Socrates: A Man for Our Times (9 page)

Polus, having been argued into repudiating his master’s lifework, is then replaced by a man called Callicles, who produces a variation on Gorgias’s amoralism. Virtue, he says, and therefore happiness, are to be found essentially in self-will, for those with the skill and willpower to exercise it, and this is so whether what is willed is just or unjust. Callicles is voicing a doctrine later to be laid down powerfully by Nietzsche, who was fascinated by the Socratic dialogues—especially when Plato was in charge—and had illuminating things to say about them. Socrates does not actually refute this outrageous proposition but concentrates instead on drawing the distinction between Callicles’ life of action and his own life of philosophy, with an overwhelming preference for the latter: “An unexamined life is a life not worth living.” This last observation is essential Socrates, too, and occurs in different ways elsewhere in his discourse. But, that apart, Socrates is fading and morphing into Platsoc. He contrasts philosophy with the activities of Pericles, Miltiades, and Cimon, denouncing them with a vehemence that is alien to Socrates. The underlying proposition, that the true philosopher does more for the citizens of Athens by encouraging them to become virtuous than by leading them into victories and conquests, may be Socratic, but the context in which the point is made and the passion injected into the argument are ugly and un-Socratic: Platsoc again. Moreover the dialogue ends with a mythical presentation of the soul being judged after death, which is obviously Plato himself speaking.

Gorgias
, then, illustrates the huge problem of extracting the real views of Socrates from the labyrinthine entanglements in which Plato—by intention or by the irresistible compulsion of his own powerful spirit, we cannot judge—has confusingly embedded them. It is rather like what happens today when a media democracy goes to war. Indeed the same word is used. Correspondents are “embedded” in active service units, and what they transmit to their TV stations and newspapers is a mixture, sometimes a confusing and contradictory one, of their own views and observations, and what their military mentors, or guardians, wish them to transmit. But at least they can, if pushed too far, protest, even if it means being sent home. Socrates was the innocent victim of Plato’s embedment—which often involved a Procrustean bed, too—and never, of course, knew how his brilliant pupil would use him after his death.

All the same, it is clear what Socrates the real man thought about some important issues, and we can present them plainly. We have seen how he taught. Now we must look at—not so much what he taught, for he had no system and, strictly speaking, taught nothing in the way of dogma—but at what he believed.

V

Socrates and Justice

W
hen the great economist John Maynard Keynes was asked what made a successful capitalist, he replied “Animal spirits, mainly.” This observation applies to Socrates too. There was about him a vigor or animation of mind, a power of cheerfulness, vivacity, and liveliness. Some vital power or energy seemed to flow into and out of him. By “animal spirits,” there is no implication of boisterous irresponsibility, such as we find in an overactive child. Rather, a zest for life and a desire to convey it, by revving up the minds of those with whom he came into contact. And in certain contexts the zest could become formidable. I can well believe the image of him striding across the field of combat, in hoplite armor, carrying his weapons, with the Spartans shrewdly deciding to leave him strictly alone: They sensed a zest for combat they could do without. Socrates compared himself to a gadfly, stinging the massive Athenian horse of state, an elderly cart horse or battle-scarred charger, out of its complacency or comatose inertia.

In conversation, too, the zest could be formidable. One of his young friends, Alcibiades, compared him to an electric ray, whose bite induced a sense of numb helplessness. But there is a danger this remark may give a wrong impression. Socrates did not exactly
bite
in argument; he rarely if ever snapped. His practice of philosophy could be defined as “reflection on propositions emerging from unreflective thought.” It is worth repeating his saying “A life without examination is not worth living.” But his examinations, or cross-examinations, were courteous, even genial. A person might think afterward that he had made a fool of himself in dialogue with Socrates, but he is unlikely to have felt that he had been deliberately led into folly. Socrates clearly liked people, the great majority of them anyway.

His philanthropy, or love of his fellow men, was quite unlike the conscious humanism of Pericles and his associates. There was no taint of atheism about it. Socrates was too aware of human weakness and shortcomings to think men could ever substitute themselves for divinity. Socrates believed in God. It was precisely because he believed in God that he devoted his life to philosophy, which to him was about the human desire to carry out divine purposes. He believed he had a command to do this and that by wandering around Athens and talking to people—“examining” them—and examining himself, he was doing as God told him. When accusations were later brought against him, he was charged not with atheism but “not believing in the gods Athenians believed in.” This had perhaps an element of truth in it. Socrates did not believe in the traditional pantheon of Greek religion, with gods specializing in particular services and leading tumultuous lives that were more mythology or fiction than serious religion. When Socrates was at his most devout, he always refers to “god” or “the god,” not “the gods.” He was a monotheist.

Of course Socrates, being a courteous and sensitive man, always deferred to the superstitions of the common people—or the elites, for that matter. He had no wish to offend. He often used the vernacular of popular religion. His famous last words, “We owe a cock to Asclepius,” are an example. Being a practical man, an empiric, he thought popular religion was at worst harmless, at best a calming and ordering factor in society. It was also a consolation to people who led hard and often harsh lives of privation. He was no Richard Dawkins, eager to disabuse the common herd of their illusions in the name of triumphalist rationality. But Socrates, a moderate in all things, always knew when to draw the line. He did not go so far as Pericles, who openly dismissed superstition in public affairs. But having been a soldier, he believed diviners and soothsayers should be kept out of military decisions. One of his friends was the general Nicias, who should have evacuated his army from the plain of Syracuse on August 27, 413 B.C. He was persuaded by a lunar eclipse to remain for the requisite ritual days and lost everything, as Thucydides relates. Socrates hailed Nicias’s courage in the
Laches
dialogue on the subject. But he also says in it that the diviners must obey the general, not the other way around. He would have advised Nicias to withdraw as fast as he could and so save his army.

The role of religion in public affairs, however, was not Socrates’ principal concern. What he sought was ways in which he could help individual men and women to become better morally. This was the mission God had given him in life, as he truly and even passionately believed. He seems to have felt close to God, in some ways. God communicated with him through a
daemon,
or spiritual voice, which told him not to do certain unwise things, like become a politician. But if Socrates was a monotheist in essentials, with a strong sense of a personal god, he did not, I think, believe God to be omnipotent, as the Hebrews did. The Greeks in general imposed limitations on divine power. To them, the gap between gods and men was often narrow and could be bridged, by apotheosis, for instance. Their heroic mortals often behaved like gods, and their gods like mortals, exhibiting jealousy, cruelty, and other base emotions. Socrates would have none of this nonsense. He had a careful doctrine of what Leibniz was later to call theodicy, a vindication of the divine attributes, especially justice and holiness, in respect to the existence of evil. He felt no difficulty in the attempt “to justify the ways of God to men.” But he did it by rejecting the notion of divine omnipotence. In book 2 of the
Republic
(not a text where, in general, the real Socrates speaks, though I think he does in this particular passage) he remarks, “So God cannot be the cause of all things but only of good things. Of evil things he is not the cause.” In saying this, Socrates was rejecting many events and possibilities dear to the Greek mind. But he was also rejecting, for instance, the kind of dramas described in the Book of Job, a text he would have found of the greatest interest though not, in the end, plausible. But there is no sign that Socrates believed in a kind of dualism or Manichaeanism. He left the problem of evil open and concentrated on the good.

Socrates spent much of his time pondering the Good Life and how to attain it. For he believed, and it was the core of his belief, that only by striving to lead good lives did humans attain a degree of content in their existence and happiness in eternity. He had a simple view of the body and the soul and their relationship. The body was the active, physical, earthly aspect of a person and was mortal. The soul was the spiritual aspect and was immortal. The body was greedy for pleasure and material satisfactions, was selfish, and if not kept under control, became a seat of vice. The soul was the intellectual and moral side of the person, which had a natural propensity to do right and to improve itself. It could be, with proper training, the seat of virtue. The most important occupation of a human being was to subdue his bodily instincts and train himself to respond to the teachings of the soul. This training took the form of recognizing, understanding, and learning about virtues and applying this knowledge to the everyday situations of life. Such, to Socrates, was the essence of wisdom. Knowledge, virtue, and wisdom were thus intimately related, and exploring these connections was the object of his “examinations,” of himself and others.

In his personal life, Socrates did everything he could to subdue his bodily cravings. He ate and drank sparingly, even though he attended dinner parties for the sake of friendship. He declined to pursue a lucrative career, like the Sophists, so kept his needs to a minimum. He had no shoes. He wore few clothes. He was content with simple shelter. He declined an offer of freehold land on which to build a house. He had little or no ready cash, though he was pleased to see the rise of a bookselling trade in Athens and reported you could buy new manuscripts there cheaply. There were always friends to help him when he was in real need, which was rare. “I can do without.” “There are so few things I really want.” The great thing was to keep fit and well. A sick man with no money is bound to be a burden. But he was never sick and was perfectly fit when he died at age seventy. With the body under control, and everyone testified to that, he was in a position to cultivate his soul by pursuing virtue. He is said to have remarked, “I have never knowingly harmed any man, or sinned against God.” That sounds like boasting, and Socrates was the last man to boast. But it was almost certainly true.

What is also true is that Socrates’ notions of the body and the soul and of their relationship became, in time, standard. Before his day, the word
psyche
had existed, had indeed been in use for perhaps a millennium, but meant something quite different and nebulous. In Homer, souls are rather like ghosts and disappear if we try to touch them. They are doppelgangers of the dead and live in Hades on the asphodel meadow. This was probably how most people in Socrates’ day saw the soul, if they thought about it. Within a generation or two of Socrates’ death, however, his idea of the soul—in all its powerful simplicity, unlike the complex and precarious soul of Plato—had been accepted by a wide range of intelligent, educated Greeks. It fitted in perfectly with Christ’s teaching and so passed into the moral conceptions of Christianity and has been the received concept of the soul ever since among civilized people. If you and I say “soul,” we mean what Socrates meant, and he gave it that meaning.

That was a remarkable contribution to the moral furniture of our minds. But it was not the only one. Socrates took an optimistic view of human nature. He believed that the great majority of people wished to do well and that wrongdoing was usually the result of ignorance or false teaching. Once a person knew the truth, his instinct was to do what is right. Hence knowledge led directly to virtue, in Socrates’ view. This underlined the importance of education, especially the kind revealed by his examination technique, which was designed to show the individual that he possessed far less knowledge than he thought he did, and thus to encourage him to acquire more.

One vital subject on which knowledge was particularly lacking was justice. All Greeks favored justice. Very few, if any, knew what it was. Worse, Socrates found that what many thought was justice was, in fact, the opposite. If there was one topic on which Greek knowledge of virtue was fundamentally defective, it was justice. Aristotle was right to stress Socrates’ importance in revealing the need for definition of terms, for it is when you begin to study definitions accurately that you start plumbing the depth of ignorance, especially about justice.