From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Socrates (469-399 BC)

John M. Cooper
Biography
Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the second half of the fifth century bc, wrote no philosophical
works but was uniquely influential in the later history of philosophy. His philosophical interests
were restricted to ethics and the conduct of life, topics which thereafter became central to
philosophy. He discussed these in public places in Athens, sometimes with other prominent
intellectuals or political leaders, sometimes with young men, who gathered round him in large
numbers, and other admirers. Among these young men was Plato. Socrates’ philosophical ideas
and – equally important for his philosophical influence – his personality and methods as a
‘teacher’ were handed on to posterity in the ‘dialogues’ that several of his friends wrote after his
death, depicting such discussions. Only those of Xenophon (Memorabilia, Apology, Symposium)
and the early dialogues of Plato survive (for example Euthyphro, Apology, Crito). Later Platonic
dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium and Republic do not present the historical Socrates’ ideas;
the ‘Socrates’ appearing in them is a spokesman for Plato’s own ideas.
Socrates’ discussions took the form of face-to-face interrogations of another person. Most often
they concerned the nature of some moral virtue, such as courage or justice. Socrates asked what
the respondent thought these qualities of mind and character amounted to, what their value was,
how they were acquired. He would then test their ideas for logical consistency with other highly
plausible general views about morality and goodness that the respondent also agreed to accept,
once Socrates presented them. He succeeded in showing, to his satisfaction and that of the
respondent and any bystanders, that the respondent’s ideas were not consistent. By this practice
of ‘elenchus’ or refutation he was able to prove that politicians and others who claimed to have
‘wisdom’ about human affairs in fact lacked it, and to draw attention to at least apparent errors in
their thinking. He wanted to encourage them and others to think harder and to improve their
ideas about the virtues and about how to conduct a good human life. He never argued directly for
ideas of his own, but always questioned those of others. None the less, one can infer, from the
questions he asks and his attitudes to the answers he receives, something about his own views.
Socrates was convinced that our souls – where virtues and vices are found – are vastly more
important for our lives than our bodies or external circumstances. The quality of our souls
determines the character of our lives, for better or for worse, much more than whether we are
healthy or sick, or rich or poor. If we are to live well and happily, as he assumed we all want to
do more than we want anything else, we must place the highest priority on the care of our souls.
That means we must above all want to acquire the virtues, since they perfect our souls and enable
them to direct our lives for the better. If only we could know what each of the virtues is we could
then make an effort to obtain them. As to the nature of the virtues, Socrates seems to have held
quite strict and, from the popular point of view, paradoxical views. Each virtue consists entirely
in knowledge, of how it is best to act in some area of life, and why: additional ‘emotional’
aspects, such as the disciplining of our feelings and desires, he dismissed as of no importance.
Weakness of will is not psychologically possible: if you act wrongly or badly, that is due to your
ignorance of how you ought to act and why. He thought each of the apparently separate virtues
amounts to the same single body of knowledge: the comprehensive knowledge of what is and is
not good for a human being. Thus his quest was to acquire this single wisdom: all the particular
virtues would follow automatically.
At the age of 70 Socrates was charged before an Athenian popular court with ‘impiety’ – with
not believing in the Olympian gods and corrupting young men through his constant questioning
of everything. He was found guilty and condemned to death. Plato’s Apology, where Socrates
gives a passionate defence of his life and philosophy, is one of the classics of Western literature.
For different groups of later Greek philosophers he was the model both of a sceptical inquirer
who never claims to know the truth, and of a ‘sage’ who knows the whole truth about human life
and the human good. Among modern philosophers, the interpretations of his innermost meaning
given by Montaigne, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are especially notable.
1. Life and sources
Socrates, an Athenian citizen proud of his devotion to Athens, lived his adult life there engaging
in open philosophical discussion and debate on fundamental questions of ethics, politics, religion
and education. Going against the grain of the traditional education, he insisted that personal
investigation and reasoned argument, rather than ancestral custom, or appeal to the authority of
Homer, Hesiod and other respected poets, was the only proper basis for answering these
questions. His emphasis on argument and logic and his opposition to unquestioning acceptance
of tradition allied him with such Sophists of a generation earlier as Protagoras, Gorgias and
Prodicus, none of whom was an Athenian, but all of whom spent time lecturing and teaching at
Athens (see Sophists). Unlike these Sophists Socrates did not formally offer himself or accept
pay as a teacher. But many upper-class young Athenian men gathered round him to hear and
engage in his discussions, and he had an inspirational and educational effect upon them,
heightening their powers of critical thought and encouraging them to take seriously their
individual responsibility to think through and decide how to conduct their lives. Many of his
contemporaries perceived this education as morally and socially destructive – it certainly
involved subverting accepted beliefs – and he was tried in 399 bc before an Athenian popular
court and condemned to death on a charge of ‘impiety’: that he did not believe in the Olympian
gods, but in new ones instead, and corrupted the young. Scholars sometimes mention specifically
political motives of revenge, based on guilt by association: a number of prominent Athenians
who were with Socrates as young men or were close friends did turn against the Athenian
democracy and collaborated with the Spartans in their victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian
war. But an amnesty passed by the restored democracy in 403 bc prohibited prosecution for
political offences before that date. The rhetorician Polycrates included Socrates’ responsibility
for these political crimes in his Accusation of Socrates (see Xenophon, Memorabilia I 2.12), a
rhetorical exercise written at least five years after Socrates’ death. But there is no evidence that,
in contravention of the amnesty, Socrates’ actual accusers covertly attacked him, or his jurors
condemned him, on that ground. The defences Plato and Xenophon constructed for Socrates,
each in his respective Apology, imply that it was his own questioning mind and what was
perceived as the bad moral influence he had on his young men that led to his trial and
condemnation.
Socrates left no philosophical works, and apparently wrote none. His philosophy and personality
were made known to later generations through the dialogues that several of his associates wrote
with him as principal speaker (see Socratic dialogues). Only fragments survive of those by
Aeschines of Sphettus and Antisthenes, both Athenians, and Phaedo of Elis (after whom Plato’s
dialogue Phaedo is named). Our own knowledge of Socrates depends primarily on the dialogues
of Plato and the Socratic works of the military leader and historian Xenophon. Plato was a young
associate of Socrates’ during perhaps the last ten years of his life, and Xenophon knew him
during that same period, though he was absent from Athens at the time of Socrates’ death and for
several years before and many years after.
We also have secondary evidence from the comic playwright Aristophanes and from Aristotle.
Aristotle, although born fifteen years after Socrates’ death, had access through Plato and others
to first-hand information about the man and his philosophy. Aristophanes knew Socrates
personally; his Clouds (first produced c.423 bc) pillories the ‘new’ education offered by Sophists
and philosophers by showing Socrates at work in a ‘thinkery’, propounding outlandish physical
theories and teaching young men how to argue cleverly in defence of their improper behaviour. It
is significant that in 423, when Socrates was about 45 years old, he could plausibly be taken as a
leading representative in Athens of the ‘new’ education. But one cannot expect a comic play
making fun of a whole intellectual movement to contain an authentic account of Socrates’
specific philosophical commitments.
However, the literary genre to which Plato’s and Xenophon’s Socratic works belong (along with
the other, lost dialogues) also permits the author much latitude; in his Poetics Aristotle counts
such works as fictions of a certain kind, alongside epic poems and tragedies. They are by no
means records of actual discussions (despite the fact that Xenophon explicitly so represents his).
Each author was free to develop his own ideas behind the mask of Socrates, at least within the
limits of what his personal experience had led him to believe was Socrates’ basic philosophical
and moral outlook. Especially in view of the many inconsistencies between Plato’s and
Xenophon’s portraits (see §7 below), it is a difficult question for historical–philosophical
interpretation whether the philosophical and moral views the character Socrates puts forward in
any of these dialogues can legitimately be attributed to the historical philosopher. The problem
of interpretation is made more difficult by the fact that Socrates appears in many of Plato’s
dialogues – ones belonging to his middle and later periods (see Plato §§10–16) – discussing and
expounding views that we have good reason to believe resulted from Plato’s own philosophical
investigations into questions of metaphysics and epistemology, questions that were not entered
into at all by the historical Socrates. To resolve this problem – what scholars call the ‘Socratic
problem’ – most agree in preferring Plato to Xenophon as a witness. Xenophon is not thought to
have been philosopher enough to have understood Socrates well or to have captured the depth of
his views and his personality. As for Plato, most scholars accept only the philosophical interests
and procedures, and the moral and philosophical views, of the Socrates of the early dialogues,
and, more guardedly, the Socrates of ‘transitional’ ones such as Meno and Gorgias, as legitimate
representations of the historical personage. These dialogues are the ones that predate the
emergence of the metaphysical and epistemological inquiries just referred to. However, even
Plato’s early dialogues are philosophical works written to further Plato’s own philosophical
interests. That could produce distortions, also; and Xenophon’s relative philosophical innocence
could make his portrait in some respects more reliable. Moreover, it is possible, even probable,
that in his efforts to help his young men improve themselves Socrates spoke differently to the
philosophically more promising ones among them – including Plato – from the way he spoke to
others, for example Xenophon. Both portraits could be true, but partial and needing to be
combined (see §7). The account of Socrates’ philosophy given below follows Plato, with caution,
while giving independent weight also to Xenophon and to Aristotle.
2. Life and sources (cont.)
Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates, Symposium and Memorabilia (or Memoirs) may well reflect
knowledge of Plato’s own Apology and some of his early and middle period dialogues, as well
as lost dialogues of Antisthenes and others. Xenophon composed the Memorabilia over many
years, beginning only some ten years after Socrates’ death, avowedly in order to defend
Socrates’ reputation as a good man, a true Athenian gentleman, and a good influence upon his
young men. The same intention motivated hisApology andSymposium. Anything these works
contain about Socrates’ philosophical opinions and procedures is ancillary to that apologetic
purpose. Plato’sApology, of course, is similarly apologetic, but it and his other early dialogues
are carefully constructed discussions, strongly focused upon questions of philosophical
substance. Plato evidently thought Socrates’ philosophical ideas and methods were central to his
life and to his mission. Xenophon’s and Plato’s testimony are agreed that Socrates’ discussions
consistently concerned the aretai, the recognized ‘virtues’ or excellences of character (see
Aretē), such as justice, piety, self-control or moderation (sōphrosynē), courage and wisdom;
what these individual characteristics consist in and require of a person, what their value is, and
how they are acquired, whether by teaching or in some other way. In his Apology and elsewhere
Plato has Socrates insist that these discussions were always inquiries, efforts made to engage his
fellow-discussants in coming jointly to an adequate understanding of the matters inquired into.
He does not himself know, and therefore cannot teach anyone else – whether by means of these
discussions or in some other way – either how to be virtuous or what virtue in general or any
particular virtue is. Furthermore, given his general characterization of virtue (see §§4–5), Plato’s
Socrates makes a point of suggesting the impossibility in principle of teaching virtue at all, by
contrast with the Sophists who declared they could teach it. Virtue was not a matter of
information about living or rote techniques of some sort to be handed on from teacher to pupil,
but required an open-ended personal understanding that individuals could only come to for
themselves. Xenophon, too, reports that Socrates denied he was a teacher of aretē, but he pays no
attention to such issues of philosophical principle. He does not hesitate to show Socrates
speaking of himself as a teacher (see Apology 26,Memorabilia I 6.13–14), and describes him as
accepting young men from their fathers as his pupils (but not for a fee), and teaching them the
virtues by displaying his own virtues to them for emulation, as well as through conversation and
precepts. Perhaps Socrates did not insist on holding to strict philosophical principles in dealing
with people on whom their point would have been lost.
In his Apology Plato’s Socrates traces his practice of spending his days discussing and inquiring
about virtue to an oracle delivered at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. Xenophon also mentions
this oracle in his Apology. A friend of Socrates’, Chaerephon, had asked the god whether anyone
was wiser than Socrates; the priestess answered that no one was. Because he was sure he was not
wise at all – only the gods, he suspected, could actually know how a human life ought to be led –
Socrates cross-examined others at Athens with reputations for that kind of wisdom. He wanted to
show that there were people wiser than he and thus discover the true meaning of the oracle –
Apollo was known to speak in riddles requiring interpretation to reach their deeper meaning. In
the event, it turned out that the people he examined were not wise, since they could not even give
a self-consistent set of answers to his questions: obviously, true knowledge requires at least that
one think and speak consistently on the subjects one professes to know. So he concluded that the
priestess’s reply had meant that of all those with reputations for wisdom only he came close to
deserving it; he wisely did not profess to know these things that only gods can know, and that
was wisdom enough for a human being. Because only he knew that he did not know, only he was
ready earnestly to inquire into virtue and the other ingredients of the human good, in an effort to
learn. He understood therefore that Apollo’s true intention in the oracle had been to encourage
him to continue his inquiries, to help others to realize that it is beyond human powers actually
to know how to live – that is the prerogative of the gods – and to do his best to understand as far
as a human being can how one ought to live. The life of philosophy, as led by him, was therefore
something he was effectively ordered by Apollo to undertake.
We must remember that Socrates was on trial on a charge of ‘impiety’. In tracing his
philosophical vocation back to Apollo’s oracle, and linking it to a humble recognition of human
weakness and divine perfection, he was constructing a powerful rebuttal of the charges brought
against him. But it cannot be literally true – if that is what he intended to say – that Socrates
began his inquiries about virtue only after hearing of the oracle. Chaerephon’s question to Apollo
shows he had established a reputation in Athens for wisdom before that. That reputation cannot
have rested on philosophical inquiries of another sort. In Plato’s Phaedo Socrates says he had
been interested as a young man in philosophical speculations about the structure and causes of
the natural world, but he plainly did not take those interests very far; and in any event, his
reputation was not for that kind of wisdom, but wisdom about how to lead a human life. In fact
we do not hear of the duty to Apollo in Xenophon, or in other dialogues of Plato, where we
might expect to find it if from the beginning Socrates thought Apollo had commanded his life of
philosophizing. However, we need not think Socrates was false to the essential spirit of
philosophy as he practised it if in looking back on his life under threat of condemnation for
impiety he chose, inaccurately, to see it as initially imposed on him by Apollo’s oracle.
Despite its impressiveness, Socrates’ speech failed to convince his jury of 501 male fellow
citizens, and he died in the state prison by drinking hemlock as required by law. His speech
evidently offended the majority of the jurors by its disdain for the charges and the proceedings;
Xenophon explains his lofty behaviour, which he thinks would otherwise have been lunatic – and
damaging to his reputation – by reporting that he had told friends in advance that as a 70-year-
old still in possession of his health and faculties it was time for him to die anyhow, before
senility set in. Furthermore, his ‘divine sign’ – the ‘voice’ he sometimes heard warning him for
his own good against a contemplated course of action – had prevented him from spending time
crafting a defence speech. (This voice seems to have been the basis for the charge of introducing
‘new’ gods.) So he would do nothing to soften his manner in order to win his freedom. Even if
this story is true, Plato could be right that Socrates put on a spirited, deeply serious defence of his
life and beliefs – one that he thought should have convinced the jurors of his innocence, if only
they had judged him intelligently and fairly.
3. Socratic elenchus, or refutation
In cross-examining those with reputations for wisdom about human affairs and showing their
lack of it, Socrates employed a special method of dialectical argument that he himself had
perfected, the method of ‘elenchus’ – Greek for ‘putting to the test’ or ‘refutation’. He gives an
example at his trial when he cross-examines Meletus, one of his accusers (Plato, Apology 24d–
27e). The respondent states a thesis, as something he knows to be true because he is wise about
the matter in question. Socrates then asks questions, eliciting clarifications, qualifications and
extensions of the thesis, and seeking further opinions of the respondent on related matters. He
then argues, and the respondent sees no way not to grant, that the original thesis is logically
inconsistent with something affirmed in these further responses. For Socrates, it follows at once
that the respondent did not know what he was talking about in stating his original thesis: true
knowledge would prevent one from such self-contradiction. So the respondent suffers a personal
set-back; he is refuted – revealed as incompetent. Meletus, for example, does not have consistent
ideas about the gods or what would show someone not to believe in them, and he does not have
consistent ideas about who corrupts the young, and how; so he does not know what he is talking
about, and no one should take hisword for it that Socrates disbelieves in the gods or has
corrupted his young men. In many of his early dialogues Plato shows Socrates using this method
to examine the opinions of persons who claim to be wise in some matter: the religious expert
Euthyphro on piety (Euthyphro), the generals Laches and Nicias on courage (Laches), the
Sophist Protagoras on the distinctions among the virtues and whether virtue can be taught
(Protagoras), the rhapsodist Ion on what is involved in knowing poetry (Ion), the budding
politician Alcibiades on justice and other political values (Alcibiades), the Sophist Hippias on
which was the better man, Odysseus or Achilles (Lesser Hippias), and on the nature of moral and
aesthetic beauty (Greater Hippias). They are all refuted – shown to have mutually inconsistent
ideas on the subject discussed (see Plato §§4, 6, 8–9).
But Socrates is not content merely to demonstrate his interlocutor’s lack of wisdom or
knowledge. That might humiliate him into inquiring further or seeking by some other means the
knowledge he has been shown to lack, instead of remaining puffed up with self-conceit. That
would be a good thing. But Socrates often also indicates clearly that his cross-examination
justifies him and the interlocutor in rejecting as false the interlocutor’s original thesis. Logically,
that is obviously wrong: if the interlocutor contradicts himself, at least one of the things he has
said must be false (indeed, all of them could be), but the fact alone of self-contradiction does not
show where the falsehood resides. For example, when Socrates leads Euthyphro to accept ideas
that contradict his own definition of the pious as whatever pleases all the gods, Socrates
concludes that that definition has been shown to be false (Euthyphro10d–11a), and asks
Euthyphro to come up with another one. He does not usually seem to consider that perhaps on
further thought the additional ideas would seem faulty and so merit rejection instead.
Socrates uses his elenctic method also in discussion with persons who are not puffed up with
false pride, and are quite willing to admit their ignorance and to reason out the truth about these
important matters. Examples are his discussions with his long-time friend Crito on whether he
should escape prison and set aside the court’s death sentence (Plato, Crito), and with the young
men Charmides, on self-control (Charmides), and Lysis and Menexenus, on the nature of
friendship (Lysis). Socrates examines Crito’s proposal that he escape on the basis of principles
that he presents to him for his approval, and he, together with Crito (however half-heartedly),
rejects it when it fails to be consistent with them. And he examines the young men’s successive
ideas about these virtues, rejecting some of them and refining others, by relying on their own
acceptance of further ideas that he puts to them. Again, he is confident that the inconsistencies
brought to light in their ideas indicate the inadequacy of their successive proposals as to the
nature of the moral virtue in question.
In many of his discussions, both with young men and the allegedly wise, Socrates seeks to know
what some morally valuable property is – for example, piety, courage, self-control or friendship
(see §5). Rejecting the idea that one could learn this simply from attending to examples, he
insisted on an articulated ‘definition’ of the item in question – some single account that would
capture all at once the presumed common feature that would entitle anything to count as a
legitimate instance. Such a definition, providing the essence of the thing defined, would give us a
‘model’ or ‘paradigm’ to use in judging whether or not some proposed action or person
possesses the moral value so defined (Euthyphro 6d–e). Aristotle says (in Metaphysics I, 6) that
Socrates was the first to interest himself in such ‘universal definitions’, and traces to his interest
in them Plato’s first impetus towards a theory of Forms, or ‘separated’ universals (see Plato §10).
In none of his discussions in Plato’s early works does Socrates profess to think an adequate final
result has actually been established – about the nature of friendship, or self-control, or piety, or
any of the other matters he inquires about. Indeed, on the contrary, these works regularly end
with professions of profound ignorance about the matter under investigation. Knowledge is never
attained, and further questions always remain to be considered. But Socrates does plainly think
that progress towards reaching final understanding has taken place (even if only a god, and no
human being, could ever actually attain it). Not only has one discovered some things that are
definitely wrong to say; one has also achieved some positive insights that are worth holding onto
in seeking further systematic understanding. Given that Socrates’ method of discussion is
elenctic throughout, what does he think justifies this optimism?
On balance, our evidence suggests that Socrates had worked out no elaborate theory to support
him here. The ideas he was stimulated to propound in an elenctic examination which went
against some initial thesis seemed to him, and usually also to the others present, so plausible, and
so supportable by further considerations, that he and they felt content to reject the initial thesis.
Until someone came up with arguments to neutralize their force, it seemed the thesis was
doomed, as contrary to reason itself. Occasionally Socrates expresses himself in just those terms:
however unpalatable the option might seem, it remains open to someone to challenge the
grounds on which his conclusions rest (see Euthyphro 15c, Gorgias 461d–462a, 509a, Crito 54d).
But until they do, he is satisfied to treat his and his interlocutor’s agreement as a firm basis for
thought and action. Later, when Plato himself became interested in questions of philosophical
methodology in his Meno, this came to seem a philosophically unsatisfactory position; Plato’s
demand for justification for one’s beliefs independent of what seemed on reflection most
plausible led him to epistemological and metaphysical inquiries that went well beyond the self-
imposed restriction of Socratic philosophy to ethical thought in the broadest sense. But Socrates
did not raise these questions. In this respect more bound by traditional views than Plato, he had
great implicit confidence in his and his interlocutors’ capacity, after disciplined dialectical
examination of the issues, to reach firm ground for constructing positive ideas about the virtues
and about how best to lead a human life – even if these ideas never received the sort of final
validation that a god, understanding fully the truth about human life, could give them.
4. Elenchus and moral progress
The topics Socrates discussed were always ethical, and never included questions of physical
theory or metaphysics or other branches of philosophical study. Moreover, he always conducted
his discussions not as theoretical inquiries but as profoundly personal moral tests. Questioner and
interlocutor were equally putting their ways of life to what Socrates thought was the most
important test of all – their capacity to stand up to scrutiny in rational argument about how one
ought to live. In speaking about human life, he wanted his respondents to indicate what they truly
believed, and as questioner he was prepared to do the same, at least at crucial junctures. Those
beliefs were assumed to express not theoretical ideas, but the very ones on which they
themselves were conducting their lives. In losing an argument with Socrates you did not merely
show yourself logically or argumentatively deficient, but also put into question the very basis on
which you were living. Your way of life might ultimately prove defensible, but if you cannot
now defend it successfully, you are not leading it with any such justification. In that case,
according to Socrates’ views, your way of life is morally deficient. Thus if Menexenus, Lysis
and Socrates profess to value friendship among the most important things in life and profess to
be one another’s friends, but cannot satisfactorily explain under pressure of elenctic investigation
what a friend is, that casts serious doubt on the quality of any ‘friendship’ they might form
(Plato, Lysis 212a, 223b). Moral consistency and personal integrity, and not mere delight in
argument and logical thought, should therefore lead you to repeated elenctic examination of your
views, in an effort to render them coherent and at the same time defensible on all sides through
appeal to plausible arguments. Or, if some of your views have been shown false, by conflicting
with extremely plausible general principles, it behoves you to drop them – and so to cease living
in a way that depends upon accepting them. In this way, philosophical inquiry via the elenchus is
fundamentally a personal moral quest. It is a quest not just to understand adequately the basis on
which one is actually living, and the personal and moral commitments that this contains. It is also
a quest to change the way one lives as the results of argument show one ought to, so that, at the
logical limit of inquiry, one’s way of life would be completely vindicated. Accordingly, Socrates
in Plato’s dialogues regularly insists on the individual and personal character of his discussions.
He wants to hear the views of the one person with whom he is speaking. He dismisses as of no
interest what outsiders or most people may think – provided that is not what his discussant is
personally convinced is true. The views of ‘the many’ may well not rest on thought or argument
at all. Socrates insists that his discussant shoulder the responsibility to explain and defend
rationally the views he holds, and follow the argument – reason – wherever it may lead.
We learn a good deal about Socrates’ own principles from both Plato and Xenophon. Those were
ones that had stood up well over a lifetime of frequent elenctic discussions and had, as he
thought, a wealth of plausible arguments in their favour. Foremost is his conviction that the
virtues – self-control, courage, justice, piety, wisdom and related qualities of mind and soul – are
essential if anyone is to lead a good and happy life. They are good in themselves for a human
being, and they guarantee a happy life, eudaimonia – something that he thought all human beings
always wanted, and wanted more than anything else. The virtues belong to the soul – they are the
condition of a soul that has been properly cared for and brought to its best state. The soul is
vastly more important for happiness than are health and strength of the body or social and
political power, wealth and other external circumstances of life; the goods of the soul, and pre-
eminently the virtues, are worth far more than any quantity of bodily or external goods. Socrates
seems to have thought these other goods are truly good, but they only do people good, and
thereby contribute to their happiness, under the condition that they are chosen and used in
accordance with virtues indwelling in their souls (see Plato, Apology30b, Euthydemus 280d–
282d, Meno 87d–89a).
More specific principles followed. Doing injustice is worse for oneself than being subjected to it
(Gorgias 469c–522e): by acting unjustly you make your soul worse, and that affects for the
worse the whole of your life, whereas one who treats you unjustly at most harms your body or
your possessions but leaves your soul unaffected. On the same ground Socrates firmly rejected
the deeply entrenched Greek precept to aid one’s friends and harm one’s enemies, and the
accompanying principle of retaliation, which he equated with returning wrongs for wrongs done
to oneself and one’s friends (Crito49a–d). Socrates’ daily life gave witness to his principles. He
was poor, shabbily dressed and unshod, and made do with whatever ordinary food came his way:
such things matter little. Wealth, finery and delicacies for the palate are not worth panting after
and exerting oneself to enjoy. However, Socrates was fully capable of relishing both refined and
plain enjoyments as occasion warranted (see §7).
5. The unity of virtue
The Greeks recognized a series of specially prized qualities of mind and character as aretai or
virtues. Each was regarded as a distinct, separate quality: justice was one thing, concerned with
treating other people fairly, courage quite another, showing itself in vigorous, correct behaviour
in circumstances that normally cause people to be afraid; and self-control or moderation, piety
and wisdom were yet others. Each of these ensured that its possessor would act in some specific
ways, regularly and reliably over their lifetime, having the justified conviction that those are
ways one ought to act – agathon (good) andkalon (fine, noble, admirable or beautiful) ways of
acting. But each type of virtuous person acts rightly and well not only in regularly recurring, but
also in unusual and unheralded, circumstances; the virtue involves always getting something
right about how to live a good human life. Socrates thought these virtues were essential if one
was to live happily (see §4). But what exactly were they? What was it about someone that made
them just, or courageous, or wise? If you did not know that, you would not know what to do in
order to acquire those qualities. Furthermore, supposing you did possess a virtue, you would
have to be able to explain and defend by argument the consequent ways in which you lived –
otherwise your conviction that those are ways oneought to act would be shallow and unjustified.
And in order to do that you would have to know what state of mind the virtue was, since that is
essential to them (see Plato, Charmides 158e–159a). Consequently, in his discussions Socrates
constantly asked for ‘definitions’ of various virtues: what is courage (Laches); what is self-
control or moderation (Charmides), what is friendship (Lysis) and what is piety (Euthyphro). As
this context shows, he was asking not for a ‘dictionary definition’, an account of the accepted
linguistic understanding of a term, but for an ethically defensible account of an actual condition
of mind or character to which the word in common use would be correctly applied. In later
terminology, he was seeking a ‘real’ rather than a ‘nominal’ definition (see Definition; Plato
§§6–9).
Socrates objected to definitions that make a virtue some external aspect of a virtuous action
(such as the manner in which it is done – for example its ‘quiet’ or measured quality in the case
of moderation, Charmides 160b–d), or simply the doing of specific types of action, described in
terms of their external circumstances (such as, for courage, standing one’s ground in
battle; Laches190e–191d). He also objected to more psychological definitions that located a
virtue in some non-rational and non-cognitive aspect of the soul (for example, in the case of
courage, the soul’s endurance or strength of resistance) (Laches192d–193e). For his own part, he
regularly shows himself ready to accept only definitions that identify a virtue with some sort of
knowledge or wisdom about what is valuable for a human being. That ‘intellectualist’
expectation about the nature of virtue, although never worked out to his satisfaction in any
Platonic dialogue, is central to Socrates’ philosophy.
Given that in his discussions he is always the questioner, probing the opinions of his respondent
and not arguing for views of his own, we never find Socrates stating clearly what led him to this
intellectualism. Probably, however, it was considerations drawn from the generally agreed
premise that each virtue is a condition motivating certain voluntary actions, chosen because they
are good and fine or noble. He took it that what lies behind and produces any voluntary action is
the idea under which it is done, the conception of the action in the agent’s mind that makes it
seem the thing to do just then. If so, each virtue must be some state of the mind, the possessor of
which constantly has certain distinctive general ideas about how one ought to behave.
Furthermore, since virtues get this right, these are true ideas. And since a virtuous person acts
well and correctly in a perfectly reliable way, they must be seated so deeply in the mind as to be
ineradicable and unwaveringly present. The only state of mind that meets these conditions is
knowledge: to know a subject is not just to be thoroughly convinced, but to have a deep, fully
articulated understanding, being ready with explanations to fend off objections and apparent
difficulties and to extend old principles into new situations, and being prepared to show with the
full weight of reason precisely why each thing falling under it is and must be so. Each virtue,
then, must be knowledge about how one ought to behave in some area of life, and why – a
knowledge so deep and rationally secure that those who have it can be counted upon never to
change their minds, never to be argued out of or otherwise persuaded away from, or to waver in,
their conviction about how to act.
In Plato’s Protagoras Socrates goes beyond this, and identifies himself with the position, rejected
by Protagoras in their discussion, that the apparently separate virtues of justice, piety, self-
control, courage and wisdom are somehow one and the same thing – some single knowledge
(361a–b). Xenophon too confirms that Socrates held this view (Memorabilia III 9.5). Protagoras
defends the position that each of the virtues is not only a distinct thing from each of the others,
but so different in kind that a person could possess one of them without possessing the others
(329d–e). In opposing him, Socrates sometimes speaks plainly of two allegedly distinct virtues
being ‘one’ (333b). Given this unity of the virtues, it would follow that a person could not
possess one without having them all. And in speaking of justice and piety in particular, Socrates
seems to go further, to imply that every action produced by virtue is equally an instance of all the
standardly recognized virtues: pious as well as just, wise and self-controlled and courageous
also. Among his early dialogues, however, Plato’s own philosophical interests show themselves
particularly heavily in the Protagoras, so it is doubtful how far the details of his arguments are to
be attributed to the historical Socrates. The issues raised by Socrates in the Protagoras were,
none the less, vigorously pursued by subsequent ‘Socratic’ philosophers (as Plutarch’s report in
On Moral Virtue 2 demonstrates). And the positions apparently adopted by Plato’s Socrates were
taken up and ingeniously defended by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (see Stoicism §16). As
usual, because of his questioner’s role, it is difficult to work out Socrates’ grounds for holding to
the unity of virtue; and it is difficult to tell whether, and if so how, he allowed that despite this
unity there were some real differences between, say, justice and self-control, or courage and
piety. Apparently he thought the same body of knowledge – knowledge of the whole of what is
and is not good for human beings, and why it is so or not – must at least underlie the allegedly
separate virtues. If you did not have that vast, comprehensive knowledge you could not be in the
state of mind which is justice or in that which is courage, and so on; and if you did have it you
would necessarily be in those states of mind. It seems doubtful whether Socrates himself
progressed beyond that point. Efforts to do that were made by Chrysippus and the other
philosophers referred to above. And despite denying that all virtues consist in knowledge, Plato
in the Republic and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VI follow Socrates to the extent of holding,
in different ways, that you need to have all the virtues in order to have any one.
6. Weakness of will denied
In Plato’s Protagoras Socrates also denies the possibility of weakness of will – being ‘mastered’
by some desire so as to act voluntarily in a way one knows is wrong or bad (see also
Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9.4, IV 5.6.) All voluntary wrongdoing or bad action is due to
ignorance of how one ought to act and why, and to nothing else. This would be easy to
understand if Socrates were using ‘knowing’ quite strictly, to refer to the elevated and
demanding sort of knowledge described in §5 (sometimes called ‘Socratic knowledge’).
Someone could know an action was wrong or bad, with full ‘Socratic knowledge’, only if they
were not just thoroughly convinced, but had a deep, fully articulated understanding, being ready
with explanations to fend off objections and apparent difficulties, and prepared to show
precisely why it was so. That would mean that these ideas were seated so deeply in the mind as to
be ineradicable and unwaveringly present. Accordingly, a person with ‘Socratic knowledge’
could not come to hold even momentarily that the action in question would be the thing to do,
and so they could never do it voluntarily.
However, Plato’s Socrates goes further. He explains his denial of weak-willed action by saying
that a person cannot voluntarily do actions which, in doing them, they even believe to be a wrong
or bad thing to do (Protagoras 358c–e). He gives a much-discussed, elaborate argument to
establish this stronger conclusion, starting from assumptions identifying that which is pleasant
with that which is good (352a–357e). These assumptions, however, he attributes only to ordinary
people, the ones who say they believe in the possibility of weak-willed action; he makes it clear
to the careful reader, if not to Protagoras, that his own view is simply that pleasure is a good
thing, not ‘the’ good (351c–e; see 354b–d). Although some scholars have thought otherwise,
Socrates himself does not adopt a hedonist analysis of the good in the Protagoras or elsewhere
either in Plato or Xenophon; indeed, he speaks elsewhere against hedonist views (see
Hedonism). The fundamental principle underlying his argument – a principle he thinks ordinary
people will accept – is that voluntary action is always ‘subjectively’ rational, in the sense that an
agent who acts to achieve some particular sort of value always acts with the idea that what they
are doing achieves more of that value than alternatives then thought by them to be available
would achieve. If someone performs an overall bad action because of some (lesser) good they
think they will get from it, they cannot do it while believing it is bad overall. That would mean
they thought they could have got more good by refraining, and their action would violate the
principle just stated. Instead, at the time they acted (despite what they may have thought before
or after acting), they believed (wrongly and ignorantly) that the action would be good overall for
them to do. Thus ignorance, and only ignorance, is responsible for voluntary error. Weakness of
will – knowingly pursuing the worse outcome – is psychologically impossible: ‘No one does
wrong willingly’.
The details of this argument may not represent explicit commitments of the historical Socrates.
None the less, his denial of weakness of will, understood as presented in Plato’s Protagoras, was
the centre of a protracted debate in later times. First Plato himself, in Republic IV, then Aristotle
in Nicomachean EthicsVII, argued against Socrates’ conclusion, on the ground that he had
overlooked the fact that human beings have other sources of motivation that can produce
voluntary actions, besides their ideas about what is good or bad, or right or wrong to do.
‘Appetites’ and ‘spirited desires’ exist also, which can lead a person to act in fulfilment of them
without having to adopt the idea, in their beliefs about what is best to do, that so acting would be
a good thing (see Plato §14; Aristotle §20, 22–23). The Stoics, however, and especially
Chrysippus, argued vigorously and ingeniously in defence of Socrates’ analysis and against the
Platonic–Aristotelian assumption of alternative sources of motivation that produce voluntary
action on their own (see Stoicism §19). In fact, during Hellenistic times it was the Socratic,
‘unitary’ psychology of action that carried the day; the Platonic–Aristotelian alternative,
dominant in the ‘common sense’ and the philosophy of modern times, was a minority view. The
issues Socrates raised about weakness of will continue to be debated today.
7. Socrates’ personality
Socrates drew to himself many of the brightest and most prominent people in Athens, securing
their fascinated attention and their passionate friendship and support. His effectiveness as a
philosopher, and the Socratic ‘legend’ itself, depended as much on the strength and interest of his
personality as on the power of his mind. Plato’s and Xenophon’s portraits of Socrates as a person
differ significantly, however. Plato’s Socrates is aloof and often speaks ironically, although also
with unusual and deeply held moral convictions; paradoxically, the depth and clarity of his
convictions, maintained alongside the firm disclaimer to know what was true, could seem all the
stronger testimony to their truth, and made them felt the more strongly as a rebuke to the
superficiality of one’s own way of living. In Xenophon, Socrates is also sometimes ironical and
playful, especially in the Symposium, but his conversation is usually direct, even didactic, and
often chummy in tone; his attitudes are for the most part conventional though earnest; and there
is nothing to unsettle anyone or make them suspect hidden depths. It is much easier to believe
that the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues could have had such profound effects on the lives of the
brightest of his contemporaries than did the character in Xenophon. That is one reason given for
trusting Plato’s more than Xenophon’s portrait of the historical personage. But perhaps Socrates
used the more kindly and genial manner and conventional approach depicted by Xenophon to
draw out the best in some of his young men and his friends – ones who would have been put off
by the Platonic subtleties. The historical Socrates may have been a more complex person than
even Plato presents.
Plato and Xenophon both represent Socrates as strongly attracted to good-looking young men in
the ‘bloom’ of their middle to late teens, just the period when they were also coming of age
morally and intellectually. In both he speaks of himself as unusually ‘erotic’ by temperament and
constantly ‘in love’. But he explains his ‘erotic’ attachments in terms of his desire to converse
with bright and serious young men, to question them about virtue and how best to live a human
life, and to draw out what was best in their minds and characters. In Xenophon he describes his
love as love for their souls, not their bodies, and he vigorously condemns sexual relations with
any young man: using him that way disgraces him and harms him by encouraging a loose
attitude as regards physical pleasures Symposium 8). The overheated sexuality of Plato’s own
accounts (Symposium and Phaedrus) of erōs, sexual love, for a young man’s beauty as
motivating an adult male to pursue philosophical truth into an eternal realm of Forms (see Plato
§12) is to be distinguished sharply from Socrates’ ideas, as we can gather them from Xenophon
and from Plato’s own early dialogues.
Xenophon emphasizes Socrates’ freedom from the strong appetites for food, drink, sex and
physical comfort that dominate other people; his enkrateia or self-mastery is the first of the
virtues that Xenophon claims for him (Memorabilia I 2.1). He was notorious for going barefoot
even in winter and dressing always in a simple cloak. Socrates’ self-mastery was at the centre of
Antisthenes’ portrayal, and is reflected also in several incidents reported in Plato, such as his
serene dismissal of the young Alcibiades’ efforts to seduce him sexually
(Plato, Symposium 217b–219e), or, perhaps when engrossed in a philosophical problem, his
standing in the open (during a break in the action while on military service) from morning to
night, totally indifferent to everything around him (Symposium 220c–d). This ‘ascetic’ Socrates,
especially as presented by Antisthenes – rejecting conventional comforts and conventional
behaviour – became an inspiration for the ‘Cynics’ of later centuries (see Cynics).
8. Socrates in the history of philosophy
Looking back on the early history of philosophy, later philosophers traced to Socrates a major
turn in its development. As Cicero puts it: ‘Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from
the heavens… and compel it to ask questions about life and morality’ (Tusculan Disputations V
10–11). Previously it had been concerned with the origins and nature of the physical world and
the explanation of celestial and other natural phenomena. Modern scholarship follows the
ancients’ lead in referring standardly to philosophers before Socrates collectively as
‘Presocratics’ (see Presocratic philosophy). This includes Democritus, in fact a slightly younger
contemporary of Socrates; Cicero’s verdict needs adjustment, in that Democritus, independently
of Socrates, also investigated questions about ethics and morality. With the sole exception of
Epicureanism, which developed separately out of Democritean origins, all the major movements
of Greek philosophy after Socrates had roots in his teaching and example. This obviously applies
to Plato, whose philosophical development began with a thorough reworking and assimilation of
Socratic moral inquiry, and through him to Aristotle and his fellow members of Plato’s
Academy, Speusippus and Xenocrates and others, as well as to later Platonists. Among Socrates’
inner circle were also Aristippus of Cyrene, who founded the hedonist Cyrenaic school (see
Aristippus the Elder; Cyrenaics), and Antisthenes, an older rival of Plato’s and major teacher in
Athens of philosophical dialectic. Both of these figure in Xenophon’s Memorabilia(Antisthenes
also in his Symposium), where they are vividly characterized in conversation with Socrates.
Another Socratic, Euclides, founded the Megarian school (see Megarian school). These ‘Socratic
schools’ developed different themes already prominent in Socrates’ own investigations, and
competed in the claim to be his true philosophical heirs (see Socratic schools; Dialectical
School).
In the third to first centuries bc, both the Stoics and their rivals the Academic sceptics claimed to
be carrying forward the Socratic tradition. In both cases this was based upon a reading of Plato’s
dialogues and perhaps other eye-witness reconstructions of Socrates’ philosophy. The Academic
Arcesilaus interpreted the Platonic Socrates as a sceptical inquirer, avidly searching but never
satisfied that the truth on any disputed question had been finally uncovered. He could point to
much about Plato’s Socrates in support: his modest but firm denial that he possessed any
knowledge, and his constant practice of inquiring into the truth by examining others’ opinions on
the basis of ideas which they themselves accepted, without formally committing himself to these
ideas even when he was the one to first suggest them. Arcesilaus, however, applied his sceptical
Socratic dialectic to more than the questions of ethics and human life about which Socrates
himself had argued, making it cover the whole range of philosophical topics being investigated
in his day. The Stoics read the dialogues (especially the Euthydemus and Protagoras) quite
differently. They found Socrates espousing a complete doctrine of ethics and the psychology of
human action. He posed his questions on the basis of this doctrine, leaving the respondent (and
the reader) to recover for themselves the philosophical considerations underlying it. They thus
emphasized the conceptions of virtue as knowledge, of virtue as unified in wisdom, and of
voluntary action as motivated always by an agent’s beliefs about what is best to do, that emerged
through Socrates’ examination of Protagoras (see §§6–7). They thought these constituted a
positive, Socratic moral philosophy, and in their own moral theory they set out to revive and
strengthen it with systematic arguments and with added metaphysical and physical speculations
of their own. Later Stoics regularly referred to Socrates as a genuine wise man or ‘sage’, perhaps
the only one who ever lived. He had brought to final, systematic perfection his knowledge, along
Stoic lines, of what is good and bad for human beings, and what is not, and therefore possessed
all the virtues and no vices, and lived unwaveringly the best, happy life, free from emotion and
all other errors about human life. It is a tribute to the complexity and enigmatic character of
Socrates that he could stand simultaneously as a paragon both of sceptical, non-committal
inquiry and life led on that uncommitted basis, and of dogmatic knowledge of the final truth
about all things human.
The figure of Socrates has continued to fascinate and to inspire ever-new interpretations of his
innermost meaning. For Montaigne, he proved that human beings can convincingly and
attractively order their own lives from their own resources of mind, without direction from God
or religion or tradition. In the nineteenth century Kierkegaard and Nietzsche offered extensive
interpretations of him, both heavily dependent upon Hegel’s absolute-idealist analysis. Hegel
interpreted Socrates as a quintessentially negative thinker, aiming at making people vacillate in
their superficial moral beliefs and endorse none of them wholeheartedly, thus hinting that the
truth, although universal and objective, lies deep within the freedom of their own subjectivity.
For Kierkegaard he represents, on the contrary, the possibility of living wholeheartedly by
occupying an unarticulated position somehow beyond the negative rejection but expressed
through it: ‘infinite absolute negativity’. In Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of
Tragedy) Nietzsche treats Socrates principally as having poisoned the ‘tragic’ attitude that made
possible the great achievements of classical culture, by insisting that life should be grounded in
rational understanding and justified by ‘knowledge’; but his fascinated regard for Socrates led
him to return to him repeatedly in his writings. Socrates was paradigmatically a philosopher
whose thought, however taken up with logic and abstract argument, is inseparable from the
search for self-understanding and from a deeply felt attachment to the concerns of human life.
His power to fascinate and inspire is surely not exhausted.
References and further reading
Aristophanes’ (c. 423) Clouds, ed. K.J. Dover, Aristophanes Clouds, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1968; trans. A.H. Sommerstein, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1982; trans. A.H. Sommerstein,
Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
(Classic comic portrayal of Socrates. Dover is an edition of the Greek text with explanatory
notes; Sommerstein’s 1982 translation also includes the Greek text and explanatory notes.)
Aristotle (c. mid 4th century ) Metaphysics I 6, XIII 4, Nicomachean Ethics VII 2–3, Sophistical
Refutations 34, Magna Moralia I 1, Poetics 1, in J. Barnes (ed.) The Complete Works of
Aristotle, revised Oxford Translation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, 2 vols.
(Important testimony on Socrates. The Magna Moralia is possibly by a follower of Aristotle, and
is of uncertain date.)
Benson, H.H. (1992) Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, New York: Oxford University Press.
(Reprints fifteen of the best journal articles of the 1970s and 1980s on Socrates and Socratic
philosophy; broad coverage of topics, full bibliography.)
Cicero, M.T. ( late 45 ) Tusculan Disputations, trans. J.E. King, Loeb Classical Library,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, 1927.
(Parallel Latin text and English translation.)
Giannantoni, G. (1990) Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (The Fragments of Socrates and the
Socratics), Naples: Bibliopolis, 4 vols.
(Volumes 1 and 2 contain the surviving Greek and Latin testimonia of Socrates – other than in
Plato and Xenophon – and of Antisthenes, Aeschines, Aristippus and other ‘minor’ Socratics;
volume 4 has notes in Italian.)
Grote, G. (1875) Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, London: Murray, 3 vols.
(Judicious, perceptive older account of Socrates in Plato’s works and of the other Socratics; still
valuable.)
Hegel, G.W.F. (1833–6) Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E.S. Haldane and F.H.
Simpson, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1892.
(Volume 1, pages 384–487 concern Socrates and the ‘minor’ Socratics.)
Kierkegaard, S. (1840–1) Om Begrebet Iron, trans. L.M. Capel, The Concept of Irony, London:
Collins, 1965.
(Subtitled ‘with constant reference to Socrates’.)
Maier, H. (1913) Sokrates, Tübingen: Mohr.
(Authoritative German treatment of the ‘Socratic problem’, arguing for the reliability of Plato’s
testimony as against that of Xenophon.)
Nietzsche, F. (1872) Die Geburt der Tragödie, trans. W. Kaufmann, The Birth of Tragedy, New
York: Vintage Books, 1967.
(Sections 7–13 especially concern Socrates.)
Plato (c. 390s–380s) Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Ion, Lesser Hippias,
Protagoras, Greater Hippias, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper, Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1997.
(These are the works of Plato usually categorized as ‘early’ or ‘Socratic’ dialogues.)
Plato (c. 380s–365) Meno, Gorgias, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic I, Phaedrus, Euthydemus,
Theaetetus, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997.
(The philosophical ideas in these dialogues cannot in general be assumed to be those of the
historical Socrates; but they do contain biographical information and characteristic portrayals of
his philosophical personality and manner.)
Reeve, C.D.C. (1989) Socrates in the Apology, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
(Commentary on Plato’s Apology in the light of Socrates’ general philosophy; accessible to the
general reader.)
Vlastos, G. (1971) The Philosophy of Socrates, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
(Collection of essays: see especially G. Vlastos, ‘The Paradox of Socrates’, A.R. Lacey, ‘Our
Knowledge of Socrates’, and M.F. Burnyeat, ‘Virtues in Action’.)
Vlastos, G. (1991) Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
(Comprehensive account based on a lifetime’s engagement with Socrates’ philosophy; good
bibliography.)
Xenophon (c. 385) Apology of Socrates to the Jury, trans. O.J. Todd, Socrates’ Defence to the
Jury (Apology), Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London:
Heinemann, 1922.
(Parallel Greek text and English translation.)
Xenophon (c. 370s) Symposium, trans. O.J. Todd, The Banquet, Loeb Classical Library,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, 1922.
(Parallel Greek text and English translation.)
Xenophon (c. 360s) Memorabilia, trans. E.C. Marchant, Memoirs, Loeb Classical Library,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, 1923.
(Parallel Greek text and English translation.)
Zeller, E. (1875) Die Philosophie der Griechen, 2. Teil, 1. Abteilung, Sokrates und die
Sokratiker, trans. O.J. Reichel, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, London: Longmans, Green,
1885.
(Exhaustive scholarly discussion and interpretation, which is still useful; part 2, section 1
concerns Socrates.)
c