2.3 The Ideas of Socrates
In this lecture, based on the Academy of Ideas video, we are going to examine four of the main
ideas of Socrates that are central to his philosophical worldview:
1) The appeal to ‘care for your soul’,
2) His conviction that knowledge of virtue is necessary to become virtuous, and in turn that
virtue is necessary to attain happiness,
3) The claim that all evil acts are committed out of ignorance and hence involuntarily,
4) His belief that committing an injustice is far worse than suffering an injustice.
CONTEXT: Socrates believed that philosophy had a very important role to play in the lives of
individuals, since the goal of philosophy for Socrates is to tell us how we ought to live, or what
must we do in order to make our lives worth living. What is the way we ought to live?” (Gorgias)
This is Socrates’ approach to the question of ARETE, moral excellence, a theme that runs
throughout much of classical thought. Socrates has now reinterpreted this concept to refer to not
what it means to be skilled at this or that particular task, like to be a skilled rhetorician, but what
it means to a skillful or excellent human being as such, and as we shall see, to make the most of
one’s life. This is how the Latin translation of arete became Virtue.
As the video suggests, many people never consciously contemplate this question of how one
ought to live. Instead the course of their lives is largely determined by the cultural values and
norms which they unquestionably adhere to. But according to Socrates, the examination of this
question is the heart of philosophy as it is through striving for answers to it that one can hope to
improve their life. One of the reasons why most do not consciously contemplate this question is
because it requires that one attain self-knowledge, or in other words, one must turn one’s gaze
inward and analyze both their true nature and the values which guide their life. And this sort of
knowledge is perhaps the most difficult knowledge to obtain.
This conviction is conveyed in perhaps Socrates’ most famous statement:
“the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology), as well as the inscription at the Oracle of
Delphi: “Know Thyself”.
Examining one’s self is the most important task one can undertake, for it alone will give you the
knowledge necessary to answer the question ‘how should I live my life’. Or, what makes life
worth living?
1) The appeal to ‘care for your soul’
When we turn our gaze inward in search of self-knowledge, Socrates thought we would soon
discover our true nature. And contrary to the opinion of the masses, one’s true self, according to
Socrates, is not to be identified with what we own, with our social status, our reputation, or even
with our body. Instead, Socrates famously maintained that our true self is our soul.
It is important to mention that the Ancient Greeks lived before Christianity, and hence for them
the notion of the ‘soul’ did not have the same religious connotations that it has for us. What
Socrates meant when he made the claim that our true self is our soul is not known for certain.
Although many scholars have taken a view similar to the one put forth by the famous historian of
philosophy Frederick Copleston who wrote that in calling our true self our soul Socrates was
referring to “the thinking and willing subject”. (psyche, our thinking/conscious self, the person)
According to Socrates it is the state of our soul, or our inner being, which determines the quality
of our life. Thus, it is paramount that we devote our attention to making our soul as good and
beautiful as possible.
Or as he says the Apology: “I shall never give up philosophy or stop exhorting you and pointing
out the truth to any one of you whom I meet, saying in my most accustomed way: “Most
excellent man, are you…not ashamed to care for the acquisition of wealth and for reputation and
honor, when you neither care nor take thought for wisdom and truth and the perfection of your
soul?” (Apology 29d)
2) Knowledge of virtue is necessary to become virtuous, and in turn that
virtue is necessary to attain happiness.
Virtue is Knowledge, and that this is the key to happiness.
After coming to the realization that one’s inner self, or soul, is all important, Socrates believed
the next step in the path towards self-knowledge was to obtain knowledge of what is good and
what is evil, and in the process use what one learns to cultivate the good and purge the evil.
Most people dogmatically assume they know what is truly good and what is truly evil. They
regard things such as wealth, status, pleasure, and social acceptance as the greatest of all goods
in life, and think that poverty, death, pain, and social rejection are the greatest of all evils.
However, Socrates disagreed with the usual answers. Nevertheless he agreed that all human
beings naturally desire to be happy and that Happiness is the final end in life, the Highest Good,
valuable for its own sake, and therefore everything we do we do because we think it will make us
happy.
It is not surprising that we often label what we think will bring us happiness as ‘good’, and those
things we think will bring us suffering and pain as ‘evil’.
But that is exactly the problem: How do we know if we are getting it right?
Everyone wants to happy, and it may well be the case that we are all, whether intentionally or
unintentionally acting for the sake of achieving a goal that we all share. But if this is the case,
why are so many people unhappy?
Of course, “happiness” is a tricky concept. For many it could simply mean that I am happy when
I get what I want, or when I experience pleasure (perhaps at getting what I want or desire). So,
the problem might be as simple as I am not happy because I do not always get what I want, or
that getting what I want takes a lot of time and trouble. What about those who seemingly do get
what they want, or have the good fortune to acquire the means to get whatever they want, but are
still not happy?
You might add that this is subjective and/or that we all want different things because we all have
very different conceptions of what happiness consists in. The sophists might leave it at that, but
is that correct? Could not some conceptions of happiness be better than others?
Again, it would depend on our conception of what happiness is and therefore on our conception
of the highest good, or what is intrinsically valuable. What is the good?
Finally, the word happiness here is a translation of the Greek word EUDAIMONIA, which
literally means doing or being well, functioning well, flourishing. Our use of the word
happiness to identity the good is itself a narrowing of the meaning of the good to a subjective
feeling that I might have, as is I feel good, not the broader sense of being good or doing well.
In any case, we have a genuine philosophical problem, a conceptual issue about what we know
or do not know. It also follows that if we have a mistaken conception of what is good, then we
will spend our lives frantically chasing after things that will not bring us happiness even if we
attain them.
Not surprisingly, Socrates assumed that if one devoted oneself to self-knowledge and
philosophical inquiry, one might arrive at a better, i.e., more informed, conception of the good.
See Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, the Stoics, not to mention Buddha the Indian and
Chinese sages, Jesus, and so on…
SOCRATES CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD
For Socrates, the highest good is Virtue (arete).
Virtue is defined as moral excellence, and an individual is considered virtuous or good) if their
character is made up of the moral qualities that are accepted as virtues. In Ancient Greece
commonly accepted virtues included courage, temperance, prudence, and justice. Later Plato
will provide an account of why these four cardinal virtues are essential for living a good life.
Socrates held virtue to be the greatest good in life because it alone was capable of securing one’s
happiness. Even death is a trivial matter for the truly virtuous individual who realizes that the
most important thing in life is the state of his soul and the actions which spring from it: “Man,
you don’t speak well, if you believe that a man worth anything at all would give countervailing
weight to the danger of life or death, or give consideration to anything but this when he acts:
whether his action is just or unjust, the action of a good or of an evil man.” (Apology 28b-d).
One of the debating points between Socrates and the sophists was over the question of whether
virtue could be taught and whether being virtuous could be learned? Socrates assumed that
virtue could be taught. To become virtuous, Socrates maintained that we must first arrive at
knowledge of what virtue really is. Knowledge of the nature of virtue, in other words, is the
necessary condition for one to become virtuous. The Sophists would have agreed, but Socrates
took this claim one step further. Socrates maintained that Knowledge is both the necessary and
sufficient condition to be virtuous.
This explains why Socrates went about conversing with his fellow Athenians, always in search
of the universal definition, or essence, of a specific virtue. He thought that when one arrived at
the correct definition of virtue, one would come to realize that virtue is the only things which is
intrinsically good. And since human beings naturally desire the good, as being virtuous alone
secures happiness (eudaimonia), with this knowledge one could become virtuous.
To summarize this idea, it is useful to express it in a simple formula:
knowledge-->virtue-->happiness.
When we arrive at knowledge of virtue we will become virtuous, i.e., we will make our souls
good and beautiful. And when we perfect our souls, we will attain true happiness.
Put differently, and in terms of Socrates’ moral psychology: the key to happiness is the claim
that Virtue is Knowledge. This is Best captured by the slogan: TO KNOW THE GOOD IS
TO DO THE GOOD.
For Socrates, Knowledge is both the necessary and sufficient condition to be virtuous.
Knowledge as a necessary condition is not terribly controversial, and may even seem obvious,
but Socrates adopts the stronger position, sometimes known as moral intellectualism, that
knowledge of the good itself is sufficient to be or do good. If I truly know what is good, I will
necessarily do what is good. If this is true, then it necessarily follows that: No one does evil
intentionally. Hence if one does evil, then it must be because that person lacks genuine
knowledge of the good, or put differently, all evil acts are committed out of ignorance of the
good.
3) All evil acts are committed out of ignorance and hence involuntarily.
If all individuals naturally desire happiness, and if it is only by becoming virtuous that one can
attain happiness, then a simple question arises: Why do so many people fail to become virtuous
and instead commit evil acts, thereby preventing themselves from attaining that which they really
want?
For Socrates, the answer to this question is that most people are ignorant. If one truly knew what
they were doing was evil, they would refrain from such an action. But because all evil acts are
committed out of ignorance, Socrates held that all evil acts are committed involuntarily. Socrates
did not mean that when one committed an evil act they did so in some sort of state of complete
unawareness, but rather that such an individual was unaware that their action was evil. In Plato’s
dialogue the Protagoras Socrates says: “My own opinion is more or less this: no wise man
believes that anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetuates any base or evil act; they know very
well that every base or evil action is committed involuntarily.” (Protagoras)
An individual who commits an evil act is one who is ignorant of the fact that virtue alone is the
one true good. Such an individual instead falsely assumes that such things as wealth, power, and
pleasure are the greatest goods in life, and therefore, if necessary, will use evil means to attain
these goods. In other words, they are ignorant of the fact that by committing such evil acts they
are tarnishing their soul and thus condemning themselves to perpetual unhappiness.
As A.E. Taylor explains: “Evil doing always rests upon a false estimate of goods. A man does
the evil deed because he falsely expects to gain good by it, to get wealth, or power, or enjoyment,
and does not reckon with the fact that the guilt of soul contracted immeasurably outweighs the
supposed gains.” (Socrates, A.E. Taylor)
Last, but not least, or perhaps even more controversial:
4) Committing an injustice is far worse than suffering an injustice.
This self-inflicted harm to one’s soul (one’s true self) caused by not acting virtuously is the
greatest evil which could befall an individual. In fact, Socrates went so far as to put forth the
astonishing claim that it is better to suffer an act of injustice than to commit an injustice.
“So I spoke the truth when I said that neither I nor you nor any other man would rather do
injustice than suffer it: for it is worse.” (Gorgias)
When we commit an act of injustice, we are harming our own soul, which is our true self. Yet on
the other hand, when we suffer an injustice it is not our soul which is harmed, but instead what is
harmed is merely something we possess: be it our wealth, reputation, or even our body. Since the
state of our soul is of the utmost importance in the attainment of happiness, we should ensure
that we take care of our soul even at the expense of our possessions and body. And if the choice
confronts us, we should choose to suffer harm rather than inflict it.
George Vlastos presents an extreme condition which illuminates just how staggering this idea of
Socrates’ really is:
“Imagine someone living under a brutal dictatorship, accused of a political crime, who saves
himself by incriminating falsely a friend, whereupon the latter is apprehended and tortured,
coming out of the ordeal a broken man to die soon after, while the accuser, well rewarded by the
regime, lives on to a healthy and prosperous old age. Socrates is claiming that the perpetrator of
this outrage has damaged his own happiness more than his victims. Has any stronger claim been
ever made by a moral philosopher? I know of none.” (Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher,
George Vlastos)