The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

The Cambridge Companion to Socrates is the best introduction to Socrates I have ever read. The chapters of the book are linked together well and have a clear progression. The first chapter begins with the so-called "Socratic problem," which involves trying to find the real Socrates in the historical literature, and the final chapter ends the book with Socrates' influence on the Greek philosophy that came after him. My favorite chapter was Terry Penner's "Socratic Ethics and the Socratic Psychology of Action." It's a fine example of the quality of work in the book. It details Socrate' account of human behavior and shows that issues related to living the good life are integrally tied to what it means to be a human being, according to Socrates.

I’ve never given a two star review, much less one star. I would probably give a book on Relativity by a bird dog 2 stars…. And in fairness, I intentionally skipped through sections of the book to correspond to my readings of Plato, starting with Ion, Menon and then the Symposium. Chapter 7, “Why Eros?” By Suzanne Obdrzalek, Corresponds to the Symposium. It’s unbelievable. The chapter manages to not mention that the Symposium is 1) clearly denoted as hearsay by Plato and 2) its most dramatic component is the entry of the drunken Alcibiades. (Alcibiades speech is intensely degrading and pathetic…. So much so, that you have the impression the drunkard is actually being candid about what’s “Eros” for him…). Suzanne also talks about Plato’s views on Eros in the Symposium; however the minor fly in the ointment is Plato does not speak and was not there…. Honestly if the editor allows this type of content into his collection, he and the work is unreliable. Given this carries the “Cambridge” brand, it literally shakes my understanding of the credibility of much of “modern philosophic” commentary…. Maybe the sophist won. I’ll certainly be looking for thoughtful source of commentary.

This is only a very partial review of this volume, because I want to concentrate on the opening chapter on the 'Socratic Problem', that is, the problem of uncovering the historical Socrates - primarily from the works of Xenophon and Plato. The volume's editor, Donald Morrison, clearly agrees with the sceptical position of Louis-André Dorion that we know nothing about the historical Socrates beyond a description of his physical appearance, and maybe a few 'themes' of his thought. Consequently, although he opens his Preface asserting that Socrates was an intellectual 'revolutionary' (something that could hardly be asserted with any confidence if he truly believes the implications of Dorion's position), his editorial approach has been to eschew any anxiety over the actual Socrates in favour of the multiple Socrateses of varying literary traditions. In order to set the stage for this approach, the volume opens with a translation of Dorion's essay on 'The Rise and Fall of the Socratic Problem', in which the author boldly declares that the Socratic Problem is over and finished. It is finished, in Dorion's view, because of K. Joel's alleged 'discovery' of the 'fictional' nature of the Logoi Sokratikoi. The author does not rehearse Joel's arguments, nor does he go into the criticisms of Joel that have been advanced since his work at the end of the nineteenth century. But Joel's work was highly speculative – to maintain that his thesis constitutes a 'discovery' elides the issues involved, and has not in fact found favour with subsequent scholars. For example, G. C. Field, in discussing Joel's 'Der echte und der xenophontische Sokrates' (published in 3 volumes, 1893-1901), writes that 'Its main thesis is that Xenophon's Socrates is simply a literary figure, drawn in the interests of Antisthenes and his school. Almost everything reported by Xenophon of Socrates is represented here as Antisthenean....But I think most readers of the work agree that the writer is obsessed by the Antisthenes theory, and in advocating it shows too often little sense of the difference between a precarious hypothesis and an established fact. The logical connection of the argument is often extremely tenuous.' ('Plato and His Contemporaries', Methuen, 1967, p. 145) But one wouldn't guess from Dorion's account that there was any uncertainty or controversy over Joel's theories at all. And indeed, from the fact that, in certain instances, a Socratic work is fictional, it does not follow that all of them are. To suppose that this is the case is to ignore the context in which each work was written. Instead of declaring, as Dorion does, that all Xenophon's and Plato's writings about Socrates can be assimilated to a single literary genre with a fixed set of rules, it would make more sense to deal with each work individually, and take into consideration the purpose and literary context of each work. Thus Xenophon's Oeconomicus is clearly a fictional narrative, in which Socrates is made to express the views that Xenophon wants to express about the subjects that interest him. But what of the Memorabilia Socratis? Here, the purpose is to defend the actual, 'historical' Socrates against the charges that were brought against him. It would make no sense whatever for Xenophon to have adduced incidents that he knew to be 'fictional'. We must, of course, make allowance in judging the work for the fact that Xenophon was no philosopher, and would have had little interest in or understanding of the more theoretical part of Socrates' teaching. Furthermore, not all the incidents reported were known by the author from first hand. But after due allowance is made in this regard, what Xenophon writes can be accepted as what he believes to be an honest portrait of the man whose memory he is seeking to defend. The same is true of the Socrates of the early dialogues of Plato. In the Apology, Plato goes out of his way to make the reader aware that he was present at the trial of Socrates, and was an auditor of the speeches. The most plausible conclusion is that he is attempting to give an accurate account of the trial; not a stenographic record, to be sure, but an account of what he remembers Socrates as having said. Similarly, Plato was deeply impressed by Socrates' philosophy and character, and it is hardly conceivable that his general account of Socrates' ideas and practice in the earlier dialogues is 'fictional'. Indeed, it is fairly obvious at what point Plato begins to use Socrates as a 'mouthpiece' for his own doctrine (around the time of the Meno). Dorion only seems to establish the contrary through insisting that those who disagree with him should 'prove' their point. Since mathematical certainty is impossible concerning an historical subject, the author gains an easy victory. However, when it comes to establishing that we cannot trust anything written about Socrates, Dorion's own standards turn out to be somewhat more lax. So, for example, he maintains that 'everyone' in the ancient world 'knew' that all the dialogues of Plato were fictional accounts with no relation to the truth. In support of this thesis he references a couple of anecdotes from many centuries later. In the first, from Diogenes Laertius, Socrates is allegedly listening to Plato reading his Lysis, and exclaims 'By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about me!'. Dorion admits that the anecdote might be considered 'misleading'(!) in that we know that Plato composed the Lysis many years after Socrates' death. But this does not deter him from claiming that the anecdote is essentially truthful on the ground that it 'fully acknowledges the fictional nature of the logoi sokratikoi' (p. 13), and consequently that its testimony can be accepted as sound. This, of course, is circular reasoning. A further anecdote, with a similar moral, is recounted from Athenaeus. Finally, we are told that Cicero was convinced that many of the doctrines that Socrates expounds in the dialogues are of Pythagorean origin – a point, however, which hardly touches on the earlier dialogues. Needless to say, this 'evidence' is tawdry stuff indeed, and does nothing whatever to undermine the credibility of the scholars whom Dorion criticises. Dorion's reasons for rejecting Plato's Apology are twofold. First, he argues that 'We have no reason to exempt the Apology from the status of a logos sokratikos and to believe that it does not contain a degree, and perhaps a considerable degree, of fiction.' (p. 17) In support of this he says that if we are to deem Plato's Apology an accurate account of the trial, then we must deem the accounts of Xenophon and others as inaccurate. But what ground do we have for treating these accounts differently? But Dorion doesn't mention that Plato was present at Socrates' trial, whereas Xenophon was not. It is entirely probable that the Apology was written by Plato precisely to provide a near-as-possible accurate account, in contrast to those works that were written merely to present a hypothetical defence of Socrates. Furthermore, the intent of the Apology is not to explore a philosophic issue in detail but to present a portrait of Socrates at his trial. What motive would Plato have for presenting a 'Socrates' he knew to be 'fictional', and then claiming authenticity for his portrait by mentioning that he was a witness to the events he describes? This is not something that Dorion answers. Dorion's second argument for rejecting the Apology is as follows: 'Plato's Apology is a report not only of Socrates' trial, but also of the very fundamentals of his philosophy; this implies that the supposed faithfulness of the account must cover everything from the theories Socrates developed to the actual progression of the trial. But because the philosophical positions developed in the Apology are present in other dialogues, it follows that we must also consider the philosophical theses of the other dialogues that conform to those of the Apology to be historically accurate. Yet we have already established that it is impossible to reconstruct the thinking of the historical Socrates on the basis of the logoi sokratikoi, since the very nature of their genre authorizes a considerable degree of invention.' (p. 18) But the reasoning here is manifestly circular, and thus his conclusion far from established. To be fair, the argument in this case is directed against C. Kahn, who does in fact dismiss the early dialogues of Plato whilst accepting the reliability of the Apology, and Dorion may rightly charge him with inconsistency. Nevertheless, Dorion adduces no further arguments other than those above against the reliability of the Apology, and I do not believe that in themselves they are persuasive. The very title of Dorion's essay, 'The Rise and Fall of the Socratic Problem', is misleading insofar as it suggests that the issue has been definitively resolved, and that further investigation is otiose. But the scholarship of the twentieth century is not somehow cancelled by the fact that a maverick viewpoint from the nineteenth century has recently become the fashion. At the very least, the editor might have balanced Dorion's essay with one or two others presenting a different point of view, rather than allowing a single dogmatic viewpoint to stand alone. For this reason, and despite the interest of the essays that follow, I do not regard this Cambridge Companion as an ideal introduction to Socratic studies. As an alternative, I would recommend Guthrie's beautifully written volume on Socrates, published by Cambridge University Press back in 1971.