"And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know."
--Socrates, Apology
"Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god."
--Socrates, Apology
At the age of 70--an impressive age for someone living in his era--Socrates confronts a large jury in Athens, condemned as "guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes" (23). Entering the final period of his life, he delivers an oral defense of himself and his lifestyle.
After reading Apology, which records this event, I wanted to post about several things I noticed in it. I will give particular attention in this short post to the claims of Socrates about epistemology and how he credits himself with not believing what he cannot genuinely know, and I will also both praise and criticize Socrates. Note that in this context the word apology refers to a defense of something, in this case Socrates, much like the word apologetics means defense of a worldview.
Somewhat early in the oration, Socrates mentions a former friend and conveys an important story of the past. Here he tells of the renowned event where the oracle of Delphi declared him the wisest person alive. Chaerephon, the deceased former friend of Socrates in question, allegedly heard the Delphi oracle proclaim Socrates the wisest person (21), triggering in Socrates a desire to refute this absurd claim. Socrates explains how he sought out men he thought were wise so that he could disprove this statement by the oracle, but he only comes to find himself interviewing wise men only to discover that they are not genuinely wise. And thus he began a "career" of investigating the truth claims offered by others and testing their veracity and verifiability. He says he lives in considerable poverty due to his pursuits and priorities, fortifying his claims with lifestyle evidence. Unfortunately, as he explained, almost anyone who seeks undiluted truth will indeed confront the obstacle other people, both ignorant and "wise", can represent. It is not uncommon at all to find fallacies in the speech and writings of scientists (Richard Dawkins), theologians (John Piper), philosophers (William Lane Craig), and ordinary laypeople alike. Because of this, I am not surprised at all that Socrates found abundant fallacies when he began interrogating people about their worldviews.
During this search for truth, Socrates needed to adopt his own epistemology. He seemed to have become a rationalist. An adequate description by Socrates of his own epistemology is this: "... he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know" (21). According to him, he does not choose to believe something when he cannot know it. But did he really adhere to his own standard? It is certainly the only legitimate logical standard of judging the veracity of knowledge, but did he maintain consistency?
Ironically, this sentence actually contradicts parts of Socrates' worldview as recorded by Plato. For instance, the "forms" so prominently featured in his philosophy exist outside of human sensory perception and are unable to be proven by deductive reasoning through logic; thus we would have no way of confirming or disproving their existence, leaving them unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Also, he made claims about ethics--and as thorough readers of my blog will no doubt know, apart from divine moral revelation a man or woman can claim that a moral idea seems true, that it subjectively feels correct, or that his or her society prefers a certain moral framework, but no one can justify the belief that he or she truly knows moral truths left to himself or herself. Left to ourselves, we only have access to subjective moral perceptions and subjective moral emotions and we can only appeal to either ourselves or some society as indicators of what is objectively right or wrong. My fallacy detector beeps every time I hear people make moral claims on the basis of these two sources. Socrates therefore violated his own rationalism because he did believe in things that logic does not permit him to know.
The Sophists are discussed, the Sophists being a group of teachers who taught for money and resorted to proclaiming ideas that allegedly amounted to fallacies and empty rhetoric. Recounting a story of a conversation with another man years go, Socrates mentions a Sophist named Evenus in particular. "And if you have heard from anyone that I undertake to teach people and charge a fee for it, that is not true either," Socrates says, distancing himself from the Sophists (20). I mention this group because they are often associated with fallacies, and perhaps the attempt of Socrates to distance himself from them was partially intended to imply that he did not employ the fallacies of the Sophists in his own philosophy and words. But as I demonstrated above, he surely did resort to fallacies--even when addressing major issues.
I do want to acknowledge the integrity of Socrates' goals despite my criticism of his worldview earlier. Socrates does nobly charge the citizens of Athens to bother his children in the same way he has bothered them--by asking questions and challenging ideas--if the listeners grow to suspect that his children care for anything more than virtue. His logical errors aside, his priorities truly did seem to align with part of the Judeo-Christian worldview. I can certainly admire and relate to his zeal for truth, yet I cannot declare him the kind of rationalist that avoids fallacies with the same passion that a mouse avoids a cat with.
As a friend of mine from college has stated, Socrates asked the right questions but often arrived at very fallacious conclusions. Whether it is the non sequitur reincarnation theory he develops while observing a slave solve a math problem in Meno, the belief in a tri-part soul he defends in Republic, or his idea of the forms existing outside of our current surroundings seen in many dialogues featuring him, many of Socrates' beliefs are at best both unverifiable and unfalsifiable and at worst simply untrue. This does not mean everything he said is faulty or that no truth can be gleaned from his dialogues, but it does prove that even those like Socrates whom philosophers and historians elevate as wise sometimes possess that title only in name--ironically the very thing that distressed Socrates and propelled him forward on his intellectual quest. Apology may immortalize Socrates' pursuit of wisdom and truth, but it also highlights ironic contradictions in his philosophy.
Plato: Complete Works. Plato. Ed. Cooper, John M. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Print.
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