Plato 9.5 Plato’s Portrayals of Socrates
Now instead of meeting one Socrates, we are in danger of meeting many. This work, however, is a study of Plato, not of his fellow Socratics. So we are justified in focusing on Plato’s version of Socrates. It may indeed turn out that his version of the barefoot philosopher is the best we have. But for better or worse, it is the most complete, most complex, most philosophical, most human, and consequently most interesting version we have from his followers. How does Plato understand Socrates?
As we have seen, Plato’s Socrates spends his time talking about virtue and goodness. He is especially keen to find definitions for the several virtues, presumably because the putative definitions will bring understanding of what virtue is and how we may attain it. But the downside of Socrates’ quest is that he rarely, if ever, arrives at a workable definition of a virtue. This may lead us, as it has led many scholars from antiquity to the present, to despair of finding a coherent theory that might undergird and ultimately support his method and general approach to ethics (ch. 9.4.3).
One hint we get concerning Socrates’ alleged ethical theory is that he held the view that virtue is knowledge. Socrates arrives at a definition consistent with this identification in the Protagoras.[24] Aristotle, who never knew Socrates, but who was Plato’s student and had a strong interest in the history of philosophy — and is likely to have met with other Socratics — interpreted Socrates as holding the view that virtue is knowledge.[25] Of course there would be much more to say about this basic principle, including what kind of knowledge virtue is and how it is arrived at. But it gives us a starting point.
Plato presents Socrates as advancing the view that courage is knowledge of what is and is not to be feared, in the Protagoras. But the dialogue ends with Socrates pointing out that his view and that of Protagoras (that virtue is not knowledge) seem to conflict with their respective positions, with Socrates claiming that virtue is not teachable and Protagoras the opposite. For if virtue is knowledge, it seems it should be teachable; and if it is not knowledge, then how could be teachable? In the dialogue Charmides the sophist Critias defines the virtue of temperance as knowledge, only to have Socrates pick his definition apart. In the dialogue Laches, Nicias offers a definition of courage very like that Socrates advances in the Protagoras, only to have Socrates refute it. So we are left in a quandary: how are we to identify a valid definition of any virtue, much less to build a theory around the definition?
As we have seen in this chapter, Plato presents Socrates not only as a seeker for definitions, but as a thinker with a mission, and as a moral agent who recognizes moral principles and lives his life in accordance with them — to the point of valuing moral integrity above his own life and welfare. This picture of Socrates suggests, if it does not prove, that the philosopher has moral principles based on rational considerations — hence a theory of ethics — that he not only explores but lives by. What then is his theory, and why won’t Plato share it with us?
One more thought: Plato’s Apology and Crito are not the only places Plato defends Socrates. In dialogues apparently written later that these two, Plato continues to defend the memory and the mission of Socrates. The Gorgias is a long and polemical dialogue in which Socrates for once seems to take off the comic mask and reveal what he is doing and why. In the Symposium we get a powerful defense of Socrates from one of his wayward followers. And in the Phaedo Socrates faces death with a calm demeanor and a heroic resolve. Socrates the moral exemplar is alive and well in many of Plato’s dialogues, presumably at least in part because Plato deeply admires the man as a human being.
Plato’s relationship to Socrates the character in his dialogues is complex. For at least a century and a half, scholars have studied Plato’s works looking for the progression of his own thought, which involves his treatment of Socrates, the protagonist of almost all his dialogues. They have identified three main stages of Plato’s writings: the Early or Socratic Dialogues, the Middle Dialogues, and the Late Dialogues. These three sets of writings seem to correlate with periods of Plato’s intellectual life and mark evolving stages of Plato’s intellectual development.
It is in the Early Dialogues that Plato presents Socrates as the thinker who claims no special expertise, who seeks definitions of virtue tirelessly, and who never seems to arrive at an adequate theory. It is not an accident that Aristotle uses these dialogues as evidence for reconstructing Socrates’ own philosophy.
In the Middle Dialogues, including notably the sprawling Republic in ten books (it filled up ten papyrus rolls, 300+ pages in modern editions), Socrates often says in effect, “I have a theory about that. Do you want to hear it?” To which his adoring followers always eagerly assent. Plato’s Socrates rapidly progresses from being a know-nothing (in book I) to being a know-it-all (in books II to X). The theories he spouts are, if we believe Aristotle — who spent twenty years as Plato’s student and then colleague — Plato’s theories. So the character Socrates goes from being a seeker to being a polymath. And he goes from focusing all his energy on ethics to philosophizing about the nature of reality (metaphysics), the study of knowledge (epistemology), the nature of the soul (psychology), political science, theory of education, theory of art (aesthetics), and even some cosmology. He goes from being a seeker of definitions to being a systematic philosopher. The theories Socrates espouses in the Middle Dialogues are those Aristotle attributes to Plato.[26] The character Socrates has become, it appears, a mouthpiece for Plato.
In the Late Dialogues Socrates gradually fades from prominence. In a number of these dialogues he meets another thinker who does most of the talking, such as the Visitor from Elea in the Sophist and Statesman and Timaeus of Locri in the eponymous Timaeus. In The Laws, a work in twelve books, Socrates does not appear at all. Gradually Socrates becomes a by-stander in the Platonic dialogues. Plato has, it seems, ceased to be in thrall to Socrates.
[24].Plato Protagoras 360d. Plato 8.4*.
[25].Aristotle Eudemian Ethics 1216b2–6.
[26].Aristotle Metaphysics I.6.
