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Socrates in Diogenes Laertius

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, tr. R.D. Hicks, adds sayings and stories to the views of Socrates in Xenophon and Plato.

"Diogenes Laertios", to transcribe his name from the Greek language in which he wrote, flourished circa A.D. 200-250. The historical Socrates had died about six hundred year earlier, in 399 B.C.

Outline of this page ...

Socrates, ethics, death, and life

Again [as in i, 14 and i, 18, Socrates] was the first who discoursed on the conduct of life, and the first philosopher who was tried and put to death. (Diog. L. ii, 20)

Anaxagoras had been fined for teaching "new doctrines about things above" (Plutarch, Pericles) and had left Athens, but unlike Socrates he had not been born there but in Clazomenae, in Ionia. The criminal charge against Socrates included "introducing novelties in religion" (cf. Plato, Euthyphro 3b).

Demetrius of Byzantium relates that Crito [who, Socrates says in Plato's Apology 33d-e, "is of the same age and of the same deme [i.e. Alopece in Attica] as myself" (tr. Jowett)] removed him from his workshop and educated him, being struck by his beauty of soul ... (Diog. L. ii, 21; Crito also appears in Plato's Crito, Euthydemus, and Phaedo)

The Greek word rendered 'beauty' in English (namely kalon) means 'excellence' in this context. [Logical grammar note: the word 'soul' here would hardly be mistaken for the name of an object rather than, in the context of the historical Socrates, the ethical aspect of man ... until the imagination takes over and creates a picture of a "ghost" (PI § 36).]

If Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece (Gorgias 495d; Diog. L. ii, 18), was a stone-worker -- i.e. a man of comparatively humble origin -- then his having been a worker in Crito's workshop is consistent with that. Plato's account of how Socrates became a philosopher is found in Apology 21a-d.

In the workshop and market-place

... that he discussed moral questions in the workshops and the market-place, being convinced that the study of nature is no concern of ours; and that he claimed that his enquires embraced

Whatso'er is good or evil in an house [Homer, Odyssey iv 392]

(Diog. L. ii, 21)

Holding the Irrational to Account (Socrates and the Donkey)

... that frequently, owing to his vehemence in argument, men set upon him with their fists or tore his hair out; and that for the most part he was despised and laughed at, yet bore all this ill-usage patiently. So much so that, when he had been kicked, and someone expressed surprise at his taking it so quietly, Socrates rejoined, "Should I have taken the law of a donkey, supposing that he had kicked me?" Thus far Demetrius. (Diog. L. ii, 21; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 13, 1: someone more ignorant than oneself is akin to a man ("donkey") in worse health.)

Wisdom = good, Conceited ignorance = evil

There is, he said, only one good, that is, knowledge, and only one evil, that is, ignorance ... (ii, 31; cf. Euthydemus 278d-282a, tr. Jowett: "Wisdom alone, is the good for man, ignorance the only evil", but the greatest evil is the self-inflicted evil of thinking you know what you don't know.)

But if virtue is knowledge

That wisdom seems very difficult to learn, because when a donkey -- or even a donkey's shadow (There was a Greek expression "not worth a donkey's shadow", and foolish words are the shadow of vice, as the man intent on vicious deeds is the donkey itself) -- kicks me I often seem unable to stop myself from kicking it back -- i.e. from taking "the law of a donkey" (if a donkey is kicked, it will kick back) -- although I say I know this to be foolish (i.e. contrary to reason, irrational).

But if "virtue is knowledge" and "vice is ignorance", then why am I overcome by this passion? There are two parts to this. The first is that "Although I say I know that x is wrong, I believe that x is right" -- i.e. I think that my angry reaction is justified although I say that it is not. (Self-deception, "the enemy that is always at home" (Plato, Cratylus 428d) -- "If it were easy for man to know thyself, that precept would not have passed for an oracle" (Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes).) This can only be overcome by forcing oneself to think things all the way through.

The second part is "the stubborn man within", the man of base instincts and bad habits acquired in the time of ignorance of the good, the bad habits that have become second nature to him. And it is only by keeping watch over ourselves, as Socrates did, that we are able to overcome these habits.

And so there are three obstacles (ignorance, instinct and habit) that stand in the way of our becoming fully ethical human beings and will continue to be -- so long as we presume that reason is unable to both guide and help us to become good human beings, that "know thyself" is not the beginning of wisdom. But as Socrates' life shows, thoroughgoing reason is an able guide to the life that is best for man.

According to Plato (Apology 37e-38a), if as Socrates thought virtue is knowledge, then the way to acquire that knowledge is to hold discourse, both with one's companions and with oneself alone, on the subject of the good for man (Plato, Apology 37e-38a). (A worthwhile dialog to imagine: "The Donkey" where Socrates' companion argues that the wise man will kick the donkey back; cf. Plato, Republic 332d).

Unity of Thought and Life

He was a man of great independence and dignity of character. (Diog. L. ii, 24)

Here 'great independence' I take to mean: Socrates acted in accord with what "discourse [or reasoning] with himself" told him to be the good in ethics (which Plato called "no small matter, but how to live"), neither dependent on the judgment nor on the wealth of anyone else for his way of life.

When what a man thinks to do is always the same as what ethics tells him to do, then he has the wisdom of Socrates ... if he has reasoned aright in ethics, thinking things all the way through to the end (including the interconnections between ethical concepts, which is Plato's "method of tautologies in ethics").

Xanthippe as Teacher

... Xanthippe first scolded him and then drenched him with water ... she tore his cloak off his back in the market place ... When Alcibiades declared that the scolding of Xanthippe was intolerable, "Nay, I have got used to it," said he, "... you do not mind the cackle of geese."

He said he lived with a shrew "... so [that thereby] I in the society of Xanthippe shall learn to adapt myself to the rest of the world." (Diog. L. ii, 36-37)

When marriage is discussed in the Athens of those days (Xenophon, Symposium ii, 9-10), after Socrates observes that because "a woman's talent is not at all inferior to a man's", a wife may be taught by her husband, Antisthenes asks about Xanthippe: "Why do you not, then, teach good temper to yours?" to which Socrates answers that if someone wishes to master an art he must take on the most difficult part of it, and "my great aim in life is to get on well with people, and I chose Xanthippe because I knew that if I could get on with her I could with anyone." (The quoted words are from Hamilton, The Greek Way (1942), x, p. 207; O.J. Todd renders Socrates' answer: "Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.")

To one who said, "Don't you find so-and-so very offensive?" he reply was, "No, for it takes two to make a quarrel." (Diog. L. ii, 36)

His self-control in such trials made Socrates feel himself to be "daily growing in goodness" (Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 6, 9; iv, 8, 6). If a man knows that impatience is wrong, he will try not to be impatient; but he must try, because impatience springs not only from the mind (when it is ignorant of the good) but also from instinct and bad habits (left over from the time of ignorance of the good). Thus Epictetus: "Practice doing what is right until it becomes a habit, because what we do from habit is sweet to us."

The Delphic Oracle

These and the like were his words and deeds, to which the Pythian priestess bore testimony when she gave Chaerephon the famous response:

Of all men living Socrates most wise. (Diog. L. ii, 37)

He used to say ... that he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance. (ii, 32; cf. Plato, Phaedrus 235c, and Apology 23a-b, 21d)

What then are the wisest words man can say? I don't know. [Here the notation for distinguishing between a sign and its use in the language shows its usefulness. Because "I don't know" ≠ 'I don't know'. Which did I intend? For Socrates, the latter: The wisest words a man can say are 'I don't know'.]

[W.K.C. Guthrie writes that] Xenophon does not actually mention Socrates's well-known confession of his own ignorance ... but he does show him disclaiming the part of a teacher [of philosophical doctrines; cf. the discussion of "Socratic irony"], preferring to make his friends companions in investigation [(Memorabilia iv, 6, 1)] --

In those investigations Socrates used his method of cross-questioning theses to refute false claims to knowledge by uncovering unclarity and contradictions in the explanations his companions gave (ibid. iv, 6, 13). Besides this "elementary logic", Socrates by his own example taught his companions the way of life of a philosopher, holding nothing dearer than wisdom and virtue (Plato, Euthydemus 278d).

-- and emphasizing the importance of self-knowledge and of not supposing that one knows what one does not know (Memorabilia iii, 9, 6).

Aristotle gives us the general statement that "it was the practice of Socrates to ask questions but not to give answers, for he confessed that he did not know" (Soph. el. 183b6-8) ... (W.K.C. Guthrie, Socrates (1971) iii, 5, p. 123-124)

[Related pages: "Socratic ignorance and wisdom", and "Socrates and flute-girls".]

Socrates' Other Teachers

Who introduced philosophy to Socrates, but what are we calling 'philosophy'?

... at the beginning of his treatise [Anaxagoras] says, "All things were together; then came Mind and set them in order." This earned for Anaxagoras himself the nickname of Nous or Mind ... (Diog. L. ii, 6)

It would be hard to exaggerate Anaxagoras' influence on contemporary thought ... in Athens ... His writings were on sale in the market ... and were eagerly studied, amongst others, it would seem, by Socrates himself. (C.E. Robinson, Hellas (1955), vi, 8, p. 93 [Zito Hellas (1946)])

Anaxagoras' subject was the study nature or "physics" -- i.e. "the part [of philosophy] concerned with the universe and all that it contains", in contrast to ethics and logic (or dialectic) (Diog. L. i, 18), including the rationalization of [i.e. making plausible to reason] stories about the gods (Phaedrus 229e).

But Socrates took no interest in "physics" as anyone who had heard him talking in the workshop and market-place would know (Plato, Apology 19c-d; cf. Phaedrus 229e-230a and Phaedo 96a; Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 7, 2-3; Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b).

Socrates and Ethics

But, as we read, Socrates "was the first who discoursed on the conduct of life" (Diog. L. ii, 20); Socrates introduced ethics, "the study of life and everything to do with us" (i, 18) into "philosophy" (i, 14, 18), and from that point of view, no one introduced Socrates to philosophy; he had no teacher.

[By 'philosophy' was, I think, originally meant all the branches of higher learning (the intellectual arts in contrast to gymnastics and crafts), not as it came to mean the three parts of philosophy identified by the Greek Stoics as metaphysics, logic and ethics.]

Archelaus, called "the physicist"

When Anaxagoras was condemned [and had to leave Athens, Socrates] became a pupil of [Anaxagoras' pupil] Archelaus the physicist ... (Diog. L. ii, 19). Archelaus [fl. 450 B.C., born in Athens, who"was the first who explained the production of sound as being the concussion of the air" (ii, 17)] was the teacher of Socrates.

[Archelaus] was called the physicist in as much as with him natural philosophy ["physics"] came to an end, as soon as Socrates had introduced ethics. (ii, 16)

But Socrates was not a physicist (cosmologist). He did not investigate the heavens (He was not to be found in Aristophanes' basket up in the sky studying the clouds [l. 225 ff.]). Socrates created no cosmology, although Plato did (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1078a).

Both were pupils of Anaxagoras, I mean Socrates and Euripides ... (Diog. L. ii, 45)

But if the Question of Providence belongs to Cosmology ...

In my opinion Socrates discoursed on physics as well as on ethics, since he holds some conversations about providence, even according to Xenophon, who, however, declares that he only discussed ethics. But Plato, after mentioning Anaxagoras and certain other physicists in the Apology, treats for his own part themes which Socrates disowned, although he puts everything into the mouth of Socrates. (Diog. L. ii, 45)

In his Memorabilia (i, 1, 19) Xenophon says that Socrates believed not only that the gods are mindful of man [cf. Plato, Apology 41c-d], but that they know all our thoughts. If the gods are mindful of us, that is a form of providence. But does that belief belong to "physics" in the classification scheme of Diogenes Laertius (i, 18), which divides philosophy into three parts: (1) "physics", which is "concerned with the universe and all that it contains"; that contrasts with (2) "logic or dialectic" ("the processes of reasoning"), and (3) "ethics", which is "concerned with life and all that has to do with us"?

Categories are context dependent

But how is ethics not to take into account some "very general facts of nature" (Philosophical Investigations" II, xii p. 230) if ethics is concerned with how man should live his life (if ethics, contrary to Kant's ethics of categorical imperatives, is rational)? But not only ethics but also the logic of language meaning must take facts into account -- and that does not destroy the distinction between logic and "physics".

Metaphysics wants to know "what produces order and is the cause of everything", and it invents speculative theories about that, but neither logic nor ethics does. Nonetheless, in Diogenes Laertius' scheme, if the gods are said to cause or affect events, being "heedful of mankind", then in some contexts talk about providence may belong to "physics" (as all theology or "talk about the gods" may), just as general facts of nature may in some contexts belong to an empirical (speculative) investigation as well as being taken notice of by ethics and logic of language. Context decides which part of philosophy any particular investigation belongs to.

Not the result of an empirical investigation or speculation

Socrates does not speculate about the nature of the gods, beyond to accept that the gods, being, unlike man, fully rational, are good and therefore "mindful of us", and that man must conduct himself properly towards the gods just as he must conduct himself properly towards human beings (Plato, Gorgias 507a-b). That is an ethical tautology, not metaphysical speculation. [A world-picture may be a tautology.]

When in Plato's Apology 40c-41c Socrates asks what death is, that is not a question about "the conduct of life" (although it does fall into Diogenes Laertius' category "concerned with life and all that has to do with us"). And so that question might be classified as metaphysical rather than ethical or logical. (But, again, a question may be asked in the context of more than one part of philosophy.)

"I grow old learning new things" (Solon)

... in his old age he learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment. (Diog. L. ii, 32)

In Plato's Euthydemus 272c, Socrates says that "Connus, Metrobius' son, the harpist ... is now still trying to teach me to play the harp; the boys, my schoolfellows, look on and laugh at me and call Connus "old Gaffer-Teacher"!" (tr. Rouse; Jowett's translation is: "grandpapa's master"). If Socrates had been, as Plato was, of the aristocracy rather than of the artisan class (if he was a stonecutter) his education in youth would have included learning to play.

He would extol leisure as the best of possessions, according to Xenophon in the Symposium. (Diog. L. ii, 31)

C.E. Robinson says that the Greek word for 'leisure' is scholê, from which comes our word 'school' (Hellas, Introduction, p. 10). The word meant: the time available for learning (the philosopher is a "lover of learning" Plato has Socrates say in Phaedrus 230d).

The Life of the Fewest Needs

He took care to exercise his body and kept in good condition. (Diog. L. ii, 22 [But only so much exercise as was beneficial to his soul (ethical well-being) (Memorabilia i, 2, 4)])

He was so orderly in his way of life that on several occasions when pestilence broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection. (Diog. L. ii, 25)

He could afford to despise those who scoffed at him. He prided himself on his plain living, and never asked a fee from anyone. He used to say that he most enjoyed the food which was least in need of condiment, and drink which made him feel the least hankering for some other drink ... (ii, 27; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 3, 5)

"So many things I do not need!"

Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, "How many things I can do without!" (Diog. L. ii, 25; variation: "So many things I do not need!")

The gods are free of all needs of the body, and thus, Xenophon says, Socrates who has the fewest needs of all men is closest to the gods (Memorabilia i, 6, 10). But of course that is not the end of Socrates' godly freedom, because the man who is not free of thinking he knows what he doesn't know is in bondage to his ignorance: he is misled by it and he misleads others with it (ibid. iv, 6, 1). Further if, as Socrates argues in Xenophon, virtue is knowledge of how to live (or wisdom), then wrong-doing is ignorance of the good and therefore ignorance of how man should live his life, and bondage to wrong-living (wrong-doing or evil) is the gravest bondage of all.

Because the gods are fully rational, unlike man who is half irrational, the gods exist in complete accord with the wisdom and thus moral excellence that is proper; and because Socrates does not think he knows what he does not know, he is as close to the gods in wisdom and thus moral virtue as man can be (Apology 23a-b).

Socrates in Aristophanes

... with endurance of toil for thy character; never art thou weary whether standing or walking, never numb with cold, never hungry for breakfast; from wine and from gross feeding and all other frivolities thou dost turn away. [Aristophanes, The Clouds, lines 412-417] (Diog. L. ii, 27)

... you stalk along the streets, rolling your eyes, and endure, barefoot, many a hardship ... [ibid. line 362] (Diog. L. ii, 28)

Philosophy, not Sophistic persuasion (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1402a)

Unlike most philosophers, he had no need to travel, except when required to go on an [military] expedition [The expeditions were to Amphipolis, Delium, and Potidaea. (ii, 22-23)]. The rest of his life he stayed at home and engaged all the more keenly in argument with anyone who would converse with him, his aim being not to alter his [companion's] opinion but to get at the truth. (ii, 22 [cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia: Socrates' method of step-by-step agreement, teaching his companions the standard of 'to know' in philosophy = to 'be able to explain what you know to others'])

In the Classical Dictionary (circa 1891) of Seyffert, Nettleship and Sandys, it says, "The only occasion when Socrates was absent from Athens, except with the Army, was to attend this festival" -- i.e. the Isthmian Games, "held on the Isthmus of Corinth, in a grove of pine trees sacred to Poseidon"; the contests included gymnastics and horse-racing, but at the competitions in music both men and women poets contended for the prize.

According to Aristotle, Socrates also visited Delphi. (Diog. L. ii, 23)

For and by What did Socrates Live?

When Xanthippe was chiding Socrates for making scanty preparation for entertaining his friends, he answered: -- "If they are friends of ours, they will not care for that; if they are not, we shall care nothing for them!" (Fragment from Maximus, tr. Crossley; cf. Attic Nights viii; Socrates' home.)

If Socrates did not live for bodily pleasure (Diog. L. ii, 27), if he ate to live rather than lived to eat and drink (ii, 34), then for what did he live? The answer, I think, must be: for the sake of the good, with the good being identified by this principle: The good for a thing is to exist in accord with the specific excellence that is proper and unique to that thing. Most proper to man is reason (in contrast to instinct or habit or thoughtlessness); reason (logic) is the tool he must use to discover the life that is the good for himself (by obeying the Delphic precept "Know thyself"), e.g. by cross-questioning what men have said and say the good for man is (Apology 37e-38a).

Even in Xenophon where the good is identified with the useful or beneficial (Memorabilia iv, 6, 7-8, and iii, 8, 7), the most important part of a thing's goodness is not its practical usefulness, but rather its benefit to the "soul" (psyche = for Socrates, the ethical aspect of man; the ethical mind. Care of the soul = the life of rational moral virtue is the good for man).

Socrates claimed no knowledge of an afterlife one way or the other (Apology 40c-41c). Nor did not seek to be a good man in expectation of a reward for a good or for fear of punishment for an evil life (Gorgias 526d-e), but rather thought that a good life is the best life to live regardless of what death is (ibid. 527a-b).

For Plato the usefulness of eating is to silence the body -- for otherwise the body "takes away from us the power of thinking at all" (Phaedo 66b-d, tr. Jowett). But unlike Plato, Socrates did not deprecate the body's senses nor for that reason our life in it. Nevertheless, for man guided by reason alone, the only reason to eat and drink is to maintain the body's health since it is the dwelling of the soul, and, like exercise, eating and drinking only so much as is agreeable to the soul (cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia i, 2, 4).

Nobility of spirit and outlook

Socrates lived for the sake of what is good rather than for what is pleasing to the senses (Memorabilia iv, 8, 11). But that mustn't be seen as a sacrifice, because, as Epictetus says, "it is no small thing and worthless" (Discourses iii, 24) to live wisely, doing what is good rather than wrong-doing and through ignorance of the good (nor was Socrates' life dour: for among the specific goods unique and proper to man is the friendship of good human beings, a mind unclouded by vice, and an undebased sense of humor).

For what does the philosopher live?

Plato in Diogenes Laertius

A dialog is a discourse consisting of question and answer on some philosophical or political subject, with due regard for the characters of the persons introduced and the choice of diction.

Dialectic is the art of discourse by which we either refute or establish some proposition by means of question and answer on the part of the interlocutors. (Diog. L. iii, 48)

Euclides of Megara was a follower of Socrates, and the followers of Euclides "were called Megarians after him, then Eristics, and at a later date Dialecticians, that name having been first given to them ... because they put their arguments into the form of question and answer". (ii, 106) "... dialectical arguments in an interrogatory form ..." (ii, 108)

The right interpretation of [Plato's] dialogues includes three things: first, the meaning of every statement must be explained; next, its purpose, whether it is made for a primary reason or by way of illustration, and whether to establish his own doctrines or to refute his interlocutor; in the third place it remains to examine its truth. (iii, 65)

Here things are put in their right order, because the question of meaning comes before the question of truth. Philosophers often hasten after the truth, neglecting first to determine "the truth about what -- i.e. What is the proposition's meaning? That will tell you if and how it is to be verified [determined to be true or false], if it is verifiable [if 'truth' and 'falsity' are applicable to it].

Cf. "This method [Wittgenstein's way of philosophizing] consists essentially in leaving aside the question of truth and asking about sense [or meaning] instead." (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 105 46 c: 1929])

Again, as there is great division of opinion between those who affirm and those who deny that Plato was a dogmatist, let me proceed to deal with this further question. To be a dogmatist in philosophy is to lay down positive dogmas ['dogma' = 'opinion'; 'dogmatist' contrasts with 'skeptic' = 'all those who suspend their judgment on the ground that things are unknowable' (i, 16)] ... Now where he has a firm grasp Plato expounds his own view and refutes the false one, but, if the subject is obscure, he suspends judgment. His own views are expounded by four persons, Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger [in the Laws], the Eleatic Stranger [in the Sophist and Statesman (Politicus)]. These strangers are ... imaginary characters without names, for, even when Socrates and Timaeus are the speakers, it is Plato's doctrines that are laid down. To illustrate the refutation of false opinions, he introduces Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polus, Gorgias, Protagoras ... (Diog. L. iii, 51-52 [p. 322a, 322b])

Plato's obscuring vocabulary

Here follows a strange statement, and a possible example:

Plato has employed a variety of terms in order to make his system less intelligible to the ignorant. (Diog. L. iii, 63)

... he often uses different terms to express the same thing. For instance, he calls the Idea  "form", "genus", "archetype", "principle", and "cause". (iii, 64)

The Greek word Hicks translates as "archetype" is transcribed paradeigma. The word "form" is eidos [whence the English expression "Theory of Ideas"]. Question: is another instance of this the word "standard" in the Euthyphro, 'standard' being a concept related to the concept 'paradigm' ('model')?

The word 'wisdom' (sophia) in Plato

Although no distinction is made in the following remarks between a conceptual (What is the meaning of the word 'wisdom' -- i.e. how does Plato use that word in his writings?) and a factual (e.g. "What is the true nature of wisdom?") investigation, the following is in fact a description of how Plato uses the word 'wisdom', not of "what Plato considers wisdom to really be" or "what Plato thinks true wisdom is".

... he considers wisdom to be the science of those things which are objects of thought and really existent, the science which, he says, is concerned with God and the soul as separate from the body. And especially by wisdom he means philosophy, which is a yearning for divine wisdom. And in a general sense all experience is also termed by him wisdom, e.g. when he calls a craftsman wise. (Diog. L. iii, 63)

The nature of sensible objects and of the Ideas (Forms), according to Plato

He also uses contrary expressions for the same thing. Thus he calls the sensible thing both existent and non-existent, existent inasmuch as it comes into being, non-existent because it is continually changing. And he says the Idea is neither in motion nor at rest; that it is uniformly the same and yet both one and many. (Diog. L. iii, 64)

Plato's Dialogs (Thrasylus of Alexandria's classification scheme)

Now, says, Thrasylus, the genuine dialogues are fifty-six in all, if the Republic be divided into ten and the Laws into twelve [and if they are not, then there are thirty-six, according to Thrasylus (who was, however, writing almost four-hundred years after Plato wrote his dialogs)] ...

[Plato's] first tetralogy [i.e. four related dialogs] has a common plan underlying it for he wishes to describe what the life of a philosopher will be.... This tetralogy, then, which is the first, begins with the Euthyphro ...; the Apology of Socrates ... comes second; the third is Crito ...; the fourth Phaedo .... (Diog. L. iii, 57-58)

Thrasyllus of Alexandria died in 36 A.D. So says the entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary 2nd ed.

The Subject Names of the Dialogs (and their type)

To each of the works [of Plato] Thrasylus affixes a double title, the one taken from the name of the interlocutor, the other from the subject. (Diog. L. iii, 57)

(iii, 51-61)

Socrates and Plato, Interests in Philosophy

The interest of the historical Socrates in philosophy went no further than ethics and logic, i.e. in how to live our life (ethics, knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong) and how to reason soundly (logic or the art of reasoning) about this. But Plato, besides logic and ethics, was also interested in metaphysics (ancient "physics"), especially in the question of concept formation (which in the context of logic is the question of the meaning of common names).

Plato's "treatment of themes Socrates disowned"

(Revised) I should have kept the original version of these remarks -- as a reminder of how stupid and superficial I can be. Indeed, that is the meaning of 'stupid' in philosophy -- namely, 'superficial'. (And yet how often in the midst of the lot of rubbish I write is to be found a worthwhile, at least it seems so to me, idea.)

Plato has the picture of a ghost resident (entombed, actually) in the body. Can we say that Plato's picture of the soul does not give a true account of the grammar (i.e. rules for the use of the word in the language) of the word 'soul'?

Plato's picture is an instance of Rationalism: he presents philosophical-logical arguments -- i.e. derives one rather-vague-in-meaning proposition from other propositions -- to prove that the soul is "a something distinct from the body". But Plato also refers to "some very general facts of nature", e.g. the existence of common names without common natures:

Have you ever seen any of these things with your eyes?

Certainly not, said he. (Phaedo 65d, tr. Tredennick)

Then whereby do you have a concept of them? That is metaphysics, but it does not "float free" of the facts. (I would reject the response: "But is that (i.e. supersensible common natures) the only possible explanation?" as hasty, superficial, because it does not appreciate how deeply perplexing the question -- and its implications for knowing reality -- is.)

Mathematics is a Rationalism that does not treat its own axioms as doubtful. But philosophy is not mathematical -- or is it? Does the subject matter of metaphysics -- namely, reality -- exist independently of philosophers' axioms? (Plato's metaphysical method.) It seems that perceptions of reality are perceptions of something, which can't be said about the subject of mathematics.

There are also religious pictures of the soul, and aren't those pictures one meaning of the word 'soul'? Isn't picturing a use of language? And what can be pictured can be believed in (religious faith as holding steadfast to religious pictures).

We say 'picture' here, but these aren't the kind of pictures that it is logically possible to compare with what they are said to be pictures of. (And so why call them pictures? Is the word 'picture' being used figuratively here -- but then what are these figurative pictures in prose?)

The nature of the Plato's metaphysics

Wittgenstein classified the word 'soul' among the superstition words. But that was only in the context of a discussion of magic -- or was it more general than that? Is Plato's talk about the soul superstition? Well, this is the puzzle: In what sense, if any, is Plato's picture of the soul a "picture of reality" -- i.e. of a possible reality? [In which sense of 'possible', for of course anything whatever that can be described is logically possible.]

Is Rationalism a misunderstanding of the logic (i.e. the "grammar") of our language? But if Plato is not talking nonsense, then what is he doing?

... this was the method which I adopted: I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which I disagreed I regarded as untrue. (Phaedo 100a, tr. Jowett)

Plato does not want to be distracted by the objects he sees with his eyes -- i.e. experience (empirical fact) -- because those objects work upon the soul the way the sun works on the eyes if looked at directly -- they blind (ibid. 99d-e). For example, Plato assumes the principle of Heraclitus, that all perceptible things are in motion (i.e. in a state of change), none at rest. But, then, how is it that we seem to perceive many things to be at rest? We see things at rest (i.e. common natures which are absolutes, unchanging), not with the body's eyes, but with the eye of the soul. Therefore, our soul's knowledge of what is at rest (or unchanging) is from its existence prior to being imprisoned by the senses of the body.

Is this not like "Percepts without concepts [i.e. Archetypes or Forms] are blind"? Concepts belong to the soul's eye.

Projects in philosophy

Philosophers undertake "programs" or "projects", sometimes (as with the Socrates of Plato's Apology) "missions", in philosophy. Is that what Plato has? He wants to judge the truth of every proposition by using the eye of the soul (i.e. assumed principles).

What I have called "the philosophy of logic of language" or logic-philosophy only talks about sense and nonsense -- and except where Plato talks nonsense, it has no right to criticize. (For example, it is nonsense to say, as the Pythagoreans do, that the soul is identical with attunement (ibid. 86b-c), for the same reason that it is nonsense to say that the body is a musical instrument -- but what is not nonsense is to say that the soul or the body is like this or that in some way or other. Whether a particular comparison is true or false is a different question.)

Wittgenstein's projects in philosophy: compare using language to playing a game or "language game", i.e. a use of language governed by rules as a game is governed by rules; compare words to a collection of tools used to do some work in our life. Are these comparisons useful to the understanding in the case of Rationalism -- i.e. what is the "original home in the language" (PI § 116) of the word 'soul'? Is it different from the original home of the words 'mind' and 'spirit'? Does Plato "believe in" souls? No, philosophical beliefs are a product of reason (of reasoning as well as we are able, Phaedo 107b); they are not religious or superstitious "beliefs in".

Wittgenstein: "The riddle does not exist" (TLP 6.5) -- but maybe that was "just the sort of stupid remark [he] would have made in those days" (Recollections p. 98)? I don't think so, not entirely, however, because: If a question can be asked at all, mustn't it also be logically possible to answer it (i.e. to describe what an answer to it would look like)? Simply having the form of a question does not give a combination of words the meaning of a question. Otherwise "you play the game wrong" (OC § 446), i.e. talk nonsense (However, against that grammatical account) ..... but did Plato divorce the word 'soul' from the work it does in the "language game that is its original home"? Is it nonsense to say that the soul may survive the death of the body?

According to some accounts, Pythagoras and Plato invented our concept 'soul' as 'the unified seat or solitary locus of intelligence, memory, feeling' (Eduard Zeller on Orphism and Plato). But it is nonsense to speak of the location ("locus") of what does not exist in space; nor can this be a metaphor, because a metaphor can be restated in prose, but just try.

When Socrates asks about death (Apology 40c-41c), he knows that he cannot answer that question; but Plato does not believe questions about "the soul" to be unanswerable.

[According to Wittgenstein, are the only "possible" answers to questions about reality empirical answers? I don't know. In his later work Wittgenstein talks about philosophy and grammar, not, in contrast to Plato, about philosophy and reality. (Note: it was not Plato's view that his "Theory of Forms" is so entirely consistent with experience that it cannot be falsified, for see Parmenides 133c.)]

Is it true, as I once thought, that when Plato talks about the soul, all he does is invent idle, because not empirically verifiable, pictures? How do we determine whether a picture is idle (wild and therefore empty speculation) or not -- is it only by the criterion of empirical verification? Cannot a cause -- even if imperceptible -- be deduced from its effects? Can't Plato deduce the eternality of the soul from man's knowledge of absolutes (Forms)?

Anaxagoras and Vortex (or Whirl)

Whereas to the question of what reality ultimately is, Thales had said "water", Anaximenes "air", Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) had said that reality is "mind [nous] and stuff in the vortex". (Vortex or Whirl is the new god worshipped in Socrates' "Thinking-house" ["School of Hard (or Very Difficult) Thinking"] in Aristophanes' The Clouds.) Plato has Socrates speak of his disillusionment with Anaxagoras' book: he had heard someone say that Anaxagoras had written that "it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything" (Phaedo 97b-c), but when Socrates himself read the book he "discovered that the fellow made no use of mind and assigned to it no causality for the order of the world" (ibid. 98b, tr. Tredennick).

[Plato's Apology 26d-e says that Anaxagoras' book cost "a drachma at most", or, 6 obols, 2 to 3 times the poorest Athenians' daily wages, but half or less of the daily income of a skilled workman.]

"Whirl"

["Japan at that time was in a state of completest anarchy. Whirl [Anaxagoras' "vortex"], as in the Olympus of Aristophanes, was the real king ..." (Brodrick, Origin of the Jesuits [1940] v, [1971] p. 143)]. Although the movement of a whirlpool may cause chaos, the movement itself is not chaotic. But was that Anaxagoras' meaning: that the arrangement of things emerges from chaos?

Kant, awakened by Hume

How does Hume wake Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers" (Introduction to Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783, tr. Carus)?

Hume started from a single but important concept in Metaphysics, viz., that of Cause and Effect ... He challenges reason, which pretends to have given birth to this idea from herself [i.e. to know of this idea independently of experience (a priori)?], to answer him by what right she thinks anything to be so constituted, that if that thing be posited [i.e. imagined to exist ("synthetic")?], something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause [This appears to be the question of "synthetic a priori" propositions].... the suggestion of David Hume was the very thing, which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.

Do I understand this? It is not the meaning I invented for Hume's idea. To answer my own question: One way would be by proving that causality is a category of perception [an innate concept] rather than of reality itself, thus pushing Kant to seek for other such categories, e.g. space, time, moral imperatives. Is that the source of Kant's view of ethics as "categorical imperatives"?

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