Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #4

In a combination continuation of the chain of blogposts on Gregory Vlastos' Socratic Studies as well as a follow-up to yesterday's note on Gregory Vlastos and the historical Socrates. The fourth essay in the collection is "The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy." 

Vlastos begins the essay with his two principle theses:

1. "In his own time and place Socrates was widely percieved as μισόδημος, i.e. as antipopulist (literally as a people-hater)" (Vlastos 87).
2. "This public perception of him was a misperception: he had not been the crypto-oligarch many had thought he was" (Vlastos 87).

Vlastos spends only a little over three pages using quotations from a few authors to back this up. There are essentially two prongs to the evidence that he levels for the claims. Prong (a) was that Socrates was the educator of Critias, Charmides, and other members of the Thirty Tyrants [1]. He quotes a smattering of people (Aeschines, Plutarch and Xenephon) to back up this claim. Prong (b) is that Socrates was a condemner of democracy. He provides a Xenephon quotation (Memorabilia of Socrates 1.2.9) to back up this assertion, which asserts that choosing a person for any profession by lot is a problematic idea.

This thesis makes a lot of sense. Plato spent much of his career defending his Socrates from the charge that he educated Alcibiades and the Thirty Tyrants and taught them their unscrupulous and cruel ways [2]. Xenephon, according to the introduction of Penguin edition of Xenephon's Socratic dialogues, was exiled from Athens because of his elitist tendencies (Waterfield 7) both because of his own political proclivities, but also because he was one of Socrates' students, all of whom were under suspicion (Waterfield 6-7) [3]. Using only Xenephon as a source to corroborate the second prong of this first thesis seems problematic as Xenephon (at least in my view) sticks a lot of his own elitist political viewpoints in Socrates' mouth. This is not to say that Socrates was pro-democracy-- I have no basis on which to assert his political views-- but it seems that using Xenephon and Xenephon alone for this provides a warped view.

Vlastos spends the rest of the essay trying to prove his second thesis--that Socretes was pro-democratic government. He starts by looking at the evidence in Crito, where Socrates and him speaking as a personified form of the Laws of Athens attest his love of Athens, even above "well-ordered" oligarchies such as Thebes, Megara, Crete, and Sparta. The rest of the essay is essentially a proof by contradiction. He explains that the only way to establish the premise in the Crito is false would be to establish one of two other premises:

1. "That this preference is contradicted by the other sentiments expressed by Socrates elsewhere in Plato's Socratic dialogues" [4] (Vlastos 93).
2. "This it is contradicted by opinions voiced by Socrates in Xenophon, our other major source, and that we have evidence independent of both Xenophon and Plato for rating Xenophon's credibility more highly than Plato's" (Vlastos 93).

Vlastos argues that if there he cannot dig up evidence for either of these premises, than the pro-Athenian testimony from the Crito stands.

I think this is a perfectly irrational way to attempt to prove something for two reasons. First, this procedure for proving a claim is untenable, especially for ancient ideas. Proving by lack is difficult enough to do in the first place, because it requires the assumption that what one believes is true, until someone else finds a piece of evidence that challenges the work. To use this method in an ancient text is ridiculous, because there is always the possibility that the evidence necessary is now lost or will not be found until some later time. The fact that such evidence does not exist may be simply due to scribal error or disintegrating documents rather than truth.

Second, even if one is to buy the premise, for which Vlastos argues extensively elsewhere [5], that the "Socratic Dialogues" form a unit and endeavor to recreate the philosophy of historical Socrates, the Crito does not mean that Socrates was a particular proponent of Athenian democracy. On it's most basic level, the argument in the Crito is on of a social contract: Socrates has lived in the city all these years and has benefited from it's people and it's protection and raised his children there, so in return he must obey the laws that govern the city just like any other citizen. If we take into account Vlastos' argument that the historical Socrates and the Socrates from the "Socratic Dialogues" is only a moral philosopher (Vlastos 101), then this makes sense; Socrates is not endorsing a political political system, but instead a moral contract with the state, irrespective of the form of rule that governs it.

Third, in my opinion, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the "Socratic Dialogues" are a group, nor that Plato tried to recreate the historical Socrates at all. A dialogue in which a character called Socrates, who somewhat resembles an historical figure, was a genre in itself. Plato, although only one of two authors of extant dialogues, was only one of at least thirteen authors who actually wrote Socratic Dialogues. Just because the main speaker is named Socrates does not hold any bearing over whether the Socratic dialogues portray Socratic philosophy as the historical Socrates might have practiced it. Vlastos rests much of his argument on the assumption that there are three distinct stages of dialogue in the Platonic corpus. I argue in the soon-to-be-complete series of blogposts on "Dates in the Platonic Corpus" that this is not the case.

Over the next few pages, Vlastos argues that in the moments where Socrates criticizes Athens in the Apology and the Gorgias that he is merely criticizing the people not following the laws rather than the democratic procedures themselves. He argues that this means that the preference expressed in Crito is not  "contradicted by the other sentiments expressed by Socrates elsewhere in Plato's Socratic dialogues" (Vlastos 93) and so he has fulfilled his first obligation in proving the second thesis.

Next, Vlastos tackles Xenephon's Socrates. Unlike Plato's, Xenephon's Socrates cannot be called a crypto-oligarch, but is easily in the oligarchic camp. Most importantly in this, statecraft is a "royal art" that can only be exercised by an elite group, and hence cannot operate in a system chosen by lot. So, as Vlastos sees is, Plato and Xenephon's Socrates are diametrically opposed. So now, if there is a reason to prefer Xenephon's view over Plato's than Vlastos' second thesis is proven false. Oddly enough, Vlastos does not tackle the argument of whose Socrates is more accurate (which he does in other texts). Instead, he faces the question as to whether governing is a "royal art" in Plato as well.

In Plato, Vlastos contends, Socrates may think that virtue is a "royal art," but he believes it is one that is necessary for all persons, regardless of their station or disposition, to practice and lead an examined life governed by moral knowledge (Vlastos 105). He claims that this Socrates considers the necessary wisdom with which people act to be a moral rather than a political statement. Vlastos then says that although he believes the Socrates of Plato is more accurate, a declaration of his faith is not convincing and he leaves the essay with two historical tidbits.

The problems I have with this argument are numerous. For the present moment I will stick with the procedural ones: Vlastos simply does not fulfill the things he lays out as necessary to prove his point. He says at the beginning that if Xenephon provides evidence of Socrates' oligarchic tendencies and if Xenephon can be proven to be more historically important/accurate than Plato, than Vlastos' second thesis is false. Instead, Vlastos sidesteps the essential last argument as to which of the two authors the audience should consider as more important because he claims it would be a "declaration of faith." As such, he cannot fulfill his second premise, and he cannot prove his second thesis.

He ends the essay with two historical "crumbs": first that Socrates taught and consorted closely with Chaerephon, an ardent democrat, and second that Lysias, who was also pro-democratic, is thought to have written an Apology of Socrates (now lost) in the few years following Socrates' execution (Vlastos 108).

The problem with these last two "crumbs" is that Socrates also consorted with anti-democratic proponants including Critias, Charmides, and Xenephon. d

Endnotes

1. The Thirty Tyrants were a group of Sparta-sympathetic oligarchs installed by Sparta to rule Athens following the Peloponnesian Wars and they were kicked out of Athens a few years before Socrates' death. For more information, see Perseus or Wikipedia.
2. See Symposium, Charmides, and Republic (Book 6 I think).
3. I discussed this briefly in a blogpost musing on Xenephon.
4. By the "Socratic Dialogues," Vlastos refers to the "early" elenchic dialogues: "Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Protagoras, and Republic [Book] I [only]" (Vlastos 135), in which he believes Plato reconstructed the philosophy (although not actual historical circumstances) of the historical Socrates.
5. This argument is the focus of "Socrates contra Socrates" from Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher.

Reasoning: What About the Historical Socrates?

As I proctored my first exam for my new class, I spent much of the day reading the book which interested me int Plato in the first place: Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher by Gregory Vlastos. I have gotten a lot further this time than either of my previous attempts to finish it [1] and it certainly provides a great wealth of knowledge. I will be writing about Vlastos' interpretation of Socratic irony soon. My real issue with much of Gregory Vlastos' analysis is his constant attempts to create a philosophical difference between the philosophy of Socrates and the philosophy of Plato using Socrates as a mouthpiece. He explains himself in the introduction that he cannot leave the historical Socrates to the historians.

Yet, attempting to find the philosophical method of the historical Socrates yields problematic results. Vlastos seems willing to disregard sources that he does not like or using sources like a show of hands: the more sources agree on one thing, the more likely Vlastos deems it. The problem with this is that the sources come from all different ages. Vlastos is willing to take Aristotle's word about Socrates over Xenephon's, although Xenephon was a contemporary of Socrates and Aristotle was not. Furthermore, Vlastos is willing to consider a number of late and problematic sources including Cicero and Plutarch over Xenephon's word on whether or not Socrates disavowed knowledge just because there are more in Plato's camp. More thoughts on this soon.

This reminded me that I have to finish writing up my summery and analysis of Socratic Studies. I will recommence soon.

Endnotes

1. I am only two essays away from the end, although I do not think I internalized the last two essays I read particularly well due to the freezing temperatures in the room in which I was proctoring.

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #3

This is the third installment in the chain of blogposts discussing Gregory Vlastos' work Socratic Studies. The third essay in the collection is "Is the 'Socratic Fallacy' Socratic?" I have been studying Plato for five years now, and in depth for about two years, and I never happened across the "Socratic Fallacy." Perhaps this is because I have shied away from the more philosophical approaches to Plato and preferred the classical interpretations. One of the prime examples, apparently, appears in the Lysis (223b) [1] which is one of the Platonic dialogues I have not yet read.

In more general terms, Vlastos phrases the Socratic fallacy as the following: "If you do not know what the F is, you will not know if you are predicating "F" correctly about anything whatever-- you will not know if anything is F" (Vlastos 69). As an example, if you do not know what the beautiful is, then you cannot know whether someone is beautiful (Vlastos 69).

Vlastos provides an argument made by other analytic ancient philosophy scholars (such as Myles Burnyeat) which he refers to as STB. The TB part of the acronym stands for "true belief" and it hinges upon the idea that even if one does not know something, a true belief is sufficient for acting as though they know it. As such, Socrates can maneuver around such a fallacy by saying that even though he doe snot know what a friend is, he has a true belief about it which allows him to call a particular individual a friend (Vlastos 72-73). Arguing based on the work on the different types of knowledge from his previous essay, Vlastos explains that Socrates not only asserts that he has moral knowledge, but also that such moral knowledge is required for being noble and living any semblance of a good life and true beliefs cannot possbily suffice (Vlastos 73).

After a series of arguments, Vlastos proposes an alternative solution: the Socratic fallacy is not Socratic but mathematical. He contends that the influence of mathematics upon Plato's work (notably in the Meno) provides the first introduction of this fallacy and that the fallacy is a perfectly logical statement in geometry (Vlastos 85). He argues that those works which fall directly in the Socratic period, as he calls it, where he believes that Plato represents Socrates' thought, do not include this fallacy while those after the influence of mathematics do include such a fallacy [2].

Here is my proposed answer to Vlastos' problem, as I find his mathematical answer to rely too much on the flawed traditional conceptions of the dates of the dialogues [3]: I think that Socrates' "fallacy" is rather a ploy. To some extent, I believe Plato's Socrates does mean what he says: e.g. if we cannot come to an answer of what friendship is through elenchus we could mistakenly consider someone as a friend who is not. However, what Socrates also points out through this statement is precisely that humans still have the inclinations to use words like justice and friendship despite their lack of a rigorous definition. This is extremely important because it shows that there is some kind of thought about these abstract concepts even if we cannot express it in a coherent manner. This, I believe, is what Plato's character of Socrates is getting at when he forces his interlocutors to speak from what they believe. These beliefs may not be true, but they provide a basis from which Socrates and his interlocutors can hone in on and question their innate sense, something that is often cultural [4]. It is, as Plato and his Socrates imply, the interrogation of these beliefs through elenchus that leads the philosopher to truth.

Endnotes

1. Vlastos discusses the example which appears during a discussion of τό φίλον which Vlastos renders "the dear" (Vlastos 68-69) The concept is a difficult one to translate into English, but it generally expresses love of the type that one would have for friends or family rather than a romantic partner.
2. The fallacy is then accounted for by what Vlastos refers to as "the wildest flight on which Plato's metaphysical imagination ever took off" (Vlastos 79), or the theory of recollection in the Meno.
3. I discuss dates extensively in "Dates in the Platonic Corpus," and more specifically in the first installment with an alternative scheme proposed in the third installment.
4. My supposition is that the implicit notions about justice and understanding partially come from the community, which is why Socrates does not leave Athens except for military service (or at least part of the reason).

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #2

This is the second installment in a chain of blogposts discussing Gregory Vlastos' book Socratic Studies, which is a series of essays on Socratic philosophy and methodology. It discusses the second essay, "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge".

In this essay, Vlastos moves on from the the general method of Socrates' questioning Socrates' the profession of ignorance. Specifically, Vlastos tackles the problem that Socrates seems to know so much and is wise, but claims he knows nothing. Most scholars think that he is being ironic or deceitful, but some believe him to be telling the truth (Vlastos 39). Vlastos, rather unusually, argues that Socrates is doing both. he explains that there is a difference between "knowledge-c" or knowledge as truth that is absolutely infallible and "knolwedge-e" which is knowledge justified by elenchus. Socrates can then freely disavow knowledge-c while standing behind knowledge-e, which he does on rare occasion (Vlastos 55-56).

The problem that I see with this theory is that, as Vlastos recognises, Socrates uses a whole host of different Greek words that us moderns translate as "knowledge." Vlastos never states whether there is any correlation between knowledges "e" and "c" and particular Greek words. Moreover, he never articulates a reason why if there is no Greek word correlation between these two particular types of knowledge whether there is some overriding factor that causes Socrates to use the word he does, irrespective of meaning, as well as what makes him confident that two different Greek words could both, for example, stand for knowledge-c. On the other hand, the essay opens up the ability for a lengthy study of those Greek words to answer these questions.

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #1

As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, I recently finished reading Gregory Vlastos' Socratic Studies. I will review the work essay-by-essay, because each one brings up a different part about Socratic methodology (as represented by Plato) that I want to address separately.

The first chapter of is entitled "The Socratic Elechus: Method is All." This utilized the most strictly analytic philosophical approach of any of the essays [1]. He begins by refuting the definition of "Dialectic" given "by Rolland Hall in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (Vlastos 2). Vlastos explains that elenchus is not the process of eliciting a hypothesis and the cross-examining the person who provided it until there is a contradiction. Rather, "Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by question-and-answer adversary argument in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own belief and is regarded as refuted only if its negation is deduced from his own beliefs" (Vlastos 4).

Vlastos believes that there is a great difference between this elenchus and the elenchus of the later versions of Socrates in Plato's works. Like many others before him, Vlastos hypothesizes that this first Socrates is the true historical Socrates that Plato represents, and then Plato in the middle dialogues breaks away to use Socrates to spout Platonic philosophy [2]. As such, Vlastos approaches his project as discovering Socrates' true method of argument.There are two constraints put on any of the interlocutors with which Socrates speaks: a) "to refrain from speechifying" (Vlastos 7) and b) that the answerer must say what he or she believes.

This second constraint is the important one. The reason is that this eliminates the hypothetical premise (Vlastos provides examples on page 8 of Socrates' objections to hypothetical premises), which is something that estranges elenchus from modern methodology.

Vlastos concludes that an internally consistant belief set would contain entirely true beliefs, according to the premise behind Socrates' elentic method. I find the conclusion of the argument to be both reasonable and interesting, although I feel that it probably has no bearing on the actual method of the true Socrates.

Endnotes

1. It was also the first of the essays that I read and the one of which I have the least recollection. As such, my summery might be less than clear. If it is, let me know in comments and I will try to revise it. I also welcome suggestions by anyone who has read the work.
2. I disagree with this general viewpoint of the evolution of the dialogues. In my series of blogposts entitled "On Dates in the Platonic Corpus," I have discussed this at length (although there is more to come). I do not, however, deal significantly with the claim about why I do not believe this is the historical Socrates. This argument I must save for another blogpost.

Reasoning: A Review of Gregory Vlastos' Essays

While I was proctoring an exam today, I finished Socratic Studies (one of the books I received for Christmas). The book is made up of a collection of four essays by Gregory Vlastos, one of the preeminent Plato scholars of the last century (from the philosophical standpoint). One of Vlastos' main interests is uncovering the historical Socrates and Socratic (rather than Platonic) philosophy from Plato's texts. This second part is the focus of the four essays and post-script in Socratic Studies. In general, I think the latter enterprise is both extremely difficult and not necessarily worthwhile, but Vlastos' essays are, as always, insightful and shed light on Plato's thought at the very least, even if they do not achieve his intended goal of discovering the philosophy of the historical Socrates.

I will review each of the essays from the book over the next few days (I will put off my commentary on marriage vows in Μήδεια). I found each essay engaging and clearly written and I believe that Vlastos' ideas deserve attention, even if I do not agree with them.

Part of this, as I mentioned before, is due to Vlastos providing my first favorable introduction to Plato. In my general humanities class on the ancient world, my discussion section was lead by a visiting professor named Edward. When I first saw Edward, I thought I must be dreaming. He was tall and muscular lean with shoulders far too broad for the rest of his body. He had enormous watery-blue eyes set into a long, tanned face with a highly-defined rectangular jaw. His hair was dark and short; it was parted at the side and slicked down in a 1950s style. The first day that I met him he was wearing a grayscale football jersey of some kind that was oddly short-- almost as though it had been altered-- and showed off his muscular shoulders on one end and tapered toward his small waist. below that he wore skin-tight cigarette jeans and enormous black books with a bright orange stripe up the side. His voice was deep and quiet and although his presence was commanding, it was clear from the way he spoke that he did not like the spotlight. He was a philosophy professor to whom I took an immediate shine. When I spent my time raging about how much I hated Plato, Edward asked me to look up the work of Gregory Vlastos and write my Plato paper using Vlastos' work as a resource. In the last four days before the paper was due, I finally picked up Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. My life changed. In the next 48 hours, I read the entirety of the Republic, which I had not been able to finish due to my fury at Plato. In the 24 hours following that, I wrote a 20 page paper into which I poured every remaining ounce of my being. Through the texts of Gregory Vlastos and the encouragement of a philosophy professor, in less than 4 days I had gone from hating Plato to knowing that if I became a classics major, I would write my thesis on Plato.

Oddly enough, I never finished Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. The first few essays were enough to propel me into a love of Plato and Plato scholarship. I have put it on my reading list.

Update 03/20/11: I spend much of today reading Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher and I should finish it within the week.

Reasoning/Appetitive: Illuminated Manuscripts and Socratic Logic

Today I saw the "Imagining the Past in France" exhibit at the Getty. I meant to go earlier-- and had, in fact, been to a lecture on the exhibit already[1]-- but due to various complications did not manage to go until today. The exhibit was amazing and I highly recommend it. When I go into illuminated manuscript exhibits, I often play a game with myself to see whether I can identify the era of a work before I check the plate underneath it. I found this exhibit more difficult that most because there was a greater diversity in artistic style within eras than in other collections I have been. I thought it might be because these were primarily secular and historical texts. There is a great slideshow of images on the Getty website.

 

The curator did a brief video introduction to the exhibit as well.

Socratic Logic

The book that I decided to read yesterday during the exam I was proctoring is Gregory Vlastos' Socratic Studies. Vlastos' work, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, was my first introduction to Plato scholarship. Although I dislike some of his methodology and conclusions, I still have a soft-spot for Vlastos' work. I will review it when I am finished (I am about 1/3 of the way through).

Endnotes

1. The lecture I went to was "How the French Made History: Manuscripts and Images of the Past in Medieval France." I reviewed the lecture on Fragments of Sulpicia.