By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily
Socrates wrote no books. Like Jesus, the only record he left was in the lives of those impressed by his life. Aristophanes, the great comic poet, made fun of him in The Clouds. The prize winning playwright made his Athenian audience laugh at learning, but The Clouds derives its chief modern interest from his assault on Socrates. Xenophan was a conservative student who left humanity a collection of fond memories of his master. In it, Socrates resembles a glorified version of Xenophan. Socrates is the wise and conventional popular sage. It is impossible from Xenophan’s account to understand why Athens would have bothered to kill Socrates.
Socrates survived his execution because Plato made him immortal. No teacher has ever had a better pupil. Plato, especially in his earliest dialogues, captured the essential Socrates. To read the Apology, the defense of Socrates at his trial is to understand the man. Were these the very words used by Socrates? It does not matter. Plato uses his memories of the trial and makes Socrates live again, but even this worshipful student began to outgrow his pain. “Socrates” in the dialogues gains his own voice and that voice matures. The voice of Plato in the Laws, where Socrates does not appear as a character, is not that of Socrates.
Though the Platonic dialogues are not historical documents, they are valuable in knowing the real Socrates. In fact, if the goal of reading them is to know Socrates, they are better than modern histories. Plato uses every tool in his unsurpassed intellectual arsenal to present a picture of the living Socrates. It is not Plato’s concern to get every historical detail right. He invents conversations between other people and Socrates that could never happened in actuality. The famous drinking party or Symposium is a prime example of the liberties with history Plato was willing to take, but he does want to defend his master against the charges brought against him. To do so, he presents a plausible picture to the public. How could Plato hope to swing intelligent opinion behind Socrates if the Socrates he described did not resemble the man Athenians had known?
Socrates did not claim to have knowledge. In fact, Socrates frequently claimed that he did not know anything . . . except that he did not know anything. Of course, by this he meant that he did not know anything he had come to think worth knowing. Socrates had served as loyal citizen of the city in the government and the army. He was a craftsman, a stone cutter, a highly skilled trade. Socrates saw, however, that these external “good” were not enough, since they did not teach him how to live the good life. This integrity came with a price since Socrates did not charge fees for his teaching or mentoring.
Socrates believed that the best way to learn was by examining the opinions of those who claimed to know. At the very least, an exposure of their ignorance would eliminate one way of going wrong. The man who debunks the inflated claims of a healing evangelist does not show that healing does not happen, but he does provide the useful service of showing that healing has not happened here and in this way. It is a negative path to a limited sort of knowledge. Socrates hoped in the process to come to a person who knows. It may also have occurred to Socrates that the communal quest for the truth like that pictured in the Symposium would bring answers. It might be that no one person could teach, but that many persons together could find the right questions.
