Socrates / Lecture 2
.docCORE11-120 Lecture Notes Week 2
Socrates on Evil and Ignorance
Socrates lived 469 – 399 BCE; and spent just about his entire life unemployed in Athens before being condemned and put to death for seeking to replace Athenian Gods with Gods of his own, and corrupting the youth.
Our primary source of information about his views comes from early dialogues of Plato. Other sources include Xenaphon’s Memorabilia and Aristophanes play Clouds. In Aristophanes play (first presented in 423) Socrates appears as someone with a raft of scientific theories replacing traditional gods with natural forces, and as a sophist. A sophist is someone who charged fees to teach students how to manipulate arguments to their advantage, especially in a court of law. Aristophanes’ Socrates is an unscrupulous buffoon; and it is doubtful that it represents the historical Socrates accurately.
Xenaphon’s Socrates is a highly conventional and rather dull moralist advising his charges that the highest virtue is obedience to the law. This no doubt leaves out much of Socrates’ character and his views.
Plato’s early dialogues offer the most persuasive portrait of the historical Socrates, but there is considerable difficulty distinguishing Plato’s views from Socrates. This is generally called “The Socratic Problem.” Plato’s early dialogues, the most important of which are, Euthyphro, Apology, Protagoras and Crito, are generally taken as the best available guides to Socrates thought. In them we find the characteristic doctrines ascribed to Socrates in the Western tradition: the unexamined life is not worth living; a wrongdoer is likely to find unhappiness and misery; nothing can harm the good and just person; nobody does evil willingly; evil acts are the result of ignorance. In other of Plato’s dialogues – Meno, Phaedo, and Symposium – Plato’s mature thought tends to be mixed together with Socratic doctrines. In the Republic – a work we will examine next week – Plato is clearly pursuing an original philosophy. In the lecture this week we explore the main themes of Socratic Ethics as it emerges in the Crito, Euthyphro, Apology, Protagoras and Meno.
Socrates’ profession of ignorance. In the Apology, Socrates recounts the story of how he was once declared – by an oracle at Delphi– to be the wisest of people. He tells us that this surprised him, since he thought of himself as possessing next to no real knowledge. And this led Socrates to interview and examine the views of those with the greatest reputations for possessing knowledge. He claims that he invariably found people who claimed to know things they did not really know, but only guessed at or presumed. He was wiser than these people, because at least Socrates knew that he knew nothing. The starting point for many Socratic inquiries, therefore, is a profession of ignorance. An interlocutor would make a claim to know what some important thing is, for example, courage, piety, justice, and so on. Socrates’ task was to demonstrate to them that their knowledge is fake.
Socrates’ method: elenchus The Euthyphro gives a good illustration of Socrates basic method, as recounted by Plato. Socrates comes upon Euthyphro as they both make their way to the Athenian Law Courts: Socrates to face his charge of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens; Euthyphro to lay a charge of murder against his father. Euthyphro’s father had mistreated a servant to the point that he died and Euthyphro was charging his father with murder. He declares that it is the right a pious thing to prosecute his father, even if the killing was unintentional (it was) and of someone unrelated to him (it was) and even if the servant was himself a murderer (he was). Socrates tackles the case like this: in order to be justly prosecuting his father, Euthyphro must understand what is at stake. Euthyphro says the prosecution is an act of piety, so he must understand what piety is. So what is it? Socrates then proceeds to demonstrate that Euthyphro has no real understanding of what piety is. All his attempts to define piety fail. Socrates does not tell us what he thinks it is. He professes ignorance; but has the wisdom, at least, to know that he doesn’t fully understand the concept of piety. A philosopher may be wise because she finds mysterious things which other people wrongly take for granted.
The method Socrates uses is called “elenchus.” It is a question and answer session with the following rules and goals.
One person (Socrates) asks most of the questions.
The interlocutor must answer every question.
A definition or principle in moral philosophy is sought from the interlocutor.
Socrates seeks clarification, gaining assent for various propositions.
These propositions are used to show that the definition or principle is unsatisfactory.
Vengeance is always unjust A conventional moral claim of the tradition Socrates inherited – often called the Homeric Tradition – was that wrongdoing ought to be repaid in kind. Justice was conventionally defined as “helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies”. Socrates tries to rebut this claim in the Crito.
Early in the dialogue, Socrates gets Crito to agree to the disastrous nature of having an “evil and corrupted body.” The health of the body is important, but so is the health of the soul. He puts the question to Crito:
And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be depraved, which is improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it be in man, which to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body? (Crito 47e)
Socrates gets Crito’s agreement that:
Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued.
A good life is a just and honourable one.
Doing wrong is always evil and dishonourable.
From this Socrates infers that:
We must do no wrong.
And then we encounter the following argument.
S: And what of doing in return for evil, which is the morality of the many – is that just or not?
C: Not just.
S: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him?
C: Very true.
S: Then we ought not retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. (Crito 49c)
This argument illustrates a central theme of Socratic Ethics: that doing wrong always harms the wrong-doer (by corrupting the higher part of themselves; by diminishing them in the one aspect that counts for their well-being above all others). Socrates takes it that it is literally in our own interests to act rightly and avoid injury and harm to others. His ethics is primarily concerned with care of the self.
Virtue is knowledge. One of the most arresting claims defended by Socrates is that virtue consists in knowledge of the good. This and the view we discuss next are often called Socratic Paradoxes. They are called paradoxes because they are strongly counterintuitive theses, theses which seem to deny facts of ordinary experience. The thesis that virtue is knowledge is developed in Plato’s dialogue Meno.
S: The next point to consider seems to be whether virtue is knowledge or something else.
M: That does seem to be the next point to consider.
S: Well now, do we say that virtue is itself something good, and will this hypothesis stand firm for us, that it is something good?
M: Of course.
S: If then there is anything else good that is different and separate from knowledge, virtue might well not be a kind of knowledge, but if there is nothing good that knowledge does not encompass we would be right to suspect that it is a kind of knowledge.
M: That is so.
S: Surely virtue makes us good.
M: Yes.
S: And if we are good, we are benefited, for all that is good benefits. Is that not so?
M: Yes.
S: So virtue is something beneficial?
M: That necessarily follows from what has been agreed.
S: Let us then examine what kinds of thing benefit us, taking them up one by one: health, we say, and strength, and beauty, and also wealth. We say that these things, and others of the same kind, benefit us, do we not?
M: We do.
S: Yet we say that these same things also sometimes harm one. Do you agree or not?
M: I do.
S: Look then, what directing factor determines in each case whether these things benefit or harm us? Is it not the right use of them that benefits us, and the wrong use of them that harms us?
M: Certainly.
S: Let us now look at the qualities of the soul. There is something you call moderation, and justice, courage, intelligence, memory, munificence, and all such things.
M: There is.
S: Consider whichever of these you believe not to be knowledge but different from it; do they not at times harm us, at other times benefit us? Courage, for example, when it is not wisdom but like a kind of recklessness: when a man is reckless without understanding he is harmed, when with understanding he is benefited.
M: Yes.
S: The same is true of moderation and mental quickness; when they are learned and disciplined with understanding they are beneficial, but without understanding they are harmful.
M: Very much so.
S: Therefore, in a word, all that the soul undertakes and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in happiness, but if directed by ignorance, it ends in the opposite.
M: That is likely.
S: If then virtue is something in the soul and it must be beneficial, it must be knowledge, since all the qualities of the soul are in themselves neither beneficial nor harmful, but accompanied by wisdom or folly they become beneficial or harmful. This argument shows that virtue, being beneficial, must be a kind of wisdom.
M: I agree.
(Meno, 87c-88d)
This perhaps shows that knowledge is a necessary for virtue, but it doesn’t show that knowledge is all we need in order to be virtuous. What else might Socrates be assuming that led him to hold that virtue just is a special kind of knowledge. First, we should note that the type of knowledge Socrates has in mind is practical knowledge. In Plato’s early dialogues, Socrates often compares the art of living with other arts (or crafts): medical craft, or navigation, or horse-breeding, and so on. To know the good is to know how to live well, how to bring it about that one’s soul properly cared for. The knowledge Socrates has in mind isn’t theoretical knowledge of what is right. It is not mere recognition that a certain act is the right thing to do, say return a borrowed item that one has grown very fond of. It is knowledge not just that this is the just thing to do, but also knowledge of how it is to our own benefit, and not just to the benefit of the lender, that we return the borrowed item.
The second point to note is that Socrates might well be assuming what is called an egoistic theory of motivation. According to this theory, all our actions are directed towards what we think is our own good. We never aim to be harmed, but only benefited by our actions. Add to this knowledge of how the just action will benefit and the unjust action harm us, and it starts to make sense that virtue is knowledge. Virtue is knowledge because knowledge is the only missing ingredient. We already posses the motivation needed to act well, to complete the picture we need to add adequate knowledge of what it is to act well and why this is to our benefit. Socrates appears to be developing this egoistic view of human motivation in the following passage from the Meno:
M: I think, Socrates, that virtue is, as the poet says, “to find joy in beautiful things and have power.” So I say that virtue is to desire beautiful things and have the power to acquire them.
S: Do yo mean that the man who desires beautiful things desires good things?
M: Most certainly.
S: Do you assume that there are people who desire bad things, and others who desire good things? Do you not think, my good man, that all men desire good things?
M: I do not.
S: But some desire bad things?
M: Yes.
S: Do you mean that they believe the bad things to be good, or that they know they are bad and nevertheless desire them?
M: I think there are both kinds.
S: Do you think, Meno, that anyone, knowing that bad things are bad, nevertheless desire them?
M: I certainly do.
S: What do you mean by desiring? Is it to secure for oneself?
M: What else?
S: Does he think that the bad things benefit him who possesses them, or does he know they harm him?
M: There are some who believe that the bad things benefit them, others who know that they harm them.
S: And do you think that those who believe that bad things benefit them know that they are bad?
M: No, that I cannot altogether believe.
S: It is clear then that those who do not know things to be bad do not desire what is bad, but they desire those things that they believe to be good but are in fact bad. It follows that those who have no knowledge of these things and believe them to be good clearly desire good things. Is that not so?
M: It is likely.
S: Well then, those who you say desire bad things, believing that bad things harm their possessor, know that they will be harmed by them?
M: Necessarily.
S: And do they not think that those who are harmed are miserable to the extent that they are harmed?
M: That too is inevitable.
S: And that those who are miserable are unhappy?
M: I think so.
S: Does anyone wish to be miserable and unhappy?
M: I do not think so, Socrates.
S: No one then wants what is bad, Meno, unless he wants to be such. For what else is being miserable but to desire bad things and secure them?
M: You are probably right, Socrates, and no one wants what is bad.
(Meno 77b-78b)
The following claims help to make sense of Socrates claim that knowledge is virtue (which, of course, doesn’t yet show Socrates to be right about any of this):
(1) Knowledge (wisdom) is practical understanding of what is good and how it benefits us, and what is evil and how it harms us.
(2) Humans always aim towards what they think will benefit them and not harm them.
No person voluntarily does wrong; to know the good is to pursue it. This is a closely related view. If virtue is knowledge, and evil is the result of ignorance, then wrongdoers are ignorant. They act wrongly without understanding the full implications of what they are doing. They do not intentionally do wrong, they do what they think it would be good to do, but misunderstand what is at stake. Here is a statement of the view, drawn from the Protagoras:
“Well gentlemen,” I said, “what about this? Aren’t all actions praiseworthy which lead to a painless and pleasant life? And isn’t praiseworthy activity good and beneficial?”
They agreed.
“So if what is pleasant is good,” I said, “no one who either knows or believes that something else is better than what he is doing, and is in his power to do, subsequently does the other, when he can do what is better. Nor is giving in to oneself anything other than error, nor controlling oneself anything other than wisdom.”
They all agreed.
“Well now. Is this what you mean by error, having false opinions and being mistaken about matters of importance?”
They all agreed to that as well.
“Now surely,” I said, “no one freely goes for bad things or things he believes to be bad; it’s not, it seems to me, in human nature to be prepared to go for what you think to be bad in preference to what is good. And when you are forced to choose one of two evils, nobody will choose the greater when he can have the lesser. Isn’t that so?”
All of us agreed to all of that.
(Protagoras, 358b4-d4).
This idea involves a denial of weakness of will and of a self-destructive will. Recall that, for Socrates, the good is what benefits an agent, evil is what harms the agent. In the Protagoras, Plato has Socrates advance the idea that the good is to live a pleasant and pain-free life; and it is doubtful that Socrates held a view like this.
A just person can suffer no harm; an unjust person is necessarily miserable. This is another of the so-called Socratic Paradoxes. A just person is a virtuous person; and virtue – according to Socrates (and the Ancient Greeks generally) is a kind of excellence. An excellent life is a life of virtue. Socrates must have thought that all harm (genuine harm; as opposed to apparent harm) is a kind of degradation of the self; a falling away of the excellence of one’s life. A harmed life is a diminished life. In this case, one might see why it is that a just person cannot be harmed. Only injustice degrades the self and thus only injustice can bring genuine harm to a person. An unjust person can never be anything but degraded and miserable. A just person can never be harmed.