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[Philosophy] Did Socrates exist?
VThornheart
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Registered User regular
Another thread got me thinking about this again.
It's often simply accepted as fact that Socrates existed. However, apparently the issue is one of some controversy.
People seem to get pretty bent out of shape when people suggest the possibility, even though no solid evidence of his actually living exists. In this linked example of the typical response, the poster got pretty heavily criticized for not "looking it up," even though there seems to be no actual solid fact TO look up (and only one person was there to cite anything remotely resembling an example of such evidence, which was again a reference to one of the seeming caricatures of Socrates).
So I pose the question to the philosophically and historically-minded group. Hopefully we won't get too many responses like the one in the linked Yahoo! Answer, so that this can actually turn into an interesting discussion.
Did Socrates exist? How do you know, or is it impossible to know?
Questions you'll generally have to defend yourself from on either side:
If he did exist, why do the only accounts of his existence vary so widely?
If he didn't exist, why do three different authors cite his existence in their works?
It's often simply accepted as fact that Socrates existed. However, apparently the issue is one of some controversy.
People seem to get pretty bent out of shape when people suggest the possibility, even though no solid evidence of his actually living exists. In this linked example of the typical response, the poster got pretty heavily criticized for not "looking it up," even though there seems to be no actual solid fact TO look up (and only one person was there to cite anything remotely resembling an example of such evidence, which was again a reference to one of the seeming caricatures of Socrates).
So I pose the question to the philosophically and historically-minded group. Hopefully we won't get too many responses like the one in the linked Yahoo! Answer, so that this can actually turn into an interesting discussion.
Did Socrates exist? How do you know, or is it impossible to know?
Questions you'll generally have to defend yourself from on either side:
If he did exist, why do the only accounts of his existence vary so widely?
If he didn't exist, why do three different authors cite his existence in their works?
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That's what he'd want you to think about. If he existed. And we do.
MY BRAIN
Especially since he certainly no longer cares about due credit.
It's a different matter, of course, for supernatural folks like Jesus.
1)The controversy about Socrates isn't really that surprising, biographers of that time weren't really limited by 'facts' and 'unbiasedness' like we are...ever. Read Tacitus, the way he describes Octavian is completely different from the way a Medieval historian would.
2)OH SHIT SOCRATES IS ONE OF THE PATRIOTS!
This is taken from Eric Voegelin's "Plato," published 1966. I am using the 1981 printing. Page six, the section "Socrates" begins thus:
Now, besides this bit of primary evidence and the dialogues and letters of Plato, Socrates also appears in a play by Aristophanes, where he is portrayed as a Sophist. Further, Voegelin (and others) hold that the Gorgias is a direct response to a posthumous attack on the character of Socrates by Polycrates - I'm not sure I agree with this interpretation of that particular dialogue, especially in light of Book I of the Republic, but the fact that Polycrates was talking about a fellow named Socrates who died in 399 BC is worth mentioning.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, the absolutely fucking brilliant 20th Century German philosopher took what I would call the "generic" academic view of the question of Socrates. That is, the early dialogues of Plato represent to a relative degree of accuracy the historical Socrates; or, at least, the Socrates which Plato would have encountered as a youth. Indeed, in the English compilation of some of his work, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato he proceeds under just that assumption. The first of the eight studies is a look at the Lysis, and the Gadamer reads the work more as Socrates the "dialectician" than as Plato the philosopher.
Karl Popper is another fucking brilliant 20th century thinker, and one who I have unfortunately haven't read. Gadamer is at times incomprehensible; Popper, from my second-hand understanding, is very straight forward. He holds that Socrates did exist, and this is reflected more or less accurately in the early Platonic dialogues. But from the middle period of Plato onwards, he accuses Plato of co-opting Socrates to legitimize his own philosophy that is ultimately incompatible with that put forward by Socrates. He accuses Plato of vanity, insofar as Plato may see himself as the philosopher-ruler presented in the Republic. He even goes on to call Plato a proto-fascist and supporter of eugenics, and that all the dialogues from the transition period to late period ought to be read not as Socrates at all, but as Plato.
Since I haven't read Popper, I can't really comment on what this understanding of the dialogues does to the Platonic corpus, but the general assumption between Popper, Gadamer, and Voegelin are the same; Socrates existed, he inspired Plato to philosophy, the early dialogues of Plato may be more "history" than "philosophy." Given that I view Plato as a trustworthy source, and given that there is corroborating evidence with regards to mentions of Socrates by his peers (Arisotophanes, other friends who wrote dialogues, Polycrates), and also his accuser, Meleteus, I think it is safe to say that Socrates did in fact exist.
The real issue, I think, comes when you try to figure out just who is speaking in Plato's works - Socrates, or Plato himself?
Not really, because they're all dialogues. Every idea presented in Plato's corpus comes out of the mouth of a character in a dialogue, and is therefore subject to suspicion regarding how closely it adheres to Plato's actual thinking.
The Republic takes this to another height altogether: the dialogue between Socrates, Glaucon, Adiemantus and the other interlocutors is being recounted by Socrates to the reader after the fact. So we are presented with the dialogue and its ideas as related by Socrates, as Socrates is related by Plato.
There is nothing definitively known about the actual thought of Plato.
And that's actually part of why I like him.
The problem is that Plato and Aristotle actually wrote source documents that we've located. Sure, they could've been named someone else... but we can prove that someone lived who believed and wrote those things (and perhaps Plato/Aristotle was their pen name, but the authors lived).
The big - and important - difference is that Socrates supposedly never wrote any source documents. No evidence exists that Socrates himself ever documented his beliefs, much less that he personally wrote an account.
And the variation of the accounts of him is not just "he had blonde hair" versus "he had black hair". These are big things: Socrates was a Sophist vs. an Anti-Sophist for example. It looks like at least one (possibly more) of the three known attributions to him were either intentional satire of one of the other source articles, or some kind of counter-argument... which would strengthen the suggestion that Socrates was merely a person referred to when people wanted to write a dialog (like John Doe is today).
In response to other posts:
Harrier: I think I'd have to side with the opinion that Plato was recounting his own opinion through the dialogs, and was merely using another person's name (Socrates, in this case) to front his opinions.
Saggio: Interesting! In my brief searching on this topic, I hadn't found that information.
Is this the source document Plato is referring to? If it is, then Plato was being self-referential, as well as merely referring to the other questionable works. I skimmed through it briefly just now, and it looked like the critical points about Socrates' life in the account was referenced in this document back to the works of Plato and Aristophanes for it's evidence.
It's like a big circular reference, if that's indeed the document being sourced by Plato. Which brings us back to the original problem... unless this isn't the one, I'll keep looking. It looks at first glance like this is the document Plato was referring to though.
I'm going to get my nuts slammed in a drawer for this but there I said it.
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Edit: Wrote 'Aristotle' instead of Plato. Whoops.
Hell, Socrates has infinitely more evidence for his historicity than Jesus.
Don't forget that Plato wasn't the only one to record Socrates' speech; he shows up some in Xenophon's writing, too. Granted, Xenophon seems to stretch the truth as well, but this is usually to make himself look better rather than someone else.
Not true at all. Throughout the 13 Letters, Plato speaks directly as himself, in a non-dialectical manner. Indeed, the Seventh Letter is where most of the autobiographical information about Plato comes from.
Once again, that's not completely the case. Plato gives a fairly concise and (according to whom you agree with) important summary of his metaphysics in the Seventh Letter, which is definitely not in dialectical form.
Also, it is generally agreed that the entirety of the later dialogues (Laws, Statesmen, etc) are 100% Plato. The main issue is with the transition and middle dialogues, including the Symposium, Gorgias, Republic, Phaedrus, and others. They are absolutely foundational, but there is no clear distinction evident between what is the philosophy of Socrates and what is the philosophy of Plato.
This is a feature that is present in a number of other dialogues, notably Symposium. In that dialogue, it is another character entirely who is recounting to a listener the dinner between Socrates and various other peoples. Indeed, at some moments, we have Plato giving us the text which is being recounted by the narrator, wherein Socrates is speaking to the other members of the dialogue by himself recounting a past interaction between himself and a Priestess of Diodona. Plato is definitely aware of the philosophical implications of this, and he uses this sort of device as a means by which the explicit points brought up within the dialogues can be explored further, or seen in a different way.
Sorry to burst your bubble again, but the later dialogues are almost entirely Plato's philosophy, while the letters contain bits of Plato's philosophy in treatise format, written by the man himself. We very much do know a lot of the 'actual thought' of Plato - that isn't really the issue. We know, obviously, that the Doctrine of the Forms which is present throughout the Republic is almost certainly a Platonic concept; we don't know, however, if the methodological discussion relating to art, philosophy, and specifically the dialectic is a Platonic or Socratic concept. It could swing either way; Socrates was very obviously interested in the methodology of philosophy, and his use of the dialectic means of philosophical inquiry is reflected in this. But do the ideas expressed by the character Socrates throughout the early books of the Republic accurately reflect the method and thoughts of the historical Socrates, or are they a later innovation by Plato?
I'll have to bust out his sources list, but I don't think so. And it isn't Plato who is doing the referring, it is Voegelin; he is saying that the actual court documents involving Meletius and the sentence received by Socrates survive.
To be fair, Socrates was also a very common name. In the dialogue the Statesman, for instance, one of the characters involved is "Young Socrates" - not Socrates as a younger man, but rather an entirely different, younger person named Socrates.
Although I'd never heard of the Thirteen Letters before. My knowledge of Plato's corpus is sketchy. I think there's still a deliberate inscrutability to his thought, though.
It must be admitted, though, that the authenticity of Plato's Letters have been seriously questioned. I'm not a Plato scholar, but I'm pretty sure the contemporary consensus is that at least some of them are later, neo-Platonic creations; perhaps some of them are authentic, but it is very difficult to know which ones are.
However, it must be said that Aristotle tells us, often in excruciating detail, just what Plato and Plato's other pupils believed and taught in the Academy. And considering that it is widely attested that Aristotle was a student of the Academy, I think we can trust most of his attributions (setting aside the worry that he may have occasionally misunderstood what Plato was teaching). So I'm of the school that thinks we can get a pretty good knowledge of Plato's own philosophy---by reading Aristotle.
I just wanted to comment on one feature of the table in your second link; it claims that, according to Plato, Socrates did not do natural science. But this is false; according to Plato, Socrates did indeed do natural science in his youth, later abandoning those pursuits for purely ethical speculation. See Phaedo, 97b-100a.
That is true, but letters three, seven, and eight are almost universally recognized as authentic. Indeed, both Plutarch and Cicero mention the Seventh Letter, as do later philosophers and historians. It is by far the most important, as it is in this letter we get first hand information about Plato's life.
I definitely disagree. I've mentioned it a number of times now, but Plato wrote 13 letters, three of which are understood as undoubtedly authentic, including the most important - the seventh. In the Seventh Letter he outlines his metaphysics (342-344c), gives a brief autobiographical account (324-326), and an ongoing commentary and explanation of his involvement in Sicilian politics (the majority of the work).
Not only that, I would disagree that Plato "never truly spoke in his own voice" in the dialogues - will it is true there is never a character "Plato" who is identical to the writer, within the dialogues, that in no way diminishes the fact that it is Plato's philosophy that is being discussed (especially in the later dialogues), no Socrates' or any other character within a given dialogue (excepting, of course, some of the early dialogues). It was a very conscious decision by Plato not to engage and write in the typical treatise format - which was widespread during his time - but, rather, in the dialogue.
Large sections of the Platonic corpus are concerned with the particular methodology of philosophy, its relationship to "the good" (agathos) and "desire" (eros). Specifically, philosophy as a means by which one may educate desire and understand/reach the good. For Plato, it is the practice of philosophy by means of the Socratic dialectic that one may educate desire (think of the charioteer in the Phaedrus) and understand the good (the allegory of the Cave from Book VII in the Republic). It would be rather contradictory if Plato held this same position but wrote entirely in treatise format - it's not that he can't, or that he sees the dialectical method as being the perfect means to reach the good. Certainly not; in the Statesman there is a very long section at the beginning wherein Younger Socrates and the Athenian Stranger engage in a completely absurd conversation about the nature of what which is ruled which completely exposes the inherent limitations of the dialectical method.
Plato is able to certainly recognize the limitations of his own chosen method, and is quite able to employ the same methods as used by his peers. Another moment in the Phaedrus and there is an extended discussion on the nature of mythos and it's place within philosophy. Hell, Plato uses mythos and paradigma (likenesses) all the time in his dialogues when the dialectical method fails him - the things I mentioned above, like the charioteer in the Phaedrus, the allegory of the Cave in the Republic, along with things like the myth of the Ring of Gygees (also from the Republic), the myth of the age of Kronos (Statesman), and the paradigma of the circle from the Seventh Letter (there are lots of others), are all means to illustrate his philosophy that are explicitly not in the dialectical form.
Anyway. I have to go and write my last paper for this semester on the Symposium. I hope this helped.
Probably.
Jesus is another good question as well, but that's for another thread.
Aristotle is NOT a primary source for the existence of Socrates. Aristotle was one of Plato's students, and wrote about Socrates through the works that Plato did. His references are all to Plato's accounts of Socrates, he never had any of his own.
And then there's the fact that the three accounts of Socrates conflict with each other so much. So what's going on with that? If there was a Socrates, which of the accounts rerpresents who he actually was (if any)? Or was he just an idea, a "reference point" like my "John Doe" speculation?
Aye, thanks for your contributions! You've brought a lot of new information that I didn't know about previously.
You do have to recognize, however, the three very different opinions of Socrates underlying the three extant accounts; we would not be very surprised to find that three short biographies of George W. Bush, written by Michael Moore, Alberto Gonzalez, and Ann Coulter would read very differently. Aristophanes obviously thought that Socrates was a fool whose very presence was a mark against Athens; Plato thought he was the best thing ever to happen to Greek society; and Xenophon...well, I don't actually know what Xenophon has to say about Socrates, outside of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.
Like Plato, Xenophon seemed to believe Socrates was the bee's knees.
True, that is very possible. Though in the case of multiple biographies, the biographers (unless they were intentionally misconstruing the target's opinion) would at least accurately portray the opinion of the target person (and then put it in a bad/good light). In Socrates' case, it sounds like he was being shown to have entirely different philosophical beliefs... it'd be like two people writing biographies about Bush, and one of them says he was a Democrat. I guess if it was intended as satire that's another point entirely. But you have a good point.
1. No they wouldn't. People misrepresent others all the time. Also, Aristophanes' portrayal was in a farce; it wasn't meant to be an accurate depiction of his philosophy.
2. Xenophon's account of Socrates is pretty consistent with Plato's.
I'm not saying there's some sort of special, wonderful thing that results from Socrates existing or not existing. As with most things talked about in this forum, it doesn't have to have earth shattering implications (or any implications). Indeed in this situation, it probably doesn't actually *matter* if Socrates existed. It's just something moderately interesting/controversial to discuss. Like what coffee you prefer, or what video game just came out. You know what I mean?
What I'm trying to say is it's just a discussion... and if you feel that it's a discussion not worth having, no one's twisting your arm to participate.
What if Xenophon was simply taking Plato's Socrates character, or vice-versa? Again, this is all conspiracy theory on my part, but it's interesting to speculate. If indeed Socrates was a made-up character, created by Plato to be a front-man for his philosophical points, people might be inclined to use that same character to state agreement/disagreement with that perspective... and even to use him in mockery of the original author's points (kind of a "throwing the character back in the author's face" approach).
Of course, my opinions here stretch pretty wildly into conspiracy theory. I admit completely that the evidence leans more substantially to his existence. There were also some points brought up here that I never realized before, and it's been interesting to discuss and learn about them.
Socrates existed. I have to wonder what significance you think there would be if he did not exist.
I was not saying you should discard that evidence. I was just speculating, and I admitted that your evidence was the far more likely conclusion. I also said that the thread presented evidence to me that I didn't realize existed before, which helped to change my mind on the subject. What more do you want than that?
Note that I also said:
You may not have read that, so I have quoted it above for reference. I fail to understand why you continue in your attack when I admitted the strength of your claim and that mine was merely speculation. There's not much more I can do than that... so I don't know what you want from me.
See the post just above your post for my explanation of why I asked the question in the first place. I didn't make this thread because I thought it was significant. I wandered across the question and thought it would be interesting to post here, purely for discussion purposes.
There is no actual consequences of it being true or untrue that have any practical application: and I didn't realize that such was a prerequisite for an interesting discussion.
EDIT: Also, yes, Occam would be spinning in his grave.
Without Socrates, there would be no Plato. It was the death of Socrates that convinced Plato to be a philosopher.
According to Plato?
I laughed.
So he can't be brought back to life in the hypothetical situation in the other thread.
BET YOU FEEL DUMB NOW
Ding!