Ryan Rafferty

I feel a bit like a time-traveller.  I’m slowly being sucked in to the lives, relationships, and thoughts of the ancient Athenians who surrounded Socrates.  My imagination wanders off to wonder what really happened back then, thinking about Antyllus’ true motives for prosecuting Socrates, or the role that the eccentric miscreant, Alcibiades, played in shaping the hearts and minds of the socratic-philosophers who knew him.  Of course, most of my thoughts are simply an outpouring of imagination from a mind deprived of stimulation.  What’s fuelling these thoughts are my summer project: to read and re-read the works of Plato.

Originally, I had planned to write a post after every dialogue I had read, but after more consideration, I plan to write a little bit after every few dialogues… I have no set formula in mind and just plan to write my thoughts as a raw exercise of my mind and as a record of my thinking which is only bound to change.

‘Euthyphro’ was the first dialogue I decided to read, I left it with mixed feelings.  On one hand I believe that it accurately portrayed the character of Socrates, but I couldn’t help but take away from this that the portrayal was made by an outsider.  ‘Euthyphro’ seemed to border on a defence of Socrates and at the same time is almost an exposition as to why Socrates was being indicted.  It is as if Plato was trying to sway public opinion by showing that Socrates does come off as a bit of jerk and an atheist, but really, if you look closely, he just asking some tough questions that lead inevitably in that direction.  I am left with the question: was this an attempt by Plato to gain favour with other Socratics?  There seems to be a tradition of dialogues being written in defence of Socrates’ behaviour, as seen in ‘Alcibiades’ by Aeschines of Sphettus, and others.  Contained in ‘Euthyphro’ is something known as the “Ethyphro Dillema”, found at 10a: “Is the pious being loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the Gods?”.  I think Socrates presents this question in an ironical way… in order to demonstrate the issues with the concept of piety… It’s almost like asking: do cows find grass tasty because it is tasty, or do we infer that it’s tasty because cows consume it? … It leads me to think that in both instances there is another, better explanation.

Putting ‘Euthyphro’ aside, I took up ‘Apology’ next.  This one is always hard for me to read, not because I am an obsessive Socratic, but rather because usually get a little teary-eyed thinking about what’s actually going on during this dialogue.  To imagine a frail, 70 year old man being put on trial in a true democratic state, having to explain his life and his actions and hope for mercy… the imagery is as depressing as it gets… especially knowing the man on trial is someone who devoted his life to a unique idea of virtue and who only wanted to help.  There is one moment in Socrates sentencing that struck me: the point where he asks that rather than be sentenced to death he be sentenced to live the rest of his life being fed in the Prytaneum.  Often people consider this an act of suicide, but I felt it was the point at which Socrates became a philosopher- it was the point at which he publicly made a claim to know something, and I think that his request was befitting, and was an infinitesimal request compared to the debt Athens owed him.

Finally, I ended with ‘Crito’, the dialogue that takes place just before Socrates’ execution.  This was the most frustrating of dialogues, and requires the most meditation.  Critobulus is trying to save Socrates by paying off his guards in order to escape in the night- Socrates refuses his offer, using the argument that given his enjoyment of the benefits of the state… he had an obligation to accept the state’s punishment.  What frustrates me about this dialogue is the one dimensionality of Socrates’ argument… He fails to question the legitimacy of the government itself, never asking the question whether or not this was the same government that provided him benefits or another, altogether damaged by the oligarchy of the thirty tyrants.  There are many other chains of thought one can take to attack his argument, but none appear in the dialogue at all.  My conclusion is that the dialogue was written to take the sting out of the actual fact that Socrates was in effect choosing suicide over all other options.  I think there is evidence to support this conclusion when Socrates asks Critobulus if his benefactors would help to raise his children if he left them in Athens but moved to Thessaly at about 54a… It was a criticism of his benefactors and I think this points to something deeper— the reality that Socrates struggled through most of his life pursuing a philosophical life, only to witness his friends helping him when their pride and place in Athens were at a state of dispute or were about to be cast in a negative light.  There was no doubt that Socrates loved Athens, and that love meant more to him than anything else… Disillusioned with his state, his friends, and his supporters he volitionally chose to die. Plato was merely attempting to soften the blow with what he could extrapolate from what he knew of Socrates’ last days.  I think that ‘Crito’ was perhaps a turning point for Plato, because I believe, compared to the previous dialogues, this is the first one that contained a great deal of conjecture and, in my opinion, proved to be an attempt to rectify Socrates’ action with his philosophy.  Even if ‘Crito’ was a word for word recreation of an actual discussion, I still believe disillusionment was there in Socrates— and that he chose to die.  I do believe there is much more to be taken from this dialogue, there is a lot of symbolism– like the ship traveling to Delos as blessed by an apolloinian priest– and perhaps in my next reading of this dialogue I will be able to spend more time with it.

The day after reading the three dialogues I had an epiphinal moment that I can barely capture in words… I briefly grasped what it meant to follow a ‘Socratic’ path of virtue.  There was a distinct point in my reflection where I seemed to grasp Socrates’ project… the sheer magnitude and importance of virtue over everything else… the understanding of virtue as action and the major implications of that– I was stunned.  As someone who cares a great deal about ethics and human character I can now see the universality of virtue that goes beyond the ethical… And also how later writers like Plato and Aristotle were simply trying to interweave and rectify the power of this idea with their own projects. In Plato’s case it was his Pseudo-Pythagorean idealism, and for Aristotle it was the coalescence of virtue with the idea of human character.  What becomes clear is that the only truly universal idea in philosophy is the idea that action is not just translatable in to the language of virtue, but is virtue, and that virtue can be examined, understood, even anticipated… The ideas go much deeper, but that experience, as lame as it may sound, was profound after some reflection.  The issue is it seems impossible to escape the pitfalls of Plato, Aristotle, and others… no matter how hard you try.

I want to postface this with the reminder that these are just my musings, they are bound to change (especially as I get deeper into ancient philosophy).  One thing that always strikes me about Plato’s writing is his use of equine-imagery… It’s something you can’t really avoid or ignore when reading many of his works it seems.

I will be back again with my thoughts on the next few dialogues in my list as soon as time permits.