Socrates (9 page)

The development of this more authoritative figure of Socrates is a feature of dialogues which we identified as transitional between the earlier ‘Socratic’ dialogues and the dialogues of Plato’s middle period. It is a particular instance of the gradual metamorphosis of the figure of Socrates into the representative of Plato which we noted earlier.

Definition

Socrates’ interest in definitions arises from his quest for expertise. The expert knows about his or her subject, and according to Socrates the primary knowledge concerning any subject is precisely knowledge of
what that subject is. The connection with expertise is made explicit in
Hippias Major
(286c–d), where Socrates tells Hippias how, when he was praising some things as fine and condemning others as disgraceful, he was rudely challenged by someone who said, ‘How do you know what sorts of thing are fine and what sorts disgraceful? Tell me, could you say what fineness is?’ Being unable to meet this challenge he consults Hippias, whose universal expertise includes, as ‘a small and unimportant part’, knowledge of what fineness is; if Hippias were unable to answer that question his activity would be ‘worthless and inexpert’ (286e).

The primacy of the ‘What is such-and-such?’ question is emphasized in a number of dialogues. The general pattern of argument is that some specific question concerning a subject, which is the actual starting-point of discussion, for example, how one is to acquire goodness, is problematic in the absence of an agreed conception of what that subject, in this case goodness, is. Hence, though the specific question is psychologically prior, in that that is where one actually begins the enquiry, the ‘What is X?’ question is epistemologically prior, in the sense that it is impossible to answer the former without having answered the latter but not vice versa. The problematic question may be of various kinds. In
Laches
(189d–190d) it is how a particular virtue, courage, is to be inculcated, while in
Meno
(70a–71b) and
Protagoras
(329a–d, 360e–361a) it is the generalization of that question to goodness as such. In
Republic
1 (354b–c) it is whether justice is advantageous to its possessor. In
Euthyphro
(4b–5d) it is whether a particular disputed case, Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father for homicide, is or is not an instance of piety or holiness. Similarly, at
Charm
. 158c–59a the question of whether Charmides has self-control is treated as problematic, and therefore as requiring prior consideration of what self-control is.

The pattern exhibited by the last two examples, in which the question ‘Is this an instance of property F?’ is said to be unsettleable without a
prior answer to the question ‘What is E?’, has given rise to the accusation that Socrates is guilty of what has been dubbed ‘the Socratic fallacy’, namely, maintaining that it is impossible to tell whether anything is an instance of any property unless one is in possession of a definition of that property. That thesis would be disastrous for Socrates to maintain, not merely because it is open to countless counterexamples (e.g. we can all tell that a five-pound note is an instance of money even if we are unable to give a definition of money), but because Socrates’ approved strategy for reaching a definition is to consider what instances of the kind or property in question have in common (e.g.
Meno
72a–c). Obviously, if we cannot tell which are the instances of the kind or property in question in advance of giving the definition that procedure is futile, as is the procedure of rejecting a definition by producing a counterexample, for if you cannot tell whether any instance is an instance without a definition, equally you cannot tell whether any instance is not an instance without a definition. But since the production of counterexamples is one of the standard procedures of Socratic elenchus, the fallacy would be wholly destructive of Socrates’ argumentative method.

In fact, Socrates is not committed to that methodologically self-destructive position. The most that the examples in
Euthyphro
and
Charmides
commit him to is that there are some, disputed, instances, where the question ‘Is this an instance of E?’ cannot be settled without answering the prior question ‘What is E?’. That claim does not commit him to maintaining that there are no undisputed cases, and so leaves it open to him to look for a property present in all the undisputed cases of F and absent from all the undisputed cases of non-F, and then to settle the disputed cases by determining whether that property applies to them. (In fact that procedure is bound to leave the dispute unsettled, because the original dispute is now transformed into a dispute over the propriety of widening the extension of the property from the undisputed to the disputed cases. That, however, is another question.)
Socrates’ rude challenger in
Hippias Major
does, however, appear to go so far as to claim that it is impossible to tell whether any particular thing is fine before one has given a definition of fineness. When all Socrates’ and Hippias’ attempts at defining fineness have failed, Socrates imagines himself being confronted again by the challenger and asked, ‘How will you know whether any speech has been finely put together, or any action whatever finely done, if you are ignorant of fineness? And if you are in that state, do you think you are better off alive than dead?’ (304d–e). We cannot avoid the difficulty by saying simply that this is someone else’s view, not Socrates’, since Socrates makes it clear that the rude challenger is an alter ego; ‘he happens to be very nearly related to me and lives in the same house’ (304d). Yet the rude challenger’s view is not one which Socrates simply endorses, for he concludes (304e) by saying that he thinks he knows that the proverb ‘Fine things are difficult’ is true; but on the challenger’s account he could not be in a position to know even that. The challenger’s view, then, is not after all Socrates’ own; it is very closely related to it, indeed (and thereby likely to be confused with it), and constitutes a challenge in that, if accepted, it would overthrow Socrates’ entire argumentative methodology. Hence the challenge is to distinguish that view from Socrates’ actual, more modest view that there are some difficult cases which cannot be settled without the ability to give a definition. To be an expert in an area is to be able to tell reliably, for disputed and undisputed cases alike, whether any case is an instance of the property or kind in question, and for that, according to Socrates, it is necessary, as well as sufficient, to be able to say what the property or kind is.

The examples from
Laches, Meno, Protagoras
, and
Republic
1 exhibit another pattern; here the question which gives rise to the quest for the definition of a property is not whether a given, disputed, instance falls under it, but whether that property itself has some further property, specifically whether justice is beneficial to its possessor, and whether courage and overall goodness (i.e. the possession of all the virtues,
courage, self-control, justice, wisdom, etc.) can be taught. At
Meno
71b Socrates gives an analogy for this pattern of the priority of definition which suggests that it is the most basic platitude. If I don’t know at all who Meno is, I can’t know whether he has any property, for example, whether he is rich or handsome. Similarly, if I don’t know at all what goodness is, there is no possibility of my knowing anything about it, including how it is to be acquired.

Understood in a particular way, this is indeed a platitude. If I have never heard of Meno, the appropriate reply to the question ‘Is Meno handsome?’ is ‘Sorry, I don’t know whom you mean.’ Similarly, if I have no idea what goodness is, the appropriate reply to ‘Can goodness be taught?’ is ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Here we have cases where a prerequisite of intelligible speech about a subject, that one should be able to identify the subject, is not fulfilled. Clearly, that prerequisite of intelligible speech does not require the ability to give a definition of the subject. In the case of an individual subject such as Meno one does not have to be in possession of any specification of Meno which uniquely specifies him independently of context; one might, for instance, be able to identify him only ostensively as ‘That man over there’, or indefinitely as ‘Someone I met in a pub last year’. The analogue in the case of a universal such as goodness is no more than the minimal requirement to know what we are talking about when we use the word; but that again does not presuppose the ability to give a verbal specification (i.e. a definition) of the universal. To return to our earlier example, I can know what I am talking about when I use the word ‘money’, even if I am unable to give a definition of money; it is clearly enough that I can, for instance, recognize standard instances. Now, in that sense it is clear that Meno knows what he is talking about from the very start; otherwise he could not even raise his initial question ‘Can goodness be taught?’ So the platitude that intelligible speech about any subject requires the ability to identify that subject does not point towards the priority of definition. Why, then, does Socrates insist on
that priority even though the condition which the platitude specifies is satisfied?

To answer that question we need to observe that in
Laches, Meno
, and
Protagoras
the search for the definition of particular virtues and inclusive goodness is prompted by the practical question of how those qualities are to be acquired. What kind of definition of those qualities is demanded by the practical question? Clearly, something more than the bare ability to know what one is talking about is demanded, because, as we have seen, that ability is presupposed by the asking of the practical question itself. It is tempting to suggest that what more is required is just the ability to elucidate the dictionary meaning of the term designating the quality under discussion. In the case of the Greek term which I have rendered distributively as ‘virtue’ and collectively as ‘goodness’ (
aretē
), a reasonably accurate specification of its meaning would be:

1. An attribute of an agent, one of a set of attributes severally necessary and jointly sufficient for the attainment of overall success in life.

2. The set of attributes specified under 1.

How is the ability to give that elucidation demanded by the practical question? It does indeed advance the enquiry to the extent of making it clear that the search is for properties which promote success in life, but it gives no indication what properties those are, nor, crucially, how those properties are to be acquired. People could agree on that definition but disagree radically in their answers to the practical question, if, for instance, some thought that the properties which bring success in life are all gifts of nature such as intelligence and noble lineage, while others thought that they could all be acquired through practice like practical abilities. The practical question thus appears to demand a different kind of definition from the elucidation of the meaning of the term which designates the property; it demands a
substantive specification of what that property is. A substantive specification will include both the decomposition of a complex of properties into the components of that complex (e.g. goodness consists of justice, self-control, etc.) and explanatory accounts of those properties (e.g. self-control consists in the control of the bodily appetites by reason). That is to say, it provides a theory of goodness, which explains it by identifying its constituents and causes, and thereby indicates appropriate methods of acquiring it.

That the definitions sought are of this substantive kind chimes in well with the demand that the giving of definitions is what characterizes the expert. The expert on goodness should be able to explain what goodness is with a view to providing reliable guidance on how to acquire and maintain goodness, just as the expert on health should be able to explain what health is with a view to providing reliable guidance on how to become and stay healthy. The texts of the dialogues mentioned above provide some confirmation that the definitions sought are of this kind, though it would be an oversimplification to pretend that they are distinguished with total clarity from elucidations of the meanings of the terms designating the properties in question.

That Socrates’ search is for substantive rather than purely conceptual or ‘analytic’ definitions is indicated by those dialogues which either explicitly identify or suggest the identification of goodness with knowledge or some other cognitive state. The most detailed discussion occurs in
Meno
(suggested above to be transitional between ‘Socratic’ and ‘Platonic’). At 75–6 Socrates attempts to explain to Meno that he is looking not for lists of specific virtues such as courage and self-control but for a specification of what those virtues have in common, and illustrates this by giving two model specifications, first of shape and then of colour. Of these, the former is a conceptual elucidation, namely, that shape is the limit of a solid, and the second a ‘scientific’ account of colour (based on the theory of the fifth-century philosopher
Empedocles) as a stream of particles flowing out from the perceived object, of appropriate size and shape to pass through channels in the eye to the internal perceptive organ. Socrates gives no clear indication that he regards these specifications as of different kinds; he says that he prefers the former, but does not indicate why, except that he describes the latter as ‘high-flown’, perhaps indicating that it is inferior because it is couched in over-elaborate technical terminology. Despite this expressed preference for what is in fact a conceptual elucidation over a substantive definition, Socrates then goes on to propose an account of goodness of the latter kind, namely, that goodness is knowledge. This is not itself an elucidation of the concept of goodness, as specified above, though it does depend on a conceptual thesis, that goodness is advantageous to its possessor (in Greek, that
aretē
is
ōphelimon
, 87e). Rather, it is the identification of knowledge as that state which is in fact necessary and/or sufficient for success in life, and it is arrived at not purely by considering the meanings of words but by the adducing of a highly general thesis about how success is achieved. The thesis is that since every other desirable property, such as strength or boldness, can lead to disaster, the only unconditionally good thing is that which provides the proper direction of those qualities, namely, intelligence, which is equated with knowledge (87d–89c). Again, Socrates is led ostensibly to abandon that account in favour of the revised suggestion that goodness is not knowledge but true belief (89c–97c) by consideration of the alleged empirical fact that there are no experts in goodness, as there would have to be if goodness were some kind of knowledge (another conceptual thesis). In Socrates’ arguments conceptual theses and general empirical claims about human nature mesh to provide the best available theory of what goodness really is, that is, of what property best fits the specification set out in the elucidation of the concept given above.