, and the religious scandals of 415 werenot so far in the past that they would have been forgotten. Because a general amnesty had been negotiated, no one, except the30 and a few others, could be tried for offenses committed prior to 403, when the 30 were defeated. But this would not haveprevented an accusation from being brought against someone who committed a crime after 403. If Socrates had continued,during the years after 403, to engage in the same practices that were so characteristic of him throughout his adult life, then noteven the most ardent supporters of the amnesty would have objected to bringing him to trial. And once a trial had begun, it wascommon practice for prosecutors to mention anything that might be judged prejudicial to the accused. There was no legalcustom or court-appointed judge that would have prevented Socrates’ accusers from referring to those of his admirers—Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides, and the like—who at one time had been enemies of democratic Athens or had been associatedwith religious scandal. The law that Socrates was alleged to have violated was a law against impiety, but in support of thataccusation he also was accused of having corrupted the young. His jury might have taken his association with opponents of thedemocracy, or with persons convicted or suspected of religious crimes, to be grounds for considering him a dangerous man.

The fact that one of those who assisted in the prosecution of Socrates and spoke against him—Anytus—was a prominentdemocratic leader makes it all the more likely that worries about the future of Athenian democracy lay behind Socrates’ trial. Andeven if neither Anytus nor the other prosecutors (Meletus and Lycon) harboured such fears, it is hard to believe that they wereentirely absent from the minds of those who heard his case. In any event, because Socrates openly displayed his antidemocraticideas in his defense speech, it would have been difficult for jurors to set aside his association with opponents of the democracy,even if they had been inclined to do so. Athenian democracy must have seemed extremely fragile in 399. It is only with thebenefit of hindsight that we can see that its institutions were strong enough to last most of the rest of the 4th century.

It is not known with certainty whether those who prosecuted Socrates mentioned Alcibiades and Critias at his trial—there is norecord of their speeches, and it is difficult to interpret the evidence about what they did say. But it is very likely that specificnames were mentioned. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates notes that his accusers alleged of certain individuals that they were hisstudents, an accusation he lamely denies on the grounds that, because he has never undertaken to teach anyone, he cannothave had students. Furthermore, Xenophon reports in Memorabilia that, according to “the accuser,” Alcibiades and Critias werefollowers of Socrates. The word accuser is taken by some scholars to be a reference to one of the three persons who spokeagainst Socrates in 399, though others take Xenophon to be defending Socrates against charges made against him in a pamphletwritten several years later by Polycrates, a teacher of rhetoric. In any event, many years later, in the 4th century, the oratorAeschines, in his speech “Against Timarchus,” asserted in public that Socrates was convicted because he was “shown to havebeen the teacher of Critias, one of the thirty who had overthrown the democracy.”

But even if Socrates’ association with Critias and Alcibiades was an important factor leading to his trial and conviction, it certainlywas not the only ingredient of the case against him, nor even the most important one. The law that Socrates was alleged to haveviolated was a law against impiety, and the thrust of his defense, as presented by Plato, was that his life has been consumed byhis single-minded devotion to the god. The Socrates who speaks to us in Plato’s Apology has no doubt that the charge of impietyagainst him must be refuted. There is no reason to suspect that this charge was a mere pretext and that what Socrates was reallybeing prosecuted for was his antidemocratic associations and ideas. The political background of his trial is important because ithelps to explain why he was not prosecuted in the 430s or 420s or at any other time of his life. Everything known about himindicates that he was the same man, and lived the same sort of life, in 399 and in 423, the year of Clouds. What made him theobject of prosecution in 399, after so many years during which his behaviour was tolerated, was a change in politicalcircumstances. But it remains the case, according to the Socrates of Apology, that his alleged religious unorthodoxy was deeplyworrying to his prosecutors and jurors. That is why this allegation receives all his attention.

That Socrates was prosecuted because of his religious ideas and political associations indicates how easily an ideal held dear by

The perceived fragility of Athenian democracy

The Athenian ideal of free speech


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The Death of Socrates, oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David, 1787; in the Metropolitan Museumof Art, New York City.

Art Media/Heritage-Images/Imagestate

his fellow Athenians—the ideal of open and frank speech among citizens—could be set aside when they felt insecure. This idealand its importance in Athens are well illustrated by the remark of the orator Demosthenes, that in Athens one is free to praisethe Spartan constitution, whereas in Sparta it is only the Spartan constitution that one is allowed to praise. Were there otherinstances, besides the trial of Socrates, in which an Athenian was prosecuted in court because of the dangerous ideas he wasalleged to have circulated? Centuries after Socrates’ death, several writers alleged that many other intellectual figures of histime—including Protagoras, Anaxagoras, Damon, Aspasia, and Diagoras—were exiled or prosecuted. Several scholars haveconcluded that Athens’s allegiance to the ideal of freedom of speech was deeply compromised during the last decades of the 5thcentury. Others have argued that much or all of the evidence for a period of persecution and harassment was invented bywriters who wanted to claim, as a badge of honour for their favourite philosophers, that they, too, like the universally admiredSocrates, had been persecuted by the Athenians. What can safely be said is this: the trial of Socrates is the only case in which wecan be certain that an Athenian was legally prosecuted not for an overt act that directly harmed the public or someindividual—such as treason, corruption, or slander—but for alleged harm indirectly caused by the expression and teaching ofideas.

According to Plato’s Apology, the vote to convict Socrates was very close: had 30 of those who voted for conviction cast theirballots differently, he would have been acquitted. (So he was convicted by a majority of 59. Assuming, as many scholars do, thatthe size of his jury was 501, 280 favoured conviction and 221 opposed it.) It is reasonable to speculate that many of those whoopposed conviction did so partly because, however little they cared for what Socrates thought and how he lived, they cherishedthe freedom of speech enjoyed by all Athenians and attached more importance to this aspect of their political system than to anyharm Socrates may have done in the past or might do in the future. The Athenian love of free speech allowed Socrates to cajoleand criticize his fellow citizens for the whole of his long life but gave way—though just barely—when it was put under greatpressure.

Although in none of Plato’s dialogues is Plato himself aconversational partner or even a witness to aconversation, in the Apology Socrates says that Plato isone of several friends in the audience. In this wayPlato lets us know that he was an eyewitness of thetrial and therefore in the best possible position towrite about it. The other account we have of the trial,that of Xenophon, a contemporary of Socrates, is of avery different character. We know that Xenophon wasnot present as a live witness. He tells his readers thathe is reporting only a portion of Socrates’ speech andthat he learned about the trial from Hermogenes, amember of the Socratic circle.

It is not surprising, then, that there are significantdifferences between Plato’s and Xenophon’s accountsof what was said at the trial. (Xenophon, for example,dwells on the troubles of old age from which Socratesis escaping by being condemned to death, whereasPlato barely alludes to Socrates’ age.) Of greaterimportance is the fact that the two Apologys agree inmany details. They agree about what the chargesagainst Socrates were: failing to acknowledge the godsrecognized by the city, introducing other new

divinities, and corrupting the young. They also agree that Meletus supported his accusation by referring to a divine voice or signthat Socrates claimed as his personal guide; that Socrates acknowledged the guidance of this divine sign in his speech; that partof Socrates’ defense consisted of a cross-examination of Meletus; that Socrates referred to an inquiry made by his friend,Chaerephon, to the Delphic oracle; that the response of the oracle confirmed that a unique status had been conferred uponSocrates by the gods; that, having been found guilty, Socrates refused to propose a punishment that the jury would findacceptable; and that, after the jury voted in favour of the death penalty, he once again addressed the jury and expressed noregrets for his manner of living or the course of his trial. There is no reason to suppose that Xenophon had learned of theseaspects of the trial from Plato. His agreement with Plato about these matters assures us that they are not fabrications.

But can we go so far as to say that in Plato’s Apology there is a word-for-word transcription (or something close to it) of thespeech Socrates gave in his defense? It would not have been impossible for Plato to have managed such a feat by takingextensive notes, comparing his memory with that of others, and gradually perfecting a rendition that aimed at replicating theoriginal as closely as possible. Unfortunately, there is no way to prove that Plato was striving to achieve this kind and degree ofaccuracy. Some scholars, in fact, have argued that Plato was engaged in a much different project: his Apology, they have noted, is

Plato’s Apology


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similar in many respects to the works of contemporary orators and teachers of rhetoric—in particular to a rhetorical exercise,“Defense of Palamades,” by Gorgias—and they infer that in composing the Apology in this fashion Plato was not seeking historicalaccuracy but instead striving to outdo or to parody the orators for whom he felt disdain. But this hypothesis is just as speculativeas the supposition that Plato strove to record as accurately as possible the actual speech of Socrates.

We cannot eliminate the possibility that some parts of the speech Plato wrote were not actually delivered at the trial or wereexpressed rather differently. Plato’s speech represents his creative attempt to defend Socrates and his way of life and tocondemn those who voted to kill him. In fact, Plato’s motives in writing the Apology are likely to have been complex. One of them,no doubt, was to defend and praise Socrates by making use of many of the points Socrates himself had offered in his speech.But, as any reader of the work can see, Plato is at the same time using the trial and death of Socrates to condemn Athens, to callupon his readers to reject the conventional life that Athens would have preferred Socrates to lead, and to choose instead the lifeof a Socratic philosopher. In the 4th century BCE Athens had no norm of accurate reportage or faithful biography, and so Platowould have felt free to shape his material in whatever way suited his multiple aims. Because it was Socrates he wished to praise,he had no choice but to make the Socrates of the Apology close to the original. But he would not have felt bound merely toreproduce, as best he could, the speech that Socrates delivered.

In any event, the historical accuracy of Plato’s Apology should not be the only question on the reader’s mind. Of equal importanceis whether Plato’s Socrates really is guilty of the charges brought against him, whether he is a wholly just and admirable person,whether his manner of living is the one that is most worthwhile (or perhaps even the only one that is worthwhile at all, asSocrates insists), and whether there is any reason for a political community to be concerned about the harm such a person mightdo. Surely the last thing Plato would have wanted his readers to do with the Apology is to ignore its philosophical, religious, andpolitical dimensions in order to concentrate solely on its accuracy as a piece of historical reportage.

Part of the fascination of Plato’s Apology consists in the fact that it presents a man who takes extraordinary steps throughout hislife to be of the greatest possible value to his community but whose efforts, far from earning him the gratitude and honour hethinks he deserves, lead to his condemnation and death at the hands of the very people he seeks to serve. Socrates is painfullyaware that he is a hated figure and that this is what has led to the accusations against him. He has little money and no politicalsavvy or influence, and he has paid little attention to his family and household—all in order to serve the public that now revileshim. What went wrong?

Socrates goes to some length to answer this question. Much of his defense consists not merely in refuting the charges but inoffering a complex explanation of why such false accusations should have been brought against him in the first place. Part of theexplanation, he believes, is that he has long been misunderstood by the general public. The public, he says, has focused itsdistrust of certain types of people upon him. He claims that the false impressions of his “first accusers” (as he calls them) derivefrom a play of Aristophanes (he is referring to Clouds) in which a character called Socrates is seen “swinging about, saying he waswalking on air and talking a lot of nonsense about things of which I know nothing at all.” The Socrates of Aristophanes’ comedy isthe head of a school that investigates every sort of empirical phenomenon, regards clouds and air as divine substances, deniesthe existence of any gods but these, studies language and the art of argument, and uses its knowledge of rhetorical devices to“make the worse into the stronger argument,” as the Socrates of the Apology puts it in his speech. Socrates’ corruption of theyoung is also a major theme of Clouds: it features a father (Strepsiades) who attends Socrates’ school with his son (Pheidippides)in order to learn how to avoid paying the debts he has incurred because of his son’s extravagance. In the end, Pheidippideslearns all too well how to use argumentative skills to his advantage; indeed, he prides himself on his ability to prove that it is rightfor a son to beat his parents. In the end, Strepsiades denounces Socrates and burns down the building that houses his school.

This play, Socrates says, has created the general impression that he studies celestial and geographic phenomena and, like theSophists who travel from city to city, takes a fee for teaching the young various skills. Not so, says Socrates. He thinks it would bea fine thing to possess the kinds of knowledge these Sophists claim to teach, but he has never discussed these matters withanyone—as his judges should be able to confirm for themselves, because, he says, many of them have heard his conversations.

But this can only be the beginning of Socrates’ explanation, for it leads to further questions. Why should Aristophanes havewritten in this way about Socrates? The latter must have been a well-known figure in 423, when Clouds was produced, forAristophanes typically wrote about and mocked figures who already were familiar to his audience. Furthermore, if, as Socratesclaims, many of his jurors had heard him in discussion and could therefore confirm for themselves that he did not study or teachothers about clouds, air, and other such matters and did not take a fee as the Sophists did, then why did they not vote to acquithim of the charges by an overwhelming majority?

The public’s hatred of Socrates

The impression created by Aristophanes

The human resistance to self-reflection


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Socrates provides answers to these questions. Long before Aristophanes wrote about him, he had acquired a reputation amonghis fellow citizens because he spent his days attempting to fulfill his divine mission to cross-examine them and to puncture theirconfident belief that they possessed knowledge of the most important matters. Socrates tells the jurors that, as a result of hisinquiries, he has learned a bitter lesson about his fellow citizens: not only do they fail to possess the knowledge they claim tohave, but they resent having this fact pointed out to them, and they hate him for his insistence that his reflective way of life andhis disavowal of knowledge make him superior to them. The only people who delight in his conversation are the young andwealthy, who have the leisure to spend their days with him. These people imitate him by carrying out their own cross-examinations of their elders. Socrates does admit, then, that he has, to some degree, set one generation against another—and inmaking this confession, he makes it apparent why some members of the jury may have been convinced, on the basis of theirown acquaintance with him, that he has corrupted the city’s young.

One of the most subtle components of Socrates’ explanation for the hatred he has aroused is his point that people hide theshame they feel when they are unable to withstand his destructive arguments. His reputation as a corrupter of the young and asa Sophist and an atheist is sustained because it provides people with an ostensibly reasonable explanation of their hatred ofhim. No one will say, “I hate Socrates because I cannot answer his questions, and he makes me look foolish in front of theyoung.” Instead, people hide their shame and the real source of their anger by seizing on the general impression that he is thesort of philosopher who casts doubt on traditional religion and teaches people rhetorical tricks that can be used to make badarguments look good. These ways of hiding the source of their hatred are all the more potent because they contain at least agrain of truth. Socrates, as both Plato and Xenophon confirm, is a man who loves to argue: in that respect he is like a Sophist.And his conception of piety, as revealed by his devotion to the Delphic oracle, is highly unorthodox: in that respect he is like thosewho deny the existence of the gods.

Socrates believes that this hatred, whose real source is so painful for people to acknowledge, played a crucial role in leadingMeletus, Anytus, and Lycon to come forward in court against him; it also makes it so difficult for many members of the jury toacknowledge that he has the highest motives and has done his city a great service. Aristophanes’ mockery of Socrates and thelegal indictment against him could not possibly have led to his trial or conviction were it not for something in a large number ofhis fellow Athenians that wanted to be rid of him. This is a theme to which Socrates returns several times. He compares himself,at one point, to a gadfly who has been assigned by the god to stir a large and sluggish horse. Note what this implies: the bite ofthe fly cannot be anything but painful, and it is only natural that the horse would like nothing better than to kill it. After the juryhas voted in favour of the death penalty, Socrates tells them that their motive has been their desire to avoid giving a defense oftheir lives. Something in people resists self-examination: they do not want to answer deep questions about themselves, and theyhate those who cajole them for not doing so or for doing so poorly. At bottom, Socrates thinks that all but a few people will strikeout against those who try to stimulate serious moral reflection in them. That is why he thinks that his trial is not merely the resultof unfortuitous events—a mere misunderstanding caused by the work of a popular playwright—but the outcome ofpsychological forces deep within human nature.

Socrates’ analysis of the hatred he has incurred is one part of a larger theme that he dwells on throughout his speech. Athens isa democracy, a city in which the many are the dominant power in politics, and it can therefore be expected to have all the vices ofthe many. Because most people hate to be tested in argument, they will always take action of some sort against those whoprovoke them with questions. But that is not the only accusation Socrates brings forward against his city and its politics. He tellshis democratic audience that he was right to have withdrawn from political life, because a good person who fights for justice in ademocracy will be killed. In his cross-examination of Meletus, he insists that only a few people can acquire the knowledgenecessary for improving the young of any species, and that the many will inevitably do a poor job. He criticizes the Assembly forits illegal actions and the Athenian courts for the ease with which matters of justice are distorted by emotional pleading. Socratesimplies that the very nature of democracy makes it a corrupt political system. Bitter experience has taught him that most peoplerest content with a superficial understanding of the most urgent human questions. When they are given great power, theirshallowness inevitably leads to injustice.

Socrates spends a large part of his speech trying topersuade his fellow citizens that he is indeed a piousman, because his philosophical mission has beencarried out in obedience to the god who presides atDelphi. It is remarkable that this is nearly the onlypositive argument he offers, in Plato’s Apology, tosupport his claim that he is a pious man. The onlyother evidence he supplies is introduced only becauseMeletus, upon cross-examination, asserts thatSocrates believes that there are no gods or divinities at

Socrates’ criticism of democracy

The charge of impiety


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Detail from Socrates and Philosophy, tempera painting by Antonio Canova; in the GipsotecaCanoviana, Possagno, Italy.

© Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis

all, an accusation far more sweeping than—andindeed contradictory to—the official indictment, whichasserted that Socrates did not acknowledge the godsrecognized by the city but instead believed in differentand new gods. Socrates quickly points out theabsurdity of this new accusation. Meletus, he notes,has referred in his speech to a certain strange divinity(daimon) who comes to Socrates to give him advice.Presumably Meletus has offered this as evidence thatSocrates believes in new gods that are different fromthe ones generally recognized in Athens. But ifMeletus admits that Socrates is guided by a divinebeing, then he cannot be taken seriously when he alsosays that Socrates is a complete atheist.

These two modes of Socrates’ religiosity—serving the god by cross-examining one’s fellow citizens and accepting the guidance ofa divine voice—are nothing like the conventional forms of piety with which Socrates’ contemporaries were familiar. TheAthenians, like all Greeks in the ancient world, expressed their piety by participating in festivals, making sacrifices, visitingshrines, and the like. They assumed that it was the better part of caution to show one’s devotion to the gods in these public andconventional ways because, if the gods were not honoured, they could easily harm or destroy even the best of men and womenand their families and cities as well. The Socrates of Plato’s Apology does not refer to his participation in these ceremonies andrituals. (The Socrates of Xenophon’s Apology does, however, and, in this and many other ways, Plato’s Socrates is the moreunconventional and provocative of the two and a figure more likely to be hated and feared.) It is impossible to know whether thehistorical Socrates participated fully (or at all) in conventional forms of religious observance, but, if Plato’s account of hisphilosophy is accurate, then Socrates lacked the typical Athenian’s motives for doing so. He cannot believe that the gods mightharm him, because he is confident that he is a good man and that a good man cannot be harmed. That is why he has no fear ofother human beings. Even if the jury votes to banish him from Athens or to kill him, he will not be worse off, because his peculiarkind of wisdom and virtue—his acknowledgment of his ignorance and commitment to continual self-examination—will remainintact. That is also why he is sure that, when he dies, his affairs will not be neglected by the gods. They must be entirely benign intheir attitude toward someone like him, who has served them so well, and so he has no need to offer them gifts, if gifts are adevice for incurring their favour or protecting oneself from their destructive power.

In effect, then, Socrates admits that his understanding of piety is radically different from the conventional conception. In keepingwith his conception of virtue as a form of knowledge he uses an intellectual test, not merely a ceremonial test, to determinewhether someone is pious. You may participate in the conventional practices of civic religion, but can you say what piety is? If youcannot, do you at least admit your ignorance and search constantly for a better understanding of piety, as the god wishes you todo? More generally, though you may think you are a good person, can you say what your virtues consist of? If you cannot, and ifyou do not spend your life trying, then your goodness is a sham.

Socrates’ reconception of piety must have struck his fellow citizens as all the more bizarre and threatening because it wasaccompanied by his unapologetic and grateful acceptance of the divine sign, which Meletus ridicules—a voice that has come tohim since childhood, warning him away from certain undertakings and in doing so giving him unfailing advice. In Xenophon’sApology, Socrates seeks to portray the daimon that guides him as a phenomenon akin to others with which his fellow citizens arequite familiar: “Those who rely on bird-calls and the utterances of men are, I suppose, receiving guidance from voices. Can therebe any doubt that thunder has a voice or that it is an omen of the greatest significance?” But an Athenian of conventional pietywould have been able to spot the weakness of this attempt to assimilate Socrates’ divine voice to the experience of a seer whomakes predictions based on the interpretation of natural phenomena. Such seers were appointed and regulated by civicprocedures. Socrates was not designated by the city to serve in an official religious capacity, and therefore, in claiming to haveexperiences that put him directly in touch with the divine, he was circumventing the normal route by which citizens gained accessto the sources of religious inspiration. The Socrates of Plato’s Apology, unlike that of Xenophon’s, makes no attempt to portray hisdivine sign as a phenomenon that can create no rift or distance between himself and others. On the contrary, he attributes hisdecision not to participate in the political life of the community beyond the minimal duties of citizenship to the influence of hisdivine sign, and he is confident that his decision to come to court and contest the charges against him (leaving the city and livingin exile was an option) was the right one because it was not opposed by the divine sign. The daimon Socrates listens to is adivinity that makes a political difference: it tells him what kind of relationship he should have with his fellow citizens and how heshould conduct himself in public affairs. Thus, not only does Socrates have an unorthodox conception of piety and of what thegods want from the citizens of the city, but also he claims to receive infallible guidance from a voice that does not hesitate tospeak to him about public matters.

Socrates’ radical reconception of

piety


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An open-minded and conscientious member of the jury could therefore have come to the conclusion that Socrates posed asignificant threat to the city and should be found guilty of the charges against him. In a way, Socrates did fail to acknowledge thegods recognized by the city, he did introduce new gods, and, by teaching these things to the young who gathered around him, hedid corrupt them. He may have referred to “the god” or “the gods,” but his conception of what is involved in attending to the godswas utterly novel and politically dangerous. The fact that Socrates saw his piety as the genuine article, and the unreflective virtueof his fellow citizens as false virtue, indicates that he took the entire religious life of Athens, no less than its political life, to beunworthy of a good man.

If there is any doubt that the unorthodox form of piety Socrates embodies could have brought him into direct conflict with thepopular will, one need only think of the portion of Plato’s Apology in which Socrates tells the jurors that he would obey the godrather than them. Imagining the possibility that he is acquitted on the condition that he cease philosophizing in the marketplace,he unequivocally rejects the terms of this hypothetical offer, precisely because he believes that his religious duty to call his fellowcitizens to the examined life cannot be made secondary to any other consideration: “Men of Athens, I salute you and hold youdear, but I will obey the god rather than you, and so long as I take breath and am able, I will never cease philosophizing.” Butthere was no need for him to have admitted, in such explicit terms, that his conception of piety might require him, in certaincircumstances, to disobey a civic order. It is characteristic of his entire speech that he brings into the open how contemptuous heis of Athenian civic life and his fellow citizens. He prides himself on the fact that he will say nothing to curry favour with the jurorsor to conceal his attitude of superiority to them—even though he realizes that this is likely to lead some of them to vote againsthim out of resentment. Others may throw themselves on the pity of the jury or bring their tearful children and friends to court;but these typical modes of behaviour corrupt the legal system, and Socrates will not stoop to such tactics. Here, as in so manyparts of his speech, he treats his day in court as an opportunity to counter-indict his accusers and his fellow citizens (those, atany rate, who voted against him) for the way they lead their lives. (Another example: after he has been found guilty and has theopportunity to propose a punishment, he tells the jury that he should receive free meals for the remainder of his life, becausethis is what he deserves—though in the end he offers to pay one mina of silver, equivalent to about one hundred days’ wages, apenalty that his wealthy friends attending the trial increase to 30 minas.) In effect, Socrates uses the occasion of his trial to puthis accusers and the jurors on trial. But this was a natural role for him, because he had done the same thing, day after day, toeveryone he met.

We can conclude that Plato was not blind to the civic and religious dangers created by Socrates. Part of what makes his Apologyso complex and gripping is that it is not a one-sided encomium that conceals the features of the Socratic way of life that laybehind the anxiety and resentment felt by many of his fellow citizens. Plato, of course, leaves no doubt that he sides withSocrates and against Athens, but in doing so he allows us to see why Socrates had enemies as well as friends. Themultisidedness of Plato’s portrait adds to its verisimilitude and should increase our confidence in him as a source of ourunderstanding of the historical Socrates. A defense of Socrates that portrayed him as an innocuous preacher of moral pietieswould have left us wondering why he was sentenced to death, and indeed why anyone bothered to indict him in the first place.

Plato gives no hint in his Apology that he had any reservations about the way Socrates led his life or the doctrines that guidedhim; the format of the Apology prevents him from doing so. He has made the decision to let Socrates speak for himself in thiswork and to refrain from offering any of his own reflections on the justice or injustice of the charges against his teacher. But, inthe Republic, he puts into the mouth of its principal interlocutor, “Socrates,” an observation about the corrosive power thatphilosophy can have when it takes hold at too early an age. When young people first hear philosophical questions about thetraditional moral standards they have learned from their parents and their community, and when they see that it is difficult todefend these orthodoxies without falling into contradiction, they are prone to reject all traditional morality and to becomeessentially lawless. For this reason, philosophy may come to be seen as a dangerous and disreputable pursuit. The Socrates ofthe Republic therefore suggests that in an ideal society the young should not be exposed to ethical doubt until they are well intotheir maturity. This, of course, is not a restriction that the historical Socrates imposed on himself. In Plato’s Apology, Socratesprides himself on addressing his questions to every Athenian—no one, in his view, is too young or too old for the examinedlife—and he freely acknowledges that the young love to see their elders embarrassed when they are unable to defend theirbeliefs. Whereas the Socrates of Plato’s Apology assumes that there is no need to place limits on philosophical inquiry, theSocrates of the Republic—who speaks as the mouthpiece of Plato—holds that in an ideal society this kind of activity would becarefully regulated. Similarly, in Plato’s Laws, the main speaker, an unnamed visitor from Athens, praises Sparta and Crete forforbidding the young to criticize the laws of their communities. Plato’s great admiration for Socrates was all the more remarkablebecause it coexisted not only with a recognition of why Socrates was considered dangerous but also with his belief that Socrateswas, to some degree, guilty of impiety and of corrupting the young.

The danger posed by Socrates

Socrates versus Plato

The legacy of Socrates


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Socrates’ thought was so pregnant with possibilities, his mode of life so provocative, that he inspired a remarkable variety ofresponses. One of his associates, Aristippus of Cyrene—his followers were called “Cyrenaics,” and their school flourished for acentury and a half—affirmed that pleasure is the highest good. (Socrates seems to endorse this thesis in Plato’s Protagoras, buthe attacks it in Gorgias and other dialogues.) Another prominent follower of Socrates in the early 4th century BCE, Antisthenes,emphasized the Socratic doctrine that a good man cannot be harmed; virtue, in other words, is by itself sufficient for happiness.That doctrine played a central role in a school of thought, founded by Diogenes of Sinope, that had an enduring influence onGreek and Roman philosophy: Cynicism. Like Socrates, Diogenes was concerned solely with ethics, practiced his philosophy inthe marketplace, and upheld an ideal of indifference to material possessions, political power, and conventional honours. But theCynics, unlike Socrates, treated all conventional distinctions and cultural traditions as impediments to the life of virtue. Theyadvocated a life in accordance with nature and regarded animals and human beings who did not live in societies as being closerto nature than contemporary human beings. (The term cynic is derived from the Greek word for dog. Cynics, therefore, live likebeasts.) Starting from the Socratic premise that virtue is sufficient for happiness, they launched attacks on marriage, the family,national distinctions, authority, and cultural achievements. But the two most important ancient schools of thought that wereinfluenced by Socrates were Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium, and Skepticism, which became, for many centuries, thereigning philosophical stance of Plato’s Academy after Arcesilaus became its leader in 273 BCE. The influence of Socrates on Zenowas mediated by the Cynics, but Roman Stoics—particularly Epictetus—regarded Socrates as the paradigm of sagacious innerstrength, and they invented new arguments for the Socratic thesis that virtue is sufficient for happiness. The Stoic doctrine thatdivine intelligence pervades the world and rules for the best borrows heavily from ideas attributed to Socrates by Xenophon inthe Memorabilia.

Like Socrates, Arcesilaus wrote nothing. He philosophized by inviting others to state a thesis; he would then prove, by Socraticquestioning, that their thesis led to a contradiction. His use of the Socratic method allowed Arcesilaus and his successors in theAcademy to hold that they were remaining true to the central theme of Plato’s writings. But, just as Cynicism took Socraticthemes in a direction Socrates himself had not developed and indeed would have rejected, so, too, Arcesilaus and his Skepticalfollowers in Plato’s Academy used the Socratic method to advocate a general suspension of all convictions whatsoever and notmerely a disavowal of knowledge. The underlying thought of the Academy during its Skeptical phase is that, because there is noway to distinguish truth from falsity, we must refrain from believing anything at all. Socrates, by contrast, merely claims to haveno knowledge, and he regards certain theses as far more worthy of our credence than their denials.

Although Socrates exerted a profound influence on Greek and Roman thought, not every major philosopher of antiquityregarded him as a moral exemplar or a major thinker. Aristotle approves of the Socratic search for definitions but criticizesSocrates for an overintellectualized conception of the human psyche. The followers of Epicurus, who were philosophical rivals ofthe Stoics and Academics, were contemptuous of him.

With the ascendancy of Christianity in the medieval period, the influence of Socrates was at its nadir: he was, for many centuries,little more than an Athenian who had been condemned to death. But when Greek texts, and thus the works of Plato, the Stoics,and the Skeptics, became increasingly available in the Renaissance, the thought and personality of Socrates began to play animportant role in European philosophy. From the 16th to the 19th century the instability and excesses of Athenian democracybecame a common motif of political writers; the hostility of Xenophon and Plato, fed by the death of Socrates, played animportant role here. Comparisons between Socrates and Christ became commonplace, and they remained so even into the 20thcentury—though the contrasts drawn between them, and the uses to which their similarities were put, varied greatly from oneauthor and period to another. The divine sign of Socrates became a matter of controversy: was he truly inspired by the voice ofGod? Or was the sign only an intuitive and natural grasp of virtue? (So thought Montaigne.) Did he intend to undermine theirrational and merely conventional aspects of religious practice and thus to place religion on a scientific footing? (So thought the18th-century Deists.)

In the 19th century Socrates was regarded as a seminal figure in the evolution of European thought or as a Christ-like herald of ahigher existence. G.W.F. Hegel saw in Socrates a decisive turn from pre-reflective moral habits to a self-consciousness that,tragically, had not yet learned how to reconcile itself to universal civic standards. Søren Kierkegaard, whose dissertationexamined Socratic irony, found in Socrates a pagan anticipation of his belief that Christianity is a lived doctrine of almostimpossible demands; but he also regarded Socratic irony as a deeply flawed indifference to morality. Friedrich Nietzschestruggled throughout his writings against the one-sided rationalism and the destruction of cultural forms that he found inSocrates.

In contrast, in Victorian England Socrates was idealized by utilitarian thinkers as a Christ-like martyr who laid the foundations of amodern, rational, scientific worldview. John Stuart Mill mentions the legal executions of Socrates and of Christ in the same breathin order to call attention to the terrible consequences of allowing common opinion to persecute unorthodox thinkers. BenjaminJowett, the principal translator of Plato in the late 19th century, told his students at Oxford, “The two biographies about which weare most deeply interested (though not to the same degree) are those of Christ and Socrates.” Such comparisons continued intothe 20th century: Socrates is treated as a “paradigmatic individual” (along with Buddha, Confucius, and Christ) by the Germanexistentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers.

The conflict between Socrates and Athenian democracy shaped the thought of 20th-century political philosophers such as LeoStrauss, Hannah Arendt, and Karl Popper. The tradition of self-reflection and care of the self initiated by Socrates fascinatedMichel Foucault in his later writings. Analytic philosophy, an intellectual tradition that traces its origins to the work of Gottlob


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Frege, G.E. Moore, and Bertrand Russell in the late 19th and early 20th century, uses, as one of its fundamental tools, a processcalled “conceptual analysis,” a form of nonempirical inquiry that bears some resemblance to Socrates’ search for definitions.

But the influence of Socrates is felt not only among philosophers and others inside the academy. He remains, for all of us, achallenge to complacency and a model of integrity.

Richard Kraut

"Socrates". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 01 Jan. 2014

<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551948/Socrates>.


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