My co-author Tim and I are grateful to be afforded the opportunity to present our views. Deciphering the Minos is not the most accessible of topics. Ours is not the most accessible of papers. We hope our content more than our style will merit recognition. As is clear below, it is a Platonic thought which implies that things most relevant to democratic society may never easily be seen by such society, if seen at all.

The Minos itself has a question and declaration which tempt us to think things more understandable than they are. Socrates begins the dialogue asking “What is law, for us?” “What is law?” seems a philosophical question of especial relevance. Those even mildly familiar with Socrates know his procedure was to ask what each of the beings were. “What is justice?” and “What is courage?” stand out as typical examples of his inquiry. “What is law?” is itself both an unusual and fundamental question. Xenophon puts it in the mouth of an Alcibiades speaking Socratically. Socrates himself, in Xenophon, never utters it directly. We note, regarding the matter at hand, Socrates has asked “What is law, for us?”

Still. Lots of people ask “What is law?” Sometimes they are 13 year old nihilists who figured out that getting grades while living in a caste system that would make Louis XIV’s France blush might not yield anything worthwhile. Sometimes they’re people seeking justice in a system in which they haven’t given up hope yet. Does “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” implicitly ask “what is law?” It certainly sets a standard to judge all law.

The power of “What is law?” as a question stems from philosophy, even if the question itself is not strictly speaking philosophical. All of us ask it in one way or another inasmuch we seek justice or attempt to clarify our views about justice. Even dogmatists ask it, getting wholly conventional answers that may be far from useless.

So the dialogue asserts its relevance on an everyday level in its opening words. The discussion is far from complete, but it has started. We scholars would leave “what is law” open to a variety of answers, but it has practical, immediate relevance to human beings. Perhaps that is why the philosopher himself declares an answer. Is law the “wishing to be the discovery of what is?”

The temptation is to think a formula can replace thoughtfulness. The formula here: if we expose the pretensions of something, we reveal what it is. Law is the wishing to be the discovery of what is. It’s settled: all law does ape, not merely knowledge, but even our approach to knowledge. It attempts to replace science and often does. Socrates’ interlocutor does not even understand what Socrates says. He immediately challenges the proposition as if what was said was that law is the discovery of what is. If law is merely the discovery of what is, shouldn’t all people have the same burial customs? Shouldn’t there be a commonality to our speculation? The interlocutor is clearly not a philosopher. He can’t even remember what was said correctly. Obviously law is an obscenely large claim, and philosophers declare that much true.

What is strange is that the non-philosophic interlocutor has hit on a set of concerns that are the same as those of us who heard Socrates correctly. Again, we’re wondering about the limits of law. Maybe we can dismiss the interlocutor based on what he wants. Tim and I have taken a lot of time to show he may need more respect for law and its source. But if we settle on that reasoning, then what is the difference between cynicism and philosophy? After all, the interlocutor is where we are. We’re just proclaiming ourselves more moral.

So why does Socrates declare law the “wishing to be the discovery of what is?” Isn’t philosophy the exact same thing? A brief recap of the dialogue is necessary at this point. (It is as if philosophy does not exist as a body of propositions or set of questions, but something actually lived.) The Minos opens with “What is law, for us?” It rapidly moves from whether law is like gold or stone, material objects, to the type of political opinion law is. That consideration brings forth law as the wishing to be the discovery of what is. So ends one third of the dialogue. The next third starts from the companion’s mistaken assumption of what Socrates said and his objection about burial customs. It ends with the companion willing to consider that there are kings who distribute a good, albeit unwritten, order for bodies and souls. It goes without saying we learn a lot about the companion’s character from the center of the dialogue. He is politically ambitious and does not really see the value of law, especially law coming from a democratic regime. Democrats, unlike all-knowing kings, change their minds. The last third is a look at such a king, the mythical Minos. The companion admits after this that he doesn’t know what is good for the soul. He has been moderated, to a degree. We’re left wondering why such an elaborate process was necessary.

Law as “wishing to be the discovery of what is” is the primary problem. It opens up the possibility that political problems are resolvable by knowledge or consistent will alone. But any given regime had better be able to deal with necessities and procure goods. That depends on being able to act and have success. Fortune is the key issue: no wonder Machiavelli might like it subservient for a perpetual republic. We might say, after all this, that law is merely a mode of governance. We would say this in the Wittgensteinian spirit of not saying more than we know. A careful read of the myth Socrates posits in the dialogue opens a criticism of that position. As I want to focus on the relevance and accessibility of our project, I will leave that aspect of the paper unsaid here. Our immediate concern: a democratic, changeable will can certainly make legitimate laws. But a democracy’s defense of itself can get horribly cynical. Maybe it is because no one knows what is good for the soul there is legitimacy in the will of many. It would take one who could elaborate such a position properly – literally, one with knowledge of ignorance – to defend the regime.

A large part of the Republic concerns a proposed guardian class of awesome warriors who will be extremely courageous and practice moderation of a sort. While there are only a few times the term “sculpture” comes up in the discussion in any way, it looks like it might provide an important clue as to how the Republic imagines man.

Bloom’s index contains five references to “sculpture:”

• 361d: Glaucon has just finished arguing that Socrates needs to prove the just life is superior to the unjust life no matter what. This includes proving that an unjust man who has the greatest reputation for justice is unhappy compared to the just man who has the greatest reputation for injustice. Socrates’ response: “My dear Glaucon, how vigorously you polish up each of the two men – just like a statue – for their judgment.”
• 420c – d: Adeimantus wants to know how the guardian class can be happy with virtually no material rewards. Socrates argues that the happiness of the guardian class must be conceived with regard to the whole, but leaves it an open question whether we are talking about the guardians’ own happiness or the city’s happiness. A statue metaphor is used to bring forth the notion of the whole. Just as you don’t use what you think is the most beautiful color while painting a statue’s eyes to make a statue realistic, you have to consider what is fitting to get a beautiful whole.
• 514c: The Cave. Men behind the prisoners use statues and a fire to project shadows onto a wall.
• 515a: Nearly the same as above. The word is more than likely around in the Greek, but I really don’t want to ferret it out right now.
• 540c: The philosopher-kings have been described. Glaucon: “Just like a sculptor, Socrates… you have produced ruling men who are wholly fair.”

The first reference pushes us to think that Glaucon is thinking of “the just man” the way one could think of a wrestler or blacksmith. You could create statues of the latter two people easily; their arts (techniques) involve tools or physical characteristics. If justice is an art – and that’s a big “if” – it does not work quite the same way.

Still. The “statues” were shaped. Socrates accepted Glaucon’s premise for his argument. Hence, I surmise, the idea of painting the statue to address the whole. The immediate problem for Glaucon’s query is that civic virtue is not the same thing as an individual’s virtue. The more the city becomes perfectly just, the more the classes fail to be just in any elementary sense. The mere creation of the guardian class requires dissolution of the family. Adeimantus’ problem is hinting at that: does civic happiness conflict with individual happiness? Of course it does. But again, we’re working with a “statue” that assumes “What is justice?” can be simply answered.

Painting and creating images (even mere shadows) are not entirely exercises in mendacity. Imitations give us a basis for likeness. If there is no apprehension of the absolute truth, we can still know relevant aspects of a thing. I’m not saying the Cave is the realm of knowledge. We are told that if people in the Cave see the true objects in the light, they will nonetheless be very reluctant to give up their “knowledge” of shadows. The Cave can almost destroy the ability to gather any sort of real knowledge. What I am saying is that there are ways to describe the good of a thing without describing its form. The poets don’t understand all the consequences of their depictions of myth and the foundation of law. But they create a convincing enough picture of people and error that they can show the law and the city as good in important ways. We can all show for the most part that the just life is much better than the unjust life. That does not mean we can show what “justice” is.

The philosopher-king, we realize now, was presupposed in Glaucon’s depicting the just man like a statue. The philosopher-king is the only person who could contemplate the form of justice. He would be just. The image of man presupposed throughout the Republic is a huge problem. Note the rough order these “statue” references occur with regards to class: first, the guardians. Second, nearly if not everyone (the Cave). Third, the philosopher-king. “Nearly everyone” is the issue. No guardians or philosopher-kings exist or have existed. Socrates has painted Glaucon’s statue with wild, unrealistic colors because the statue itself is wild and unrealistic.

References

Bloom, Allan. The Republic of Plato: Second Edition. New York: Basic, 1991.

Strauss, Leo. “Plato.” History of Political Philosophy: Third Edition. ed. Strauss & Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987

The short dialogue at hand opens with something remarkable: Socrates asks questions directly, questions that even we – advanced as we think we are – may consider philosophic:

Socrates: So what is the love of gain? Just what can it be, and who are the lovers of gain? (225a)

I realize there’s a temptation to dismiss these questions on our part as too moralistic. Do they come loaded with pious notions that make the inquiry a cheap form of reproaching others? The unnamed companion to which Socrates addresses the question shows where a lack of reflection truly lies:

Comrade: In my opinion, they are those who think it worthwhile to make a gain from worthless things.

Socrates: But do they, in your opinion, know these things are worthless, or do they not know? For if they don’t know, you are saying the lovers of gain are fools.

Comrade: I say they’re not fools but villains and evildoers who are overcome by gain. They know that the things from which they dare to make gain are worth nothing, yet they still dare to be lovers of gain through shamelessness. (225a-b)

“Worthwhile to make a gain from worthless things:” taken just by itself, this does not imply a moral critique. But the companion (comrade) claims those who love gain are “villains and evildoers.” He makes it sound like people who love gain consistently trade something they know is total garbage for more of something else. It is hard not to associate the companion’s notion of “love of gain” with greed, and not just any sort of greed. It sounds like the type of greed where one’s desire to want more is a sickness: they only feel secure having more. They pride themselves on being able to take from others. Perhaps I should use the word “comrade” to describe Socrates’ interlocutor. However, do note the companion is concerned with “shame.”

Going back to the companion’s first statement, we realize the discussion could go another direction entirely. To get what is worthwhile from the worthless: isn’t that what a skilled craftsman of any sort does? What about science? People study things like fungi (which may be characterized as worthless), find cures for diseases, understand the world around them that much more. Socrates even follows up the first statement with a question about whether the lovers of gain are knowers. The companion obviously does not care to go this direction. It looks like “love of gain” means “excessive love of money” to him or being someone like a hoarder that steals. Either way, the companion seems to think love of gain ignoble. Those who love gain may be part of a class that wants to buy its way to the top (oligarchs) or are an unrestrained, base sort of person (self-interest wrongly understood). Again, the notion there is restraint in shame is important. The tyrant can be defined as one who wants everything at the cost of nothing. Perfect tyranny – the most perfect injustice – would disguise itself as justice, after all (cf. Republic 344a, following Bruell).

Let us continue, knowing the puzzles will deepen:

Socrates: Then do you say that the lover of gain is of this sort, like a man who is a farmer, who plants knowing his plant is worth nothing and raises it thinking it worthwhile to make a gain from that? Do you say he is of that sort?

Comrade: The lover of gain, Socrates, thinks he ought to make gain from everything.

Socrates: Don’t answer me so aimlessly, as though you had suffered some injustice from someone, but pay attention to me and answer as though I asked you again from the beginning: don’t you agree that the lover of gain knows about the worth of this thing from which he considers it worthwhile to make a gain?

Comrade: I do, indeed. (225b-c)

Forde notes that “to plant” and “plant” have “the same root as the Greek word for nature (physis)” (Forde 22). So first Socrates brought up the question of whether the lovers of gain know anything. Now he’s asking indirectly whether or not they know something about “nature.” Does knowledge of nature translate into gain? “Nature,” as you know, is not birds and trees and rocks and stuff. It is the question of whether we, independent of society, have an “end.” A “human nature” might be summed up by saying “man is a rational animal whose happiness is achieved through pursuit of the virtues.” If gain can be reduced to money, then there is a nature/convention tension at play very early in this dialogue. Money is conventional: it is because we declare gold to be valuable that it is valuable.

Now what is curious about the farmer is that yes, strictly speaking, his knowledge about nature does turn into a conventional gain. But that’s very strictly speaking. Most farmers have been dirt poor for thousands of years. This is a difficult point to think about: how exactly do nature and convention relate? Unsurprisingly, the companion repeats himself in a not-so-bright manner. We should note that Socrates used “worthwhile to make a gain” in describing the farmer’s actions (Bruell 5). This is slick: the companion had pretty much reduced “love of gain” to greed where the worthless were traded for things. “Worthwhile to make a gain” does not seem to be what the companion meant as “love of gain” (not much later Socrates brings out the contrast between “worthwhile to make a gain” and whether one ought to make a gain. But he doesn’t do that here). And yet I don’t feel sorry for the companion, and neither should you. It’s like the companion’s opinion is too crude to be serious, despite the fact it has obvious benefits for Athenian society. It may keep away tyrants and may help establish a nobility that is not entirely self-serving. Can the good be preserved even as someone is forced to be a bit more intelligent about what he considers evil? How unjust is it to be accountable for your notion of justice?

References

“Hipparchus.” trans. Steven Forde. The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Pangle. Ithaca: Cornell, 1987.

Bruell, Christopher. On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.

From the answers of a maiden, gold and a most honorable death the dialogue ventures into the topics of the fitting, the useful, and the pleasant. “The fitting,” though, was strictly speaking Hippias’ answer. He rooted it in a convention so strict, however, it could not help but be contradictory. Hippias said that it is beautiful to bury one’s parents, but this does not apply to heroes. Achilles was buried well before his parents and yet lived a most beautiful life, celebrated in epic.[1] Socrates says the person who abuses him will not only point out this contradiction, but will bring back the question of whether “the fitting, and the nature of the fitting itself, happens to be the beautiful.”[2] Socrates himself asks whether the fitting makes things beautiful (the fitting is the being of the beautiful) or appear beautiful. This results, after some wrangling, with Hippias asserting the fitting both makes things beautiful and makes things appear beautiful. Hippias abandons “the fitting” entirely when confronted with the problem of law, which is said to be beautiful. Not all people are lawful, but if the beautiful is the lawful and readily apparent, then they should be law abiding in Hippias’ mind.[3]

The ironic thing about Hippias abandoning the “fitting” is that it brought him and Socrates’ abusive friend into agreement that something was important.[4] It could be said those in cities fight because the beautiful is readily apparent to each of them, and this argument is far easier to hold if one thinks the beautiful is “fitting.” Different sorts of men require different things. Hippias and Socrates’ abusive interlocutor are two different sorts of men, but both need knowledge (even if one thinks, as Hippias does, that he can find the beautiful by himself if left alone). What we need is an account of how the beautiful ties in with knowledge, and therein lies the great mystery of the Greater Hippias. Socrates is erotic. One assumes people who lust are interested in beautiful things. But eros is completely absent from this dialogue.[5] Wisdom, progress, virgins, gold, statues, honor and death have been mentioned. The law has come up as a topic. The non-erotic character of Hippias’ relation to beauty is what Socrates is after. To refine the questions brought forth in the Protagoras and Gorgias, respectively: How can virtue developed by a political art be knowledge when the city is not fully rational? Is it possible to reconcile Gorgianic rhetoric with philosophy, so that listeners are not only made better but the truth can be progressed toward? One expects eros to be absent in those dialogues, as eros resists what is political in any form. It is strange this dialogue even had to consider politics or gods.

Hippias as an individual has shaped the dialogue. As an individual, in his private capacity, he is almost completely public. Even when he says something terribly obnoxious, such as his proclamation that he is wiser than those in the past, he explains his impropriety with an appeal to the character of the public.[6] If the Greater Hippias has a rhetorical object, in the sense of prosecuting someone, it is attacking the sophists as empty shells. The critique of Protagoras, who could command his audience as Orpheus,[7] or Gorgias, who does rebuke Callicles, may not be as harsh. And yet all sophists depend on being beautiful in some way.

One has to wonder, then, whether Socrates attempts to define the beautiful as useful in order to lower the conversation. This would be similar to Protagoras, where high talk about Simonides and Pittacus descended into a discussion of courage and people who jump into wells to recover pots. Now the useful as beautiful is not a common opinion; still, it introduces the some very common notions into the conversation. Beauty must be the holding of power; all people are impressed by that.[8] Hippias as a political figure is being scrutinized indirectly. Before, Hippias’ relative silence about law told us how he, a sophist, regards the law. It is beautiful inasmuch people say it is beautiful.[9] To be considered lawless can be bad for business. The consideration of politics may be more about the public than the private in this section. The part of the dialogue prior to the search for the beautiful depended on a public/private distinction:

The introduction is in two sections. The first (281a-283b) discusses the activity of sophists and compares them with the men of the past who were famous for their wisdom. The second (283b-286c) discusses Hippias’ activity as a sophist in general and at Sparta in particular. Socrates starts by proposing a definition of the wise and perfect man. Such a man combines the private and the public; on the one hand, he acts in his own interest, earning money by helping the youth (how he helps them is not said). On the other hand, he acts in the public interest by benefiting his city….

The second section of the introduction is a demonstration that Hippias cannot always convert opinion into money. It therefore calls into question his ability to combine the private and the public and does so by raising more explicitly the questions of what sorts of knowledge and skills he possesses and what sorts of help he gives, if any.[10]

The useful is ultimately rejected by Hippias because it would mean the beautiful is a means to an end, that end being the good.[11] The beautiful, strictly speaking, would not be good, and this displeases him greatly. It is fairly obvious what this says about Hippias the individual. He may talk about politics and what arts are worth pursuing, but he is only concerned with them inasmuch as they affect his appearance. “Getting his hands dirty,” which would be the consequence of reasoning that the beautiful is useful, a cause of the good, is utterly unacceptable.

But Hippias’ desire to see the beautiful as good, with no qualification, affects how he conceives public things. Appearances are powerful, and he deals with what political pundits nowadays call “spin” as well as the myths that surround any citizen’s view of politics. A lack of clarity about whether we are indeed talking about “spin” or mythos brings forth the attempt to define the beautiful as that which pleases through sight or hearing. The power of appearances, for the hoi polloi, is in the pleasing. Knowledge of ignorance is pain. Hippias has unwittingly opened up the question of the philosophic life versus everyone else. That the beautiful may be a pleasure experienced two different ways (through sight, through hearing) creates a problem.[12] There are two wholly separate entities that are each beautiful and beautiful in different ways. How could the term “beautiful” ever be applied with any seriousness to two phenomena which have nothing else to do with each other than their being regarded beautiful? The term seems completely empty to a modern reader, a convention at its purest. Hippias need not be so cynical outright; he can say “beautiful” works like “just,” where if one person is just, and the other is just, then both are just.[13] Socrates is denying that “both” and “each” work such a way with regards to “the beautiful,” partly because we are talking about “the beautiful” as opposed to “beautiful.”

“The beautiful” has been abstract from the very start of the inquiry. It demands that we see something as better than others of its kind (the “maiden” discussion). We cannot divorce the concept from matters of class or kind (the significance of the “gold” discussion). It may be that the beautiful is the fitting, in terms of the being of a thing (Hippias, in pursuing “appearance,” went astray. If the discussion continues properly, one should get an account of how being and appearance relate). To understand the fitting as crucial to a being, one can look at usefulness and the being in question. Are there simply good beings? If so, it would be the case that “the beautiful” suits them as it enables us to see and pursue them.

The topic of pleasure through sight and hearing is the culmination of the inquiry. What we need to know is how we know the good and the beautiful. We have an idea how they relate, but saying “something looks beautiful, because it is beautiful it is good” demolishes the inquiry. We get fooled by false beauty, and the good is distinct from the beautiful, distinct enough to be apprehended separately, we think. The abstraction of beauty as pleasure, that the problem of  the beautiful becomes one of number,[14] where “both” comprehends two of “each” where the “each” are most unlike, hints that the beautiful is a larger domain than the good. This makes sense: “false beauty” is beauty also; a “false good” is something people quickly abandon upon discovery. But the implication of such reasoning is that “true beauty” is not simply honesty. True beauty has to correspond not merely with the truth, but the good. The whole has to make its parts better.

Hence, this dialogue. Hippias concludes the Greater Hippias with this speech:

But Socrates, what do you suppose all these things together are? They are scrapings and clippings of speeches, as I was just saying, divided up into bits. But the alternative is both beautiful and worth much – to be able to compose a speech well and beautifully in a law court or council chamber or in any other ruling group to which the speech is addressed and to go away having persuaded them and taking off not the littlest but the largest of the prizes, the salvation of oneself and one’s money and friends. So one ought to cling to these things, bidding good-bye to little speeches, in order that one not seem to be exceedingly unintelligent by engaging in babblings and drivel, as we were just now.[15]

Hippias sees the beautiful as a whole which is effective. One says beautiful things to beautiful (powerful) people and gets beautiful things. All one needs to do is mimic the whole. But Socratic dialectic has, throughout the dialogue, made some progress in illuminating the concept under scrutiny. It did this by taking one “each” that was most unlike another “each,” Hippias and Socrates, and making them report and judge their own dialogue. The “both” in this case is the literal representation of Socrates, who presented the true questions he wanted to ask in an interlocutor Hippias could not recognize. That interlocutor, of course, was truly Socrates. The Socrates speaking directly to Hippias was merely beautiful.

[1] Greater Hippias, 292d-293e

[2] ibid, 293e

[3] ibid, 294d-e

[4] cf. The Being of the Beautiful, xxxv-xxxvi

[5] ibid, xx

[6] Greater Hippias, 282a

[7] Seth Benardete, “Protagoras’ Myth and Logos,” 187

[8] Greater Hippias, 295e-296a

[9] ibid, 294c. Socrates says the “lawful things and pursuits, are both reputed to be beautiful,” and this is rejected by Hippias subsequently as the “fitting” requires that beauty to be easily apprehended by all men, resulting in concord.

[10] Sweet 343-344

[11] The Being of the Beautiful, xxxix

[12] Greater Hippias, 298d-299c

[13] ibid, 300e-301a

[14] The Being of the Beautiful, xliv-xlv

[15] Greater Hippias, 304a-c

Bibliography

Primary source:

Plato, “Greater Hippias.” tr. David Sweet. The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues. ed. Thomas Pangle. Ithaca: Cornell, 1987. 307-339

Secondary sources:

Benardete, Seth. The Being of the Beautiful. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

“Protagoras’ Myth and Logos.” in The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Burger & Davis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 186-197.

The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Euripides, “Hippolytus.” trans. David Grene. Greek Tragedies Vol. 1, 2nd ed. Ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Strauss, Leo. Xenophon’s Socrates. South Bend: St. Augustine’s, 1988.

Sweet, David. “Introduction to the Greater Hippias.” The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues. ed. Thomas Pangle. Ithaca: Cornell, 1987. 340-355

Contrasting the lives Socrates and Hippias lead goes far in framing more difficult issues:

Socrates: Hippias, the beautiful and wise, how long a time it’s been for us since you alighted at Athens!

Hippias: Yes, for I’ve had no leisure, Socrates. For whenever Elis has to conduct some business with any of the cities, she always comes to me first among her citizens when she chooses an envoy; she considers me to be a most able judge and reporter of whatever speeches are made by each of the cities. Therefore I’ve often gone as envoy to other cities but most often and regarding the most numerous and important matters I’ve gone to Lacedaemon. For this reason – in answer to your question – I don’t come frequently to this area.[1]

Socrates is ugly, Hippias is beautiful. Socrates stays in the same place, Hippias travels much. Socrates has leisure, Hippias does not. Socrates does not have a formal public capacity, but Hippias does. These would be trivial contrasts between any other two men, but here one purports to be called wise by many. Hippias, in his wisdom, is considered “a most able judge and reporter of… speeches;” he may be “first” among the citizens of his city, although one could suspect that many in Elis are glad to be rid of him for long stretches of time.

The dialogue builds from simple characterization like the above to something far more complex. Later, when the beautiful is sought after, Hippias gives three statements of what is most beautiful: a maiden, gold, a death worthy of the highest honor. One is tempted just looking at those three items to dismiss them as not answering “What is the beautiful?” They only seem to be particular examples of something that may be beautiful. But each response of Hippias helps give what is a broad question more focus. The beauty of a maiden is nothing compared to the beauty of a god; what is most beautiful may be easiest to see within a class, but then a hierarchy of classes needs to be established.[2] “What is the beautiful?” may not need to account for classes, however. What if there was something that could be added to another, which automatically made it beautiful? That something would not simply be the predicate “is beautiful,” but another attribute for which we could substitute beautiful. “Gold,” as ridiculous as it may sound, is a perfectly legitimate attempt to answer the more refined query, especially for a more materialistic society.[3] Of course, “gold” runs into the problem that it is literally not the beautiful: a gigantic statue of Athena the Athenians thought very beautiful was of ivory and stone.[4] The problem of class, strangely enough, points to the problem of the gods: What is the highest class, and how is it determined?[5] Athena is a maiden; who determined the sacredness of virginity? If the beautiful turns out to be godly and useful (Socrates’ second definition), is the beautiful merely convention? Such a question never arises openly as Hippias gives the most conventional answer possible to the problem of the beautiful:

“I say, then, that always, for everyone and everywhere, it is most beautiful for a man who is wealthy, healthy, and honored by the Greeks, having arrived at old age and having celebrated beautifully the funeral of his parents after they have come to their own end, to be beautifully and magnificently buried by his own offspring”[6]

If “gold” was brought forth by Hippias partly to address the universality of the beautiful, as Hippias’ own wisdom converts to gold in nearly any city, then this conventional definition has a certain universality (not without irony, of course: note “by the Greeks”). But this definition also has another feature. It is meant to address something Hippias himself introduced to the conversation, when confronted with the problem of a most beautiful statue made of substances other than gold. Hippias said that what was “fitting” could be used to differentiate beautiful from ugly. Hippias is trying to articulate what is most fitting for man in saying that what is most beautiful is for a man, having met the conditions he puts forth, “to be beautifully and magnificently buried by his own offspring.” Unfortunately, he has made what is fitting for man not-being.[7]

Hippias’ attempts to define “the beautiful” elaborate on the basic description of who he is. His answers seem to be useful for one moving from city to city. They are meant to win arguments, not investigate an issue. He can be characterized as conventional to the point of not-being: he tells people exactly what they want to hear; he impresses them through looks alone; he never is anywhere. And yet, when forced to account for the basis of what he thinks, he said something very insightful. It is fairly plausible to think the beautiful is the fitting. The outstanding question is what can be truly told about Socrates from his description. The dialogue must be reported and judged more fully before that can be appreciated.

[1] Greater Hippias, 281a-b

[2] Greater Hippias, 289a-c; The Being of the Beautiful, xxvii

[3] ibid, 289e; regarding the materialism of certain Greeks, see Euripides, Hippolytus 616-627, where Hippolytus wishes that women were replaceable by wealth, and Xenophon, Oeconomicus Book VII, where Ischomachus teaches his wife that the purpose of marriage is the preservation of wealth had and acquisition of that much more.

[4] ibid, 290b-c

[5] David Sweet, “Introduction to the Greater Hippias,” 345-6

[6] Greater Hippias, 291d

[7] For more on the conventional and not-being, one needs to consider Solon’s response regarding happiness to Croesus in Herodotus. A discussion of that account is in Benardete’s Plato’s “Laws:” The Discovery of Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), xiv-xv

Part I | II | III

Introduction

The Greater Hippias can be placed with the Protagoras and Gorgias as dialogues concerned with the value of sophistry and rhetoric. Protagoras begins with a myth and ends with Protagoras himself in the complications the concept of courage creates for holding mythos is reducible to logos. Gorgias argues to Socrates that without rhetoric, men could not possibly be free or exert rule; Callicles favors rhetoric because it is more manly than philosophy.[1] The Gorgias ends with Socrates telling a myth.

The importance of the opening section of the Greater Hippias has implicitly been revealed.[2] That section is about Hippias’ sophistic and rhetorical endeavors. He talks about how he had to learn things regarding the ancients in order to please the Spartans. Hippias is not only placed together with Protagoras and Gorgias formally in the Platonic corpus, but the question of how sophistry relates to the beautiful in earnest is raised. This is not an open and shut case of sophistry being entirely defective and philosophy carrying the day. Socrates needs Hippias as much as he needs himself, and we note that he willingly went to Protagoras and sought out Gorgias to ask about virtue and rhetoric, respectively. It may be the case that whatever claim sophistry has to the beautiful is more sound than any philosophy could make. Socrates’ physical appearance reveals him to be monstrous, erotic in such a way as to displease the poets.[3]

A quick outline of the Greater Hippias: the opening has Hippias discuss his work in the service of Elea. He is an envoy to other cities, especially Sparta, where he discusses ancient things such as mythology to make money. His interest in things such as astronomy and geometry does not conflict with his political role(s) in the least; he speaks very well, and that power allows him to excel in both public and private endeavors. He claims wisdom has progressed, making this possible. Previous wise men in Greece were less focused on making money and getting power, but he seems to dwell on his ability to make money as proof of his excellence. From that opening, 281a-286c, the rest of the conversation becomes the quest for “the beautiful.” Hippias said he composed a very beautiful speech concerning what young men should strive for, and this piqued Socrates’ interest: What is the beautiful? Hippias then gives three definitions of what is beautiful: a maiden, gold, and a most honorable death. That, in turn, is followed by three definitions of Socrates: the beautiful may be “the fitting,” “the useful,” “the pleasant.” The dialogue gets markedly more difficult to understand as it progresses. That may or may not be related to a peculiar device Socrates uses throughout the discussion of “the beautiful.” Socrates says someone will abuse him if he cannot answer what is the beautiful and yet dare to proclaim something beautiful. That “someone” is responsible for holding Hippias’ and Socrates’ arguments to very strict standards. It turns out that “someone” is Socrates himself, but only we readers know this. Hippias cannot even recognize the name of his interlocutor when told it.

[1] Gorgias, 452d-e; 484d-e

[2] Greater Hippias, 281a-286c

[3] Socrates as monstrous: Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (South Bend: St Augustine’s, 1998), 155. Also see: Seth Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 104-5. For the displacement of the poets, see Seth Benardete, The Being of the Beautiful (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), xlii-xliii.

Young Socrates makes a lot of sense. So much sense that you get the distinct feeling the “forms,” in the way he’s positing them, would destroy philosophy. It looks like we need a defense of seemingly pointless questions and abstract debates. It’s not Socrates’ thought alone which is the problem as much as “Whence the philosopher?” If people believe philosophy strictly as rigorous science – if it becomes completely divorced from its New Age/hippie tendencies (those things where “self-knowledge” becomes a serious question) – then the philosopher becomes an impossibility. Young Socrates is concerned, rightly, with the content of the forms Justice, Beauty, Good (130b). But he is adamant there are no forms of hair, mud, dirt (130c-d). He is bowing to convention completely; he has thoughts about politics and some philosophical views, but has not brought into being political philosophy. We note, further, that Parmenides identified eros as the first and oldest of the gods, and Zeno in this very dialogue is said to be his lover. Is philosophy Socrates’ eros yet?

1. I have not finished reading this dialogue yet. I don’t have access to the secondary sources I need to do more serious work on it (Stanley Rosen’s Preface to the 2nd Edition of his Symposium commentary would be most helpful, as would Robert Brumbaugh’s “The Purpose of Plato’s Parmenides“). All I want to do is put forth some notes on the first of Parmenides’ arguments with Aristotle, where he asserts that “One is” and therefore “experiences nothing.” This is immediately contradicted by his second argument, where “if the One is, the One experiences all things” (Whitaker 5).

The biggest problem I’m having with this dialogue is staying organized. The irony is that the dialogue is very tightly organized, and I know Plato is saying something pretty directly in terms of the uses and abuses of form (har har). Is it a rebuke of Parmenides? Probably not; Parmenides’ concern with the “One” is easy for many philosophers to ignore. We want knowledge that’s effectual, thus forgetting that being able to give some kind of account of the whole matters. Much of our knowledge is a standing in a space of reasons (to borrow – not precisely and in a very different context – from Sellars).

2. To get to “if the One is, it experiences nothing,” we have to take a rather tortuous road:

• the One is not many, nor is it a whole (!), nor does it consist of parts (a whole is defined as that which has parts). (137c-d)
• the One has “no beginning nor end nor middle;” it lacks shape entirely (137d-138a)
• the One has nothing to do with place (138a-b)
• the One is motionless, and cannot even be said to be at rest (!) (138b-139b)
• “Same” (!) and “other” fail to describe the One (139b-e)
• “Like” and “unlike” also fail (139e-140b)
• the One “will be neither equal nor unequal to itself nor anything else” (140b-140d)
• the One has nothing like “age;” it is completely divorced from time, which is where beings occur.  (140e-141e)

That summary makes no sense as it currently stands, I know.  I want to rebuild the argument piece-by-piece.  Right now, I’ve put exclamation points next to things that would make insisting on “the One” a more intuitive argument (the question of the whole, an unchangingness concerning what “is,” an emphasis on something being the same within things that exist). You’ll note that Parmenides in this one part of his “gymnastic” rejects all those considerations.

3. Lots of things are missing from the summary, but most absent is that each argument “builds” from the previous ones. The lack of shape is from the lack of parts. The lack of place is from the lack of shape, so much so that one sees “shape” and “place” as “how parts or things relate.” This leads to the near-mystical conclusion that the One is not anywhere, for it is “neither being in itself nor anything else” (138b). Does that make any sense? It doesn’t seem so to me, and yet it seems to be a working definition of “place” for Parmenides.

The arguments only continue to build in this manner, up to a point.  Motion requires place or at least parts that can move. Fair enough, but then we hear that to be at rest, the One needs to be “in the same thing” (139a). But again, from above, we “learned” that the One cannot be in itself or another.

With the “same/other” question, the logic shifts to another ground. Whether or not the One is the same or other than anything else or itself depends more on what is meant by “the One” than any convoluted concern about “parts” or “being in itself or anything else.” The like/unlike concerns follow this pattern (we don’t mean “the One” as simply “the Same;” “like” is tied to sameness) as does equal/unequal (again, “Same” comes into play).

4. With all of this in hand, Parmenides’ proof that the One has nothing to do with experience follows. In order to have age, something must be like something else that is in time. The One obviously fails this test. Can the One simply be in time? No, because anything in time exists at one moment where it is “younger” and another where it is “older.” That alone isn’t a problem, except that Parmenides asserts that as something in time becomes older, it is also becoming younger with respect to itself.  How exactly the One relates to itself is a great mystery, given the logic used to argue that the One has nothing to do with place. I confess I’m not entirely clear on what the argument exactly is in this section. It does sound like at 141c-d the equality/inequality argument is being used to show the One has no experiences like the things that age.

In any case, I think I’ve been clear that some of the argumentation Parmenides uses feels pretty slippery. Maybe it holds very tight at some logical level beyond human ken, but note how emphatically young Aristotle assents to the one time something can actually be understood (141e, “most true!”). Does that mean everything being thrown around is mere rhetoric? What we need to do is reevaluate what is going on. What exactly was the significance of discussing “the One,” anyway?

5. The first four arguments are a bit weird; if we say “shape” is really the matter of “time,” then time and place are framed by quantities of matter (whole? in parts?) and matter in motion/rest. Place, parts and motion/rest are almost completely absent from the second group of four arguments. Parts are implicit in the initial argument about the same, like/unlike, inequality (greater than/less than), but nowhere is the first argument about parts  failing to define the One specifically mentioned.

By implication: “time” is the major problem hiding in Parmenides’ seemingly rigorous logic. He tried to cover it up with the first four arguments, tried again with the last four, and it still ended up defining his investigation into “One is” entirely. That the One was motionless should have ended the discussion. But his own thought wouldn’t let “One” be at rest: in what would it rest? The question seems to point to place rather than time, but it was the very formal definition of time (time as shape) that led not only to a rejection of time, but a rejection of place.

Intuitively, this should be making some sense. Time as a philosophic concern is an enormous problem when considering how all things are One, or what “Oneness” might be, etc. But now we have another challenge. Parmenides isn’t Timaeus or Glaucon or some other Socratic interlocutor whose thought is fundamentally flawed. He’s someone who is in the process of teaching Socrates as he deploys these arguments. I don’t know that he wants Socrates to absorb a specific teaching about time, as much as he wants to point to something tying the One to the forms.

6. It would seem that the forms are over and done with; Parmenides made very serious criticisms of them before embarking on this gymnastic. But Parmenides has just gone through a ton to say if One is, it experiences nothing. In other words, he’s left a space open for Socrates’ “forms” to be “beings” in some sense (135b-c).

The necessity of the forms is that without them, we can’t communicate. Words have to correspond to something that all of us relate to, at some point. But that doesn’t make the forms “logical atoms” or perfect instances of things. Kripke once pointed out regarding naming that you could use the name Aristotle perfectly just by asking “Who is Aristotle?” Even “What is Aristotle?” would be grammatical. The forms are something closer to that. The One isn’t the forms – it’s actually the opposite of the forms – but is just as necessary for human thinking, and just as much a “blank.”

To see this, note 141e-142a:

[Parmenides:] …the One neither is one nor is – if it’s necessary to trust this very speech.

[Aristotle:] I’m afraid so.

[Parmenides:] But whatever is not – could there be anything for it or of it, should it not be?

[A:] And how could there?

[P:] So, then, there’s no name for it nor account, nor is there any knowledge of it nor perception nor opinion.

[A:] It appears not.

[P:] And, then, it’s not named nor spoken of nor opined nor known, nor do any of the things that are perceive it.

[A:] It doesn’t look like it.

[P:} Well, then, is it possible that this is the way it is concerning the One?

[A:] No, it sure doesn’t seem so to me, at least!

“Is not:” we do have a name, “nothing.” And when propositions turn out to not reflect reality, we say they are “false” or “untrue” because the opinion or perception involved was faulty. In fact, opinion and perception as concepts take that we make mistakes into account. It sounds awkward to say “true opinion” or to constantly talk about one’s sense-perceptions being wrong.

The way concerning the One (just as the forms) is the via negativa. Positive knowledge – like knowing the specific character of the form of Justice – is not easy to come by. But you can know what Justice isn’t, and that reflects on the whole (I know this properly belongs to Justice, not Courage, etc.). There’s a huge irony here, of course. What seems to be a restrained approach to knowledge actually pushes the character of knowing outside of time. You’re going to start getting, for example, a “form of Justice” where Justice is transpolitical – “do no harm” – even as there are laws to obey and allies to help and enemies to kill and to disobey the law is unjust. And that’s just the beginning of the problems. For all we know about how the sexes operate through studying things like hormones and evolutionary biology, it isn’t clear we’ve made happier couples of any sort.

7. Again, these are very preliminary thoughts – I still have to account exactly for how the One and forms relate, at the very least – and are subject to change. I don’t advise anyone pick up the Parmenides any time soon. I’m tempted to abandon this project until I have the right secondary sources, at which point I’ll try again.

References

Whitaker, Albert Keith. Plato’s Parmenides. Newburyport: Focus/R. Pullins, 1996.

Outline of Plato’s Apology, continued

At 35d, Socrates strongly implies that he is being prosecuted for impiety. He has done a great deal of arguing to make the corruption charge the primary one. Strauss notes the corruption charge is “incredible,” but it is otherwise with impiety (Strauss 40).

Be that as it may, our provisional look at Socrates’ actual apology is complete. Now we turn to the counterproposal of punishment after he has been voted guilty, and the conclusion:

35e-38b: Socrates is surprised at the number of votes he got for acquittal. Given what is said in this section, it seems pretty clear he wants to be executed. He asserts that “privately” he gave each Athenian “the greatest benefaction,” and yet he is still amazingly poor (36c-d). Hence, he should be honored as Olympians are (36d-e). Socrates claimed earlier that he taught no one, and has repeatedly treated the Athenians as unjust and not concerned with virtue. How on earth has he benefited them like an Olympian? A champion athlete makes them “seem to be happy;” has Socrates made anyone genuinely happy? (36e, Strauss 49)

Moreover, Socrates takes aim at the way of deciding on punishment (37a: “if you had a law like other human beings, not to judge anyone in a matter of death in one day alone…”) and considers all the rest of the possible punishments – prison, a fine, exile and silence – worse than death (Strauss 49). The issue is admitting that he has led a life unjust in any way, as opposed to the best of all possible lives. We note that the philosopher is akin to the lawgiver in terms of punishment, with an (or perhaps several) ironic twist(s). In the Gorgias, Socrates discusses openly how it is of great benefit for him to be corrected if wrong.

A third and final digression of Socrates begins. He answers why he cannot accept exile and be silent in exile; this is not unrelated to the god’s task. At 38a, Socrates utters perhaps the most famous line in the Platonic corpus – “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The context is curious. He says it will not persuade the Athenians. Strauss argues that Socrates is exactly correct on this count; the story of the Delphic oracle was much more persuasive to his audience (Strauss 50).

38-42a: After Socrates is condemned to death, he addresses the condemners and those who voted for acquittal. This is a marked change from a world where there were only accusers and those convinced by the accusers.

He tells the condemners that he would have died soon anyway and that he indeed had the speeches available to convince them otherwise. Instead of explaining himself, though, he posits motives for them. They convicted him because he did not wail and lament and say the sort of things that would have pleased them (38d-e). He tells them that in both matters of law and war one should not try to escape death by any means (38e-e9a). Villainy is faster than death. Death caught the slower, Socrates, but those running faster have been caught by villainy (39a-b). Those running faster, to be sure, are the accusers. The condemners as a whole are not necessarily “convicted by the truth of wretchedness and injustice.” Yet all those who condemned, he prophesizes, will be refuted by those younger and harsher whom they have not seen (39c-d). All those who condemned him want to avoid giving an account of their own lives.

To those who voted for acquittal he wants to share stories (mythos is in one of the words he uses). He tells them the daimonion at no time opposed him in his going to the trial or making his speech. This means something good must be happening to him, and death could be good one of two ways – it could be a dreamless sleep (contrast with the story of the horse and the gadfly), which even in life no one complains about. Or it could involve going to Hades, inasmuch he was good, and not only avoiding punishment but getting to question people like Homer and Hesiod and Minos and Orpheus about whether they are really wise or not.

The gods show care for the troubles of a good man; he has therefore been released from his troubles. He exhorts all to bother his sons the way he bothered others: to make sure they are not merely reputed virtuous, to make sure they care for virtue in the first place. Can the philosophic enterprise be carried out by the city? Socrates: “Which of us goes to a better thing is unclear to everyone except the god.”

References

Strauss, Leo. “On Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito.” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. 38-66

West, Thomas G. and Grace West. Four Texts on Socrates. Ithaca: Cornell, 1987.

Outline of Plato’s Apology, continued

28b-29b: Socrates’ second digression (the first was that of the Delphic oracle). This time he asks himself whether he is ashamed to die because of the life he lived. He compares himself to Achilles avenging Patroclus; Achilles was most certainly not afraid to die. But he does not mention the name of Achilles, and his version of events is very different from Homer’s (28c-d). Socrates’ “Achilles” is much more concerned with honor and justice than Homer’s; compare with Iliad XVIII, 95-104, where Achilles seems focused on more private concerns.

Socrates then discusses his own military service in comparison with his way of life. Related: it is either a Socratic or pre-Socratic joke, I can’t remember and can’t find the citation, that polis (city) derives from polemos (battle). Athena is the goddess of both wisdom and war. In any case, just as Socrates was commanded by generals in battles to hold his place (and he did so), Socrates was commanded by the god “to live philosophizing and examining myself and others” (28e). “In the first digression, the emphasis was altogether on his examining others. Is philosophizing the same as realizing one’s ignorance regarding the most important things?” (Strauss 44) The principle Socrates ultimately uses to justify himself:

…I do know that it is bad and shameful to do injustice and to disobey one’s better, whether god or human being. So compared to the bad things which I know are bad, I will never fear or flee the things about which I do not know whether they even happen to be good (29b).

“Courage” does not occur in Socrates’ discussion of Achilles; was Achilles “commanded” to go kill Hector? (Strauss 44) Something is strange about Socrates’ obedience in the battles he fought; all were pretty much Athenian defeats or inconclusive. The commanders, then, put their soldiers in situations where obedience would not produce the good, where soldiers would have to think for themselves in order to survive and be effective (West 80, note 51 is highly recommended).

29c-31c: Socrates’ third digression? It is hard to call this a digression since he is putting words in the mouths of the jurors, words specific to the trial. He begins the section by discussing Anytus:

…Anytus [...] said that either I should not have been brought in here at the beginning, or, since I was brought in, that it is not possible not to kill me (he said before you that if I am acquitted, soon your sons, pursuing what Socrates teaches, will all be completely corrupted)… (29c)

The question put in the jurors’ mouths is whether Socrates can be let go, but told not to philosophize. Socrates emphasizes once again that his mission comes from the god, and he would rather obey the god than them. He talks about his exhorting many Athenians to virtue. He makes it explicit that Athens is about to commit a great injustice, and the famous metaphor of Socrates as gadfly to Athens as horse is in this section:

For if you kill me, you will not easily discover another of my sort – who – even if it is rather ridiculous to say – has simply been set upon the city by the god, as though upon a great and well-born horse who is rather sluggish because of his great size and needs to be awakened by some gadfly (30e).

Meletus represented the poets: quite ironic he had trouble answering promptly. Anytus is a tanner (artisan), but also the most powerful of Socrates’ accusers. Refuting Meletus was a matter of showing his inconsistency, an inconsistency that can be said to characterize the poetry/mass media the Greeks intake. Refuting Anytus at a higher level depends upon showing the good philosophy can produce. Politics provides immediate goods: done right, it takes care of necessities, emboldens and unites the citizens, establishes justice.  (It is not hard to think there is a political art, a political science.) In a sense, if we are talking about the four virtues central to Greek thought, wisdom, justice, moderation and courage, politics might have near-exclusive command over three of them, if not four (“wisdom” can easily be replaced by “prudence”). The only way Socrates can argue, therefore, is in a sense for a radical reconception of virtue. We are looking at a demonstration of philosophic courage all throughout the Apology; Socratic moderation is reflected both in his extreme continence and lust for wisdom (how could it be moderate to act ignorantly, even in the slightest degree?). Justice becomes more of a transpolitical matter (“do no harm”) rather than one which we could actually live by (“help friends, harm enemies” – see Book 1 of the Republic for more on this).

What y0u’re seeing in this section, I suspect, is that Socrates can’t really refute Anytus, not on the literal level (Strauss 49). Hence, the rhetoric is more strident, the issue of pay and poverty comes up. Socrates is very much in control of every word: this is easily the most lasting and powerful part of the argument, the part everyone throughout the ages remembers. But it is not going to save his life.

31c-34b: Socrates discusses the daimonion which kept him out of politics, then two examples where he had to get involved in politics, and finally whether he corrupted any of those in the Socratic circle.

The daimonion is connected with Socrates’ self-preservation; thus, it stops him from attempting to rule, as “no human being… will preserve his life if he genuinely opposes either you or the multitude and prevents many unjust and unlawful things from happening in the city” (31e). The oracle might not have been as concerned with Socrates’ preservation; it commanded him to irritate powerful people, to stand his ground as a soldier would (Strauss 46). Strauss argues that one can see this and what came before it as part of the second digression: a contempt for self-preservation became the complete vindication of self-preservation. There are two opposed (divine?) principles: “[the daimonion] acted as it were on the premise that life is good and death is bad while the Delphic command proceeds from the opposite premise” (Strauss 46). This is not an issue I want to explore much more; how exactly the daimonion has “divine” status – it was there well before Socrates received the oracle – is the key question.

The two times Socrates was charged explicitly with something political: once, he tried to prevent an angry mob from unlawfully executing generals that had won a battle (32b). The account is in Xenophon’s Hellenica, first book. Not only did the generals fail to recover bodies, but they might have let a number of people drown after the battle. A storm did hamper recovery efforts. Another time, the oligarchs wanted him to arrest a most just man and put him to death. He simply walked away (32d).

Socrates emphasizes how private his philosophic activity has been; he has not taught, not received money, and is not even responsible for those who have become upright (33a-b). Compare with 29c-30c, where he examines and exhorts people to virtue. The link seems to be the Delphic oracle, “the god,” who apparently communicated in more ways than just the oracle (33c). Socrates emphasizes the pleasure others take in seeing people who claim they have virtue being tested. He has cast his life, so far, in terms of duty. Socrates says that many relatives of those he has spoken in front of can vouch that he has not corrupted anyone. Many of them in fact want to aid him (33d-34b).

34b-35d: Socrates concludes his defense. He adds that he is not going to beg meanly, and bring his family and friends forth and try to elicit pity:

For I am old and have this name; and whether it is true or false, it is reputed at least that Socrates is distinguished from the many human beings in some way. If, then, those of you who are reputed to be distinguished, whether in wisdom or courage or any other virtue at all, will act in this way, it would be shameful (34e-35a).

Socrates is repeatedly described in Xenophon as anthropos, “human being,” and not aner,  a “real man.” The Greek word for courage is derived from aner; to be courageous is simply to be a real man. Again, in Xenophon, Socrates puts on a clinic on how to be a gentleman, how to be noble – notice how he acts in Xenophon’s Symposium, especially with regard to the jester who seems intent on bringing the party lower. How exactly nobility flows from wisdom is a serious question. Do note the relation between nobility, lawfulness and piety brought forth in 35b-d.

Outline of Plato’s Apology, continued

(see Part 1 for the first section of this outline, 17a-19a. Also: the actual charges against Socrates are not mentioned in the Apology. They are in Diogenes Laertius. Xenophon, Memorabilia I.1 differs from that indictment in one word only. See West 73, note 38 for more.)

19a-20c: Socrates states the slander as if it were a sworn statement, saying the formal accusation arises from this (after Meletus’ near-impossible to defend accusation at 26e, this is quite plausible). Socrates says the slander is “something like this:”

Socrates does injustice and is meddlesome, by investigating the things under the earth and the heavenly things, and by making the weaker speech the stronger, and by teaching others these same things (19b).

He denies the charges, but says “if anyone is wise in such things [those characteristic of science, not making weaker speeches stronger],” he does not want to “dishonor” that knowledge (19c). However, the many have heard him talking and never heard him talk about such things (19d).

Socrates’ restatement is significant because of “by teaching others these same things.” Compare with 18b, quoted in part 1 – that addition wasn’t there. The “teaching others” addition makes it look like twofold nature of the official indictment (roughly: not believing in the city’s gods and importing strange deities, and corrupting the youth) stems directly from this (Strauss 40). Socrates’ claim that the “many” can talk seriously about what he talked about is also curious; Socrates admitted earlier that he talked “elsewhere,” not just in view of everyone (Strauss 40, 17c-d).

He claims he does not educate, though education is “noble.” Gorgias, Prodicus and Hippias do educate, being sophists, and collect money and gratitude from their students even as they pull them away from the rest of the citizenry (19d-20a). A very short exchange with Callias is reported, where Callias, who has spent more money on sophists than any other, is asked what will make his sons “noble and good [kalos kai agathos; the term goes with "gentleman" to signify a "perfect gentleman"] in their appropriate virtue” (20b). Callias replies that he has hired a foreigner who charges five minae. From Xenophon’s Oeconomicus II:3 – five minae, a rather paltry sum, is Socrates’ entire wealth. Socrates calls the rate “modest,” and then says he has no knowledge of  the “virtue of a human being and citizen” to educate with, otherwise he would be proud (the term he uses is related to noble/beautiful. See West 68, note 24).

20c-24b: Socrates’ first digression; Socrates imagines a retort to what he has just said and answers it (Strauss 44). The retort, at 20c, is that if he had done nothing wrong, then this slander would not have arisen. To reply, the story of the Delphic oracle – which no one has ever heard before – is told. An associate of his, Chaerephon, went to the Delphic oracle and asked Apollo’s priestess if anyone was wiser than Socrates. The oracle said no. Socrates immediately doubted the oracle and started looking for people wiser than him. He interrogated the politicians who were reputed to be wise, then the poets, then artisans. No one was able to defend their reputation. He finds his task to be divinely ordained; his attempt to refute the oracle became a confirmation of it. It also made him a number of enemies who reached for the easiest slander they could.

Chaerephon is directly mentioned in the Clouds; he was an obsessive disciple of Socrates. He was also a committed democrat whom the jury would have known personally (21a). At the time of the Apology, he is dead; his brother has to vouch for the truth of the story. The story is strange. It is filled with impiety (who asks a god who is wisest? Socrates immediately challenges Apollo’s judgment?), and yet proves Socrates took the city’s gods seriously. Moreover, as Socrates notes, it points to a “certain wisdom,” a “human wisdom” perhaps (20d-e). We may be tempted to think human wisdom is nothing but this knowledge of ignorance, for Socrates says aloud that the knowledge of the sophists may be greater than human. Perhaps the only true knowledge is divine. The worthlessness of human wisdom comes to light, but does not make Socrates any less wise for having it. However, as the Apology progresses, we learn there is more than simply negative content to human wisdom (Strauss 42,  with especial emphasis on 44-45).

24b-28b: Meletus, the poet and initiator of the proceedings, on the stand. Meletus hesitates often before answering; at some points, like 25c, I think he can see that Socrates could conceivably get him to paint every single one of the jury as bad people according to his (Meletus’) reasoning. Meletus severely damages his credibility a number of ways, but the most notable failing has to do with trying to tarnish Socrates as an atheist (26e). The indictment did not charge Socrates with atheism.

Socrates restates the charges in this section yet again:

It is something like this: it asserts that Socrates does injustice by corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel. The charge is of this sort (24b).

“Daimonia” are not the same conception of divinity as the Delphic oracle, and careful listeners have to wonder what Socrates has done to his own story. What he has done in terms of the charges is made “corrupting the youth” the primary charge; the impiety concerns follow from that (Strauss 43). Socrates is apologizing to the city, it looks like: he is talking aloud about what philosophy takes seriously, and whether it can be of value to the city, or only a detriment. The first accusation has become the present accusation, not because of slander, but because Socrates himself wants to address the tension he sees.

Re: the daimonion (from where we get the word “demon”) of Socrates, the “divine thing” he mentions in several other dialogues. It acts to restrain him or excuse him; its character is purely negative. See Strauss 46-47 for an excellent short discussion of how it relates to Socratic eros.

Outline continues in part 3…