Hi I’m the Political Junkie.
If you look in book 2 of ‘The Republic’, you’ll find Plato’s brother Glaucon speaking
to Socrates at a dinner party.
Socrates, being a master wordsmith, has just defeated three men on the nature of justice.
So insufficient were their arguments, that after being rhetorically embarrassed, one-Thrasymachus,
retires into silence while another- Cephalus, simply leaves the room.
Glaucon, wishing to hear further from this brilliant man, pushes him to argue a positive
vision of Justice, one in which Justice is good in itself and not simply for its benefits,
saying, “I want to hear justice praised in respect of itself; then I shall be satisfied,
and you are the person from whom I think that I am most likely to hear this...I desire to
hear you too praising justice and censuring injustice,”
Glaucon held Socrates in such high regard that he trusted him to defend his own worldview,
one which he admits he hasn’t fully thought through himself.
Clearly Socrates was the highest esteemed philosophos in all of Athens.
But was he really?
This house where the dinner party is being held...-likely fictional, two of Socrates
interlocutors are Glaucon and Adeimantus, the brothers of Plato, but of whom we have
no further historical record other than this book itself.
Speaking of the book, despite it being presented from the 1st-person perspective of Socrates,
wasn’t written by Socrates.
For example, the first line: “I went down to the Piraeus,” signifying Socrates descent
from the philosophical Acropolis in Athens to a rougher area near the ocean weren't’
his own words, but those of Plato decades after it supposedly occurred
It’s doubtful any of this ever occurred, or if it did, that it transpired remotely
like that portrayed.
Furthermore, Socrates wrote no books himself, and there is no official record of his activities
or execution.
Could the historical evidence cast doubt on the existence of Socrates?
Was the founder of Western Philosophy a fictional creation?
To answer this question, you and I need to go deeper with this topic and address two problems:
one, is there evidence that Socrates existed?
And two, was he anything like the logical savant we’ve come to know through Plato’s
representations of him?
Let’s start with The Clouds, a theatrical comedy written by Aristophanes around 423
BCE, during which the protagonists son says, “Bah! the wretches!
I know them; you mean those quacks with pale faces, those barefoot fellows, such as that
miserable Socrates...?”
Here you can see a very different portrayal of Socrates than the one we met in Plato’s
Republic: a dirty, miserable fellow.
But what we also have is the only primary evidence on Socrates’ existence written
by someone during his purported lifetime- additionally from someone (Aristophanes) who
knew Socrates over two decades before his execution.
Though The Clouds is meant to lampoon Socrates for impious sophistry (we’ll come back to
that later), it would be hard for a playwright to make fun of a public figure who didn’t
exist.
We have two other primary sources on Socrates: one being the historian, Xenophon and the other Plato,
who we mentioned earlier.
Both were significantly younger students of Socrates and wrote accounts of him after his
death.
Unlike Aristophanes, both of these men had the intent of showing a more innocent version
of their teacher; innocent in motivations but also legally.
Their apologies of Socrates were both written after his execution by the Athenian authority.
Through these three primary sources from people who knew Socrates during his lifetime, you
can reasonably conclude that Socrates was a real person who lived in Athens.
Though the their details and motivations often differ, this doesn’t necessarily detract
from the idea: it shows they weren’t in conspiracy to invent a character or to make
him look good.
Debra Nails of the Stanford Encyclopedia explains the complications, however, of nailing down
the validity of individual details of those accounts, “The difficulties,”
“are increased because all those who knew and wrote about Socrates lived before any
standardization of modern categories of, or sensibilities about, what constitutes historical
accuracy or poetic license,”
As such, historians have literally been debating for thousands of years over which biographical
details of Socrates constitute reality.
By seeing where there is agreement between the texts, or at the very least, a lack of
contradiction, we can posit a few basic things about Socrates:
According to Arthur Herman in ‘The Cave and the Light’, “We know, for example,
Socrates was born in Athens in 470”, some historians say 469 BCE, “...We know he was
the son of Sophroniscus...and Phaenarete...He married an Athenian woman, Xanthippe, who
bore him a son and two children who were infants in arms when he died...he had never left the
city’s environs...until in middle age compulsory military service in the Peloponnesian War
took him to Northern Greece...Finally, we know Socrates was sentenced to death for blasphemy
and corrupting Athen’s young men.”
I want just to add a couple things.
Another author, William J. Prior in “A companion to Plato” says that details of Socrates
military service are “found in only one source (in this case Plato),”
We can also say with great confidence that Socrates was a teacher who enjoyed interrogating
the knowledge of his students.
Even the bumbling idiot parody of Socrates from The Clouds was seen interrograting his
students over whether a flea's sound- its buzzing, came from its mouth or its ass.
Which leads us to our second question: Socrates was.
That is, he lived.
But ‘how was he’?
What were his personality traits and his beliefs?
The source texts vary wildely when it comes to these issues, which is why disputes over them have been
dubbed, “The Socratic Problem”
All three authors portray Socrates as someone who asks lots of questions, and all three
show Socrates identifying the ignorance of the people he encounters.
But differences abound.
Was he rude and dirty?
Farting Socrates from Aristophanes, yes.
Plato describes him as an ugly drinker.
Legend has it that even Xenophon met his teacher the first time because Socrates simply blocked
his way through a narrow alley with a stick.
So yes, he was likely eccentric.
Did Socrates reject the greek gods as accused by the authorities?
Xenophon says that Socrates ‘was a believer and traditionally pious’ (Benson, 26).
This was probably in response to part of Aristophanes caricature of Socrates- his rejection of Zeus
in The Clouds: “SOCRATES: Zeus! what Zeus!
Are you mad?
There is no Zeus.
STREPSIADES: What are you saying now?
Who causes the rain to fall?
Answer me that!
SOCRATES: Why, these, and I will prove it.
Have you ever seen it raining without clouds?
Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!
STREPSIADES: By Apollo! that is powerfully argued!”
Plato even recognizes this satire in his apology of Socrates, but in his other writings, such
as The Republic (which we started with), Socrates is no atheist, but rather a man who wishes
to shape public perception of the gods.
So impious?
Probably in a traditional sense.
Third, was Socrates a dreaded Sophist?
Sophist is the ancient greek designation for new-age teachers, stereotypically ones more
interested in dubious rhetoric and making a profit.
The socrates presented in the clouds is written to epitomize sophistry, teaching the main
character how to avoid repaying his creditors by using the right words.
Xenophon, for his part, presents Socrates at least having dialogue with Sophists (Benson,
26).
But Plato takes the most aggressive posture against this image of Socrates as a profiteering
hack.
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates tells the judges and jury that he has no money for a fine-
a humble image contradictory to greed.
Furthermore, Plato often pits Socrates against inferior sophists in his dialogues: At the
beginning of the video, I mentioned to you that in book 1 of the Republic, Socrates defeats
three men on the nature of justice.
One of them, Thrasymachus, is an overly aggressive and emotional sophist, whom Socrates rhetorically
demolishes into silence.
Which leads us to a final question: where is the value in deducing these details of
Socrates life?
Is it enough to say, as others have, that we don’t know and it doesn’t matter, that
most of what we perceive of Socrates is romanticism by Plato, putting his teacher up on a pedestal?
Shortly after the thrashing of Thrasymachus, in the same dialogue, Glaucon turns to Socrates
and describes three types of good: the first kind which are good in themselves, ‘independent
of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures’, they serve no higher purpose,
but they feel good.
A second type of good, that which is ‘disagreeable’ at the moment, like exercise or going to the
doctor, but which provides serious benefits.
And a third kind- the ‘highest class’: those goods which we both ‘welcome for their
own sakes’, but also bring reward, such as acquiring knowledge or having sight.
By diving into these larger questions, we too, like Socrates, are going down from the
Acropolis to the Piraeus.
Gaining knowledge is both pleasurable and brings benefits, and therefore we, accepting
Glaucon’s premise, are partaking in the most enriching type of good.
I know a guy- who didn’t ask me to do this by the way- I know a guy who has made a video
about every single presidential election in american history- every single one!
And he’s just started a series about Supreme Court Cases.
Both series are awesome which is why I’ve linked my favorite episodes from them here.
Go binge-watch Mr. Beat’s Social Studies channel!
Later guys.