I’ve just posted on my Blog about: Plato’s Socrates https://t.co/VkVrlmyiPw

I’ve just posted on my Blog about: Plato’s Socrates https://t.co/VkVrlmyiPw

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER)
Aug 25, 2021

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Plato’s Socrates

I was saying in class yesterday that my preferred approach to class prep these days is to rise early and try to come up with something fresh and novel to say about the philosopher(s) du jour.  So, what’s new with Socrates and Plato?

Well, according to Xenephon, Plato’s Socrates is “pure rationality” whereas the real Socrates was a dispenser of practical “how to live” advice.

Those who know Socrates mainly through the writings of Plato – Xenophon’s near-exact contemporary – will find Xenophon’s Socrates something of a surprise. Plato’s Socrates claims to know nothing, and flamboyantly refutes the knowledge claims of others. In the pages of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, however, Socrates actually answers philosophical questions, dispenses practical life advice, provides arguments proving the existence of benevolent gods, converses as if peer-to-peer with a courtesan, and even proposes a domestic economy scheme whereby indigent female relatives can become productive through the establishment of a textile business at home. Socrates’ conversation, according to Xenophon, ‘was ever of human things’. This engaged, intensely practical, human Socrates can be refreshing to encounter. Anyone who has felt discomfort at how the opponents of Plato’s Socrates suffer relentless public refutations and reductions to absurdity can take some comfort in Xenophon’s Socrates who ‘tries to cure the perplexities of his friends’.

Trying to cure the perplexities of your friends, forever conversing “of human things,” and generally just trying to ameliorate the human condition through an antiquarian version of talk therapy sounds exactly like what we should expect of a philosopher who claims to know nothing of things in the heavens and under the ground. 

Humility and humanity go together well. The real mystery is why a Platonically hyper-rationalized Socrates ever had any credibility among scholars at all. We’re accustomed to saying that Plato’s our only credible source on Socrates, and to dismissing Xenophon without a hearing. Bertrand Russell called him stupid. But we’re more likely to inch closer to the historical Socrates by triangulating our vision and consulting other sources. It would be stupid not to.

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