For understanding the trends of ancient Greek moral philosophy, especially the departure which Socratic doctrines represent, it is necessary to begin with Sophism. Actually, Sophists gave a practical turn to Greek philosophy. The Greek philosophy began as speculation into the nature of the cosmos oruniverse andintotheultimateprincipleof allthings. Asisto be expected,theearlyspeculations on the subject could make little headway and this led to scepticism about abstract philosophical thinking.
Around this time, the contacts of Greeks with the rest of the world began and changed their outlook.Earlier, Greeks believed that their morals and ideals are not merely the conventions of their own society, but are rooted in natural order. Their morals are not subjective views of a particular society but are objective and universal. The Greek thinkers began to wonder whether various national and local ways of life, customs, religions and moral codes which their contacts with outside world revealed are conventions or naturally given. They began to doubt the earlier view that Greek culture and morals are ideal and rooted in nature. Greek morality no longer seemed ideal or unique. Morals, it seemed, are neither universal nor absolute but are relative to a given society. As we shall see, Socrates opposed this sort of moral relativism.
Further, Sophists unliketheearlierGreekphilosophers, had no interest in discoveringobjective truth about the external world. They were practical teachers. The contemporary Greek city state opened out many opportunities of political advancement to talented youth. But for this purpose, the political aspirants had to cultivate skills of clever oratory for swaying the masses. An avenue of making money in ancient Greece was through arguing in law suits which also presupposed oratorical skills.Sophistswereitinerant professors who travelledfromcityto cityandgaveinstructionto young men. They taught them grammer, interpretation of poets, the philosophy of mythology and religion, etc. Their main focus was however on rhetoric or on presentation of arguments in attractive and pleasing garb. This earned them a bad name. It seemed that Sophists taught the art of making the unjust appear the just cause. They also taught, so people felt, how to win law suits by hook or crook and how best to advance one’s political career.
More importantly, Sophists put man at the centre of their doctrines. Protagoras, the most renowned sophist expresses this view in the following beautiful passage: “...man is the measure of all things, of those that are, that they are, of those that are not, that they are not.” This may mean that the community, society or the whole of humanity is the standard or criterion of truth. However, Protagoras regarded moral judgements or valuations as relative. “For I hold that whatever practices seem right and laudable to any particular state are so for that State, so long as it holds by them.”
Socrates believed that moral judgements and standards are objective and universal. This is the reason why Socrates discusses moral concepts such as truth, courage and justice at great length. For Sophists seem to advocate extreme relativism: “what appears to you to be true is true for you, and what appears true to me is true for me.” This is pure subjectivism. However, many modern philosophers feel that the ancient moral thinkers criticized Sophists too harshly. With this background, we turn to Socrates.
Socrates As the First Systematic Moral Thinker
Socrates is the first systematic moral thinker in Western philosophical tradition. He belonged to the Athenian republic in ancient Greece. Early on, Athens was a city State but gradually became an empire. Socrates lived in the fifth century B.C. (469-399). To understand his ideas, we need to have some historical background of his times.
Around this period, there were wars between Persians and Greeks. The Greeks won a notable victory at Marathon in the first Persian war. In the victories over Persia, Sparta, a city state and rival of Athens played a major role. While the Athenian republic was a democracy, Sparta was a military oligarchy. Under Pericles, a democratically minded ruler, Athens prospered and witnessed great artistic efflorescence. The famous ancient Greek dramatists - Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
– belonged to fifth century B.C. Incidentally, Aristophanes, a comic poet of this time, lampooned Socrates in the drama Clouds.
The rivalrybetween Athens and Spartaresultedintheoutbreak of thePeloponnesianWar in 431
B.C. Sparta defeated Athens in the war, and set up in Athens, an oligarchic government, known as the Thirty Tyrants. Some of these tyrants (such as Critias, their head) had been pupils of Socrates. They were overthrown within a year and democracy was restored. The political atmosphere became poisoned in the wake of war, plague, defeat and amidst widespread suspicions about conspiracies and treacheries against government.
Trial of Socrates
It was at this time that Socratesfell foul of thepolitical rulers in Athens. He was accused of corrupting the youth and of impiety towards gods. At the end of the trial, Socrates was condemned to death. Plato, a great philosopher and disciple of Socrates, gives a poignant account of the trial in The Apology. It is a great Platonic dialogue. In those times, philosophers used to write their treatises in the form of dramaticdialogues among the participants.
Philosophers have gleaned the moral doctrines of Socrates mainly from various dialogues which Plato wrote. Some of the famous Platonic dialogues, besides Apology, are: Republic, Phaedo, Protagoras, Meno, and Gorgias. Many philosophers think that the Socrates portrayed by Plato in his dialogues may not be historical but fictional. We can bypass this question and proceed straight to a few important details of Socrates’s personality and then outline his moral theories.
Socrates was a man of modest means. In his younger days, he served in the army, and acquitted himself with courage and honour. He then settled down in Athens. He spent his time in disputation, and taught philosophy to the young without charging fees. He carried on his discussions in market places and other public forums. He was high-minded and was indifferent to worldly success. He was a saintly character with a beautiful soul. Far from being an arm-chair moral thinker, Socrates practised what he preached.
His trial and death have created a halo of moral heroism around him. He has been put on the same pedestal as Jesus, Galileo, and Sir Thomas More. In his tract, On Liberty, Mill wrote, “Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named Socrates between whom and the legal authorities of his time there took place a memorable collision.” In modern terminology, Socrates would be called ‘an anti-establishment thinker’.
The philosophic interests of Socrates, unlike those of his predecessors, were ethical rather than scientific. He turned away from cosmic speculations and brought ‘Philosophy down from Heaven to Earth’. He focused on human relations of life and on the various ways in which men in their different rolesinteract withoneanother.Hethoughtthatthesealoneliewithinthecompassof knowledge,and are capable of yielding lessons for proper conduct of life. He was a practical moralist in this sense.
According to Socrates, Ethics has an end or a standard; the precepts or means of achieving the end flow from ethical theory. But he did not precisely state what it is. The Greek philosophers developed the concept of the Summum Bonum at a later time. Summum Bonum is the highest good or the ultimate good according to which values and priorities are established in an ethical system. Socrates (and Plato) referred to the final end of conduct as ‘the art of dealing with human beings’; ‘the art of behaving in society’; and ‘the science of human happiness’.
Socratesputsmoral considerationsabove allelse.Theonlyworthwhilepursuit formenisvirtue- the noble and the praiseworthy. Doing-well consists in excelling in whatever one does. Knowledge is a prerequisite for good behaviour. He preferred the pleasures of self-improvement and of duty as opposed to indulgences, honours, and worldly advancement. In ‘Apology’, he reproaches men for pursuing wealth and glory more than wisdom and virtue. The soul can be perfected by acquiring virtues. In modern terminology, for Socrates, virtue is the highest psychological good and is always to be preferred to material good. Life is not worth living if soul is destroyed, and wrong doing corrodes it.
Unjust acts signify improper behaviour towards others. To quote his examples, it is unjust to rob temples, betray friends, steal, break oaths, commit adultery, and mistreat parents. Socrates opposed wrongdoing even when his life was at stake. His friends arranged for his escape from prison so that he can evade the death penalty. Socrates declined their offer saying that it would be unjust to do so. He said that we should not act wrongly or unjustly, even when others are unjust to us. As we saw before, Socrates shows admirable moral heroism by refusing to abandon his principles and by refusing to escapedeaththroughimmoral means.
Socrates holds that no one knowingly does what is bad. This view is known as moral intellectualism. It means that only knowledge is needed to make all men virtuous. Socrates thinks that men desire what is virtuous or good for them. If they desire bad things or act wrongly, it is due
to their ignorance. In this conception, virtue is knowledge and ensures good action. Further, virtue is sufficient for happiness. It is noteworthy that in Christian (as in Hindu) ethics, a pure heart (not necessarily knowledge) leads to virtuous action, and can be found both among the ignorant and the learned.
Common experience shows that men often crave for things which they know are bad and pursue activities which they know are harmful. They drive recklessly or take drugs. Even saints, not to speak of ordinary mortals, succumb to worldly temptations. Moral knowledge by itself is inadequate to motivate men to be virtuous or follow the right course of action in a given situation. Hence, the Socratic conception is rather simplistic. Men often err knowingly and are unable to resist temptations. This is what the saying, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” means. Thus Socrates has overlooked the complexities of moral psychology.
Aristotle criticizes the moral intellectualism of Socrates or the view that virtue is a kind of knowledge. Aristotlebelieves that the essence of moral life consists in cultivation of good habits. The two views can in fact be reconciled. Virtue involves both knowledge and habit. Virtue is, in fact, a perspective. The virtuous man lives continuously in a moral universe or simply follows moral duty. To live continuously in a moral universe is a habit; but simultaneously, it is a form of insight. The man who lives in a different universe sees things habitually in a different way through a differently coloured glass. To be virtuous, therefore, is to possess habitually a certain kind of knowledge or insight.
Virtue is both a kind of knowledge and a kind of habit. Habit as applied to moral character, is not mere custom. It is not comparable to habits such as one’s walking or speaking style. Habits of moral significance are habits of deliberate choice. As deliberate choice depends on thought or reason, in order to choose the right, we must know the right. Thus, knowledge and habit both go into virtuous conduct.
Moderate Living
Socrates advocates mild asceticism. A philosopher need not give up all ordinary pleasures, but he should not be a slave to them. He must be entirely concerned with the soul, and not with the body. “He would like, as far as he can, to getaway from the body and to turn to the soul.” Philosophers, Socrates continues, try to dissever the soul from communion with the body, whereas other people think that life is not worth living for a man who has “no sense of pleasure and no part in bodily pleasure.”
We also find in Socratesthe religiousideas which devalue body and look upon it as an impediment to spiritual progress. “It [body] needs food and is prone to disease. It fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all ”. Mental purity means freedom from slavery to the body and its needs. Socrates also thought that body is a hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge, and that sight and hearing are inaccurate witnesses: true existence, if revealed to the soul at all, is revealed in thought, not in sense.
The link between morality and theology was tenuous in Socrates’ thought. Theology consists of study of philosophical and moral doctrines of a religion. Systematicreligiousthinking as for example in Judaism, Christianity or Buddhism did not exist in ancient Greece. Early Christian writers referred to Greek religious ideas as paganism. However, Christian writers were greatly influenced by Plato
and Aristotle. Greeks worshipped many gods. Socrates was pious and reverential towards gods. So far as the gods administered the world in a right spirit, they would show favour to the virtuous.
Socratic Method
Socrates was a reflective moralist who analysed the moral categories then emerging into contemporary discourse. Platonic dialogues are discussions of definitions of ethical terms such as temperance or moderation, friendship, courage. Socrates consistently maintains that he knows nothing, and is only wiser than others in knowing that he knows nothing. His method of discussion consisted in putting a series of questions to others, and in the process, exposing their pretensions to knowledge. This could be the reason for the hostility which he provoked. In this connection, the following incident which Bertrand Russell cites is instructive.
He would ask such questions as: “If I wanted a shoe mended, whom I should employ?” To which some ingenuous youth would answer: “A shoemaker, O Socrates.” He would go on to carpenters, coppersmiths, etc., and finally ask some such question as “who should mend the Ship of State?” When he fell into conflict with the Thirty Tyrants, Critias, their chief, who knew his ways from having studied under him, forbade him to continue teaching the young, and added: “You had better be done with your shoemakers, carpenters, and coppersmiths. These must be pretty well trodden out at heel by this time, considering the circulation you have given them”
Other Aspects of Socratic Thought
We need to consider only a few more aspects of Socratic morals. In one interpretation, the trial of Socrates is seen as a conflict between State power on one side and individual liberty and freedom of speech on the other. Whatever may be the status of contemporaneous law, the question arises about whether an individual can somehow put his own sense of conscience or moral integrity even above the law.
This is a perennial question in political theory. Even today, we have many activists who try to act as self appointed conscience keepers of the nation. They are often active on issues such as Naxalism, minorityrights, secularism,tribal rights and environment. They also espousethe human rights of those accused of terrorism. In these matters, the question of balancing security threats to nation and human/individual liberties becomes important.
During his trial, Socrates says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It means that a worthy life is possible only if we continually reflect on our thinking and remove contradictions and incoherence from it. This is a typically intellectual conception perhaps inapplicable to common people. But it reflects the sublime quality of Socratic thought. We referred to an interpretation of the trial of Socrates as a conflict between State (or political) power and freedom of speech. In another interpretation, it can be seen as the result of Socrates’ highly individual quest for self perfection.
We may also note that Socrates has given a new direction to the then prevalent moral values. Greek epic poets, Homer and Hesiod, set out certain exemplary models of heroic virtue and civic life. The virtues of this tradition were the virtues of a warrior culture, of war-like peoples and men at war. This conception of the citizen contained certain notions of citizen loyalty and patriotism which were created and shaped by the poetic tradition going back to Homer. Socrates has replaced the traditional view of morality. Socratic conception of citizenship emphasises the individual’s own
powers of independent reason, argument and judgment. The Socratic citizen is unlikely to defer to or rely on such public goods as custom, authority and tradition.
Many centuries had to pass before the emergence of the modern State and its free citizens. Moral thought also went through many turns and twists over this long period. However, if we make due allowances for modern trends and tastes, the moral reaching of Socrates still holds its ground. The rigorous analysis of moral ideas which Socrates pioneered is a procedure which modern philosophy still follows. Conceptual analysis and clarification of ideas are parts of current philosophical practice. Modern philosophers adopt a positivist approach to morals which implies that they analyse but rarely commit themselves to a given moral code.
Summary of Socrates’ Philosophy
• Socrates was the first systematic moral thinker.
• He led an exemplary life spending most of his time in philosophical discussion.
• He was accused of corrupting the youth and of impiety towards gods. At the end of the trial, Socrates was condemned to death.
• His trial and death have created a halo of moral heroism around him.
• Political activists like Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King were inspired by him.
• His pupil Plato, a great philosopher, outlined many Socratic ideas in the famous dialogues:
Apology, Republic, Phaedo, Protagoras, Meno, and Gorgias.
• The philosophic interests of Socrates, unlike those of his predecessors, were ethical rather than scientific. He did not speculate on the origin and nature of the universe.
• According to Socrates, the only worthwhile pursuit for men is virtue–the noble and the praiseworthy.
• Unjust acts signify improper behaviour towards others.
• Socrates holds that no one knowingly does what is bad. This view is known as moral intellectualism.
• But this runs counter to the fact that men often err knowingly and are unable to resist temptations.
• Socrates advocates mild asceticism.
• Socrates was a reflective moralist who analysed the moral categories then emerging into contemporary discourse. Platonic dialogues are discussions of definitions of ethical terms such as temperance or moderation, friendship, courage.
• Socrates says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
• Socrates had given a new direction to the then prevalent moral values. He shifted attention from heroic virtues. His conception of citizenship emphasises the individual’s own powers of independent reasoning, argument and judgment.