Socrates

Athenian philosopher (c. 470–399 BCE), executed on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, and the principal speaker of most of Plato's dialogues. Socrates wrote nothing: he philosophized only orally, in face-to-face question-and-answer. On Cooper's account he was "a totally new kind of Greek philosopher" — one who denied possessing wisdom and refused to "hand anything down" as his personal truth, making philosophy instead a cooperative, joint search conducted by testing one's own and others' opinions against reasons (Cooper, Introduction §III).

Key Points

  • The "What is X?" question. Socrates seeks, for each virtue or value, a single model or standard (παράδειγμα) — "one that gives clear, unconflicting, and unambiguous answers" and "can provide such a standard all on its own." In the Euthyphro he distinguishes the essence of piety from a mere property of it: that pious things are loved by the gods is "a secondary quality, not the 'essence' of piety" (now anchored in the dialogue itself, 10a–11b; see socratic-definition). This demand for the one eidos common to all instances recurs across the dialogues — e.g. Meno 71d–72c, where Meno's list of virtues fails to answer "what is virtue?" (the "swarm of bees").
  • The elenchus and Socratic ignorance. Socrates' method is to elicit an interlocutor's confident opinion and subject it to "searching rational scrutiny," typically reducing it to aporia — while himself "always disclaiming the final possession of any" moral knowledge (Cooper, Introduction §II). The productive role of aporia is dramatized in the Meno slave-boy demonstration (82e–84b): the boy must first realize that he does not know before genuine inquiry can begin.
  • Philosophy as preparation for death. In the Phaedo (the dialogue of his last day) Socrates defines philosophy itself as "practice for death" (64a–69e) — the soul's release from the body's distractions — and meets his execution as the consummation of that practice. The Phaedo death scene is the corpus's defining image of the philosophical life.
  • Two registers of "Socrates." In the Cratylus, Meno, Phaedrus, and Phaedo Socrates is the leading speaker; in the Sophist he is present but cedes the inquiry to the Eleatic Visitor; in the Timaeus he recaps the Republic's city and then falls silent before Timaeus' cosmological monologue. This recession tracks the historical-vs-Platonic-Socrates problem (below).
  • Maieutics — the midwife self-description. In the Theaetetus (148e–151d) Socrates names his art for the first time as midwifery (technē maieutikē): he is "barren of wisdom" and delivers and tests others' intellectual offspring, judging each a "wind-egg" or a "fertile truth." The corpus's most explicit account of Socratic method — which the Theaetetus frames as superseded, in the planned sequels, by the Eleatic Visitor's diairesis.
  • The directing Socrates of the late dialogues. In the Republic Socrates narrates and constructs the whole positive edifice (the Forms, the Good, the just city); in the Philebus he is "again fully in charge," expounding the fourfold ontology — a Socrates "very sure of his ground," moving "much more in the manner of the Visitor" (Cooper). The maieutic disclaimer recedes as the positive doctrine grows.
  • The argumentative Socrates of the Socratic dialogues. In the Protagoras, Gorgias, and Ion Socrates is the elenctic protagonist who wields the craft-analogy (knowledge as a technē with a determinate subject) and defends intellectualist theses — virtue is knowledge, "no one errs willingly," rhetoric and rhapsody are not crafts. The Seventh Letter adds what — if the letter is genuinely Plato's (its authenticity is contested) — is first-hand testimony: Socrates' refusal to help the Thirty arrest Leon of Salamis (the episode also has an Apology locus, 32c–d), and his execution by the restored democracy — "the justest man of that time."
  • The trial-and-death and definitional Socrates (Wave 4). With the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro the wiki now holds the primary self-portrait: human wisdom and the Delphic-oracle mission (Apology 20e–23b), the gadfly (30e), the examined life ("the unexamined life is not worth living," 38a), the daimonion (the forbidding divine sign, 31d), and the consistency of accepting death (the Crito's "persuade or obey," 50–54). The definitional dialogues — Euthyphro (piety), Laches (courage), Charmides (temperance) — show the elenchus running the "what is X?" question to aporia on virtue after virtue; the Euthydemus sets the genuine elenchus against its eristic double. Biography: valor at Potidaea (Charmides) and the retreat from Delium (Laches 181a–b, cf. Symposium 220e).
  • Socrates with the sophist Hippias; the friendship inquiry (Wave 5). The Lysis shows Socrates modelling the right way to engage young men — philosophical conversation, not praise-poetry — while running the aporetic inquiry into friendship (the prōton philon, the oikeion); the Hippias Major and Hippias Minor pit him against the polymath Hippias of Elis on the fine and on the deception paradox — the latter ending in a conclusion ("the voluntary wrongdoer is the good man," 376b) Socrates pointedly disavows.

The Historical-vs-Platonic Socrates Problem

The single most important interpretive caution attaching to Socrates' name (Cooper, Introduction §II). In the Socratic dialogues Socrates argues as the historical Socrates is independently attested — by Xenophon (Memorabilia, Apology, Symposium) — to have argued: examining moral opinion, professing ignorance, advancing no positive doctrine, and saying nothing of the theory of Forms. In the "second group" and late dialogues, "Socrates" instead defends ambitious positive theses — the Forms, the immortality of the soul, recollection — that are Plato's own contributions, not the historical Socrates'. One therefore cannot read a claim by "Socrates" as straightforwardly either Plato's settled view or the historical Socrates'. The name marks a literary persona through which Plato both honors and exceeds his teacher. See plato.

Connections

Open Questions

  • With Wave 4 the trial-and-death cluster (Apology, Crito, Euthyphro) and the definitional dialogues (Laches, Charmides, Euthydemus) are ingested; the "What is X?" analysis now has full dialogue-internal anchors (socratic-definition) and the elenctic Socrates his own elenchus page. The live interpretive question is now the Apology's editor-flagged thesis that Socrates makes his own reason the final arbiter of what the gods want — pious, or impious by the city's lights? See claims#plato-apology-philosophy-as-highest-piety (live claim).
  • The relation between Socratic aporia (productive not-knowing) and the wiki's other figures of productive negativity (negation, non-being, the hyper-dialectical refusal of synthesis) is now seeded by the aporia page (the Meno's productive impasse) — a candidate cross-tradition connection held open, not asserted.

Sources

  • plato-phaedo — philosophy as practice for death (64a–69e); the death scene (115a–118a).
  • plato-meno — the "what is virtue?" demand (71d–72c); the slave-boy elenchus and productive aporia (82e–84b).
  • plato-cratylus, plato-phaedrus, plato-sophist — Socrates as leading / receding speaker.
  • plato-theaetetus — the midwife self-description (maieutics, 148e–151d); plato-philebus, plato-symposium, plato-republic — the directing / narrating Socrates of the late dialogues.
  • plato-protagoras, plato-gorgias, plato-ion — the elenctic, intellectualist Socrates of the Socratic dialogues (the craft-analogy; virtue-as-knowledge). plato-letter-7 — putatively Plato's own first-hand testimony to Socrates' integrity (the Leon episode) and death (the letter's authenticity is contested).
  • plato-apology — the primary self-portrait: human wisdom and the oracle (20e–23b), the gadfly (30e), the examined life (38a), the daimonion (31d); the Leon episode (32c–d).
  • plato-crito — the consistency of accepting death; the personified Laws and "persuade or obey" (50–54).
  • plato-euthyphro — the dialogue-internal "what is X?" / essence-vs-property anchors (6d–e, 10a–11b).
  • plato-laches, plato-charmides, plato-euthydemus — the elenchus on courage and temperance, and against eristic; Delium/Potidaea biography.
  • plato-lysis — Socrates and the boys; the aporetic inquiry into friendship (the prōton philon, the oikeion).
  • plato-hippias-major, plato-hippias-minor — Socrates against the polymath Hippias: the form/instance demand on the fine; the deception paradox and the disavowed conclusion on voluntary wrongdoing.
  • John M. Cooper, "Introduction" to Plato: Complete Works (Hackett, 1997), raw lines 159–221 (the historical-vs-Platonic Socrates; the dialogue form), and the Euthyphro introductory note, raw lines 293–296 (the "What is X?" / model / essence-vs-property analysis). Traceable to the raw file.