What Socrates was Thinking

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Aegeus consults the Pythia. Attic red-figure kylix (c. 430 BCE), the Kodros painter. Berlin F 2538.⁣

A kylix is a drinking cup. Socrates is a historical figure and a character in Plato's dialogues.

Plato uses the character to understand the historical figure. He tries to work out for himself and posterity what Socrates was onto about human beings and the good life.

Socrates, as Plato understands him, is a φιλόσοφος or "lover of wisdom."

He castigates the Athenians for caring more about money and reputation than about "wisdom and truth and the best state of their souls." He says to them, if "some one of you disputes this, and says he does care, [I will] question him, examine well and test him, and if he does not seem to me to possess virtue, and yet says he does, I shall rebuke him for counting of more importance things which by comparison are worthless" (Apology 29d).

We saw this questioning in the search for definitions. We have thought some about how to understand it, but there is more work to do to see what Socrates was thinking.

Socrates Asks Questions

Socrates questions his interlocutors about about right and wrong and related matters. In the Euthyphro, the question is what piety is. In the Laches, it is what courage is.

In their answers to his questions, Socrates's interlocutors contradict themselves. He wants to continue, but they do not care as much about wisdom. They find some excuse to return to caring about money and the other things they have made the point of their lives.

⊕ The time we spend thinking about a question depends on its importance to us, and Socrates thinks that no question is more important than what the good life is. This helps explain how Socrates so impressed Chaerephon that he went to Delphi to ask whether anyone was wiser than Socrates.

Socrates tells Gorgias that "no bad for a man is as great as false belief about the things we are discussing right now" (Gorgias 458a). Socrates tells Polus that "the matters in dispute between us are not at all insignificant ones" because they are about "recognizing or failing to recognize who is happy and who is not" (Gorgias 472c). "For you see," Socrates says to Callicles, "our discussion is about this, and there is nothing even a man of little intelligence would take more seriously: how to live one's life" (Gorgias 500c).


"You know Chaerephon, I fancy. He was my comrade from a youth and the comrade of your democratic party, and shared in the recent exile and came back with you. And you know the kind of man he was, how impetuous in whatever he undertook. Well, once he went to Delphi and made so bold as to ask the oracle this question; and, gentlemen, don't make a disturbance at what I say; for he asked if there were anyone wiser than I. Now the Pythia replied that there was no one wiser. And about these things his brother here will bear you witness, since Chaerephon is dead. But see why I say these things; for I am going to tell you whence the prejudice against me has arisen" (Apology 20e).

Delphi (about a hundred miles north west of Athens) was the home of the Temple of Apollo. The Pythia is the priestess who serves as oracle for Apollo.

"If you put me to death, you will not easily find another, who, to use a rather absurd figure, attaches himself to the city [of Athens] as a gadfly to a horse, which, though large and well bred, is sluggish on account of his size and needs to be aroused by stinging. I think the god fastened me upon the city in some such capacity, and I go about arousing, and urging and reproaching each one of you, constantly alighting upon you everywhere the whole day long. Such another is not likely to come to you; but if you take my advice, you will spare me. But you, perhaps, might be angry, like people awakened from a nap, and might slap me, as Anytus advises, and easily kill me; then you would pass the rest of your lives in slumber, unless the god, in his care for you, should send someone else to sting you. And that I am, as I say, a kind of gift from the god, you might understand from this; for I have neglected my own affairs and have been enduring the neglect of my concerns all these years, but I am always busy in your interest, coming to each one of you individually like a father or an elder brother and urging you to care for virtue" (Apology 30e).

"Perhaps someone might say, Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking? Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not to be lived by a human being (ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ), you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you" (Apology 37e). Why does Socrates continue to engage in this practice of asking questions?. ⊕

He seems to have more than one reason. In the Apology, we see one of them.

Socrates tells the jury that Chaerephon (a childhood friend and follower) asked the priestess at Delphi whether anyone was wiser than Socrates (20e). The priestess said the god's answer was that no one was than Socrates, but Socrates says that he had trouble understanding this. He did not regard himself as wise, but he also thought that the god could not be wrong. So, to investigate the meaning of the god's answer, he examined everyone he met.

No one had the wisdom they believed they had, but Socrates continued because he thought piety required him to show that there was no counterexample to what the priestess told Chaerephon. In fulfilling his duty in this way, Socrates describes himself as a "gift" the god has sent the Athenians (Apology 30e). He questions them in dialectic to make them realize they do not know what they think they know, and this helps them eliminate the inconsistency in their beliefs that prevents them from living in accord with the virtues of character.

Beliefs that Cannot be Abandoned

Plato makes Euthyphro an example of someone Socrates questions in his duty to the god.

Euthyphro gives up, as we have seen, but if he were to continue, it is possible to think that he would eventually see the correct answer to the what is piety question.

If this is the right interpretation, then Euthyphro must have had the correct answer all along. This answer is fixed in his mind. It cannot be lost in dialectic with Socrates. Euthyphro's problem is that he also has false beliefs about what piety is. He acquired these beliefs as he lived his life, and they make it easy for him to do something he thinks is pious when in fact it is not.

Now we can see a question Plato knows he must answer.

He needs to explain how Euthyphro can have the correct answer fixed in his mind.

In the Meno and the Phaedo, which traditionally come after the early dialogues devoted to the search for definitions, Plato makes Socrates give the beginning of an answer.

We will see this later in connection with what historians call Plato's Theory of Recollection.

The Focus on Definitions

Plato also faces another and even more immediate question about what Socrates is doing.

Socrates seems to try to get Euthyphro to see that piety is what is fitting with respect the gods (12e) and that prosecuting his father may not have this property.

Socrates himself, in the Gorgias, gives this definition of what piety is.

"[W]hen [someone] does what is fitting (τὰ προσήκοντα πράττοι) as regards men, his actions will be just, and as regards the gods, his actions will be pious (Gorgias 507a).

⊕ This suggests Socrates thinks that the reference class is the only difference in the definitions of the virtues of character. In the case of piety, the reference class is the gods. In the case of justice, it is human beings. Justice is what is fitting with respect to human beings, courage is what is fitting in situations that can inspire fear in those who lack wisdom, and so on.

If this is right, the definitions provide no guidance for what to do in particular situations. It is not enough for Euthyphro to know that piety is what is fitting with respect to the gods. He needs to know what is fitting for him to do in the situation he faces involving his father.

Socrates understood this, and the Laches helps us see why he asks his what is it questions.

Knowledge of Good and Bad

⊕ In the Laches, Nicias tells Socrates that Laches has not been taking the right approach in "defining courage" (Laches 194c). He has been looking to examples of courage to see what courage is, that it is staying at one's post to face the enemy (Laches 190e). Nicias suggests that instead of something someone does, courage is a kind of "wisdom" (Laches 194d).

Socrates encourages this suggestion and the accompanying thought that wisdom is knowledge of what is good and what is bad in the various circumstances one faces in life. ⊕   "Now do you think, Nicias, there could be anything wanting to the virtue of a man who knew all good things, and all about their production in the present, the future, and the past, and all about bad things likewise? Do you suppose that such a man could be lacking in temperance, or justice, and holiness, when he alone has the gift of taking due precaution, in his dealings with gods and men, as regards what is to be dreaded and what is not, and of procuring good things, owing to his knowledge of the right behaviour towards them?
  I think, Socrates, there is something in what you say" (Laches 199d).

  "Well now, the cause of cowards being cowardly, do you call this cowardice or courage?
  Cowardice, I call it.
  And were they not found to be cowards through ignorance of what is dreadful?
  Certainly.
  And so they are cowards because of that ignorance?
  Yes.
  And the cause of their being cowards is admitted by you to be cowardice?
  Yes.
  Then ignorance of what is dreadful and not dreadful will be cowardice?
  Yes.
  But surely courage, is the opposite of cowardice.
  Yes.
  Then the wisdom that knows what is and what is not dreadful is opposed to the ignorance of these things?
  Yes.
  And the ignorance of them is cowardice?
  Yes.
  So the wisdom (σοφία) that knows what is and what is not dreadful is courage, being opposed to the ignorance of these things? Why is it, Protagoras, that you neither affirm nor deny what I ask you?
  Finish it by yourself, Socrates" (Protagoras 360c ). He seems to think that knowing what is good and what is bad in the circumstances when one faces is knowing what is and is not fitting for one to do in those circumstances.

This helps us make sense of what Socrates was thinking. We saw that he thought that

• the soul has virtue just in case it has wisdom
• this wisdom is knowledge about ethical matters

Now we can see that he also thought that

• knowledge about ethical matters is knowledge of good and bad

When Socrates tests his interlocutors in dialectic to determine whether their souls have virtue, what he ultimately wants to help them know is what is good and what is bad.

His interlocutors lack this knowledge because they are confused about the definitions of the virtues of character. They think, for example, that courage is staying at one's post to face the enemy and hence that staying at one's post is good when in fact sometimes it is bad.

This must abandon this and their other false beliefs about what the virtues of character are if they are going to live beneficial lives. Otherwise, they are inadvertently going to do what is bad because in their ignorance they wrongly believe they are doing what is good.

Once they know what is good and what is bad, Socrates thinks they will have the virtues of character. He thinks this because he accepts the theory of desire we called Socratic intellectualism, and once they have the virtues of character, he thinks they will have the control they need to live the life it most benefits a human being to live.

Looking Forward in History

If Plato sees that this is what Socrates is doing, we can expect the dialogues to unfold in a certain way going forward. We can expect Plato to take the definitions of the virtues of character to be clear enough and to focus on whether Socratic intellectualism is true and on the very difficult question of what is good and what is bad that Socrates did not answer.

In fact this happens in the middle dialogues, as we will see in later lectures.

Plato, in these dialogues, keeps Socrates as the main character, but this character no longer seems to be quite the same person as the Socrates we saw in the early dialogues. ⊕ Socrates' father seems to have been a stone-mason, and Socrates seems to have worked in this trade (Diogenes Laaertius, Lives of the Philosophers II.5). The young would be in the shops around the agora, and Socrates would visit these shops (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.2.1). One of these shops seems to have been the workshop of Simon the shoemaker (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers II.13).

In the Republic, for example, which is perhaps the most well known middle dialogue, Plato uses the character to give answers that conflict with ones Socrates gives in the early dialogues. The Socrates in the Republic no longer accepts the Socratic Intellectualism in the Protagoras.

This development is part of an important and continuing line of thought in Ancient philosophy. Much of what happens in the Period of Schools is understandable as an attempt to keep what was right in Socrates and to supplement it with the missing details.

This is why historians traditionally see the first half of Ancient Philosophy (585 BCE to 100 BCE) as consisting in the Presocratic Period and the Period of Schools. What unites the philosophers in the Period of Schools is not that they were members of schools. They, in different ways, were all working out a line of thought that began with Socrates.

What we are going to see in the middle dialogues is the line of thought Plato works out.