Socrates (2)

Before teaching others, he had to educate himself; we know nothing of this personal training; the Socrates of the Clouds (423) is a mature man, and he was over sixty when Plato knew him; at least, a precious document reveals to us in Socrates a man of violent passion; it is the testimony of his contemporary Spintharos, whose son Aristoxenus wrote the memoirs on Socrates: “No one was more persuasive thanks to his speech, to the character that appeared on his physiognomy, and, to tell the truth, to all that his person had of particularity, but only as long as he was not angry; when this passion burned him, his ugliness was frightful; no word, no act from which he abstained then.” His self-control is therefore a continual victory over himself (7).

This inner thrust that it contains is doubtless the reason for the fascinating power that it exercises over all ardent natures, over that of an Alcibiades (8) as well as over that of Plato. The temperament of Socrates is too rich for him to limit himself to a pure inner reform and for him not to aspire to spread his wisdom around him; it is not in solitude that he wants to live, it is with men and for men, to whom he wants to communicate the most precious good that he has acquired, self-mastery. This inner force that pushes him towards others, Socrates feels it as a divine mission. It is necessary to insist on this religious character: is not the starting point of his activity in Athens the response of the Pythia of Delphi to her enthusiastic friend Chaerephon, to whom it was revealed that no one was wiser than Socrates? It was Apollo “who had assigned him the task of living by philosophizing, by scrutinizing himself and others” (9); nothing exceptional, moreover, at that time, in the interpretation that Socrates gives of his own tendencies; there was no lack of men, like Euthyphro of whom Plato speaks, who believed themselves to be in a special relationship with the divine (10); and Socrates in particular seems to have experienced the divine presence in himself through the famous demon, or rather this demonic sign, this interior voice which, in cases where human wisdom is powerless to foresee the future, revealed to him the acts from which one must abstain (11). However, on this religious aspect of Socrates’ thought, we must be clear: religion gives him faith and confidence in himself, but he does not draw from it any doctrinal view on human destiny, and there is no reason to believe that he was a follower of Orphism.

What did he teach? According to Xenophon and Aristotle, Socrates would be above all the inventor of moral science and the initiator of the philosophy of concepts. “Socrates,” says Aristotle, “deals with ethical virtues, and in their regard, he seeks to define universally […]; he seeks what things are. This is because he tried to make syllogisms; and the principle of syllogisms is what things are. […] What we are right to attribute to Socrates is both inductive reasoning and universal definitions, which are both at the beginning of science. But for Socrates, universals and definitions are not separate beings; it was the Platonists who separated them and gave them the name of ideas. » (12) So, according to Aristotle, Socrates understood that the conditions of moral science were in the methodical establishment, by inductive means, of universal concepts, such as that of justice or courage. This interpretation of Aristotle, which has no other aim than to attribute to Socrates the initiative of the idealist doctrine which, through Plato, continues to him, is obviously inaccurate; if his aim had been to define virtues, it would have to be admitted that, in the dialogues where Plato shows Socrates seeking, without success, what courage (Laches), piety (Euthyphron) or temperance (Charmides) is, he took it upon himself to insist on the failure of his master’s method. Is it really this theoretician of concepts who would say of himself that he is “attached to the Athenians by the will of the gods to stimulate them as a gadfly would stimulate a. horse,” and that he never ceases to exhort them, to reprimand them, obsessing them everywhere from morning to night? (13) The teaching of Socrates consists in fact in examining and testing not concepts, but men themselves and in bringing them to realize what they are: Charmides, for example, is, in the opinion of all, the model of a reserved adolescent; but he does not know what reserve or temperance is, and Socrates conducts the interrogation in such a way as to show him that he does not know what he himself is; in the same way Laches and Nicias are two brave men who do not know what courage is; the holy and pious Euthyphro, questioned in every way, cannot manage to say what piety is. Thus the whole method of Socrates consists in making men know themselves; his irony consists in showing them that the task is difficult and that they wrongly believe they know themselves; finally his doctrine, if he has one, is that this task is necessary, because no one is wicked voluntarily and all evil derives from an ignorance of self which takes itself for a science. The only science that Socrates claims is to know that he knows nothing. (14)

Such an interview transforms the listener; the contact of Socrates is like that of the torpedo; it paralyzes and disconcerts; it leads one to look within oneself, to give one’s attention an unusual direction: (15) the passionate, like Alcibiades, know well that they will find with him all the good of which they are capable, but flee from him because they fear this powerful influence, which leads them to reprimand themselves. It is especially to young men, almost sometimes children, that he tries to impress his direction; it may be that, if the corruption of youth was held against him as a charge, it is because he disturbed the prejudices that young people had received from their family education: Socrates intervened only to help them educate themselves, to draw from themselves all their strength. The effect of the examination that Socrates forces his listener to make is in fact to make him lose his false tranquility, to put him in disagreement with himself and to propose to him as a good the personal effort to find this agreement again. Socrates therefore has no other art than maieutics, the art of giving birth to his mother Phaenaretes; he draws from souls what they have in them, without any pretension to introduce into them a good of which they would not carry the germs. (16)

Of the extent of the subjects of his conversations we cannot . in no way give us an idea; there is no reason to believe that Socrates was not a cultivated man, capable of taking an interest in the sciences and the arts; in truth, everything was good for testing men, from aesthetic discussions on expression in the arts to the choice by lot of magistrates, on the occasion of which he demonstrated the absurdity of the democratic regime of Athens. (17) It must be noted, however, that, contrary to the criticism of the sophists, that of Socrates does not bear on laws or religious customs, but only on men and human qualities; as much as he is conservative in his political ideas, he is as free with regard to those he wants to reform and to whom he shows their ignorance. It is doubtless this extreme freedom that ruined him; the tyrannical government of Critias had already forbidden him to speak, this is the democracy that took his life.

References

7. According to Porphyry, Histoire des Philosophes, p. 9, liv. 3, éd. Nauck.
   8. Cf. Banquet, 215.
   9. Plato, Apologie, 21 a ; 28 e. . .
   10. Plato, Euthyphron, B bc.
   11 Plato, Euthyphron, B b ; Alcibiade, 103 à 105e ; Xenophon, Mémorables, I, 1, 2-4 (The demon divinatory sign). .
   12. Métaphysique, M, 4, 1078 b, 17 : comparer Xénophon, Mémorables, IV, 6.
   13. Plato, Apologie, 30 e.
   14. Plato, Apologie., 21 b, 23 b.
   15. Plato, Ménon, 79e sq.
   16. Plato, Thêétète, 148 e sq.
   17. Xenophon, Mémorables, III, 10.

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Source: Émile Bréhier(1951). Histoire de la philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France. Translation and adaptation by © 2024 Nicolae Sfetcu