These minutes were spoken on
26 October.
It is said by some that Socrates
doesn’t have doctrines.
Although it is perhaps difficult to say what he is committed to since he
wrote nothing down and his views are related to us only by the reports of
others, some take this to mean that Socrates didn’t write because he
didn’t know what he believed.
Hutchinson finds this too skeptical a view as there are other ancient
philosophers such as Carneades, who also didn’t write anything down. Like Socrates, Carneades had a student
who wrote down his views, and yet no one seems to contest these reports as
uncertain. There are also modern
analogues of this type of philosopher who does not write. In fact several of these are employed
at Ivy League institutions and though they have not written down their ideas
this is not to say that they are not generally understood and respected.
Hutchinson’s
opinion is that we do have two authors, Xenophon and Plato, who put us is a
good position to know Socrates’ thought. These men were both close to Socrates for several decades of
his life. Their accounts are for
the most part complimentary rather than contradictory, and between the two of
them we have quite a comprehensive picture of Socrates’ thoughts. In Xenophon 3.9 we do seem to have at
least a “thumbnail sketch” of Socrates’ doctrines. The themes covered are involved with
Socrates’ usual focus on leadership, personal development, and rising to
our ideals. Socrates stressed the importance
of certain types of knowledge and analysis. 3.8 is a schematic conversation where Aristippus is trying
to trap Socrates in question and answer.
Initially, Aristippus asks “do you know anything that is
good?” Socrates immediately
sees the direction Aristippus is steering the conversation in, and answers that
good is not universal, but is a relational property. It is inadequate to say a
thing is good; it has to be good for some end.
Aristippus’
next tack was to ask about “the fine”, and he enquired whether
“the fine” was the same as “the good”. Hutchinson mentioned that “the
fine” is in certain translations understood as the “the
beautiful”. In any case it
is from the Greek word “kalos” as in calisthenics, and means
something that looks good.
However, it can also apply to a person’s inner qualities. In this way it becomes a term of moral
approbation.
The
next question from Aristippus was: “are things that are fine like one
another?” Elaborating, he asked Socrates to consider a dung basket. Socrates insisted that a dung basket is
fine and a golden shield is contemptible, if the former carries out its
function well and the latter does not.
Hence, like goodness, fineness is also a relational quality; a thing is
only fine relative to how well it fulfills its function. Socrates continues this theme in a humorous
fashion in Xenophon’s Symposium, where he enters into a beauty
contest with a much better looking man.
Socrates finds himself more beautiful, on the grounds that with his
bulging eyes he can see in more directions, on his fleshy lips a kiss is more
easily planted. In other words the
function of his body, not its aesthetic appearance is the criterion for beauty.
The
final question we are asked to consider in 3.8 is “is the good different
from the beneficial?”
Socrates says they are not.
Xenophon turns this abstract idea into a concrete example; a house is
good and benefits its owner if it performs its functions well. A good house needs only to keep the
owner comfortable in all seasons and keep his possessions safe. Similarly, practical considerations are
paramount in selecting a location for a temple. A temple is to be located so that it is out of the way but
also in a spot such that the passerby might be in a reverent frame of mind as
he or she comes upon it. This
reminded Hutchinson of the Pythagorean Acousmata which states that one should
be in a devoted state of mind to enter a temple, and should not enter for any
reasons that are not premeditated, purposeful, and appropriately religious. For this reason it would not be right
to have a temple around any unlikely corner as – what if one was in a
black temper thinking impure thoughts and suddenly happened upon such a sacred
place? Many religions, Hutchinson
said, have guidelines for situating their places of worship. We may take Socrates’ concern
about the placement of temples as another indication that he was a very
religious person.
In
3.9 is a discussion of envy, a topic not addressed by Plato. Hutchinson told us that Athenian
society, like our own, was very competitive; people were constantly comparing
themselves to one another and looking to the famous for both an ideal and a
mark to surpass. Turning to the
dialogue, we were made aware of the paradoxical situation in which people were
moved to empathy by others’ distress, and yet were angered at their
success. According to
Socrates such a conflict in feeling can only happen to foolish people. Therefore, most people must be foolish
since most of us feel envy.
Socrates’ apparent low opinion of humanity in this example
reminded Hutchinson of Diogenes the cynic who, fifty years later, often
wandered around public areas shining his lantern in peoples faces saying he was
“looking for an honest man”.
This expresses the conviction that the number of people with their
intellectual stuff together – who are not off their rockers conceptually
or otherwise, is very low”.
Socrates had an optimistic opinion of what people could aspire to but a
pessimistic opinion of what people around him in the flesh could actually
achieve.
Hutchinson
next addressed the topic of leisure.
He said the word “leisure”, is derived from the Greek word
“skolai”. “Scholar” also comes from
“skolai” because to have leisure time is to find oneself in the
position to have nothing better to do than involve oneself in a free
wide-ranging research project.
Hutchinson stressed that the common conception of leisure is paradoxical
because although leisure is supposed to mean time in which one does nothing,
most of the time you will find people doing things in their
“leisure” time.
Leisure, instead of being the cessation of activity, becomes any
activity one does instead of another.
The true conception of leisure, then, is having the freedom to select an
activity as opposed to being necessarily engaged in it. Furthermore, it is the freedom to
substitute a “better” activity for one that is less good. Thus, people who gossip or watch silly
tv are not at leisure, since they are substituting a worse activity for a better
one!
The
idea that those who hold scepters are not kings and rulers is an example of an
apparently paradoxical statement that is nevertheless supported by
Socrates. Socrates believes that
authority rests in wisdom and knowledge, not symbols of power. A crown on a person’s head does
not indicate that he actually has the wisdom to make kingly decisions. Just because one has the power to raise
an army and make war on another nation does not necessarily mean that one knows
whether or not one should make war at all. This theme of who has knowledge and
who does not and what we know and do not know, is a favourite of
Socrates’. Another of
Socrates’ favourite and highly interpreted ideas is that justice and all
other moral virtues are equal to wisdom.
Another
paradoxical statement of Socrates’ is that what one does and what one
knows are the same. Most of us,
and Aristotle as well, would not agree that this is the case. For example, sometimes we know what we
should do but are fearful.
Socrates says it never happens that we know what to do and don’t
do it. He supports this claim with
yet another controversial idea, that there is no such thing as weakness of
will. The phenomenon that most
people call “temptation” does not actually exist. What is happening is not that we are
tempted away from what we know is right; rather, we are reassessing, perhaps
only temporarily, what we think is right.
Hence, the problem lies, not in temptation but in knowing what is right. For example, say we “know”
we should get some work done before night. It gets late, we aren’t finished and yet we decide to
quit – and have a beer instead.
Most would read this situation as a fall into temptation. The motivation to have a beer became
greater than the motivation to keep working even though we knew we ought to
finish. Socrates might say,
however, that we decided to quit and have a beer because upon reassessing the
situation, the possibility of our having a nervous breakdown and never
finishing seemed to indicate that the “right” lay in having a beer
and relaxing.
Perhaps
these reassessments are poor ones but the problem lies in not knowing what to
do, not in not doing it. Hence the
actual skill to be developed to live a good life and do the right thing is the
skill of thinking.