2.2.1 The Street Philosopher and his Disciples
The heyday of the sophists was the second half of the fifth century BCE. During the same period, another thinker rose to prominence, one who, like the sophists, was concerned not with the origin and functioning of the cosmos but with the human world and human welfare. Yet he was in many ways the complete antithesis of the sophists. Whereas they promoted themselves, touted their professional successes, and advertised their educational skills, attracting large crowds and amassing wealth for themselves, Socrates went about barefoot in shabby clothes, disavowed any special expertise, and claimed not to be a teacher, while conversing on philosophical topics with ordinary individuals. Free of charge. Despite his scruffy appearance and his humble beginnings, he managed to gather a loyal following of ambitious young men (such as flocked to hear the sophists), including some from the aristocracy, who viewed him as an exemplar and mentor. For he combined a sharp intellect, a sense of humor, self-deprecation, quixotic idealism, personal integrity, and dogged pursuit of knowledge with a charismatic personality.
Indeed, Socrates can be seen as the ultimate anti-sophist.
Socrates philosophized not by lecturing or instructing, but by asking questions. From what we know of him, he was the son of a stone mason, and he served his city as a hoplite, or infantry soldier. He owned property, including his own military armor, but he did not belong to the leisured class like some of his prominent followers. He had been the student of a natural philosopher, Archelaus, but seems never to have developed a cosmology of his own. He had no visible means of support, yet he lived the life of wise man, spending his time in the pursuit of wisdom, while refusing to be a professional teacher. For he said he had no special knowledge, but lived in pursuit of the most important things in life. He sought wisdom not only from self-appointed experts like the sophists, but from ordinary citizens, and even from youths.
We get different pictures of Socrates from his contemporaries. From the comic poet Aristophanes, we get a portrait of a natural philosopher and sophist, a man who hangs in the sky from a basket, observing weather and introducing the Clouds as deities in place of the traditional gods. He robs his students and teaches them how to win arguments by underhanded means. For Aristophanes, Socrates embodies everything that is bad about the new pseudo-intellectuals of Greece: pretension, deceit, greed, self-promotion.
From Socrates’ follower Xenophon, who was an ambitious young aristocrat, we get the picture of an honest, sincere family man, hen-pecked but devoted. He can hold his own at a party. He is hostile to natural philosophy, but seeks to improve those about him with traditional wisdom. Xenophon stoutly defends his master from attacks that make him out to be a traitor to his country and a corrupting influence on his associates, including Alcibiades and Crito.
From his most famous follower, Plato, we get a portrait of Socrates as an intense but enigmatic thinker who engages his friends, acquaintances, and even strangers in his quest to understand the nature of virtue. Socrates seeks for definitions of virtues, which he tests and usually demolishes, always seeking for a more defensible account of goodness. He never, however, seems to make progress in his pursuit—well, almost never. Yet when he has to defend himself in his public trial at the end of his life, he points out a series of impressive accomplishments in which he has stood up to danger on the battlefield, lawlessness in government, and threats from tyrants, without ever compromising his moral standards. And during his trial, he goes so far as to say he is God’s gift to Athens, a kind of crusader for truth and justice such as the city has never seen before.
So who do we believe? This puzzle is known in scholarship as the Socratic Problem: who is the real Socrates? There was a man named Socrates who made a huge impact on his community and, eventually, the world. Was he a scoundrel, a saint, or a solid citizen? Many books and articles have been written on this problem, which will perhaps never go away. But the problem is not insoluble. The fact is that, however others perceived him, Socrates won the hearts and minds of a small but very gifted group of young men who carried on his legacy in a way that transformed the intellectual world of Greece. Aristophanes makes him a compendium of all the worst traits of intellectual pretenders. But he cannot account for how some of the greatest minds of the time gravitated towards Socrates. Socrates’ followers included Plato and Xenophon, both proud aristocrats who would never have acted like Socrates in seeking wisdom from ordinary people as well as from self-appointed experts. Yet they saw in Socrates, the homely, scruffy, comical, self-deprecating, garrulous street philosopher a brilliant epitome of the life of reason.
In fact, from what we can tell, Plato and Xenophon, though they had much in common, could not stand each other. In their voluminous writings they barely mention each other. Yet both were deeply influenced by and devoted to their master. So who is the better guide to understanding their master? Socrates was an enigmatic figure, even to his followers. Xenophon portrays him not only as an intellectual paragon but as a family man, friend, neighbor, and confidant. No doubt we can learn from him about Socrates the man. On the other hand, Xenophon, who became an important player in political history by leading to safety the ten thousand Greek mercenary soldiers employed by Cyrus the Persian viceroy who revolted against the Great King, was not a philosopher, though he became a competent historian. He did not get Socrates the philosopher, appreciate his subtleties, or grasp the nuances of his philosophical position. Plato, on the other hand, would prove himself a brilliant philosopher. And, moreover, he would emerge as one of the great writers of all time, someone who could recreate Socrates on the page and make him come alive for the reader.
Yet precisely because Plato was so adept at recreating his master’s actions and mannerisms, on the one hand, and so powerful a thinker in his own right, on the other hand, he might make Socrates into a mouthpiece for his own thought. And indeed, that is what Plato does in his so-called Middle Dialogues, where he has Socrates produce elaborate theories, as in The Republic. Contemporary commentators like Plato’s student Aristotle attribute these theories not to Socrates but to Plato. In his Early Dialogues, however, Plato depicts Socrates not as advancing his own theories, but as extracting definitions and beliefs from those he talks to, while claiming not to have any special knowledge on the subjects he examines. It is this very un-Platonic Socrates that scholars have come to identify with the historical Socrates.[1]
Why, then, would Plato bother to depict Socrates saying and doing very Socratic things, when Plato has his own axe to grind? Because Plato’s own theory arose as an answer to the puzzles Socrates posed. And without encountering Socrates and his philosophical worries, you could never appreciate what Plato was doing or why his theory was the perfect answer to the problems raised by Socrates.
In fact, Socrates’ inquiries gave rise to a whole group of thinkers centered in Athens, known as the Socratics. They took their inspiration from Socrates and his question-and-answer approach to philosophy. Each of his followers who went on to philosophize seriously had his own brand of Socratic philosophy. But it was Plato who emerged as both the philosopher’s philosopher and Socrates’ bard, the man who resurrected Socrates on the written page and breathed life into his thought, reviving the problems he confronted, and perceiving the method in his madness. Through Plato and the other Socratics, Socrates’ focus on moral philosophy produced an intellectual revolution that changed forever the trajectory of Western thought.
[1] Gregory Vlastos, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991).