Socrates: Devious or Divine? Author(s) : Paul W. Gooch Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Apr., 1985), Pp. 32-41 Published By: On Behalf of Stable URL: Accessed: 27/03/2014 07:21

Socrates: Devious or Divine?
Author(s): Paul W. Gooch

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Apr., 1985), pp. 32-41
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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Greece &
Rome,
Vol.
XXXII,
No.
1, April
1985
SOCRATES: DEVIOUS OR DIVINE?
By
PAUL W. GOOCH
Perhaps happiness
can be attributed
only
to the dead because
they
are
beyond
the reach of fortune: but that
security
is denied to one's
reputation.
The case of Socrates makes this
clear,
and it is his
reputation
which is this
paper's
theme. For since his death Socrates has been the
object
of such
competing
assessments that some have
despaired
of ever
finding
the real
person
executed in Athens in 399 B.C.
Although
that
search need not be
fruitless,
this
study
is concerned not so much with
the sources of our
knowledge
of Socrates as with the
ways
in which
Plato's Socrates has been
represented
and assessed.' On the one hand
are
interpreters
who hold him
up
as a model for life and
thought,
an
ideal
figure approaching
sainthood if not
divinity;
and on the other
more sinister hand are those who claim to discern under the saint's
clothing
the
sly fox,
the devious devil whose
major
aim is to
destroy
other
people's
beliefs and
arguments.
Socrates has been
praised
and
condemned with fervour since his
original trial,
and
although
we will
not reach
yet
another final verdict
here, perhaps by canvassing
a little
of the evidence we
may
come to understand not
only something
of his
reputations,
but also how
they
find their sources in Plato's own
writings.
From Plato we learn of Socrates'
problems
with his
reputation
during
his life.
Aristophanes
had
portrayed
him in the Clouds as a
new-fangled intellectual, trying
to
survey
the world from his basket
suspended midway
between earth and
sky.
That this
reputation
was
damaging
and unfair is Socrates' contention in the
Apology:
he
protests
that the Athenians have found in
Aristophanes' comedy
'a Socrates
being
carried about there
proclaiming
that he was
treading
on air and
uttering
a vast deal of other
nonsense,
about which I know
nothing,
either much or little'
(19c).2
It is therefore a
large part
of Plato's
purpose
in
writing
his
early dialogues
to correct distortions and leave
the world with a
philosophically
accurate
portrait
of Socrates. The
man who
emerges
from the
Apology
is neither buffoon nor
rogue,
but
a dedicated seeker of truth who is motivated
by duty
to
god
rather
than man. We see him
carrying
out his mission in the other
early
dialogues,
but nowhere is his character more
effectively portrayed
than
in the
closing pages
of the Phaedo and the last moment of his life. For
in Socrates' manner of
dying
Plato
epitomizes
his life and ideals. The
scene allows us to view Socrates as the
personification
of the traditional
Greek virtues. As the moment
approaches
when Socrates must drink
the
poison,
the women and children are sent off so there will be no
SOCRATES: DEVIOUS OR DIVINE 33
outbursts of
weeping.
But
everyone
else does break down:
only
Socrates
has the
courage
and self-control to remain calm in death's face. That
he
accepts
death without
making any attempt
to
escape
from
prison
is
testimony
to his remarkable sense of
justice,
which
places
obedience
to law above
personal gain.
So Socrates
represents
the ideals of
bravery,
justice, temperance:
but
supremely wisdom,
for it is
through
reasoned
argument
and self-critical awareness that he is able to achieve his state
of mind. As for that fifth traditional
virtue, piety,
it can
simply
be
noted
that,
whatever the basis for the
charges
of
irreligion
at his
trial,
here his words before
drinking
the hemlock are a
prayer,
and his final
utterance
a
request
for a sacrificial
offering
to
Asclepius.
Plato's
epitaph
for Socrates has therefore more substance than most tributes: 'such
was the
end, Echecrates,
of our friend who
was,
as we
may say,
of all
those of his time whom we have
known,
the best and wisest and most
righteous
man'
(Phaedo 118a).
With this kind of evidence we are
prepared
to
say
that Plato believed
Socrates to be a
paradigm
or model for what it is to be an excellent
human
being.
Of
course,
in Plato's
developed philosophical vision,
true
archetypes
of the virtues are to be found not in this world but in
his World of Forms: nevertheless Socrates seems to come as close as
is
possible
to an
exemplification
of those virtues in a
single
man.
We will find ourselves back with Plato in due course.
Now, however,
we must ask how
Socrates'
reputation
fares in later centuries. As
evidence we
may
consider three or four instances of the treatment
Socrates has received. To
start,
there is the curious custom of cele-
brating
his
birthday
in
antiquity.3
Celebration of birth dates of those
long
dead is an honour
customarily
afforded to saints or
statesmen,
not
philosophers.
Yet Socrates' traditional
birthday
was celebrated in
the ancient
world, along
with
Plato's,
on two successive
days
of
paper-
reading
and
partying.
We know
tantalizingly
little about this
practice:
Plutarch records
it,
and
Porphyry
tells us that it was Plotinus' habit
to observe the
birthdays.
In what
century
the celebration
began
to be
held,
or how
long
the
practice persisted,
we do not seem to know. But
the
fifteenth-century
Florentine
Platonist,
Marsilio
Ficino, thought
his reinstitution of the celebration in Florence on 7 November 1474
to be a revival after a
lapse
of twelve centuries. What had
happened
to Socrates'
reputation
in those
many years
is not
easily discovered;
but Ficino did his best for both Plato and Socrates. We find not
simply
a desire to honour
them,
but
something approaching
veneration. Ficino
was known to
keep
a
perpetual
flame
burning
before a bust of
Plato;
and he writes of Socrates in
imagery
which reminds us of biblical
passages.
His
commentary
on the
Symposium
endows Socrates with
all the
perfections
of
love, including
a
compassionate
concern for the
34 SOCRATES: DEVIOUS OR DIVINE
salvation of his followers. He frees the
young
from wicked
men;
'the
true
lover,
like a
shepherd, keeps
his flock of lambs safe from false
lovers as from the
ravage
of wolves and disease'
(Seventh Speech,
ch.
XVI).
Socrates cares for the souls of
others;
and thus Ficino makes
him into a
pastor/saviour
in the
language
of the Christian tradition.
Here then is an instance of Socrates on the
way
to sanctification if not
divinity
- a direction which reaches some kind of culmination in the
sixteenth-century
tract of Erasmus known to us as The
Godly
Feast.
At this feast several characters are
discussing
the
spirit
of Christ at
work in
pagan writers,
and
one,
in
contemplating
Socrates' attitude
towards
death, reports
that he is so moved that sometimes he feels
like
exclaiming,
Sancte Socrates,
ora
pro
nobis. We are a
long way
from
Aristophanes,
a
long way
from the Socrates Athens
thought
it was
putting
on trial.
But that
prayer-like cry
to Socrates is not all that distant from our
own
day.
The
tendency
to
sanctify
Socrates
persists;
or if it is not a
full-blown
sanctification,
it is at least a
strong
association of the man
with
things
Christian and with the one who is
worshipped
as God
within the Christian faith. Look
through
Edith Hamilton's intro-
ductions to the
dialogues
in the standard text in use
today,
The Collected
Dialogues of
Plato
(New York, 1961 ).
She
gospelizes
the Phaedo's
ending
by telling
us that Socrates was
'entering
not into
death,
but into
life,
"life more
abundantly"' (p. 40), picking
a
phrase
from
Jesus' lips.
Again,
Socrates'
message
in the
Gorgias
is associated with the
injunction
from the Sermon on the
Mount,
'Turn to him the other cheek'
(p. 230).
Such
phrases might,
I
suppose,
be
thought only attempts
to
point
to
parallels
between two
great figures
of the world's
history.
But that
suggestion
is far too weak when Miss Hamilton chooses to write of
the Phaedrus
(p. 475):
The stress in the Phaedrus is on visible
beauty,
but the reader of Plato must
always
remember that
Socrates,
the most beloved and the most
lovely
of
all,
was
completely
without it.
Again
and
again
his snub nose is
mentioned,
his
protruding eyes,
and so
on. He has no form nor comeliness that we should desire him. His wonderful
beauty
was within.
The sentence she
quotes,
from
Isaiah,
has been
applied pre-eminently
to
Jesus
in the Christian tradition. Miss Hamilton and Ficino would
have
got
on
famously.
There are less obvious
ways
in which Socrates is
appropriated
as
saintly
and divine. It can
happen
in
translating
Plato's
text,
as in the
case of Paul
Shorey's
1930 Loeb translation of the
Republic
at 316e.
It reads: 'the
just
man will have to endure the lash, the
rack, chains,
the
branding-irons
in his
eyes,
and
finally,
after
every extremity
of
suffering,
he will be crucified.'
Shorey
confesses in a note that the
verb anaschinduleuo more
strictly
means
'impaled',
not 'crucified'. But
he defends his choice
by saying
that writers on Plato and
Christianity
have often
compared
the fate of Plato's
just
man with the event of the
crucifixion. Socrates is of course Plato's
just man, unjustly
condemned
to
death;
and if he was not
literally
crucified nevertheless the translation
suggests
such an identification with the death of
Jesus.
Perhaps
these instances will suffice. There is a
long-lived
tradition
of
treating
Socrates as a
special person,
the summation of
perfections,
the
object
of veneration and an
honorary
member of the
kingdom
of
Christ and his saints.
To this
point
the alternatives in this
paper's title,
devious or
divine,
have been left without comment.
They
deserve some consideration
now. For someone
might propose
in the manner of Descartes that the
alternatives need not be
mutually
exclusive: a
being might
be both
devious and divine if he were an evil
genius
bent on
using
his
great
power
to deceive us about all manner of
things.
Such a
proposal
forces
us to
clarify
our two
epithets. By
'divine' we should intend here not
omnipotence
but that
part
of the
dictionary
definition which reads
'excellent
in the
highest degree'. By
'devious' we should mean
'not
direct;
not to be
trusted;
deceitful'.
Keeping
within these boundaries
will allow us to
say
that
any
divine
being
will not be
devious,
since
deceitfulness is not an excellence. It will also make it
possible
to use
the word 'divine' of the sanctified Socrates we have been
considering:
he is 'divine' not because of a
metaphysical
status as
part
of God in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition;
that would be
blasphemous
and a manifest
impossibility,
since no mortal can ever shake his creatureliness.
Rather,
he
approaches being
divine
by
virtue of his moral and intellectual
perfections.
That
said,
we
may
ask about the
origin
of this divine Socrates. Our
earlier
portrait
of Socrates in Plato
began
with the texts that make him
an ideal human
being,
so that the sanctification of
Socrates,
his
growth
beyond
the rest of us
ordinary mortals, might
have
appeared
as the
work of the Christian
interpreters
who link him with their
religious
tradition. In fact the matter is more
complex
than
this,
however. For
within Plato's
writings
themselves Socrates is
given
status
beyond
the
human. Consider this
evidence, though
it is more
suggestive
than
complete.
There is first the matter of Socrates'
daimonion,
his
spiritual
sign,
however that is to be
interpreted.
Unlike the
majority
of
mankind,
he claims a
special
link with the
supernatural.
That is nonetheless
only
a clue. Plato is much more
explicit
in the
Symposium,
where he makes
an unmistakable connection between Socrates and the semi-divine
Eros, that
spiritual being
neither
completely
man nor
completely god.
Alcibiades confirms this
by likening
Socrates to a
satyr
statue: un-
attractive on the
exterior,
but full of
figures
of the
gods
inside. Once
he had
opened
Socrates
up,
he
reports,
those internal
images
were 'so
divine and
golden,
so
perfectly
fair and
wondrous,
that I
simply
had
to do as Socrates bade me'
(Symposium 217a).
One more
example,
this
time from the
Theaetetus,
must suffice. A
passage
near the
beginning
of that
dialogue
is famous for its
metaphor
of Socrates as midwife: he
there claims that as his mother had been a
midwife,
so he
practises
the same art on the souls of those who think
they may give
birth to
ideas and
knowledge.
One
may
see the
major point
of the
image
in the
light
of Socrates'
professed ignorance;
he does not
implant
ideas in
the minds of
others,
but
merely
assists them in the
discovery
of what-
ever is
already
within them. This
metaphor,
offered in this one
place
alone,
is however so
striking
that it tends to obscure another
intriguing
aspect
of the
passage
- its
religious
tone. For Plato has Socrates insist
that his own work is linked with
god's
work. Not
only
does he refer
to his divine
sign (151a);
he also
says
that it is
god
who
compels
him
to act as midwife
(150c)
and who
grants progress
to his
pupils (150d),
so that the
delivery
of truths is 'due to the
god
and me'
(150d).
I conclude that Plato's own
language
is
strong enough
on several
occasions to make Socrates more than
human,
to rank him with the
divine. In an
utterly
serious
fashion,
and in an
entirely
different
context,
he
agrees
with
Aristophanes
that Socrates should be
placed
between
earth and
sky.
On what
understanding
of
divinity
does he do this? Is
this
mainly
a matter of
exaggeration
for effect?
It is
not,
in
my opinion, simple hyperbole.
Instead it is connected
with Plato's
understanding
of soul and the divine. In some moods he
suggests
that what makes a
being
divine and
godlike
is its full
apprehension
of the World of Forms and the
perfections
which attend
such
apprehension.
If a mortal were to
gain
this vision he would become
the friend of
god
and the best candidate for
immortality (Symposium
212a):
or as he
puts
it in the
Phaedrus,
the soul of the
philosopher
is
'in communion
through memory
with those
things
the communion
with which causes
god
to be divine. Now a man who
employs
such
memories
rightly
is
always being
initiated into
perfect mysteries
and
he alone becomes
truly perfect' (249c). When,
in this same mood Plato
reflects on the
beauty
he found in
Socrates,
his attitude to Socrates
will not be far from the emotions of the lover in the Phaedrus who
experiences
awe and reverence as at the
sight
of a
god
when he
encounters someone who
truly expresses beauty;
so that 'if he did not
fear to be
thought
stark
mad,
he would offer sacrifice to his
beloved,
as to an idol or a
god' (251a).
Some Christian commentators
may
have been carried
away by
their
eagerness
to claim a Socrates sanctified and
perfected
for the
kingdom
of God. But it now
appears
that Plato has the lead role in the
develop-
ment of a divine Socrates. That this Socrates has been
preserved
successfully
into our own
present
can be established with one
quotation,
the
closing
words of a
study published recently
in Canada:
Socrates thus
spoke
a
profound
truth when he said to his
jury
that his conduct of
philosophy
was his service of the
God,
for
through
the life of
philosophy
Socrates
had attained a
godlike condition,
and was
actively engaged
in
leading
men to that
same sublime vision of the
divinely
beautiful Good wherein
they
too would become
possessed
and in their own measure
godlike.4
The
testimony
of witnesses to the divine Socrates has concluded
with such
strong
statements so that we
might
set them over
against
some
very
different voices. For there is another band of
contrary
witnesses who demand
opportunity
to
put
their case
against Socrates,
not for him. While not all of them would wish to be associated with
the ethics or
politics
of
Thrasymachus
in the first book of the
Republic,
they
will feel
something
of his
impatience
to
get
into the discussion
with a 'loud and bitter
laugh'
in order to draw attention to what
they
feel is Socrates'
major
flaw: his rotten tactics in
argument.
He is not
the sincere seeker of
truth;
he is instead
ironical, pretending ignorance
and
(as Thrasymachus
has
it) willing
to do
anything
rather than
give
a
straightforward
answer
(Rep. 337a). Although
Socrates
castigates
the
sophists
of his
day
for
being
more concerned with success in
argument
than with the
truth,
he ends
up using
the same tricks as
they
do -
except
that he refuses to come clean about his tactics. Here are the
charges
of one
witness,
Frederick
Woodbridge, writing
a
couple
of
generations ago;
he
brings
our divine Socrates to earth with a thud:
He is no
paragon
of
perfection.
His
egotism
is
pronounced
and makes him
very
careful
of the
things
that will
keep
him in character and
very
careless of
everything
else. He
plays up
to what is
expected
of him. In the
arguments
into which he draws others he
is not fair as a
disputant.
Of the tricks of
logic
and the devices of rhetoric he is a
master and trusts more to them than to coherent
reasoning. Flattery, cajolery,
insinuation, innuendo, sarcasm, feigned humility, personal idiosyncrasies,
brow-
beating, insolence, anger, changing
the
subject
when in
difficulty, distracting
attention, faulty analogies,
the
torturing
of
words, making adjectives
do the work of
nouns and nouns of
adjectives, tacking
on verbs to
qualities
which could never use
them, glad
of an
interruption
or a
previous engagement, telling
stories which make
one
forget
what the
subject
of discussion
was, hinting
that he could
say
much more
and would if his hearers were
up
to
it, promising
more tomorrow if
they
are
really
interested and want to
go
on
-
an
accomplished sophist
if there ever was one.5
If
Woodbridge's catalogue
of
charges
is even half
correct,
Socrates
will be
only
a
pretender
to the throne of
respect
where his
partisans
have tried to seat him. While we
might
wish to elaborate the list,
we
must confine our attention for now to Socrates' method of
argument.
His usual
approach
is to ask
innocently
about some
particular quality
or
concept (like holiness, friendship, virtue), claiming
that he knows
nothing
about the matter himself. When his interlocutor
attempts
a
definition Socrates
immediately
finds
something wrong
with
it;
sub-
sequent attempts
are examined without
mercy
and shown to lead to
inconsistencies or contradictions which were
implicit
in the inter-
locutor's
position
and answers from the start. His victim reduced to
speechless perplexity,
Socrates
passes
on to the next
person, always
looking
for a
knowledge
he
professes
not to have.
Now the deflators of Socrates
argue
that his
great profession
of
ignorance
is
only
a sham and
pretense.
He knows far more than he
lets
on,
but since his aim is to
expose
the
inadequacies
of other
people's
minds he tricks them into conversation
by
his shameless mask of
innocence. A well-known
study by
Richard Robinson of Plato's
dialectic calls this Socratic
'slyness':
Socrates will
pose
as
needing
instruction from
others,
as
having
a bad
memory,
as
willing
to be
open
to refutation himself - he will do
anything
to
get
from an interlocutor
the
premiss
he needs to
destroy
the
poor
creature. 'Socrates seems
prepared
to
employ any
kind of
deception
in order to
get people
into
this
elenchus',
Robinson
complains.6
The
consequence
is that Socrates
cannot be an effective teacher of virtue or a moral
example.
'The
insincerity
of
pretending
not to be
conducting
an elenchus must
surely
lessen the moral effect. It is not
possible
to make men
good by
a kind
of behaviour that is not itself
good.'7
For all that he is
clever,
Socrates
is a devious
rogue.
Robinson has
put
his
finger
on what
Thrasymachus
calls Socrates'
'well known
irony'
and on the
morally questionable
nature of his
method. There were ancient
questions
about such
things
too. Some
of the Christian writers in the first few centuries were
upset
with
Socrates' divine
sign
which
they interpreted
as
demonic,
but a man
like Lactantius in the later
part
of the third
century
A.D. has other
problems
as well: 'Socrates had a measure of wisdom. He realized that
these
questions
were
incapable
of resolution and withdrew from them.
I am afraid that this is his
only
claim to wisdom.
Many
of his
actions merit criticism rather than
approval' (Divine
Institutes
3.20).
Lactantius cites as an
example
of Socrates'
inconsistency
his denial of
the
gods coupled
with his
swearing
oaths
by 'dog
and
goose'.
'Buffoon
(as
Zeno the
Epicurean
calls
him)! Senseless, abandoned, desperate,
if he wanted to make a
mockery
of
religion!
Mad,
if he
seriously
reckoned a
filthy
animal as
god!' (3.20).
And one more criticism:
'Was Socrates able to
implant ability
in his
disciples?
It did not occur
to Plato that Alcibiades and Critias were also
continually associating
with Socrates; one became his own
country's
most
energetic opponent,
the other a ruthless dictator'
(3.19).
But even before the Christian criticism of Socrates
(some
of it
partly
motivated
by
a
general
condemnation of
philosophy)
there had been
problems, especially
with Socrates'
irony.
Some
Epicurean philo-
sophers
had
placed
Socrates
squarely
in the tradition of the
eirdn,
the
hypocrite
and flatterer who claims to be less than he
is, masking
his
arrogance
towards others. This kind of behaviour the
Epicureans
considered
particularly reprehensible
in a
teacher,
for it is
unfriendly
and the direct
opposite
of the frankness which should characterize
relations between
pupil
and master. 'The
eiron, Socrates,
does not
receive
help
or advice from
others;
no one in the
dialogues
is his
equal.
He does not
give help
or advice in frank
openness,
rather his statements
are
tongue-in-cheek, sly.'8
We
may
find criticism of Socrates even closer to Plato's time in the
little
dialogue
called the
Cleitophon (though
some scholars have tried
to
argue
that it is an authentic work of
Plato,
most modern com-
mentators think it
spurious).
There
Cleitophon agrees
that Socrates is
very
effective in
waking
his hearers from their
slumber, through
exhortation about
justice
and the care of the soul. His
problem
comes
when he tries to exact from Socrates some content about
justice,
some
positive knowledge
about what he should do once he has been wakened
up.
He
gets
no
help
from Socrates' associates or Socrates
himself,
and
concludes either that Socrates does not know
justice
or else that he
refuses to share his
knowledge.
So the
dialogue
ends with his
charge:
'While
you
are of untold value to a man who has not been
exhorted,
to him who has been exhorted
you
are almost a hindrance in the
way
of his
attaining
the
goal
of virtue and
becoming
a
happy
man'
(410c).
Cleitophon's
sentiments would not have been welcomed at Plato's
birthday
celebrations.
Nevertheless, just
as we found ourselves back in Plato's
dialogues
on the issue of Socrates'
reputation
as the embodiment of divine
per-
fections,
we must ask ourselves whether Plato himself contributes
anything
to the criticism of Socrates. Is
there,
within the
dialogues,
any grist
to be
ground
in the mills of those who
produce
a devious
Socrates,
one who cannot be
praised
or trusted?
At an obvious level the answer is
yes.
Plato constructs for us a
Socrates who clashes with
opponents
like Callicles or
Thrasymachus,
vocal critics
accusing
him of some of the
things
on
Woodbridge's
list.
He is not
straightforward;
he uses
language
in
slippery ways
to his
own
advantage,
and so on. That however is
superficial.
What is of
more interest and
importance
is the criticism Plato's Socrates receives
not from his
opponents
but from his friends. Think of Alcibiades'
speech
in the
Symposium,
the same
speech
in which he
praises
Socrates
as full of
godlike perfections: he adds to this
praise
the
complaint
that
Socrates does not take his
personal relationships seriously.
'He
spends
his whole life in
chaffing
and make
game
of his fellow-men'
(216e),
Alcibiades laments. Since Socrates has refused to
gratify
him as he
wanted,
we
might suspect
that Alcibiades is
speaking only
from a
wounded
vanity.
Yet his
charge
is more worrisome than that. He uses
the
language
of a
trial,
a trial which considers not Socrates'
heresy
or
his
corruption
of the
young,
but his
arrogance
towards even his friends.
'I am not the
only person
he has treated
thus',
adds Alcibiades: 'there
are
Charmides,
son of
Glaucon,
and
Euthydemus,
son of
Diocles,
and
any
number of others who have found his
way
of
loving
so deceitful
...' (222b).
Behind the
extravagant
talk sit some
questions:
How did
Socrates relate to others? Are there
really examples
in Plato's text of
the
pastoral
concern which Ficino
thought
was exhibited in Socrates'
life? Is there in Plato's
portrait
of this
compelling
man
any
indication
of the divine
perfection
of love as a
self-giving
for the sake of the
other? These
questions
will not find
easy answers,
nor can
they
be
explored
here. Nevertheless Plato's characterization of Socrates'
relations with
others,
and his discussions of
friendship
and
love,
bear
careful examination if we are to come to an
adequate
assessment of
Socrates.
One last issue in Plato's text deserves comment. We have summoned
character witnesses who have
argued
for Socrates' moral
perfection
and his
ideal,
divine
status;
and we have listened to
opponents
who
want to cut him down to
size,
if not
slice him into small
pieces.
Plato's
responsibility
for this
range
of
reputations
is clear in some
respects:
we have examined
places
where Socrates is idealized and elevated to
god-like
stature. And we have
just
heard from the mouths of some of
Plato's characters other
suggestions
of
irony
and
indifference, upon
which the critics of Socrates have seized. But are there indications that
Plato himself had some critical distance on
Socrates,
that the issue of
Socrates was a
complex
one for
him,
not resolvable into the
simple
alternatives of this
paper's
title?
Let me
suggest
that
Plato,
in
constructing
and
preserving
his
Socrates,
found himself involved in a difficult
problem.
He wanted to
give
us a
striking
character
utterly
dedicated to
philosophy
as
religious
duty
-
but also to
philosophy
as a
negative enterprise,
destructive of
unthinking opinion. Socrates,
as Plato started with
him,
claimed no
positive knowledge.
He also could claim no successes in his method:
no one with whom he worked was able to
produce knowledge.
The
result was
anger
and
hostility, leading
to Socrates' death.
Plato,
however,
soon wanted to
put
his Socrates to more
productive
use in
his
dialogues.
In
the
very
act of
writing
down conversations Plato
opened up
the
possibility
for an
interpretation
of Socratic
argument
as
yielding
more than
negative
content. And as his
philosophic
vision
expanded,
Plato
developed
a Socrates who allows
many positive
doctrines to
emerge
in the course of discussion. At the same time Plato
attempts
to be true if not to the content then at least to the form of
the
early
Socrates'
profession
of
ignorance.
Hence the difficult
problem:
Plato is forced to create a Socrates who becomes
insincerely
ironical. He
keeps saying
that he does not
know,
but Plato's
very
writing pushes
us to
suspect
that his Socrates does know whatever it
is that Plato is
using
him to teach us.
The result is that there is within
Plato,
and therefore within Plato's
reader,
an ambivalence towards Socrates. On the one
hand,
his
dedication to the search for
knowledge
and virtue embodies the ideals
of the
philosophic life,
and of human existence. On the other
hand,
the
question
of the success and nature of his
relationships
with others
is
troublesome,
as is the issue of his
irony
once Plato has
positive
doctrine to
impart. By preserving
his ironic Socrates Plato becomes
the source of later
suspicions
about Socrates'
insincerity,
while
pro-
viding
materials for Socrates' sanctification.
This is not the
place
to
say
more. It is not
surprising
that we have
reached no final verdict. If we have achieved some
understanding
not
simply
of the enthusiasms and reservations of our witnesses but also
of the
ambiguities
of Plato's
portrait
of
Socrates,
that is
enough
for
the
present.
Of Socrates
himself,
and what he is if not
really
divine
or
utterly devious,
we shall have to think another
day.9
NOTES
1.
I choose Plato's
presentation
as the most
influential,
and the most
philosophically
interest-
ing,
Socrates. For a
helpful
discussion of some of these issues see A. R.
Lacey
in G. Vlastos
(ed.),
The
Philosophy of
Socrates
(Garden City, N.Y., 1971), pp.
22-49.
2. Ancient authors are
quoted
from the Loeb translations of their works.
3. For references see
my note,
'The Celebration of Plato's
Birthday',
CW 75
(1982), 239-40;
see also P.
J. Penella,
CW 77
(1984),
295.
4.
J. Beckman,
The
Religious
Dimension
of
Socrates'
Thought (Waterloo, 1979), pp.
180-1.
5. The Son
of Apollo (Boston
and New
York, 1929), p.
269.
6. Plato's Earlier Dialectic
(Oxford2, 1953), p.
9.
7.
ibid., p.
18.
8. M. T.
Riley,
Phoenix 34
(1980),
67.
9. An earlier form of this
paper
was read to the Toronto Classics
Club,
12
January
1982.

Socrates: Devious or Divine? Author(s) : Paul W. Gooch Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Apr., 1985), Pp. 32-41 Published By: On Behalf of Stable URL: Accessed: 27/03/2014 07:21

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Socrates: Devious or Divine? Author(s) : Paul W. Gooch Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Apr., 1985), Pp. 32-41 Published By: On Behalf of Stable URL: Accessed: 27/03/2014 07:21

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Socrates: Devious or Divine?

Author(s): Paul W. Gooch

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