Probable feelings of Plato on this subject. Claim put forward in the Gorgias of an independent locus standi for philosophy, but without the indiscriminate cross-examination pursued by Sokrates.
The questions here suggested must have impressed themselves forcibly on the mind of Plato when he recollected the fate of Sokrates. In spite of a blameless life, Sokrates had been judicially condemned and executed for publicly questioning received opinions, innovating upon the established religion, and instilling into young persons habits of doubt. To dissent only for the better, afforded no assurance of safety: and Plato knew well that his own dissent from the Athenian public was even wider and more systematic than that of his master. The position and plan of life for an active-minded reasoner, dissenting from the established opinions of the public, could not but be an object of interesting reflection to him.[123] The Gorgias (written, in my judgment, long after the death of Sokrates, probably after the Platonic school was established) announces the vocation of the philosopher, and claims an open field for speculation, apart from the actualities of politics — for the self-acting reason of the individual doubter and investigator, against the authority of numbers and the pressure of inherited tradition. A formal assertion to this effect was worthy of the founder of the Academy — the earliest philosophical school at Athens. Yet we may observe that while the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias adopts the life of philosophy, he does not renew that farther demand with which the historical Sokrates had coupled it in his Apology — the liberty of oral and aggressive cross-examination, addressed to individuals personally and indiscriminately[124] — to the primores populi as well as to the populum tributim. The fate of Sokrates rendered Plato more cautious, and induced him to utter his ethical interrogations and novelties of opinion in no other way except that of lectures to chosen hearers and written dialogue: borrowing the name of Sokrates or some other speaker, and refraining upon system (as his letters[125] tell us that he did) from publishing any doctrines in his own name.
[123] I have already referred to the treatise of Mr. John Stuart Mill “On Liberty,” where this important topic is discussed in a manner equally profound and enlightened. The co-existence of individual reasoners enquiring and philosophising for themselves, with the fixed opinions of the majority, is one of the main conditions which distinguish a progressive from a stationary community.
[124] Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 21-22-23-28 E. τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ τάττοντος, ὡς ἐγὼ ᾠήθην τε καὶ ὑπέλαβον, φιλοφοῦντα με δεῖν ζῇν καὶ ἐξετάζοντα ἐμαυτόν τε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους, &c.
[125] Plat. Epist. ii. 314 B. K. F. Hermann (Ueber Platon’s Schriftstellerische Motive, p. 290) treats any such prudential discretion, in respect to the form and mode of putting forward unpopular opinions, as unworthy of Plato, and worthy only of Protagoras and other Sophists. I dissent from this opinion altogether. We know that Protagoras was very circumspect as to form (Timon ap. Sext. Emp. adv. Mathemat. ix. s. 57); but the passage of Plato cited by Hermann does not prove it.
Importance of maintaining the utmost liberty of discussion. Tendency of all ruling orthodoxy towards intolerance.
As a man dissenting from received opinions, Sokrates had his path marked out in the field of philosophy or individual speculation. To such a mind as his, the fullest liberty ought to be left, of professing and defending his own opinions, as well as of combating other opinions, accredited or not, which he may consider false or uncertified.[126] The public guidance of the state thus falls to one class of minds, the activity of speculative discussion to another; though accident may produce, here and there, a superior individual, comprehensive or dexterous enough to suffice for both. But the main desideratum is that this freedom of discussion should exist: that room shall be made, and encouragement held out, to the claims of individual reason, and to the full publication of all doubts or opinions, be they what they may: that the natural tendency of all ruling force, whether in few or in many hands, to perpetuate their own dogmas by proscribing or silencing all heretics and questioners, may be neutralised as far as possible. The great expansive vigour of the Greek mind — the sympathy felt among the best varieties of Greeks for intellectual superiority in all its forms — and the privilege of free speech (παῤῥησία), on which the democratical citizens of Athens prided themselves — did in fact neutralise very considerably these tendencies in Athens. A greater and more durable liberty of philosophising was procured for Athens, and through Athens for Greece generally, than had ever been known before in the history of mankind.
[126] So Sokrates also says in the Platonic Apology, pp. 31-32. Οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ὅστις ἀνθρώπων σωθήσεται οὔτε ὑμῖν οὔτε ἄλλῳ πλήθει οὐδενὶ γνησίως ἐναντιούμενος, καὶ διακωλύων πολλὰ ἄδικα καὶ παράνομα ἐν τῇ πόλει γίγνεσθαι· ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι τὸν τῷ ὄντι μαχούμενον ὑπὲρ τοῦ δικαίου, καὶ εἰ μέλλει ὀλίγον χρόνον σωθήσεσθαι, ἰδιωτεύειν ἀλλὰ μὴ δημοσιεύειν.
The reader will find the speculative individuality of Sokrates illustrated in the sixty-eighth chapter of my History of Greece.
The antithesis of the philosophising or speculative life, against the rhetorical, political, forensic life — which is put so much to the advantage of the former by Plato in the Gorgias, Theætêtus (p. 173, seq.), and elsewhere was the theme of Cicero’s lost dialogue called Hortensius: wherein Hortensius was introduced pleading the cause against philosophy, (see Orelli, Fragm. Ciceron. pp. 479-480), while the other speakers were provided by Cicero with arguments mainly in defence of philosophy, partly also against rhetoric. The competition between the teachers of rhetoric and the teachers of philosophy continued to be not merely animated but bitter, from Plato downward throughout the Ciceronian age. (Cicero, De Orat. i. 45-46-47-75, &c.)