SOCRATES (469–399 B. C.).
=Socrates and Aristophanes.= There were two ways in which the other
elements in Greek society tried to meet the Sophists. One was led by
Aristophanes, the other by Socrates. Aristophanes was a rich nobleman
who looked back with pride upon the good old times. He would have a
government of the best rather than of the many. He would destroy the
Sophistic movement, and he wrote many satires upon Greek life with that
end in view. His satire, _The Clouds_, is of especial interest in this
connection. Socrates represents the other way in which the Sophistic
movement was met. He accepted the Sophistic movement, but he read more
deeply into it than the Sophists themselves, and he tried to find its
truth.
The extraordinary personality of Socrates is the central figure in
this age of critical inquiry. For the first time do we find philosophy
centred in a great personality, and there is no more picturesque figure
in history. The exposition of his doctrines is essentially a biography.
He wrote nothing himself, and the literary sources of his life and
teaching are found in Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_ and _Symposium_, in
the writings of Plato, and in those of Aristotle. They throw different
lights upon his character, and together give a fairly complete picture.
Xenophon records the sober, practical, and popular side of Socrates,
caught in casual conversation. Plato idealizes Socrates, especially
in his later writings, and he reveals Socrates’ character on its
imaginative and spiritual sides. Aristotle is more discriminating
and less sympathetic, but always reliable because he is a generation
removed.[17]
=The Personality and Life of Socrates.= Alcibiades described Socrates
as like the little cases sold upon the streets of Athens, which
were made in the shape of Silenus and contained a carved image. The
description was apt, for Socrates had a fine spiritual nature within
an astonishing shell. He was short, stout, and thick-set, with his
head set upon his shoulders. His eyes were bulging, his nose flat with
upturned nostrils, his mouth big and grinning, and his beard disordered.
His protruding belly was set upon slender legs, and his dress was
slovenly. Nevertheless his geniality, his fine humor, the unselfishness
which he manifested unstintedly toward his friends, exercised an
irresistible charm upon all the remarkable personalities of his time.
Over the Athenian youth his influence was very great, and he surrounded
himself with a large circle of admirers, to the neglect of his home
cares and his wife Xantippe. While the habit of the Sophists was to
talk in private and for pay, Socrates was distinguished from all his
contemporaries by the fact that he would talk in the public places with
any one, rich or poor, and without remuneration.
His life had its ascetic side. He was frugal in his needs. He went
barefoot, summer and winter, and his clothing was the scantiest. He was
abstemious in food and drink. While on occasion at the feast he would
drink more wine than any one else, yet he never was seen intoxicated.
The ascetic side of his nature is seen in his refusal to cultivate
gymnastics, because such training required much food. He tried to limit
his wants. He was a model of hardiness, self-denial, and self-mastery,
as many an anecdote will show. “No one ever saw or heard anything
wicked in Socrates,” said Xenophon. “So pious was he that he never did
anything without first consulting the Gods, so master of himself as
never to prefer pleasure to goodness, so sensible as never to err in
the choice between the better and the worse. In a word, he was the best
and the most happy of men.”
At times Socrates seems intellectually stiff and prosaic. This may
have been incidental to his asceticism, or the result of it. He was
indifferent to the sensuous, and he explained the beautiful in terms
of the useful. He refused to walk out because trees and flowers could
teach him nothing. Art offered no suggestions to him, for it is useless
even if it is inspired. His unpoetic and prosy nature was perhaps not
due so much to his lack of taste as to his original mind overflowing
with ideas. He was not perceptive, but reflective. He said that
astronomy is a mystery, geometry is land measuring, which any man
can do, arithmetic is merely permissible, and physics something to be
neglected. “Ye may judge how unprofitable these studies are by seeing
how men differ among themselves.” He was once found dancing at home
by himself when he was expected to be at a dance with others, and his
practical nature is also revealed in the fact that at the feast he was
reminded of its utility.
The influence of Socrates’ dæmon or divine voice upon him is very
interesting. He felt himself divinely called by his dæmon (_Apology_,
29, 33 f.) to unremitting labor in the moral perfecting of society
through an examination of himself and his fellows. Socrates was moved
by a deep religious feeling in all that he undertook. This divine
leading is what he designates as his dæmon. He speaks of it as “the
God” or “the gods” which speaks to other men through the oracles. This
divine voice was ever with him, but as to specific actions it only
warned him against the injudicious action, never incited him to the
correct action. Specifically it did not tell him what to do so much as
what not to do. When he was about to prepare a defense beforehand that
he should make to the judges, his dæmon interposed, and so he relied
upon the inspiration of the moment. On one of his campaigns he was
observed to stand in communion with the dæmon the whole day, unmindful
of the weather.
As to the education and intellectual training of Socrates, one must say
that it formed a factor of less importance in his life. The uniqueness
of Socrates’ character is only in small measure to be accounted for by
his environment. He was one of those men who would have been great in
any time. He got but little from his father, who was a sculptor, or
from his mother, who was a midwife. He was not strictly an educated
man, although he had the early education of an Athenian youth, and
of course no one could grow up a citizen of Athens in the time of
Pericles without absorbing its culture. His formal education probably
consisted of music and gymnastics, and he was certainly familiar
with the preceding schools of philosophy. Socrates lived a long life
of contented poverty, and he dedicated his life to the public. Two
inherited instincts were strong within him, which alone will account
for his career: (1) his strong religious persuasion that he was acting
under a mission from the gods; (2) his great intellectual originality,
as shown in his teaching and in his power over others.
There are few striking events in Socrates’ career, except his death. He
was born in Athens in 469 B. C. He began his divinely appointed work of
redeeming Athens from the dangerous tendencies of the Sophists at the
commencement of the Peloponnesian War. He served in three campaigns as
a soldier. He also acted, when called upon, as prytanis, or lawgiver,
although he stood aloof from political activity. At the advanced age
of seventy he was accused of corrupting the youth and denying the gods.
His life thus far would have seemed to be one of unimpeachable moral
and brilliant intellectual monotony. But his death illuminates his
life and makes it heroic, because his death shows what in reality his
life was,――the tragic epitome of the Athenian social situation. His
death was not due to himself, although he could have escaped, nor to
his judges, although they could have acquitted him. It represents the
inevitable conflict between the Greek ideal of universalism and Greek
individualism. Its value is therefore historic. His particular accusers
were actuated by personal animosity. Behind them were many others whom
his efforts at reform and his bitter irony had made hostile. Behind
all was the voice of Athenian conservatism against the Athenian culture
movement. The charges against Socrates were in part true, and besides
as a moral reformer he had been a public nuisance. Yet his death was a
judicial murder. He was found guilty by his judges. To the sentence of
death proposed by Meletus, one of his accusers, Socrates had the right
to propose an alternative sentence, and the judges must choose between
the two. Had Socrates proposed a small fine, it would probably have
been accepted by the judges. He proposed, however, that Athens provide
for him at the public expense, arrogant as he was in his complacent
sense of virtue. The judges then could do nothing else than pronounce
the sentence of death. This was delayed thirty days on account of the
sacrifice at Delos. Even then Socrates could have easily escaped from
jail. But he refused to do the law a wrong, and drank the hemlock in
May, 399 B. C.
Professor G. H. Palmer points out the irony that characterizes the
life and death of Socrates. He stands for 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 moral excellence.
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,” Protagoras would 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 for a 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 to remain 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 _The Greatest 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.
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 the reason 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 sure that 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 appears
in 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 to be 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 nothing could 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 a firm, 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.
=The Logical Expedients of Socrates.= The examination of concepts
by Socrates was an attempt to find a logical “Nature,” just as the
Cosmologists had searched physical phenomena to find a physical
“Nature.” This makes Socrates the first to teach by induction and
one of the first to use definition effectively. In contrast to the
Sophists, he tried to give words exact meanings; for the Sophists fixed
artificial meanings to words with reference to particular objects. In
seeking for the exact meaning, Socrates was looking below the changing
particulars to the “Nature” of the fact and the universal principle.
Thus he was making his hearers conscious of the logical dependence
of the particular upon the universal. The universal is that which is
common to all particular conceptions or opinions. It lies beneath them
and binds them together. Thus, by logical analysis, Socrates is taking
steps in the educational process of gaining the universal. Provisional
definition would be given by him in some dialogue; this definition
would be tried by many facts; thus an advance would be made toward
a true definition and a universal principle. This process is that of
induction. It leads to generic concepts by comparison of particular
views and individual perceptions, by bringing together analogous cases
and allied relations. The subordination of the particular under the
universal thus became a principle of science. However imperfect and
childlike was Socrates’ method of procedure, whatever lack of caution
in generalization and in the collection of material, however hasty
oftentimes his judgments, he nevertheless made the subordination of the
particular to the universal a principle of logical procedure. Xenophon
says that Socrates was untiring in his efforts to examine and define
goodness and wickedness, justice and injustice, wisdom and folly,
courage and cowardice, the state and the citizen.
=Socrates and the Lesser Socratics.= The death of Socrates proved to
be his transfiguration. His influence, widespread and profound, came
more from his personality than from his formulated theory. He was a
revelator without a revelation. An absolutely true end of life, the
Good, he firmly believed to exist; but it was an ideal to be won by
each and all. After him, therefore, there was opportunity for various
interpretations of his doctrine, and several schools were founded by
his disciples. His truest and most discriminating pupil was Plato, who
is in a class by himself as developing the philosophy of Socrates to
a systematic perfectness. The philosophy of Plato stands with that of
Democritus and Aristotle as one of the three systematic philosophies
that Greek civilization produced. Besides Plato there were the Lesser
Socratics: Euclid (not the mathematician), Phædo, Aristippus, and
Antisthenes. Each of these was respectively the founder of a school.
These four Lesser-Socratic schools were that at Megara founded by
Euclid, the Elean-Eretrian founded by Phædo, the Cynic founded by
Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaic founded by Aristippus. The influence of
the Megarian and Elean-Eretrian schools was unimportant. It may suffice
to dismiss them by saying that Phædo was the favorite pupil of Socrates,
and that Plato was a member of the Megarian school for a short time
after the death of Socrates. The two other Lesser-Socratic schools had
an important influence upon contemporary and later civilization and
will be mentioned here. These are the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools. In
these two schools two great types of ethical theory that have since
existed were formulated. All four of the Lesser Socratics pretended to
be the true development of the teaching of Socrates; and these two, as
well as the other two, differ in the accentuation that they place on
some phase of the master’s doctrine.
Socrates’ own definition of ideal excellence being incomplete, the
Cynics and Cyrenaics tried to define it, to give it content and to show
a practical way of reaching it. They attempted
(1) to answer affirmatively that there is a universal validity;
(2) to show in what it consists;
(3) to show how man must prepare himself in order to reach it.
Both schools are individualistic and eudæmonistic. They maintained that
to affirm that the Good is good for its own sake is to leave the Good
contentless; and to affirm that the Good is insight into the Good is to
go in a circle. The one unambiguous answer to the question of Socrates,
What is ideal excellence or the Good? is this: Goodness is happiness.
This gives a content to the otherwise contentless ideal of Socrates.
The difference between the two schools consists in the ethical way in
which this happiness may be obtained.
It will appear, therefore, that the Lesser Socratics were more
Sophistic than Socratic. They were diametrically opposed to Socrates’
theory of the universality of truth. The excellent Good must be sought
by each in his own way. This is individualistic virtue, and not that
of humanity. Civilization was valued by them only as it satisfied
individual needs. The common problem of individualistic happiness
limited the efforts of both schools, while the results that they
reached in solving it were quite different.
There are two ways of achieving happiness; one is by satisfying the
desires, the other is by cutting off the desires. For happiness is
the perfect proportion of desire and satisfaction. A living creature
is happy if his desires are satisfied, whether those desires be few
or many. In the theory of the Cyrenaic school, happiness is gained
by increasing the satisfactions; in the theory of the Cynic school,
happiness is gained by decreasing the desires.
=The Cynic School= was founded by Antisthenes, and numbered among its
adherents Diogenes, about whom so many curious stories have been told,
Crates of Thebes, his wife Hipparchia, and her brother, Metrocles.
Virtue in the eudæmonistic sense is the only end, and this school
agreed with Socrates that this end is to be attained by knowledge. That
is to say, virtue or knowledge is only a means of gaining happiness,
and all other possessions the Cynics affected to despise. Virtue
as knowledge is therefore to be sought; ignorance is to be shunned;
all else is a matter of indifference. Riches, luxury, fame, honor,
sense-pleasure and pain, and later with logical consistency all shame,
convention, family, and country were objects of contempt. Man must
make himself independent by cutting off the desires which he cannot
satisfy or the desires that seem superfluous. He should keep alive
only such desires as are necessary to existence. In independence of all
outward circumstance the Cynic conceives himself to be the Wise Man,
in contrast to whom the mass of men are fools. The Cynic is, therefore,
the equal of the undesiring gods. He has independent lordship and
does not need the artificialities of civilization. Natural law was
contrasted by him in a Sophistic way with statutory law, and in the
midst of the refinements of society he preached a return to a state
of nature.
=The Cyrenaic School= was founded by Aristippus, who lived in Cyrene,
a luxurious city of northern Africa. Aristippus was a man of the
world. He was first a Sophist and later a disciple of Socrates. After
Socrates’ death he returned to Cyrene. Here he founded his school,
which included three generations of his own family. The prominent
members of it were Arete, his daughter; Aristippus, his grandson;
Theodorus, Hegesias, Anniceris, and Euhemerus, the author of so-called
Euhemerism, which taught that the gods were originally only great
men. In opposition to the brutal bareness of the Cynic school, the
Cyrenaics saw the true end of life in the pleasures of sense. Following
Protagoras, Aristippus said that the sensations are always true and
can be defined in terms of motion. The school developed an elaborate
psychology of sensation which summarizes its doctrine. It is as follows:
(1) The intensity and not the duration of a sensation determines its
value; (2) Bodily pleasures are of greater value than mental because
they are more intense; (3) I can know only my own sensations, and
therefore they are of greater value than another’s; (4) Man has a
reasonable insight which determines him in the choice of his sensations.
The practical problem of life for this, as it was for the Cynic school,
was how to become individually independent of the world. But the
Cyrenaic taught independence by enjoyment, in opposition to the Cynic’s
independence by renunciation. The Cyrenaic Wise Man knows all the
pleasures of life thoroughly, from animal satisfactions to spiritual
ecstasies. He uses them all, but never forgets himself. He is lord of
his appetites, never wishes the impossible, and has perfect and serene
peace.
It is an interesting fact that this pleasure-loving school drew
pessimism as the consequence of its theory. If life fails to give
enjoyment, it is a failure. That life alone is reprehensible that has
more pain than pleasure. It is on this ground that man should submit
to law and custom rather than give up his pleasures. Yet some members
of the school maintained that man is bound to be unhappy. While he
should have pleasure, he is so constituted that he cannot gain it. The
body of man is an inevitable sufferer. The highest that we can hope is
painlessness.
The Cynic and Cyrenaic schools occupy an important position in
the history of philosophy. The Cynic doctrine was the basis of the
teaching of the Stoic school, and the Cyrenaic was the legitimate
predecessor of the Epicurean school. These great schools were founded
in Athens seventy-five years later, and will be discussed under the
Hellenic-Roman Period.