Philosophers and Their Relationship to Society

27 January 2024

Philosophers and Their Relationship to Society

Socrates:  ”’. . . Shall we describe those who belong to our band, or shall we let that go and return to the argument, in order to avoid abuse of that freedom and variety of discourse, of which we were speaking just now?’

Theodorus:  “’By all means, Socrates, describe them; for I like your saying that we who belong to this band are not the servants of our arguments, but the arguments are, as it were, our servants, and each of them must await our pleasure to be finished; for we have neither judge, nor, as the poets have, any spectator set over us to censure and rule us.’

Socrates:  “’Very well, that is quite appropriate, since it is your wish; and let us speak of the leaders; for why should anyone talk about the inferior philosophers?  The leaders, in the first place, from their youth up, remain ignorant of the way to the agora, do not even know where the court-room is, or the senate-house, or any other place of public assembly; as for laws and decrees, they neither hear the debates upon them nor see them when they are published; and the strivings of political clubs after public offices, and meetings, and banquets, and revellings with chorus girls, it never occurs to them even in their dreams to indulge in such things.  And whether anyone in the city is of high or low birth, or what evil has been inherited by anyone from his ancestors, male or female, are matters to which they pay no more attention than to the number of pints in the sea, as the saying is.  And all these things the philosopher does not even know that he does not know; for he does not keep aloof from them for the sake of gaining reputation, but really it is only his body that has its place and home in the city; his mind, considering all these things petty and of no account, disdains them and is borne in all directions, as Pindar says, “both below the earth,” and measuring the surface of the earth, and “above the sky,” studying the stars and investigating the universal nature of every thing that is, each in its entirety, never lowering itself to anything close at hand.’

Theodorus:  “’What do you mean by this, Socrates?’

Socrates:  “’Why, take the case of Thales, Theodorus.  While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.  The same jest applies to all who pass their lives in philosophy.  For really such a man pays no attention to his next door neighbour; he is not only ignorant of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a human being or some other kind of a creature; but what a human being is and what is proper for such a nature to do or bear different from any other, this he inquires and exerts himself to find out.  Do you understand, Theodorus, or not?’

Theodorus:  “’Yes, I do; you are right.’

Socrates:  “’Hence it is my friend, such a man, both in private, when he meets with individuals, and in public, as I said in the beginning, when he is obliged to speak in court or elsewhere about the things at his feet and before his eyes, is a laughing-stock not only to Thracian girls but to the multitude in general, for he falls into pits and all sorts of perplexities through inexperience, and his awkwardness is terrible, making him seem a fool; for when it comes to abusing people he has no personal abuse to offer against anyone, because he knows no evil of any man, never having cared for such things; so his perplexity makes him appear ridiculous; and as to laudatory speeches and the boastings of others, it becomes manifest that he is laughing at them – not pretending to laugh, but really laughing – and so he is thought to be a fool.  When he hears a panegyric of a despot or a king he fancies he is listening to the praises of some herdsman – a swineherd, a shepherd, or a neatherd, for instance – who gets much milk from his beasts; but he thinks that the ruler tends and milks a more perverse and treacherous creature than the herdsmen, and that he must grow coarse and uncivilized, no less than they, for he has no leisure and lives surrounded by a wall, as the herdsmen live in their mountain pens.  And when he hears that someone is amazingly rich, because he owns ten thousand acres of land or more, to him, accustomed as he is to think of the whole earth, this seems very little.  And when people sing the praises of lineage and say someone is of noble birth, because he can show seven wealthy ancestors, he thinks that such praises betray an altogether dull and narrow vision on the part of those who utter them; because of lack of education they cannot keep their eyes fixed upon the whole and are unable to calculate that every man has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks.  And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him; he laughs at them because they cannot free their silly minds of vanity by calculating that Amphitryon’s twenty-fifth ancestor was such as fortune happened to make him, and the fiftieth for that matter.  In all these cases the philosopher is derided by the common herd, partly because he seems to be contemptuous, partly because he is ignorant of common things and is always in perplexity.’

Theodorus:  “’That all happens just as you say, Socrates.’

Socrates:  “’But when, my friend, he draws a man upwards and the other is willing to rise with him above the level of “What wrong have I done you or your me?” to the investigation of abstract right and wrong, to inquire what each of them is and wherein they differ from each other and from all other things, or above the level of “Is a king happy?” or, on the other hand, “Has he great wealth?” to the investigation of royalty and of human happiness and wretchedness in general, to see what the nature of each is and in what way man is naturally fitted to gain the one and escape the other – when that man of small and sharp and pettifogging mind is compelled in his turn to give an account of all these things, then the tables are turned; dizzied by the new experience of hanging at such a height, he gazes downward from the air in dismay and perplexity; he stammers and becomes ridiculous, not in the eyes of Thracian girls or other uneducated persons, for they have no perception of it, but in those of all men who have been brought up as free men, not as slaves.  Such is the character of each of the two classes, Theodorus, of the man who has truly been brought up in freedom and leisure, whom you call a philosopher – who may without censure appear foolish and good for nothing when he is involved in menial services, if, for instance, he does not know how to pack up his bedding, much less to put the proper sweetening into a sauce or a fawning speech – and of the other, who can perform all such services smartly and quickly, but does not know how to wear his cloak as a freeman should, properly draped, still less to acquire the true harmony of speech and hymn aright the praises of the true life of gods and blessed men.’

Theodorus:  “’If, Socrates, you could persuade all men of the truth of what you say as you do me, there would be more peace and fewer evils among mankind.’”

(Plato, Theaetetus, translated by Harold North Fowler, Plato: Theaetetus, Sophist, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1921, pages 119-127, 173B-176A, ISBN: 0674991370)

1.  The above quote from Theaetetus is a well-known, and often referenced, digression in the dialogue where Socrates takes a few moments to discuss what the character of a philosopher is like, and how that character manifests in the observable behavior of ‘leaders’ of philosophy.  I think by ‘leaders’ Socrates means something like ‘first rate’ or ‘exemplary.’  This is a very helpful description of the philosopher and how the philosopher is viewed by non-philosophers.

2.  I think it would be helpful to read in conjunction with this passage from Theaetetus the section from Phaedo where Socrates details the ascetic practices of a philosopher; this is found at 64C to 64E. 

In Phaedo Socrates focuses on individual ascetic practices such as not indulging in rich food or in alcohol and refraining from the “pleasures of love.”  In Theaetetus the emphasis is on what I think of as ‘social asceticism’ because this dialogue depicts the nature of the philosophers’ social life.  There is overlap between the two (individual and social asceticism) but I think there is a difference in emphasis between the two dialogues.  Taken together they broaden our understanding of the specifics of Platonic asceticism.

3.  It is striking how the philosopher, as depicted in Theaetetus, refrains from political commitments or interactions.  I suspect this comes as a surprise to those, who are many, who consider Plato to be a political philosopher; for example those who view The Republic as a blueprint for an ideal state instead of viewing The Republic as an inquiry into the nature of the soul and the nature of justice which is fulfilled by exiting the ‘cave’ of ignorance and ascending into the light.  But if Theaetetus is viewed in the context of Phaedo and of The Republic as an allegory of spiritual ascent, then Theaetetus fits right in with the overall corpus of the Dialogues as a whole.

Plato’s teachings on asceticism are the key to understanding the Dialogues.

4.  It is also striking to me how Plato in this passage mocks pretensions of high status based on, for example, one’s ancestry.  The aristocratic class in Athens at that time was politically powerful and Plato came from that kind of class background.  Plato would have been familiar with these kinds of pretensions.  But through Plato’s study of philosophy he saw through these kinds of status seeking behaviors and saw their vanity and emptiness.  This will be expressed in The Republic when Plato states that a child of ‘gold’ can come from parents of ‘bronze.’

5.  The philosopher engages in what I sometimes call ‘the logic of withdrawal.’  This logic has a number of dimensions: individual behavior (see Phaedo), social behavior, body, speech, and mind.  In each of these dimensions the philosopher enacts an ascetic withdrawal so that the philosopher can use his time to focus on the one clear thing that transcends all interactions and appearances.

6.  The philosopher is drawn to the transcendental, the Good, the One, and the Beautiful.  The transcendental is non-sensory.  Because the philosopher is focused on the non-sensory he appears ‘foolish’ to those who are focused on the sensory domain. 

In modernity the existence of the transcendental is denied; which makes the life of the philosopher not just foolish, but completely deluded.  It takes the virtue of courage to overcome this context of modernity.  Such courage can be nourished and cultivated by reading the Dialogues and the Enneads.  And once the philosopher has had the experience of the transcendental, even if it is momentary, then all doubt about the journey’s worth vanishes.