B3 Lecture 2: The Quietism of Socrates: Criticism of Democratic Politics

Themes from the last lecture: the polis as inspirational model, where this centred around two
key features (i) strong communal participation; (ii) the self as constituted by community.

Introducing the philosophers. How do their values and views sit within their political
community?

(i) Philosophers as other-worldly: In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus (173c-175b), we are told

that: When it comes to participating in the city’s institutions (T1), “how natural it is that men
who have spent a great part of their lives in philosophical studies make such fools of
themselves when they appear as speakers in the law-courts”.

(ii) The relationship between philosophy and the polis is sometimes articulated as a tension
between the theoretical life (bios theoretikos) and the practical life (bios praktikos), with the
philosophers privileging the former. If so, their relationship to the polis, community, and
citizenship may be at odds.

Some have claimed that the inauguration of that tension between the political life and the
philosophical life comes at a specific historical moment of the trial and death of Socrates
(Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics”). Plato’s despair at the death of Socrates motivated a turn
towards the inner life and a flight from the political realm, in which Socrates had been tried
and executed. Such views often rely on a sharp division between (the historical) Socrates and
Plato, arguing that Socrates was the “last great philosopher citizen” (Arendt), whose practices
promise to provide a contemporary model of Socratic citizenship (Villa (2001) and Kateb
(2006)) and it was Plato who inaugurated the flight from the political realm. So, just what
was Socrates’ relationship to the polis and its practices? Was it escapist and quietist,
something that urged the leading of a quiet private life of philosophical reflection, or was
Socrates more politically engaged and, if so, in what sense?

Evidence from the Apology

Socrates’ trial and death.

His association with youths such as Critias, who led the coup that overthrew democracy, and
Alcibiades, a pro-Spartan oligarch provided the fuel for his accusers.
Evidence that Socrates had provoked enmity by being an ally to those subversive to the
democracy (though this could not be acknowledged explicitly at the trial given the political
amnesty in Athens after the oligarchic coup).

T2: Xenophon, Mem. 1, 2, 12: "But the accuser said that Critias and Alcibiades, having
associated with Socrates, did great evil to the city”.

The divine sign has prevented him from active public service (Apol. 31d-e):

T3: “If I had long ago attempted to engage in public affairs I would long ago have been killed
and so would not have been of any benefit to you to myself…it is impossible for any man to
be spared if he openly opposes you or any other mass of men and prevents many unjust and
illegal things from occurring in his polis”.

1
And yet, Socrates represents his private questioning as of the greatest service to the state; he
is the civic gadfly (30e-31a).

After the verdict of guilty when Meletus asks for the death penalty:

T4: “What do I deserve to pay or suffer because I have deliberately not led a quiet life but
have neglected what occupies most people: wealth, household affairs, the position of general
or public orator or the other offices, the political clubs and factions that exist in the city? I
thought myself too honest to survive if I occupied myself with such things. I did not follow
the path that would have made me of no use either to you or to myself, but I went to each of
your privately and conferred upon him what I say is the greatest benefit, by trying to persuade
him not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and
as wise as possible, not to care for the city’s possessions more than the city itself, and to care
for other things in the same way”.

So, we have a tension here: Socrates claims to be a benefactor to the city; he even claims the
Athenians have never enjoyed a greater good in their city than his philosophical activity. He
stresses neglect of his private interests and lack of financial gain – showing his dedication to
the common good. And yet, as he himself puts it, he stays out of political affairs and has
never given advice to the city before a public gathering (31c-32a). How can he claim to be a
great benefactor to the city and yet avoid any part in its public affairs?

Anti-democratic Sentiments

Little interest in T5: “communal decision making effected in public after substantive
discussion by or before voters…, and on issues of principle as well as purely technical
operational matters” (Cartledge’s characterisation of politics in the strong sense in the
reading from last week (2000) 11.

And consider T6: “Hoi polloi, when they try to train horses, actually corrupt them, and the
same is true of all other animals” (25a-b). What are the political implications of this?

T7: “Perhaps you think, Athenians, that I have been convicted for lack of words to persuade
you, that I thought it right to do and say anything to be acquitted. Not so. It is true that I have
been convicted for a lack; not a lack of words, but a lack of bold shamelessness,
unwillingness to say the things that you would find it most pleasant to hear – lamenting and
wailing, saying and doing many things I claim to be unworthy of me, but things of the sort
you are accustomed to hear from others….I would far rather die with that defence (the one he
gave) than live with the other (38d-e).

Consider the following from the Apology (29d-30b) T8:

"I shall not cease philosophizing and exhorting you and expostulating with each one of you I
happen to run into, saying to him in my customary way: 'O best of men, Athenian, citizen of
the greatest city, most highly reputed for its wisdom and power, are you not ashamed to be
concerned to make as much money as possible and for reputation and prestige, while for
wisdom and truth and for the greatest possible improvement of your soul you have no care or
worry?'. . . These things I will say to anyone I run into, young or old, alien or citizen”.

2
Socrates, according to Schofield, is “deeply embedded in and engaged with Athens” (2006:
26); “Philosophy’s role is to perform for the city the supreme public benefit of moral
criticism” (2006: 24; compare Ober (1998) p184: the Apology helps to establish an “ethics of
social criticism”).

Evidence from the Gorgias

Callicles chastises Socrates for the unmanly pursuit of philosophy, which leads to
inexperience in the affairs of the polis, its laws and everything which one needs to become a
real man, as he puts it (484d-e).

T9: “[The philosopher] becomes unmanly, avoiding the city-centre and the meeting places in
which, says the poet, men win distinction. He disappears from view, and spends the rest of
his life whispering in the corner with three or four adolescents, without ever giving voice to
anything free, or great, or effective…
…if someone seized hold of you or one of your kind, and carted you off to prison, claiming
you were acting unjustly when you weren’t acting unjustly, you know you would have no
way of helping yourself. You’d go dizzy, and stand there gawping, with no idea what to say.
You’d be had up in court, find yourself facing some altogether contemptible and vicious
accuser, and if he chose to demand the death penalty for you, you’d be put to death”.

Politics and Rhetoric

The Gorgias begins as a dialogue about rhetoric and examines those who make a living
teaching rhetoric to aspiring politicians. So what is the relationship between rhetoric, the
dialogue’s expressed subject, and politics? There is a clear democratic context, the place
where men enjoyed the greatest “license in relationship to speech” in all Greece (461e).

Gorgias claims to teach rhetoric which he defines as follows, T10: “the ability to persuade by
speeches judges in a law court, councillors in a council meeting, and assembly men in an
assembly or in any other political gathering that might take place” (452e). This produces
“freedom for humankind itself and the source of rule over others in one’s own city” (452d).

Politics and Expertise

T11: “When the city holds a meeting about the selection of doctors or shipwrights or
specialists of some other kind, it surely won’t be the expert in rhetoric who gives his advice
then, will it? It’s obvious that in each choice it should be the most skilled person who does the
choosing. And when it’s a question of building walls or fitting harbours of dockyards, again it
won’t be the expert in rhetoric, it will be master-builders” (455b-c).

T12: Both rhetoric and pastry cooking aim to produce pleasure, (for politicians and orators,
to gratify the public – those who are good at it have a knack for “sucking up to people”
(463b)). As a kind of flattery it is an image of the art of politics (463b-d), which is properly
defined as the expertise concerned with the improvement of the soul (464b).
To be a skill one must be able to give a rational explanation of the thing it is catering for, the
nature of the things it is providing, and the cause of each (465a-b).

T13: On the choice of lives: “Whether it is the life you summon me to, doing the things
appropriate to a ‘real man’; speaking in the assembly and practicing rhetoric and being

3
political in the way that you currently practice politics. Or whether it is the philosophical
life…if these really are two lives, it is necessary to examine the difference and decide which
of them is better” (500c-d).

The choice of lives is refigured in T14, as a choice between:

“battling with the Athenians to make them as good as possible, like a doctor, or the one
which involves becoming their servant and trying to please them in my dealings with them”
(521a).

T15: “I think I am the only one practising politics among people today….[But] I shall be like
a doctor on trial before a jury of children, with a chef as prosecutor. Ask yourself what
defence such a person would make in that situation. Suppose the prosecutor said something
like this: ‘Children, this man here has done you many injuries – he is the ruin of you
yourselves, and in particular the youngest of you with the cuts and burns he inflicts; he
reduces you to a state of paralysis by starving and choking you, making you take the bitterest
of drinks, and forcing hunger and thirst upon you. Not at all like me who feasted you with all
sorts of delicious things.’ What do you think the doctor caught in this predicament would
have to say? Suppose he told the truth: ‘I did these things, children, in the interests of health”.
Uproar follows and “he would be completely at a loss what to say” (522a-b).

Implications of politics as expertise

We might think Socrates is committed to the following two claims, and that they are anti-
democratic:

(i) There is a political expertise;

(ii) The many are not capable of developing it.

Further, democracy is:

(iii) rule by the ignorant (454e-455a);

(iv) In pursuit of desire-satisfaction (502e-503d, 521e-522a);
(v) Which corrupts (515d-517c).

Where is the evidence for (ii)? Socrates claims that because rhetoric aims at persuading a
mob, or crowd in a short time, it must be based on belief rather than knowledge and unlike
knowledge, belief can be true or false (454d-455a). But, if the many can be persuaded
individually, in a long time, perhaps they are capable of developing it?

Paternalism and the doctor analogy

What is the material here? How does this doctor operate?

Does “battling through” as a way to do politics mitigate the paternalism here?

Socrates as deliberative democrat?

T16: Socrates as “the last great philosopher-citizen” (Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics”).
Socratic discourse as: “an idealized analogue for democratic deliberation” (Euben, P.,
“Reading Democracy” p 343).

T17: But, according to Barber (“Misreading Democracy” p364): “Socrates looks past the
muddled agon toward a domain of unmoveable truth; to reach that domain he may embark on

4
a mode of discourse but this hardly gives him a talent for the genuine polyphony that is the
sine qua non of democratic politics, since democratic politics is not the least interested in
truth”.
“To believe in democratic politics is to renounce foundational sources of conflict resolution”;
“It means learning to live with uncertainty and its posture is necessarily critical”; ‘it prefers
challenging truths to imparting them” (p373).

Reading

Arendt, Hannah ‘Philosophy and Politics’, Social Research, 71:3, 2004, pp.427-454

Euben, P., “Reading Democracy: Socratic Dialogue and the Political Education of
Democratic Citizens”, with –

Barber, B. “Misreading Democracy: Peter Euben and the Gorgias” both in Demokratia: a
conversation on democracies ancient and modern (1996)

George Kateb, ‘Socratic Integrity’ in George Kateb, Patriotism and Other Mistakes, Yale
University Press, New Haven CT and London, 2006, pp.215-244

Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2001

Ober, J. Political dissent in democratic Athens: intellectual critics of popular rule.

(Princeton, 1998), chapter 4, pp. 156-213

Schofield, M. ‘Socrates on Trial in the USA’, in Classics in Progress, edited by T.P.

Wiseman (Oxford 2002), 263-83

Vlastos, G. ‘The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy’ in Socratic Studies

(Cambridge, 1994)