Socrates was the son of Phaenarete, a midwife, and Sophroniscus, a stone-carver. In Plato's Euthyphro (lib), he traces his ancestry to the mythical sculptor Daedalus, so it may be that he too practiced his father's craft early in life. He served as a hoplite (heavily armored infantryman) in the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, where he gained attention for his courage, his capacity to tolerate hunger, thirst, and cold, and powers of concentration that could keep him rooted to the spot for hours on end. Since hoplites had to own property and provide their own weapons, Socrates cannot have been very poor. Still, he seems to have been exceptionally frugal in his habits. He often went barefoot, seldom bathed, and wore the same thin cloak winter and summer. In a society that worshipped male beauty, he was noteworthy for his ugliness. He had a snub-nose, bulging eyes, thick lips, and a pot belly. Yet his personal magnetism was such that many of the best looking young men avidly sought out his company. In Plato's Symposium, indeed, he characterizes himself as a master of the art of erotic attraction (ta erotika), though that characterization no doubt involves some ironic punning, since the verb erotan means to ask questions.
In 406 BCE, Socrates served on the steering committee (prytamis) of the Athenian Assembly, where he alone voted against an illegal motion to try as a group the generals who had failed to pick up the bodies of the dead after the sea battle at Arginusae. Later, at the risk of his own life, he disobeyed the unjust order of the Thirty
Tyrants to bring in Leon of Salamis for execution.
In 423 BCE, he was made the subject of Aristophanes' comedy, Clouds, as he was of other non-extant comedies by other authors, including Amipsias and Eupolis. In Clouds, he appears: first, as the head of the phrontisterion, a school where, for a small fee, one can learn the just logic, which represents traditional aristocratic values, and also the unjust logic, which represents the new values of the sophists; second, as the
ascetic high priest of a mystery religion, who teaches a variety of sciences, including a mechanistic theory of the cosmos, on the basis of which he denies the existence of Zeus and the other gods of tradition, worshipping in their place the various forms of Air, including the eponymous Clouds. It is not much of a reach to conclude that Socrates must have looked enough like other sophists to lend popular credibility to Aristophanes' portrait.
In any case, he was brought to trial in 399 BCE on a charge of corrupting the youth by teaching them not to believe in the gods, found guilty (in large part, he claims, because of the prejudice against him fanned by Aristophanes), and condemned by a close vote to death by hemlock poisoning. Central, it seems, to the prosecution's case was one of the most puzzling aspects of Socrates: his daimonion or spiritual voice, which held him back whenever he was about to do something wrong. Though this may, in fact, have been no different from other acceptable forms of religious practice, in someone already suspected of being an atheistic sophist, it no doubt seemed - or could be made to seem - much more sinister and subversive.
Socrates' personal characteristics played, and continue to play, a very significant role in attracting devotees to him. He demonstrates - what every teacher knows - that charisma can be as important as content. If Socrates hadn't been erotikos, if he hadn't had that certain compelling something, who would have listened to what he had to say? As it is, however, many listened. And since Socrates himself wrote nothing, it is to those who did that we must turn for information. The problem is that some of the writings of those who knew him - Antisthenes, Phaedo of Elis, Eucleides of Megara, Aristippus of Cyrene, Aeschines of Sphettos - have disappeared or exist only in very fragmentary form, while others that we do possess - those of Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon - present us with very different portraits. Moreover, Plato's own portrait is a double one, at least: the Socrates of his early dialogues (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Hippias Major, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus) is thought to be based to some extent on the historical figure (they are often called "Socratic" dialogues for this reason). The Socrates who appears in his transitional (Euthydemus, Gorgias, Meno, Protagoras), middle (Cratylus, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic,
Symposium, Theaetetus), and some of his late (Critias, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, Timaeus, Laws, Seventh Letter) dialogues, however, seems to be increasingly a mouthpiece for his own developing doctrines. When we look at Socrates, therefore, we are perforce looking at many potentially different figures. For some were influenced by the historical Socrates, some by portrayals of him only some of which we know, some more by the man and his character, and some more by his specific doctrines.
Nonetheless, a few significant ideas come close to being the common property of these different figures: (1) knowledge or theory (logos) is important for virtue; (2) virtue is important for happiness; (3) the sort of self-mastery (enkrateia), selfsufficiency (autarkeia), and moral toughness (karteria) exhibited by Socrates with
regard to pleasures and pains is important for happiness; (4) the use of questioning based on epagoge (induction, arguing from parallel cases) is important with regard to the possession of knowledge, and so of virtue; (5) eros and friendship have important roles to play in philosophy, and philosophy in life; (6) the traditional teachers of virtue (the poets), as well as the alleged embodiments of wisdom (the politicians), are
deficient in various ways that questioning reveals.
These ideas are vague, of course, and so can be understood in various ways. Socrates could hardly have influenced Cynics, Cyrenaics, Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics had it been otherwise. Important as these developments are, however, they are overshadowed by the decisive role Socrates played in Plato's thought and, via it, in Aristotle's.
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