Socrates (6 page)

The work is then essentially a fuller, illustrated version of the
Apology
. In keeping with the character of the latter, the content of the conversations is heavily slanted towards piety, moral uplift, and good practical advice. For example Socrates gives an irreligious acquaintance called Aristodemus a little lecture on the providential ordering of the world, pointing out among other things how the eyelashes are designed to screen the eyes from the wind (1.4), and he encourages the hedonist Aristippus to self-control by telling him a story from the
sophist Prodicus of how Heracles chose the sober joys of virtue in preference to the meretricious attractions of vice (2.1). He discusses the role of a general with a series of interlocutors (3.1–5), helps a friend in financial difficulties by persuading him to put the womenfolk of his large household to work making clothes (2.7), and gives advice on the importance of physical fitness (3.12) and on table manners (3.14). This is not to say that the work has no philosophical content. We find Socrates using methods of argument familiar from Plato, such as inductive arguments to establish a conclusion from an array of similar cases (e.g. 2.3), frequently derived from the practice of practical crafts, and there are instances of cross-examination with a view to showing that the person examined lacks the appropriate knowledge (notably 3.6 and 4.2, where the examinations of the respective pretensions to political leadership of Glaucon, Plato’s elder brother, and of a young associate named Euthydemus, recall the similar examinations of Alcibiades in Aeschines’
Alcibiades
and the pseudo-Platonic
First Alcibiades
). Two chapters, 3.9 and 4.6, are devoted to philosophical topics familiar from the Platonic dialogues; the former begins with discussion of whether courage is a natural gift or acquired by teaching, a specific instance of the question which begins
Meno
and is prominent in
Protagoras
, and in the course of the chapter (sections 4–5) Xenophon reports that Socrates identified wisdom first with self-control and then with justice and the rest of virtue. That too links this chapter with
Meno
and
Protagoras
, in both of which Socrates defends the thesis that virtue is knowledge. In 4.6 the topic is definition; as in several Platonic dialogues Socrates identifies the question ‘What is such-and-such?’ (e.g. ‘What is justice?) as the primary philosophical question, illustrating the general point by the examples of piety (discussed in
Euthyphro
) and courage (discussed in
Laches
). In section 6 he asserts the ‘Socratic paradox’ familiar from
Meno
,
Gorgias
, and
Protagoras
that no one knows what he should do but fails to do it, and in section 11 he makes the related claim that those who know how to deal properly with danger are courageous and those who make mistakes cowardly, a thesis which Socrates argues for at
Protagoras
359–60.

We can sum up by saying that while philosophy takes second place in the
Memorabilia
to piety, morality, and practical advice, the philosophy which the work does contain is recognizably common to other Socratic writings, especially those of Plato. This raises the question whether we should treat Xenophon as an independent source for those elements of philosophical doctrine and method, thus strengthening the case for their attribution to the historical Socrates, or whether we should conclude that Xenophon’s source is those very Socratic writings, above all Plato’s. We have to tread cautiously. There are indeed some indications in Xenophon’s writings of dependence on Plato.
Symposium
8.32 contains a pretty clear reference to the speeches of Pausanias and Phaedrus in Plato’s
Symposium
, and it is at least likely that the many earlier writings on the trial of Socrates, whom Xenophon refers to in
Apology
1, include Plato’s
Apology
.
⁴
There is nothing in the
Memorabilia
which so clearly points to a specific Platonic reference, and we are not justified in concluding that any similarity of subject-matter must be explained by Xenophon’s dependence on Plato, rather than influence in the reverse direction, or reliance on a common source, including memory of the historical Socrates. (We have very little information about the dates of composition of the works of either Plato or Xenophon.) On the other hand, Xenophon left Athens two years before Socrates’ death and did not return for more than thirty years. The bulk of his Socratic writings were written during this period of exile, in which he was cut off from personal contact with Athens and must therefore have relied on the writings of other Socratics, including Plato, to refresh his memory and deepen his knowledge of Socrates. Since the philosophical overlaps mentioned above could all be explained by Platonic influence, and since we must assume that Xenophon made some use of Plato’s writings in his absence from Athens, the most prudent strategy is to acknowledge that the philosophical elements in the
Memorabilia
should not be treated as an independent source for the philosophy of the historical Socrates. Equally, we have no reason to suppose that either Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates’ personality or his presentation of the content of his conversations is any more
historically authentic than that of any other Socratic writer. He is indeed himself the interlocutor in one conversation (1.3.8–15), and in some other cases he says that he was present (e.g. 1.4, 2.4–5, 4.3), but in most cases he makes no such claim, and in any case the claim to have been present may itself be part of literary convention; he says that he attended the dinner-party depicted in his
Symposium
(
Symp
. 1.1), whose dramatic date is 422, when he was at most eight years old. Some of the conversations are clear instances of types current in Socratic literature, such as discussions with sophists (1.6, 2.1, 4.4) and cross-examinations of ambitious young men (3.1–6, 4.2–3). The presentation of Socrates’ conversations in the
Memorabilia
may indeed owe something to memory of actual Socratic conversations, either Xenophon’s own or the memory of others, but (
a
) we have no way of identifying which elements in the work have that source, and (
b
) it is clear that any such elements contribute to a work which is shaped by its general apologetic aim and by the literary conventions of the Socratic genre.

I conclude this section by considering another writer who, though not a writer of Socratic dialogues, has been held to be a source of independent information on the historical Socrates, namely Aristotle. (Aristotle did write dialogues, now lost, but there is nothing to suggest that they were Socratic in the sense of representing conversations of Socrates.) Unlike the others whom we have discussed, Aristotle had no personal acquaintance with Socrates, who died fifteen years before Aristotle was born. He joined Plato’s Academy as a seventeen-year-old student in 367 and remained there for twenty years until Plato’s death in 347. It is assumed that in that period he had personal association with Plato. There are numerous references to Socrates in his works; frequently the context makes it clear that he is referring to the character of Socrates portrayed in some Platonic work, for example,
Politics
1261
^a
5–8, where he refers to Plato’s
Republic
by name, saying ‘There Socrates says that wives and children and possessions should be held in common’. Sometimes, however, the context indicates that
Aristotle’s intention is to refer to the historical Socrates, and it is with regard to some of these passages that we have to consider whether his presentation of Socrates may plausibly be thought to be independent of Plato’s portrayal.

The crucial passage
is Metaphysics
1078
^b
27–32, where Aristotle, discussing the antecedents of Plato’s theory of Forms, says the following:

There are two things which may justly be ascribed to Socrates, inductive arguments and general definitions, for both are concerned with the starting-point of knowledge; Socrates did not, however, separate the universal or the definitions, but they [i.e.
Plato and his followers
] did, calling them the Forms of things.

Since Plato represents Socrates as maintaining the theory of separately existing Forms in several dialogues, notably
Phaedo
and
Republic
, and referring to it as something which is familiar to everyone taking part in the discussion (
Ph
. 76d,
Rep
. 507a–b), the information that Socrates did not in fact separate universals from their instances cannot have been derived from Aristotle’s reading of Plato, and the inference is irresistible that its source was oral tradition in the Academy stemming ultimately from Plato himself. We do not have to suppose either that Aristotle was personally intimate with Plato, his senior by over forty years (though he is said to have been a favourite pupil, and he wrote a poem in praise of Plato), or that personal reminiscences of Socrates were a staple topic of discussion in the Academy. All that we need suppose is that some basic facts about the role of Socrates
vis-à-vis
Plato were common knowledge in the school. It would have been astonishing had that not been so, and the scepticism of some modern scholars on this point is altogether unreasonable. How much this tradition included, beyond the fact that Socrates did not separate the Forms, it is impossible to say. I find it plausible that it included the two positive assertions which Aristotle associates with that negative one,
namely, that Socrates looked for universal definitions and that he used inductive arguments.

Plato

Socrates appears in every Platonic dialogue except the
Laws
, universally agreed to be Plato’s last work. So, strictly speaking, all of Plato’s writings, with the exception of the
Laws
, the
Apology
(which is not a dialogue), and the
Letters
(whose authenticity is disputed) are Socratic dialogues. There are, however, considerable variations in the presentation of the figure of Socrates over the corpus as a whole. In two dialogues acknowledged on stylistic grounds to be late works, the
Sophist
and the
Statesman
, Socrates appears only in the introductory conversation which serves to link those two dialogues to one another and to
Theaetetus
, while the role of the principal participant in the main conversation, normally assigned to Socrates, is assigned to a stranger from Elea (i.e. to a representative of the philosophy of Parmenides). The same situation occurs in two other late dialogues,
Timaeus
and its unfinished sequel
Critias
; in each case Socrates figures briefly in the introductory conversation and the main speaker is the person who gives his name to the dialogue. In
Parmenides
Socrates appears, uniquely, as a very young man, whose main role is to be given instruction in philosophical method by the elderly Parmenides. Even the dialogues where Socrates is the main speaker exhibit considerable variation in portrayal. Some give prominence to events in Socrates’ life, notably
Symposium
and those works centred on his trial and death (
Euthyphro, Apology
,
Crito
, and
Phaedo
), but also (to a lesser extent)
Charmides
. Some, including those just mentioned, contain lively depictions of the personality of Socrates and of argumentative interchanges between him and others, with particular prominence given to sophists and their associates. In this group, besides those just mentioned, fall
Protagoras
,
Gorgias
,
Euthydemus
,
Meno
,
Republic
1,
Hippias Major
,
Hippias Minor
,
Ion
,
Laches
, and
Lysis
. In others again, though Socrates is the principal figure in the sense of directing the
course of the discussion, he is much less of an individual personality, and more of a representative figure of philosophical authority, replacable, for all the difference it would make to the course of the discussion, by another; for example, the Eleatic Stranger (or, perhaps, Plato). Such seems to me (though this is a matter for individual judgement) the role of Socrates in
Republic
(except book 1),
Phaedrus
,
Cratylus
,
Theaetetus
, and
Philebus
. How is this plasticity in Plato’s portrayal of Socrates to be accounted for, and what are its implications for the relation between that portrayal and the historical Socrates?

In the nineteenth century investigations of stylistic features of the dialogues by various scholars converged independently on the identification of six dialogues:
Sophist
,
Statesman
,
Philebus
,
Timaeus
,
Critias
, and
Laws
, as the latest works in the corpus, identified as such by resemblance in respect of various stylistic features to the
Laws
, which is attested by ancient sources to have been unfinished at Plato’s death. This research also identified a further group of four dialogues:
Parmenides
,
Phaedrus
,
Republic
, and
Theaetetus
, as closer than other dialogues to the style of the late group, leading to the hypothesis that these constituted a middle group, written before the late group and after the others. Subsequent stylometric research, while confirming the division into three groups, has not succeeded in establishing any agreed order of composition within any group.
⁵
This discussion assumes the validity of these results.