socrates speech

Top 10 Greatest Speeches

As the political season heats up, TIME takes a tour of history's best rhetoric

The Greek philosopher Plato, author of the Socratic dialogues.

Apology, 4th century B.C.

Facing charges of "corrupting youth," Socrates delivered this speech — as rendered by Plato — to an Athens jury. It proved unsuccessful; he was convicted by his peers, and subsequently killed himself by swallowing hemlock. But this skillful piece of rhetoric underlines the realization that has propelled philosophy ever since: that human knowledge is woefully limited.

Best Line : "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

Next Patrick Henry

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Bibliographies

The ci poetry project, the last words of socrates at the place where he died.

2015.03.27 | By Gregory Nagy

§0. In H24H 24 §45, I quote and analyze the passage in Plato’s Phaedo 117a–118a where Socrates dies. His last words, as transmitted by Plato, are directed at all those who have followed Socrates—and who have had the unforgettable experience of engaging in dialogue with him. Calling out to one of those followers, Crito, who was a native son of the same neighborhood where Socrates was born, he says to his comrade:  don’t forget to sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios . I will quote the whole passage in a minute. But first, we need to ask: who is this Asklepios? As I explain in H24H 20 §§29–33, he was a hero whose father was the god Apollo himself, and, like his divine father, Asklepios had special powers of healing. More than that, Asklepios also had the power of bringing the dead back to life. That is why he was killed by the immortals, since mortals must stay mortal. But Asklepios, even after death, retained his power to bring the dead back to life.

§1. So, what does Socrates mean when he asks his followers, in his dying words, not to forget to sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios?

§2. On 16 March 2015, the group participating in the 2015 Harvard Spring Break travel study program visited the site where Socrates died—and where he said what he said about sacrificing a rooster to Asklepios. On the surface, this site is nothing much to write home about. All we can see at the site is the foundation stones of the State Prison where Socrates was held prisoner and where he was forced to drink the hemlock in the year 399 BCE. But I feel deeply that, just by visiting the site, our group managed to connect with a sublime experience. We were making contact with a place linked forever with the very last words of one of the greatest thinkers in world history.

§3. I now quote my own translation of Plato’s Phaedo 117a–118a, which situates these last words of Socrates:

“Go,” said he [= Socrates], “and do as I say.” Crito, when he heard this, signaled with a nod to the boy servant who was standing nearby, and the servant went in, remaining for some time, and then came out with the man who was going to administer the poison [ pharmakon ]. He was carrying a cup that contained it, ground into the drink. When Socrates saw the man he said: “You, my good man, since you are experienced in these matters, should tell me what needs to be done.” The man answered: “You need to drink it, that’s all. Then walk around until you feel a heaviness | 117b in your legs. Then lie down. This way, the poison will do its thing.” While the man was saying this, he handed the cup to Socrates. And Socrates took it in a cheerful way, not flinching or getting pale or grimacing. Then looking at the man from beneath his brows, like a bull—that was the way he used to look at people—he said: “What do you say about my pouring a libation out of this cup to someone? Is it allowed or not?” The man answered: “What we grind is measured out, Socrates, as the right dose for drinking.” “I understand,” he said, | 117c “but surely it is allowed and even proper to pray to the gods so that my transfer of dwelling [ met-oikēsis ] from this world [ enthende ] to that world [ ekeîse ] should be fortunate. So, that is what I too am now praying for. Let it be this way.” And, while he was saying this, he took the cup to his lips and, quite readily and cheerfully, he drank down the whole dose. Up to this point, most of us had been able to control fairly well our urge to let our tears flow; but now when we saw him drinking the poison, and then saw him finish the drink, we could no longer hold back, and, in my case, quite against my own will, my own tears were now pouring out in a flood. So, I covered my face and had a good cry. You see, I was not crying for him, | 117d but at the thought of my own bad fortune in having lost such a comrade [ hetairos ]. Crito, even before me, found himself unable to hold back his tears: so he got up and moved away. And Apollodorus, who had been weeping all along, now started to cry in a loud voice, expressing his frustration. So, he made everyone else break down and cry—except for Socrates himself. And he said: “What are you all doing? I am so surprised at you. I had sent away the women mainly because I did not want them | 117e to lose control in this way. You see, I have heard that a man should come to his end [ teleutân ] in a way that calls for measured speaking [ euphēmeîn ]. So, you must have composure [ hēsukhiā ], and you must endure.” When we heard that, we were ashamed, and held back our tears. He meanwhile was walking around until, as he said, his legs began to get heavy, and then he lay on his back—that is what the man had told him to do. Then that same man who had given him the poison [ pharmakon ] took hold of him, now and then checking on his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel it; and he said that he couldn’t; and then he pressed his shins, | 118a and so on, moving further up, thus demonstrating for us that he was cold and stiff. Then he [= Socrates] took hold of his own feet and legs, saying that when the poison reaches his heart, then he will be gone. He was beginning to get cold around the abdomen. Then he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said— this was the last thing he uttered— “Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?” “I will make it so,” said Crito, “and, tell me, is there anything else?” When Crito asked this question, no answer came back anymore from Socrates. In a short while, he stirred. Then the man uncovered his face. His eyes were set in a dead stare. Seeing this, Crito closed his mouth and his eyes. Such was the end [ teleutē ], Echecrates, of our comrade [ hetairos ]. And we may say about him that he was in his time the best [ aristos ] of all men we ever encountered—and the most intelligent [ phronimos ] and most just [ dikaios ].

So I come back to my question about the meaning of the last words of Socrates, when he says, in his dying words: don’t forget to sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios . As I begin to formulate an answer, I must repeat something that I have already highlighted. It is the fact that the hero Asklepios was believed to have special powers of healing—even the power of bringing the dead back to life. As I point out in H24H 24§46, some interpret the final instruction of Socrates to mean simply that death is a cure for life. I disagree. After sacrificing a rooster at day’s end, sacrificers will sleep the sleep of incubation and then, the morning after the sacrifice, they will wake up to hear other roosters crowing. So, the words of Socrates here are referring to rituals of overnight incubation in the hero cults of Asklepios.

§4. On 18 March 2015, the group participating in the 2015 Harvard Spring Break travel study program visited a site where such rituals of overnight incubation actually took place: the site was Epidaurus. This small city was famous for its hero cult of Asklepios. The space that was sacred to Asklepios, as our group had a chance to witness, is enormous, and the enormity is a sure sign of the intense veneration received by Asklepios as the hero who, even though he is dead, has the superhuman power to rescue you from death. The mystical logic of worshipping the dead Asklepios is that he died for humanity: he died because he had the power to bring humans back to life.

§5. So, Asklepios is the model for keeping the voice of the rooster alive. And, for Socrates, Asklepios can become the model for keeping the word alive.

§6. In H24H 24§47, I follow through on analyzing this idea of keeping the word from dying, of keeping the word alive. That living word, I argue, is dialogue. We can see it when Socrates says that the only thing worth crying about is the death of the word. I am about to quote another passage from Plato’s Phaedo , and again I will use my own translation. But before I quote the passage, here is the context: well before Socrates is forced to drink the hemlock, his followers are already mourning his impending death, and Socrates reacts to their sadness by telling them that the only thing that would be worth mourning is not his death but the death of the conversation he started with them. Calling out to one of his followers, Phaedo, Socrates tells him (Plato, Phaedo 89b):

“Tomorrow, Phaedo, you will perhaps be cutting off these beautiful locks of yours [as a sign of mourning]?” “Yes, Socrates,” I [= Phaedo] replied, “I guess I will.” He shot back: “No you will not, if you listen to me.” “So, what will I do?” I [= Phaedo] said. He replied: “Not tomorrow but today I will cut off my own hair and you too will cut off these locks of yours—if our argument [ logos ] comes to an end [ teleutân ] for us and we cannot bring it back to life again [ ana-biōsasthai ].

What matters for Socrates, as I argue in H24H 24§48, is the resurrection of the ‘argument’ or logos , which means literally ‘word’, even if death may be the necessary pharmakon or ‘poison’ for leaving the everyday life and for entering the everlasting cycle of resurrecting the word.

§7. In the 2015 book Masterpieces of Metonymy (MoM), published both online and in print , I study in Part One a traditional custom that prevailed in Plato’s Academy at Athens for centuries after the death of Socrates. Their custom was to celebrate the birthday of Socrates on the sixth day of the month Thargelion, which by their reckoning coincided with his death day. And they celebrated by engaging in Socratic dialogue, which for them was the logos that was resurrected every time people engage in Socratic dialogue. I go on to say in MoM 1 §§146–147:

For Plato and for Plato’s Socrates, the word logos refers to the living ‘word’ of dialogue in the context of philosophical argumentation. When Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo (89b) tells his followers who are mourning his impending death that they should worry not about his death but about the death of the logos— if this logos cannot be resurrected or ‘brought back to life’ ( ana-biōsasthai )—he is speaking of the dialogic argumentation supporting the idea that the psūkhē or ‘soul’ is immortal. In this context, the logos itself is the ‘argument’.

For Plato’s Socrates, it is less important that his psūkhē or ‘soul’ must be immortal, and it is vitally more important that the logos itself must remain immortal—or, at least, that the logos must be brought back to life. And that is because the logos itself, as I say, is the ‘argument’ that comes to life in dialogic argumentation.

Here is the way I would sum up, then, what Socrates means as he speaks his last words. When the sun goes down and you check in for sacred incubation at the precinct of Asklepios, you sacrifice a rooster to this hero who, even in death, has the power to bring you back to life. As you drift off to sleep at the place of incubation, the voice of that rooster is no longer heard. He is dead, and you are asleep. But then, as the sun comes up, you wake up to the voice of a new rooster signaling that morning is here, and this voice will be for you a sign that says: the word that died has come back to life again. Asklepios has once again shown his sacred power. The word is resurrected. The conversation may now continue.

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Mast@chs – summer seminar 2021 (friday, july 23): summaries of presentations and discussion, the god and the goat, by rowan ricardo phillips, the odyssey, book 11, lines 538–556, by rowan ricardo phillips.

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Constantin Brancusi. Socrates Image © The Museum of Modern Art; Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY ©2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris reproduced with permission of the Brancusi Estate

The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.), [ 1 ] an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic not only for the philosophic life but, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the adulation and emulation ordinarily reserved for religious figures – strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.

So thorny is the difficulty of distinguishing the historical Socrates from the Socrateses of the authors of the texts in which he appears and, moreover, from the Socrateses of scores of later interpreters, that the whole contested issue is generally referred to as the Socratic problem . Each age, each intellectual turn, produces a Socrates of its own. It is no less true now that, “The ‘real’ Socrates we have not: what we have is a set of interpretations each of which represents a ‘theoretically possible’ Socrates,” as Cornelia de Vogel (1955, 28) put it. In fact, de Vogel was writing as a new analytic paradigm for interpreting Socrates was about to become standard—Gregory Vlastos’s model (§2.2), which would hold sway until the mid 1990s. Who Socrates really was is fundamental to virtually any interpretation of the philosophical dialogues of Plato because Socrates is the dominant figure in most of Plato’s dialogues.

1. Socrates’s strangeness

2.1 three primary sources: aristophanes, xenophon, and plato, 2.2 contemporary interpretative strategies, 2.3 implications for the philosophy of socrates, 3. a chronology of the historical socrates in the context of athenian history and the dramatic dates of plato’s dialogues.

Resources for Teaching

General overviews and reference

Analytic philosophy of socrates, continental interpretations, interpretive issues, specialized studies, other internet resources, related entries.

Standards of beauty are different in different eras, and in Socrates’s time beauty could easily be measured by the standard of the gods, stately, proportionate sculptures of whom had been adorning the Athenian acropolis since about the time Socrates reached the age of thirty. Good looks and proper bearing were important to a man’s political prospects, for beauty and goodness were linked in the popular imagination. The extant sources agree that Socrates was profoundly ugly, resembling a satyr more than a man—and resembling not at all the statues that turned up later in ancient times and now grace Internet sites and the covers of books. He had wide-set, bulging eyes that darted sideways and enabled him, like a crab, to see not only what was straight ahead, but what was beside him as well; a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils; and large fleshy lips like an ass. Socrates let his hair grow long, Spartan-style (even while Athens and Sparta were at war), and went about barefoot and unwashed, carrying a stick and looking arrogant. He didn’t change his clothes but efficiently wore in the daytime what he covered himself with at night. Something was peculiar about his gait as well, sometimes described as a swagger so intimidating that enemy soldiers kept their distance. He was impervious to the effects of alcohol and cold weather, but this made him an object of suspicion to his fellow soldiers on campaign. We can safely assume an average height (since no one mentions it at all), and a strong build, given the active life he appears to have led. Against the iconic tradition of a pot-belly, Socrates and his companions are described as going hungry (Aristophanes, Birds 1280–83). On his appearance, see Plato’s Theaetetus 143e, and Symposium 215a–c, 216c–d, 221d–e; Xenophon’s Symposium 4.19, 5.5–7; and Aristophanes’s Clouds 362. Brancusi’s oak sculpture, standing 51.25 inches including its base, captures Socrates’s appearance and strangeness in the sense that it looks different from every angle, including a second “eye” that cannot be seen if the first is in view. (See the Museum of Modern Art’s page on Brancusi’s Socrates which offers additional views.) Also true to Socrates’s reputation for ugliness, but less available, are the drawings of the contemporary Swiss artist, Hans Erni.

In the late fifth century B.C.E., it was more or less taken for granted that any self-respecting Athenian male would prefer fame, wealth, honors, and political power to a life of labor. Although many citizens lived by their labor in a wide variety of occupations, they were expected to spend much of their leisure time, if they had any, busying themselves with the affairs of the city. Men regularly participated in the governing Assembly and in the city’s many courts; and those who could afford it prepared themselves for success at public life by studying with rhetoricians and sophists from abroad who could themselves become wealthy and famous by teaching the young men of Athens to use words to their advantage. Other forms of higher education were also known in Athens: mathematics, astronomy, geometry, music, ancient history, and linguistics. One of the things that seemed strange about Socrates is that he neither labored to earn a living, nor participated voluntarily in affairs of state. Rather, he embraced poverty and, although youths of the city kept company with him and imitated him, Socrates adamantly insisted he was not a teacher (Plato, Apology 33a–b) and refused all his life to take money for what he did. The strangeness of this behavior is mitigated by the image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students. Because Socrates was no transmitter of information that others were passively to receive, he resists the comparison to teachers. Rather, he helped others recognize on their own what is real, true, and good (Plato, Meno , Theaetetus )—a new, and thus suspect, approach to education. He was known for confusing, stinging, and stunning his conversation partners into the unpleasant experience of realizing their own ignorance, a state sometimes superseded by genuine intellectual curiosity.

It did not help matters that Socrates seemed to have a higher opinion of women than most of his companions had, speaking of “men and women,” “priests and priestesses,” likening his work to midwifery, and naming foreign women as his teachers: Socrates claimed to have learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletus, the de facto spouse of Pericles (Plato, Menexenus ); and to have learned erotics from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea (Plato, Symposium ). Socrates was unconventional in a related respect. Athenian citizen males of the upper social classes did not marry until they were at least thirty, and Athenian females were poorly educated and kept sequestered until puberty, when they were given in marriage by their fathers. Thus the socialization and education of males often involved a relationship for which the English word ‘pederasty’ (though often used) is misleading, in which a youth approaching manhood, fifteen to seventeen, became the beloved of a male lover a few years older, under whose tutelage and through whose influence and gifts, the younger man would be guided and improved. It was assumed among Athenians that mature men would find youths sexually attractive, and such relationships were conventionally viewed as beneficial to both parties by family and friends alike. A degree of hypocrisy (or denial), however, was implied by the arrangement: “officially” it did not involve sexual relations between the lovers and, if it did, then the beloved was not supposed to derive pleasure from the act—but ancient evidence (comedies, vase paintings, et al.) shows that both restrictions were often violated (Dover 1989, 204). What was odd about Socrates is that, although he was no exception to the rule of finding youths attractive (Plato, Charmides 155d, Protagoras 309a–b; Xenophon, Symposium 4.27–28), he refused the physical advances of even his favorite, Alcibiades (Plato, Symposium 219b–d), and kept his eye on the improvement of their, and all the Athenians’, souls (Plato, Apology 30a–b), a mission he said he had been assigned by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, if he was interpreting his friend Chaerephon’s report correctly (Plato, Apology 20e–23b), a preposterous claim in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Socrates also acknowledged a rather strange personal phenomenon, a daimonion or internal voice that prohibited his doing certain things, some trivial and some important, often unrelated to matters of right and wrong (thus not to be confused with the popular notions of a superego or a conscience). The implication that he was guided by something he regarded as divine or semi-divine was all the more reason for other Athenians to be suspicious of Socrates.

Socrates was usually to be found in the marketplace and other public areas, conversing with a variety of different people—young and old, male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, citizen and visitor—that is, with virtually anyone he could persuade to join with him in his question-and-answer mode of probing serious matters. Socrates’s lifework consisted in the examination of people’s lives, his own and others’, because “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being,” as he says at his trial (Plato, Apology 38a). Socrates pursued this task single-mindedly, questioning people about what matters most, e.g., courage, love, reverence, moderation, and the state of their souls generally. He did this regardless of whether his respondents wanted to be questioned or resisted him. Athenian youths imitated Socrates’s questioning style, much to the annoyance of some of their elders. He had a reputation for irony, though what that means exactly is controversial; at a minimum, Socrates’s irony consisted in his saying that he knew nothing of importance and wanted to listen to others, yet keeping the upper hand in every discussion. One further aspect of Socrates’s much-touted strangeness should be mentioned: his dogged failure to align himself politically with oligarchs or democrats; rather, he had friends and enemies among both, and he supported and opposed actions of both (see §3).

2. The Socratic problem: Who was Socrates really?

The Socratic problem is a rat’s nest of complexities arising from the fact that various people wrote about Socrates whose accounts differ in crucial respects, leaving us to wonder which, if any, are accurate representations of the historical Socrates. “There is, and always will be, a ‘Socratic problem’. This is inevitable,” said Guthrie (1969, 6), looking back on a gnarled history between ancient and contemporary times that is narrated in detail by Press (1996), but barely touched on below. The difficulties are increased because all those who knew and wrote about Socrates lived before any standardization of modern categories of, or sensibilities about, what constitutes historical accuracy or poetic license. All authors present their own interpretations of the personalities and lives of their characters, whether they mean to or not, whether they write fiction or biography or philosophy (if the philosophy they write has characters), so other criteria must be introduced for deciding among the contending views of who Socrates really was. A look at the three primary ancient sources of information about Socrates (§2.1) will provide a foundation for appreciating how contemporary interpretations differ (§2.2) and why the differences matter (§2.3).

One thing is certain about the historical Socrates: even among those who knew him in life, there was profound disagreement about what his actual views and methods were. This is evident in the three contemporaneous sources below; and it is hinted at in the few titles and scraps by other authors of the time who are now lumped together as ‘minor Socratics’, not for the quality of their work but because so little or none of it is extant. We shall probably never know much about their views of Socrates (see Giannantoni 1990). [ 2 ] After Socrates’s death, the tradition became even more disparate. As Nehamas (1999, 99) puts it, “with the exception of the Epicureans, every philosophical school in antiquity, whatever its orientation, saw in him either its actual founder or the type of person to whom its adherents were to aspire.”

Aristophanes (±450–±386)

Our earliest extant source—and the only one who can claim to have known Socrates in vigorous midlife—is the playwright Aristophanes. His comedy, Clouds , was produced within a year of the battle of Delium (423) at which Socrates fought as a hoplite, and when both Xenophon and Plato were infants. In the play, the character called Socrates heads a Think-o-Rama in which young men study the natural world, from insects to stars, and study slick argumentative techniques as well, lacking all respect for the Athenian sense of propriety. The actor wearing the mask of Socrates makes fun of the traditional gods of Athens (lines 247–48, 367, 423–24), mimicked later by the young protagonist, and gives naturalistic explanations of phenomena Athenians viewed as divinely directed (lines 227–33; cf. Theaetetus 152e, 153c–d, 173e–174a; Phaedo 96a–100a). Worst of all, he teaches dishonest techniques for avoiding repayment of debt (lines 1214–1302) and encourages young men to beat their parents into submission (lines 1408–46).

Comedy by its very nature is a tricky source for information about anyone. Yet, in favor of Aristophanes as a source for Socrates is that Xenophon and Plato were some forty-five years younger than Socrates, so their acquaintance could only have been during Socrates’s later years. Could Socrates really have changed so much? Can the lampooning of the younger Socrates found in Clouds and other comic poets be reconciled with Plato’s characterization of a philosopher in his fifties and sixties? Some have said yes, pointing out that the years between Clouds and Socrates’s trial (399) were years of war and upheaval, changing everyone. The Athenian intellectual freedom of which Pericles been so proud at the beginning of the war (Thucydides 2.37–39) had been eroded completely by the end (see §3). Thus, what had seemed comical a quarter century earlier, Socrates hanging in a basket on-stage, talking nonsense, was ominous in memory by then. A good reason to believe that Aristophanes’s representation of Socrates is not merely a comic exaggeration but systematically misleading in retrospect is Kenneth Dover’s view that Clouds amalgamates in one character, Socrates, features now well known to be unique to specific other fifth-century intellectuals (1968, xxxii-lvii). Perhaps Aristophanes chose Socrates to represent garden-variety intellectuals because Socrates’s physiognomy was strange enough by itself to get a laugh. Aristophanes sometimes speaks in his own voice in his plays, giving us good reason to believe he genuinely objected to social instability brought on by the freedom Athenian youths enjoyed to study with professional rhetoricians, sophists (see §1), and natural philosophers, e.g., those who, like the presocratics, studied the cosmos or nature. Such professions could be lucrative. That Socrates eschewed any earning potential in philosophy does not seem to have been significant to the great writer of comedies.

Aristophanes’s depiction of Socrates is important because Plato’s Socrates says at his trial ( Apology 18a–b, 19c) that most of his jurors have grown up believing the falsehoods attributed to him in the play. Socrates calls Aristophanes more dangerous than the three men who brought charges against him because Aristophanes had poisoned the jurors’ minds while they were young. Aristophanes did not stop accusing Socrates in 423 when Clouds placed third behind another play in which Socrates was mentioned as barefoot; rather, he soon began writing a revision, which he circulated but never produced. Complicating matters, the revision is our only extant version of the play. Aristophanes appears to have given up on reviving Clouds in about 416, but his comic ridicule of Socrates continued. Again in 414 with Birds , and in 405 with Frogs , Aristophanes complained of Socrates’s deleterious effect on the youths of the city, including Socrates’s neglect of the poets. Aristophanes even coins a verb, to socratize , conveying a range of unsavory behaviors. [ 3 ]

Xenophon (±425–±386)

Another source for the historical Socrates is the soldier-historian, Xenophon. Xenophon says explicitly of Socrates, “I was never acquainted with anyone who took greater care to find out what each of his companions knew” ( Memorabilia 4.7.1); and Plato corroborates Xenophon’s statement by illustrating throughout his dialogues Socrates’s adjustment of the level and type of his questions to the particular individuals with whom he talked. If it is true that Socrates succeeded in pitching his conversation at the right level for each of his companions, the striking differences between Xenophon’s Socrates and Plato’s is largely explained by the differences between their two personalities. Xenophon was a practical man whose ability to recognize philosophical issues is almost imperceptible, so it is plausible that his Socrates is a practical and helpful advisor. That is the side of Socrates Xenophon experienced. Xenophon’s Socrates differs additionally from Plato’s in offering advice about subjects in which Xenophon was himself experienced, but Socrates was not: moneymaking (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7) and estate management (Xenophon, Oeconomicus ), suggesting that Xenophon may have entered into the writing of Socratic discourses (as Aristotle labeled the genre, Poetics 1447b11) making the character Socrates a mouthpiece for his own views. His other works mentioning or featuring Socrates are Anabasis , Apology , Hellenica , and Symposium .

Something that has strengthened Xenophon’s prima facie claim as a source for Socrates’s life is his work as a historian; his Hellenica ( History of Greece ) is one of the chief sources for the period 411–362, after Thucydides’s history abruptly ends in the midst of the Peloponnesian wars. Although Xenophon tends to moralize and does not follow the superior conventions introduced by Thucydides, still it is sometimes argued that, having had no philosophical axes to grind, Xenophon may have presented a more accurate portrait of Socrates than Plato does. But two considerations have always weakened that claim: (1) The Socrates of Xenophon’s works is so pedestrian that it is difficult to imagine his inspiring fifteen or more people to write Socratic discourses in the period following his death. (2) Xenophon could not have chalked up many hours with Socrates or with reliable informants. He lived in Erchia, about 15 kilometers and across the Hymettus mountains from Socrates’s haunts in the urban area of Athens, and his love of horses and horsemanship (on which he wrote a still-valuable treatise) took up considerable time. He left Athens in 401 on an expedition to Persia and, for a variety of reasons (mercenary service for Thracians and Spartans; exile), never resided in Athens again. And now a third is in order. (3) It turns out to have been ill-advised to assume that Xenophon would apply the same criteria for accuracy to his Socratic discourses as to his histories. [ 4 ] The biographical and historical background Xenophon deploys in his memoirs of Socrates fails to correspond to such additional sources as we have from archaeology, history, the courts, and literature. The widespread use of computers in classical studies, enabling the comparison of ancient persons, and the compiling of information about each of them from disparate sources, has made incontrovertible this observation about Xenophon’s Socratic works. Xenophon’s memoirs are pastiches, several of which simply could not have occurred as presented.

Plato (424/3–347)

Philosophers have usually privileged the account of Socrates given by their fellow philosopher, Plato. Plato was about twenty-five when Socrates was tried and executed, and had probably known the old man most of his life. It would have been hard for a boy of Plato’s social class, registered in the political district (deme) of Collytus within the city walls, to avoid Socrates. The extant sources agree that Socrates was often to be found where youths of the city spent their time. Further, Plato’s representation of individual Athenians has proved over time to correspond remarkably well to both archaeological and literary evidence: in his use of names and places, familial relations and friendship bonds, and even in his rough dating of events in almost all the authentic dialogues where Socrates is the dominant figure. The dialogues have dramatic dates that fall into place as one learns more about their characters and, despite incidental anachronisms, it turns out that there is more realism in the dialogues than most have suspected. [ 5 ] The Ion , Lysis , Euthydemus , Meno , Menexenus , Theaetetus , Euthyphro , Cratylus , the frame of Symposium , Apology , Crito , Phaedo (although Plato says he was not himself present at Socrates’s execution), and the frame of Parmenides are the dialogues in which Plato had greatest access to Athenians he depicts.

It does not follow, however, that Plato represented the views and methods of Socrates (or anyone, for that matter) as he recalled them, much less as they were originally uttered. There are a number of cautions and caveats that should be in place from the start. (i) Plato may have shaped the character Socrates (or other characters) to serve his own purposes, whether philosophical or literary or both. (ii) The dialogues representing Socrates as a youth and young man took place, if they took place at all, before Plato was born and when he was a small child. (iii) One should be cautious even about the dramatic dates of Plato’s dialogues because they are calculated with reference to characters whom we know primarily, though not only, from the dialogues. (iv) Exact dates should be treated with a measure of skepticism for numerical precision can be misleading. Even when a specific festival or other reference fixes the season or month of a dialogue, or birth of a character, one should imagine a margin of error. Although it becomes obnoxious to use circa or plus-minus everywhere, the ancients did not require or desire contemporary precision in these matters. All the children born during a full year, for example, had the same nominal birthday, accounting for the conversation at Lysis 207b, odd by contemporary standards, in which two boys disagree about who is the elder. Philosophers have often decided to bypass the historical problems altogether and to assume for the sake of argument that Plato’s Socrates is the Socrates who is relevant to potential progress in philosophy. That strategy, as we shall soon see, gives rise to a new Socratic problem (§2.2).

What, after all, is our motive for reading a dead philosopher’s words about another dead philosopher who never wrote anything himself? This is a way of asking a popular question, Why do history of philosophy? —which has no settled answer. One might reply that our study of some of our philosophical predecessors is intrinsically valuable , philosophically enlightening and satisfying. When we contemplate the words of a dead philosopher, a philosopher with whom we cannot engage directly—Plato’s words, say—we seek to understand not merely what he said and assumed, but what his statements imply, and whether they are true. Others’ words can prompt the exploration of new and rich veins of philosophy. Sometimes, making such judgments about the text requires us to learn the language in which the philosopher wrote, more about his predecessors’ ideas and those of his contemporaries. The truly great philosophers, and Plato was one of them, are still capable of becoming our companions in philosophical conversation, our dialectical partners. Because he addressed timeless, universal, fundamental questions with insight and intelligence, our own understanding of such questions is heightened whether we agree or disagree. That explains Plato, one might say, but where is Socrates in this picture? Is he interesting merely as a predecessor to Plato? Some would say yes, but others would say it is not Plato’s but Socrates’s ideas and methods that mark the real beginning of philosophy in the West, that Socrates is the better dialectical guide, and that what is Socratic in the dialogues should be distinguished from what is Platonic (§2.2). But how? That again is the Socratic problem .

If it were possible to confine oneself exclusively to Plato’s Socrates, the Socratic problem would nevertheless reappear because one would soon discover Socrates himself defending one position in one Platonic dialogue, its contrary in another, and using different methods in different dialogues to boot. Inconsistencies among the dialogues seem to demand explanation, though not all philosophers have thought so (Shorey 1903). Most famously, the Parmenides attacks various theories of forms that the Republic , Symposium , and Phaedo develop and defend. In some dialogues (e.g., Laches ), Socrates only weeds the garden of its inconsistencies and false beliefs, but in other dialogues (e.g., Phaedrus ), he is a planter as well, advancing structured philosophical claims and suggesting new methods for testing those claims. There are differences on smaller matters as well. For example, Socrates in the Gorgias opposes, while in the Protagoras he supports, hedonism; the details of the relation between erotic love and the good life differ from Phaedrus to Symposium ; the account of the relation between knowledge and the objects of knowledge in Republic differs from the Meno account; despite Socrates’s commitment to Athenian law, expressed in the Crito , he vows in the Apology that he will disobey the lawful jury if it orders him to stop philosophizing. A related problem is that some of the dialogues appear to develop positions familiar from other philosophical traditions (e.g., that of Heraclitus in Theaetetus and Pythagoreanism in Phaedo ). Three centuries of efforts to solve versions of the Socratic problem are summarized in the following supplementary document:

Early Attempts to Solve the Socratic Problem

Contemporary efforts recycle bits and pieces—including the failures—of these older attempts.

The Twentieth Century

Until relatively recently in modern times, it was hoped that confident elimination of what could be ascribed purely to Socrates would leave standing a coherent set of doctrines attributable to Plato (who appears nowhere in the dialogues as a speaker). Many philosophers, inspired by the nineteenth century scholar Eduard Zeller, expect the greatest philosophers to promote grand, impenetrable schemes. Nothing of the sort was possible for Socrates, so it remained for Plato to be assigned all the positive doctrines that could be extracted from the dialogues. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, there was a resurgence of interest in who Socrates was and what his own views and methods were. The result is a narrower, but no less contentious, Socratic problem. Two strands of interpretation dominated views of Socrates in the twentieth century (Griswold 2001; Klagge and Smith 1992). Although there has been some healthy cross-pollination and growth since the mid 1990s, the two were so hostile to one another for so long that the bulk of the secondary literature on Socrates, including translations peculiar to each, still divides into two camps, hardly reading one another: literary contextualists and analysts. The literary-contextual study of Socrates, like hermeneutics more generally, uses the tools of literary criticism—typically interpreting one complete dialogue at a time; its European origins are traced to Heidegger and earlier to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The analytic study of Socrates, like analytic philosophy more generally, is fueled by the arguments in the texts—typically addressing a single argument or set of arguments, whether in a single text or across texts; its origins are in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was the doyen of the hermeneutic strand, and Gregory Vlastos (1907–1991) of the analytic.

Literary contextualism

Faced with inconsistencies in Socrates’s views and methods from one dialogue to another, the literary contextualist has no Socratic problem because Plato is seen as an artist of surpassing literary skill, the ambiguities in whose dialogues are intentional representations of actual ambiguities in the subjects philosophy investigates. Thus terms, arguments, characters, and in fact all elements in the dialogues should be addressed in their literary context. Bringing the tools of literary criticism to the study of the dialogues, and sanctioned in that practice by Plato’s own use of literary devices and practice of textual critique ( Protagoras 339a–347a, Republic 2.376c–3.412b, Ion , and Phaedrus 262c–264e), most contextualists ask of each dialogue what its aesthetic unity implies, pointing out that the dialogues themselves are autonomous, containing almost no cross-references. Contextualists who attend to what they see as the aesthetic unity of the whole Platonic corpus, and therefore seek a consistent picture of Socrates, advise close readings of the dialogues and appeal to a number of literary conventions and devices said to reveal Socrates’s actual personality. For both varieties of contextualism, the Platonic dialogues are like a brilliant constellation whose separate stars naturally require separate focus.

Marking the maturity of the literary contextualist tradition in the early twenty-first century is a greater diversity of approaches and an attempt to be more internally critical (see Hyland 2004).

Analytic developmentalism

Beginning in the 1950s, Vlastos (1991, 45–80) recommended a set of mutually supportive premises that together provide a plausible framework in the analytic tradition for Socratic philosophy as a pursuit distinct from Platonic philosophy. [ 6 ] Although the premises have deep roots in early attempts to solve the Socratic problem (see the supplementary document linked above), the beauty of Vlastos’s particular configuration is its fecundity. The first premise marks a break with a tradition of regarding Plato as a dialectician who held his assumptions tentatively and revised them constantly; rather,

• Plato held philosophical doctrines , and
• Plato’s doctrines developed over the period in which he wrote,

accounting for many of the inconsistencies and contradictions among the dialogues (persistent inconsistencies are addressed with a complex notion of Socratic irony.) In particular, Vlastos tells a story “as hypothesis, not dogma or reported fact” describing the young Plato in vivid terms, writing his early dialogues while convinced of “the substantial truth of Socrates’s teaching and the soundness of its method.” Later, Plato develops into a constructive philosopher in his own right but feels no need to break the bond with his Socrates, his “father image.” (The remainder of Plato’s story is not relevant to Socrates.) Vlastos labels a small group of dialogues ‘transitional’ to mark the period when Plato was beginning to be dissatisfied with Socrates’s views. Vlastos’s third premise is

• It is possible to determine reliably the chronological order in which the dialogues were written and to map them to the development of Plato’s views.

The evidence Vlastos uses varies for this claim, but is of several types: stylometric data, internal cross references, external events mentioned, differences in doctrines and methods featured, and other ancient testimony (particularly that of Aristotle). The dialogues of Plato’s Socratic period, called “elenctic dialogues” for Socrates’s preferred method of questioning, are Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras, and book 1 of the Republic. The developmentalists’ Platonic dialogues are potentially a discrete sequence, the order of which enables the analyst to separate Socrates from Plato on the basis of different periods in Plato’s intellectual evolution. Finally,

• Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates only what Plato himself believes at the time he writes each dialogue.

“As Plato changes, the philosophical persona of his Socrates is made to change” (Vlastos 1991, 53)—a view sometimes referred to as the “mouthpiece theory.” Because the analyst is interested in positions or doctrines (particularly as conclusions from, or tested by, arguments), the focus of analysis is usually on a particular philosophical view in or across dialogues, with no special attention given to context or to dialogues considered as wholes; and evidence from dialogues in close chronological proximity is likely to be considered more strongly confirming than that from dialogues of other developmental periods. The result of applying the premises is a firm list (contested, of course, by others) of ten theses held by Socrates, all of which are incompatible with the corresponding ten theses held by Plato (1991, 47–49).

Many analytic ancient philosophers in the late twentieth century mined the gold Vlastos had uncovered, and many of those who were productive in the developmentalist vein in the early days went on to constructive work of their own (see Bibliography).

It is a risky business to say where ancient philosophy is now, but an advantage of an entry in a dynamic reference work is that authors are allowed, nay, encouraged to update their entries to reflect recent scholarship and sea changes in their topics. For many analytic philosophers, John Cooper (1997, xiv) sounded the end of the developmentalist era when he described the early- and middle-period dialogue distinctions as “an unsuitable basis for bringing anyone to the reading of these works. To use them in that way is to announce in advance the results of a certain interpretation of the dialogues and to canonize that interpretation under the guise of a presumably objective order of composition—when in fact no such order is objectively known. And it thereby risks prejudicing an unwary reader against the fresh, individual reading that these works demand.” When he added, “it is better to relegate thoughts about chronology to the secondary position they deserve and to concentrate on the literary and philosophical content of the works, taken on their own and in relation to the others,” he proposed peace between the literary contextualist and analytic developmentalist camps. As in any peace agreement, it takes some time for all the combatants to accept that the conflict has ended—but that is where we are.

In short, one is now more free to answer, Who was Socrates really? in the variety of ways that it has been answered in the past, in one’s own well-reasoned way, or to sidestep the question, philosophizing about the issues in Plato’s dialogues without worrying too much about the long toes of any particular interpretive tradition. Those seeking the views and methods of Plato’s Socrates from the perspective of what one is likely to see attributed to him in the secondary literature (§2.2) will find it useful to consult the related entry on Plato’s shorter ethical works .

The larger column on the left below provides some of the biographical information from ancient sources with the dramatic dates of Plato’s dialogues interspersed [in boldface] throughout. In the smaller column on the right are dates of major events and persons familiar from fifth century Athenian history. Although the dates are as precise as allowed by the facts, some are estimated and controversial (Nails 2002).

This brings us to the spring and summer of 399, to Socrates’s trial and execution. Twice in Plato’s dialogues ( Symposium 173b, Theaetetus 142c–143a), fact-checking with Socrates took place as his friends sought to commit his conversations to writing before he was executed. [spring 399 Theaetetus ] Prior to the action in the Theaetetus , a young poet named Meletus had composed a document charging Socrates with the capital crime of irreverence ( asebeia ): failure to show due piety toward the gods of Athens. This he delivered to Socrates in the presence of witnesses, instructing Socrates to present himself before the king archon within four days for a preliminary hearing (the same magistrate would later preside at the pre-trial examination and the trial). At the end of the Theaetetus , Socrates was on his way to that preliminary hearing. As a citizen, he had the right to countersue, the right to forgo the hearing, allowing the suit to proceed uncontested, and the right to exile himself voluntarily, as the personified laws later remind him ( Crito 52c). Socrates availed himself of none of these rights of citizenship. Rather, he set out to enter a plea and stopped at a gymnasium to talk to some youngsters about mathematics and knowledge.

When he arrived at the king archon’s stoa, Socrates fell into a conversation about reverence with a diviner he knew, Euthyphro [399 Euthyphro ] , and afterwards answered Meletus’s charge. This preliminary hearing designated the official receipt of the case and was intended to lead to greater precision in the formulation of the charge. In Athens, religion was a matter of public participation under law, regulated by a calendar of religious festivals; and the city used revenues to maintain temples and shrines. Socrates’s irreverence, Meletus claimed, had resulted in the corruption of the city’s young men ( Euthyphro 3c–d). Evidence for irreverence was of two types: Socrates did not believe in the gods of the Athenians (indeed, he had said on many occasions that the gods do not lie or do other wicked things, whereas the Olympian gods of the poets and the city were quarrelsome and vindictive); Socrates introduced new divinities (indeed, he insisted that his daimonion had spoken to him since childhood). Meletus handed over his complaint, and Socrates entered his plea. The king-archon could refuse Meletus’s case on procedural grounds, redirect the complaint to an arbitrator, or accept it; he accepted it. Socrates had the right to challenge the admissibility of the accusation in relation to existing law, but he did not, so the charge was published on whitened tablets in the agora and a date was set for the pre-trial examination—but not before Socrates fell into another conversation, this one on the origins of words (Smith 2022). [399 Cratylus ] From this point, word spread rapidly, probably accounting for the spike of interest in Socratic conversations recorded in Theaetetus and Symposium . [399 Symposium frame] But Socrates nevertheless is shown by Plato spending the next day in two very long conversations promised in Theaetetus (210d). [399 Sophist , Statesman ]

At the pre-trial examination, Meletus paid no court fees because it was considered a public duty to prosecute irreverence. To discourage frivolous suits, however, Athenian law imposed a heavy fine on plaintiffs who failed to obtain at least one fifth of the jury’s votes, as Socrates later points out ( Apology 36a–b). Unlike closely timed jury trials, pre-trial examinations encouraged questions to and by the litigants, to make the legal issues more precise. This procedure had become essential because of the susceptibility of juries to bribery and misrepresentation. Originally intended to be a microcosm of the citizen body, juries by Socrates’s time were manned by elderly, disabled, and impoverished volunteers who needed the meager three-obol pay.

In the month of Thargelion [May-June 399 Apology ] a month or two after Meletus’s initial summons, Socrates’s trial occurred. On the day before, the Athenians had launched a ship to Delos, dedicated to Apollo and commemorating Theseus’s legendary victory over the Minotaur ( Phaedo 58a–b). Spectators gathered along with the jury ( Apology 25a) for a trial that probably lasted most of the day, each side timed by the water clock. Plato does not provide Meletus’s prosecutorial speech or those of Anytus and Lycon, who had joined in the suit; or the names of witnesses, if any ( Apology 34a implies Meletus called none). Apology —the Greek ‘ apologia ’ means ‘defense’—is not edited as are the court speeches of orators. For example, there are no indications in the Greek text (at 35d and 38b) that the two votes were taken; and there are no breaks (at 21a or 34b) for witnesses who may have been called. Also missing are speeches by Socrates’s supporters; it is improbable that he had none, even though Plato does not name them.

Socrates, in his defense, mentioned the harm done to him by Aristophanes’s Clouds (§2.1). Though Socrates denied outright that he studied the heavens and what is below the earth, his familiarity with the investigations of natural philosophers and his own naturalistic explanations of such phenomena as earthquakes and eclipses make it no surprise that the jury remained unpersuaded. And, seeing Socrates out-argue Meletus, the jury probably did not make fine distinctions between philosophy and sophistry. Socrates three times took up the charge that he corrupted the young, insisting that, if he corrupted them, he did so unwillingly; but if unwillingly, he should be instructed, not prosecuted ( Apology 25e–26a). The jury found him guilty. By his own argument, however, Socrates could not blame the jury, for it was mistaken about what was truly in the interest of the city (cf. Theaetetus 177d–e) and thus required instruction.

In the penalty phase of the trial, Socrates said, “If it were the law with us, as it is elsewhere, that a trial for life should not last one but many days, you would be convinced, but now it is not easy to dispel great slanders in a short time” ( Apology 37a–b). This isolated complaint stands opposed to the remark of the personified laws that Socrates was “wronged not by us, the laws, but by men” ( Crito 54c). It had been a crime since 403/2 for anyone even to propose a law or decree in conflict with the newly inscribed laws, so it was ironic for the laws to tell Socrates to persuade or obey them ( Crito 51b–c). In a last-minute capitulation to his friends, he offered to allow them to pay a fine of six times his net worth (Xenophon Oeconomicus 2.3.4–5), thirty minae . The jury rejected the proposal. Perhaps the jury was too incensed by Socrates’s words to vote for the lesser penalty; after all, he needed to tell them more than once to stop interrupting him. It is more likely, however, that superstitious jurors were afraid that the gods would be angry if they failed to execute a man already found guilty of irreverence. Sentenced to death, Socrates reflected that it might be a blessing: either a dreamless sleep, or an opportunity to converse in the underworld.

While the sacred ship was on its journey to Delos, no executions were allowed in the city. Although the duration of the annual voyage varied with conditions, Xenophon says it took thirty-one days in 399 ( Memorabilia 4.8.2); if so, Socrates lived thirty days beyond his trial, into the month of Skirophorion. A day or two before the end, Socrates’s childhood friend Crito tried to persuade Socrates to escape. [June–July 399 Crito ] Socrates replied that he “listens to nothing … but the argument that on reflection seems best” and that “neither to do wrong or to return a wrong is ever right, not even to injure in return for an injury received” ( Crito 46b, 49d), not even under threat of death (cf. Apology 32a), not even for one’s family ( Crito 54b). Socrates could not point to a harm that would outweigh the harm he would be inflicting on the city if he now exiled himself unlawfully when he could earlier have done so lawfully ( Crito 52c); such lawbreaking would have confirmed the jury’s judgment that he was a corrupter of the young ( Crito 53b–c) and brought shame on his family and friends.

The events of Socrates’s last day, when he “appeared happy both in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear” ( Phaedo 58e) were related by Phaedo to the Pythagorean community at Phlius some weeks or months after the execution. [June–July 399 Phaedo ] The Eleven, prison officials chosen by lot, met with Socrates at dawn to tell him what to expect ( Phaedo 59e–60b). When Socrates’s friends arrived, Xanthippe and their youngest child, Menexenus, were still with him. Xanthippe commiserated with Socrates that he was about to enjoy his last conversation with his companions; then, performing the ritual lamentation expected of women, was led home. Socrates spent the day in philosophical conversation, defending the soul’s immortality and warning his companions not to restrain themselves in argument, “If you take my advice, you will give but little thought to Socrates but much more to the truth. If you think that what I say is true, agree with me; if not, oppose it with every argument” ( Phaedo 91b–c). On the other hand, he warned them sternly to restrain their emotions, “keep quiet and control yourselves” ( Phaedo 117e).

Socrates had no interest in whether his corpse was burned or buried, but he bathed at the prison’s cistern so the women of his household would be spared from having to wash his corpse. After meeting with his family again in the late afternoon, he rejoined his companions. The servant of the Eleven, a public slave, bade Socrates farewell by calling him “the noblest, the gentlest, and the best” of men ( Phaedo 116c). The poisoner described the physical effects of the Conium maculatum variety of hemlock used for citizen executions (Bloch 2001), then Socrates cheerfully took the cup and drank. Phaedo, a former slave echoing the slave of the Eleven, called Socrates, “the best, … the wisest and the most upright” ( Phaedo 118a).

4. Socrates outside philosophy

Socrates is an inescapable figure in intellectual history worldwide. Readers interested in tracking this might start with Trapp’s two volumes (2007). Strikingly, Socrates is invoked also in nonacademic contexts consistently over centuries, across geographical and linguistic boundaries globally, and throughout a wide range of media and forms of cultural production.

Though not commonplace today, Socrates was once routinely cited alongside Jesus. Consider Benjamin Franklin’s pithy maxim in his Autobiography, “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates,” and the way the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., defends civil disobedience in Letter from Birmingham Jail by arguing that those who blame him for bringing imprisonment on himself are like those who would condemn Socrates for provoking the Athenians to execute him or condemn Jesus for having triggered his crucifixion. In the visual arts, artist Bror Hjorth celebrates Walt Whitman by giving him Jesus and Socrates as companions. This wood relief, Love, Peace and Work, was commissioned in the early 1960s by the Swedish Workers’ Educational Association for installation in its new building in Stockholm and was selected to appear on a 1995 postage stamp. A more light-hearted linking is Greece’s entry into the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, Elpida’s Socrates Supersta r, the lyrics of which mention that Socrates was earlier than Jesus.

At times, commending Socrates asserted the distinctiveness of Western Civilization. For example, an illustrated essay on Socrates inaugurates a 1963 feature called “They Made Our World” in LOOK , a popular U.S. magazine. Today Socrates remains an icon of the Western ideal of an intellectual and is sometimes invoked as representative of the ideal of a learned person more universally. Whether he is being poked fun at, extolled, pilloried, or just acknowledged, Socrates features in a wide range of projects intended for broad audiences as a symbol of the very idea of the life of the mind, which, necessarily from a Socratic viewpoint, is also a moral life (but not necessarily a conventionally successful life).

There may be no more succinct expression of this standing than James Madison’s comments on the tyrannical impulses of crowds in Federalist 55: “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” The persistence of this position in the cultural imagination is clear in his many appearances as a sober knower (e.g., Roberto Rossellini’s 1971 film) and a giant among giants, as in, for example, his imagined speech, penned by Gilbert Murray, where he is placed first among the “immortals” featured in the 1953 recording, This I Believe ,compiled by journalist Edward R. Murrow and linked to his wildly successful radio broadcast of the same name. But Socrates also persistently appears in funny settings. For example, an artist makes the literally brainless, good-natured scarecrow featured in the 1961 animation, Tales from the Wizard of Oz , answer to the name ‘Socrates’; and the Beatles make Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., their sweet fictional character in the 1968 film Yellow Submarine , respond to a question with the quip, “A true Socratic query, that!” A more robust recent example that mobilizes the longevity of Socrates’ association with reflection and ethical behavior is Walter Mosley’s crime fiction featuring Socrates Fortlow. His three books follow a Black ex-con in Los Angeles with a violent past and a fierce determination to live life as a thinking person and to do good; the character says his mother named him ‘Socrates’ because she wanted him to grow up smart, a reference to a naming custom practiced by former slaves. The association of Socrates with great intellect and moral rectitude is still kicking, as a quick glance at the collection of Socrates-themed merchandise available from a wide array of vendors will attest. Further, in the mode of “the exception proves the rule,” observe that in DC Comics, Mr. Socrates is a criminal genius able to control Superman by subduing him with a device that disables him mentally.

In antiquity, Socrates did not act as a professional teacher of doctrines; he did, however, self-identify as a knowledge-seeker for the sake of himself and the benefit of those with whom he engaged, young or not. So firmly entrenched internationally in today’s vernacular is his association with education that his name is used to brand professional enterprises as varied as curricula designed for elementary school, college, law school, institutional initiatives that serve multiple disciplines, think tank retreats, café gatherings, electronic distance learning platforms, training programs for financial and marketing consultants, some parts of cognitive behavioral therapy, and easy-to-use online legal services. We find a less commercial example in Long Walk to Freedom (1994) in which the great South African statesman Nelson Mandela reports that, during his incarceration for anti-apartheid activism, his fellow prisoners educated themselves while laboring in rock quarries and that “the style of teaching was Socratic in nature;” a leader would pose a question for them to discuss in study sessions. Another example is Elliniko Theatro’s S ocrates Now, a solo performance based on Plato’s Apology that integrates audience discussion.

In U.S. education at all levels these days, Socratic questioning implies no effort on the part of a leading figure to elicit from the participants any severe discomfort with current opinions (that is, to sting like a gadfly or to expose a disquieting truth), but instead uses the name ‘Socrates’ to invest with gravitas collaborative learning that addresses moral questions and relies on interactive techniques. The unsettling and dangerous aspects of Socratic practice turn up in politicized contexts where a distinction between dissent and disloyalty is at issue. Appeals to Socrates in these settings most often highlight the personal risks run by an intellectually exemplary critic of the unjust acts of an established authority. This is a recurring theme in politically minded allusions to Socrates globally. A wave of such work took hold in the U.S., Britain and Canada around WWII, the McCarthy Era, and Cold War. Creative artists in literature, radio, theater, and television summoned Socrates to probe what it means to be an unyielding advocate of free speech and free inquiry—even a martyr to belief in the necessity of these freedoms to meaningful and virtuous human life. In these sources, his strange appearance, behavior, and views, especially his relentlessly critical, even irritating, truth-seeking, and anti-ideological posture are presented as testing Athenian democracy’s capacity to abide by these ideals. They suggest that the indictment, trial, and execution are stains on Athenian democracy and that a worrisome historical parallel is unfolding. These full-blown interpretations of the life of Socrates require wrestling with the whole issue of the historical Socrates; a claim to historical accuracy was a crucial part of any case for his story’s being credible as a warning.

Visually, we find monuments and other sculptural tributes to a less overtly political Socrates in cities and small towns across the globe in public spaces devoted to learning and contemplation. A stand-out for its unusual focus is Antonio Canova’s 1797 bas-relief, “Socrates rescues Alcibiades in the battle of Potidaea,” in which Socrates strikes a powerful pose as a hoplite. An 1875 piece by Russian imperial sculptor Mark Antokolski foregrounds the personal cost of Socrates’s commitment to philosophy, portraying him alone, a drained cup of hemlock at his side, slumped over dead. Reproductions of, and drawings based on, ancient copies of what are thought to be a fourth-century B.C.E. statue of Socrates by the Athenian Lysippus (e.g., the British Museum’s Statuette of Socrates) are also in wide circulation. A particularly interesting one can be found in graphic artist Ralph Steadman’s Paranoids , a 1986 book of Polaroid caricatures of famous people. But the most influential image of the philosopher today is the riveting, widely reproduced, 1787 painting, “The Death of Socrates,” by Jacques Louis David, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It captures the philosopher’s own claim to be reverent, his courageous decision to take the cup of hemlock in his own hand, and the grief his unjust fate stirred in others.

David’s neo-classical history-painting has come to be a defining image of Socrates. This is curious because, while the design of the painting abounds with careful references to the primary sources, it ignores those sources’ description of Socrates himself — the ones cited in section 1 on Socrates’s strangeness — rendering the old philosopher classically handsome instead. Attending to the primary sources has led some readers to wonder whether Socrates might have had an African heritage. For example, in the 1921 “The Foolish and the Wise: Sallie Runner is Introduced to Socrates,” a short story in the NAACP journal edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, author Leila Amos Pendleton tackles the issue. Her character, a bright girl employed as a maid, responds to her employer’s account of the physical appearance of the great man born before Jesus that Miss Audrey intends to tell Sallie all about: “He was a cullod gentmun, warn’t he?” This prompts the following exchange: “Oh no, Sallie, he wasn’t colored.” “Wal, ef he been daid all dat long time, Miss Oddry, how kin yo’ tell his color?” “Why he was an Athenian, Sallie. He lived in Greece.” Nails (1989) depicted Socrates as an African village elder in a recreation of Republic 1. In the visual arts, drawings and watercolors by the Swiss artist Hans Erni resolutely portray Socrates as ugly as the sources describe him. Socrates also sometimes resonates as Black (or queer, or touched), independent of any discussion of physical attributes; this follows from his renown for refusing to be defined by the stultifying norms of his day.

In Plato’s Phaedo , Socrates says a recurring dream instructs him to “compose music and work at it” and that he had always interpreted it to mean something like keep doing philosophy because “philosophy was the greatest kind of music and that’s what I was working at” (60e–61a). In prison awaiting execution, he says he experimented with new ways of doing philosophy; he tried turning some of Aesop’s fables into verse. We might view some of the deeply thoughtful, even loving, engagements with Socrates in music and dance in light of this passage. “Socrates” is the fifth movement of Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium (1954). He is the explicit inspiration for two works of choreography by Mark Morris, Death of Socrates in 1983, and Socrates in 2010, both of which work with 1919 compositions by Erik Satie that directly reference Socrates. And we have a work produced in 2022 at HERE in New York, The Hang, the stunning product of a collaboration by playwright Taylor Mac and composer Matt Ray.

Conjurings of Socrates appear outside philosophy as both brief but dense references to discrete features of this puzzling figure, and sustained portraits that wrestle with his enigmatic character. Details of the sources mentioned above, and other sources that may be useful, are included in the following supplementary document.

• Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), 2005, A Companion to Socrates , Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Bussanich, John, and Nicholas D. Smith (eds.), 2013, The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates , London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Cooper, John M. (ed.), 1997, Plato: Complete Works , Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, has Plato’s works in Greek, in translation, and with notes. It has the works of Aristophanes and Xenophon as well.
• “ The Uses and Disadvantages of Socrates ”, Christopher Rowe’s 1999 Inaugural Lecture at the University of Durham.
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article devoted to Socrates.

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Plato’s ‘Symposium’: A Critical Guide. Cambridge critical guides

Anna novokhatko , albert-ludwigs-universität​ freiburg. [email protected].

Table of Contents [Authors and titles are listed below.]

Few texts of ancient Greek literature have engaged scholarship to such an extent as Plato’s Symposium , written probably between 384 and 379 BCE and presenting an account of a fictional banquet in the house of the Athenian tragic poet Agathon to celebrate his first victory in the dramatic competitions of 416 BCE. Even the most recent work is copious. 1

The present volume contains thirteen contributions and includes a broad spectrum of scholars, from very well-known experts on Plato’s philosophy to young researchers. The volume is focused on the text of the dialogue and in general corresponds to its structure: four contributions analyse the three speeches delivered before Socrates (F. V. Trivigno, S. Obdrzalek, D. Sedley and F. J. Gonzalez), four contributions deal with Socrates’ speech itself (F. C. C. Sheffield, A. Nightingale, C. Shields and A. W. Price), and, finally, two contributions at the end of the volume (R. G. Edmonds and P. Destrée) examine Alcibiades’ arrival and his praise of Socrates. The chapter written by J. Reid provides an overview of all the speeches in the context of Plato’s educational principles. The first (rather philological) and the last (rather philosophical) chapters stand out, the first by Z. Giannopoulou providing a narratological approach to the text and focusing on time as a principle of narrative structure; the last chapter, by R. Kraut, dealing with eudaimonism in relation to Plato’s ethical thought.

Giannopoulou argues that the regressive temporality of the dialogue’s frame (the present leads to the past and mirrors the past) corresponds to the first part of Diotima’s speech (204a-206a). But the prologue’s progressive temporality, in which the present leads to the future, corresponds to the second part of Diotima’s speech (206b-212a), concerning begetting in beauty and a procreative model of desire.

J. Reid provides an intertextual reading highlighting parallels between the speeches prior to Diotima’s and the goals of early education in the Republic . In both dialogues, Plato is concerned with the goals of education.

F. V. Trivigno deals with Eryximachus’ speech and regards it as constituting a methodological rivalry between medicine and philosophy as these are developed in Plato. The parallels between Plato’s treatment of Eryximachus, with various cues indicating to the audience that his speech should be taken as parodic, and the figure of the doctor as a stock character from Old and Middle Comedy are convincing (though two important attestations from comedy are missing from the list: Crates fr. 46 PCG and Ameipsias fr. 17 PCG both refer to doctors’ speech and reinforce the author’s argument on the parody of medical discourse).

S. Obdrzalek argues further that Aristophanes’ speech, which is very significant in relation to Socrates’, represents a profoundly pessimistic account of desire as a state of lack and as an irrational urge incapable of satisfaction. Plato objects to Aristophanes because Aristophanes treats human nature and desire as irrational and because he assigns the wrong object to desire, a union with a human beloved rather than contemplation of forms.

D. Sedley considers this same tale of human origins by Aristophanes to be a tragi-comic perversion of the creation story told by the eponymous speaker in the later Timaeus (the list of textual correspondences is presented in the appendix). Plato in his Timaeus adds four reasons for the spherical shape of the world-god: inclusiveness, the beauty of symmetry, self-sufficiency, and rotation. The highest achievement of human life is to succeed in identifying the core of a person’s being with the intellect, located in the head, setting aside the lower psychological drives, housed in the heart and gut ( Tim. 90a-d). The human goal of becoming godlike, while absent from the earlier speakers’ attempts to capture love’s divine nature, is twice represented in the Symposium as the real aim of love: it is first sketched misleadingly by Aristophanes, then correctly by Socrates.

F. J. Gonzalez argues further that Agathon’s speech, which precedes Socrates’, is prominent and central, conceptually coherent and sophisticated. It introduces various points that are further developed in Socrates’ speech such as the definition of the nature of desire, the identification of happiness with the possession of goodness and beauty, a critical distance from the poetic tradition (Hesiod and Parmenides), and the distinctly Platonic conception of temperance. Agathon is the last to stay awake in discussion with Socrates, and thus the kinship between the two seems much closer than usually thought, something suggested by the central importance of their rivalry in the dialogue.

In foregrounding Diotima’s speech, F. C. C. Sheffield examines the nature and structure of erotic desire, explaining why desire is a uniquely appropriate term for the characterization of the philosopher’s pursuit of forms (and exclusively associated with passionate sexual desire). A basic feature of desire is what the Greeks would think of as its axiomatic relationship to beauty (beauty being how the goodness of a thing – a body, a soul, a poem or law – appears to us). Desire is more than a lack or a longing, and it involves cognitive components, specifically an evaluative judgement of its object as kalos or agathos in some respect. Desire constitutes a fundamental urge to self-creation. It is our relentless pursuit of beauty, a drive to reproduce the value we see in the world and capture it in a life of our own, as parents, poets, legislators, or philosophers. The proper end of all desires is the form of beauty, and that is why desire emerges most strongly in those dialogues in which the theory of forms plays a central role: the Phaedo , the Symposium , the Phaedrus , and the Republic . Finally, the author’s focus on the intertextual relationship with Aristotle ( Metaphysics Lambda ) represents a significant contribution to scholarship. Scheffield emphasizes that the metaphysical significance of desire for Plato has been neglected, despite the fact that its significance was appreciated by Aristotle. Aristotle used desire in a context that employs features highlighted in Plato’s Symposium . Aristotle is drawing on the ability of desire to capture action in relation to the divine end, and on the features that make the desire- term eros appropriate for action in relation to the divine.

A. Nightingale analyses the discourse associated with the body and the realm of becoming. In the Symposium all the emphasis is on the philosophical lover who gives birth to ideas in the presence of his beloved. The metaphor of the philosopher’s fathering of a discourse that carries his seed in the Phaedrus (finalized written texts vs. open-ended and on-going philosophical dialogue) differs from the metaphor of the philosopher giving birth to discursive offspring in the Symposium . The philosopher plants discourses in the student’s mind; the student develops arguments that are fruitful and full of seeds; from these seeds other discourses grow up in other people’s minds and thus become immortal. Two models of psychic pregnancy (great poets and lawgivers vs. the philosophic lover) are set forth by Diotima. Philosophical work does not take the form of a finished product; poems and law-codes, by contrast, are fixed and finalized. In Diotima’s discussions of the discursive children of the poets and lawgivers (model 1) and of the philosophic lover (model 2), Diotima effectively contrasts a finalized discourse to an ongoing and changing philosophic discourse.

C. Shields poses the question why creatures who live and love in a world of change and impermanence should embrace a conception of the culmination of human life that may seem to them not its apotheosis but rather its abnegation. This criticism is valid only within a partial and decontextualized understanding of Plato’s motivation for characterizing the ascent toward beauty. The final goal of love is not the serene contemplation of beauty itself, but rather the secure possession of the form of the good. Diotima treats the vision of the form of beauty as the culmination of an attraction consistent with a larger, overarching ultimate end. Knowledge has a special role in Plato, and the possibility of cognitive achievement will dwarf other, lower, non-cognitive types of love. Shields’ contribution is not aided by a number of incorrect citations (such as Plato’s Republic book 6 quoted repeatedly as book 5).

A. W. Price concludes the series of four contributions devoted exclusively to Diotima by posing two questions about how best to interpret the point in the Symposium that Socrates pretends to derive from Diotima: (1) Within the Lesser Mysteries, is desire generic (desire in general) or specific/erotic? (2) Within the Greater Mysteries, is interpersonal desire maintained or supplanted? Similarly to Nightingale’s discussion, Price argues that Plato plays with the ambiguity of the vocabulary tokos and tiktein , describing procreation in the language of pregnancy. In invoking the impact of poetry and legislation, Diotima applies the language of generation freely: all poets are procreators of wisdom and the rest of virtue; legislators such as Lycurgus and Solon procreated laws and virtue of all sorts, which they have since then counted as their children.

Two further contributors, R. G. Edmonds and P. Destrée, deal with the final episode of the drunken Alcibiades. Edmonds argues against Christoph Riedweg’s suggestion that the references in the Symposium to the Greater and Lesser Mysteries may reflect an actual sequence of initiations focused on imparting secret doctrines to the initiates. He claims that Plato deploys the imagery of mystery rituals and the idea of Alcibiades as a profaner of mysteries to provide an answer to the problem of the spectacular failure of Alcibiades. Alcibiades was able to perceive the beauty in Socrates, but failed to understand that beauty was not a possession of Socrates himself. He tried to appropriate beauty just as he would try to appropriate the Mysteries of Eleusis. The point of the metaphor of the mysteries is that the philosophy Alcibiades desires is not some piece of information that he can learn ( mathein ) and keep for himself, but rather an experience he must undergo ( pathein ), such as a ritual. Alcibiades’ failure in philosophy is illuminated by the parallel with the Mysteries, which he failed to treat with due respect. In the Symposium , Plato uses the imagery of the Mysteries to elucidate the nature of philosophy, both in the metaphor of the epopteia of Diotima and in the profanations of Alcibiades.

P. Destrée on the contrary argues that Alcibiades’ speech can shed positive light on Diotima’s speech. Alcibiades came to Socrates the Silenus to learn a special knowledge, knowledge of one’s desire for happiness. Alcibiades’ concluding sentence is seen as providing the clue as to how to interpret Diotima’s final words (212a), which should be read in this perspective. At the very end of the Republic , it is similarly only the philosophers who are able to obtain true moral knowledge and thus practice true virtue, which allows them to obtain true happiness.

R. Kraut concludes the volume arguing that the Aristotelian ultimate end should not be imposed on Plato, and that Socrates’ goal of loving as the contemplation of the form of beauty should be considered to be the finest activity of the gods who comprise happiness and not as the only form of happiness. The best kind of embodied existence is in the right relationship to all beautiful things.

The volume represents various approaches to the interpretation of the text of the Symposium on a synchronic level. A desideratum remains discussion on the generic (i.e. genre-related) contextualisation of this dialogue in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BCE. 2 However, the book constitutes a very useful survey incorporating current scholarship of the highest quality, spanning an impressive breadth of topics ranging from minor interpretive explanations to questions of Plato’s social and ritual context.

Authors and titles

Introduction, Pierre Destrée and Zina Giannopoulou 1. “Narrative Temporalities and Models of Desire,” Zina Giannopoulou 2. “Unfamiliar Voices: Harmonizing the Non-Socratic Speeches and Plato’s Psychology,” Jeremy Reid 3. “A Doctor’s Folly: Diagnosing the Speech of Eryximachus,” Franco V. Trivigno 4. “Aristophanic Tragedy,” Suzanne Obdrzalek 5. “Divinization,” David Sedley 6. “Why Agathon’s Beauty Matters,” Francisco J. Gonzalez 7. ” Erōs and the Pursuit of Form,” F.C.C. Sheffield 8. “The Mortal Soul and Immortal Happiness,” Andrea Nightingale 9. “A Fetish for Fixity?” Christopher Shields 10. “Generating in Beauty for the Sake of Immortality: Personal Love and the Goals of the Lover,” Anthony W. Price 11. “Alcibiades the Profane: Images of the Mysteries,” Radcliffe G. Edmonds III 12. “How Does Contemplation Make You Happy? An Ethical Reading of Diotima’s Speech,” Pierre Destrée 13. Eudaimonism and Platonic erōs ,” Richard Kraut Bibliography Index locorum Index

1 . The classical Cambridge commentary by K. Dover (1980), the Warminster translation and commentary by C. J. Rowe (1998), the monographs by K. Sier (Stuttgart and Leipztig 1997), R. Hunter (Oxford 2004), and F. C. C. Scheffield (Oxford 2006), the volumes of collected papers edited by J. Lesher, D. Nails and F. Scheffield (Washington DC 2006) and C. Horn (Berlin 2012). I will not here mention the numerous recent translations of the Symposium .

2 . On placing the Symposium within the system of genres of the time, see B. Zimmermann, ‘Platons Theorietheater: Einige Gedanken zum Symposion ’, International Yearbook for Hermeneutics 13 (2014), 34-47.

The Defense Speech ("Apology") of Socrates * Minor corrections in the text were made February 1, 2012. Introduction by Manuel Velasquez Note by Dr. Garrett: I have provided study questions for this version of the Defense Speech as well as the longer version. (Note added February 7, 2011) Socrates' relentless and, to some people, infuriating questioning of his fellow citizens eventually led to his death. Shortly after the scene described in Euthyphro , Meletus and others indicted Socrates and brought him to trial. In his brilliant work The Apology , Plato summarized the speech Socrates delivered in his defense. The speech is especially fascinating because it provides a summary of Socrates' life and of his devotion to philosophical questioning. Socrates is standing in court, facing the jury composed of five hundred Athenian citizens who have just heard the testimony of his accusers, who charge him with corrupting the youth of Athens and with not believing in the gods of the state: [From The Apology of Socrates, translated (and much abridged) by Manuel Velasquez (copyright 1987); for a full translation, by Benjamin Jowett, see Jowett Translation .--J.G.] I do not know, my fellow Athenians, how you were affected by my accusers whom you just heard. But they spoke so persuasively they almost made me forget who I was. Yet they hardly uttered a word of truth. But many of you are thinking, "Then what is the origin of these accusations, Socrates?" That is a fair question. Let me explain their origins— Some of you know my good friend Chaerephon. Before he died he went to Delphi and asked the religious oracle there to tell him who the wisest man in the world was. The oracle answered that there was no man wiser than Socrates. When I learned this, I asked myself, "What can the god's oracle mean?" For I knew I had no wisdom. After thinking it over for a long time, I decided that I had to find a man wiser than myself so I could go back to the god's oracle with this evidence. So I went to see a politician who was famous for his wisdom. But when I questioned him, I realized he really was not wise, although many people—he especially—thought he was. So I tried to explain to him that although he thought himself wise, he really was not. But all that happened was that he came to hate me. And so did many of his supporters who overheard us. So I left him, thinking to myself as I left that although neither of us really knew anything about what is noble and good, still I was better off. For he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows, while I neither know nor think that I know. And in this I think I have a slight advantage. Then I went to another person who had even greater pretensions to wisdom. The result was exactly the same: I made another enemy. In this way I went to one man after another and made more and more enemies. I felt bad about this and it frightened me. But I was compelled to do it because I felt that investigating god's oracle came first. I said to myself, I must go to everyone who seems to be wise so I can find out what the oracle meant. My hearers imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find lacking in others. But the truth is, Men of Athens, that only god is wise. And by his oracle he wanted to show us that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing. It is as if he was telling us, "The wisest man is the one who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing." And so I go about the world obedient to god. I search and question the wisdom of anyone who seems to be wise. And if he is not wise, then to clarify the meaning of the oracle I show him that he is not wise. My occupation completely absorbs me and I have no time for anything else. My devotion to the god has reduced me to utter poverty. There is something more. Young men of the richer classes, who do not have much to do, follow me around of their own accord. They like to hear pretenders exposed. And sometimes they imitate me by examining others themselves. They quickly discover that there are plenty of people who think they know something but who really know nothing at all. Then those people also get angry at me. "This damnable Socrates is misleading our youth!" they say. And if somebody asks them, "How? What evil things does he do or teach them?" they cannot say. But in order not to appear at a loss, these people repeat the charges used against all philosophers: that we teach obscure things up in the clouds, that we teach atheism, and that we make the worst views appear to be the best. For people do not like to admit that their pretensions to knowledge have been exposed. And that, fellow Athenians, is the origin of the prejudices against me. But some of you will ask, "Don't you regret what you did since now it might mean your death?" To these I answer, "You are mistaken. A good man should not calculate his chances of living or dying. He should only ask himself whether he is doing right or wrong—whether his inner self is that of a good man or of an evil one." And if you say to me, "Socrates, we will let you go free but only on condition that you stop your questioning," then I will reply, "Men of Athens, I honor and love you. But I must obey god rather than you, and while I have life and strength I will never stop doing philosophy." For my aim is to persuade you all, young and old alike, not to think about your lives or your properties, but first and foremost to care about your inner self. I tell you that wealth does not make you good within, but that from inner goodness comes wealth and every other benefit to man. This is my teaching, and if it corrupts youth, then I suppose I am their corrupter. Well, my fellow Athenians, you must now decide whether to acquit me or not. But whichever you do, understand that I will never change my ways, not even if I have to die many rimes. To talk daily about what makes us good, and to question myself and others, is the greatest thing man can do. For the unexamined life is not worth living. [At this point Socrates rested his case. The jury debated among themselves and then, in a split vote, they reached their final verdict.] Men of Athens, you have condemned me to death. To those of you who are my friends and who voted to acquit me let me say that death may be a good thing. Either it is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as some people say, it is merely a migration from this world to another. If it is complete unconsciousness— like a sleep undisturbed even by dreams—then death will be an unspeakable gain. And if it is a journey to anodier world where all the dead live, then it will also be a great good. For then I can continue my search into true and false knowledge: In the next world, as in this one, I can continue questioning the great people of the past to find out who is wise and who merely pretends to be. So do not be saddened by death. No evil can happen to a good man either in this life or in death. Well, the hour of departure has arrived, and we must each go our ways. I to die, and you to live. Which is better only god knows.

Closing Comment by Velasquez

Symposium by Plato

Symposium by plato summary and analysis of the speech of agathon and socrates questions agathon.

The Speech of Agathon

Agathon begins by explaining how he plans to shift his speech from the previous by describing the nature of Love and celebrating him, rather than congratulating humans on the good things that come from Love. therefore, he starts by describing the qualities of the god. Disagreeing with Phaedrus , he says Love is the youngest god, backing this up by saying that Love flees old age, living among young people since like attracts like. Also, if Love was the oldest, the violent histories told by Hesiod and Parmenides would not have occurred, since Love brings peace. He is also delicate, settling in gentle characters, of fluid and supple shape to enfold souls, and attractive.

Agathon continues on to describe the “moral character,” translated from arete , of Love. Love has the four cardinal virtues of Justice, Moderation, Bravery, and Wisdom. Love is never the cause of victim of injustice, since violence never touches him. He has “the biggest share of moderation.” Moderation is power over pleasures and passions, and since no pleasure is stronger than Love, weaker pleasures are under Love’s power. Having power over pleasure, therefore, Love has the greatest moderation. Love is Brave, having a hold on Ares, the god of war, since Aphrodite has power over Ares. To prove Love’s wisdom, Agathon equates Love’s poetry, making those in love poets, the production of animals, and his effect on artisans and professionals as being wise. Love is said to be the teacher of artisans and professionals, making them successful.

Agathon ends his speech praising Love, stating all men should follow this god. Then he turns to Phaedrus, telling him this is the speech he has prepared, admitting part of it was in fun, but part of it was still moderately serious. After all present applaud for Agathon, Socrates tells Eryximachus , reminding him he had said he would have nothing to say after Agathon spoke.

He praises Agathon’s speech, saying it reminded him of Gorgias. Socrates praises all of the speakers, but says that they did not actually praise Love, although they appeared to do so. To avoid comparisons to the previous speeches, he asks if he can speak in his own way. All agree and he begins his speech by asking Agathon questions.

Socrates Questions Agathon

Socrates praises Agathon’s speech once more, saying he will also explore the questions of the qualities of Love himself. He asks if Love is the love of nothing or something, to which Agathon answers the latter, and then Socrates says that Love desires that which loves it. They establish that Love desires what it does not have, something would not desire what it already has, but rather that which it needs.

This applies to qualities that are not permanent. A person who is tall would not desire height, as they will be tall for their whole life, but someone who is strong could desire strength, since it is not necessary that they will be strong in the future. People want to preserve qualities they have now that they want to possess in the future. In other words, “Love is the love of something” and he loves what he needs in the present.

Socrates goes on to remind Agathon of having claimed there is only love of beautiful things, not ugly ones. Therefore, Love desires beautiful things, and since he only loves what he does not have, Love needs beauty and does not have it. Socrates deduces that this means that Love is not beautiful, to which Agathon agrees, taking back what he stated earlier. Socrates adds that good things are beautiful, and if Love needs beautiful things and good things are beautiful, Love needs good things too.

Agathon talks about what love is, rather than what it does. He, like Pausanias , is unconcerned with heterosexuality almost completely. In discussing the virtue of Love, he describes the characteristics it is generally divided into, which the previous speeches have described: courage (Phaedrus), justice (Pausanias), temperance (Eryximachus) and he substitutes wisdom for piety ( Aristophanes ). These are the four cardinal virtues making the “moral character” of love, or arete . Agathon wrongly defines them when applying them to Love. He equates Justice with nonviolence, courage and moderation with power, and wisdom with technical skill.

A shift in focus occurs in his speech again, from Aristophanes’ human conception of Love, to Agathon’s purely divine conception of goodness and focus in praising Love, the god. It is ironic, however, that while he praises Love for what he is, Agathon uses virtue, a human excellence, as the criterion in praise. A paradox arises where he tries to praise a deity, even though that deity is anthropomorphic, in terms of virtue, but to complete his argument abstracts from man. While his speech has been considered one of the worst of the group, he does set the reader up for Diotima like the others, as the first speaker to explicitly distinguish between beauty and goodness.

Plato constantly challenges the tragedy-comedy dichotomy in the Symposium, and Agathon’s speech is a major element in this challenge. A tragedian who had just the night previously celebrated his first award as a writer, gave arguably the most amusing speech of the initial six. Aristophanes, a comedic poet, gave a speech which was overall sad, but with lighthearted elements. Agathon’s speech was more clearly comedic. He pokes fun at Socrates who is older and was never described at attractive, when saying “Everyone knows that Love has extraordinary good looks, and between ugliness and Love there is unceasing war” (196 A), clearly a jab at the man sitting next to him. However, he insists that parts of the speech are meant in earnest, supported by Plato’s observation in other writings that stripping poetry of its devices leaves only speeches. This, for example, adds a layer to the portrayal of Socrates, underneath Agathon’s jabs at him.

Emphasizing the fun approach to his speech, Agathon parodies the Sophist Gorgias’ style of oratory. Passage 197D, the concluding passage of the speech, is the most prominent example of this. The use of lyric meters, internal rhymes, balanced phrases, among other poetic devices parody the teachings of Gorgias on formal speaking. As a student of Gorgias himself, this implies self-parody by Agathon. Strong critics of Agathon however have referred to his writing as being simply imitation. What is left underneath the skillful prose disguised as parody might be a complete lack of knowledge. Being quite drunk when he speaks, Agathon is trying to get laughs over all else, focusing on an unrestrained parody of Gorgianic style, adding double entendres, particularly when referring to Socrates.

Characteristically, Plato represents Socrates questioning the speaker before him before giving his own speech. However, this method of Socrates and his speech are generally attributed to be Plato’s own ideas and theories. Socrates draws on Gorgias when questioning Agathon, not as parody, but alluding to the standards of what is likely, eikos , established by him and his school of orators.

The questioning sets up Diotima’s speech, introducing the idea that love must be a lover of wisdom, to be nuanced by Diotima. They also end the conception of attributing all good qualities to Love; rather than base their idea of Eros on the beloved, they should do so on the lover. The structure of questioning foreshadows that a Platonic Form that will be discussed by Diotima (Form of Beauty). When asking “a brother, just insofar as he is a brother, is he the brother of something or not?” Socrates is asking what a brother is, asking the question what is that which a Form answers.

Symposium by Plato Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Symposium by Plato is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which of these steps is crucial when doing a close reading of nonfiction?

Are you giving me choices here?

1. How does Plato, using integrative thinking, ultimately find a way to connect erotic love, beauty and the absolute into a unified whole?

I'm familiar with the concept of integrative thinking but unsure on the details of it that would cover such a complex set of variables.

“Might makes right” is a statement that might be heard..... ?

State of Nature

Study Guide for Symposium by Plato

Symposium study guide contains a biography of Plato, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Symposium by Plato
• Symposium by Plato Summary
• Character List

Essays for Symposium by Plato

Symposium essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Symposium by Plato.

• The Impossibility of Evil Without Ignorance and the Progression Toward Good
• The Structure of Plato's Symposium
• Plato's Psychology - The Tripartite Soul
• Love and the Importance of the Speeches
• Pederasty Without Sexual Relations

E-Text of Symposium by Plato

Symposium e-text contains the full text of Symposium by Plato

• Persons of the Dialogue
• Full text of Symposium

Wikipedia Entries for Symposium by Plato

• Introduction
• Literary form
• Setting and historical context
• Principal characters