A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

Professor G. H. Palmer points out the irony that characterizes the life and death of Socrates. He standsfor the harmony of opposite qualities. He devoted himself to the good of Athens, and yet Athens put him to death. In the service of the eternal was he sacrificed. His own personality is an exemplification of this irony. In appearance his un-Greek physical ugliness is in contrast with his beautiful Greek soul; he was the most austere and yet the most sensitive of men; he was always a serious moralist and yet always a jester; he was scarcely out of Athens and yet he was a world’s man; he was the world’s philosopher and yet he had no system of thought and left no writings.

Socrates and the Sophists. In his point of departure Socrates is in entire agreement with the Sophists. He is a critical philosopher. Criticism is the starting-point of his philosophy as a whole, and he begins each particular argument afresh with a critical examination of its grounds. This means that he, like the Sophists, turns to the individual reason as the final court of appeal. Like them he refused to accept any traditional dogma unexamined, and he commenced a critical inquiry into all kinds of conceptions. Socrates and the Sophists are one in the spirit of the Greek illumination in their critical attack upon intellectual problems. Socrates’ famous saying that “virtue is knowledge” could equally well be put into the mouth of Protagoras; and the doctrine of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things” could be ascribed to Socrates without inconsistency.

In his conclusions in one respect Socrates arrives at the same point as the Sophists,—but in only one respect. He agrees with them as to the worthlessness of the results of natural science. Natural science cannot be worth while, because it does not lead to moralexcellence. The meagre results of the Cosmologists show the worthlessness of natural science to man. In this one respect Socrates’ criticism leads him to skepticism like the Sophists,—to a skepticism of natural science.

But in his conclusions as to the value of human nature, Socrates set himself entirely against the outcome of the reflections of the Sophists, and indeed of his time. In the absorbing anthropological topics of his time, he laid the foundations of a constructive philosophy against the skeptical conclusions of the Sophists. In human matters he maintained that there is a validity to truth and a possibility of absolute knowledge. He admitted with the Sophists that there are obscurities in human thought, and that obviously the standard of truth does not belong to any one man. But while the Sophists emphasized these contradictions and reasoned therefore that no valid truth existed, Socrates cut his way through such contradictions and obscurities, emphasized the identity in men, and maintained that the truth is in all men together,—in humanity. It exists as an ideal to be striven for by men together. When Protagoras says that “man is the measure of all things,” he means by “man” the individual man; while Socrates, if he had used that expression, would have meant “humanity.” And Socrates means by his principle “virtue is knowledge” that the knowledge of that same humanity (i. e. insight, reason) is virtue; while Protagoras, agreeing as he did formally with the maxim that “virtue is knowledge,” would always define “knowledge” as the individual feelings. “The individual man is the measure of all things,” Protagoras would say; “Humanity is the measure of all things,” Socrates would reply. “Virtue is knowledge gained by the feelings,” Protagoraswould say; “Virtue is knowledge gained by the reason,” Socrates would reply. Beneath the changing capricious individual, beneath the variety of men, Socrates believed that there was a common humanity, one unchanging man, who contained the ultimate truth. There are many opinions, ideas, and feelings, but only one knowledge. This knowledge is rational; and human nature is a unity in the possession of this knowledge.

This is the principle that distinguishes Socrates from the other leaders of the Greek Illumination. While he was imbued with the motives of the Greek culture of his time,—curious about its results, feeling its usefulness, and critical of all tradition,—he nevertheless withheld himself from its skeptical conclusions. Any culture illumination runs the danger of defeating itself and becoming skeptical of its own powers. This is what actually happened in the Sophistic philosophy. But when Socrates set himself against this superficial and self-destructive outcome of his age, he became in his constructive philosophy the clearest and most comprehensive expression of that age. Because he grasped the principle of the Greek Enlightenment deeply and formulated it constructively, his intellectual reign became historically established. The fundamental principle of the philosophy of Socrates was therefore the real principle of classic Greek civilization, and by saving that principle he saved Greek civilization for modern Europe.

The Unsystematic Character of the Socratic Philosophy. The casual reader is often troubled to know for what precisely Socrates is searching. The vagueness of the Socratic quest is partly due to the fact that he had no system. Indeed, he had no groundwork fora system of thought. His psychology or theory of the human mind was undefined. He speaks of sensations and perceptions, but they, with the feelings and the will, are considered by him to be unimportant factors in the conscious life. On the whole, the mind was thought by him to be an aggregation of conceptions or ideas. The feelings cloud the activity of these conceptions, and the only feeling to which Socrates attached any importance was his dæmon or divine voice. This grew to be his mentor as he grew older. Socrates never made a scientific psychological analysis. He began rather with three assumptions which amounted to convictions. They were these: that only by acquiring conceptions is true knowledge to be found; that virtue consists in acting according to conceptions; that the world has been designed according to conceptions.Conceptions were, so to speak, an obsession with Socrates.[18] They were his postulates, his instruments, and his goal. The other factors of the mind were neglected by him.

The Ideal of Socrates. The goal of the quest of Socrates is an ideal, and in the nature of things had the vagueness of any ideal. The content of an ideal has toremain undefined until it has been gained by experience, and then of course it is no longer an ideal. Any ideal, however, can be stated formally, and the formal and deductive side of knowledge has had an important place both in practical conduct and in the history of science. Socrates could state his ideal formally and to some extent he could give it content; but it always remained for him an object to be sought. He believed that the ideal lay in conceptions and could be found if he got the truth of any one conception. So he undertook to define such conceptions as friendship, courage, prudence, etc., but his search was never satisfied. Nevertheless, the search itself was scarcely less important to him than its accomplishment.

The ideal of Socrates was Knowledge or Wisdom, and his formal statement of the ideal was Knowledge is Virtue. The primal end to be striven for is wisdom, that is, in conceptions and by conceptions. But where are these conceptions to be found but in one’s own mind? Therefore the region of the quest of Socrates was his own mind, and his motto was, “Know thyself.” And what is this Virtue of which knowledge or wisdom is the equivalent? It does not mean virtue in the narrow modern meaning of the term, nor yet in the narrow original meaning, of warlike prowess or valor. The Greek word which Socrates used was ἀρετή, and is best translated excellence or ability. In the history of the word it had a variety of meanings, like the Latin word virtus, whose equivalent it is. It is derived from the same root as the word Ἄρης, Ares (or Mars), the name of the god of war. While therefore originally it meant military valor, it came to mean any kind of excellence. In modern times there appeared a book called TheGreatest Thing in the World, which had as its aim to show that Christian love is the “greatest thing in the world.” To Socrates not “Love” but “Wisdom” is the “greatest thing in the world,” and Greek civilization is thus contrasted with that of Christianity.

But now the question comes, What kind of knowledge or wisdom does Socrates mean as the greatest excellence? In contrast to the Sophists, who relied upon the sensations and impulses as wisdom, Socrates turned to that element which had been the decisive factor of the culture of the time. This was insight. The greatest excellence is insight. He who acts according to his feelings is not sure of his knowledge, but he who acts according to insight has the greatest excellence in the world. But Socrates restricts the meaning of knowledge still further. Not only is knowledge to Socrates insight, but it is moral insight. For the problems in which he was interested were the problems of human life and principally the problem of self-examination. Thus we can translate the conventional formal statement of Socrates, viz., Knowledge is virtue, into this rather longer sentence, Moral insight is the most excellent thing in the world. For the first time in the history of thought philosophy is founded upon a moral postulate.

What the Socratic Ideal involves. We have now examined the meaning of the formal statement of the Socratic ideal. A further question along this same line concerns what that ideal involves.