Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

The assumptions of some Platonic commentators — that Sokrates and Plato of course knew the answers to their own questions — that an honest and pious man, of ordinary intelligence, has the answer to the question in his heart, though he cannot put it in words — these assumptions were also made by many of Plato’s contemporaries, who depreciated his questions as frivolous and unprofitable. The rhetor and historian Theopompus (one of the most eminent among the numerous pupils of Isokrates, and at the same time unfriendly to Plato, though younger in age), thus criticised Plato’s requirement, that these familiar terms should be defined: “What! (said he) have none of us before your time talked about the Good and the Just? Or do you suppose that we cannot follow out what each of them is, and that we pronounce the words as empty and unmeaning sounds?”37 Theopompus was the scholar of Isokrates, and both of them probably took the same view, as to the uselessness of that colloquial analysis which aims at determining the definition of familiar ethical or political words.38 They considered that Plato and Sokrates, instead of clearing up what was confused, wasted their ingenuity in perplexing what was already clear. They preferred the rhetorical handling (such as we noticed in the Kriton) which works upon ready-made pre-established sentiments, and impresses a strong emotional conviction, but presumes that all the intellectual problems have already been solved.

All this shows the novelty of the Sokratic point of view: the distinction between the essential constituent and the objective accidental accompaniment,39 and the search for a definition corresponding to the former: which search was first prosecuted by Sokrates (as Aristotle40 points out) and was taken up from him by Plato. It was Sokrates who first brought conspicuously into notice the objective intellectual, scientific view of ethics — as distinguished from the subjective, emotional, incoherent, and uninquiring. I mean that he was the first who proclaimed himself as feeling the want of such an objective view, and who worked upon other minds so as to create the like want in them: I do not mean that he provided satisfaction for this requirement.

Undoubtedly (as Theopompus remarked) men had used these ethical terms long before the time of Sokrates, and had used them, not as empty and unmeaning, but with a full body of meaning (i.e. emotional meaning). Strong and marked emotion had become associated with each term; and the same emotion, similar in character, though not equal in force — was felt by the greater number of different minds. Subjectively and emotionally, there was no difference between one man and another, except as to degree. But it was Sokrates who first called attention to the fact as a matter for philosophical recognition and criticism, — that such subjective and emotional unanimity does not exclude the widest objective and intellectual dissension.41

As the Platonic Sokrates here puts it in the Euthyphron — all men agree that the person who acts unjustly must be punished; but they dispute very much who it is that acts unjustly — which of his actions are unjust — or under what circumstances they are so. The emotion in each man’s mind, as well as the word by which it is expressed, is the same:42 but the person, or the acts, to which it is applied by each, although partly the same, are often so different, and sometimes so opposite, as to occasion violent dispute. There is subjective agreement, with objective disagreement. It is upon this disconformity that the Sokratic cross-examination is brought to bear, making his hearers feel its existence, for the first time, and dispelling their fancy of supposed knowledge as well as of supposed unanimity. Sokrates required them to define the general word — to assign some common objective characteristic, corresponding in all cases to the common subjective feeling represented by the word. But no man could comply with his requirement, nor could he himself comply with it, any more than his respondents. So far Sokrates proceeded, and no farther, according to Aristotle. He never altogether lost his hold on particulars: he assumed that there must be something common to them all, if you could but find out what it was, constituting the objective meaning of the general term. Plato made a step beyond him, though under the name of Sokrates as spokesman.

Not being able (any more than Sokrates) to discover or specify any real objective characteristic, common to all the particulars — he objectivised43 the word itself: that is, he assumed or imagined a new objective Ens of his own, the Platonic Idea, corresponding to the general word: an idea not common to the particulars, but existing apart from them in a sphere of its own — yet nevertheless lending itself in some inexplicable way to be participated by all the particulars. It was only in this way that Plato could explain to himself how knowledge was possible: this universal Ens being the only object of knowledge: particulars being an indefinite variety of fleeting appearances, and as such in themselves unknowable. The imagination of Plato created a new world of Forms, Ideas, Concepts, or objects corresponding to general terms: which he represents as the only objects of knowledge, and as the only realities.

In the Euthyphron, however, we have not yet passed into this Platonic world, of self-existent Forms — objects of conception — concepts detached from sensible particulars. We are still with Sokrates and with ordinary men among the world of particulars, only that Sokrates introduced a new mode of looking at all the particulars, and searched among them for some common feature which he did not find. The Holy (and the Unholy) is a word freely pronounced by every speaker, and familiarly understood by every hearer, as if it denoted something one and the same in all these particulars.44 What is that something — the common essence or idea? Euthyphron cannot tell; though he agrees with Sokrates that there must be such essence. His attempts to explain it prove failures.

The definition of the Holy — that it is what the Gods love — is suggested in this dialogue, but rejected. The Holy is not Holy because the Gods love it: on the contrary, its holiness is an independent fact, and the Gods love it because it is Holy. The Holy is thus an essence, per se, common to, or partaken by, all holy persons and things.

So at least the Platonic Sokrates here regards it. But the Xenophontic Sokrates, if we can trust the Memorabilia, would not have concurred in this view: for we read that upon all points connected with piety or religious observance, he followed the precept which the Pythian priestess delivered as an answer to all who consulted the Delphian oracle on similar questions — You will act piously by conforming to the law of the city. Sokrates (we are told) not only acted upon this precept himself, but advised his friends to do the like, and regarded those who acted otherwise as foolish and over-subtle triflers.45 It is plain that this doctrine disallows all supposition of any general essence, called the Holy, to be discovered and appealed to, as type in cases of doubt; and recognises the equal title of many separate local, discordant, and variable types, each under the sanction of King Nomos. The procedure of Sokrates in the Euthyphron would not have been approved by the Xenophontic Sokrates. It is in the spirit of Plato, and is an instance of that disposition which he manifests yet more strongly in the Republic and elsewhere, to look for his supreme authority in philosophical theory and not in the constituted societies around him: thus to innovate in matters religious as well as political — a reproach to him among his own contemporaries, an honour to him among various subsequent Christian writers.

Plato, not conforming to any one of the modes of religious belief actually prevalent in his contemporary world, postulates a canon, suitable to the exigencies of his own mind, of that which the Gods ought to love and must love. In this respect, as in others, he is in marked contrast with Herodotus — a large observer of mankind, very pious in his own way, curious in comparing the actual practices consecrated among different nations, but not pretending to supersede them by any canon of his own.

Though the Holy, and the Unholy, are pronounced to be each an essence, partaken of by all the particulars so-called; yet what that essence is, the dialogue Euthyphron noway determines. Even the suggestion of Sokrates — that the Holy is a branch of the Just, only requiring to be distinguished by some assignable mark from the other branches of the Just — is of no avail, since the Just itself had been previously declared to be one of the matters in perpetual dispute. It procures for Sokrates however the opportunity of illustrating the logical subordination of terms; the less general comprehended in the more general, and requiring to be parted off by some differentia from the rest of what this latter comprehends. Plato illustrates the matter at some length;46 and apparently with a marked purpose of drawing attention to it. We must keep in mind, that logical distinctions had at that time received neither special attention nor special names — however they may have been unconsciously followed in practice.