Socrates was born in 469 and put to execution in 399 B.C. In his youth, he saw the great Periclean age when Athens rose to the apex of political greatness. But his last days passed in the troubled environment of the great Peloponnesian War. He served as a hoplite or a foot armed soldier in the Athenian camps at Thrace and in the battle of Delium. He was the only man in the Committee of Council who refused to concur in putting to the Assembly such an unconstitutional vote on the charge of their failure to rescue the drowning sailors in the naval battle of Arginusae. Likewise, in another case, he refused to concur with the order (taking it as illegal) whereby he with four other citizens was already proscribed. But he was accused or refusing to worship the state-gods and of introducing new divinities thus corrupting the society. On this charge, he was condemned to death by drinking a cup of hemlock. This tragedy made him immortal. Barker says: “Indeed, we may almost say that the greatest lesson of his life was his death”.
The difficulty in understanding Socrates is that he wrote nothing and, whatever knowledge we have, it flows from the writings of his followers like Plato and Socrates and critics like Xenophon. Besides, his name is sometimes associate with the Sophists, for some of his fundamental convictions were based on their doctrines. In fact, he accepted the dictum of Protagorus that ‘man is the measure of all things,’ but that for him it was man rather than men. While admitting the right of self-consciousness to be heard, he insisted that its evidence was valid only because it was a consciousness common to all mankind. Yet, he was not at all a Sophist, for he never charged fees, offered no course of study, know towed to no man and above all did not copiously follow their dictums. According to Barker, “Yet in contrasting Socrates with the sophists, we must remember that in many respects he was one of them; and in deed his age, and later ages called him Socrates the Sophist… But he differed from the Sophists in not attempting to teach new canons of conduct. Far from endeavoring to preach a new rule of self-assertion, which should revolutionize old standards, he sought to elicit from the ordinary conduct of men a clear conception of the rules by which they already acted. He wished men to analyze carefully the duties of life and to arrive at a clear conception of their meaning; but did not wish them to being a new conception, acquired from some other source and remodel life by its aid.”
Socrates adopted a unique mode of discussion to reveal the results of his unrelenting search for truth. He threw a question among his students, friends and disciples and sought to elicit their views and then demonstrate that they were untenable. He thus proved his point by means of questions and answers delving deep into dialogue. His approach was, therefore, something more than being purely deductive or dialectic or both. It is thus clear that his philosophy arose out of his refutation of contemporary notions and his results arrived at by his personal exhortation procedure. Unlike a superstitious thinker who takes everything as right, or even a mechanical student who simply discovers the cause of origin of a thing, Socrates took a theological stand and thus sought to explain the ‘why and what’, i.e. the purpose and raison dieter of things.
The pursuit of Socrates was not after knowledge as such it was after true knowledge- a type of knowledge which was a real and permanent possession of mind, a thing in which true goodness consisted and which could be transmitted to others by way of teaching. He emphasized that goodness was contained in the capacity of assigning true place and proper perspective to everything; it was architectonic and so it might determine due proportions and proper relations of each activity and department of life. Hence, it was the very capacity of soul that brought harmony and balance of all its activities. He also urged that it was not opinion that existed out of common understandings; rather it was a matter pertaining to teleological explanation of things. Hence, he gave a theory of two knowledge’s- the apparent and the real, the former being a subject of mere conventional while the latter of a high morality.
It may be added at this stage that, of course “the knowledge with which Socrates identifies virtue is not anything and everything to which the name of knowledge can be given; it is definitely knowledge of what is my good.” It is due to the fact that the Greek mind made no distinction between the principles of private and those of public conduct, morals and politics; and Socrates consistently applied his conviction of the identify of ‘goodness’ with a right estimate a values to the morality of the State and its statesman. So subtle is the meaning of Socrates here that it has its indelible impact on the mind of Plato and may be seen in his theory of Forms.
A.E.Taylor presents a fine explanation in this regard: “If a thing becomes what it was not before, it becomes beautiful; that is always for on e and the same reason, which Beauty has become present to the thing, if it ceases to be beautiful, Beauty has withdrawn from it. Or in an alternative phrase a thing which is beautiful is so because and, as long as, it partakes of Beauty; a figure is triangular just so long as and because it partakes of the triangle, and so forth. Beauty and triangle are what in this doctrine are called forms or patterns and a thing is what it is, has the characteristics it has, because it partakes of the Forms of which it does partake.” Three important points should note here:
- The things which partake of a Form are all perishable; they begin to be and cease to be, but the Form, Beauty, the Triangle, etc. neither begin to be, nor cease to be; it is strictly, what Dr. Whitehead calls, an eternal object.
- The thing which we perceive by our senses only partakes of or resembles the Forms imperfectly. We never see a stick which is flawlessly straight or a patch which is exactly and perfectly triangular, and we never perhaps meet with an act of perfect justice; we only see approximately straight sticks and approximately straight triangular patches, and come across acts of approximate justice. But the straight line or the triangle about which the geometer tells us is perfectly straight or triangular, and the justice of whom the moralist talks as a duty is perfect justice.
- The things which partake of the Form may be indefinitely many; the Form itself is strictly one…And it is always the form, never this or that thing which partakes of a Form which is the object of which we are talking in science.
Through such an ethical passage Socrates comes to politics. If true knowledge is real knowledge or if true goodness pertains to real morality, and if the knowledge might be taught and thus the people be given reasoned convictions, naturally the state ought to be in the hands of truly intelligent persons and educator be a state function. The ultimate nature of the state ‘is a partnership in virtue’ and it ‘exists not only for the sake of life but for good life.’ He thus objected to the rule of a sovereign assembly where even the tinker and tailor had equal voice- the man who lacked expert knowledge based on first principles for the conduct of political affairs and who were incapable of transmitting their political instincts. His final conclusion thus rested in favor of an absolute aristocracy of intellect. A.M. Adams says: “Socrates, like Hobbes, asserted the uncompromising authority and irresponsibility of ruling power.”
In the world of political philosophy, the immortality of Socrates is not due to his own life and death but because of his great student named Plato. Maxey says: “I Plato Socrates lived once again”. His two valuable ideas (the meaning of virtue and best state) fundamentally conditioned Plato’s mind. His identification of virtue with knowledge enabled him (Plato) to understand the abstract concept of virtue as something that could be learned, taught, acquired and transmitted. This thing led Plato to the quest of a precise definition and thus he took from his teacher the capacity to define ethical concepts and adding scientific application to them.
The political philosophy of Socrates may be criticized on two grounds.
Firstly, whatever we have of him, it forms part of the secondary evidence and an exclusive reliance on it may lack authenticity. He does not explain the nature of principles by which true knowledge may be put into action.
Secondly, his best state may lead to the tyranny of the wisest. Barker says: “He preached the sovereignty of true knowledge; he hardly explained the nature of the principles by which true knowledge must act…But Socrates preached the sovereignty of knowledge, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of knowledge might easily become, in its political application, a doctrine of enlightened despotism.”