A good (and relatively entertaining, at least if you are interested in philosophy) introduction to Socrates, the founder of Greek (and, by extension, Western) philosophy.

What follows is just a collection of quotes from the book.

His pious references to the wisdom of God (sometimes he speaks of a single God, sometimes of the gods) are apt to disguise how unconventional his attitude to divinity was. When he says that only God has wisdom, he seems to mean this figuratively, just as one might shrug and say, 'God knows!' For consider how he sets about interpreting 'God's' words and trying to tease out hints of 'His' wisdom. The Delphic oracle was as authentic a voice of God as any available: yet Socrates did not just accept what it said but instead set out 'to check the truth of it'. He says elsewhere that 'it has always been my nature never to accept advice from any of my friends unless reflection shows that it is the best course that reason offers'; he seems to have adopted exactly the same approach to the advice of God. Presented with the divine pronouncement that no man is wiser than Socrates, he refuses to take this at face value until he has satisfied himself that a true meaning can be found for it.

(pp. 19-20)

For all his talk of ignorance, and his insistence that he merely acted as a midwife for the ideas of others, Socrates did have strong beliefs of his own. Unfortunately he never wrote them down. For one of these beliefs was that philosophy is an intimate and collaborative activity; it is a matter for discussions among small groups of people who argue together in order that each might find the truth for himself. The spirit of such a pastime cannot accurately ba captured in a lecture or treatise. That is one reason why Plato and Xenophon (and several of their contemporaries whose works are now lost) chose to present Socrates' teaching in the form of dialogues. Dialogue had been his métier and dialogue would be his monument.

(p. 24)

Socrates pursued the virtues because he felt morally obliged to, here and now. Earthly life imposed its own duties, brought its own blessings and was not simply a preparation for something else. Plato's motives were less straightforward because he had at least one eye fixed on something beyond. One belief about virtue that the two men held in common is that the pursuit of goodness is not only a matter of acting in certain ways but also an intellectual project. Yet they saw this project differently. Socrates believed that coming to understand the virtues was a necessary precondition for possessing them. A man could not be truly virtuous unless he knew what virtue was, and the only way he might be able to get this knowledge was by examining accounts of the particular virtues. That is why Socrates went around questioning people and arguing with them. Plato believed in this argumentative search too, but he also interpreted it as something almost mystical. While Socrates saw the search for definitions as a means to an end, namely the exercise of virtue, Plato saw the search as an end in itself. To look for a definition was, for Plato, to seek the ideal, eternal, unchanging Form of whatever was under discussion; the contemplation of such Forms was itself the highest good. That is what he thought Socrates' questioning really amounted to and what it ought to aim at.

(pp. 29-30)

Socrates' theory starts and ends with the soul; in the Apology, he says that the most important thing in life is to look to its welfare. The soul, he says elsewhere, is that which is 'mutilated by wrong actions and befited by right ones'. He does not mean the actions of others, but those of oneself. To do good is to benefit one's own soul and to do wrong is to harm it. Since the soul's welfare is paramount, no other sort of harm is so important. Nothing that other people can do to you can harm you enough to cancel out the benefit you bestow on yourself by acting rightly. It follows that bad people ultimately harm only themselves: 'Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death'.

Socrates therefore has no fear of the court which is trying him. He will not stoop to dishonourable behaviour in order to win acquittal, for 'the difficulty is not so much to escape death; the real difficulty is to escape from doing wrong, which is far more fleet of foot'. One reason why it is hard to stop evil catching up with you is that if someone tries to do you wrong, it is often tempting to try to get your own back on them. But since it is always wrong to do evil —which would harm your soul whatever your excuse for doing it might be— Socrates points out that one must never return evil for evil. In other words, one must turn the other cheek.

(pp. 45-46)

For Socrates, the connection between virtue and wisdom was so close that he seems in some sense to have identified the two. They certainly seemed to run into one another. According to Socrates, if someone has any of the other virtues, he must have wisdom as well —because otherwise he would not have managed to be virtuous. And if he has wisdom, he must have all of the virtues —because, being wise, he will realize that he cannot be happy without practising all the other virtues too. As we have seen, Socrates thought that moral behaviour benefits the soul and that a person who acts wickedly is doing himself a spiritual mischief. If this is true, then anyone who is genuinely wise will realize this fact. Anyone who realizes it —and who values his own soul, as any wise person surely must— will therefore try to avoid doing wrong. This train of thought explains why Socrates held that nobody does evil knowingly; for if someone does wrong, the only plausible explanation for his doing so is that he does not realize that his actions will harm his soul. He is, in effect, acting out of ignorance. All in all, these sorts of considerations supported Socrates' idea that if his discussions helped people towards wisdom, he would thereby be helping them towards virtue too.

(pp. 48-49)

Entertainment: 6/10
Content: 6/10