The Socratic Way
Beginnings
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Philosophy
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What is it?
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It’s hard to say
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I’ll approach this obliquely
Began in the West with the Greeks
(about 500 BC)
 The ‘love of wisdom’
 We begin real philosophy with
Socrates (496-399BC)
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Socratic Method
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Socrates wrote nothing
Spent his life talking in the Athenian town square
 Plato wrote down his dialogues
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The early ones have Socrates’s ideas
 The later ones have Plato’s thoughts
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He claimed to know nothing
He thought seeking truth had to
be a collaborative effort
Socratic Method
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Begin by claiming ignorance of some issue
Seek enlightenment from a person who knows
Show that they don’t know
End by having a better idea of what is to be
known
Socratic Method
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Elenchus
Socrates asks all the questions.
 The interlocutor must answer every question.
 A definition or principle is sought from the
interlocutor.
 Socrates seeks clarification, gaining assent for
various propositions.
 These propositions are used to show that the
proposed definition or principle is unsatisfactory.
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Euthyphro
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Socrates meets Euthyphro on the way to the law
courts
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Euthyphro is going to prosecute his father for
unlawfully causing death – a capital crime
His father had mistreated a slave to the point that he died
 Euthyphro thinks it is the right and pious thing to do to
prosecute in such cases
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Socrates is going to be tried for impiety
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He thinks this is a good time to have a philosophical
discussion on piety
Euthyphro
Soc. Do you know enough about piety to be sure
that bringing an action against your father is not
itself impious?
Euth. Yes, I have an exact knowledge of all such
matters.
Soc. Is piety in every action always the same? and
impiety just whatever is impious?.
Euth. Yes
Euthyphro
Euth. Piety is doing what I’m doing and
prosecuting my father. After all, Zeus punished
his father Cronus (who’d also punished his
father Uranus)
Soc. But aren’t there also other pious actions?
Euth. Yes
Soc. I don’t want a list of some pious actions: I
want to know what principle makes them pious.
Euthyphro
Euth. The principle is this: piety is what the gods
love and impiety is what they hate.
Soc. OK. So let’s think about that.
Do the gods quarrel amongst themselves?
Euth. Yes
Soc. And what sort of differences give rise to the
sort of long-lasting quarrels that the gods have?
Euthyphro
Soc. I say that that sort of dispute arises when we
differ over what is just or good or honourable:
any other questions we can eventually resolve
Euth. Sure
Soc. And the gods’ quarrels must also be like this
Euth. That seems to be true
Euthyphro
Soc. And doesn’t everyone love what they deem
just and noble and hate the unjust and ignoble?
Euth. Yes
Soc. Then some things will be both loved by the
gods and hated by the gods?
Euth. Yes
Soc. Aha! So you agree that some things are both
pious and impious!
Euthyphro
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But: a contradiction can never be true
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Nothing can be a thing loved by the gods and at the
same time a thing not loved by the gods.
And: any proposition that yields a contradiction
must be false
Therefore: piety can’t be ‘what is loved by the
gods’
Aporia
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This argument doesn’t tell us what piety is; only
what it is not
This is typical of Socrates’s arguments
We are left in a state of indecision and perplexity
– which the Greeks called aporia
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The Socratic style is called aporetic
Philosophical Reflexivism
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What’s the process in that argument
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Find Euthyphro, who claims to know what piety is
Get a definition of piety
Derive consequences from this definition
Identify a falsehood (contradiction) in the
consequences
Conclude that the definition must be false
Conclude finally Euthyphro didn’t know what
piety was
Philosophical Reflexivism
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That argument depended on an assumption that
if you know what piety is then you can give a
definition of it.
That assumption was typical for Socrates: If you
say you know what X is, then you can define X
But is it a good assumption?
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How might Euthyphro have continued the
argument?
Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. You say I don’t know what piety is, so you
clearly have an idea of what it is to know
something. Do tell.
Soc. Surely: to know something is to be able to
define it
Euth. And this applies to everything?
Soc. Of course!
Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. Well, we’ll see about that. I ask you to look
now at that man with the shiny head who is
buying figs.
Soc. That’s Cephalus. Ha ha. He’s bald.
Euth. Bald? But I’m sure I can see a couple of
hairs there.
Soc. Not enough though. He’s definitely bald.
Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. If I added one more hair to his head would
he still be bald?
Soc. Yes.
Euth. So a single hair doesn’t make the difference
between baldness and non-baldness. OK, so
what if I then added one more hair
Soc. I think I get your point.
Euth. Which is?
Euthyphro’s reply
Soc. Since I can’t tell you how many hairs make a
bald man non-bald, I can’t define baldness, so I
don’t know what baldness is.
Euth. Almost! But I think we do know what
baldness is. My real point is that there are lots of
words like ‘bald’ that we use but can’t define.
Soc. Ah, and so you reject my assumption that to
know what baldness is to know its definition.
Philosophical Reflexivism
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That argument is an application of Socrates’s
method to Socrates’s method.
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A sort of meta-elenchus!
This sort of self analysis – reflexivity – is typical
of philosophy
The philosophizing mind never simply thinks about an object,
it always, while thinking about any object, thinks also about
its thought about that object. Philosophy may thus be called
thought of the second degree, thought about thought.
Philosophical Reflexivism
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Could we take reflexivity as being definitive of
philosophy?
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No. Consider mathematics, history, sociology
If we can’t define philosophy, does that mean
we can’t know what it is?
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What do you think?