SOCRATES
Philosophy Entirely Reduced to Morality, and Morality
Considered as the End of all Intellectual Activity.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES.--Of Socrates nothing is known except
that he was born at Athens, that he held many public discussions with all
and sundry in the streets of Athens, and that he died under the Thirty
Tyrants. Of his ideas we know nothing, because he wrote nothing, and
because his disciples were far too intelligent; in consequence of which it
is impossible to know if what they said was thought by him, had really been
his ideas or theirs. What seems certain is that neither Aristophanes nor
the judges at the trial of Socrates were completely deceived in considering
him a Sophist; for he proceeded from them. It is true he proceeded from
them by reaction, because evidently their universal scepticism had
terrified him; but nevertheless he was their direct outcome, for like them
he was extremely mistrustful of the old vast systems of philosophy, and to
those men who pretended to know everything he opposed a phrase which is
probably authentic: "I know that I know nothing;" for, like the Sophists,
he wished to recall philosophy to earth from heaven, namely from
metaphysics to the study of man, and nothing else; for, like the Sophists,
he confined and limited the field with a kind of severe and imperious
modesty which was none the less contemptuous of the audacious; for,
finally, like the Sophists, but in this highly analogous to many
philosophers preceding the Sophists, he had but a very moderate and
mitigated respect for the religion of his fellow-citizens.
According to what we know of Socrates from Xenophon, unquestionably the
least imaginative of his disciples, Socrates, like the Sophists, reduced
philosophy to the study of man; but his great and incomparable originality
lay in the fact that whereas the Sophists wished man to study himself in
order to be happy, Socrates wished him to study himself in order to be
moral, honest, and just, without any regard to happiness. For Socrates,
everything had to tend towards morality, to contribute to it, and to be
subordinated to it as the goal and as the final aim. He applied himself
unceasingly, relates Xenophon, to examine and to determine what is good and
evil, just and unjust, wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, etc. He
incessantly applied himself, relates Aristotle--and therein he was as much
a true professor of rhetoric as of morality--thoroughly to define and
carefully to specify the meaning of words in order not to be put off with
vague terms which are illusions of thought, and in order to discipline his
mind rigorously so as to make it an organ for the ascertainment of truth.
HIS METHOD.--He had dialectical methods, "the art of conferring," as
Montaigne called it, more or less happy, which he had probably borrowed
from the Sophists, that contributed to cause him to be considered one of
them, and exercised a wide vogue long after him. He "delivered men's
minds," as he himself said--that is, he believed, or affected to believe,
that the verities are in a latent state in all minds, and that it needed
only patience, dexterity, and skillful investigation to bring them to
light. Elsewhere, he _interrogated_ in a captious fashion in order to
set the interlocutor in contradiction to himself and to make him confess
that he had said what he had not thought he had said, agreed to what he had
not believed he had agreed to; and he triumphed maliciously over such
confusions. In short, he seems to have been a witty and teasing Franklin,
and to have taught true wisdom by laughing at everyone. Folk never like to
be ridiculed, and no doubt the recollection of these ironies had much to do
with the iniquitous judgment which condemned him, and which he seems to
have challenged up to the last.
HIS INFLUENCE.--His influence was infinite. It is from him that
morality became the end itself, the last and supreme end of all
philosophy--the reason of philosophy; and, as was observed by Nietzsche,
the Circe of philosophers, who enchants them, who dictates to them
beforehand, or who modifies their systems in advance by terrifying them as
to what their systems may contain irreverent towards itself or dangerous in
relation to it. From Socrates to Kant and thence onward, morality has been
the Circe of philosophers, and morality is, as it were, the spiritual
daughter of Socrates. On the other hand, his influence was terrible for the
religion of antiquity because it directed the mind towards the idea that
morality is the sole object worthy of knowledge, and that the ancient
religions were immoral, or of such a dubious morality as to deserve the
desertion and scorn of honest men. Christianity fought paganism with the
arguments of the disciples of Socrates--with Socratic arguments; modern
philosophies and creeds are all impregnated with Socraticism. When it was
observed that the Sophists form the most important epoch in the history of
ancient philosophy, it was because they taught Socrates to seek a
philosophy which was entirely human and preoccupied solely with the
happiness of man. This led a great mind, and in his track other very great
minds, to direct all philosophy, and even all human science, towards the
investigation of goodness, goodness being regarded as the condition of
happiness.