We need to talk about two versions of Socrates: the historical figure named Socrates, and the literary persona of the same name who appears in Plato’s early dialogues.  Are they similar, or, to be more precise, is the second a reasonable imitation of the first?  As we have noted, Plato does a marvelous job of breathing life into the literary persona, down to the level of endowing him with the physical traits and personality quirks of the man.  But it is evident that the historical Socrates was an enigma even to his closest associates, let alone to those who knew him only at sight and by reputation.  So why should we trust Plato to represent him accurately and fairly?

Because, in the first place, Plato does not in general expound Socrates to us.  He lets Socrates be Socrates and do and say paradoxical things.  In the second place, he makes Socrates supremely interesting as a thinker, endowed with depth and complexity.  And, in the third place, he presents Socrates as having a coherent philosophical position beneath the affable exterior, the self-deprecating demeanor, and the apparently contradictory pronouncements.  Only someone as philosophically astute as Plato could create such a character.  And maybe in this case the saying is true that you just can’t make this stuff up.  Socrates was Plato’s philosophical hero.  Plato was interested in Socrates because he somehow managed to combined theoretical precision with practical virtue in such a way that theory could point the way to moral action.  Plato was recreating Socrates, with his shabby dress and garrulous personality—a persona utterly foreign to the refined and cultured aristocrat Plato—as a philosophical paradigm and moral exemplar. 

As we shall see, in Plato’s middle period, the character Socrates would provide the launching pad for Plato’s own philosophical theory.  Plato saw himself as the Next Step in philosophical evolution.  But his readers had to experience the powerful First Step made by Socrates, who turned away from studying nature and focused his energies on making himself and those around him better human beings.  The proper study of mankind was man, as Socrates saw.  To be sure, Plato would go far beyond mundane human considerations in his own thought.  But it all started with paying attention to human goodness, perhaps the one area that the early Greek philosophers most neglected.  So if Plato wanted to teach you how to do philosophy, he had to introduce you to Socrates, the one honest and upright man that Plato had ever met, and, no doubt, the only person who had managed to be honest and upright by design, and not by chance. 

And you had to experience Socrates, not just hear about him at second hand. That meant you had to see him at work, engaging with his friends and associates, asking for definitions of virtues, asking follow-up questions, exposition inconsistencies, seeking better definitions, and in general, challenging people to think deeply about matters they had considered only superficially.  Plato had to take you by the hand and introduce you to the bumbling, gregarious, unpretentious, inquisitive, persistent, even obnoxious, but also the most intellectually brilliant and morally upright person you would ever meet.  Then, and only then, might you get a glimpse of the genius who had opened up the world of goodness to Plato.

2.2.3.1 Defending Socrates

But why should we believe that Plato wants us to know Socrates?  Because it was one of his most cherished tasks to defend the memory of Socrates in the public forum.  It was Plato’s  presentation of Socrates’ defense speech that became the great vindication of his mentor’s life and work, from the time it was published until the present day.  His dialogue, or monologue if you will, The Apology of Socrates (where ‘apology’ apologia, means ‘defense’) purports to rehearse the speech of Socrates at his own trial.  That work in a way anchors the whole of Plato’s Socratic corpus by showing how Socrates emerged from obscurity and turned his attention to moral philosophy and the reform of his fellow citizens.  The details we can extract from it, so far was we can check them, seem historically accurate and theoretically reasonable.  And, while we cannot guarantee that the speech follows closely Socrates’ actual speech (though I think it is likely to be a reasonable facsimile of the original), much less a verbatim reproduction, it had better represent who and what Socrates was, if it was to defend the memory of Socrates against unfair attacks.  And there is every reason to think that Plato and the other Socratics were very much involved in defending Socrates’ memory against malicious accusations. 

Insofar as the Apology endeavors to represent the real Socrates to a suspicious world, it can serve as a kind of touchstone of Socrates motivation, method, and doctrine.  And to the degree that Plato’s other early dialogues represent Socrates in a way consistent with the Apology, they can count as evidence of Socrates’ motivation, method, and doctrine—at least in Plato’s understanding of Socrates.  And since Plato is the most philosophically astute of Socrates’ followers, the most gifted writer, and devoted to his mentor’s memory, we can expect him to provide the most promising account of Socrates’ philosophy.  The fact that Plato presents Socrates in fictional discussions need not disqualify his dialogues as inaccurate.  Indeed, Plato’s compositions may offer the most immediate way for his readers to experience the activities of Socrates and to judge them for themselves.