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Socrates, The Master of Those Who don't Know

Il maestro di color che non sanno. The master of those who don't think they know what they don't know (Il maestro di color che non pensano sapere ciò che non sanno), and thus, in my view, the master of the student of philosophy. For 'twas modesty invented the word 'philosopher', something as Socrates' heirs we oughtn't forget.

The allusion is to Dante's Inferno iv, 131, where Aristotle, although unnamed, is called "The master of those who know".

Context: these are "logic of language" (Wittgenstein's expression as defined in my jargon) and history of philosophy -- and philosophy studies ... for there is more to Philosophy than Wittgenstein's logic-philosophy, I say.

Although there may well be more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our metaphysics, there are certainly more things dreamt of in our metaphysics than there are in Heaven or earth. (Cf. Lichtenberg, "Our compendia of physics" in Aphorisms)

But Metaphysics ("We are discussing no small matter, but what is real", when we are not discussing phantoms, the fancies of our own self-mystification), like Logic, is only one of Philosophy's three parts. Ethics is the third -- because Ethics, according to Socrates, but contrary to Wittgenstein, is also rational (a thoroughgoing use of reason).

Outline of this page ...

Socrates is neither physics nor metaphysics, but ethics and logic only

Russell's aim in philosophy of "to understand the world as well as may be" does not easily apply -- and, indeed, if we use language as we normally do, then it does not apply -- to Socrates, who took no interest in "the world" (physics and metaphysics; Anaxagoras' work is both these) but only in how man should live his life (ethics). So it is simply false that all philosophers before Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations shared Russell's definition of 'what philosophy is'. For Socrates did not (It was Plato who extended Socrates' search for definitions beyond ethics into metaphysics, something which Socrates had not done).

Logic -- the tool Socrates used for his work in ethics -- is, in Socrates sense of the word 'logic' (for the word 'logic' has had many different meanings), reason reflecting on experience; and note that for Socrates there are two tests here, not only the test of reason but also of the test of experience. Likewise Wittgenstein's work of clarifying concepts (conceptual clarification, or, logic in Wittgenstein's later sense of the word 'logic') is also reason working on experience. Neither of those philosophies is modeled on mathematics (i.e. reason allowed to float free of any test of experience) -- but also, neither tries "to understand the world as well as may be"; neither is what Russell says philosophy is. (Russell makes no sharp distinction between philosophy and natural science -- His own later philosophy is not pure metaphysics, for it is speculation based on the present findings of the sciences.)

Ambivalence towards Plato

Had Plato not put Platonic doctrines in the mouth of Socrates, where they certainly never were (Diog. L. ii, 45), there would be no ambivalence towards him for me. Plato's Gorgias, Euthyphro and Laches, for examples, have very important lessons in Socrates' method of dialectic. But on the other hand, for example, there is Plato's Phaedo, with it doctrine of "recollection", its Orphic (according to Zeller, that was its origin, but its origin is also Pythagorean) doctrine of soul (ghost) versus body (its tomb), and its Rationalist method (which is contrary to Aristotle's account of Socrates' method because is anti-inductive, as in Theaetetus 146e), and which in so many ways overrides -- in order to serve Plato's own metaphysical speculation -- Socrates' fundamental distinction between what you know and what you only think you know (but do not know). For e.g. Socrates' view of what man knows about death is clear in Apology 40c-41c. Further, Plato's Theaetetus rejects the Socratic standard of 'knowledge' (i.e. the definition of 'know' Socrates selected in order to make philosophy objective) -- namely, being able to give an account of what you know to others (that will stand up against refutation in dialectic) -- And that which we know we must surely be able to tell? (Plato, Laches 190c) ...

That is why I cannot think entirely well of Plato. Because by putting Platonic doctrines in Socrates' mouth, Plato has placed an obstacle to seeing what Socrates has to teach the student of philosophy, and what he has to teach is a criterion for 'to know', and a method (dialectic, or, dialog) of step-by-step agreement and refutation by seeking out any implicit contradictions in sense in a proposed definition (or, thesis) as in the Laches ("What is courage?" cf. Plato's Euthyphro's search for an absolute standard of judgment in ethics) -- i.e. what Socrates has to teach is not fanciful (-- because not tethered to verification by experience --) speculation guided by reason alone, but philosophy itself, which in my view is Socratic philosophy.

Plato, as his dialog the Sophist clearly shows, had no need to obscure Socrates' mission in philosophy, for Plato was himself a very able and original philosophical thinker: he did not need to put his own ideas in Socrates' mouth in order to lend them weight, as other writers in those days did. And, indeed, why didn't Plato choose Heraclitus rather than Socrates as his mouthpiece, for Heraclitus' influence on Plato's thinking was at least as strong, maybe stronger? Plato should not have abused Socrates as he did in his dialogs, in my view (although there is another view, which I do not accept). Countless students suppose that it is Socrates who puts forth his own opinions in e.g. Plato's Republic rather than Plato himself, thus burdening the memory of Socrates with Platonic doctrines which were never his. I can well remember how I felt some forty years ago when, shortly after reading Plato's Apology, I read the Phaedo. I said then that Plato had betrayed Socrates. And that is, for the reasons I have stated, what I still think. The Socrates of Plato's Phaedo is utterly incompatible with the Socrates of the Apology.

On the other hand, now that, thanks to Aristotle (Metaphysics 987a-b), I have found a criterion for distinguishing the historical Socrates from Plato's literary character, and with the passage of time, I am no longer so angry with Plato. I now enjoying reading his dialogs.

Is not Plato, in preferring his own preconceptions to the evidence of his senses and, indeed, ignoring that evidence if it is not consistent with his preconceptions -- in a word, is not Plato's method an instance of thinking you know what you don't know? For are not his preconceptions akin to Protagoras' "[the individual] man is the measure of all things", which Plato either rejects in both the Cratylus and Theaetetus -- or at best regards as unimportant, because what is important instead is Plato's own preconception (or, axiom) that knowledge can only be of things that are essentially unchanging (i.e. unchangeable) and that, despite any and all evidence to the contrary, such unchangeable, albeit imperceptible, things exist (i.e. must exist).

But dialectic is discussion of what is perceptible to the senses -- because only that is public (objective rather than subjective). Logic, primarily logical inconsistency, is the tool of dialectic (if by 'dialectic' we mean the activity of question and cross-question), or the discussion is instead a conceptual investigation (of either actual usage or possible uses of words), but in no case is anyone's preconception allowed to escape criticism in dialectic.

On the other hand, what we learn from Plato's early dialogs about how to use the Socratic Method is vital to an understanding of that method (although so is Xenophon's Memorabilia)

Query: Socrates' definitions really come at the end of an enquiry not the beginning.

That is where 'Socratic definitions', as defined by Aristotle come, because Socrates' method is inductive: (1) Gather examples of what you are trying to define, then (2) Look for the common nature shared by the examples. The 'Socratic definition' is that common nature. And that definition, therefore, comes at the end of the enquiry.

The general principle -- although that principle is a tautology, or, definition: i.e. it simply points out the grammatical connections among our concepts 'conclusion', 'beginning' and 'end' -- is this: that in any argument, the conclusion comes at the end, not at the beginning (unless the argument is circular, i.e. assumes the very thing it proposes to prove, in which case it is an example of unphilosophical reasoning).

However, as Plato uses Socrates' method, definitions are proposed at the beginning and throughout the enquiry (dialog): the enquiry needs something to examine, and so a proposed definition is looked at; of course, if the definition cannot be refuted in dialectic, then at that point the definition is accepted -- but that acceptance (agreement) comes at the conclusion of the enquiry, not at its beginning, although the definition was proposed for examination at the beginning of the enquiry.

So, given that 'Socratic definition' is defined differently by Aristotle and Plato, the query's thesis may be correct, although it may also be wrong.

Mind, concepts, order imposed on chaos

... at the beginning of his treatise ... he 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., tr. Hicks, ii, 6)

Out of context, but the "mind" I have in mind is the human mind with its concepts giving light to its percepts so that they are not blind. Percepts without concepts are "together" (much of a muchness), but the addition of concepts ("mind") sets them in order. Or rather, in an order, for that order is only one of many possible orders (classes, categories), and that is only to consider the human life form (What of other forms?). The text says that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 B.C.) "was the first who set mind above matter" (ibid.); this is spoken of in Plato's Phaedo 97b-c ff. (Plato's Apology 26d does not refer to Mind but only to Anaxagoras' astronomical speculations, of which there were many, e.g. about what the sun is, and what the causes of thunder and lightening are. (Diog. L. ii, 8-9))

Query: shared conceptual investigations.

That is what Plato's dialogs are, what Socratic dialectic is. (Although I do not believe that was what Plato intended his dialogs to be, because Plato did not believe that our concepts are conventions, for if they are then there is no possibility of knowing reality in itself.)

'Theses' and 'Theories', the meaning of those words in Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein says that in philosophy you can't put forth a thesis because no one would dispute it (PI § 128). So if anyone asks about "Wittgenstein's theory" of this, that or the other, and if by 'theory' he means 'thesis', then Wittgenstein does not have any, according to his own account: "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them." (Cf. Socrates: step-by-step agreement in dialectic. But where there is no disagreement, there is nothing to refute.) Now, why does Wittgenstein say that?

Because Wittgenstein's "theses" are merely grammatical remarks, grammatical reminders (ibid. § 127) about the public life ("civil status") of language (ibid. § 125). That is what -- what I have called "Wittgenstein's logic of language" -- aims to do: simply to describe what is in plain view. (It also describes what the public rules might be if the general facts of our life were different, e.g. if various standards of measurement, e.g. the ruler, the balance scale, that we use in the world we know were not to useable, or, as in my fable, all human beings lacked the sense of sight.) But why is that Wittgenstein's aim?

One of Wittgenstein's criticisms -- at least according to my account (or, in any case, one of my own criticisms) -- of metaphysics is precisely that it speculates about a "reality behind reality" that is not public and therefore not objective (and thus simply is unknowable, as we normally use the word 'know'). When Wittgenstein says that he wants to do away with "explanations" (ibid. § 109), he is talking about metaphysical theories that try to be just that: not a description of what is open to the public, but an account of what is "hidden" (the conjectured "reality behind the appearances").

However, if by 'theory' someone means 'a way of looking at things', then of course Wittgenstein has those -- for that is what a comparison is: a way of looking at things. And Wittgenstein's philosophy consists of comparisons (similes, metaphors).

Query: Ludwig Wittgenstein, language as a tool.

Exactly. "Language as a tool", not "language is a tool". That is a comparison (as the word 'as' suggests), a way of looking at language meaning (not the only possible way of looking at it).

Dialectic versus Introspection - Socrates versus Descartes

Note: There is another discussion, Socrates and Descartes contrasted, of worthwhile remarks.

Query: what were the differences between Socrates and Descartes?

The difference in their methods (for Descartes introspection, for Socrates dialectic) was one. Another was that Socrates sought knowledge only in Ethics (how to live our life), whereas Descartes, like Plato, wanted knowledge in Metaphysics. And a third difference was in the result of following their methods: Descartes claimed to discover knowledge though his method; whereas Socrates found only that no one knew what he wanted to know -- because although men claimed knowledge in ethics, none could give an account of what they claimed they knew that would stand up to the test of dialectic. The difference in their results is remarkable because both started from the same place: the recognition of their own ignorance. For Socrates' ignorance, see Plato's Apology 21a-d. For Descartes:

For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance. (Discourse on the Method, Part 1, tr. Haldane and Ross)

It wasn't that Socrates didn't believe he knew what the good for man is -- but 'believing' and 'knowing' are very different concepts, and beliefs (or, opinions) may be false, and they will not prevent us "becoming angry and falling out with one another" (Euthyphro 7d; cf. Phaedrus 263a-b). And so in search of knowledge in ethics Socrates questioned ("examined" (Apology 37e-38a)) both himself and others but found that no man is wise (if to be 'wise' is to have 'knowledge in ethics'). And that was as far as Socrates went.

Descartes, on the other hand, only began in ignorance and, through the use of his method "of rightly conducting the reason and seeking for truth in the sciences", arrived at certainty, at so much certainty that he believed he had found "the reasons by which to prove the existence of God and of the human soul, which are the foundation of his Metaphysics" (ibid. precis). The result of following his method, Descartes believed, is that certainty replaces doubt, knowledge replaces error.

Note that by the word 'soul' Descartes does not mean the Socratic 'mind', of the "existence" of which no proof is logically possible (because it has no existence other than as a concept, i.e. the use of a word -- namely, for Socrates: the word 'mind' means the rational, ethical aspect of man), but instead the Platonic-Orphic and Catholic Christian disembodiable spirit-like entity (or, ghost).

Query: Descartes' use of the word 'know'.

I will take 'use' to mean 'definition' -- but 'definition of a word' as opposed to 'definition of a thing' (i.e. an hypothesis about the nature or cause of an object or phenomenon). For Socrates: 'to know' = 'to be able to give an account of what you know to others' (That was, on my account, the meaning of 'know' Socrates selected from among the many we use). That is setting a criterion, choosing a (conceptual, or, logic) tool for your work (in philosophy).

Which criterion did Descartes set? For Descartes, to 'know' is to 'have a "clear and distinct idea"' -- i.e. it is a matter of introspection. But if that definition is selected, then knowledge is not objective (nor is the meaning of language); everything becomes a question of whatever seems right, of what I am inclined or disinclined to say (PI § 258). But is that what we normally mean by the word 'know'? We use that word in many ways, and sometimes possibly for what is not verifiable; but we don't use the word 'know' that way always -- but maybe that is what Descartes does.

Cartesian introspection assumes the position of solipsism, which tries to divorce language from the public life in which it is learned and has objective meaning --. That is the biggest difference between Socrates and Descartes: for Socrates the grammatical criterion of 'to know' is public, whereas for Descartes it is private.

W.E. Johnson: "If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is senseless" (Recollections p. 103). But if the distinction between sense and nonsense is to be made in that solipsistic way, then there is no objective distinction made -- and philosophy becomes utterly idle, a babble of sounds in an eternal night of seems to have meaning and seems not to have meaning.

That is the condition of linguistic meaning in Cartesian solipsism, where philosophy is nothing more than a solipsistic use of language -- But where the utterance of sounds with sense is indistinguishable from "sounds without sense" (mere noise), that is not what Wittgenstein called a 'use of language'. (Is there a solipsistic "theory of linguistic meaning"?)

Query: why is Wittgenstein interested in rules?

Because without them it is difficult to see how we can make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense in philosophy. Can you see another way, an alternative logic of language? (Why "make"? Because we don't normally use language according to strict rules.) If philosophy is going to be a Socratic activity, then it needs to be founded on a sound logic (of language) -- and the standard of rules is one way to do that (if indeed there is another).

Query: how does Descartes' method of doubt differ from the Socratic method?

As introspection differs from dialectic. And as Rationalism -- i.e. the deduction of synthetic a priori propositions from axioms, on the model of mathematics -- differs from rationalism -- i.e. the application of reason to our shared-in-common, and therefore objective, experience.

Note that there is no pure induction because percepts without concepts are blind (although concepts may, I think, in many cases, be revised to reorganize percepts). But also note that Rationalism's concepts risk being empty, i.e. "sounds without sense", mere ink marks on paper.

The question of whether there are any synthetic a priori propositions -- i.e. truths about reality that can be known independently of any sense experience -- is the question of whether Rationalism is a possible path to knowledge. The following conversation Drury could only date as "1930(?)".

DRURY: I think in your recent lectures you have been directly concerned with Kant's problem: How are synthetic a priori propositions possible?

WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, you could say that. I am concerned with the synthetic a priori. When you have thought for some time about a problem on your own, you may come to see that it is closely related to what has been discussed before, only you will want to present the problem in a different way. (Recollections p. 118)

According to Rhees, in 1937 Wittgenstein said that "he wanted to avoid this way of speaking [i.e. the expression "synthetic a priori"], since it led to perplexities and confusion" (ibid. p. 220n14). He wanted to make a fresh start in philosophy, a new way of looking at things. If we begin with "grammar and sense and nonsense", as Wittgenstein later did, propositions that earlier might have been called "synthetic a priori truths" are classified merely as "rules of grammar".

Note.--It's not correct to say that Socrates' method is doubt. Rather, at least in Plato's account, Socrates begins by supposing his companion to have the knowledge which his companion claims to have. Socrates then puts that supposition to the test of dialectic, either to be accepted (agreed to) or refuted.

"... the discovery of my own ignorance". That is where Socrates is stopped (due to the criterion he has set for 'knowing') -- not because he wants to stop there -- i.e. with the discovery of universal ignorance in ethics. Descartes, on the other hand, wants and believes that he had gone far beyond that. And I think, although I don't know, that Plato also believed that he had gone far beyond that.

Query: doubts and questions in philosophy.

That is Descartes('s method of doubting) verus Socrates('s method of cross-questioning).

Query: what could the Cartesian method do that the Socratic method couldn't?

It can, as any deductive method can, create the illusion that you know what you don't know -- i.e. that you are investigating "the world" (reality) rather than only relationships among propositions (or, concepts).

For Socrates Que sais-je? is not rhetorical (or "learned ignorance"), but a question to be answered.

Query: would Descartes consider the Socratic method to be the proper path to truth? why or why not?

Descartes is like the hard-boiled detective who says, "I work alone". But dialectic requires companion/s, although "holding discourse with oneself", if one cross-questions one's own claims to know, can be dialectic as well. The thing is that others often see what we don't see: "Pay attention to your enemies," Antisthenes said, "for they are the first to discover your weaknesses" -- or, in this case, the flaws in your theses. (Cf. Plato's Protagoras 348c-d: when two investigate together ...)

A Classical Education - An education in dead languages?

Lichtenberg: the Greeks did not waste the strength of their youth learning dead languages ...

Why, are they dead? Plato and Xenophon seem to me very much alive, extremely vital. Dead? -- as compared to what -- as compared to English in which people gibber jabber in the press and in the publishing houses -- This is a living language? If this be life, "then who knows if life be death and death be life"! No, Greek and Latin don't seem in the least bit dead to me, but vibrant and alive.

[Greek education: "Music" and "Gymnastic"]

Lichtenberg, ways of thinking, and madness

I think this is the remark Drury quotes, although of course in a different translation:

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking ... (Lichtenberg [1742-1799], The Waste Books (2000), reprint of Aphorisms (1990), Notebook J, no. 263 in the Hollingdale translation; the ellipsis is apparently Lichtenberg's own)

The translation Drury used has "... but the manner of presenting it to the mind" (DW p. 97). That remark maybe continues a remark begun in Notebook J, no. 261 in Hollingdale's translation:

... one could also say in physics: I have assigned to it causes whose absurdity no one has yet been able to demonstrate -- instead of saying: I have explained.

No. 263 is, I think, like Wittgenstein's "A philosopher says: Look at things this way!" And no. 261 is like what I wrote in the Preface so many years ago: Nothing stays clear for very long, only for so long as we see no problem with it. (And this is what there is no "perennial philosophy" (or that all philosophies are perennial), because later philosophers see things a new way from, or see -- or think they see -- problems, "absurdities", in, the work of those who came before them. Despite this is the fact that there are "still" Platonists, still Aristotelians, still Thomists, still Kantians, still Hegelians, and there will still be "Wittgensteinians" after the next great thinker comes along and displaces Wittgenstein.

Query: death of philosophies.

I will take this query at its word: it is characteristic of philosophy that philosophies don't die, that there are in our day Cartesians and Positivists just as there were in the day of Descartes and Comte.

[The resemblance in style between Wittgenstein's remarks that are collected in the book which its publishers titled Culture and Value and Lichtenberg's remarks is astonishing. The only difference is this: that although Lichtenberg's remarks are sometimes commonplace -- i.e. thoughts that even I myself have had -- Wittgenstein's never are.]

Since a man can go mad, I do not see why a universal system cannot do so too ... (Notebook J, no. 183 in Hollingdale's translation; the ellipsis is apparently Lichtenberg's own)

And, yes, I am thinking of Wittgenstein. That's what I was thinking apropos of Lichtenberg's remark.

Except that unlike of a madman, a system must stand to the tests of reason and experience. And therefore it doesn't matter in the least if the system was created/invented by a madman -- or even a "very singular" man (Russell's view of Wittgenstein).

"The other side of the sky" (Plato)

Phaedrus 247c: the "place beyond the heavens" (tr. Hackforth), in the myth in that dialog about the really real reality. Jowett's translation is "the heaven which is above the heavens". Is this Drury's "other side of the sky" (Recollections p. 84)? It gives you the picture -- of what? Normally, the "grammar" (in Wittgenstein's jargon) of 'the other side' or 'beyond' or 'above' would require that there be some barrier or obstacle, e.g. a wall ('on the other side of the wall'). But to speak of "the other side of air" -- what would it mean?

But of course Plato is not talking about anything perceptible to the senses. The question is -- is he drawing a picture of anything, i.e. is he drawing a picture at all? What picture? (Is "the other side of the ether" any clearer than "the other side of the air"? I don't know, but the ether is a metaphysical construct.) Why shouldn't Plato say that: the sky is a barrier like a wall, that if we could perceive beyond that barrier, then we would see reality?

Why? Because that is a one-sided metaphor, an analogy from A to B where there is no B. But isn't any statement about "things that are imperceptible" of that kind? Any metaphor you use, any analogy, any comparison, any simile, is going to be one-sided -- because we cannot pass beyond the barrier; otherwise the imperceptible thing would be perceptible.

[Notes about the notion of a "one-sided analogy" in a similar context | See also Analogy as definition]

Reality may not be confined to what is perceptible to the senses -- but is our knowledge of reality confined to what is perceptible to the senses? (But now I owe you a definition of the word 'knowledge', i.e. of which sense of that word to use to reply to this question.)

Aristotle: the Practical Syllogism

Note: Everything, but especially everything I write about the history of philosophy, belongs in the category "If I know what I am talking about, and I may not know what I am talking about".

For example. The house is on fire [and I am in the house]. If I remain in the house, I may be burned alive. Therefore (action) I leave the house. That is to say, the premises are propositions, but the conclusion (or, consequence) is an action rather than a proposition. So this is "Aristotle's practical syllogism" (Guthrie, Aristotle (1981), p. 349-350). The example, however, is my own.

The practical syllogism. Except, of course, sometimes we are ruled by instinct, whether natural or the result of habit ("second nature"), because an event does not allow us time to think, as e.g. when we throw out our hands to break our fall even though this may not be the wisest way to protect oneself from injury. However, if we look at most things we do, most of our actions in life are not by instinct forced, and even though we do not put our reasoning into words, nonetheless we are reasoning. "The fire will burn me; and I do not wish to be burned; consequently (action), I do not put my hand in the fire." Man is a reasoning creature. That is not merely one among other excellences proper to man; it is also a defining characteristic of man, defining of what man is: a creature endowed with discourse of reason. (Is that both a statement of natural fact and a rule of grammar, i.e. a rule belonging to our definition of the word 'man', or is 'man' simply defined ostensively (but where are the limits of an ostensive definition? are they defined)?) by pointing at individuals?

Practical wisdom, says Aristotle, is concerned with the practical syllogism, e.g. A is the [desired] end, B is the means [or instrument to that end], therefore B should be done [in order to accomplish A]. (Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Greece and Rome (1947), II, xxxi, 8, p. 344)

Aristotle, knowledge and virtue: "Incontinence is not ignorance", or, "Temperance (self-control) is not knowledge"

When trying to refute Socrates' view that self-control (or, temperance) is knowledge (Protagoras 352b-c), Aristotle says, in Guthrie's words, "the doctrine is in plain contradiction to experience", well, "to experience" or "to common belief", for either is a possible translation (Aristotle, p. 360, 360n1; Ross' translation of 1145b28-29 is "this view plainly contradicts the observed facts").

Socrates ... thought the virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, all of them, forms of scientific knowledge) ... (Nicomachean Ethics 1144b28-29, tr. Ross)

Socrates was seeking through the use of universal (i.e. thoroughgoing) reason (The "rational" in the quotation) a universal rule (definition) or standard in ethics (A rule is one kind of standard (The grammar of these two concepts is connected in that way), but in ethics 'standard' = 'rule'). It was Socrates view (which may only be a way of looking at ethics, although for Socrates it was a proposition = statement of fact) that "virtue is knowledge", and hence:

Socrates in the Nicomachean Ethics

Socrates was wholly opposed to the idea [that "where knowledge was present something else [could dominate and drag] it about like a slave" (cf. Plato, Protagoras 352b-c [and Sophist 230a])]: there was no such thing as incontinence, for no one wittingly acts otherwise than for the best, but only through ignorance. Now to say this is a glaring contradiction to accepted opinion [or "common belief"], and we must inquire into what happens, and, if the cause is ignorance, what manner of ignorance. (1145b21-29, tr Guthrie)

Guthrie's translation is a bit different from the Ross translation, p. 365, [360n1]. Ross has that Socrates' "view plainly contradicts the observed facts", but, according to Guthrie, the meaning of the Greek phrase "at line [1145b]28 does not mean 'the facts' or 'the evidence', as it has often been translated, but [instead it means] 'appears to men', received opinions" (p. 365n2).

["Those who know the good cannot fail to do what is good, whereas those who are ignorant of the good cannot do what is good" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 9, 5).]

Aristotle's use of the Common Beliefs of mankind

According to Guthrie's account, for "practical" (rather than "theoretical") questions, this was Aristotle's philosophical method: (1) "set down the current beliefs on a subject", (2) "then state as clearly as possible the questions or difficulties ... which arise", (3) "next confirm current opinions as far as possible, or at least the most widely held and authoritative"; (4 - Conclusion) "for if the difficulties are resolved and received opinions survive, that will be sufficient demonstration" (ibid. p. 365).

[Aristotle's] championship of the consensus omnium is truly remarkable: "We maintain that what everyone believes is true. Whoever destroys this faith will hardly find a more credible one." (Guthrie, ibid. p. 91; p. 91n1: Aristotle's statement is Nicomachean Ethics 1172b36-1173a2)

If that be true, then one studies ethics in order to accept, not common sense (sound judgment), but common nonsense (foolishness). And if Aristotle's view extends to the whole of philosophy, then Wittgenstein's work in logic of language should be dismissed out of hand, as should my grammatical investigations of the word 'point' in axiomatic geometry. (But Guthrie says that Aristotle is talking here about ethics in a "practical" rather than a "scientific" treatise, and, therefore, see Posterior Analytics Chapter 13 for its distinction between "knowledge" and "opinion" in the context of "science".)

Query: if I were Callicles what would I change about what I say?

How shall I know what you would change! Dare to think for yourself (yes, and get a bad mark the way I always did) ... Callicles has already appealed to the Aristotelian standard of the consensus of mankind (Gorgias 481b-483c).

"The truth is not decided by consensus"

But that is a standard which -- even if it were by nothing else -- Wittgenstein's study of the logic of language has shown the foolishness of: The logic of our language is misunderstood by anyone who (1) cannot make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense, and (2) cannot distinguish between a factual and a conceptual investigation; and most men do not and cannot (and therefore the common belief of mankind -- i.e. the common misconception -- cannot simply be revised by Aristotle or by anyone else: it has to be discarded). I myself most certainly did not and could not make those distinctions before thinking about Wittgenstein's later work for many years.

And further, as Plato says, the truth of a proposition is not decided by taking a vote -- that is not how we learned to use the word 'truth', nor how we would teach someone else to use that word. This is why knowledge of geometrical equality -- (i.e. proportion in contrast to arithmetic equality: Plato says that all men are not equal in wisdom although in democracy the vote of each is given equal weight) -- was a prerequisite for entering his school. Polemarchus in the Republic represents the consensus (332a-d: "It is just to harm those who are bad and enemies") -- and, contra Aristotle's method, Plato does not revise Polemarchus' claim, but discards it: he has Socrates thoroughly refute it.

Contrary senses of 'common consent'

"The truth is not (and yet it is) decided by consensus" -- i.e. the truth is not a matter of opinion ('consensus ₁'), although it is a matter of agreement ('consensus ₂') in the human life form's form of life (PI § 241). (Which sense did Aristotle intend? It appears 'consensus' ₁.) Thus if we speak of "the conceived facts" -- who conceives those facts? Well, man in his "percepts without concepts are blind", and yet the those facts are independent of man. That is the paradox, that the conceived facts are dependent on man as an individual for their existence but are also independent of him as an individual -- not because of a presumed independent "thing in itself", but because the conceptualization of the percept belongs to the whole of mankind: in the community it is public and therefore objective.

Elsewhere I wrote apropos of "The one and the many" --

By 'common sense' W.K.C. Guthrie appears to mean: 'the evidence of sense perception and the consensus among mankind about the validity of that evidence'.

But that "consensus" is not a contractual agreement: it is not the result of a vote. Rather, it is agreement in (compelled) acceptance (The compulsion is not from the community but from the inner nature of man itself, the human life form).

Callicles' indifference to Plato's arguments

If someone believes that morality comes from the barrel of a gun, he doesn't use philosophical discussion to convince others of that. If he is the stronger, he simply bellows at his opponent, "Move!", and has done with it. Why should the doctrine that "might makes moral right" appeal to philosophy for sanction? Not for any philosophical reason, that I can think of.

Ethics is practical (but not in Aristotle's arid sense)

Aristotle is talking about "types of knowledge" (exact as is natural science, and inexact as is ethics), whereas I am talking about the purpose of the study of ethics. Philosophy begins in many ways. Logic is studied to heal and serve the understanding. And metaphysical speculation is studied from longing to know what is really real, regardless of whether that speculation is useful to some end or not. But ethics cannot be that way: we are too far from being good, our daily wrong-doing is too great, for there to be time for curiosity in the study of ethics.

The present inquiry does not aim at knowledge ... Its purpose [the purpose of ethics] is not to know what virtue is, but to make ourselves good. In the field of conduct the aim is not to contemplate or to know, but to act. (Nicomachean Ethics [1103b26, 1179b1], quoted by Guthrie in The Greeks and their Gods, Chapter xii, 2, "Plato and Aristotle")

So Aristotle says, but he doesn't say how we are "to make ourselves good" -- but rather only that "virtue is good habit formed at a young age". Which is why I said that "ethics is practical, but not in Aristotle's arid way": Aristotle's way is arid because it doesn't serve "to make ourselves good", i.e. it isn't practical. In contrast, if we say that virtue is knowledge, as Socrates does, then we have a guide to go about amending our lives (namely, by seeking through cross-questioned reasoning to discover what the good is), but if we say "virtue is good habit", that only describes -- it does not instruct.

Aristotle's "revised consensus of mankind" amounts to the exhortation "Form good habits in your youth!" Aristotle says that ethics is practical, but his mind is set on theorizing, and in this he rather resembles the skeptic Plato's Socrates speaks of in Phaedrus 229e).

"... otherwise than for the best" [Nicomachean Ethics 1145b21-29]. But if you think you know something better than what you say is the best ... Well, I have already said elsewhere in what way I believe it is most useful to ethics to make use of the statement that "virtue is knowledge": When anyone says "I know what I do is not good, but ..." he is only giving mouth honor, because despite what he says he thinks he knows something better -- i.e. something else to be the truth.

That is, if anyone says, "This is bad, but I will do it anyway", rather than "That is bad, but I did it because I acted instinctively (for man has many evil instincts) or impulsively from the bad habits formed in the time of my ignorance of the good." Rationality requires pausing to think (rational judgment is the conclusion of reflection); without such thinking there can be no Ethics, no philosophy of good and evil.

That way of looking at the Socratic "doctrine", in contrast to Aristotle's way, is useful to the one who aims to become a good man [and only ignorance would put any other aim before that]. Aristotle's way is simply a description of how we might idly look at this topic; "idly," I say, because such a description is not serviceable -- if indeed ethics is practical, as both Aristotle and I conceive the subject-matter of Ethics to be -- i.e. define that aspect of the grammar of the word 'ethics' -- although for different reasons.

Aristotle the scientist versus Plato the philosopher (observing rather than amending life in ethics)

Aristotle seems to me to have been more a natural scientist than a philosopher, more like Isaac Newton than like Plato.

[Plato] was always more interested than his pupil ever was in the application of philosophy to the circumstances of human life. This indeed is one of the most fundamental differences between the two. Knowledge for Plato was a means towards understanding (and hence possessing) the Good. For Aristotle it was enough that "All men by nature seek knowledge" [The opening words of Aristotle's Metaphysics]. No further end need be sought: it was itself the end. (Aristotle, p. 17, [17n1])

Aristotle's standard is a sharp descent from the words Plato has Socrates speak: "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live". If virtue is not knowledge -- i.e. if reason cannot tell us how to live and show us how to become good human beings, then ethics is not part of philosophy, which is thoroughgoing (universal) reason applied to experience. If ethics does not tell us what we must do to become good, then, as in Aristotle, it is an idle discussion for the philosopher.

[Guthrie speaks of] the Aristotelian definition of virtue as a habitual tendency towards right which makes it at the same time enjoyable (Aristotle, p. 366-367).

If ethics is practical, I cannot see that Aristotle's "definition of virtue" is of any practical use at all [is of the slightest use to ethics] to anyone seeking to become a better human being. Basically it amounts to observing that "Some people have formed good habits in youth, and others have formed bad habits, and what we do from habit is sweet ["enjoyable"] to us (Epictetus)". Well, quite, but if ethics is practical, the question isn't that; the question is: how do you reform bad habits -- that is to say, replace them with good habits? That is practical; and if ethics is practical, then that is the question that needs to be answered by it.

Interests Temporal versus Eternal

[Aristotle] belonged by birth to a guild, the Asclepiadae, in which the medical profession was hereditary.... This early connection with medicine ... largely explains ... the predominantly biological cast of Aristotle's philosophical thought ... At the age of eighteen, in 367-6, Aristotle was sent to Athens for "higher" education in philosophy and science, and entered the famous Platonic Academy, where he remained as a member of the scientific group gathered round the master for twenty years, until Plato's death in 347-6.... [Plato] discerned the bent of his distinguished pupil's mind, and [Aristotle's] special share in the researches of the Academy had ... been largely of a biological kind. (A.E. Taylor, Aristotle [Rev. ed. 1919], (1955), i, p. 8).

What kind of "largely explains" is this, i.e. how does one verify that proposition (well, there is no question of verifying that kind of explanation, if it is explanation at all). But further, the medical profession seeks to heal illness, not just to describe it.

As to the scientific "bent of mind", the philosopher is interested in the eternal, not in the temporal which is the concern of the natural sciences. I would say that Aristotle's interest was solely this-worldly, if he even believed there was any other.

Vox populi ≠ Vox philosophiae

Aristotle's account is really of no use at all. Philosophy is not concerned with common opinions (the vox populi), but with the truth, and that is not determined by taking a vote [A grammatical reminder: is that how you learned to use the word 'truth', by taking a vote? This co-incidence in our forms of life is not contractual, which is what a vote would be]. The "common belief" or "received opinion" of mankind amounts to this: some men are born good, others bad; some men have strength of will, others haven't; and all this, according to man's religions, is due either to the grace (i.e. capricious kindness) of God (or gods) or to Nature. The "common opinion" says, "Why am I this way? Because it is my fate to be" -- (Heraclitus: A man's fate is his character) -- and that is of no use whatever to ethics. Indeed, it only discourages us from trying to make ourselves into better human beings. But think: man is not only endowed with instinct: he is also endowed with reason. And using reason to think things all the way through he can amend his life.

Often it is said that "the passions are at war with reason", which means I don't know what -- unless we simply identify "the passions" with base instincts and the bad habits formed in the time of ignorance. But ignorance is not at war with reason. What is, instead, at war with reason is our lack of self-knowledge and our unwillingness to know ourselves (cf. Epictetus' "knowing the state of one's own mind"), when we think we know what we don't know -- or more specifically to ethics: when we say we know one thing but believe we know something else, something better, something wiser. That is what is at war with becoming a good human being. Thus is self-control knowledge.

In any case, Epictetus says in a single statement what Aristotle talks at length about, but in Aristotle's case to no useful end -- namely, "Practice doing what is good until it becomes a habit, because what we do from habit is sweet to us." That is practical ethics: it is a way to reform the bad habits one formed in the time of ignorance of the good.

Aristotle's Ethics, a summation

"Good habits are the necessary condition for being a good human being: The root, the foundation of ethics is not, as Socrates believed knowledge, but instead habit (early habituation). That belongs to Aristotle's "descriptive ethics" -- i.e. Aristotle's description (account) of what causes a man to do what is good. It is a description of the facts according to Aristotle and consonant with the consensus view of mankind."

[Aristotle on the Good for Man (Moral virtue), a longer summary]

Natural science as description, not application

It strikes me that Aristotle was, in ethics, more natural scientist than philosopher. He was content if he could say: This is how things are. ("Aristotle's descriptive ethics".)

Aspects of Aristotle's ethics and logic are similar in this respect, that they are both descriptions of the grammar (in Wittgenstein's jargon) of our language, e.g. Aristotle's table of the mean.

"... the highest or ultimate causes of things" is, I think, the subject of Aristotle's metaphysics. Does Aristotle turn ethics into metaphysics? for he thinks he has finished with ethics once he has identified the cause ["for to know the cause of a thing is the same as to know its essence" (Anal. Post. 93a)] of good behavior as good habits formed in youth.

But Socratic ethics is practical: its aim is to make man a better human being based on the individual's knowledge of the excellence that is proper to man. And the Sophists' teaching, too, was practical, but the Sophists did not concern themselves with how man should live his life -- because they thought they already knew, that it was obvious, how he should live his life: by pursuing his own self-interest and that of his useful friends, winning every argument, whether in the courts or in the assembly, regardless of whether the argument he defended was the better or the worse argument. The ethics Socrates introduced to philosophy is something very different from that: it does not presume to know what the good is for man, but first puts all suggestions (theses) to the test of dialectic, that the better argument should always win out over the worse, the good for man over the bad.

Epictetus spoke of three parts of ethics. But Aristotle concerned himself only with the second two (which are only of secondary importance, according to Epictetus), neglectful of the first part, namely, of doing right, for he gives no help about how to do what is right -- i.e. how to amend one's life: how to replace bad habits with good. Aristotle describes ethics as if he were a mere spectator to our life, not as a man who must seek to do what is right -- which surely includes helping others to do what is right!

Schweitzer writes that "compassion is the foundation of all ethics" (cf. Civilization and Ethics (2nd ed. 1929) xv, p. 169). Is that a useful way to look at ethics, useful, that is, for someone who wants to become a more ethical (i.e. better) human being -- or it is like Aristotle's account of ethics, useful only from a scientific point of view? "Compassion is the difference between Hume's "monster" -- i.e. someone who seems without the human qualities of compassion and empathy -- and me," someone might say to himself. Yes, very well, that may or may not be an apt description of our condition. -- But is it of any practical use to ethics? Certainly it is no use to the "monster". What might be useful would be: "Reason is the foundation of all ethics."

What answer has Schweitzer to those who are not gifted with the qualities of compassion and empathy -- i.e. how can those human beings be ethical if the foundation of all ethics is compassion? What answer has Aristotle for Hume's "monsters" if they did not form good habits in youth -- how can they become ethical? What are those who are not themselves without compassion and empathy to offer as an ethics to those who are without those qualities (if compassion is the foundation of Schweitzer's ethical principle that "Whatever promotes life is good, whatever harms it evil". Protecting all life an act unique to man, but is it a defining excellence of man, as reason and morality are?)

On the other hand, Socrates founds ethics in the fact of nature of man's proper excellence: only reason, and not emotion, is needed for his ethics (A man is not capable of reasoning is also not capable of ethics, for ethics is philosophical reflection, i.e. reasoning). The good man harms no one, and to act contrary to the demands of compassion and empathy is to do harm, regardless of whether one oneself has the gifts of compassion and empathy: there is Aristotle's rule of 'kindness'.

Aristotle's ethics of the mean is founded on reasoning, but of what service is it to tell a man that courage is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice if that does not help that man to act neither foolhardy nor cowardly? It must first be established that bravery belongs to the excellence that is proper to man and that the individual man does not over-reach himself through ignorance of his natural limits in either direction. The precepts "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much" are both calls to the life of reason, to prudent reflection against imprudent impulse.

[Schweitzer, in his criticism of Aristotle's ethics of the mean, cites cases where he say Aristotle misidentifies the mean. (Civilization and Ethics, tr. Campion (1929), p. 45.)]

Absolute and Relative Ends (Wittgenstein)

M. O'C. Drury gave a brief account of what Wittgenstein said in 1929 at a meeting of Cambridge University's Moral Science Club.

So far as I could follow it, Wittgenstein's point was that although two people could always discuss the best means to an agreed end, there could be no argument about what were absolute ends in themselves. Hence there could be no science of ethics. (Recollections p. 99)

Question: what are "absolute ends" when they're at home -- i.e. what did Wittgenstein mean by that combination of words? He did not define those words, but said the following instead:

And "Absolute Value"

... I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance ... (Quoted by Drury from Wittgenstein's "Lecture on Ethics" [LE p. 11], Recollections p. 83)

I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world. (LE p. 7)

Such remarks seem to me, although I may be mistaken, to be an expression of, or at least to share, Kant's view of ethics -- the "categorical imperative" = "the moral law within" -- of that way of looking at ethics.

Whether Wittgenstein held that view in later years, I don't know, but I ask because those are very much the views of the TLP, and if Wittgenstein continued to hold that view, then the holding of it was non-rational -- or is it consistent with his later account of how our language works ("the logic of our language")? But that view of ethics may have been from the very beginning, from before the TLP, what Wittgenstein called a "religious picture" for him. (That it may have been, but what it isn't is philosophy.)

Wittgenstein's above remark about "what I mean by absolute value" belongs in the same category as W.E. Johnson's statement that "If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is senseless". Cf. the paper crown on the chess king: "it hasn't got what I call a 'meaning'" (BB p. 65). That is, of course, a selected meaning of the word 'meaning', a word we use in many, many different ways, but not all those ways make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense, and therefore not all those ways are serviceable for philosophical reasoning -- i.e. in philosophy.

Our words used as we use them in science, are vessels capable of only containing and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning and sense. Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts ... (LE p. 7; quoted by Drury, p. 82-83)

But Drury does not quote these lines which follow:

That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions [e.g. 'absolute value'] were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. (LE p. 11)

"... natural meaning". As if there were another kind. "Nonsense" that can convey meaning is not nonsense (cf. the eccentric definition of 'nonsense' in the TLP, whereby some nonsense is not meaningless). On Wittgenstein's latter account, if the words 'absolute value' have any meaning at all, then the explanation of their meaning must be of the same humble ("common garden variety") kind as any other word of our language (PI § 95).

So that, the Lecture on Ethics is not a case of the egg-shell of the old way of thinking still clinging to the emerging baby chick (CV p. 44); no, in this case the way of thinking still is entirely in the old way. (The "Lecture on Ethics" -- which was given in circa 1920-1930 -- should, as I see it is an elucidation ["making clear"] of the remarks towards the end of the TLP).

But Wittgenstein's is not the only way of looking at Ethics

Wittgenstein's remarks at the Moral Science Club may be placed in another context, however, and given the meaning: Although the means to an ultimate end may be rationally discussed, the ultimate end itself cannot be. (I have in any case, rightly or wrongly, always taken that to be Wittgenstein's view; cf. OC § 611: "When two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another ...") Whether that is, according to Wittgenstein, by logical necessity or only a way of looking at things, I don't know (but does logical necessity exist anywhere except within a way of looking at things, for what is logically possible or impossible is a grammatical, not a factual, question).

But a way of looking at things is just that: one way of looking at things, not the only way. And why begin where Wittgenstein begins, with the notion of "absolute value"? Your view of a room may be very different depending on whether you pass through the door sideways, facing forward, or back into the room. Why not begin, as Socrates may have done with a discussion of what the good man (in contrast to the bad man) does: e.g. if the good man harms his enemies, then what does the bad man do to them (from which it follows that the good man does not harm his enemies). Or begin with the question of how man should live his life based on the excellence that is proper (or, appropriate) to man. If we begin here, we identify the excellences (or, virtues) that are uniquely human -- i.e. the use of reason and ethics (in contrast to instinct and natural values) then the question of "absolute value" does not even arise.

[There are, of course, other things that are unique to man, such as humor and creative imagination, but such things are not the concern of ethics, although whether they are to be fostered or suppressed is.]

The Greek Stoics distinguished in their Ethics between ends and means to ends (things that are good, and things that instruments to good, and things that were both), but they didn't hold that Ethic's ends couldn't be rationally established. If you are going to talk about "absolute value" as the end aimed at by ethics -- and claim that "absolute value" cannot be determined by means of dialectic -- then you are denying that there is such a subject as ethics, which like all philosophy, is rational. (Whether the later Wittgenstein denied that there was such a philosophical subject, I don't know, although he did if ethics is concerned with an irrational "absolute value". He did speak well to Drury of the way C.D. Broad's book Five Types of Ethical Theory was written: "I thought he wrote that very well" (Recollections p. 142). Maybe the denial that ethics is part of philosophy is an example of "just the sort of stupid remark I would have made in" earlier days (ibid. p. 98), although of course I don't know if Wittgenstein would have said that.)

What would be an example of an "absolute value" that is undemonstrable, according to Wittgenstein? To always be scrupulously honest with oneself about oneself e.g.? But is that virtue, the second half of "Know thyself", undemonstrable? Demonstrations (proofs) are always demonstrations in the context of a particular way of looking at things, are they not. If according to a way of looking at things a demonstration is impossible -- not as something impossible to demonstrate within the picture, but as something belonging to the frame through which we look at the picture ... Is the latter not the status of Wittgenstein's "absolute value" -- i.e. a priori undemonstrable?

[The recovery (rediscovery) of Socratic ethics and of philosophy]

The Master said: "Yu! Shall I tell you what is know? Know, know; don't know, don't know. That is know." (The Analects [a collection of teachings] of Confucius, ii, 17)

What part of 'don't know' don't you understand? If you don't know, say 'I don't know' -- and don't try to dodge your ignorance with conjecture: 'probably', 'likely' -- These words are the face of a far deeper ignorance: the failure to "Know thyself" as man as such, namely man's fundamental condition of ignorance. Let your don't know be don't know -- and if you are unsure, you don't know.

"Let your know be know, and your not-know be not-know." And that is an allusion to Matthew 5.37. As might be "Confess thine ignorance", for no one who has not overthrow his own intellectual hubris -- with as much humility as the religious man who in the silence of the dark cellar confesses in tears before God "I do not know" -- can enter the kingdom of the eternal questions in philosophy, to which thinking you know what you don't know is fatal.

Socrates, "the master of those who don't think they know what they don't know"

For me, there is only Socratic philosophy; whatever leads away from that is a false path. But who could be a worthy heir to such modesty, a faithful disciple to that high ideal: "He only errs who thinks he knows what he does not know," is how Augustine expressed it. But he also wrote: "Whatever is not done from love is not done as it should be done." Certainly I don't live that way. Saintliness, whether in philosophy or religion -- and yet in the hour our death, who will not think as Greene's whisky priest thought: "It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint".

"To be wise is to know the good for man"

Query: has Socrates lived a good life in the Apology?

If the good life for man is the life of thoroughgoing reason ("the examined life"), he has. Is that the good for man? Surely this is something a wise man would know, whether that, or something else, is the good for man.

Query: what does Socrates mean by 'ignorant'?
Query: Socrates' concept of 'knowledge and ignorance'.

According to Guthrie's account in this context -- which I accept as correct (but which I have further defined) -- Socrates had a simple test for whether anyone knows something or not. If anyone knows something, then he can give an account of what he knows to others, an account that will stand up against refutation in Socratic dialectic (question and cross-question). The "account" must be whittled down to a thesis (or, proposition), because a long speech finds no serviceable place in the method of dialectic. If someone cannot tell what he knows to others, then he is 'ignorant' of what he claims to know (i.e. he doesn't know what he claims to know)).

We might think to ask: What kind of knowledge was Socrates looking for? But that only means: which definition of the word 'knowledge' did Socrates choose for his work in ethics? "Socrates' concept" = Socrates' use (or, definition) of the word 'know'.

Query: in Socrates' view what are the two signs of a foolish man?

There are three. That he thinks he knows what he does not know. That he refuses to acknowledge when he has been refuted in dialectic. That he becomes angry when he is refuted (i.e. shown not to know what he thinks he knows). Plato's Gorgias 457e-458b: my greatest benefactor is the one who refutes me in argument: refutation teaches modesty and shows the need to seek to know what one has mistakenly thought that one already knew.

Query: Socrates was not wise.
Query: was Socrates a wise man or a fool?

If to 'be wise' means to 'be able to give an account that will stand up against the test of dialectical refutation' in ethics, then, no, neither Socrates nor anyone else he questioned is wise (according to Plato's Apology and Socratic dialogs). However, if to 'be wise' means to 'live an examined life', then .... Or was Socrates a fool? Or was he wise precisely because he was not a fool -- if 'a fool' is 'someone who thinks he knows what he does not know' -- and if not being a fool is the only wisdom man can have?

Query: the difference between a wise man and a lover of wisdom.

That was the distinction which perhaps Pythagoras or his school was the first to make: the distinction between one who seeks and one who thinks he has found. Who would the wise man be? The wise man would know what (according to me) no man can know: the "Truth", the objective answer to the riddle, to the eternal questions that we see no rational way to answer, to the mystery we live in the midst of. But no man is wise, and therefore the man who thinks he is wise (because he thinks he knows what he does not know) suffers from "conceited ignorance", which is quite the contrary of Socratic ignorance. The lover of wisdom is guided by the standard "He only errs who thinks he knows what he does not know"; the one who is modest versus one who is boastful. (Philosophy is thoroughgoing (universal) reason examining experience. Philosophy seeks to know; opinions, belief-in, these are not knowledge.)

Or so I am saying now, but what I shall be saying in five years may be very different, and in twenty years different again, if I am still dishonoring the earth in twenty years. What part of "I don't know" don't you understand? These remarks are not stages, steps on the way to the truth. -- That's not the way it (Philosophy) works. What part of "I don't know" don't you understand.

Query: why did Socrates question people?

Which Socrates -- whose version of Socrates: "No man is wiser than Socrates" (Plato) or "Of all men Socrates is the wisest" (Xenophon)? Did Socrates question people only in order to confirm his understanding of Apollo's words that all men are fools (i.e. not wise), which is one way Plato's Apology 23b may be read?

Query: Socrates: we live in ignorance.

Our life is lived in the midst of mystery, of questions that we cannot answer (Schweitzer: "All we do know is that life is a great mystery and that we ought to be filled with awe and reverence for this mystery"), although we are often unaware (we sleepwalk) of just how fundamental mystery is to our life: mystery is at the very root of our life, not in its trunk and branches (or, in any case, not in those alone).

Query: was Socrates wise at his trial?

From which point of view? From the point of view of "care of the soul"? Anything other than the truth is harmful (damaging) to the "soul", to the ethical mind of man. Or from the point of view of being acquitted ("worldly wisdom")? What does it benefit a man to gain his acquittal but lose his soul -- or what will he give for his soul, which is the man himself? Will he not be like salt that has lost its saltiness? For what is [a] man without ethics -- is he even [a] man?

Query: how does Socrates feel about the god Apollo?

Compare how Socrates responds to the words of Apollo with how Abraham responds to the words of his god. Socrates applies reason to the god's words, to determine their meaning, for the gods are good; their words are true, their deeds good (That is the thoughtful Greek view of the gods). Whereas Abraham can only obey his god, for his god is the law-giver, beyond good and evil, who cannot be put to the test of reason: he is the standard that says what is good and what is evil. Whereas for the Greek philosophers what is good and what is evil can be discovered by the use of man's reason.

Man ... know thyself.

Query: Man, who are you? according to philosophers.

The precept "Know thyself" was a proverb in Greece, far older than Socrates (It was inscribed in Apollo's temple at Delphi), and to know its answer was to know what the good is for man as Socrates understood that. There is a Socratic discussion of "Know thyself" in Xenophon -- and, most importantly, to not think one knows what one doesn't know is to know oneself (Xenophon, Memorabilia iii, 9, 6); to think oneself wise where one is not does the greatest harm both to oneself and to one's companions (ibid. iv, 6, 1). And that is the sense of "Know thyself" that I most often associate with Socrates. (Socrates' two words of guidance to his companion.)

But to know oneself also means to know one's own nature, that is, both to know the specific excellence that is proper to man and to oneself as an individual. And that knowledge is the basis of Socratic ethics, because life in accord with those excellences is the good life. (Note that wisdom = self-knowledge is an empirical not a grammatical equation (tautology), if wisdom for man can be something else.)

And so those are the two reasons why Socrates said, "Man, know thyself."

Query: man, examine thyself. Socrates.

In order to distinguish what you know from what you only think you know but do not -- about things it is important to know, about what the good for man is and how he should live his life. In Plato's Apology 37e-38a, Socrates says that a life without that kind of self-examination isn't worth living.

Natural reason, which is an excellence both proper and unique to man, is according to Socrates the tool by means of which man must seek to become wise. Puzzle: wisdom is, according to the Greeks, not only a human excellence but also a human ethical excellence -- now, why is that? And is thoroughgoing discourse of reason also a moral virtue? (Thinking things all the way through surely is.)

"Our compendia of physics"

A somewhat pert philosopher ... said there were more things in Heaven and earth than could be found in our compendia.

If the simple fellow ... was with the phrase jeering at our compendia of physics, we may cheerfully reply to him: very good, but on the other hand there are more things in our compendia than can be found in either Heaven or earth.

(Lichtenberg, Notebook L, 1796-1799, tr. Hollingdale)

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