Socrates (7 page)

For our purpose the most significant feature is the virtual disappearance of Socrates from the late group; he is absent from the
Laws
and from the main discussions of all the others except
Philebus
. His role in that dialogue is similar to that in the dialogues of the middle group with the exception of the anomalous
Parmenides
, where he is assigned the role of interlocutor to Parmenides. In
Philebus
,
Phaedrus
,
Republic
, and
Theaetetus
, though he has the leading role, it is rather as a mouthpiece for philosophical theory and an exponent of argumentative technique than as an individual in debate with other
individuals. These distinctions are, of course, matters not only of judgement but also of degree. This is not to suggest that the figure of Socrates in the middle dialogues has no individual traits, or to deny that some of these link him with the figure portrayed in the early dialogues; thus, Socrates in the
Phaedrus
goes barefoot (229a) and hears his divine voice warning him against breaking off the discussion prematurely (242b–c). Moreover, even in the early dialogues the figure of Socrates has a representative role, that of the true philosopher. But what is quite clear is that Plato’s interest in the personality of Socrates as the ideal embodiment of philosophy changes in the course of his career as a writer. At the outset that personality is paramount, but gradually its importance declines, and the figure of Socrates comes to assume the depersonalized role of spokesman for Plato’s philosophy, to the point where it is superseded by avowedly impersonal figures such as the Eleatic Stranger and the Athenian of the
Laws
. What follows will be concerned primarily with the depiction of Socrates in the dialogues of the early period.

That depiction, it must be re-emphasized, belongs to the genre of ‘Socratic conversations’, and our earlier warnings against the assumption of naive historicism apply to it as much as they do to the writings of Xenophon and the other Socratics. Unlike Xenophon, Plato never claims to have been present at any conversation which he depicts. He does indicate that he was present at Socrates’ trial (
Apol
. 34a, 38b), which I take to be the truth, but we saw that that did not justify taking the
Apology
as a transcript of Socrates’ actual speech. In one significant case he says explicitly that he was not present; when at the beginning of the
Phaedo
Phaedo tells Echecrates the names of those who were with Socrates on his last day he adds ‘Plato I think was ill’ (59b). The effect of this is to distance Plato from the narrative; the eye-witness is not the author himself, but one of his characters, Phaedo, hence that eye-witness’s claims are to be interpreted as part of the dramatic context. It follows that what is narrated, for example, that Socrates argued for the immortality of the soul from the theories
of Forms and of Recollection, is part of the dramatic fiction. I am inclined to think that Plato’s claim to have been absent from Socrates’ final scene is as much a matter of literary convention as Xenophon’s claims to have been present at Socratic conversations, and that in all probability Plato was actually present.

In some cases (
Charmides, Protagoras
) the conversation is represented as having taken place before Plato was born, and in others (
Euthyphro
,
Crito
,
Symposium
) the
mise-en-scène
precludes his presence. Mostly the dialogues contain no claim that they are records of actual conversations, and where that claim is made in particular cases, as in the
Symposium
(172a–174a), the claim is itself part of an elaborate fiction, in which the narrator explains how he is able to describe a conversation at which he was not himself present. The central point is that, for Plato’s apologetic and philosophical purposes, historical truth was almost entirely irrelevant; for instance, the main point of the dialogues in which Socrates confronts sophists is to bring out the contrast between his genuine philosophizing and their counterfeit, and in so doing to manifest the injustice of the calumny which, by associating him with the sophists, had brought about his death. For that purpose it was entirely indifferent whether Socrates ever actually met Protagoras or Thrasymachus, or, if he did, whether the conversations actually were on the lines of those represented in
Protagoras
and
Republic
1. As with Xenophon, it may be that Plato makes some use of actual reminiscence; but we cannot tell where, and it does not in any case matter.

So far we have considered as a single group all those dialogues which stylometric criteria indicate as earlier than the ‘middle group’:
Parmenides
,
Phaedrus
,
Republic
, and
Theaetetus
. Within that group any differentiation has to appeal to non-stylometric criteria. Here Aristotle’s evidence is crucial. Accepting as historical his assertion that Socrates did not separate the Forms, we can identify those dialogues frorn the stylistically early group in which Socrates maintains the
theory of Forms,
viz.
Phaedo
,
Symposium
, and
Cratylus
, as dialogues where, in that respect at least, the Socrates of the dialogue is not the historical Socrates. This result can now be supplemented by some conjectures about the likely course of Plato’s philosophical development which have at least reasonable plausibility.

It is reasonable to see in the attribution of the theory of Forms to Socrates a stage in the process of the transformation of Socrates into an authoritative figure who speaks more directly for Plato than does the Socrates of his earlier writings. This is indicated by some other features of these dialogues. The
Symposium
puts a good deal of emphasis on the individual personality of Socrates, starting with his unusually smart turn-out for the dinner-party (174a) and his late arrival as a result of having stopped on the way to think out a problem (174d–175b, a mini-version of the trance at Potidaea referred to later in the dialogue (220c–d)), and culminating with Alcibiades’ eulogy, which puts it squarely in the Socratic ‘Alcibiades dialogue’ tradition. But Socrates has another role in the dialogue, that of a spokesman who reports the speech of a wise woman, Diotima, to whom belongs the account of the educational role of love, culminating in the vision of the Form of Beauty (201d–212c). So, strictly, Socrates does not himself maintain the theory, but speaks on behalf of someone else who does. I think that Plato uses this device to mark the transition from the Socrates of historical fact and of the tradition of the Socratic genre (not explicitly distinguished from one another) to what we might call the Platonic Socrates. Socrates speaking with the words of Diotima is a half-way stage to the Socrates
of Phaedo
and
Republic
, who has now incorporated the theory of Forms as his own. As regards
Phaedo
, we saw that Socrates’ death depicted there was not his actual death, and it was suggested that Plato has signalled that the narrative does not reproduce what Socrates actually said. Another indication of this is the concluding myth of the fate of the soul after death, where Socrates steps out of his own person to tell what ‘is said thus’ (107d). The subject matter of
Cratylus
, in particular its interest in linguistic
meaning and Heraclitean theories of flux, links it firmly to
Theaetetus
and
Sophist
, to which it can plausibly be seen as a prelude.

Besides the theory of Forms, two other doctrines which it is reasonable to ascribe to Plato are those of the tripartite soul, which does not appear earlier than the middle period
Republic
and
Phaedrus
, and the theory of Recollection, which is plausibly ascribed to Pythagorean influences encountered on his first visit to Sicily in 387 and which is closely linked to the theory of Forms, explicitly in
Phaedo
and
Phaedrus
and, arguably, implicitly in
Meno
. Also closely linked to recollection is the theory of Reincarnation, which is the central topic of the great myths of the afterlife which conclude
Phaedo
and
Republic
, is indicated, though not particularly prominently, in the myth in
Gorgias
, is prominent in the myth in
Phaedrus
, and occurs in some of the arguments of
Meno
and
Phaedo
. My suggestion is that the Socrates who maintains these doctrines is a figure through whom Plato speaks, to a steadily increasing degree, his own words in the voice of Socrates.

This leaves us with a group of stylistically early dialogues in which Socrates does not maintain any of the doctrines which I have identified as specifically Platonic: the theory of Forms, the tripartite account of the soul, recollection, and reincarnation. Leaving out of account the two
Alcibiades
dialogues as probably spurious, and
Menexenus
on account of the fact that it is in essence not a Socratic dialogue but a parody of a funeral oration, these are:
Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Ion, Euthydemus, Protagoras
, and the two
Hippias
dialogues (of which the authenticity of
Hippias Major is
also disputed). To these should be added
Gorgias
and
Meno
as, probably, transitional works containing features linking them both to the early group and to the middle ‘Platonic’ dialogues. This is not to say that the Socrates of these dialogues is the historical Socrates. Plato, like every other Socratic writer, has from the outset concerns to which historical truth is incidental; in Plato’s case these are the defence of Socrates and the presentation of Socratic argument as a paradigm of philosophy.
These dialogues do, however, present a picture of Socrates which is coherent both psychologically and (to a reasonable extent, though not wholly) doctrinally. Moreover, that picture is closer to the historical reality to this extent: first, that the kind of discussion which is there presented is probably more like actual Socratic conversations than the more technical argumentation of, say,
Theaetetus
, and secondly, that the Socrates in these dialogues carries a lighter burden of Platonic doctrine.

As far as Plato’s portrayal of Socrates is concerned, there is no sharp line to be drawn between ‘the historical Socrates’ and ‘the Platonic Socrates’. The Platonic Socrates is simply Plato’s presentation of Socrates in his writings. That presentation, as I hope the foregoing sketch has indicated, undergoes an intelligible development from the portrayal of a highly individual personality engaged in a highly characteristic kind of philosophical activity to the mere ascription of the label ‘Socrates’ to the lay figure which represents Plato’s opinions. The earliest stage of that process, though closer to historical reality, is never a simple depiction of it, and the transition from that stage to a more ‘Platonic’ stage is continuous, not a sharp cut-off.

The next chapter examines the content of that early stage of the presentation of Socrates. Two presuppositions of this discussion should be made explicit. The first is that, while critical examination of the views of others is Socrates’ principal method of enquiry, the aim of that method is at least sometimes to provide arguments in support of certain theses which Socrates maintains, not merely to reveal inconsistency among the beliefs of those to whom he is talking.
⁶
The second is that the dialogues should not be read in isolation from one another. Some contemporary scholars, reviving the view maintained in the nineteenth century by Grote, suggest that there should be no greater expectation of consistency of doctrine or of the pursuit of common themes in the Platonic dialogues than in the corpus of a dramatist such as Sophocles. I believe, on the contrary, that Plato
throughout portrays Socrates engaged as a philosopher in the search for truth and understanding, and that the individual works which make up that portrayal may therefore be expected to give a coherent picture of his philosophical activity. That is not, of course, to deny that Plato can represent Socrates as changing his mind, or to deny that his portrayal of Socrates changes to reflect shifts in his own philosophical standpoint (some such changes are discussed in the next chapter). All that I am maintaining is that Plato presents Socrates as seeking to work out a broadly coherent position, against the background of which changes and developments have to be seen and explained.

Chapter 4
Plato’s Socrates

As indicated at the end of the last chapter, we shall be considering the portrayal of Socrates’ doctrines and methods of argument in twelve dialogues plus
Apology
. The following features are common to all or most of these dialogues.

i. Characterization of Socrates
. Socrates is predominantly characterized, not as a teacher, but as an enquirer. He disclaims wisdom, and seeks, normally in vain, elucidation of problematic questions from his interlocutors, by the method of elenchus, that is, by critically examining their beliefs. In some dialogues, notably
Protagoras
and
Gorgias
, the questioning stance gives way to a more authoritative tone.

ii. Definition
. Many of the dialogues are concerned with the attempt to define a virtue or other ethically significant concept.
Euthyphro
asks ‘What is holiness or piety?,
Charmides
‘What is temperance?’,
Laches
‘What is courage?’,
Hippias Major
‘What is fineness or beauty?’ Both
Meno
, explicitly, and
Protagoras
, implicitly, consider the general question ‘What is virtue or excellence?’ In all these dialogues the discussion ends in ostensible failure, with Socrates and his interlocutor(s) acknowledging that they have failed to find the answer to the central question; in some cases there are textual indications of what the correct answer is.