Socrates, Plato and the Development of Reason

A rejoinder to Professor Sichel

SAMUEL SCOLNI COV
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
I ' v e heard ol d wi zards say that arguabl y the pri nci pal requisite f or successful
t ea-l eaf readi ng is havi ng a r ough i dea of what you want to find. As in ot her
cases of ci rcul ar hermeneut i cs, here t oo you can do little mor e t han poi nt at a
pat t ern whi ch seems to you cl ose t o your subject and cr y out, ' Look: can you see
i t ?' Ot her patterns are discernible, of course, some mor e relevant, some less,
and any di vi ner must be t hankful to whomever compl ai ns about his crypt i c
utterances, whi ch he i di osyncrat i cal l y t ook f or evident, or opens his eyes to see
what he mi ssed while bei ng t oo engr ossed in his own concerns. Thi s is not
t o i mpl y t hat anyt hi ng goes; even tea l eaves arrange t hemsel ves so that in any
gi ven cup some patterns are j ust not there. And schol arl y di sagr eement over
whi ch are and whi ch are not is what keeps t he ol d mant i c art alive.
Mor e specifically, I am grat eful to Professor Sichel f or her t hought ful and
st i mul at i ng revi ew of my Plato' s Metaphysics of Education. 1 Her r evi ew gi ves
me a good oppor t uni t y f or cl ari fyi ng to others and to mys el f t he posi t i ons I
advanced in the book. Pr of essor Si chel ' s remarks about unfulfilled pr omi ses are
true enough. But I am afraid this is agai n not the pl ace t o put matters right. Here
I can onl y hope to stress some di fferences in interpretation and perhaps unt angl e
one or t wo mi nor mi sunderst andi ngs, caused no doubt by my failure t o make
mys el f t ol erabl y clear.
Si nce my story about Plato ended with the Republic (with the Theaetetus t hrown
in, in spite of chr onol ogy) , it was not t oo difficult t o create the i mpressi on of a
seaml ess picture. Onl y the mor e so as the transition I tried to wor k on was not that
bet ween Socrat es and Plato. Thi s distinction, I think, may oft en be t oo crude.
Besi des the historical Socrat es (what ever he was like), we must have t wo mor e:
Pl at o' s Socrat es, i.e. Socrat es as he is depi ct ed by Pl at o still i nnocent of met a-
physi cs and eschat ol ogy, mai nl y in di al ogues like the Laches or the Lysis; and
the Pl at oni c Socrat es, i.e. the Socrat es who put s f or war d poi nt s of vi ew whi ch
nowadays can hardl y be literally t aken as Socratic. That I bel i eve the historical
Socrat es t o have been not ver y di fferent f r om Pl at o' s is of little i mport ance in
this context. The quest i on t hr ough whi ch I appr oached Socrat es was, What was
it in Socrates, as Plato understood him, that set Plato on his phi l osophi cal course?
And the ver y way the quest i on is posed al ready hints at some sort of devel op-
ment rather t han at a ' uni t y of Pl at o' s t hought ' on the one hand or at some t ype
of qui l t -work hypot hesi s on the other. The later dialogues, and not or i ousl y t he
Parmenides, will have to wait f or anot her opportunity. But, fortunately, t hey do
not affect our present interests.
Studies in Philosophy and Education 13: 149-156, 1994.
1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
150 SAMUEL SCOLNICOV
The Socrat i c-Pl at oni c quest i on is furt her compl i cat ed i nsofar as the passage
f r om Pl at o' s Socrat es t o the Pl at oni c Socrat es is not a smoot h and unequi vocal
cont i nuum. The earl y/ mi ddl e di al ogues di st i nct i on can serve onl y as a r ough
gui de (even i f we di sregard f or the moment t he dating difficulties). The Socrat es
of Pl at o' s Apology is quite different is some i mport ant respects f r om that of t he
Protagoras and the Gorgias or even t he Euthyphro; and the uni versal l y accept ed
dat i ng o f t he Theaetems as a late di al ogue does not prevent Socrat es f r om dis-
pl ayi ng there, as also elsewhere, some easily recognizable traits from the early,
' Socrat i c' dialogues. Thus, the line bet ween the Socrat i c and the Pl at oni c is
better dr awn within the dialogues, not between them. I am not i mpl yi ng t hat the
distinction bet ween early and late di al ogues is irrelevant to the underst andi ng of
Pl at o' s devel opment . I am j ust put t i ng a pl ea f or a mor e nuanced use of the
Socr at i c/ Pl at oni c di agnosi s, accor di ng t o whi ch we should, when necessary,
speak of Socrat i c as opposed t o Pl at oni c el ement s t hr oughout the di al ogues, wi t h
var yi ng emphases not necessari l y dependent on chr onol ogy.
Of course, Pl at o' s portrait of Socrat es is ext remel y compl ex, and one cannot
poi nt at the one single Socrat i c trait whi ch was Pl at o' s mai nspri ng. But, i f one
asks oneself, what is it in the Pl at oni c port rai t of Socrat es t hat sets Socrat es apart
f r om all the ot her charact ers in the di al ogues, at least t wo things l eap t o the eye:
t he (moral) i mport ance o f the care of one' s soul and the central rol e di al ect i c
pl ays i n it. Socr at es' argument at i ve tactics, even as Plato present s t hem, e.g. in
the Euthydemus and el sewhere, i f taken out of cont ext , were much like t hose of
the Sophists; but the mai n thrust of Socrat i c paideia in t he Pl at oni c dialogues, as
care of the soul, gi ves t hem a compl et el y di fferent significance.
Henr y Tel oh was right, I think, in stressing psychagogia, the l eadi ng of the
soul, as a mai n procedure o f Socrat i c educat i on in Pl at o' s dialogues. 2 Hi s distinc-
tion bet ween etenchus and psychagogia is persuasi ve, al t hough perhaps t oo hard
and fast. Yet, i f we want t o exami ne the relation between Plato' s Socrates and Plato,
we must come back to the question: Where is Socrates leading the soul? And here
it seems to me that Tel oh does not pay sufficient attention to the serious intellec-
tual cont ent of elenchus and psychagogia. Pl at o' s Prot agoras and Callicles do
def end power f ul theses with great ver ve and no small success. Socr at es' inter-
l ocut ors are not aware, in var yi ng degrees, of t he full f or ce o f t he posi t i ons t hey
maintain. I n fact, it is part of Socr at es' educat i onal st rat egy t o bri ng t hem t o
such an awareness, in the measure of their capacities. Thei r event ual defeat is no
doubt due also t o their personalities as di spl ayed in the di al ogues; but t oget her
wi t h t hem al so the phi l osophi cal posi t i ons t hey are commi t t ed t o are defeat ed, or
at least made doubt ful . I stress ' t oget her wi t h t hem' because I agree with Tel oh
t hat f or Pl at o' s Socrat es there are no di sembodi ed doctrines, and any refut at i on
is ad hominem. And yet, there is a l esson the reader can learn f r om a Pl at oni c
di al ogue, albeit at his own peril.
As wi t h elenchus so wi t h psychagogia. True, di fferent souls need di fferent
met hods. But t hey all l ead to philosophia as Socrates underst ood it: the exami ned
life. The final goal cannot be separat ed f r om the way t hat leads t o it. True but
unr easoned opi ni ons are f or Pl at o' s Socrat es o f no worth. 3 Li vi ng an exami ned
A REJOINDER TO SICHEL 151
life means accepting nothing on trust and not giving in to psychological pressure
- although such pressure can be, as it in fact is in most cases, a powerful tool for
disabusing peopl e of their unreasoned but deepl y held opinions.
For Socrates, the focus of moral interest was in the whole of one' s actions and
cognitions, in an integrated perspective of one' s whole experience. In such an
integration, as Socrates saw it, the intellectual element is paramount. The rightness
or wrongness of one' s action depends on the intellectual activity' involved in the
deliberation leading to the action. Socrat es' psyche has indeed some affinity with
Buber' s character, ' as the link between what this individual is and the sequence
of his actions and attitudes' . 4 The direct personal interaction necessary in educa-
tion is, of course, as Socratic as it is Buberian. The disagreement between t hem
is in that, for Buber, character is expressly not intellectually mediated, while, for
Socrates, there is no essential distinction between emotional attitude, moral virtue
and intellect or reason. Plato came to think of education as developing the recog-
nition of the true rational nature of the soul ' s empirical desires and emotions.
Socrates may not have gone that far, but he forcefully denied, in the face of all
appearances, the possibility of akrasia, weakness of the will. What unifies the
Socratic moral person is the intellectual or rational element in it; Buber sees the
unifying element as the sheer individually of him who is confronted by another
such individuality.
I do not have a good translation for Socrat es' 'psuche'. ' Soul ' may be some-
times too metaphysical. The English ' charact er' , I am afraid, plays down the
rational aspect so important to Socrates, while stressing too much the aspect of
the will (which is al most irrelevant in a Socratic context). ' Per son' or ' personal-
i t y' , as Professor Sichel pointed out, 5 lack the moral dimension. At least once, I used
the expression ' mor al personal i t y' . 6 1 admi t defeat. But then, Socrates concept of
the moral person was not quite like ours.
Socrates walks a narrow plank between openness and closeness. On the one
hand, he has to let the person reach the conclusions for himself. Telling them to
hi m is no use. This would amount to giving him one more unreasoned opinion,
not different in that much from his other (morally useless) opinions. Knowl edge
necessarily requires personal conviction and understanding, and only knowl edge
in the strict sense of reasoned knowl edge is of real worth. Gentle as Socrates is
with young Lysis and Charmides, it is they who have to make up their minds at
each and every step of the dialogue, and the success or failure of Socrat es' psy-
chagogia may hang on an answer being ' yes ' or ' no' .
Here lies the deep educational significance of Socratic irony. It is not ' sayi ng
the opposite of what one t hi nks' , in the venerable definition of Quintilian. There
is nothing that Socrates can say or imply (e.g., by antiphrasis) that will lead
surely to the final goal. Socratic irony dispossesses the interlocutor of his opin-
ions without giving hi m any others to hang on to. At most, Socrates can point
the way ambiguously, from af ar ]
One the other hand, knowl edge in the strict sense is not only reasoned; it is
also true. Clarity is not enough: there is one right conclusion to be reached.
Plato' s Socrates in the early dialogues is adamant in claiming that some things
152 SAMUEL SCOLNICOV
are right and some are not. (For example, doing evil is wrong in all circum-
stances.) His position seems to be that if only one could be cured of one' s preju-
dices, one would see what is right. This is one aspect of the difference between
Socrates and Sophists like Protagoras: for Socrates, error in unnatural and yet
nearly universal. Plato took upon himself to give an account of why this is so,
and why full consistency, as Socrates demanded, eventually coalesces with truth.
In other words, as Plato saw it, Socratic educational practice presupposed a very
definite type of metaphysics. And this Plato sought to provide, mainly in the
Republic.
It is true that every Platonic dialogue presents two alternative views (some-
times, as in the earlier dialogues but not only there, only one explicitly and the
other by contrast or implication). But here Socratic openness ends. For Plato there
was in the Socratic view an implicit metaphysics, which he saw as his task to
develop. Plato is about metaphysics, which he saw, going apparently much further
than even his Socrates had ever gone, as absolutely indispensable for morality.
An unmetaphysical reading of, say, the Symposium misses the point. 8 One is not
asked there to choose between Socrates' and Alcibiades' views. Alcibiades him-
self can see as through a glass darkly that Socrates is the embodiment of excel-
lence. He can sense that Socrates points beyond himself, hence that he pushes
him away while drawing him close. But he cannot make the further step away
from Socrates. Even as Plato praises his hero, he shows his greatest failure.
Knowledge, especially self-knowledge, can be neutral neither for Socrates nor
for Plato. If it could, consistency could be enough - for purely pragmatic reasons:
if one cannot put order in one's soul, one may be unable to attain one's goals, what-
ever they be. The examined life does have pragmatic benefits and some of these
are brought up, e.g., in the Protagoras, the Gorgias and the Republic I. But not
everyone bad is like the raving tyrant of the Gorgias. Some can, like Thrasy-
machus, be perfectly calculated and self-possessed; they are the clever and wicked
of Republic VII 519, whose 'little souls' are turned in the wrong direction. They
could use the calculus of pleasures of the Protagoras to great advantage. But the
Apology, no less than the final myth of the Gorgias, makes clear that the care of
the soul is not a pragmatic matter. ' Anytus and Meletus can kill me but they
cannot do me harm' (Apology 30 cd).
One may now understand why Socrates' was not a failure of love. (By the
way, I did not write, advisedly, that ' Socrates' was a failure of love' . What I
wrote was: ' If Socrates' was a failure of love, as some thought' - I meant, among
others, Vlastos - 'it was necessitated by his philosophy' . 9) But for Socrates, not
only in the Symposium and the Phaedrus but also in the Lysis and the Charmides,
love of the individual as such cannot bring salvation. For Plato's Socrates no
less than for Plato himself, love is of perfection. But perfection can be achieved
only by personal effort. Doing one' s best to persuade someone to strive for con-
sistency in his actions and beliefs is all very well. But if Socrates cannot bring
him to see for himself the value of consistency and to commit himself to achiev-
ing it, there is nothing more Socrates can do. Loving him in his actual, unre-
formed individuality is of no avail.
A REJOI NDER TO SICHEL 153
Socratic love too was ironic, as Alcibiades in the Symposium was to discover
to his despair. The erotic attraction to the individual, when pressed for fulfill-
ment, turned out be a cover for al most impossible demands made of its object;
not demands for anything to be gi ven - on his own admission, Alcibiades was
prepared, sometimes, to give everything - but for a complete revolution in one' s
soul and in one' s system of values. And here Socratic love deserts its object, having
done all that can be done for him. There was in Socratic love no compassion.
Socrates may or may not have felt sorry for Alcibiades, but i f he did, he cer-
tainly did not think compassi on (or Christian agape) would save him. Socrates
knew for sure that, the salvation of the soul being for hi m what it was, he who
cannot save hi msel f cannot be saved by another.
Was this a failure of love? In a Christian sense, it may have been. But Socrat es'
concept of love was different. Socrat es' is not St. John' s agape that gives freely,
but an eros that demands unremittingly. Alcibiades sensed the paradox when he
complained of not knowi ng any more whether he was the bel oved or the lover
(Symposium 216- 8) . Even without Plato' s later interpretation of the perfection
of the individual as transcendent to him, Socratic love is never love of the indi-
vidual as he his; it is a drive towards his improvement. This is why it can be of
educational value: it strives to change its object for what it considers the better.
But for Socrates there is indeed onl y one way of reaching knowl edge in the strict
sense, namel y by personal effort. Moreover, the attainment of such knowl edge
implies at least the conviction of its value. Euthyphro, in the end of his dialogue,
goes smugl y down the steps of the Ki ng' s Porch to his moral perdition and all
Socrates has for him is biting irony. But then, on his own premises, there is
nothing of any real moral worth that Socrates can tell him. One need not endorse
Socrat es' concept of love in order not to impute to him ' t he inability to escape
the tools of his own a g e ' ) One needs onl y appreciate what Alcibiades called his
atopia, something between strangeness and absurdity.
From what I have already said, it should be clear why I do not think Plato
would have been ' particularly ardent' in advocating ' met hod and reasoning as
foundational for resolving various probl ems in education and ethics' . 11 Not that
he was against method and reasoning, of course. Method can bring clarity; but
clarity was not all that Socrates and Plato, in my reading, were after. Protagoras,
Callicles and Thrasymachus achieve during the dialogues an enviable degree of
clarity, and yet Socrates will not accept their positions. It is not for nothing that
he has been often accused of playing with t hem fast and loose. What Socrates
objects to is not that they are not prepared to apply reason to education and
ethics. It is rather that in their systems of values reason plays a secondary role.
Thei r interests are somewhere else and for t hem the value of reason lies in its
furthering these interests in the best way.
Indeed, in another age, philosophers came back to the Socratic-Platonic concept
of the intrinsic value of reason as a normat i ve principles of order (cf., e.g.,
Gorgias 499e, 503e-504a). Kant distinguished between instrumental Verstand
and normat i ve Vernunft, and spoke of ' t he interests of Reason' . Both in the fifth
and fourth centuries BC and in the eighteenth century, the question was whether
154 SAMUEL SCOLNtCOV
reason is instrumental or normative. In both Enlightenments, it was agreed that
wi sdom is ' the noblest' (cf. Protagoras 309c1-12). What was in dispute was whether
reason is purely calculative (as Hume claimed) or capable of initiating and direct-
ing action (as Kant and Socrat es~l at o claimed), and hence of value in itself.
But, again, these distinctions are not pre-existing. Socrates forges t hem as he
goes along. Distinguishing beforehand, in the usual fashion, between knowl edge w
and knowl edge s would be to mi ss the point. What the dialogue does, among
many other things, is gradually to set up two conceptions of knowl edge and start
an inquiry into which answers the requirements made of it earlier in the dia-
logue. Socrates and Protagoras are not engaging in a clarification of the meanings
of ' knowl edge' ; they are arguing about what is it that the word with its connota-
tions applies to. Protagoras does not accept that excellence is knowl edge w. He
thinks at first that knowl edge is irrelevant and in the end he is prepared to give it
an instrumental, but still secondary, role. Yet, the word has fo r Protagoras impor-
tant connotations ( ' I t would be base of me to say that wi sdom and knowledge
are not the most powerful of human things' , Protagoras 352dl -2). Socrates
shows Protagoras that he cannot have these connotations and think of knowl-
edge as utilitarian. The disagreement is real and philosophically important.
There is nothing to prevent Protagoras from accepting the foundational role of
met hod and reasoning for resolving (or rather clarifying) probl ems in ethics and
education. What he will not and cannot accept is that, in ethics and education,
the method is of the substance of the solution. Socrates, on the other hand, is
trying to convince him and others that it is the logos of the conclusion that
makes all the difference. Prot agoras' great speech makes it clear that, for him,
the reason why one holds an opinion or attitude is of no relevance to the opinion
or attitude held; it is the final result that matters. Reason will show the best way
of achieving the desired result, but it does not in itself pertain to it. Socrates goes
some way along with Protagoras. As Teloh and others have shown, different
souls need different tactics. But these psychological tactics are onl y protreptic,
intended to effectuate the conversion to philosophia. Socrates himself, so it seems
to emerge from Plato' s dialogues, never succeeded further than that, i f indeed
that far. But the conversion to philosophia means living an exami ned life, i.e.
valuing the logos of an opinion more than the opinion itself.
Plato, then, in the Protagoras, is not advocating the calculative techne. The
science of measurement is an i mprovement on Protagoras, following from his
own premises, in good dialectical fashion. It is Protagoras who, from the very
start (' You will become better from day to day' , Protagoras 3t 8a9), expects to
escape from tuche, or luck, the way things j ust happen to come out. Plato exam-
ines Prot agoras' techne and rejects it, not because it is not good enough but
because it is not to the point. The calculus of pleasures, if well devel oped and
judiciously applied, can yield, in its field of application, the best results; it can
substantially increase the control of people over their own lives as against leav-
ing them to pure chance. The calculative techne is a translation of Prot agoras'
myt h of Prometheus into scientific terms. It is the rational solution to the pro-
bl em of the art of living. But the probl em with the art of measuring is that,
A REJOINDER TO SICHEL 155
i nst ead of pr omot i ng a ' t ur ni ng of t he eye o f t he soul ' , a cogni t i ve and mor al
Gest al t switch, it devel ops furt her the demot i c vi ew o f utilitarian virtue.
Young Hippocrates, however, comes t o Protogr~s not epi techne but epi paideia,
not to mast er an art or a t echni que, but f or the sake of his own educat i on. But
this is j ust what Prot agoras cannot deliver. He can t each how t o escape f r om
tuche as far as humanl y possible, how t o become better, i.e. mor e successful f r om
day t o day. But f or Pl at o, this is not enough. Hi s concept i on o f educat i on is o f a
compl et e change of val ues, accor di ng t o whi ch the escape f r om t uche in the
accept ed sense of these wor ds becomes irrelevant. (The charact eri sat i on o f the
phi l osopher as ' r ehear si ng f or deat h' in Phaedo 64a6 coul d be al ready Pl at oni c,
but cf. the pal e students of Socr at es' ' t hi nk- s hop' in Ar i st ophanes' Cl ouds. ) I n
any case, this concept i on had good Socrat i c roots: ' i t is not money t hat brings
excel l ence (arete) but it is excel l ence t hat makes money and ever yt hi ng else
good f or me n' ( Apol ogy 30b2- 4) .
Thi s goes al so f or Pl at o' s rej ect i on of tragedy. I f Ari st ot l e is right, one coul d
wal k away f r om a t ragedy with the reassuring feeling that i f onl y one coul d escape
tuche or moi ra, chance or fate, all woul d be wel l and one shoul d count one' s
blessings. But the myt h of Er tells us the st ory of that soul who l i ved a j ust life
because he had the good fort une of a good educat i on in a good city. But because
he l i ved a life ' wi t hout phi l os ophy' , i.e. a life of true but unreasoned opi ni ons
and actions, he came t o gr i ef in choosi ng his next life (Republ i c X 619 bc). But,
as the heral d announced bef or e t he choosi ng of lives, t hat soul had no one t o
bl ame but himself. He may have escaped worl dl y unhappi ness and di sgrace, but
he was still t ranscendent al l y culpable. In ot her words, it is not escapi ng tuche
t hat count s but why one escapes it. Escapi ng chance by chance is mor al l y no
better t han not escapi ng it at all (although, as the myt h and all of the Republ i c
allow, it does have pr agmat i c value).
Pl at o t hus came t o t he vi ew t hat human life is not self-sufficient and t hat t he
i ndi vi dual ' s real nature is not in hi m. The St oi cs ri ght l y underst ood that Socrat i c
goodness, far f r om bei ng fragile, is unassailable. I n Pl at o' s interpretation it is so
because it is t ranscendent t o this world. No empi ri cal t echne can secure it, for -
like reason and knowl edge - ul t i mat el y human excel l ence is not an empi ri cal
matter; al t hough, to be sure, it has empi ri cal consequences, or el se it woul d be
irrelevant t o human life. How this can be so is t he ont ol ogi cal pr obl em Pl at o
grappl es with.
NOTES
i Betty A. Sichel, ' A Review of Samuel Scolnicov's Plato's Metaphysics of Education, pp. 141-148,
above.
2 Henry Teloh, Socratic" Education in Plato's Early Dialogues" (Notre Dame, Indiana, University of
Notre Dame Press, 1986).
3 Contra T. Irving, Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 91; see my Plato's
Metaphysics of Education (London, Routledge, 1988), pp. 16 and 124-5 n. 17.
4 Martin Buber, Between Man andMan, tr. R.G. Smith (New York, Macmillan, 1965), p. 104.
156 S AMUE L S C OL NI C OV
s Sichel, p. 147, n. 4.
6 E 2 .
7 See my ' "To me, Callicles, he seems exceedi ngl y in earnest ' : On t aki ng Socratic irony ser i ousl y' ,
The Philosophy of Socrates, ed. C. Boudouri s (At hens, International Cent er for Greek Phi l osophy
and Cul t ure, 1991), 324- 332.
s As somet i mes is t he case with, e . g, Mart ha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambri dge,
Cambri dge Uni versi t y Press, 1986), ch. 6.
9 P. 20.
10 Sichel, p. 144.
H Sichel, p. 142.