The Socratic Way
 

 

Introduction

 

Philosophy has been an essential part of Western culture for as long as it has been identifiably Western, but most people, though they may have learned to speak respectfully of philosophers like Sartre, Hegel, Descartes, Plato, and so on, have little idea of what it is that they did or what it is that modern philosophers do; and so the standard questions that an introduction to a first philosophy course tries to answer are things like: what is philosophy?, and why should anyone study it? These are basic questions, but I find that they are hard questions to answer directly; or, at least, it is hard to give any answer that an audience new to philosophy will find satisfactory. So I’m going to approach it somewhat indirectly.

 

The Socratic Way

 

Whatever it is that we call philosophy, has been going on for about 2500 years. The word itself betrays its origins in the activities of the ancient Greeks, for it is a compound of philos (filos,) meaning ‘love,’ and sophia (sofia,) ‘wisdom,’ together signifying ‘the love of wisdom’. But, in fact, we can be much more specific; because philosophy in the West didn’t just begin with ‘the Greeks,’ it began with a particular Greek – Socrates – who lived between ca. 469 and 399 BC. That doesn’t mean that he was the first person to be called a philosopher: there were plenty of those. What we mean by calling Socrates the originator of our philosophy is that he seems to have been the first to approach this business with a methodology appropriate to the task – a methodology that was so distinctive that it has come to be known as the Socratic Method.

 

Socrates’s influence was exerted entirely through his conversations with Athenians in the marketplace. He seems to have spent a lot of time in the marketplace chatting to his friends, and became, as you’d expect, a rather well-known figure in the city, although, as you’d probably also expect, not one who was well-respected by all. What the typical respectable Athenian gentleman thought of Socrates may be guessed from the portrait of Socrates that is painted by the comic playwright Aristophanes. In his play, The Clouds (first presented in 423,) Socrates appears as an unscrupulous buffoon with a hatfull of loony theories. Socrates is seen hanging from the ceiling of his school – called the ‘Thinkery’ – because being up high like this will help him have elevated thoughts. It is doubtful that this represents the historical Socrates accurately.

 

Luckily, there were those who were more appreciative, because Socrates himself wrote nothing at all, and so we depend on the writings of his star pupil, Plato, to learn about the real man, his method, and his arguments. Plato, who went on to become one of the world’s greatest philosophers, so admired Socrates that he wrote all of his own works as reports of Socrates’s conversations with other Athenians and visitors to Athens. It’s generally believed that the earliest of these so-called ‘Dialogues’ more or less represent the views of his admired teacher, and that as time went on he increasingly used them to present his own views.

 

So, what do we learn from Plato about Socrates’s work?

 

To begin with, it is notable that Socrates never claimed to be in possession of the truth. In the dialogue called the Apology, Socrates recounts the story of how he was once declared – by an oracle at Delphi – to be the wisest of men. 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 opinions 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 concluded that at least he was wiser than those people, because he knew that he knew nothing.

  

A second important point to note, is that Socrates was emphatic that he was only interested in the truth and that this had to be a collaborative exercise. No-one was clever enough to be able to establish the truth of things all by themselves. This is one of the recurring themes of Socrates’ discussions in the dialogues – he is forever saying to those he’s talking with that he would welcome their assistance in discovering new reasons for or against some point, or in showing him how his reasoning may have gone astray. He does not take the view that argument is a competitive event between two people – one of whom will emerge as the winner and the other as the loser.

  

The starting point for many Socratic inquiries, therefore, is a profession of ignorance, and a request for enlightenment upon some pressing issue, such as the nature of beauty, courage, piety, and so on. The person to whom Socrates is talking then makes a claim to have the relevant knowledge and responds to Socrates’ request. But in the conversation that follows Socrates proceeds to show – using the words out of their own mouth – that they do not have the knowledge that they thought they had. And both parties then come away from the encounter with a clearer idea of what the issues are and how little we really know.

 

Euthyphro and the elenchus

 

As presented in the Dialogues of Plato, all this happens in a rather artificially regular way. It’s extremely doubtful that any of them are accurate representations of any actual dialogue that Socrates took part in – but they probably capture the essence of the way Socrates did things. According to Plato the Socratic method is a question and answer session with the following rules and goals:

 

1.                   Socrates asks all the questions.

2.                   The interlocutor must answer every question.

3.                   A definition or principle is sought from the interlocutor.

4.                   Socrates seeks clarification, gaining assent for various propositions.

5.                   These propositions are used to show that the proposed definition or principle is unsatisfactory.

 

In this form the Socratic method is called the elenchus. (Apparently, in Modern Greek this word has developed into their word for a tax audit – so I suppose it has always been a pretty painful experience for the person being cross-examined.)

 

The dialogue called Euthyphro gives a good illustration of the elenchus. Like most of these dialogues, it is named for the person to whom Socrates is talking. In this dialogue Socrates happens 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 prosecute 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 and 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.)

 

Soc. Good heavens, Euthyphro! and is your knowledge of religion and of things pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an action against your father? 

Euth. The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?

 

So Euthyphro claims to have knowledge about piety, and all such things. Socrates naturally asks:

Soc. … I adjure you to tell me the nature of piety and impiety, which you said that you knew so well, and of murder, and of other offences against the gods. What are they? Is not piety in every action always the same? and impiety, again – is it not always the opposite of piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety, one notion which includes whatever is impious? 

Euth. To be sure, Socrates. 

Soc. And what is piety, and what is impiety? 

Euth. Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime-whether he be your father or mother, or whoever he may be-that makes no difference; and not to prosecute them is impiety. And please to consider, Socrates, what a notable proof I will give you of the truth of my words, a proof which I have already given to others:-of the principle, I mean, that the impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?-and yet they admit that he bound his father (Cronos) because he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too had punished his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, they are angry with me. So inconsistent are they in their way of talking when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.

 

But notice what Euthyphro has offered here. Socrates asks what is piety, and Euthyphro gives several examples of pious behaviour, backed up by a comparison of what he is doing to what is known to have been done by Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. If it’s OK for the king of the gods, then it’s OK for him, he says. Socrates is not satisfid by this:

 

Soc. No doubt, Euthyphro; but you would admit that there are many other pious acts? 

Euth. There are. 

Soc. Remember that I did not ask you to give me two or three examples of piety, but to explain the general idea which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not recollect that there was one idea which made the impious impious, and the pious pious? 

Euth. I remember. 

Soc. Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then I shall have a standard to which I may look, and by which I may measure actions, whether yours or those of any one else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an action is pious, such another impious. 

…


Euth. Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them. 

Soc. Very good, Euthyphro; you have now given me the sort of answer which I wanted. But whether what you say is true or not I cannot as yet tell, although I make no doubt that you will prove the truth of your words. 

Euth. Of course. 

Soc. Come, then, and let us examine what we are saying. That thing or person which is dear to the gods is pious, and that thing or person which is hateful to the gods is impious, these two being the extreme opposites of one another. Was not that said? 

…


Soc. And further, Euthyphro, the gods were admitted to have enmities and hatreds and differences? 

Euth. Yes, that was also said. 

Soc. And what sort of difference creates enmity and anger? Suppose for example that you and I, my good friend, differ about a number; do differences of this sort make us enemies and set us at variance with one another? Do we not go at once to arithmetic, and put an end to them by a sum? 

Euth. True. 

Soc. Or suppose that we differ about magnitudes, do we not quickly end the differences by measuring? 

Euth. Very true. 

Soc. And we end a controversy about heavy and light by resorting to a weighing machine? 

Euth. To be sure. 

Soc. But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel, when we do quarrel?

Euth. Yes, Socrates, the nature of the differences about which we quarrel is such as you describe. 

Soc. And the quarrels of the gods, noble Euthyphro, when they occur, are of a like nature? 

Euth. Certainly they are. 

Soc. They have differences of opinion, as you say, about good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable: there would have been no quarrels among them, if there had been no such differences-would there now? 

Euth. You are quite right. 

Soc. Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? 

Euth. Very true. 

…


Soc. Then the same things are hated by the gods and loved by the gods, and are both hateful and dear to them? 

Euth. True. 

Soc. And upon this view the same things, Euthyphro, will be pious and also impious? 

Euth. So I should suppose.

At which point Socrates and Euthyphro notice that they have deduced a contradiction, which everyone agrees can’t be a true statement: it’s never true that the sun is shining and at the very same time and place the sun is not shining, or that the grass is green and at the very same time and place the grass is not green, or (and this is the important point) that something is loved by the gods and at the very same time not loved by the gods. But if this is the case, then the hypothesis that Euthyphro put forward – that piety is what the gods love and impiety the contrary – must be false; because it is an uncontroversially true principle of argument that anything which implies a falsehood must itself be false.

 

But this is a purely negative conclusion. And even at the end of the dialogue, after the two have considered many different possibilities, there is still no positive discovery to be announced. Socrates’s conversations must have been extraordinarily frustrating, since they almost never find an unambiguous answer to the questions that Socrates initially poses. For this reason, Socrates’s philosophical method is what we sometimes call aporetic, because it results in aporia, a Greek word meaning, basically, perplexity. We are perplexed at the end of the Euthyphro because we learn that all of our attempted definitions of piety have been shown to be faulty, and Socrates has thus convinced us that we don’t know what piety is.

 

Philosophical reflexion

 

But are we right to be so perplexed? Let’s look at what Socrates has done in our extract:

 

1.                   Socrates gets from Euthyphro a definition of ‘piety:’

Piety is what the gods love and impiety is what the gods hate.

2.                   Socrates then derives certain consequences of this definition.

Since we know that the gods have disagreements

And we know that the only fundamental causes of disagreement are differences over the matter of right and wrong.

It follows that the gods differ over right and wrong

Then, since we know that everyone loves what is right and hates what is wrong

It follows that the gods love and hate different things – or, which is the same thing, the same things are loved and hated by different gods

And we have assumed that piety is what the gods love and impiety is what the gods hate.

And so the same things are both pious and impious

3.                   Deriving the conclusion that:

Piety cannot be just what the gods love and impiety what they hate.

 

This seems pretty convincing at first sight, but the ultimate conclusion that we are invited to draw – that Euthyphro doesn’t know what piety is – depends upon a prior assumption that Socrates made – and that he got Euthyphro to assent to – that if we know what piety is then we can give a definition of it. This is, in fact, a thing that Socrates did generally assume to be true. If you know what anything means, then you can give a definition of it.

 

But perhaps Socrates needed to be challenged on this. We can imagine Euthyphro responding to Socrates in the following way.

 

Euth. So you have an understanding, Socrates, of what it is to know something?

Soc. I certainly do. And I’ll tell you what it is if you’d just ask.

Euth. So tell me.

Soc. With pleasure: I think that to know what a thing is is the same as to be able to give a definition of that thing.

Euth. And does this apply to all kinds of things Socrates, or just to some?

Soc. Why, to all things of course – because knowledge is just one kind of thing, though it can apply to many different kinds of things.

Euth. Well then, you see that fellow buying figs over there. The one with the shiny head?

Soc. Indeed I do. That is Cephalus. His head is shiny because he is bald, poor fellow, and the sun reflects glaringly from it.

Euth. Bald, you say?

Soc. And not just I, but many say it. But let us speak quietly, for he is rather sensitive.

Euth. But even from here I can see that he has several hairs remaining.

Soc. Not enough, Euthyphro, not enough. A man with one or two hairs is still bald.

Euth. And if you added one hair to the head of this bald man – or to any bald man – would he not still be bald?

Soc. I would say so.


Euth. And if, having added one hair to Cephalus, and he still being bald, you added another hair, would he still be bald?

Soc. I think I know where you’re going with this Euthyphro.


Euth. I’m glad to hear it. 

Soc. You are going to say that since I can’t tell you how many hairs makes the difference between hairy and bald, it’s clear that I can’t actually give a definition of bald, and therefore that I don’t really know what baldness is. 


Euth. That’s almost right. But what I’m really trying to point out is that there are many common words that we use, quite uncontroversially, and without any question of doubt about what we’re talking about, which we yet cannot define.

Soc. Ah, and therefore you reject my earlier claim that if you know what a thing is, then you must be able to define it exactly? 


Euth. Indeed; because there is really no doubt that Cephalus is bald, but neither is there any good definition of that condition.

 

But, of course, if we reject Socrates’s assumption that to know something involves at least being able to define it (meaning that if you can’t define it then you can’t know it) then the entire Socratic method is severely limited. Although it may be able to show that each and every attempted definition that you offer of piety, say, is indefensible, it will not establish that you don’t know what piety is. It can only show that your knowledge of it is not the sort of thing that comes packaged with an ability to define it.
 
What we have just seen is Euthyphro applying the Socrates’s method of elenchus to Socrates own method – a type of meta-elenchus, if you will. This demonstrates something fairly important about the thing that we call philosophy – it is reflexive. Philosophy often deals itself and its methods in a way that is unusual (very unusual) in other fields of enquiry. Sometimes those who look for definitions of philosophy, or characterizations, seize on this as a likely candidate: Graham Priest, formerly of UQ in Brisbane, used to call it ‘that discipline which has itself as its own subject’, and R.G. Collingwood said, more expansively, that

 

Philosophy is reflective. The philosophizing mind never simply thinks about an object, it always, while thinking about any object, thinks also about its thought about that object. Philosophy may thus be called thought of the second degree, thought about thought. For example, to discover the distance of the earth from the sun is a task for thought of the first degree, in this case for astronomy; to discover what it is exactly that we are doing when we discover the distance of the earth from the sun is a task for thought of the second degree, in this case for logic or the theory of science.

 

However, reflexivity just by itself can hardly be taken as definitive: the mathematics of mathematics (metamathematics) is an established field in Mathematics, and the history of history writing is something that Collingwood himself would have been familiar with. We can imagine also the sociology of sociology being conducted in the same way that we see the sociology of science being done, and so on.

 

So we have here a case where we have failed to give a definition of philosophy, and if we suspect that other attempted definitions may fail too then we may have to suffer the perplexity of not knowing what philosophy is; unless of course we accept that Euthyphro’s response to Socrates is on the mark and knowledge can be had without definitions. Well, we don’t know that yet – Euthyphro only claimed that it seemed likely to be the case, so we are in a state of perplexity about whether we should be in a state of perplexity. We suffer aporia upon aporia.