3. The Philosophy of Socrates

Behind the method was a philosophy, elusive, tentative, unsystematic, but so real that in effect the man died for it. At first sight there is no Socratic philosophy; but this is largely because Socrates, accepting the relativism of Protagoras, refused to dogmatize, and was certain only of his ignorance.

Though condemned for irreligion, Socrates gave at least lip service to the gods of his city, participated in its religious ceremonies, and was never known to utter an impious word.¹⁶⁶ He professed to follow, in all important negative decisions, an inner daimonionwhich he described as a sign from heaven. Perhaps this spirit was another play of the Socratic irony; if so, it was remarkably well sustained; and it is but one class of many appeals, in Socrates, to oracles and dreams as messages from the gods.¹⁶⁷ He argued that there were too many instances of amazing adaptation and apparent design to allow us to ascribe the world to chance or any unintelligent cause. On immortality he was not so definite; he pleads for it tenaciously in the Phaedo, but in the Apology he says, “Were I to make any claim to be wiser than others, it would be because I do not think that I have any sufficient knowledge of the other world, when in fact I have none.”¹⁶⁸ In the Cratylus he applies the same agnosticism to the gods: “Of the gods we know nothing.”¹⁶⁹ He advised his followers not to dispute of such matters; like Confucius, he asked them did they know human affairs so well that they were ready to meddle with those of heaven?¹⁷⁰ The best thing to do, he felt, was to acknowledge our ignorance, and meanwhile to obey the oracle at Delphi, which, when asked how one should worship the gods, answered, “According to the law of your country.”¹⁷¹

He applied this skepticism even more rigorously to the physical sciences. One should study them only so far as to guide his life; beyond that they are an inscrutable maze; each mystery, when solved, reveals a deeper mystery.¹⁷³ In his youth he had studied science with Archelaus; in his maturity he turned from it as a more or less plausible myth, and interested himself no longer in facts and origins but in values and ends. “He discoursed,” says Xenophon, “always of human affairs.”¹⁷⁴ The Sophists had also “turned around” from natural science to man, and had begun the study of sensation, perception, and knowledge; Socrates went further inward to study human character and purpose. “Tell me, Euthydemus, have you ever gone to Delphi?” “Yes, twice.” “And did you observe what is written on the temple wall—Know thyself?” “I did.” “And did you take no thought of that inscription, or did you attend to it, and try to examine yourself, and ascertain what sort of character you are?”¹⁷⁵

Philosophy, therefore, was for Socrates neither theology nor metaphysics nor physics, but ethics and politics, with logic as an introduction and a means. Coming at the close of the Sophistic period, he perceived that the Sophists had created one of the most critical situations in the history of any culture—the weakening of the supernatural basis of morals. Instead of a frightened return to orthodoxy, he moved forward to the profoundest question that ethics can ask: is a natural ethic possible? Can morality survive without supernatural belief? Can philosophy, by molding an effective secular moral code, save the civilization which its freedom of thought has threatened to destroy? When, in the Euthyphro, Socrates argues that the good is not good because the gods approve of it, but that the gods approve of it because it is good, he is proposing a philosophical revolution. His conception of good, so far from being theological, is earthly to the point of being utilitarian. Goodness, he thinks, is not general and abstract, but specific and practical, “good for something.” Goodness and beauty are forms of usefulness and human advantage; even a dung basket is beautiful if it is well formed for its purpose.¹⁷⁶ Since (Socrates thought) there is nothing else so useful as knowledge, knowledge is the highest virtue, and all vice is ignorance¹⁷⁸—though “virtue” (arete) here means excellence rather than sinlessness. Without proper knowledge right action is impossible; with proper knowledge right action is inevitable. Men never do that which they know to be wrong—i.e., unwise, injurious to themselves. The highest good is happiness, the highest means to it is knowledge or intelligence.

If knowledge is the highest excellence, Socrates argues, aristocracy is the best form of government, and democracy is nonsense. “It is absurd,” says Xenophon’s Socrates, “to choose magistrates by lot where no one would dream of drawing lots for a pilot, a mason, a flute-player, or any craftsman at all, though the shortcomings of such men are far less harmful than those that disorder our government.”¹⁷⁹ He condemns the litigiousness of the Athenians, their noisy envy of one another, the bitterness of their political factions and disputes: “On these accounts,” he says, “I am constantly in the greatest fear lest some evil should happen to the state too great for it to bear.”¹⁸⁰ Nothing could save Athens, he thought, except government by knowledge and ability; and this was no more to be determined by voting than the qualifications of a pilot, a musician, a physician, or a carpenter. Nor should power or wealth choose the officials of the state; tyranny and plutocracy are as bad as democracy; the reasonable compromise is an aristocracy in which office would be restricted to those mentally fit and trained for it.¹⁸¹ Despite these criticisms of Athenian democracy Socrates recognized its advantages, and appreciated the liberties and opportunities that it gave him. He smiled at the tendency of some followers to preach a “return to Nature,” and adopted towards Antisthenes and the Cynics the same attitude that Voltaire would take towards Rousseau—that with all its faults civilization is a precious thing, not to be abandoned for any primeval simplicity.¹⁸²

Nevertheless the majority of the Athenians looked upon him with irritated suspicion. The orthodox in religion considered him to be the most dangerous of the Sophists; for while he observed the amenities of the ancient faith he rejected tradition, wished to subject every rule to the scrutiny of reason, founded morality in the individual conscience rather than in social good or the unchanging decrees of heaven, and ended with a skepticism that left reason itself in a mental confusion unsettling to every custom and belief. To him, as well as to Protagoras and Euripides, praisers of the past like Aristophanes attributed the irreligion of the age, the disrespect of the young for the old, the loosened morals of the educated classes, and the disorderly individualism that was consuming Athenian life. Though Socrates refused to support the oligarchic faction, many of its leaders were his pupils or his friends. When one of them, Critias, led the oligarchs in a rich man’s revolution and a ruthless terror, democrats like Anytus and Meletus branded Socrates as the intellectual source of the oligarchic reaction, and determined to remove him from Athenian life.

They succeeded, but they could not destroy his immense influence. The dialectic he had received from Zeno was passed down through Plato to Aristotle, who turned it into a system of logic so complete that it remained unaltered for nineteen hundred years. Upon science his influence was injurious: students were turned away from physical research, and the doctrine of external design offered no encouragement to scientific analysis. The individualist and intellectualist ethic of Socrates had a modest share, perhaps, in undermining Athenian morals; but its emphasis on conscience as above the law became one of the cardinal tenets of Christianity. Through his pupils the many suggestions of his thought became the substance of all the major philosophies of the next two centuries. The most powerful element in his influence was the example of his life and character. He became for Greek history a martyr and a saint; and every generation that sought an exemplar of simple living and brave thinking turned back to nourish its ideals with his memory. “In contemplating the man’s wisdom and nobility of character,” said Xenophon, “I find it beyond my power to forget him, or, in remembering him, to refrain from praising him. And if, among those who make virtue their aim, any one has ever been brought into contact with a person more helpful than Socrates, I count that man worthy to be called most blessed.”¹⁸³