Workshop Abstracts

Carl Huffman, “The Secret Life of Socrates”

Emese Mogyorodi, “The Dangers and Blessing of philosophia: Socrates vs. the ‘Gentlemen of Athens’ on the Good Life”

Don Morrison, “Some remarks on Xenophon’s Moral Psychology”

Tim O'Keefe, "Socrates' Therapeutic Use of Inconsistency in the Axiochus"

David Robertson, “Miscommunication in Plato's Gorgias”

Daniel Graham and James Siebach, “Plato’s Charmides: Intellectualism on Trial”

Carl Huffman, “The Secret Life of Socrates” (back to top)

    Scholars attempting to discover the historical Socrates have relied mostly on Plato with a bow towards Xenophon and a glance at Aristophanes. None of these authors themselves are primarily interested in providing an historical account of Socrates, however, and many scholars now regard the search for the historical Socrates as futile. There has been surprising neglect of a source who has, prima facie, an important claim to our attention, if we are searching for the historical Socrates, since he sets out precisely to write a life of Socrates. That author of course is Aristoxenus of Tarentum, the great musical theorist and member of the Lyceum under Aristotle. The reason that so little attention has been paid to Aristoxenus is not far to seek. He is universally regarded as bitterly hostile to Plato and Socrates. He is the one who tells us that Plato cribbed the Republic from Protagoras. Even the editor of the fragments of Aristoxenus, Wehrli, describes Aristoxenus' treatment of Socrates as "libelous" (1945: 65). Guthrie describes Aristoxenus as a "curiously sour character" whose account is gossipy and "bears the marks of malice and scandal" (1971: 70). Most modern treatments assume that Aristoxenus has been put in his place and don't bother to mention him (e.g. Vlastos 1991, 1994, Nehamas 1998). The purpose of my paper is to argue that there is no good reason to think that Aristoxenus presented even a negative account of Socrates let alone a libelous or malicious one.
    The fundamental point is that we have only fragments of Aristoxenus' Life of Socrates, and there are too many different ways to put those fragments together to simply dismiss their evidence as gossip. It is true that Aristoxenus said 1) that as a boy Socrates was the lover of his teacher Archelaus, or more properly the beloved, 2) that Socrates was subject to fits of anger in which he spoke and acted outrageously 3) that he earned money and may have worked as a stone cutter 4) that he had a strong sex drive and had sex both with his wives (of whom he had two) and with prostitutes 5) that some criticized Socrates for seeking to understand humanity without first trying to understand the divine. Not all of these assertions need to be taken as attacks on Socrates let alone libelous ones. Aristoxenus also reports that there were few men more persuasive than Socrates, that he was easily satisfied and required few material goods, and that he was remarkable in voice, speech, appearance and character. In my paper I examine what are usually taken to be Aristoxenus' attacks on Socrates and show that many of them were not attacks at all and that, while others point to character flaws in Socrates, they are balanced by praise. Aristoxenus was presenting a rounded view of Socrates that may have been closer to the truth than anything we find in Plato, Aristophanes or Xenophon.

Emese Mogyorodi, “The Dangers and Blessing of philosophia: Socrates vs. the ‘Gentlemen of Athens’ on the Good Life” (back to top)

    In my paper I argue that Plato’s Apology provides not only a defence for Socrates, but also a multi-faceted politico-philosophical and social-psychological analysis of the meaning of the charges themselves, of the motivations for the trial, of the reasons for Socrates’ execution and, finally, accounts for the narrow margin by which he was convicted. This analysis exposes the common roots of both the political and the religious accusations, roots that in Plato’s insight lie deeper than the surface charges that he had anti-democratic views or was a dangerous religious innovator. Plato’s analysis also reveals that the apparently plausible psychological explanation, that Socrates was convicted because most of his judges could not get rid of some unfounded prejudices against him, is superficial.
    In recent years there has been renewed interest in the reasons for the trial and execution of Socrates, where interpreters seem to be largely divided between two basic views. On one distinctive and ever popular view Socrates fell victim to the aftermath of the democratic restoration of 403 B.C. because of his unconcealed anti-democratic sentiments and his well-known association with oligarchic politicians. On another, recently more frequently advocated view, Socrates was put to trial and executed because of his religious ideas, which were either misapprehended by the jury or were indeed destructive to traditional religious sentiment or practice. As a tendency, these opposing lines of interpretation about the motives for the trial apparently exclude each other mutually, as they also seem to have done in antiquity (Plato’s and Xenophon’s Apologies vs. Polycrates’ Accusation).
    As to the political interpretation of the trial, one of the most puzzling problems advocates of this view need to confront is that our primary sources, Plato’s and Xenophon’s Apologies seem to be notoriously silent about the issue and address only the religious charges explicitly. Thus, the apparent failure or disinterest of Socrates to provide a defence against these covert charges made many interpreters look primarily for the religious motivations of his trial and execution.
    However, Socrates’ failure to provide an explicit defence against the political insinuations can be exploited to make a rather grim case for the political interpretation. It might be argued that by addressing the religious charges he (or Plato) was “diverting attention from the real issues”, because he was in fact guilty. Thus, for Socrates’ defenders it is vital that his defence provide an adequate response to the political insinuations. I maintain that Socrates’ best advocate, Plato, does provide a defence against both charges. It must be admitted, however, that this defence is far from explicit in the Apology. The question, then, is not why Socrates fails to provide a defence against the political charges, but why he provides it in such an indirect way?
    If we look at the recently more popular religious interpretations of the trial, on the whole it occurs that the agenda of his “prosecutors” tends to be completed too successfully. Defenders, in turn, either prove too successful, too, in that they leave his condemnation unexplained, or they resort to the plain psychological explanations, that Socrates was condemned because some of his peers could not get rid of their unfounded prejudices against him, or because they were enraged by his refusal to plead with them.
    My view is that by connecting the prejudices against Socrates with his Delphic mission, the activity Socrates calls “cross-examination” (elenchos), Plato exposes the underlying common roots of both the political and the religious charges. Since Socrates’ mission has to do with the way he came to conceive of and pursue philosophy upon his interpretation of the Delphic oracle, the question arises: what is it in this unique conception of philosophia and its pursuit that proved so intolerable for the Athens of the early 4th century B.C. that they executed Socrates for it?
    In Plato’s presentation it is clear that philosophia for Socrates meant a way of living based on a certain conception of the good life. I contend that Plato leads back the ultimate conflict of Socrates and the ‘gentlemen of Athens’ (i.e. those convicting him) to a conflict rooted in their irreconcilable conceptions about the good life with its religious and political dimensions. Thus, the question I more specifically address is whether Socrates’ conception meant a genuine menace for the traditional existential values of the polis in general, or only proved intolerable on certain conditions.
    Through an analysis of Socrates’ reaction to the oracle, his puzzle over its meaning, the way he devised out of his aporia, and his later dynamic engagement with the oracle, I argue that philosophy for him ultimately involved keeping the delicate balance on the razor’s edge dividing epistemic dogmatism and scepticism. On the basis of Socrates’ conversation with Euthyphro in the dialogue named after him, on the one hand, and with Anytus in the Meno, on the other, I further argue that Plato found the common roots of both the religious and the political aversions to Socrates in the aversion to philosophia conceived of in this sense, and put into practice via the elenchos.
    Plato also suggests, that it was neither for traditional religious sentiment, nor for the traditional political community of the polis in general, that this notion and practice of philosophia proved dangerous, but only for those who responded to recent social traumas in a way that made them unable to tolerate, or made them all at once seek to exorcise the challenge posed by the Socratic practice of philosophia. However, as Plato presents it, this intolerance is not an isolated event in the history of Athens, but has archetypal politico-philosophical and social-psychological dimensions. Thus, I conclude, Plato accounts for the votes both of those who condemned and those who acquitted Socrates, while exposing the underlying common roots of the political and religious hatred against him in a way which is of universal social philosophical import.

Don Morrison, “Some remarks on Xenophon’s Moral Psychology” (back to top)

    The moral psychology of Xenophon’s Socrates is a topic that is extremely rich, yet almost unexplored .
    Plato’s Socrates is typically viewed as either a psychological or a rational egoist. I argue elsewhere that the evidence for egoism in Plato’s “Socratic” dialogues is surprisingly weak. By contrast, the clearest statement of Socratic egoism is found, not in Plato, but in Xenophon , at Memorabilia 3.9.4.
    Evidently, Xenophon’s Socrates did not believe in the possibility of altruism. Of course he recognizes, and praises, the fact that people act to benefit their family, their friends, and their country. But Socrates does seem to think that whenever a person acts that way, the person believes that by benefiting their family, friends, and country, they also benefit themselves. Various passages in the Memorabilia and other writings support this interpretation.
    The strongest grounds I am aware of for denying that Xenophon’s Socrates believes in psychological egoism is that Xenophon’s Socrates also has—for the period-- an unusually clear grasp of the concept of duty. At Mem. IV, 6, 6 , Socrates asks rhetorically, “Do you know of any who do anything other than what they think they ought (ha oiontai dein)?”
    But when viewed in light of other passages, this text turns out to be compatible with Socratic egoism. The “ought” that Socrates uses here is the “ought” of rationality—so that the force of Socrates’ remark here (as in parallel texts) is that all people do what they think they (all things considered) ought to do. What Xenophon’s Socrates denies is weakness of will.
    Let’s distinguish two varieties:
    Strong weakness of will occurs when those who truly know what action is in their best interest, nonetheless do something else.
    Weak weakness of will occurs when those who (merely) believe that something is in their best interest, nonetheless do something else.
    A variety of texts show that Xenophon’s Socrates denies both types of weakness of will. But Xenophon’s Socrates also clearly believes in a multi-part soul. By contrast, standard interpretations of Plato’s Socrates tie his denial of weakness of will to a denial of a multi-part soul (e.g. of the type we find in Plato’s Republic). How can Xenophon’s Socrates accept multiple parts of the soul which can struggle and overpower each other, and yet deny weakness of will?
    The Memorabilia gives us a surprisingly sophisticated account of the psychodynamics of the soul which make this view coherent. Crucial to the story is Socrates’ self-control or enkrateia. This virtue represents one of the greatest divides between Plato’s and Xenophon’s portraits of Socrates. In contrast to Plato’s more intellectualist portrait , Xenophon presents enkrateia as Socrates’ most outstanding virtue.

Tim O'Keefe, "Socrates' Therapeutic Use of Inconsistency in the Axiochus" (back to top)

    The few people familiar with the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus generally have a low opinion of it. It’s easy to see why: the dialogue is a mélange of Platonic, Epicurean and Cynic arguments against the fear of death, seemingly tossed together with no regard whatsoever for their consistency. As Furley notes, the Axiochus appears to be horribly confused. Whereas in the Apology Socrates argues that death is either annihilation or a relocation of the soul, and is a blessing either way, “the Socrates of the Axiochus wants to have it both ways”: death is both annihilation and a release of the soul from the body into a better realm. This may be used to construct a valid argument for the conclusion that death is not evil, but at the expense of having a contradiction as one of its premises.
    But D. S. Hutchinson has recently proposed that these inconsistencies shouldn’t surprise us if we view the Axiochus as “an unconventional version of a very conventional genre—the consolation letter.” In this paper I expand on Hutchinson’s brief suggestion and argue that the Axiochus can be rehabilitated by paying attention to its genre. Although the Axiochus does display many similarities to the consolation letter, the shift from letter to dialogue does—pace Hutchinson—significantly affect what’s going on. Within the dialogue, Socrates behaves toward Axiochus in a way similar to the way the author of a consolation letter behaves towards the letter’s reader: he is willing to use inconsistent arguments, borrowed from any source, in order to soothe the patient. However, in depicting this type of consolatory relationship between Socrates and Axiochus, the dialogue itself is not aiming at consoling its readers. Instead, it should be seen as displaying for the reader’s consideration a certain type of consolatory argumentative practice.
    Socrates notes that Axiochus is “very much in need of consolation” (365a), and he uses any means necessary to accomplish this task. Socrates exhibits many ways in which he is willing to sacrifice argumentative hygiene for the sake of therapeutic effectiveness. These include:
    • Use of arguments with inconsistent premises, presented in propria persona.
    • Appeals to emotion
    • Tailoring arguments to the audience.
    • Presenting invalid arguments so as to induce unjustified but comforting beliefs.
    • Evasion.
In these respects, I think that Socrates’ argumentative practice is best compared to PH III 280-1, where Sextus Empiricus says that the skeptic will deliberately use logically weak arguments as long as they work.
    Dorothy Tarrant claims that what links the Socrates of the Axiochus to Socrates as he appears elsewhere in the Platonic corpus is his evident care for the welfare of his interlocutor’s psyche. But this concern takes a quite different form in the Axiochus than it usually does. As with Sextus, psychic therapy in the Axiochus involves relief from pain. The primary difference between them is that Socrates, unlike Sextus, is not aiming at producing epochê in his patient.

David Robertson, “Miscommunication in Plato's Gorgias” (back to top)

    In the Gorgias, Plato is concerned to explain the elenchus from different angles, in particular the miscommunication which afflicts Socrates' efforts to bring his conversation partners into better alignment with the good. Our attention is directed beyond other communication difficulties to a problem of clashing experiences, desires, and values which prevent successful communication (I mean communication about what matters most to people, which I label 'Socratic communication'). I try in this paper to do justice to Plato's outlook on the prospects for repair of this kind of miscommunication. I first clarify what kind of communication breakdown preoccupies Plato and how he thinks it is possible, with reference to how Socrates and Callicles are talking at cross-purposes in the Gorgias. After considering similar miscommunication phenomena, I argue that Plato's communication problem is also distinguished by its intractability and (paradoxically) by its compatibility with successful communication at all other levels. I then consider some insights of communication theory, claiming that Plato's problem is pragmatic in nature. It is a kind of the pragmatic ill-formedness (a violation of the rules of language and communication) which is known as 'pragmatic overshoot'. In light of a more precise formulation of the problem, we can see that Plato's special kind of pragmatic overshoot resists an approach for achieving understanding along Gricean lines. But my ultimate concern is whether Plato is right to consider this miscommunication to be highly resistant to repair, and whether Plato offers much help towards an account of overcoming this type of miscommunication. I argue that at least partial repair of this kind of miscommunication is possible. We would expect Plato to see this, and it is significant that there is a suggestion in the Crito (Crit. 49C10-E2) that the right sort of common ground can serve as the basis for successful Socratic communication, in spite of the other experiences, values, and desires which might hinder understanding.

Daniel Graham and James Siebach, “Plato’s Charmides: Intellectualism on Trial” (back to top)

    Plato’s Charmides is a Socratic dialogue that seems to argue against Socratic positions. How are we to understand it? Socrates begins discussing sophrosune with the young Charmides, but lures Critias into the discussion. With Critias the definitions become more sophisticated, but also more problematic. Socrates takes ‘knowing oneself’ to entail knowing what one knows and does not know. This and subsequent versions of the definition have strong connections with views of Socrates expressed in other Socratic dialogues, yet Socrates ruthlessly disproves them.
    There are two major interpretations of the Charmides. (1) The dialogue explores the concept of moderation, and helps to clarify certain aspects of it, perhaps rejecting extreme and untenable definitions. On this interpretation, Plato is not rejecting Socratic epistemology but merely clarifying it. (2) The dialogue brings out failures in Socratic conceptions of virtue and criticizes them as inadequate. On this interpretation, Plato is rejecting faulty definitions and looking forward to a more adequate account.
    The first interpretation is usually advanced by developmentalists, the second by unitarians. The first interpretation runs into serious problems, as will be argued. Accordingly, it is difficult to see that the Charmides advances Plato’s understanding of moderation in particular or of virtue or moral knowledge in general. On the other hand, there are no obvious problems with the second interpretation. A similar criticism of intellectualism is raised in the Republic, and the interpretation squares with the critical tone of the Charmides. Furthermore other Socratic dialogues often associated with the Charmides, namely the Euthydemus, Laches, and Lysis, raise similar or related problems without resolving them.
    Yet if Plato is being critical of some philosophical position which is not his own, whose position is it? The fact that he criticizes it in several dialogues suggests it is not a mere invention of Plato’s. The intellectualist account of moderation is incompatible with views of Critias, Antisthenes, and other Socratics, as well as those of Plato’s rival Isocrates. Yet this position is attributed to Socrates in the Apology and Crito, by all accounts the most historically accurate portrayals of Socrates. The most plausible reading of the evidence is the Plato is using his character Socrates to criticize the historical Socrates’ philosophical position. This character stays within the framework of Socratic methods and assumptions in his criticism. Plato seems to be maintaining his portrayal of Socrates against those of other Socratics, while pointing beyond the views of (what Plato understands to be) the historical Socrates to a more satisfactory theory.
    If this is so, we may use a unitarian reading of the Charmides to support a new kind of developmental reading: in the early dialogues Plato the author portrays Socrates faithfully, while Plato the philosopher already is expressing deep reservations about his master’s theory. The middle dialogues mark a change of method and assumptions in Socrates the character, but not necessarily in Plato the philosopher.