Socrates and Plato:Exit from Uncertainty

By Avik Gangopadhyay, Masters Student

There are authors and thinkers who had deliberately saught the theme of certainty and uncertainty in their works,thought and preaching.The essay examines and explores this attitude in Socrates and Plato,in their philosophy and literature.

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

SOCRATES AND PLATO
EXIT FROM UNCERTAINTY

I

SOCRATES : THE FIRST MARTYR OF PHILOSOPHY

Ancient Athens was a small city having a crowd of the most active-minded people that has ever been gathered together except perhaps in the Florence of the Renaissance. Life was lived much more out-of-doors than indoors. People of the well-to-do classes spent much time in the gymnasium, which was a center of conversation as well as of athletics. Teaching was oral both for boys and grown-up men. Word of mouth in public was the medium of intellectual culture. As a center of intense political life, Athens has undergone all the main problems of political science, practical and theoretical. Later, Athens assumed a position like that of Oxford in England, or Paris in France, or Wiemar in Germany. Our focus is on to the late fifth century and early fourth century B.C.. For Socrates’ date is 470-399 B.C. and Plato’s date is 427-347 B.C.
The pre-Socratic world of philosophy was dominated by the Sophists. They were Greek philosophers who were part of the transition from the older ‘cosmic philosophers’ to the more refined systems. They rendered services to science, literature and philosophy. Protagoras of Abdera was one of the most important of the Sophists and was a senior contemporary of Socrates. Following the Heraclitean doctrine, Protagoras advocated the philosophy of the universal flux of all things to the mind and maintained “the uncertainty of the existence, specially of the gods and the relativity of all truth.” He said, “Man is the measure of all things.” He also opined on the relation of senses that exists between man and the external world. Georgias of Leontini offered three bold propositions framed upon Zeno’s thought: …. “nothing exists, that if anything exists it cannot be known, and that it could be known it could not be communicated”. Thrasymachus went ahead to bridge the “law of nature” and the “natural right”. Prodicus of Ceos taught morality in accordance with ordinary conceptions of right. He also taught Rhetoric to Euripides and his teaching was recommended by Socrates. The Sophists, in General, belonged to all the liberal professions and taught all the usual branches of knowledge like the French Encyclopedists. They were “an educative forces in Hellas”, favouring the conception of a “natural law”, to broaden the outlook of the ordinary Greek citizen. Opinions collided to each other, like Protagoras’ “every opinion is true” and Georgias’ “every opinion is false”. By questioning the absolute foundations of traditional institutions, certainties, convictions, beliefs and way of life, Sophism tended “to foster a relativistic attitude”. Against this relativism and the open-ended uncertainties Socrates and Plato reacted and endevoured to establish the sure foundation of true knowledge and ethical judgements.
Socrates devoted all his energy and time to conversation with distinguished strangers, young men and boys of the rich and leisured class. In these conversations he adopted the pose of a man who knew nothing and was asking for information. That is the famous ‘socratic Irony’. His method was to expose confusion, pretension and ignorance among the men who professed to teach by involving them in contradictions and then to depart professing that his own ignorance was as deep as it had been before. There were two things that contributed to the world of thinking: Socratic Method and Socratic Definition. The ‘Socratic method’, sometimes called the Method of Dialectic was a form of seeking knowledge by question and answer. The question was put by Socrates and the answer offered by the respondent took the form of a definition. Socrates then proceeded to refute each definition by offering a counter example designed to show that the definition offered was too narrow, too restricted, or biased or uninformed. For instance, he might profess his ignorance about the word ‘courage’ used by the other man in conversation, and pretended to have a desire to learn. His companion had used the word, therefore he must know what it meant. When some definition or description had been given to him, Socrates would profess his great satisfaction, but would intimate that there were one or two little difficulties which he would like to get cleared up. Accordingly he asked question, letting the other man do most of the talking, but he asked question, letting the other man do most of the talking, but keeping the course of the conversation under his control, and so would expose the inadequacy of the proposed definition of ‘courage’. The other would fall back on a fresh or modified definition. The dialectic proceeded from less adequate definition to a more adequate definition. Sometimes no definite result would be arrived at but the aim was “to attain a true and universal definition”.
So Socrates went about prying into the human soul, uncovering assumptions and questioning certainties. But questioning certainties was not to fall back to the relativistic doctrine of uncertainty of the Sophists. His concern was to attain the “fixed concepts”, which Aristotle declared were attempted by his employments of “inductive arguments and universal definitions”. The concepts that abound in our familiar sphere were questioned by him with an intention to reach at “unchanging definitions”-like, What is justice? What is courage? What do you mean by these abstract words with which you so easily settle the problem of life and death? What do you mean by honour, virtue, morality, patriotism? What do you mean by yourself? What is the best state?
To offer a brief and a generalised view of the philosophical activity of Socrates we may state the following:
i. Particular instances may vary but the definition stands first. This idea can be made clear by stating an example from the Aristotlean definition of man as a “rational animal”. Individuals vary in their gifts. Some are possessed of great intellectual gifts, others not. Some guide their lives according to reason, others surrender to instinct and passing impulse. Some men do not enjoy the unhampered use of their reason, whether because they are asleep or because they are mentally defective. But all animals who possess the gift of reason, whether they are actually using it or not, whether they can use if freely or are prevented by some organic defect, are men. The definition of man is fulfilled in them and this definition is constant. Even if all mean are blotted out of existence, the definition of man as “rational animal” would remained constant. His interest in ethical conduct is sufficed by another example: according to relativistic ethic, justice varies from city to city, community to community; we can never say that justice is this or that, and that this definition holds good for all states, but only that justice in Athens is this and Thrace is that. But if we can once attain to a universal definition of justice, which expressed the innermost nature of justice and holds good for all men, then we have something sure to go upon, and we can judge not only individual actions, but also the moral codes of different states. Some philosophers say this tendency of Socrates as offering a “metaphysical status to universals”.
ii. The process of induction has enabled the arguments of Socrates to proceed from less perfect to more perfect. There are some ethical phenomena which he sought to investigate and the nature of which he hoped to “enshrine in definition”-piety and impiety, just and unjust, courage and cowardice, temperance and friendship. While investigating he nature of injustice, example of “to deceive, to injure, to enslave” are brought forward. It is then pointed out that it is only when these things are done to friends that they are unjust. But the difficulty arises that if one steals a friend’s sword when he is passing a state of despair and wishes to commit suicide, no injustice is committed. It is also not unjust on a father’s part if he employs deception in order to induce his sick son to take the medicine which will heal him. Therefore, it appears that actions are unjust only when they are performed against friends with the intention of harming them.
iii. The dialecties of Socrates was aimed to discover the truth, not as matter of pure speculation, but with “a view to the good life: in order to act well one must know what the good life is”. He was deeply convinced of the value of the soul, “in the sense of the thinking and willing subject”, and he saw clearly the importance of knowledge, of true wisdom, if “the soul is to be properly tended”. He questioned, “What are the true values of human life which have to be realised in conduct?” He called his method “midwafery”, to express his intention of getting others to produce true ideas in their minds, with a view to right action. He was convinced that a clear knowledge of truth is essential for the right control of life. His preoccupation with ethics had compelled him to give birth to true ideas in the clear form of definition for a practical end.
iv. One mission of Socrates was also “to persuade everyman to look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interest, and look to the State before he looks to the interests of the State; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions”. He criticised and exposed superficial views and easy going assumptions with a desire to promote the good of his interlocutors and to learn himself, not to display his own superior dialectical acumen.
v. The theory of ethical intellectualism of Socrates clarifies the relation between knowledge and virtue. To Socrates knowledge and virtue are one, in the sense that “the wise man, he who knows what is right, will also do what is right”. It is also important to bear in mind what Socrates meant by “right”. He states- “that action is right which serves man’s true utility, in the sense of promoting his true happiness”. Here, the word ‘happiness’ is not synonymous to ‘pleasant’ or ‘pleasure’.
vi. The Socratic theory of the “unity of virtue” shows: “there is really only one virtue, insight into what is truly good for man, what really conduces to his soul’s health and harmony”. The Sophists professed to teach the art of virtue but Socrates declared himself to be a learner with “…ethical inquiries directed to the discovery of universal and constant moral norms”.
vii. His ideas of religion and teleology are closely positioned. He has spoken of ‘gods’ in the plural, the traditional Greek deities. To him, “the knowledge of the gods is not limited, they are everywhere present and know all that is said and done”. He has also suggested: “…as man’s body is composed of materials gathered from the material world, so man’s reason is a part of the Universal Reason of Mind of the world”. The gods give us the light without which we cannot see and Providence is displayed in the gifts of food made to man by the earth.
There had been philosophers before Socrates who were strong, subtle and seers like Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Pythagoras and Empedocles. But Socrates did not claim to have wisdom, but only to seek it lovingly. It was his questions and replies that gave Socrates death and immortality. As Will Durant says, “…he was wisdom’s amateur, not its professional”. He disdained to make appeal for his pardon. The seventy year old philosopher was perhaps twice removed from the world of uncertainties: first, he might thought it was the time for him to die, and second, that he could never again die so usefully:
“But now the time has come, and we must go hence; I to die and you to live. Whether life or death is
better is known to God, and to God only.”
Perhaps after the execution of the judgement Anytus and Meletus could have realised that death may not be punishment at all as what happens after death is uncertain and beyond mortal experience. If they did not, it is certain that Plato might have understood that there is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates, the dialectical humanist, Know thyself.


II

PLATO : THE FIRST UTOPIAN

Plato was twenty-eight when Socrates was executed. Meeting Socrates had been a turning point in his life. His subtle soul had found delight in seeing the dialectic game of Socrates, deflating dogmas and puncturing presumptions with the sharp point of his questions. The tragic end of Socrates left its mark on every phase of Plato’s thought. He became an ardent worshipper of wisdom and of his teacher. His intellectual flexibility was demonstrated in his confession : “I thank God that I was born Greek and not barbarian freedman and not a slave, man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates.”
Socrates left no writings and was hostile to written “fixed dead words”. In one of the dialogues of Plato Socrates says: “…writing closely resembles painting. The creatures of the latter art stand before you as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, they look very solemn and say not a word. And so it is with written discourses. You could fancy they speak as though they were possessed of sense…but when misunderstood, … and unjustly attacked, it always needs its father to help it; for, unaided, it can neither retaliate, nor defend itself.”
The dialogue form of Plato had twin purpose: one, it did cater to his philosophical motivation, and two, the desire to preserve a record of the life and death of Socrates. He felt that learning could be achieved only through discussion and shared inquiry. Though a frozen conversation the dialogue form compensates the spontaneity of real talk by a better order and by a more perfect expression. According to Sigmund Freud, the dialogue form is also a psychologically convincing mode of communication. In The Future of an Illusion Freud writes: “An enquiry that proceeds uninterruptedly like a monologue is not altogether without its dangers. One is too easily tempted to push aside thoughts that would interrupt it, and in exchange one is left with a feeling of uncertainty which one will drown in the end by over decisiveness. I shall therefore imagine an opponent who follows my arguments with mistrust, and I shall let him interject remarks here and there…” In Plato, the sensitive interplay of abstract argument and concrete literacy form gives the dialogues unusual complexity and depth of meaning.
Plato’s dialogues are representative of his thought and his development. They are generally identified in three major sets. Briefly they are stated below:
I. The first group is dialogues of inquiry, in which Plato recreates Socrates’ sense of mission. Most of the dialogues are an attempt to reach certainty-“Socratic intellectual determinism”-but end in uncertainty. The works include Apology, Crito, Euthyphron, Laches, Ion, Protagoras, Charmides, Lysis and Republic Book I.

II. The second group consists of dialogues of speculation, in which a systematic theory is envisaged that explains why inquiry can be effective and what some of its results are. The works include Gorgias, Meno, Euthydemus, Hippas I, Hippas II, Cratylus and Menexenus.
III. The third are dialogues of criticism and application, in which the ideas of the speculative group are tested against new facts and subjected to criticisms that can be raised from other points of view. This is Plato’s “Period of maturity”. The works of this period include Symposium, Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus.
Some critics and biographers tend to create a fourth set, that involved Plato’s works of old age. This set includes Theaetetus, Parmenides Sophistes, Politicus, Philebus, Timaecus, Critias, Laws and Epinomis.
The dialogues of Plato are admixture of philosophy and poetry, of science and art. His intellectual and philosophical quest tend to impose certainty upon the flux that abounds in all living, and nonliving being and thing. I prefer to take up the dialogues that directly correspond to art and literature, namely Ion and a portion of the Republic. Before initiating the discussion it is important to note that Plato has in sufficient abundance the qualities which he condemns. Will Durant, the philosopher-historian, rightly says, “He inveighs against poets and their myths, and proceeds to add one to the number of poets and hundred to the number of myths. He complains of the priests but he himself is a priest, a theologian, a preacher, a supermoralist”.


III

ION : THE BEGINNING OF IMITATION


To start with Ion we must know the manner of communication of poetry in the days of Plato. In Plato’s culture, live performance was the norm. Apart from private reading and study of literary texts by the intellectual minority, most citizens experienced poetry of Homer and lyrics in various will-defined social settings: at the annual dramatic festivals and hearing Homer performed by professional rhapsodes. Oral memorisation and recital dominated even the schoolchild’s poetic training. The theatrical aspect of poetic experience was the major target of Plato. To Plato, instead of strengthening poetry’s voice, theatricality hampers intoning it properly. In Ion Plato attempts to break the connection between poetic inspiration and understanding in a unique way. Before Republic it is in Ion that he has expressed his specific views on poetry.
The two interlocutors in the dialogue are Socrates, the philosopher and Ion, the rhapsode. The strategy of Socrates in the conversation with the rhapsode Ion is to get him see that poetic inspiration is not a prerogative of the poets alone; but is transmitted by them to intermediaries, such as actors and rhapsodes, enabling them to perform the poetry, and so the contagion spreads to its final carrier, the enthusiastic audience. Socrates intends to talk to a real poet, not a ‘poet’s interpreter’. The dialogue highlights the difference between a poet and a rhapsode. While placing the idea of inspiration in proper perspective, Plato says that poets are not judged on how well they could talk about their poetry, but on the quality of the poetry they produced, and rhapsodes, by conrast, win garlands not just by performing Homer, but by praising him. In the pattern of argument we find Socrates targetting the rhapsode rather than the poet because only the rhapsode made his understanding of poetry an object of professional discourse distinct from the performance of the poetry itself. As a rhapsode Ion specialises in the poetry of Homer, excluding all others, and announces himself satisfied with this limitation. Socrates offers a psychological shading on the traditional concept of inspiration: the poet is the inspired interpreter of the God and the rhapsode is the inspired interpreter of the poet. Thus being possessed both the poet and the rhapsode are not responsible for what they say. Ion approves of one fact beforehand that he is delighted at the notion of being inspired and acknowledges that he is beside himself when he is performing. Socrates has given the famous comparison:
“…magnet attracts iron rings, and not only that, but puts the same power into the iron rings, so that they can do the same as the stone does; they attract other rings, so that sometimes there is a whole long string of these rings hanging together….the Muse not only inspires people…but through these inspired ones others are inspired and dangle in a string. In fact, all the good poets who make Epic poems use no art at all, but they are inspired and possessed when they utter all these beautiful poems; …The poets…tell us that they get their honey-songs from honey-founts of the Muses and pluck from what they call Muses’ gardens…and what they say is true. For the poet is an airy thing, a winged and holy thing; and he cannot make poetry until he becomes inspired…not by art, then, ….but by divine dispensation; therefore, the only poetry that each one can make is what the Muse has pushed him to make, one ecstatic odes, one hymns of praise, one songs for dance or pantomine, one epic, one satiric iambic; …”
Socrates goes on to exemplify the nature of the divine power and the art. Ion seems satisfied to what the Socrates proposes:
Socrates: …the poets are nothing but the god’s interpreters, …Don’t you think I speak the truth, my dear Ion?
Ion: Upon my word I do! ….I feel sure that a divine dispensation from heaven for us makes good poets the interpreters in these things.
Socrates: And don’t you reciters interpret the poet’s works?
Ion: That is quite true also?
Socrates: So you are interpreters of interpreters?
Ion: We are indeed.
Actually Socrates does not deny that poetry and rhapsody are arts. He denies that what poets and rhapsodes say is said with art and understanding on their part. Plato brings out the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the transparent childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Euthydemus describes the rhapsodists as “very precise about the exact words of Homer, but very foolish themselves…”
In the second half of the dialogue Ion presents himself as most professional, much dominated by inspiration rather than understanding. He proclaims himself expert in generalship because he “knows what is suitable for a general to say”. Plato makes him shallow in making us appreciate the irrelevance of Ion’s shallowness to the quality of his theatrical achievement. The chief indictment laid against poetry in the Ion is “that since poetry in its proper form is theatrical performance it can be fully appreciated and evaluated in terms of its effects alone”. Plato does not take the fictionality of any literary work for granted. He rather wishes to think not ‘fictionality’ but ‘theatricality’ or as a critic says: “…that capacity for imaginative identification which inspired poets and performers and satisfied audiences alike employ-fictionality belongs to the artistic product; theatricality belongs to the soul”. Thinking of poetry in terms of theatricality, Plato makes poetry “through and through an ethical, not an aesthetic affair”. Plato opens up two distinct domains of inquiry: “the fictionality of literature and the psychology of literary production”. Plato develops the concept of ‘theatricality’ in his term mimesis-‘imitation’, which blooms in the Republic. Jowett also sees “the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, which in the Republic leads to their final seperation, is already working in the mind of Plato, and is embodied by him in the contrast between Socrates and Ion”. The very attempt to categorise art on an ethical plane is a rejection of uncertainty that fictionality breathes.


IV

REPUBLIC : BK X

IMITATION AND LEVELS OF REALITY


“….Republic is a complete treatise in itself, Plato reduced to a book; here we shall find his metaphysics, his theology, his ethics, his psychology, his pedagogy, his politics, his theory of art. Here we shall find problems reeking with modernity and contemporary savor: communism and socialism, feminism, birth-control and eugenics, Nietzschean problems of morality and aristocracy, Rousseauian problem to return to nature and libertarian education, Bergsonian ‘elan vital’ and Freudian psychoanalysis-everything is here. It is a feast for the elite, served by an unstinting host, ….”-Will Durant.
In the third book of The Republic, one of the interlocutors, Socrates, asserts that literature must deal only with “suitable subjects in a suitable manner”. He prescribes in some detail as to both subject and form “in effect, the poet may tell only plain stories of virtuous people”. The same is thought of music: “none but the Dorian and the Phrygian, the manly and sober modes”, are to be allowed, and those rhythms “expressive of an orderly and brave life”. The practice in the other arts is to be regulated in the similar fashion and in the result a noble art, purified of unwholesomeness and extravagance, will “develop in the young the characteristic of nobility”. By learning to appreciate the good and the beautiful in art, Socratic argues, people will learn to love them in life.
In book IX, Socrates analyses in an argument the kinds of pleasure enjoyed by the three classes of men: “the philosopher’s pleasure in wisdom is best because it partakes most of the unchanging world of truth and real being; the pleasures of victory and honour come next; and last of all is the pleasure of the gratified desire, which is no more than a fleeting shadow of true pleasure”. Socrates wants us to agree that “wisdom-loving is superior to honour-loving and honour-loving to pleasure-loving”.
This argumentative framework culminates in Book X. Socrates brings forth his criticism of the artist. Distinguishing three levels of reality, Socrates offers instances of the ideal bed, the bed one sleeps on, and the image of a bed in a picture, to fix the level of operation of an artist at the lowest level. The artist does not portray the ideal bed: “art is mere imitation of an appearance of reality”. We may list Plato’s ideas of the poet, the poetry, the drama, and art in particular in a very general manner apart from what is stated above during the discussion of Ion:
i. Imitation is essentially an activity inferior to doing or making.
ii. The artist will never be able to imitate particularly well, because his knowledge of his subject is bound in every case to be inferior to a practical knowledge of it.
iii. Art cannot be a serious occupation.
iv. In the moral level poetry and poets pander to the popular taste and narrate tales of man’s pleasant vices.
v. The representation of Gods and their representative protagonists as corrupt, immoral and dishonest depraves public taste and morality.
vi. Poets and dramatists appeal to the “baser instincts of men, their love of the sensational and the melodramatic” as “judgement in dramatic poetry is left to the many”.
vii. Being “divinely inspired” and the mouthpiece of Muse, the pronouncements of the poets are unreliable and uncertain, exposing truth in partial and imperfect standards.
viii. The frenzy of the poet is ‘non-rational’.
ix. Imitation becomes a second nature of one who imitates resulting in an unhealthy personality split.
x. Imitation of baser part of soul gives greater momentary pleasure which feeds and waters the passion instead of drying them up.
xi. Poetry is thrice removed from reality and it cannot be a source of knowledge and truth.
xii. Being no creator but imitator the poet has no utilitarian value in an ideal state.
xiii. Art does not appeal to the rational element of the soul. In literature, the poet will not imitate the reasonable man but the foolish and unstable man, because the latter will give more scope for effect. The tendency of art to corrupt the best of the natures is all the more dangerous.
Mentioning Iliad and Odyssey, Plato points out, that there are a blend of two forms of presentation, namely simple narrative and imitation. He also claims that poetry can take three forms. It may proceed wholly by imitation, as in tragedy and comedy; it may proceed wholly by narrative, the poet speaking in his own person throughout, as in dithyramb; or it may employ both methods as in epic poetry. The question to be decided in which form or forms from among these three are to be allowed in the ideal state.
Structurally, Book X can be divided in two parts. The first discusses imitation and its products in the light of metaphysical and epistemological distinctions. The second part relates the conclusion of the first pat to his psychological doctrines. Plato begins by asking what general imitation is and proceeds to give an answer in terms of the theory of forms.
To discuss Plato’s doctrine of forms let us use his argument in a summary form, as preferred by critics in general:
“….Take any class of particular things in our ordinary everyday world-for example, the class of things each of which we call a bed. Now, as we know from the theory of Forms, the particular beds are all beds in virtue of the Form of Bed. Thus there is first of all the Form of Bed, which is unique, which exists in the nature of things, and which we might say was made by God. Secondly, there are all the particular beds, and these are made by the carpenter or craftsman, looking to the Form. As we also know from the theory of Forms, the Form of Bed alone is completely real, while bed the carpenter makes is not completely real-it is a shadowy thing as compared with reality.”
Thirdly, the painter, Socrates says, is a craftsman who produces a bed, but not an actual bed, only the appearance of a bed.
The nature of imitation thus stand: “God makes the Form, the craftsman makes the particular bed, but the artist is not making a bed. What he does is to imitate what others have made. It is in fact the products of the craftsman that he imitates and he imitates these not as they are but as they appear. Imitation, then, is concerned with appearances, the artist is an imitator, and his work is at the third remove from reality. Similarly, the tragic poet, who is an imitator, and other imitators are as it were third from the throne of truth….”
The works of Homer and other dramatists come under Plato’s ban, that they are the sort of art that Book X attacks as bad imitation, “third removed from the truth”. To Plato, man has a choice in his own hands. It anything goes wrong, becomes unreal, uncertain and irrational, the “blame lies with the Chooser”; he attaches fundamental importance to the philosophic life-“to choose a life of philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom”. Plato turns the pursuit of the philosophical knowledge into a myth. Creating a myth is widening the exit from uncertainty.
The extent of influence of both Socrates and Plato is beyond measure. While Whitehead characterises the history of western philosophy as “footnotes to Plato”, Hegel, Kierkaggard, Nietzsche and modern existentialist philosophers consider Socrates as “living heritage”.