EARLY SOCRATIC DIALOGUES
PLATO (c. 427–347 BC) stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. He came from a family that had long played a prominent part in Athenian politics, and it would have been natural for him to follow the same course. He declined to do so, however, disgusted by the violence and corruption of Athenian political life, and sickened especially by the execution in 399 of his friend and teacher, Socrates. Inspired by Socrates’ inquiries into the nature of ethical standards, Plato sought a cure for the ills of society not in politics but in philosophy, and arrived at his fundamental and lasting conviction that those ills would never cease until philosophers became rulers or rulers philosophers. At an uncertain date in the early fourth century BC he founded in Athens the Academy, the first permanent institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all Western universities. He travelled extensively, notably to Sicily as political adviser to Dionysius II, ruler of Syracuse.
Plato wrote over twenty philosophical dialogues, and there are also extant under his name thirteen letters, whose genuineness is keenly disputed. His literary activity extended over perhaps half a century: few other writers have exploited so effectively the grace and precision, the flexibility and power, of Greek prose.
TREVOR SAUNDERS was born in Wiltshire in 1934, and was educated at Chippenham Grammar School, University College London and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He taught at the universities of London and Hull, and at the time of his death in 1999 was Professor of Greek at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he had taught since 1965. He was also a Visiting Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Visiting Fellow of the Humanities Research Centre, Canberra. His main interest was in Greek philosophy, especially political, social and legal theory, on which he published numerous works, including two Penguin Classics: a translation of Plato’s Laws and a revision and re-representation of T.A. Sinclair’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics. In 1991 he published Plato’s Penal Code, a study of the penology of the Laws in its historical context, and in 1995 he published a translation of Politics: Books I and II for Clarendon Press. His recreations included railway history and the cinema.
ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. He graduated from Manchester University in 1974 and went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King’s College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer, and both copy editor and commissioning editor for Penguin. He is now a self-employed writer with publications ranging from academic articles to children’s fiction. He has translated various Greek philosophical texts, including several for Penguin Classics: Xenophon’s Conversations of Socrates and Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises, Plutarch’s Essays, Plato’s Philebus and Theaetetus and (in Plato’s Early Socratic Dialogues) Hippias Major, Hippias Minor and Euthydemus. His biography of Kahlil Gibran, Prophet: The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran, is published by Penguin. He has also edited The Voice of Kahlil Gibran for Penguin Arkana.
DONALD WATT was born in Argyll in 1955, and was educated at Oban High School, the University of Edinburgh and Balliol College, Oxford. His main academic interests are Greek drama and philosophy. He now lives in London, where he works in publishing.
IAIN LANE was born in Essex in 1961, but has spent most of his life in Yorkshire. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His main academic interest is moral philosophy, especially the ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle. He is married, and serves in the Anglican Priesthood.
Edited with a General Introduction by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS
ION
Translated and introduced by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS
LACHES
Translated and introduced by IAIN LANE
LYSIS, CHARMIDES
Translated and introduced by DONALD WATT
HIPPIAS MAJOR, HIPPIAS MINOR,
EUTHYDEMUS
Translated and introduced by ROBIN WATERFIELD
With some fragments of Aeschines of Sphettus,
translated and introduced by TREVOR J. SAUNDERS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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These translations first published 1987
Reprinted with a new Preface and revised Bibliography 2005
4
General introduction copyright © Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
ION: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright © Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
LACHES: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright © Iain Lane, 1987
LYSIS, CHARMIDES: introduction, translation, commentary and notes copyright © Donald Watt, 1987
HIPPIAS MAJOR, HIPPIAS MINOR, EUTHYDEMUS: introduction, translation,
commentary and notes copyright © Robin Waterfield, 1987
FRAGMENTS OF AESCHINES OF SPHETTUS: translation and commentary
copyright © Trevor J. Saunders, 1987
Preface copyright © Chris Emlyn-Jones, 2005
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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2. Socrates and His Predecessors
10. The Supreme Socratic Paradox
13. Socrates and Greek Democracy
14. The Purpose of the Dialogues
Translation with running comment
Translation with running comment
Translation with running comment
Translation with running comment
HIPPIAS MAJOR AND HIPPIAS MINOR
Translation with running comment
Translation with running comment
Translation with running comment
Some Fragments of Aeschines of Sphettus
SELECTIVE INDEX OF GREEK PERSONAL NAMES
The publication in 1987 of an edition of these seven short dialogues of Plato was hailed by reviewers as a landmark in the history of Penguin Classics. The team of editors, under the distinguished leadership of the late Professor Trevor Saunders, produced translations and commentaries that were clear, informative and, at the same time, scholarly. At the time their work was ‘state of the art’ and in most respects it remains so; this volume, not least Saunders’ own contribution to it, is one of the most stimulating and reliable guides for anyone studying these dialogues in translation.
For this reason revision of the original text is unnecessary. In the intervening period, however, scholarship on Plato has moved on, and it is appropriate that early twenty-first-century readers should have the opportunity of a bibliographical update. Since the late 1980s the general emphasis of Socratic/Platonic scholarship has changed in some respects: for example, the existence and nature of a clearly defined ‘socratic period’ in the history of Plato’s oeuvre, assumed rather than argued for in this volume, has been the subject of discussion and controversy. Much attention has also been given to the basic nature and purpose of Platonic composition, and in particular the balance between dramatic and philosophical elements in individual dialogues – already, as the reader will learn, a live issue in the various discussions to be found in this volume. On a practical note, for readers who wish for more biographical information about the numerous individuals other than Socrates who pass through the pages of these dialogues, J. K. Davies’ Athenian Propertied Families can now be replaced with the invaluable purpose-designed reference work by Debra Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis and Cambridge 2002).
The flood of publications since 1987 on these seven dialogues alone has been enormous; to attempt an update on the scale of the original volume would have doubled the length of the bibliography. I have therefore confined myself to adding the more significant and approachable publications in English.
Chris Emlyn-Jones
Each contributor to this volume has attempted to translate Plato’s subtle and elusive Greek into clear and idiomatic English; beyond this minimum requirement I have not sought to impose any uniformity of style. Nor have I required any particular philosophical stance, or any particular interpretation of any of the dialogues: each contributor has been free to expound, argue and assess as he thought fit. However, we have all written the various aids to the reader in accordance with the following triple guideline: that the introduction to each dialogue should be synoptic and discursive, offering guidance and suggestions on its problems and overall significance; that the italicized ‘signposts’ in the texts should elucidate and comment on the successive stages of the argument; and that the footnotes should provide succinct information on points of historical, literary and philosophical detail.
Since the primary purpose of the enterprise is a philosophical one, each translator has paid particular attention to the rendering of the key terms, and to their elucidation (with frequent transliteration) in the introductions, signposts and footnotes. Though we have aimed at a high degree of consistency within each dialogue, and between them, no guarantee is offered of a wholly invariable one-for-one translation of any term in the volume as a whole: the subject-matter is far too complex for that.
The ‘Introduction to Socrates’ is strictly for beginners: it does not assume knowledge of ancient Greece in general or of Socrates in particular. Its purpose is to set out in palatable form Socrates’ main characteristics as a man and a philosopher, as a basis for understanding the more detailed and specialized introductions to the individual dialogues. Further reading may be found in the bibliographies; each section of the volume, at the cost of some repetition, has its own, self-contained bibliography where full details are given of those works which are referred to by the names of their authors alone.
In sum, the reader is invited to make use of any or all of five forms of aid to his or her understanding of these dialogues: (i) general introduction, (ii) the introduction to each dialogue, (iii) signposts at intervals in the text, (iv) footnotes, (v) bibliographies. The variety and richness of Plato’s text deserve no less.
Each dialogue has been translated from volume III of the Oxford Classical Text of Plato (ed. J. Burnet, 5 vols., 1901–6); departures from it are pointed out in footnotes.
The traditional mode of detailed reference to Plato’s text is by the numbers of the pages in the edition of Stephanus (1578), which are printed in the margin, together with the subsections a, b, c, d, e.
References to works of Plato are made by their names alone. His version of Socrates’ speech at his trial, the Apology of Socrates, is abbreviated to Apology; the Greek word apologia means simply ‘speech in defence’.
Detailed information about some of Socrates’ interlocutors, and about some of the persons mentioned in the course of the conversations, may be found in J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 B.C.(Oxford 1971). An illustrated booklet by M. L. Lang, Socrates in the Agora (Princeton 1978), seeks to find Socrates ‘in the material world and physical surroundings of his favorite stamping-grounds, the Athenian Agora’ (market-place).
From time to time, in reprinting, bibliographies are brought up to date and other minor adjustments made.
T.J.S.
I express my most cordial thanks to all those who have in various ways given me the benefit of their knowledge and advice in the preparation of this volume: Dr P. V. Jones, Professor G. B. Kerferd, Mr J. F. Lazen by, Mrs M. Midgley, Dr P. Murray, Mr D. B. Robinson, Dr R. W. Sharples, Professor M. C. Stokes and Professor M. M. Willcock. The proofs benefited greatly from the vigilant scrutiny they received from my wife, Teresa.
Betty Radice, the editor of the series, suggested this collection of Socratic dialogues and gave me invaluable help and encouragement in its early stages. She died, however, before it was completed. Her long editorship of the Penguin Classics was fruitful and distinguished. This volume is gratefully dedicated to her memory. (TJS)
I am most grateful to Professor T. J. Saunders, Professor I. G. Kidd and Professor A. J. Woodman for their help. (RAHW)
I should like to thank Professor Trevor Saunders for his patience, advice and support. A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Mr David Robinson of the University of Edinburgh who read through drafts of both dialogues and provided invaluable help and encouragement. (DMW)
In particular I would like to thank Mr R. E. F. Green, who introduced me to the Laches, and Professor Trevor Saunders, who has been a consistently patient and helpful editor. A more general, though no less heavy, debt of gratitude is owed to all those from whose scholarship and enthusiasm I have learned so much. I am especially grateful to Professor M. C. Stokes for an invaluable set of comments on an early draft of the introduction to the Laches. Thanks are due also to my wife and my parents for their tolerance and encouragement. (IRL)
‘Mummy, why can’t we have yesterday again?’
‘Mummy, would I be me if Daddy had married somebody else?’
‘Daddy, will you go and fetch the moon for me?1
Parental answers to such questions are apt to be brisk and short: ‘What nonsense!’ or ‘Don’t be silly!’ Yet the puzzlement felt by the child is neither unnatural nor unintelligent. Teddy Bear has ‘gone’, into the toy-cupboard. Yesterday has ‘gone’. Teddy Bear can come back (and will in the morning). So why cannot yesterday too come back? Daddy can fetch a cup of milk, or a ball; so why can he not fetch the moon? Faced with discouraging answers, most of us learn to discriminate the various uses of words and to distinguish acts which are practically possible from those which are not. We learn, that is, to stop asking naïve questions. In a sense, to grow up is to give up.
But there are disconcertingly direct questions of another kind, which are not so easily outgrown. The child who wonders protestingly, ‘Why must I eat up my rice pudding?’, grows into the adult who asks, ‘Why ought I to care for my elderly parents?’, or ‘Why must I not steal?’ Commonly, of course, we simply learn to acquiesce in the accepted standards of our society, or of some group within it, and refuse to allow the hard questions of principle to bother us except intermittently. Our natural childish wonder is eroded, and we in turn become the irritated parents who give testy answers. But there is one person who never grows out of the childhood habit of asking for answers to awkward questions: the philosopher. For it is his business to be a child who never grows up.2
But he does not ask all types of difficult question. The development of science and technology has solved empirically, or made empirically solvable, many problems which used to be regarded as the province of philosophy. When we want to know how a thing works or what it is made of, we can use tested and agreed methods of chemical or other analysis which will, at least within certain limits, give us precise answers. With these problems, in so far as they are merely factual or technological, the philosopher has no concern. What engages him is any unsolved conceptual problem, for instance the relationship between hypothesis and induction in scientific inquiry and experiment, the moral responsibilities of the scientist or doctor, the rights of individuals against the claims of society, and in general a vast range of moral, social, legal, political, religious, logical and linguistic ideas. His job (it is a surprisingly arduous one) is to analyse and clarify the assumptions, methods and criteria employed by those who are working ‘in the field’ on a practical level – scientists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, priests and so forth. If such conceptual matters were ever elucidated with the same degree of demonstrable precision as is attainable in problems of science and technology, the philosopher would simply lose interest in them. In that case, the profession of philosophy would presumably wither away; for the world would have no need of it.
In Socrates’ heyday1 Greek philosophy had been a going concern for about a century and a half. The questions his predecessors had asked were diverse, wide-ranging and breathtakingly comprehensive; and for the reasons I have given many of them would not now be regarded as belonging to philosophy at all, but to the various special sciences:2
What was the origin of the physical world, and what is the nature of physical change?
What is the constitution of the heavenly bodies, and why do they move as they do?
What are the origins of the human race?
How did civilization develop to its present state?
How does the human body function?
What are the mechanics and validity of sense-perception?
What is the relationship between reality and thought?
How are law and nature related?
Ought moral standards to vary from time to time and from place to place, or ought they to be in some sense absolute or universal?
What sort of answers were given? Some of the assertions of Socrates’ predecessors and contemporaries are naïve, even crude; some are of the utmost subtlety and sophistication; all are fragmentary and difficult to interpret; and we often have to rely not on the actual words of these thinkers but on reports and summaries of their views in later writers. In general their beliefs were formulated not by controlled experimental method, but by informal observation, homely analogy and shrewd reasoning.
Socrates’ own influence on Greek philosophy is often represented as having been so highly decisive as to have turned it into quite new channels. Cicero, for instance, in a celebrated judgement,1 said that ‘socrates… was the first to call philosophy down from the sky and put her in cities, and bring her even into homes and compel her to inquire about life and ethics, and good and evil.’ But in the first place, the sorts of question about the physical world which I have indicated continued to be asked during Socrates’ lifetime and for many centuries afterwards, and at an infinitely higher level of technological sophistication they are still asked today: Socrates does not represent a clean break, at which one style of inquiry stopped and another began. In the second place, even before him, and certainly during his own lifetime, there was plenty of other speculation about ‘the lives and affairs of men’: Socrates did not invent moral philosophy as such. True, he liked to mark himself off from other thinkers in certain well-defined respects. For instance, he appears to have been, at least after a certain stage in his career, intolerant of speculation about the nature and workings of the physical world. But he did not put an end to it; and his own contribution is only one step, though a particularly influential and far-reaching one, in the progress of Greek philosophy.
Socrates made two crucial assumptions: (i) that the precision of knowledge attainable in practical skills like pottery or carpentry or ship-building is in principle possible in moral conduct; (ii) that this precise knowledge is to be won by analysing moral language. Let us examine this approach: how does it work?
But no. We are already on slippery ground. Do we know that Socrates thought what I have suggested? He himself wrote nothing, and (as in the case of Jesus) we are wholly dependent on the writings of others for our knowledge of his activities and opinions. These authors differ sharply in their portrait of Socrates, and their comparative historical reliability is a matter of controversy.1 They are chiefly four:
1. Xenophon (c. 430–c. 354) was a military man turned country gentle-man who had a strong interest in practical education. He had a fervent admiration for Socrates and had heard some of his conversations. He wrote a great deal about him, mainly but not exclusively in the form of purported reminiscences, and often with the professed intent of defending his memory against misunderstanding and misrepresentation.2 He portrays him as a sort of cracker barrel sage, much inclined to giving avuncular advice to young men. Here is a specimen:
I shall now describe how Socrates used to help people with honourable ambitions by making them apply themselves to the objects of those ambitions.
One day he heard that Dionysodorus had come to Athens and was offering to teach the art of generalship. So he said to one of his companions who he knew was eager to attain the rank of general in the state, ‘You know, my boy, it’s a poor thing for one who wants to be a general in the state to neglect the opportunity of instruction when it’s available. Such a person would be more justly liable to public prosecution than one who undertook to make statues without having learned how to do it; because in the perils of war the whole state is entrusted to the care of the general, and the good effects of his success and the bad effects of his failures are likely to be equally far-reaching. So a man who did his best to get himself elected to this office without troubling to learn how to discharge it would surely deserve to be penalized.’
By using arguments like these Socrates persuaded his friend to go and take lessons. (Memorabilia III. 1.1–3, trans. H. Tredennick; for Dionysodorus, see Euthydemus)
There is nothing here to make the blood race. One may note the moral earnestness and the emphasis on knowledge; these and other features of Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates may be found, in subtler and stronger forms, in Plato’s accounts; but if Socrates had been merely the genially edifying person Xenophon describes, then clearly he would never have become such a celebrated figure. Xenophon’s Socrates is indeed a considerable conversationalist, who holds certain views and makes certain assumptions about the world that deserve to be taken seriously;3 but hi strong point is massive horse-sense, not philosophical acumen.
2. Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 385), the comic dramatist, portrays Socrates in his Clouds as running a phrontistērion, a ‘thinking-shop’, in which all manner of new-fangled intellectual fantasticalities are taught to the young. Strepsiades wishes to enter his son for instruction, and when inspecting the establishment is scandalized by a conversation he has with the proprietor:
SOCRATES: These, these [the Clouds] then alone, for true Deities own, the rest are all God-ships of straw.
STREPSIADES: Let Zeus be left out: He’s a God beyond doubt: come, that you can scarcely deny.
SOCRATES: Zeus, indeed! There’s no Zeus: don’t you be so obtuse. STREP-SIADES: No Zeus up aloft in the sky!
Then, you first must explain, who it is sends the rain; or I really must think you are wrong.
SOCRATES: Well then, be it known, these send it alone: I can prove it by arguments strong.
Was there ever a shower seen to fall in an hour when the sky was all cloudless and blue?
Yet on a fine day, when the Clouds are away, he might send one, according to you.
STREPSIADES: Well, it must be confessed, that chimes in with the rest: your words I am forced to believe.
Yet before, I had dreamed that the rain-water streamed from Zeus and his chamber-pot sieve.
But whence then, my friend, does the thunder descend? that does make me quake with affright!
SOCRATES: Why ‘tis they, I declare, as they roll through the air. STREPSIADES: What, the Clouds? did I hear you aright?
SOCRATES: Ay: for when to the brim filled with water they swim, by Necessity carried along,
They are hung up on high on the vault of the sky, and so by Necessity strong
In the midst of their course, they clash with great force, and thunder away without end.
STREPSIADES: But is it not He who compels this to be? does not Zeus this Necessity send?
SOCRATES: No Zeus have we there, but a Vortex of air. STREPSIADES: what! Vortex? that’s something, I own,
I knew not before, that Zeus was no more, but Vortex was placed on his throne!
(Aristophanes, Clouds 365–81, trans. B. B. Rogers)
Necessity and Vortex were current cosmological concepts, notably of the atomists Leucippus and Democritus. That Socrates was at one period of his life interested in such topics is perfectly possible;1 but the point is that he is treated by Aristophanes throughout the play – not, I think, without a certain affection1 – as a sort of composite ‘intellectual’ embodying a great many of the fashionable philosophical speculations of the time, and as something of a subversive influence (witness the shock to Strepsiades’ religious belief administered by Socrates’ ‘naturalistic’ or ‘scientific’ explanation of thunder). A comedian must no doubt put some recognizably true characteristics into his representation of known persons; but he is not on oath, and will distort freely in order to raise a laugh. Aristophanes’ account of Socrates probably tells us more about the intellectual climate of fifth-century Athens and the popular reaction to philosophers in general than about Socrates in particular.2
3. By far the most striking, persuasive and influential account of Socrates comes from the pen of Plato (c. 427–347). If we are to believe what we find in the dialogues, Socrates was a man of immense charm, but with a turn of deadly irony; a man of simple religious faith,3 yet possessing logical prowess of a high order; and above all a formidable conversationalist, whose razor-sharp dialectic maddened his interlocutors to the amusement of the audience. Whether this portrait of Socrates is entirely historical may be doubted: it seems just too good, and somewhat larger than life. It probably owes much to the literary genius of Plato, who observed certain traits in Socrates’ character and conversations, and wrote them up into the irresistibly brilliant portrait which has fascinated the world ever since.4 Hence we are not to suppose that the dialogues written by Plato actually took place in the form in which he has written them. Obviously they must be based on something historical:5 but their literary elegance suggests an extensive degree of Platonic manipulation. In the end, however, what matters is not their historical accuracy but their philosophy.
4. This is our cue to bring on our last witness, Aristotle (384–322), who tells us in his Metaphysics: ‘There are two things which you may fairly attribute to Socrates: inductive arguments and general definition’ (1078b27–9). Aristotle was born too late to have known Socrates; but he spent twenty years in Plato’s Academy, and presumably read his dialogues as well as other sources; he probably absorbed a good deal of anecdotal evidence also. The word ‘fairly’ suggests that there was some controversy about Socrates’ contribution to philosophy, and that Aristotle is trying to settle it.1 Certainly, what he attributes to Socrates, ‘inductive arguments and general definition’, are central to Plato’s early Socratic dialogues.
An inductive argument is one which reasons from a frequent connection of A with B to an invariable connection of A with B:
| A | B |
| I went swimming last month | and caught a cold. |
| I went swimming last week | and caught a cold. |
| I went swimming yesterday | and caught a cold. |
Therefore 1. Whenever I go swimming I catch a cold.
Therefore 2. If I go swimming next week, I shall catch a cold.
The inferences 1 and 2 are plausible and perhaps very likely, but they are not cast-iron: I may swim next week and not catch a cold. However many cases (i.e. combinations of A and B, of swimming and cold-catching) are collected, inferences (1 above) from them and their predictive power (2 above) are always less then certain.2
Induction is closely related to analogy.3 In Plato,4 Socrates frequently reasons analogically along these lines:
In carpentry, there is an expert (the carpenter) in a defined body of knowledge, which has its own precise rules, procedures, techniques, and criteria of excellence.
In ship-building, the same is true.
In house-building, the same is true.
Therefore in moral action, the same is true.
In other words, morality is a skill or ability which like any skill or ability rests on a set body of knowledge. However, we do not, at least as yet, possess this body of knowledge,1 nor do we have the precise rules, procedures, techniques, and criteria of excellence; nor do we know who the moral expert is. Socrates seems to have supposed that such knowledge and rules could be acquired by a careful inspection of moral terms and of the way they are applied in reporting and assessing conduct.
Now, what is striking about moral terms is that the same word is applied to a wide variety of cases. For instance:
I pay my debts, and that is a just act.
I support my elderly parents, and that is a just act.
I punish a criminal, and that is a just act.
What feature (or set of features) is present to and common to all these and all other just acts, and entitles them to the description ‘just’, without which they would not be just? Will not that common feature be precisely the general term ‘justice’? Let us suppose we could acquire precise knowledge of that concept, just as a carpenter has precise knowledge of the criteria of good carpentry. We should then need, when assessing whether a given act is just or not (and there are many such difficult moments in human life), only to examine it to see whether it exhibits justice, the essential feature of all just acts.2 This feature would be cast in the form of the second of the two innovations Aristotle ascribes to Socrates: a definition.
What is a Socratic definition? It is a logos, a form of words, an account.3 Take several things with the same name: my table, your table, his table. Each of them has one or more properties (a flat top, say) which are essential to it, without which it would not be a table. A Socratic definition is a description of the constitution or structure of a bundle of those essential properties which, being present in certain particular objects, justify their being called tables. If one of these properties is not essential to the table’s being a table – if, that is, the table could be a table without it – then that property does not form part of the definition of table. For instance, a table may or may not be large, or black, or three-legged; but these qualities are not essential to it qua table; they are not part of its ousia, its essence.1 The bundle of essential properties Socrates often calls an eidos or an idea,2 the ‘appearance’ or ‘look’ of a particular class of things, which is present in and common to all the members of that class, and which serves to mark that class off from every other class of thing. In the case of tables it is tableness; in the case of just acts, justice; in that of pious acts, piety.
If the eidos were not present to the object, the object would not be what it is; add the eidos, and the object is what it is. It is the presence or absence of the eidos that makes the crucial difference. Hence it is easy to think of the eidos as a cause, something which by coming makes the object what it essentially is, and by departing deprives it of that status. To conceive of an eidos as a cause, as a thing in its own right, is however probably a development introduced by Plato (see pp. 32–3). Socrates himself seems to have concentrated on the eidos only as that which is simply there in all objects of a given class, and which needs to be described in terms of a definition.
There is a problem in the logic of Socratic definition. The procedure relies on an induction which is based on the assumption that the objects or acts which are the subject of the induction are correctly named, i.e. correctly identified as instances of the general term we are seeking. For instance, we collect several ‘just’ acts, and attempt to define ‘justice’. But we may be mistaken in having supposed those acts to be ‘just’ in the first place. In that case, one or more non-just acts will have vitiated our definition. The definition, which is supposed to enable us to discriminate just action from unjust, seems to depend on the prior availability of the knowledge it is itself intended to supply. For how can we know that the acts listed in the induction, which is intended to tell us what ‘justice’ is, are just, if we do not know what ‘justice’ is in the first place?1
Throughout the dialogues we find Socrates asking apparently simple questions such as ‘What is piety?’, ‘What is courage?’ and ‘What is justice?’ These questions, like the questions asked by children with which we started, have a startling directness; but they are in some ways rather sophisticated, in that they presuppose some reflection on the relationship between particulars and general terms, and to assume that such concepts as justice, piety, etc., somehow exist and can be formulated in words (cf. Section II). They have also the important implication that moral values are in some sense fixed and absolute. On this point, Socrates collides head on with the intellectual orthodoxy of his day. Many people, including some (but not all) of the thinkers known generally as the ‘Greek sophists’,2 observing that moral ideas and actions vary from time to time and from state to state in practice, concluded that the same applies in principle: that is, they ought to be essentially variable and freely adaptable to the needs and desires of individuals and communities. In the starkest contrast, Socrates argued, implicitly rather than explicitly, that moral concepts such as piety etc. are unchanging standards against which individual actions must be judged. The attack by Socrates on moral relativism is at the heart of Greek philosophical debate of the time.
It is clear that Socrates embarks on his inquiries not merely out of philosophical curiosity, but for pressing reasons of practical prudence: they are intended to yield results, a body of knowledge which can be applied with precision in the pursuit of the most moral life, which Socrates (see pp.25–7) assumes is the most happy one. And since every moral virtue, each in its own particular sphere of conduct, seems to be a matter of knowing what is good and what is evil, Socrates was inclined to think that they must all be fundamentally ‘one’.3 Moreover, as virtue consists in knowing something, it must presumably be teachable: it must be a skill or craft (technē), which like any other skill or craft produces precise practical results from exact calculation. In brief, to discover what virtue is is the means to become virtuous – and therefore happy – oneself. Philosophy thus becomes, or should become, crucial to the pursuit of the good life.
It is precisely because moral inquiry has practical implications that Plato takes care, by means of the dramatic framework that surrounds and permeates the philosophical content of the dialogues, to locate the inquiries in the context of the confusion and puzzlement about moral terms experienced by representative Athenians in their everyday life. So far as philosophy itself was concerned, he had no need to imitate or report Socrates’ inquiries in the form of dramatic dialogue: he could have simply set out their philosophical substance, and the steps in the argumentation, in plain and frugal form. But life generates puzzles of conduct; philosophy is intended to solve them; and in his Socratic dialogues Plato’s literary skill combined philosophy and life to superb effect.
A second and connected reason for the dramatic setting was, of course, Plato’s desire to demonstrate and popularize the practice of philosophy by writing material that would be found attractive to read or listen to (see pp. 35–6). Indeed, to some readers the dialogues’ literary polish has always been their chief appeal. ‘Macaulay’s diary for the month of July 1853 is full of Plato. “I read the Protagoras at dinner. The childish quibbling of Socrates provokes me. It is odd that such trumpery fallacies should have imposed on such powerful minds. Surely Protagoras reasoned in a better and more manly strain. I am more and more convinced that the merit of Plato lies in his talent for narrative and description, in his rhetoric, in his humour, and in his exquisite Greek.”’ 1
Socrates’ intellectualist approach to morality and to problems of conduct becomes particularly clear in the two celebrated paradoxes attributed to him by Plato. The first is, ‘Virtue is knowledge.’ ‘Virtue’ is the commonly accepted but somewhat misleading translation of aretē, ‘excellence’, ‘efficiency’, ‘goodness’. The point of the aphorism is that if we are to act morally and thus live happily, it is not enough simply to have virtuous intentions or even virtuous habits: there is a certain body of knowledge that must be acquired – knowledge, presumably, of the meaning of moral terms such as justice, piety, etc.1 Only if we know what these are can we be excellent and efficient in moral conduct.
The purport of the second paradox is fundamentally the same: ‘No one does wrong willingly.’ The ambiguity of the Greek word hamartanei (‘he goes/does wrong’) is crucial. If we do wrong it is because we have gone wrong. That is to say, we have acted in ignorance of, or in error about, justice or piety or some other moral term. If we really knew them, then naturally we would never2 do wrong (unless, of course, we were forced, or lacked non-moral technical resources or opportunity). Since to do right is to be happy (see further Section 8), no one can ever really want to do wrong;3 if a man does so want, it must be because he is misinformed about moral terms. The ambiguity of hamartanei tends to preclude the possibility of arguing that morally wrong conduct is consistent with happiness. For while the proposition ‘He who goes wrong/makes a mistake (hamartanei) about moral questions cannot be happy’ seems plausible enough (mistakes usually lead to suffering or disaster), it seems to bring with it the proposition ‘He who does wrong (hamartanei) cannot be happy.’ This latter proposition, which is wholly contrary to the intuition of the ordinary man, was indeed one of Socrates’ most firmly held beliefs.
The claim that no one does wrong willingly would, if true, have startling consequences for penology; for how could it ever be reasonable to punish a criminal, who ex hypothesi did not ‘really intend’ to do wrong? In brief, Socrates’ answer was that punishment is not, or ought not to be, the infliction of suffering in return for past misdeeds, but the ‘cure’ of the criminal’s involuntarily wicked psychic state for the future: it helps his soul to acquire, if not moral knowledge, then at least correct moral opinions. The wrongdoer who persists in doing wrong is less happy than the wrongdoer who is cured of his vice (see Section 8). Hence a criminal ought to seek punishment just as a sick man seeks medical treatment.4 That punishment is essentially cure is maintained, with some vehemence, in Plato’s last work, the Laws, and has some influence, at least theoretically, on the model penal code Plato draws up for use in the ideal state depicted in that dialogue.5
‘Happiness’ is the conventional but somewhat misleading translation of eudaimonia. It is not primarily a feeling, a warm glow of serenity and contentment; it is rather an objective state of affairs, something like ‘achievement and success in living’. Now according to Socrates, ‘To do right is to be happy’, and ‘To do wrong is to be unhappy.’ These propositions are very hard to swallow. Yet they are fundamental to his ethics. The courageous man,1 for instance, knows what actions to fear and avoid (for these are painful and lead to misery), and what actions need not be feared and avoided (for these are not painful and lead to happiness). Given this knowledge, and given all men’s desire for ‘good’, it is inconceivable that the courageous man, in the sphere of conduct to which the particular virtue of courage is relevant, should make mistakes in his choice of action. Knowledge is both a necessary and a sufficient condition of a choice which brings ‘happiness’.2
Of course, the virtuous/knowledgeable man may be frustrated by things and events external to himself from actually doing the morally correct actions which he has chosen. More importantly, it is notorious that the wicked often flourish, while the virtuous often do not. In ancient Greece this observation led, at least in certain thinkers, to a belief that in spite of appearances the wicked always suffer eventually for their crimes, either later in this life or in the next. But Socrates seems to have resolutely maintained the stronger thesis that if a wicked man appears here and now to be happier than a virtuous one, it is mere illusion. For already, here and now, in this world, the just man creates his own heaven, the unjust his own hell. No harm can come to the just man; whatever tribulations befall him he is always happier than the unjust. To persuade people of this is very difficult.3 What did Socrates mean by it?
Socrates’ view of the world was fundamentally teleological. He saw it as a rationally ordered structure, in which men, like many other things,4 have a function. That function is to fit in with the whole; that is what man is, in some sense, for. To fit in, to fulfil one’s function, is presumably advantageous and leads to happiness. Moral knowledge is, therefore, knowledge of that function, that is to say knowledge of what will bring good and what will bring evil. If that knowledge is virtue, then ignorance will be vice; the ignorant man does not know how to fulfil his function, which is the means to his own happiness.
Hence the word aretē, commonly translated ‘virtue’, is better thought of as ‘excellence’: since ‘virtue’ is knowledge, the man who has aretē is the man who has knowledge, and who is therefore excellently equipped to fulfil his function and be happy. In this respect Socrates stands firmly within ordinary Greek usage: aretē is excellence in or for something; but according to him that something was none of the goals which men commonly set themselves, such as power or wealth or luxury, but the achievement of eudaimonia, happiness, by fulfilment of function.
Although Socrates never quite puts the point in explicit terms, he is one of a long line of thinkers who have sought to find moral rules and standards in ‘nature’, as being somehow ‘given’ and fixed by the very structure of the world and man’s place in it. These standards, whatever they may turn out to be on inquiry, are objectively ‘there’, as matters of fact, whether we like it or not, and we ignore them to our cost; hence the importance of discovering them. The so-called immoralists of the fifth century (notably Thrasymachus in Republic I and Callicles in the Gorgias) appealed to the ‘facts of nature’ to support what broadly amounted to a doctrine of ‘might is right’. However much Socrates’ moral philosophy and ‘immoralist’ moral philosophy differ, they are fundamentally alike in assuming that moral norms exist as fixed and discoverable facts.1
This still does not meet the objection that the virtuous man, for all his knowledge, cannot possibly be happy if he is prevented from applying it and achieving advantageous action, and that if put on the rack he must be actually unhappy. But Socrates seems to have held that in the end moral knowledge is unshakeably satisfying to its possessor, in that it renders him indifferent to bodily discomfort or even death; in fine, no real (i.e. psychical) harm can come to the good man.2 In Plato, this issue is the central problem of the Republic. What Socrates there undertakes to prove is that justice is, as we would say, its own reward. He is challenged to show that justice, when stripped bare of all external consequences, whether good or ill, is for its possessor more valuable than anything else. ‘Platonic justice’ is an internal, psychological state, the condition of functional harmony between the rational, spirited and appetitive ‘parts’ of the soul, a harmony crucially characterized by the domination exercised by reason and knowledge. A man with such a harmony may live in squalor and deprivation; but he is many times happier than the unjust man in his palace, whose soul is dominated by appetite and passion. Whether Plato succeeds in demonstrating anything of the kind is highly disputable; some hold that in the last resort psychic justice is valued in the Republic for the social justice to which it leads in the state – that is to say, for its external consequences.1
The Socratic paradoxes entail some further paradoxes.
1. The virtuous man, he held, prefers being wronged to doing wrong, and never willingly does wrong even in return for wrong.2. Consequently, he will never disobey a law, even one that bears on him unjustly; for to break a law is itself to act contrary to justice.3 Such action is the action of an unjust man’s soul; and the unjust man is by definition ignorant of moral values and hence of the means to his own happiness. The just man not only will not, but cannot, do wrong, in any circumstances, because he knows that it would harm his own soul and militate against his own happiness: unjust action prevents him from ‘fitting in’ with the ordered structure of the world by fulfilling his function. He is therefore incapable of performing actions which he knows will make him as unhappy as the unjust man.4 To cultivate the locus of his moral knowledge should therefore, on prudential grounds, be a man’s first care: in Socratic terms this is to ‘cultivate his soul’, which is much more valuable than his bodily well-being or his material possessions.5
2. What the Greeks called akrasia (moral weakness, failure to control and check one’s desires and emotions) seems effectively abolished. For Socrates’ key assumption is that no man does voluntarily anything except that which he judges best. The virtuous man really knows that what is morally right is more advantageous than anything else; hence he is never torn between what he knows to be morally right and an apparently pleasurable alternative.1 If one objects, ‘That is contrary to experience: often I know what I ought to do, but do some other act instead, because it is more pleasurable’, then Socrates would claim that such a person’s lack of virtue does not consist in acting contrary to his knowledge, but in not possessing knowledge at all: he has only a vacillating correct opinion, vulnerable to the pressures of desires and emotion, which somehow displace that opinion in favour of another opinion, a false one, namely that to indulge pleasure and emotion is best. But real knowledge of piety, justice, etc., is knowledge not only of piety and justice, but also knowledge that piety and justice, not impiety and injustice, bring the greatest advantage. Such knowledge is immovable and invariably leads to correct action: for no man chooses to do what he knows will bring him less advantage in preference to what he knows will bring him more.
3. For the same reasons, a virtuous act performed by a man without moral knowledge may be in practice identical to a virtuous act performed by a man who does possess such knowledge.2 But the former person will be acting only in a state of ‘right opinion’, formed by mere habituation or on advice and instruction. Moral opinion is feeble and tottering; moral knowledge is strong and stable.
Today we should be inclined to say that, morally, man cannot but live in the dark: he is often unsure, in particular situations, that what he is doing is right. After a certain point, after all moral deliberation, he has personally to commit himself to some course of action, while still unsure that it is morally correct. The real test of his moral character is the size of the moral ‘risk’ he is prepared to take, the personal commitment he feels (rather than knows) he has to make to certain moral standards and actions. Now Socrates devoted his life to a search for definitions, norms which were intended to give precise answers to particular moral questions which arise in particular situations of moral difficulty.3 The supreme Socratic paradox is, therefore, that he died1 in defence of a quest which, had it been successful, would have told him infallibly whether or not to the was in fact the right thing to do. In the circumstances in which he found himself, he could not, on his own grounds, have known it to be right when he did it.2 He made the supreme commitment in defence of a method that was designed to abolish moral risk-taking, and to make personal commitments unnecessary.
Before embarking on an investigation of a term, Socrates insists on certain conditions. First, for reasons which will emerge shortly, the interlocutor must himself believe in the answers he gives to Socrates’ questions. Second, his answer must take the form of a general definition, e.g. of piety. To advance a specific example of piety, i.e. a particular pious action, will not do:3 all a single action can do is to show the application of the general concept in a single context, and then only to someone who knows the general concept in the first place; a single instance of piety, considered in isolation, cannot reveal what all pious acts have in common. Answers in the form of a particular action are also vulnerable to the negative example, i.e. an act which satisfies the definition as offered but demonstrates its inadequacy. Here is a simple case: ‘Justice is the returning of what we have borrowed.’ ‘But not, surely, if the borrowed object is a weapon, and the lender has now gone mad?’4 The third condition is that the interlocutor should not give a mere description rather than a definition: Socrates insists that we cannot say what sort of thing the concept in question is until we know what it is. For example, we cannot know whether virtue is teachable before we know what virtue is.5
After one or more false starts which breach one or more of these conditions, the typical pattern of a conversation with Socrates is as follows. Socrates again asks ‘What is x?’, where x is what is meant by the general term in question, e.g. justice or piety. The interlocutor then states at some level of generality acceptable to Socrates1 what he thinks x is (let us call his statement proposition A). Socrates, after a certain amount of bowing and scraping in deference to the interlocutor’s surpassing wisdom, and lamentation of his own ignorance, wonders whether the answer can be right. Will he consent to answer a few questions to clear up Socrates’ puzzlement? By all means. Socrates, starting from a second proposition, or set of propositions, which sounds obvious (let us call it/them B), and to which the interlocutor readily agrees, then asks a series of simple questions. Step by step the interlocutor is led on, till he finds himself assenting to some apparently unavoidable conclusion from B, which is nevertheless at odds with A. After some bewilderment, he tries again. He offers either a new A, or the first A modified in the light of the results of Socrates’ interrogation. This sequence, which is called elenchus (‘testing’, ‘refutation’), can then be repeated several times: new questions and objections from Socrates elicit modified or new answers. In theory, presumably, the progressive refinement of A could be carried to the point where it becomes irrefutable; but to judge from the dialogues this desirable result is never achieved in practice.
Sooner or later, as the elenchus proceeds, the interlocutor is disconcerted to find that he cannot have both A and B. In theory he could jettison B at any moment; but since B sounds so obviously true that no reasonable man could deny it, in practice it is A that has to be abandoned. The only truth established is not-A, and even that only so long as the interlocutor sticks by B, or so long as it is assumed that B is true. In that sense the progress made seems entirely negative: we discover several things that x is not; and invariably the conversation ends inconclusively, in what is called aporia, a state of helplessness or ‘flap’. But in another sense the progress is positive: the interlocutor becomes convinced of the falsity of A and hence of his own ignorance of the moral value which he had thought he could define.2
This conviction of ignorance is, according to Socrates, a good thing, as it clears the ground for the beginning of wisdom. Elenchus does not of itself tell the interlocutor what the truth is, or which proposition to abandon; it is intended to stimulate him to pursue his inquiries and reach the truth.1 That is why Socrates insists that the interlocutor must himself believe in his answer.2 It is not enough that he should answer in a spirit of disinterested intellectual experiment, to see if an idea ‘stands up’. He must be unreservedly committed to his answer, so that if it is refuted the educational effect may be as salutary as possible to him.3
Interlocutors, however, so far from feeling gratitude for being relieved of their misconceptions, would often become decidedly irritated, not only at being refuted, but by the frequent protestations of ignorance from Socrates himself; for they suspected him of knowing but concealing the right answer. They termed it ‘irony’, eirōneia, by which they meant not just ‘irony’ in the modern sense, but something like ‘slipperiness’ or ‘tricksiness’. Socrates, they understandably felt, was ‘real sneaky’, and more concerned to trip up and humiliate than to enlighten them.4
The conviction of ignorance forced on the interlocutor by the demonstration of the falsity of his opinion was not intended to produce in him what on many occasions it no doubt did produce: the conclusion that if the moral opinions which he had been accustomed to hold are wrong, then he was free to adopt others at whim. That is why the parents of the young men who were attracted to Socrates’ conversations thought of him as a negative and destructive influence.5 On the contrary: Socrates’ fundamental assumption was that moral standards have some sort of objective existence, and can be isolated and defined, given patient inquiry. Socratic dialectic is a strict discipline; it is not an invitation to smash conventional standards and ‘do your own thing’.
The essentially educational purpose of elenchus distinguishes it from:6 (a) epideixis, lecture/exposition/display, designed to impress and persuade discursively rather than by tight argument;1 (b) eristic, aggressive conversation using any and every verbal manoeuvre simply in order to win arguments, without regard for the truth;2 (c) antilogic, ‘disputation by contradiction’, systematic derivation of contradictory entailments from an opponent’s position, often but not always with eristic intent.3
Epideixis is fairly distinct. Eristic and antilogic are methodologically related, and because of their combative disregard for truth, they are often terms of abuse. Elenchus, though formally a variety of antilogic, is in Socrates’ hands never used eristically; it is a prized tool in dialectic, advanced and procedurally correct philosophical discussion.4
All Plato’s Socratic dialogues are amalgams of Socrates and Plato: they contain genuine historical reportage of at least Socrates’ general style of argument, worked up by Plato into more or less systematic treatments of particular philosophical difficulties, in the light of his own reflections and researches. The precise line of division between the two philosophers is impossible to draw with certainty.5 There is, however, general agreement that Aristotle was right to attribute to Plato two crucial developments.6
First, he extended Socrates’ notion of ‘universals’ (i.e. essential qualities common to all things of the same name, which entitle them to that name) from moral acts to all things whatever. For instance, just as all pious acts have piety in common, so do all beds have bedness in common. Plato thus developed Socrates’ attempt to define moral terms into a comprehensive theory of the relationship between particulars and general terms.
Second, whereas Socrates thought of these essential qualities as somehow present within all the members of a given class of act or thing, Plato attributes a real independent existence to them: piety and bedness are in some sense real things, existing somewhere and somehow. These ‘ideas’ or ‘forms’7 are unchanging and unique, perfect of their kind, and stand apart from particulars, which ‘share in’ or ‘participate in’ them more or less imperfectly. The nature of this participation is never made clear. Apparently a red object is red because it ‘shares in’ redness, which is somehow present or available to it. The assumption seems to be that redness is itself red, and indeed perfectly so. But in that case shall we not require some third entity, say REDNESS, to account for the redness both of redness and red objects – and so on ad infinitum?1
Accounts of Socrates commonly start by inquiring what can be said for sure about his life and personality (not much, in view of our sources), and by telling in detail the endlessly fascinating and controversial story of his trial and execution in 399, when he was brought to court on the triple charge of not recognizing the gods recognized by the state, of importing other, new divinities, and of corrupting the young. I do not propose to rehearse these matters, partly because there are excellent descriptions readily available elsewhere,2 partly because the nature of this volume demands an elementary introduction to Socrates’ philosophy, and partly also because it is only after one has learned something of the implications of his philosophical methods and assumptions that one can begin to see why he was executed. For Socrates did not the just because he was an irritating conversationalist, or because he had certain private beliefs and personal practices that could be represented at his trial as religiously suspect and educationally corrupting, or even because he had consorted with persons who after the restoration of democracy to Athens in 403 were odious to democrats. He died at least partly because of his philosophy. Many ancient Greeks, like many people today, believed (i) that in technical matters there are indeed fixed rules and standards, which depend on a body of exact knowledge, possessed by the various practitioners; (ii) that this is not the case in moral, social and political questions, in which one man’s opinions and standards are in principle as valid as another’s, so that individuals and states may legitimately adopt whatever moral principles and practices convenience or exigence dictates. As we have seen, Socrates agreed with (i), but used it to undermine (ii). If he is right, and correct moral conduct does depend on exact knowledge of general moral terms, then presumably one had better defer to the moral expert, to the one who ‘knows’ – whoever that is (Socrates seems never to have claimed the title for himself). In thus making the discovery of true moral values into an intellectual and élitist activity,1 and by implying that once the expert establishes moral knowledge his prescriptions will become binding on the rest of us,2 Socrates was bound to look askance at the principles and practices of democracy; and indeed his mocking hostility to that type of regime was well known.3
Plato, better than anyone, saw the political implications, and in his Republic he pursued them to the uttermost. In this celebrated (or notorious) dialogue he represents Socrates as advocating a utopia in which all moral and aesthetic standards, and all social and political power, depend entirely on an intellectual élite which had spent an arduous lifetime in the pursuit of absolute moral truth. His utopia is as far removed from democracy as could possibly be imagined.
The crucial point for the reader of the dialogues in this volume is that when Plato explores, through Socrates, the difficulties and implications of Socrates’ own assumptions and arguments, he is not exploring matters of purely theoretical interest. For to Plato and Socrates philosophy is morals, philosophy is politics, philosophy is life.4 If the difficulties in Socratic philosophy could be demonstrably resolved, so that it was left holding the field against its rivals, then the political and social consequences would be immense. That is ultimately why Plato, and a long line of philosophers down to the present day, have devoted their efforts to the analysis and criticism of Socrates’ arguments.
If that is indeed the aim of the dialogues, for what recipients were they written? Were they intended only for a private readership? Or to be read aloud to audiences? Or even performed, perhaps to philosophical clubs of some kind, or for ‘fringe’ competitions at the Olympic games?1 So far as their immediate use and destination are concerned, it is one of the curiosities of literature that no one quite knows what the Platonic dialogues were for. Nor is it known, except within rather broad limits, when they were composed, nor in what order, nor how many antedate the foundation of Plato’s Academy, nor indeed when that foundation took place. If any do antedate it, they were perhaps intended for a relatively wide readership and/or large audiences, rather than small and specialized ones. That would account in part for the characteristics of the earliest of the three groups into which the dialogues are customarily divided. Most of these are fairly brief, and moderately dramatic and humorous; but philosophically they are tougher than they seem at first reading. Most of them reflect the historical Socratic elenchus, in that they end inconclusively in aporia; and their immediate purpose would have been, at least in part, to commemorate and defend Socrates’ memory. The ‘middle’ dialogues are much longer, dramatically brilliant, and sometimes very funny indeed; they develop doctrine along lines which are indeed Socratic, but which probably go, in a Platonic direction, well beyond anything Socrates ever thought of. In the ‘late’ dialogues the dialogue form wears thin, and there are only touches of life and humour here and there; virtual lectures are frequent, the Greek is both technical and mannered, and the philosophy is exceedingly difficult and sophisticated. One supposes that these works were rarely studied except by dedicated philosophers, and their use may well have been confined to advanced students of the Academy, perhaps in seminars.
But whatever the dialogues’ immediate use, their strictly philosophical purpose is intimately related to Plato’s conception of philosophy as a human activity. Books, he makes Socrates say,2 cannot be argued with; they always say the same thing to you, however often you read them. Plato knew that if he had reduced his philosophical tenets at any stage of his career to a set of propositions, his companions would have simply repeated them parrot-fashion. He believed that the only way to philosophize was to engage in the give and take, the argument and counter-argument, of rational conversation, in which the interlocutors care passionately for the truth and not at all for winning a dispute. Hence he never wholly abandoned the dialogue form. The dialogues always promote Platonic doctrines, but they never order one what to think: every opinion expressed in them is the refutable opinion of a particular person. They stimulate the reader, or ought to stimulate him, to respond to the argumentation; they challenge him to do philosophy on his own account. Whenever two or more people fall to arguing about a passage in a Platonic dialogue, they are doing exactly what Plato intended. And no one would be more pleased than he if they were to correct and improve his own work, gain deeper insight into the issues, and perhaps even solve the problems. For it is largely owing to Socrates’ conversations, and to Plato’s dialogues, that philosophy is not a jealous discipline.
It is in this spirit that the reader of this volume should approach the seven dialogues it contains. They are all from the early period,1 and they make a good collection. The Ion, the slightest but the most amusing piece, assails the pretentious claims to knowledge made by a fatuously self-confident Homeric rhapsode, and floats some suggestive ideas on the nature of poetic inspiration. The Laches is an attempt to define courage, the Lysis to define friendship, Charmides self-control, and the Hippias Major fineness. All four are rich in suggestion, but all end in aporia. The Hippias Minor explores paradoxes thrown up by Socrates’ favourite analogy, between morality and technical skills. In the Euthydemus Socrates tangles entertainingly with a couple of ‘antilogical’2 sophists. If any or all of these dialogues provoke the reader into exclaiming, ‘But that can’t be right!’, or ‘I can think of an answer to that one’, then Socrates’ formula for philosophy will be doing its magic. The magic worked in the ancient world, and it still works today.