Was Socrates a Sophist?
I think it's pretty clear he wasn't.
Fictional people can't be anything, Anon.
Socrates was a Platonic construct.
The general view is that he was the last of the sophists, because the general view is that he was mostly concerned with ethics and rhetoric, as reflected in the early Platonic dialogues. In the later dialogues Plato moves more toward his own interests in metaphysics and such.
It's obviously fluid. Plato and Aristotle are well in line with prior and near-contemporary natural philosophy, like the neo-Pythagoreans and pre-Socratic metaphysicians, as well as with the sophistic tradition, and the distinction between the two is artificially inflated by historical hindsight. Sophists were just "wise men" who travelled and advised, and the ones most in demand tended to be teachers in rhetoric, practical ethics, and statecraft. But it's fair to say that Socrates was probably far more in the latter tradition than in that of natural philosophy and metaphysics.
By his own definition probably not.
But in a practical sense he was more like the greatest Sophist of them all.
isn't a sophist someone who tries to win an argument for the winning's sake, instead of searching for the truth?
Socrates was stumped some in some dialogues, and admited so.
>>8190808
>Socrates was stumped some in some dialogues, and admited so.
He was just playing the long con.
>>8190813
damn
>>8190808
a more modern interpretation of the word means a person that is good with rethoric but uses false premises
>>8189818
Why are the Nietzschefags shilling so hard today?
Depends on your definiton
>>8189818
No. In fact, he is generally honest; he IS a patriot, and he DOES believe in the Gods. The only point of contention is professed love of Wisdom.
Phaedo is where he really starts fucking up. He argues that the body (and its needs) are the biggest obstacles to wisdom, and that death frees the soul from the body; thus permitting you achieve true/pure wisdom.
I won't go into all the shit about Hades/etc, which I suppose can be forgiven. Indeed, I suppose it should; but Socrates can't be. Why? Because even through the Crito/etc, Socrates peddles himself as someone who holds the pursuit of wisdom to be his highest pursuit.
But it isn't. His argument against suicide is that we are essentially the gods' property, and that no one wants their property to destroy itself. However, this falls apart when you consider that not long afterwards, he preaches about how shit the Human body is - and that the Human soul is distinct from it, and should be freed from it. Ergo, if anything, suicide would in fact IMPROVE the gods' property.
Nonetheless, that's not what I'm getting at. I think Socrates tried to reconcile his love of wisdom with his love for the gods; death is guaranteed, after all. With that in mind, Socrates' approach to life is to live; but to neither seek nor shun death. That way you honour/respect the gods, yet still respect their property (i.e. Yourself).
If he truly held death to be the highest ideal, even above the gods, then he'd have went full Hegesias of Cyrene and advocated suicide at all times. Not stick around until the ripe old age of 70.
Don't even get me started on his ideas of what is 'just', unless again, 'Crito' was just a lesson in trolling.
>>8191708
/thread
could end any thread on lit desu senpai
>>8191746
Tell me anon, what does he say aboot Hades?
>>8191774
I'm referring to what he says about the gods in general, which is the standard religious trash you'd expect from thousands of years ago.
He was on trial and charged for atheism/heresy, after all, as well as 'corrupting the youth'.
While he does look scruffy, I don't think he could have afforded such qt sandals if he didn't take the money.
He was ordered dead by the r30 tyrants of Athens--not the death typical of a scummy, subservient rhetorician.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the official story of him checks out. I don't at all see how adopting the contrary opinion here is helpful. Also you could read Plato and see for yourself.
>>8191831
No he was ordered dead due to his association with the oligarchs
>>8191831
>ordered
I think you mean voted.
Socrates also spends a lot of time autistically arguing that the ruling is just.
>>8191869
His argument was basically that if you choose to live in a state, you are a slave to that state; but you can leave if you want, so it's all good.
A lot of people forget that Socrates could've chosen exile, but didn't.
>>8191869
The tyrants had been deposed by the time he was executed
He was a friend of a few of the tyrants and was quite oligarchic
>>8191746
What are your thoughts on Crito? My general recollection is that Crito wanted to bust him out of jail but Socrates says no and makes the argument that he has been in Athens his whole life and has agreed to their laws fair and square and also benefited from the laws and infrastructure of Athens his whole life. With this in mind he thinks it would be wrong to then break the law at the first moment is suited his own situation, let alone what would happen if everyone acted in such a way. I must admit to being a fairly new and uncritical reader but this all seemed sound to me.
>>8191897
I wrote something in the margins when studying Crito, which sums up the general dilemma I think it poses:
>Is reacting (rather than submitting) to injustice necessarily unjust?
Socrates seems to think so. The trouble starts in Euthyphro:
>"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"
Socrates seems to hold piety, goodness and justice as distinct. The latter two in particular, stand out; in the world of Socrates, what is good is not necessarily what is just, and vice versa. Arguably that's how it is even now, and this distinction explains why he can maintain a 'bad'/wrong ruling to nonetheless be just. It is 'just' because the Athenians/Laws/State declare and/or voted it to be just.
The question is whether you draw that distinction. I personally believe that what is good is just, and vice versa. For Socrates, however, what is 'just' is nothing more than what the Athenians/Law/State deem to be just.
In Crito, Socrates argues that you are essentially the slave of whatever state you choose to live under; eternally indebted, and yet free to leave. The trouble with this view is that by agreeing to live under a state, you apparently lose all rights to have any expectations (or make any demands) of that state - something which is nowadays deemed reasonable.
The Enlightenment understanding is that of a two-way street; we submit to a state (pay taxes/obey laws/etc), on the condition that it upholds 'its end of the bargain'. In turn, we do the same. The Socratic/Greek ideal, however, is nothing more than "If you don't like it, then you can just geeeet out!"
It also helps to view the Greek conception of a state as an 'investment' - which is what ultimately led Socrates to his stupid conclusion that in saving himself, he would 'destroy' the state. Socratic 'justice' is submitting to the state/laws at all costs - even death.
>>8191955
But is not Socrates' gain from the bargain all of the benefits of living in Athens under Athenian rule, whatever they may be? While I don't know a lot about what that entails what I do know is that Socrates enjoyed it enough to stay in Athens his whole life and in doing so knowingly agreed to the Athenian justice system.
>>8192003
If he really valued wisdom, and by extension justice in the proper sense, he wouldn't feel indebted to something so petty as a state - never mind one that has treated him unjustly.
His loyalties should have ended when the state's commitment to proper justice ended. Socrates himself notes that he would be condemned because he is disliked, rather than spared on the merit of his argument.
The fact is that he had a death wish, and his slavish subservience to the state/law/Athenians is merely a convenient means by which to bring it about. Nietzsche explores this idea further; Socrates is a quintessential pessimist, as evidenced by the fact that he deems death to be life's cure, as if life needs curing.
He didn't get paid to do what he did so I would say no
>>8191746
What are you talking about? The pursuit of wisdom is the only thing he was serious about. The religious stuff and patriotic stuff is doubtful. Don't you remember the noble lie in the Republic, it is essentially religious and then his anti democratic behaviour, how could he be a patriot?
When they accused him of believing in new gods and in no gods, he brings argues with an analogy of horsrs. When Athens is going to execute him, he's cheeky to the end and asks if he can pour out libations to Zeus with the hemlock. The only times he gets serious is when he's talking about wisdom like the Symposium.
Did he believe in gods? Not in the traditional way at least. Was he a patriot? He appreciated the democratic freedoms sure. He mentionsin the Republic how democracies are marketplaces for ideas but his utopia is based more on Sparta than Athens with key differences.
It is like his relationship to the bussy. He pretended to be licentious but in private he was very continent. He always gives different arguments to different people but be always argues for his particular lifestyle.
>>8192063
My point remains; if he maintains that the body, its needs, and by extension LIFE are fundamental impediments to attaining wisdom in the true sense, he would not have argued against suicide. Indeed, he would have argued for it.
Especially if he held wisdom to be the highest ideal.
>>8192078
Don't you think he could have been trying to popularize philosophy with his death? If he had lived in exile, people wouldn't be as excited about him (like Aristotle) but his death made his whole life very attractive to people. Sort if like becoming a martyr. And it doesn't matter what he argues when it comes to beliefs, as you pointed out he argues both sides often.
Maybe he thought he would gain more wisdom in death than by living a few more years.
>>8190742
>forms
>not the realest
>>8192109
>Don't you think he could have been trying to popularize philosophy with his death?
He makes that point, which raises the question of whether he cares more about reputation or what is just. Towards the start, he argues that reputation is an essentially petty concern; but as time goes on, he appears to placemore and more stock in it.
Another objection I have with his objection to suicide, which I maybe didn't word well either, is his implication that it destroys the gods' property (i.e. You).
The fact is that, like a natural death, it only results in the destruction of the physical body; which is something Socrates is already more than happy to part with.
Therefore, not only does suicide not 'destroy the gods' property' in any real sense, but it actually improves it; for in death, the property attains true/pure wisdom.
>>8192132
I guess I see your argument. His death is more a problem than I thought at first. I always just thought he wanted to get converts to philosophy. Although I am skeptical of him being out for reputation primarily or even if it is a good part of his motivations. Where would you see him more concerned with his reputation? As far as I can see with the majority of people he was indifferent and with individuals he was kind of manipulative like Alcibiades. Maybe he cares about how someone like Plato thinks of him but still.
Obviously or at least more than likely Socrates was some kind of believer in something religious but I don't know how serious you can take his arguments on suicide since he effectively committed it with his execution.
I guess a good question is why he didn't do what ideally retired philosopher kings would do. He says they contemplate the forms and philosophy until death but then he doesn't. Or else and maybe this is a stretch, he did escape and he later becomes the Athenian Stranger.
>>8191955
I don't think Socrates necessarily sees all the laws and decisions as just, but thinks it is just to follow them as part of his deal in the 'social contract'
>>8192252
>'social contract'
I didn't sign shit.
>>8192257
Did you read Google's privacy updates?
no, but plato was.
>>8191955
>Socrates seems to hold piety, goodness and justice as distinct
Interestingly, in the Euthyphro, that somehow falls apart; justice and piety end up being identified together, though it's not quite clear what that means (though we basically end up with at the least a piety that needs no gods; if the gods love the pious *because* it is pious, then they must love something like a "form" of justice, and so why bother with modeling oneself off of the gods when one can seek after the source of the justice of the gods more directly?).
This identification of the just and the pious also comes up quite a bit in the Protagoras, which I've been reading.
>>8194689
>if the gods love the pious *because* it is pious, then they must love something like a "form" of justice, and so why bother with modeling oneself off of the gods when one can seek after the source of the justice of the gods more directly?
Good point. I suppose Socrates was subtly allowing for atheism of a kind; I wouldn't go as far as advocating, as I do think he genuinely argues the case for his belief in the gods.
What he might well have been doing is putting 'piety' on their level; not as something to be praised, but to be loved. I'd be hesitant to claim he was putting piety 'above' the gods.
>>8189818
Before one can jump into an argument over the meaning of the term "sophist", we should first note that the term's historical use before the fifth century B.C.E. was positive, and meant in addition to being knowledgeable or prudent, some who was "skillful" or who had a technical "know-how".
What's more, Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus, anyway, all called themselves sophists, and the pejorative meaning that developed (completely independant of Plato, by the way) reflects the worries and anxieties of the political traditionalists/conservatives in Athens who were growing increasingly unnerved by the boldness of the aristocratic class/oligarchs in their attempts to gain power over the democracy (consider that during the Peloponnesian war, you end up with two oligarchic coups in Athens; also consider Thucydides' account, where the tensions between the demos and the oligarchs of a given city are more explicit elsewhere, but present none the less just about everywhere but Sparta).
A basic fact to note about the sophists: whatever they taught (and they individually differed from each other), they all taught for money, and they all traveled around Greece. So, to connect to the observation above: their students came from rich and well off families, and they didn't necessarily have to have any interest in the local politics of wherever they were visiting. To many traditionalists, they mst have seemed incredibly perverse.
The text responsible more than any other for associating Socrates with the sophists is Aristophanes' Clouds. What often gets overlooked is how careful Aristophanes himself as an author is: it's his idiotic main character who thinks Socrates must be one of the sophists, and we should pay attention to the fact that while that character offers over andover to pay Socrates, Socrates *never* asks for payment, an implicit suggestion by Aristophanes that there's something different about him.
(cont.)
>>8192115
Plato's Socrates wasn't the form of Socrates. I don't know if you're being flip or just stupid.
>>8194721
So, sophists 1) teach something for payment, and 2) claim to have some kind of knowledge of things.
Socrates clearly doesn't demand any material payment from anyone he talks to, nor does he necessarily seem to "teach" people anything (at least not in any especially formal or systematic way; certainly he could be said to teach indirectly).
The big issue that seems to differentiate Socrates from the sophists (at least perhaps in Plato's eyes) is 1) the theoretical content of the sophist's teachings and 2) the political effects of said teachings. This needs to be qualified a little: we should pay attention to the fact that the sophist Prodicus is treated with comparitively high respect in Plato's texts, and Socrates keeps being portrayed as having learned something or other from him, even though he is mocked a bit. We should also note that there's understood to be a distinction of a sort between Gorgias (a rhetorician who teaches others how to speak) and the sophists (who may teach rhetoric, but who also sometimes seem to claim to teach political virtue).
To make a bit more of the matter would require carefully reading dialogues like Protagoras, Hippias Major and Minor, Theaetetus, Euthydemus, and the Sophist; let it just be noted that at the very least, the problem of appearances seems to be the basic ground upon which Plato begins his critiques of the theoretical contents of their teachings, while the relation of appearances to the good is where he founds his political critique.
>>8194698
>What he might well have been doing is putting 'piety' on their level; not as something to be praised, but to be loved. I'd be hesitant to claim he was putting piety 'above' the gods.
I think he kind of is, if only because that's precisely what falls out from offering a hypothesis of forms that the gods model themselves by. It really does become a very problematic question, at that point, of "why worship gods?" If one takes the gods (as Euthyphro does) to be paradigms of human action and behavior, AND one takes the gods to model their behavior off of something else (namely, the pious which they love because it's pious, and not pious because they love it), then one is forced to recognize that one doesn't have to model themselves off of the gods. But further, ifthe gods model themselves off of these ontologically prior or more primary beings, than there's not even a good ground for worship, since the gods aren't the source of anything.
Were there other people than Socrates and Plato at that time that despised the sophists, or are those the only sources we have of that?
>>8190742
Except Socrates is depicted as a real person by other people than just Plato. Obviously, that doesn't necessarily mean that Plato's depiction of Socrates was especially faithful, but there almost definitely was a man named Socrates and he may or may not have been a sophist.
>>8194761
Aristophanes depicts Socrates as a sophist in The Clouds, and it was definitely less than a kind portrayal.
p1. Socrates is a man
p2. all sophists are men
p3. Socrates was an asshole
p4. all sophists were assholes
==Socrates might as well be considered a sophist
Q.E.D
>>8189818
He died for an ideal, if the story is true.
Sophists cannot even die to themselves.
>>8194828
what ideal was that?
>>8194836
Integrity.
>>8194836
Intellectual honesty.
>>8191893
Socrates wasn't especially oligarchic, in a couple of ways, the most obvious being his disinterest in material wealth and his lack thereof, material wealth having by that poin come to strongly dominate what it meant to be a non-Spartan oligarch. Further, his sympathies to those cities that inspired oligarchic sentiment, Crete and Sparta, are very mixed. Both cities end up the butt of a longish joke in the Protagoras on the part of Socrates who makes the ironical claim that those cities are the true home of philosophy, the Cretans and Spartans having apparently concealed their deep wisdom by putting on a show of militant masculinity to fool all of their sympathizers and mimics elsewhere.
There *is* something to say in noting that he strongly appreciates Spartan moderation, but I'd think that a look at what Socrates does and at the strict homogeneity of Spartan character and the unquestionability of their civic customs would show very clearly that he'd have done especially badly there. Let's not forget that the regime that most resembles the Spartans in the Republic (the Timocracy) is still a *degeneration* of the Best City, and that the Timocracy contains the seeds of its degenerations into the Oligarchy and then Democracy.
You're right to point to the relationship with tyrants, however, and that probably gets at a strong element to the Athenian accusation against Socrates--his close relationship to the sometimes demagogue/sometimes oligarch Alcibiades, and his sort-of friendships with Critias (the leader of the Thirty that became the Thirty Tyrants) and Charmides (one of the members of the Ten in charge of dominating the Democracy-sympathizing Piraeus of Athens) certainly led democratically minded citizens of Athens to wonder if there wasn't a connection between this annoying man who kept asking questions like "what is a law?" and "what is piety?" to seem as if he was teaching these ambitious men to question the democracy, political life, and laws and customs of Athens in a way as to reject them and suggest a coup.
(Oddly, one of the three accusers, Anytus, was earlier involved in the Four Hundred, an oligarchic coup that lasted for a few months, initiated by Alcibiades; if I'm remembering correctly, I think he was exiled and then returned and joined the democrats.)
