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

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

1. In the first place, to possess knowledge is to act righteously. Knowledge ＝ righteous conduct. Socrates does not mean that knowledge is merely the condition of right conduct; he means that knowledge actually constitutes moral conduct. The development of thereason is actually the same as the development of the will. Knowledge is virtue and virtue is knowledge. Vice is ignorance and ignorance is vice. To have an insight into the truth is the principle of living. Not only is deficient insight the cause of evil, but it is itself the greatest evil. Not only does a man act wrongly because he does not know the good, but not to know the good is the greatest wrong that can happen to him.

2. Not only is moral insight the same as virtuous activity, but this insight is always accompanied by happiness. The will follows the recognition of the good, and the appropriate action makes man happy. Happiness is the necessary result of moral excellence. The Wise Man knows what is good for him and does it; thus in his performance he becomes happy. Socrates would subscribe to the proverb “Be good and you will be happy.” Such teaching on the part of Socrates implies that he believed two things: (1) that man by unremitting earnest examination of himself and others could gain such perfect happiness; and (2) that the world is under providential guidance. Socrates never expressly denied the existence of the Homeric gods and never expressly declared himself a monotheist. He is, however, always referring to one over-ruling wisdom. He had a personal conviction of immortality, but he never attempted its proof. Although Socrates had little confidence in human knowledge about the world of physical nature, he was animated by a belief that amounted to a conviction in the providential arrangement of the world. In such a divinely ordered world the good must be happy. Only a perfect wisdom can, however, be certain that always the results of his actions will gain happiness in the environment in which he lives; but still man can be surethat happiness increases proportionately with knowledge. Greek philosophy did go beyond this point in ethics, and this is called, in technical language, eudæmonism. Eudæmonism and hedonism are pleasure theories that are similar. Eudæmonism is the theory that active well-being is the highest good in life and that that good is always accompanied by pleasure. In hedonism pleasure is the good to be aimed at. In history eudæmonism has easily degenerated into hedonism.

3. Socrates makes moral insight the same as virtuous activity, and he says that its inevitable accompaniment is happiness. Does he also make moral insight the same as utility? According to Xenophon, Socrates regards moral excellence as that which is most useful. Indeed, in some of the Platonic dialogues Socrates seems to define insight as the art of measuring or prudence, and it is pointed out that Socrates developed no virtue so fully as self-control. In the exigencies of the argument Socrates also often resorted to the useful to define the good. The question, What is the good? often resolves itself into the other question, What is the thing good for? Indeed, the form of the argument often assumes the vicious circle: Why is the act just? Because it is useful? Why is it useful? Because it is just. For the purposes of disputation, in which Socrates was always shrewd and not always scrupulous, he so frequently refers the good to what is suitable to men’s happiness and profit that his philosophy does not seem to rise above the relativism of the Sophists. But it is certain that Socrates strove to transcend this relativism, although not with full success and although his formulated teaching does not always go beyond it. However, that he believed in an absolute rather than a relative good appearsin many ways: in his doctrine that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it; in his strict conformity to law rather than to save himself from death by breaking the law; in his constant interpretation of life as right-doing, ethical improvement, and participation in the good. The utility that is always in the background of his thought is the usefulness for the soul. We may conclude, therefore, that it was only superficially for the purposes of argumentation that Socrates made the useful an equivalent of moral insight.

The purpose of Socrates was, after all, not to teach men to think correctly nor to become cultured but to become happy and useful Athenians. Moral excellence is the Socratic goal; and knowledge, happiness, and usefulness are only aspects of that goal. Knowledge is the essential means, happiness the essential result, and usefulness the essential sign of moral excellence. It follows as a corollary from Socrates’ philosophical ideal that he should also teach: (1) that virtue is teachable, and (2) that the virtues are one. Virtue is obviously teachable if it is knowledge. It follows also, although not so obviously, that all the virtues are fundamentally the same, and that a man cannot be virtuous in one thing without being virtuous in all. The really temperate man is also courageous, wise, and just.

The Two Steps of the Method of Socrates. The external form of the method of Socrates was conversation. Thinking was to him an inner conversation. The result of a conversation, external or internal, was evolvement,—the implicit in thought made explicit. This was quite opposed to the method of the Sophists, which was the supplying of knowledge. Socrates did not propose to start from any kind of knowledge except the ideal tobe striven for. Starting with the presupposition that man contained knowledge, the end which Socrates attempted to reach by his method was a practical one. With so much in summary, let us examine the two steps of the method of Socrates.

The first step that Socrates deems necessary for man in attaining this ideal of moral excellence is negative. Indeed, it is more,—it is complete abnegation on the part of the seeker for truth. One must confess that he himself knows nothing, and come to a realization that his untested individual opinions are not the truth. He must approach the subject as a seeker and not as a teacher. This attitude of mind is the beginning of wisdom. Plato relates how the Delphic oracle amazed Socrates by announcing that he was the wisest of the Greeks. In reflecting upon the statement of the oracle he came to agree with the oracle because, as he said, he was ignorant and he knew it, while the other Greeks were ignorant and did not know it. Before Socrates began to examine any conception, he professed or assumed to profess absolute ignorance of it. He is the modest inquirer. He is always described in the rôle of the questioner who is seeking information and light.

He laid the same requirement upon others that he did upon himself. The dialectic conversation could not be successfully carried on unless his interlocutors had the same recognition of self-ignorance,—the same measure of self-knowledge. The Sophists with whom he often carried on his discussions laid claim to knowledge on every known subject under the Greek sun and were ready to teach anything to the Greek youth. To Socrates’ mind nothing could more impede his undertakings than such an affectation of wisdom; to the Sophists nothingcould be more repugnant than such a confession which Socrates always obliged them to make. Although professing to be only a seeker for knowledge, he tried first by his questions to scrutinize and to break down with his exasperating logic the half-formed conceptions of the egotist. This clear-cut analysis for purely destructive purposes, which he used in preparation for his later constructive conversation, is called the Socratic irony. As he proved himself superior to any of his companions in the use of the dialectic, he could begin his conversations in the most destructive fashion. His method was destructive of all prejudice and preconceived opinion that would in any way stand athwart perfectly free inquiry into the truth. His wish was to begin de novo with every one, so that all traditional beliefs having been given up and the investigators having confessed their ignorance, constructive study of the concept in hand could be begun.

The second step in Socrates’ method of dialectical inquiry follows upon the initial destructive criticism. It is in this part of the conversation that we find his own constructive theory. The dialogue is, of course, its necessary condition; for the truth is not in me nor in thee, but in us all. It is latent in the mind and not on the surface of any opinion. Let us rub our minds together. Let us sift our varied concepts, unfold our real selves, and bring the unborn truth to the light. Our ideas supplement one another and have a common ground. Intellectual intercourse is an intellectual and a personal need, for it reveals common sympathies and a oneness of life. Common love of knowledge makes friends, and this mutual intellectual helpfulness he calls by the mythical term Eros. Inquiry is indefinite in duration;the quest of truth is endless; and Socrates acknowledges by his fresh beginnings again and again his failure to reach the ideal. Thus the theoretical self-abnegation of Socrates had a twofold significance in his constructive philosophy. On the one hand, it was an invitation to his countrymen to help him in his search for the universal truth; on the other, it was an acknowledgment that he had failed to attain that universal truth.

Socrates and Athens. Socrates had a religious reverence for his own mission in the Athenian community. He was the “gad-fly of the Athenian public”; he was the educator of the time; he was divinely appointed to the Athenian people. He felt himself so necessary to the Athenian State that at his trial he proudly suggested that instead of punishing him the State keep him at the public expense in the Prytaneum. But the educator creates nothing; he only awakens and develops the germs of knowledge that lie latent. The human Athenian nature is big with truth; Socrates was divinely appointed to bring it forth. He called his method, after the profession of midwifery of his mother, the maieutic method. It was intellectual midwifery, and he was the intellectual midwife of Athens. Although he failed to find any concrete form of ultimate truth, he never had any doubt about the correctness of his method and of undertaking the problem afresh. He believed that his failure was due to the inherent weakness of human discernment; and so far as man’s discernment or insight is clear, so far will he know the true significance of things.

Socrates believed in man, and he believed that in man were contained all those elements that make up afirm, rational, and moral society. Since he failed to justify this belief in a theoretical way, his belief became largely a matter of faith. Humanity is something to be won, something to be developed. He was personally the embodiment of his faith, and his large influence was due to his unswerving confidence in ethical ideals that did not allow the least paltering.