SOCRATES

Greek philosopher, teacher of plato; b. the son of a stonemason and a midwife, Athens, c. 469 b.c.; d. Athens, 399 b.c.

Life. Socrates's life spanned the great outburst of Athenian activity and culture triggered by the Greek victory over Persia (480–479) and ending in the long war of attrition with Sparta that brought Athens to ruin. He married, perhaps twice and rather late in life, leaving young sons when he died at the hands of the restored democracy, which found in him a scapegoat for Athenian failings during the recent war.

In early life he showed interest in the physical speculations of his time and is said to have associated with Archelaus, who was a close follower of anaxagoras. Aristophanes's Clouds (423 b.c.) links him, in comic fashion, with the sophists and speculators on cosmology. In the Phaedo (97C), Plato represents him as pleased with the view of Anaxagoras that Mind arranges and is the cause of all things, but as disappointed with Anaxagoras's subsequent explanation of the universe through physical causes. Certainly at some time during his life, possibly around the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Socrates turned his attention almost exclusively to questions of human conduct and virtue. It was a change consonant

with the increased importance and responsibility of the individual under the new Athenian democracy and paralleled by the search for a systematic higher education that gave the Sophists their opportunity to practice as itinerant teachers. Socrates's ascetic habits, extreme self-control, and refusal to take fees, together with his great courage and striking appearance, gave personal weight to his emphasis on care of the soul and his quest for moral definition. He served with bravery at Potidaea (432), Delium (424), and Amphipolis (422); as one of the Council of Presidents he refused to sanction simultaneous trial of eight generals after Arginusae (406); and he disobeyed an order of the Thirty that would have involved him as an accomplice to murder (403).

Teaching. Sources for the teaching of Socrates are various. He wrote nothing himself, reckoning dialogue as far superior to the written word, but in Plato's Apology and in the early "Socratic" dialogues perhaps the historical Socrates is fairly substantially represented, although Plato allows himself considerable liberty in dramatic setting, casting, and literary embellishment. Another contemporary source is Xenophon, who gives a more matterof-fact account of Socrates in his Memorabilia, Apology, and Symposium. Aristotle gives some assessments in the

Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics that are confirmed in the Magna Moralia, and there is a life of Socrates in Diogenes Laertius.

Chaerephon, a lifelong friend of Socrates, is said to have asked the oracle of Apollo at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates and to have received a negative reply. To test the truth of the oracle, Socrates is represented (Apol. 21C–22E; Diog. Laert. 2.5.37) as constantly searching for persons of wisdom, but as disappointed in his quest, and hence concluding that he must be wiser than others because he knew himself to be ignorant, whereas they thought themselves wise and were not. Socrates is portrayed as a frequent visitor to the market place, where he was ready to converse with all comers in an attempt to turn their attention from externals to themselves and to the virtues of the soul. The typical procedure (e.g., Charmides, Euthyphro, Meno, Mem. 4.2.8–39) was for Socrates to lead on his acquaintance to make some assertion concerning a particular virtue or virtue in general, and then to question the accuracy of his observations. After several attempts at definition, the dialogue usually ends in indecision, but much has been accomplished. The person engaged in conversation has recognized his own lack of precision and mere assumption of knowledge where true knowledge was none. He leaves convicted of ignorance and perhaps stimulated to search further for a satisfactory answer. All the while, Socrates, with gentle irony, protests his own ignorance and his desire to learn from his interlocutor.

aristotle is insistent that Socrates considered virtue to be knowledge. In a sense, knowledge is the only good, ignorance the sole evil. There is no such thing as the problem of incontinence—i.e., knowing what is good, but failing to do it because of the lure of pleasure (Eth. Nic. 1145b 21–1146b 5). Socrates analyzes this so-called problem and pronounces it to be a failure in the correct estimate of the relative balance of pleasure and pain or of good and evil (Prot. 353–7). Aristotle summarizes the achievement of Socrates by ascribing to him inductive reasoning and the quest for universal definitions in matters of human conduct (Meta. 987b 1–4). Perhaps the wisdom of Socrates was truly a "human" wisdom (Apol. 20D).

Aristotle remarks that Socrates did not separate his universal definitions from particular things (Meta. 1078b 30, 1086b 3–5), and it is clear from the Meno (80D–81E) that Plato first puts forward the theory of preexistence and recollection in order to justify Socrates's confidence in inquiry and to save him from the horns of Meno's dilemma. The theory of Ideas is a development of Socrates's thought that must be ascribed to Plato.

Appreciation. Socrates was a religious man, who saw clearly the limits of human reason and the need to consult the gods in matters beyond the grasp of men (Mem. 1.1.4–9). He was accused of "introducing strange deities" only because of his constant reference to a spiritual warning that always stopped him from a proposed course of action but never positively encouraged him to act. It is clear that this was, in his view, something distinct from the mere voice of conscience, and Socrates was too rational a man to be given to hallucinations. Of personal immortality he was unsure. Death was either a dreamless sleep or a migration of the soul to another place where it would be immortal and happier than here (Apol. 40D–41C).

The cynics are connected with Socrates via Antisthenes, an admirer of his poverty and frugality (Symp. 4.34–44); the cyrenaics through Aristippus, whom Xenophon portrays in discussion with Socrates on the question of pleasure (Mem. 2.1); and the Megarian school of eristic disputation through Euclides. But none of these minor schools can strictly be called Socratic in tradition.

See Also: greek philosophy.

Bibliography: a. e. taylor, Varia Socratica (Oxford 1911); Socrates (New York 1933). e. duprÉel, La Légende socratique et les sources de Platon (Brussels 1922). a. k. rogers, The Socratic Problem (New Haven 1933). r. hackforth, The Composition of Plato's Apology (Cambridge, Eng. 1933). a. d. winspear and t. silverberg, Who Was Socrates? (New York 1939). v. de magalhÃes-vilhena, Le Problème de Socrate (Paris 1952). a. h. chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth (London 1957). g. faggin, Enciclopedia filosofica 4:742–749. f. ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. k. praechter et al. 1:129–158. Paulys Realenzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. g. wissowa et al. 3A.1 (1927) 804–893. f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, Md.) 1:96–115.

[w. h. o'neill]