Plato 9.4.3 Socrates as a Perpetual Seeker
One important and viable interpretation of the historical Socrates is as a perennial seeker of wisdom, particularly an adequate understanding of ethical issues, including especially the definition of virtues. That is what we see Socrates doing in most of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, and in many of Xenophon’s portrayals. Socrates asks, what is courage, or prudence, or justice, or piety. He finds individuals who are willing (sometimes with a little arm-twisting, sometimes needing no prompting at all) to give their versions of what a given virtue is.
Yet in all, or almost all, of Socrates’ discussions, the task that seems easy at first becomes difficult. Some answers do not qualify at all: they are examples rather than definitions; or they are definitions, but hopelessly general, or, on the contrary, hopelessly narrow. When we get to a promising definition, Socrates often finds counterexamples. Soon the person who is giving the answers runs out of suggestions. Sometimes Socrates offers his own suggestions. But even they fail to survive the philosopher’s intense scrutiny. We arrive at an impasse, a dead-end, what the Greeks call an aporia. Many of Plato’s dialogues are so-called “aporetic” dialogues, discussions that reach a dead-end.
Socrates himself professes that he has no special knowledge; he has nothing to offer but his curiosity and his endless pursuit of wisdom, with nothing, it seems, to show for his efforts. Not surprisingly there are many scholars who see Socrates, whether the historical figure or the figure depicted in Plato’s quasi-historical dialogues, as a voice crying in the wilderness, always seeking but never finding.[21]
One ancient interpretation of Socrates is as a proto-skeptic, a forerunner of the skeptics who prided themselves in showing that philosophy can teach us only that we know nothing for sure. Some of the skeptics lived al fresco and went about in tattered cloaks like Socrates, challenging self-proclaimed experts but offering no expertise of their own.
[21].See Brickhouse and Smith 1994: 30–72 and 2000: 99–121; Benson 2000; Bett 2011. These accounts offer valuable nuances about Socrates’ position, but they all recognize him as falling short of strict knowledge and possession of virtue.
