The Socratic Revolution

Imagine a world in which there is no morality. There are platitudes about how to act and how to treat other people. There are customs and norms and social expectations. The justifications of good behavior are couched in terms of what is good for you — what will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. But there are no general principles of action, no system of duties, no rational basis for human interactions, no recognized moral authority.

Imagine that in this world people believe in a pantheon of gods with human traits. These gods look, think, and act like human beings except that they have the gift of immortality: they were born but they will never die. They have power over mortals. But they are not noticeably better, that is: more moral, than mortals. They are not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. Each one has some super-power, but no one has unlimited power.

The gods cooperate with each other, but they sometimes quarrel among themselves, they lie, cheat, and commit adultery, they make mistakes, they sometimes embarrass themselves, and become a laughingstock for their peers. They have favorites among mortal humans, whom they help and protect; they also have mortals they dislike, and whom they plot against; they have illicit affairs with mortals, sometimes deceive them, and use them for their own ends. Religion is a kind of commerce with the gods in which the individual offers a sacrifice and asks for a blessing in return, a quid pro quo.

Welcome to the world of early Greek philosophy. It is against the backdrop of a society without a coherent moral code, brought up in a religion in which the deities are all-too-human and do not provide a exemplars of sterling behavior, that the early Greek thinkers develop their own theories.

The early Greek poets did, indeed, seek to ground behavior in the will of the gods:

The eye of Zeus seeing all and perceiving all,

looks on these things, too, if he will, nor does it escape him

what kind of justice the city harbors within.

Indeed, neither would I be just among men

nor my son, since it would be a bad thing to be a just man,

if the unjust man received a greater reward.

But I trust that counselor Zeus will not bring such things to pass. (Hesiod Works and Days 267–73)

The poet Hesiod here looks to Zeus to uphold justice. But Zeus had violently overthrown his father, Cronus, and Cronus his father Uranus. And Hesiod warns that sometimes Zeus punishes a whole city for the wickedness of some of its inhabitants; if so, how does that help the just people of the city? In any case, Hesiod makes it clear that he would not follow justice if there were not some suitable reward for doing so.

The earliest Greek philosophers, whom we call the Presocratics because they lived (mostly) before Socrates, focused their efforts on aspects of cosmology: how did the world arise, what is the shape and nature of the world, and what are the laws or principles of nature that govern it? We call the Presocratic philosophers because they initiated general examinations of reality and knowledge which later thinkers called philosophy. One thing they did not study, or rarely studied, was morality.

One early philosopher/poet did take notice of the problem of making the Greek gods the monitors of human behavior:

Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things

that are blameworthy and disgraceful for men:

stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other. (Xenophanes fr. 11)

An early poet complains about the disconnect between human actions and divine rewards:

Dear Zeus, I’m amazed at you! For you rule over all,

enjoying honor and great power yourself,

knowing well the mind and heart of men,

and your power is supreme, O king.

How, then, does your mind, son of Cronus, dare to treat

sinners and the righteous alike? . . .

Is there no divine judgment set for mortals,

no path that they might follow to please the immortals? (Theognis 373–82)

Philosophy took a practical turn with the arrival of the Sophists. Instead of being focused on cosmology and science, they were interested in the practical applications of knowledge. At the time when democratic institutions were expanding, they offered citizens the tools to be leaders, or, as we might say today, influencers of society and government. They taught how to give a rousing speech, how to win an argument, how to manage money, how to lead people. Socrates came of age at the time when the Sophists were flourishing. Mostly itinerant teachers, they came to a major city like Athens, gave some free lectures, and then charged tuition for courses in practical subjects.

Socrates claimed to be impressed with them, but he worried about what they taught. Were they teaching how to sway opinion and win arguments so as to achieve truth, or merely so as to get ahead? In the game of life, is the aim to win no matter what? Is it enough to succeed at any cost?

Plato seems to represent Socrates reliably in his early or Socratic dialogues. In them, we typically see Socrates asking a person, who often is a self-proclaimed expert on something, to define a virtue such as justice or piety. The person then gives a common-sense definition. Socrates asks some apparently unrelated questions, and then shows how the answers to those questions show that the definition is false. The person tries again, with similar results. Often the discussion ends with the person he is talking to making excuses and running off without having offered a viable definition. Socrates typically claims to have no answer himself, but only a desire to learn from others.

This Socratic method of elenchus or refutation seems to be a purely negative method, and Socrates maintains a façade of learned ignorance. So what is going on?

In a couple of dialogues, Plato allows us to see Socrates providing a more positive approach. Here I will focus on the Crito, a dialogue in which we find Socrates in prison, waiting for execution after his trial. His friend Crito comes to visit him, informing Socrates that he has bribed the prison guards, and he wants to break Socrates out of prison. They need to make the jailbreak the same night. Socrates asks him if fleeing prison is the right thing to do. Of course, says Crito. You were falsely accused, the jury was prejudiced, and you are innocent. You need to save your life and you owe it to your friends and family to flee to a city where you will be safe.

At this point, Socrates reminds his friend Crito that they have often professed to follow moral principles. They need to think about those now. Crito agrees.

Socrates begins a long argument, part of which we can summarize as follows:

Socrates’ argument against escaping from prison

1. We must value living well more than living.

2. To do wrong causes the doer not to live well.

3. Thus, to do wrong is bad for the doer. (1, 2)

4. Thus, we must never do wrong. (3)

5. To injure is to do wrong.

6. Thus, we must not injure. (4, 5)

7. To break agreements is to injure.

8. Thus, we must not break agreements. (6, 7)

9. To break laws is to break agreements.

10. Thus, we must not break laws. (8, 9)

11. To run away from legal punishment is to break laws.

12. Thus, I must not run away from legal punishment. (10, 11)

What is important here is to see that Socrates accepts moral principles, such as that it is never right to do wrong. These, along with a reasonable understanding of what kinds of actions constitute wrongdoing, entail that one should not escape from prison. In fact, Socrates recognizes that he had a fair trial, in the sense that he had exactly the same amount of time to defend himself as his accusers had to accuse him. The jury vote was a secret ballot offered under conditions where bribery and political influence were precluded. He could have left Athens voluntarily before the trial, but he did not. Now he sees any effort to escape as an attempt to undermine the authority of the government, from which he has benefited throughout his life.

Incidentally, the way he presents his argument is as a refutation of the thesis that he should flee prison. The refutation produces a result that is untenable. So he must remain and take his punishment. His negative method does produce a positive result: to tell him what he must do.

At least three times in his life, Socrates risked his life in the public forum. Once, when he was service as a senator in the Athenian senate (chosen by lot: he never ran for office or dabbled in politics), he stood up to the six-thousand-man Assembly. They wanted to conduct a quick joint trial of several general whom they thought were derelict in their duty, in a way that was unconstitutional. For the day in which Socrates was appointed to serve as the director of the Assembly, he blocked the motion, even though the men of the Assembly threated to lynch him.

When the oligarchy known as the Thirty Tyrants ordered him and several other citizens to arrest Leon of Salamis, a war hero and champion of democracy, hoping to implicate him in their lawless purge of democratic leaders, he refused, and went home at the risk of his own life.

In his own trial he stood up for his own rights and criticized the Athenians for their moral shortcomings, again, taking his life into his own hands.

He points out that when he examines people about the beliefs, he does so with an important purpose:

And if any of you protests and says he does care about these things, I won’t just quit and go away, but I will ask questions, examine, and cross-examine him. And if I find he has not acquired virtue, but claims he has, I will accuse him of valuing the most important things the least and the least important things the most. I will do this to anyone I meet, young or old, foreigner or citizen, but especially to you citizens, since you are my kindred. Know well that this is what the god commands, and I believe that no greater good has ever come to this city than my mission for the god. For I spend all my time doing nothing else but urging you, both young and old, not to worry about your bodies or your possessions in preference to or as much as your soul, how it may be as good as possible, declaring, Goodness does not come from wealth, but from goodness comes wealth and every good thing that men possess, whether in private or public life. (Plato Apology 29d-30b)

What Plato shows us is that behind the appearance of being a man with no special knowledge, was a person who had a powerful moral theory that told him what was right and what was wrong; he followed moral imperatives unfailingly, several times at the risk of his own life.

Indeed, he made a claim at the beginning of his trial speech which lets us see behind the curtain. He said that if he had any advantage over other thinkers, it was in that he did not claim to know what he did not know. Later, he said,

To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing but to think you are wise when you are not; it is thinking you know what you don’t know. No one in fact knows whether death may be the greatest of all goods, but men fear it as if they knew for sure that it was the greatest of all evils. And how is this not the most reprehensible ignorance, that of thinking you know what you don’t know? For my part … if I should claim to be wiser than anyone it would be precisely in this, that inasmuch as I have no adequate knowledge about the afterlife, I recognize that I do not know. But to do wrong and to disobey one’s superior, whether god or man, that I do know to be evil and shameful. Consequently, in place of those evils which I know to be evils, I shall never fear or flee from events that, for all I know, might actually be goods. (Plato Apology 28d-29c.)

Suddenly, the issue that is lurking behind many moral evaluations, the fear of death, is exposed as inscrutable and irrelevant. Perhaps this is the ultimate test of morality: to be able to set aside our own welfare and even our own lives, rather than give in to threats of violence and retaliation over a moral principle. For the first time in recorded history, one individual stood up for what he saw was morally right, according to a theory of goodness.

There have always been moral people. And there is empirical evidence from psychological studies that we are all born with a sense of right and wrong. But people are also very good at finding excuses to avoid their moral duties. We tend to rationalize and look the other way when duty calls.

In the Greek world, at least, before Socrates, all moral schemes were based on personal prudence: what’s in it for me? But Socrates’ theory makes my personal welfare irrelevant to the moral question. Moral responsibility is prior to personal welfare. My duty trumps my personal well-being. For the first time morality is the be-all and end-all of human action. I am free to seek my own well-being when I am not acting in an immoral way. But if I have a moral obligation, that supersedes my present convenience and compels my obedience.

If ethics is the rational study of morality, Socrates can claim to be the first ethical man — the first individual to live a life in pursuit of a theoretical good arrived at by reason and logic. For the first time in history he announced that morality was the chief good of human beings, and the knowledge of the moral good outweighed all other human values. Morality is not about what is good for me. It’s about what is good for everyone and for society as a whole. This might remind us that the best way to serve God is to serve our neighbors. At his trial, Socrates claimed to be dedicated to serving God by challenging his fellow citizens to put the pursuit of virtue and goodness above the pursuit of wealth, power, and prestige. In later times, early Christians viewed Socrates as a pre-Christian martyr for his devotion to virtue at the expense of his own life.

There have always been moral people. But Socrates was the first ethical man.

Socrates developed a theory of morality, an ethics, which he made the focus of his life’s work. He seems never to have deviated from his own principles. He revolutionized philosophy. After him all ancient philosophical theories would have ethics at their core, supported by theories of reality, knowledge, psychology, etc. And they were judged, first and foremost, by their ability to make people better.

(From a lecture given at BYU on 2/8/24)