If we focus on Socrates’ method as portrayed in Plato’s early dialogues, we see Socrates seeking wisdom from the people he talks to, his “interlocutors,” in philosophical parlance. These are sometimes self-appointed experts, but they may also be just ordinary people, sometimes even teenagers at the gymnasium. He typically presents himself as unable to attain wisdom himself, and seeks for help from an interlocutor. Socrates almost always narrows the discussion to a question for a definition, usually of some desirable virtue, suggesting that until they can define the virtue, they will not be certain of what characteristics it has and how to attain it. Behind the quest is the objective of becoming a better person and living a valuable life.
We find a brief and relatively straightforward example in Plato’s dialogue the Euthyphro, in which Socrates’ acquaintance Euthyphro announces that he is going to court, accusing his own father of murder in the death of a slave. This allows Socrates to admire Euthyphro for his commitment to justice, to the point of prosecuting his own father. Euthyphro claims to be an expert in religion and to understand our duties to the gods. Accordingly, Socrates, who has just been arraigned on a charge of impiety himself, hopes to learn what piety is and how to avoid offending the gods and the citizens of Athens. He will become Euthyphro’s student. But what is piety?
Euthyphro answers that it is doing what Euthyphro is now doing, prosecuting guilty parties for their wrongdoing. Socrates, however, points out that the proposed definition is too narrow: it offers an example, not a general description of what piety consists of. Euthyphro answers that what is dear to the gods in pious, and what is not dear is impious. In the discussion it becomes clear that Euthyphro accepts the mythological accounts of the gods as they are depicted in Homer and Hesiod. Socrates has his reservations about this, because, according to the myths, the gods often disagree and come into conflict with each other. And they behave no better than selfish and self-centered mortals. So it appears that what is pleasing to one god may be displeasing to another. If so, the definition cannot help us to know what is virtuous and what is unvirtuous. At this point, Euthyphro proposes (definition 3) that there are some things the gods may all agree about, so that these things are pious, while the things that they all hate are impious.
Now Socrates asks Euthyphro if actions are pious because they are loved by the gods, or if the goods love them because they are pious. In the second case there must be some additional reason why the gods love such actions. And that is what we want to know, because it will reveal the value that they have. Here Socrates reveals a distinction between the essence (ousia) of piety and an incidental feature (pathos) of it.[1] Presumably, a good definition will give the true nature of the term to be defined, not just a characteristic. At this point, Euthyphro complains that whatever definition he offers fails, and the discussion is going around in circles. (Here Plato seems to be toying with Euthyphro’s name, which means ‘straight thinker.’)
Socrates offers a hint to help Euthyphro out. Perhaps piety is some part of justice. Picking up on this hint, Euthyphro offers definition 4, that piety is the part of justice that has to do with service to the gods.[2] Socrates now asks what kind of service humans can offer to gods. For the gods are divine and presumably have no need of whatever gifts or actions humans can give or perform for them. Euthyphro describes the relationship between humans and gods as a kind of bartering; but what do the gods really need that humans can give them? Granted that they can bless us, how can we benefit them?
In trying to answer that question, Euthyphro says that we can give them honor and thanks. But Socrates points out that he is back to saying that piety is doing what is pleasing to the gods. And the straight thinker has now come full circle. Euthyphro suddenly remembers that he has an urgent appointment and hurries off.
The details of this story are unique to Euthyphro: he is prosecuting his father for murder; he is an expert on religion; he attempts to define piety. But the general trajectory of the dialogue is quite common in the Socratic dialogues. The interlocutor offers definitions of a virtue; he needs some help making them appropriately general; when he offers appropriately general definitions, they fail; his frustration turns into despair and failure.
So what is Socrates doing here? There are several basic possibilities. 1) Socrates is mocking his interlocutors for fun if not profit. 2) Socrates is genuinely baffled by the important questions he raises, and is in need of help not available from the hoi polloi or the cognoscenti. 3) Socrates has answers to his questions but he is not sharing them with his audience. In the first case he is a scoundrel, like Aristophanes portrays him.[3] In the second case, he raises important questions, but cannot help us solve them; he depends on divine intervention (if anything) to help us. Such seems to be the view of Aeschines, one of the Socratics, and, at least in Plato’s middle dialogue the Meno, Plato.[4] Perhaps Plato will step in to answer Socratic questions. In the third case, Socrates has a positive message, but one which he keeps hidden; this is the Socrates of the Apology, who has a message for his associates about how to live rightly.[5] So who is the real Socrates?
[1] Plato Euthyphro 11a-b.
[2] Plato Euthyphro 12e.
[3] Aristophanes, The Clouds.
[4] Aeschines Alcibiades, fr. 11 Dittmar, SSR VI A 53; Plato Meno 100b.
[5] For an extended examination of the Socrates of Plato’s Apology, see Peterson 2011: 17-58.