Interview With Socrates
Greek philosopher and educational reformer of the fifth century B.C.; born at
Athens, 469 B.C.; died there, 399 B.C. After having received the usual Athenian
education in music (which included literature), geometry, and gymnastics, he
practised for a time the craft of sculptor, working, we are told, in his
father's workshop. Admonished, as he tells us, by a divine call, he gave up his
occupation in order to devote himself to the moral and intellectual reform of
his fellow citizens. He believed himself destined to become a sort of gadfly to
the Athenian State. He devoted himself to this mission with extraordinary zeal
and singleness of purpose. He never left the City of Athens except on two
occasions, one of which was the campaign of Potidea and Delium, and the other a
public religious festival. In his work as reformer he encountered, indeedhe may
be said to have provoked, the opposition of the Sophists and their influential
friends. He was the most unconventional of teachers and the least tactful. He
delighted in assuming all sorts of rough and even vulgar mannerisms, and
purposely shocked the more refined sensibilities of his fellow citizens. The
opposition to him culminated in formal accusations of impiety and subversion of
the existing moral traditions. He met these accusations in a spirit of defiance
and, instead of defending himself, provoked his opponents by a speech in
presence of his judges in which he affirmed his innocence of all wrongdoing, and
refused to retract or apologize for anything that he had said or done. He was
condemned to drink the hemlock and, when the time came, met his fate with a
calmness and dignity which have earned for him a high place among those who
suffered unjustly for conscience sake. He was a man of great moral earnestness,
and exemplified in his own life some of the noblest moral virtues. At the same
time he did not rise above the moral level of his contemporaries in every
respect, and Christian apologists have no difficulty in refuting the contention
that he was the equal of the Christian saints. His frequent references to a
divine voice that inspired him at critical moments in his career are, perhaps,
best explained by saying that they are simply his peculiar way of speaking about
the promptings of his own conscience. They do not necessarily imply a
pathological condition of his mind, nor a superstitous belief in the existence
of a familiar demon. Socrates was, above all things, a reformer. He was alarmed
at the condition of affairs in Athens, a condition which he was, perhaps, right
in ascribing to the Sophists.
They taught that there is no objective standard of
the true and false, that that is true which seems to be true, and that that is
false which seems to be false. Socrates considered that this theoretical scepticism led inevitably to moral anarchy. If that is true which seems to be
true, then thatis good, he said, which seems to be good. Up to this tome
morality was taught not by principles scientifically determined, but by
instances, proverbs, and apothegms. He undertook, therefore, first to determine
the conditions of universally valid moral principles a science of human conduct.
Self-knowledge is the starting point, because, he believed, the greatest source
of the prevalent confusion was the failure to realize how little we know about
anything, in the true sense of the word know. The statesman, the orator, the
poet, think they know much about courage; for they talk about it as being noble,
and praiseworthy, and beautiful, etc. But they are really ignorant of it until
they know what it is, in other words, until they know its definition. The
definite meaning, therefore, to be attached to the maxim know thyself is Realize
the extent of thine own ignorance. Consequently, the Socratic method of teaching
included two stages, the negative and the positive. In the negative stage,
Socrates, approaching his intended pupil in an attitude of assumed ignorance,
would begin to ask a question, apparently for his own information. He would
follow this by other questions, until his interlocutor would at last be obliged
to confess ignorance of the subject discussed. Because of the pretended
deference which Socrates payed to the superior intelligence of his pupil, this
stage of the method was called Socratic Irony. In the positive stage of the
method, once the pupil had acknowledged his ignorance, Socrates would proceed to
another series of questions, each of which would bring out some phase or aspect
of the subject, so that when. at the end, the answers were all summed up in a
general statement, that statement expressed the concept of the subject, or the
definition. Knowledge through concepts, or knowledge by definition, is the aim,
therefore, of the Socratic method.
The entire process was called Hueristic,
because it was a method of finding,and opposed to Eristic, which is the method
of strife, or contention. Knowledge through concepts is certain, Socrates
taught, and offers a firm foundation for the structure not only of theoretical
knowledge, but also of moral principles, and the science of human conduct,
Socrates went so far as tro maintain that all right conduct depends on clear
knowledge, that not only does a definition of a virtue aid us in acquiring that
virtue, but that the definition of the virtue is the virtue. A man who can
define justice is just, and, in general, theoretical insight into the principles
of conduct is identical with moral excellence in conduct; knowledge is virtue.
Contrariwise, ignorance is vice, and no one can knowingly do wrong. These
principles are, of couse only partly true. Their formulation, however, at this
time was of tremendous importance, because it marks the beginning of an attempt
to build up on general principles a science of human conduct. Socrates devoted
little attention to questions of physics and cosmogony. Indeed, he did not
conceal his contempt for these questions when comparing them with questions
affecting man, his nature and his destiny. He was, however, interested in the
question of the existence of God and formulated an argument from design which
was afterwards known as the Teleological Argument for the existence of God.
Whatever exists for a useful purpose must be the work of an intelligence is the
major premise of Socrates' argument, and may be said to be the major premise,
explicit or implicit, of every teleological argument formulated since his time.
Socrates was profoundly convinced of the immortality of the soul, although in
his address to his judges he argues against fear of death in such a way as
apparently to offer two alternatives: Either death
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