Socrates: The Questions That Outlived Him

The man Athens condemned to death

In 399 BCE, an Athenian jury found Socrates guilty of corrupting the young and offending the city's religious traditions.

He was around seventy years old and had spent much of his life asking people questions they thought they knew the answers to.

What was courage? What made someone just? Could virtue be taught? What did it actually mean to live a good life?

They sound like reasonable questions. Most of us could probably offer an answer to at least one of them.

Socrates had a habit of making those answers rather difficult to defend.

In Plato's dialogues, he asks people to explain their beliefs and then examines their reasoning. A politician who claims to understand justice might struggle to define it. Someone who believes they know what courage means can find themselves contradicting their own explanation.

Socrates rarely seems troubled by the awkwardness this creates. The people answering his questions are another matter.

He attracted admirers, particularly among younger Athenians, but his conversations could also embarrass prominent citizens and challenge their claims to knowledge and authority.

Eventually, Meletus brought charges against him, with support from Anytus and Lycon. They accused him of failing to recognise the gods acknowledged by the city, introducing new divine beings and corrupting young people.

The jury convicted him.

Under Athenian procedure, conviction did not automatically mean execution. There was a separate stage in which the prosecution and defence proposed penalties, and the jury chose between them.

According to Plato, Socrates initially suggested that he deserved free meals at public expense in recognition of his service to Athens. He later proposed a fine, with friends offering to guarantee payment.

The jury chose death.

It's tempting to see the trial as a straightforward story about a philosopher punished for asking uncomfortable questions. The reality is harder to untangle.

Athens had recently endured a disastrous war against Sparta, the overthrow of its democracy and a period of political violence. Some of Socrates' associates had been involved in events that left deep divisions within the city.

The religious accusations also mattered. Religion was woven into Athenian public life, and questions about the gods could carry political and social consequences.

We cannot know exactly what persuaded the jurors to condemn Socrates. The surviving evidence gives historians several possible explanations, but no way of discovering what every person in that courtroom was thinking.

Even the man at the centre of the story is surprisingly difficult to pin down.

How do you read a philosopher who left no philosophical books?

Nearly everything we know about Socrates' ideas comes from other people's accounts.

The most important of those people is Plato.

Plato knew Socrates and made him the central character in many of his philosophical dialogues. Through these works, we encounter Socrates discussing justice, courage, friendship, knowledge, love and the soul.

But Plato wasn't recording conversations word for word.

He was a philosopher and an accomplished writer, developing arguments of his own. His dialogues have characters, settings and carefully constructed exchanges. Although Socrates frequently takes the leading role, we cannot assume that everything he says represents the beliefs of the historical man.

Xenophon, another writer who knew Socrates, gives us a somewhat different picture.

His Socrates often seems more interested in practical matters: how to behave well, manage a household, choose friends and exercise good judgement.

Then there's Aristophanes, the Athenian comic playwright who made fun of Socrates in Clouds, first performed in 423 BCE. His version is a ridiculous intellectual associated with strange investigations and questionable arguments.

Aristotle, who was born after Socrates' death, provides another perspective on how his philosophy was understood by later thinkers.

These writers don't always agree. They also had different reasons for writing about him.

Plato admired Socrates and explored philosophy through his conversations. Xenophon wanted to defend his reputation. Aristophanes was trying to entertain an audience, partly by making intellectual life look absurd.

So which version is closest to the real man?

Scholars call this the Socratic problem: the difficulty of separating the historical Socrates from the portraits other people created of him.

There is no universally accepted solution.

Just remember that whenever Socrates speaks in an ancient text, somebody else has chosen how to present him.

Your first book on Socrates

C. C. W. Taylor's Socrates: A Very Short Introduction is an excellent place to begin because it helps you understand both the historical figure and the difficulties surrounding our evidence for his life.

Taylor introduces the ancient accounts, explains the ideas most closely associated with Socrates and examines why scholars find it difficult to establish exactly what he believed.

It's a relatively short book, written for readers who don't necessarily have any previous knowledge of philosophy.

One thing worth understanding early is the expression Socratic method.

You may have heard it described as teaching through questions. That's broadly helpful, but it can make Socrates sound like a teacher who already knows the correct answer and is patiently leading a student towards it.

The dialogues are often less straightforward.

Socrates asks someone to define an idea, examines their answer and looks for problems in the reasoning. Sometimes the discussion produces a clearer understanding. Sometimes it ends with neither person able to offer a satisfactory definition.

For Socrates, recognising that you don't understand something as well as you thought can itself be valuable.

Begin with the trial

For a first encounter with Plato, the Oxford World's Classics edition of Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito, translated by David Gallop, brings together three of the most approachable works associated with Socrates' trial and imprisonment.

All three are relatively short, and together they offer a fascinating introduction to his character, arguments and final days.

Begin with Euthyphro, which takes place before the trial.

Socrates is involved in legal proceedings when he encounters a man who believes he understands religious duty.

Euthyphro is confident about what makes an action pious. Socrates asks him to explain, and their conversation gradually reveals how difficult the question is.

The setting makes the discussion particularly interesting. Socrates himself is facing accusations concerning religion.

Next, read Defence of Socrates, also known as the Apology.

Here, apology means a defence, not an expression of regret.

Plato presents Socrates addressing the Athenian jury. He responds to the accusations against him, discusses his reputation and explains why he believes his habit of questioning people is valuable.

He doesn't behave quite as we might expect someone facing a possible death sentence to behave. Rather than concentrating entirely on winning sympathy, Plato's Socrates continues to challenge the assumptions of those judging him.

The penalty stage is particularly striking. When Socrates suggests that the city ought to reward him with public meals, it is difficult to imagine the jurors being especially pleased.

Whether the historical Socrates said everything Plato attributes to him is another question. The Defence is not a surviving court transcript.

But it's an extraordinary introduction to how Plato wanted readers to understand his teacher.

Finally, Crito takes us into Socrates' prison cell.

His friend Crito wants him to escape. He worries about Socrates' death, his family and the disgrace his friends might suffer if they appear unwilling to help him.

Socrates turns the conversation towards a different question: would escaping be right?

Their discussion examines justice, wrongdoing and the obligations a citizen may have towards the laws of their community.

You might agree with Socrates' reasoning. You might think Crito has the stronger argument.

Why did Athens condemn him?

Robin Waterfield's Why Socrates Died approaches the trial from a different direction.

Plato gives us Socrates defending himself. Waterfield asks us to consider the Athenians who were listening, and the city they had lived in during the years leading up to his prosecution.

Socrates lived through one of the most turbulent periods in the city's history.

For much of his adult life, Athens was involved in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and its allies. The conflict brought enormous destruction, political tension and eventually defeat.

Socrates himself served in the Athenian army. Ancient accounts place him on several campaigns, although much of what we know about his conduct comes from writers who admired him.

In 404 BCE, Athens surrendered to Sparta.

An oligarchic government, meaning rule by a relatively small group of people, subsequently took control of the city. Its leaders became known as the Thirty.

Their rule was brutal. Political opponents were persecuted, property was confiscated and people were executed.

Democracy returned in 403 BCE, but those events were still recent when Socrates was tried four years later.

Two men connected with Socrates are especially important to this history.

Alcibiades was a brilliant and controversial Athenian politician and general whose changing allegiances made him both influential and deeply divisive.

Critias, another associate of Socrates, became one of the leading figures among the Thirty.

Those connections may have contributed to suspicion of Socrates. But knowing someone does not mean sharing all their beliefs or approving of their actions.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates describes refusing an order from the Thirty to take part in the arrest of Leon of Salamis, whom the regime intended to execute.

So the surviving evidence does not allow us to place him neatly on one side of Athenian politics.

Nor should we overlook the formal religious accusations.

In Plato's account, Socrates speaks about a personal divine sign, sometimes called his daimonion. He describes it as a warning that turns him away from certain actions, rather than a voice telling him what to do.

This is relevant to the accusations concerning his religious beliefs. Socrates understood the sign as divine, but it was not necessarily easy for other Athenians to fit such claims into accepted religious practice.

We should be careful, though, not to assume that this sign alone explains the prosecution.

Waterfield brings the political, religious and social circumstances together, asking why Socrates might have appeared troubling to some of his fellow citizens.

His book offers a historical interpretation rather than a final answer accepted by every scholar.

Learning to think alongside Socrates

Socrates is often at his most interesting when the question seems easy. Courage, friendship, self-control — ordinary ideas, until he asks someone to explain exactly what they mean.

Plato's Meno and Other Dialogues, translated by Robin Waterfield for Oxford World's Classics, brings together four conversations that explore questions like these: Charmides, Laches, Lysis and Meno.

You don't need a background in philosophy to recognise the problems they raise, even when the discussions become complicated.

Take Laches.

Socrates and his companions want to understand courage.

At first, that doesn't seem especially difficult. A soldier who stands firm in battle might be courageous. Someone who faces danger despite being afraid could be courageous too.

But Socrates wants a definition that explains what makes these different actions courageous.

Is courage simply standing your ground? What about retreating when retreat is the sensible choice? Does courage require knowledge of what should and should not be feared?

Before long, the apparently simple question has become much harder to answer.

Charmides examines moderation and self-control, while Lysis explores friendship.

Then Meno turns to virtue and asks whether it can be taught.

The word virtue can sound rather old-fashioned today, perhaps suggesting respectable or morally proper behaviour. For ancient Greek philosophers, the underlying idea was broader. It concerned excellence in a person, including the qualities needed to live and act well.

That makes Meno's question particularly interesting. If being a good person depends on certain qualities, can someone teach those qualities to another person?

And how would we know whether someone truly possessed them?

The dialogue eventually leads into questions about knowledge and learning.

You may finish some of these works without finding the neat answer you expected.

Consider what happens when you read Laches. You begin with a word you use quite comfortably. By the end, you may realise that your understanding of courage is less secure than you thought.

You've discovered a difficulty that wasn't obvious before.

Socrates wasn't always pleasant company

It's easy to imagine Socrates as a gentle teacher patiently guiding his companions towards wisdom.

Plato doesn't always present him that way.

His Socrates can be persistent, demanding and quite prepared to expose weaknesses in someone else's reasoning.

Gorgias offers a particularly good example.

The dialogue begins with rhetoric, the art of persuasive speaking, but gradually becomes an argument about power, justice and what makes a life worthwhile.

Socrates questions Gorgias, a teacher of rhetoric, before turning to Polus and eventually Callicles.

Callicles defends ideas about power, pleasure and success that Socrates finds deeply mistaken.

One of the problems they explore is the difference between convincing people and knowing what is right.

Imagine a politician making an excellent speech. The audience is persuaded, the politician wins support and everyone leaves convinced that the proposal is sensible.

But what if the politician doesn't actually understand the issue?

Being persuasive and being knowledgeable are not the same thing.

For Socrates, that distinction raises serious questions about the place of rhetoric in public life.

Does power mean being able to do whatever you want? Is it better to suffer an injustice or commit one? Could someone be wealthy, influential and widely admired while still living badly?

These aren't merely abstract philosophical puzzles.

In Athens, public speaking was central to politics and the law courts. A person's ability to persuade others could have real consequences for the city.

Robin Waterfield's Oxford World's Classics translation of Gorgias is a rewarding choice after the shorter dialogues.

It asks more of the reader, but it also shows Socrates engaging with people whose ideas about success and power clash sharply with his own.

Another witness, another Socrates

Plato isn't our only witness to Socrates. Xenophon knew him too, and the man who emerges from his writings can feel surprisingly different.

His Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, Apology brings together several works in which Socrates appears.

The collection is available in the Loeb Classical Library.

Loeb editions present the original ancient text alongside an English translation on facing pages. They're valuable for serious study, although the format can look a little more academic than an ordinary paperback. You don't need to know ancient Greek to use one.

The two works I'd concentrate on are the Memorabilia and Apology.

In the Memorabilia, Xenophon presents Socrates discussing friendship, behaviour, responsibility and practical judgement.

You still encounter a man concerned with how people should live, but Xenophon's Socrates often seems more interested in giving practical advice than the figure we meet in Plato's more demanding philosophical arguments.

One account is not automatically more historically accurate than the other. Both writers admired Socrates, and both wanted their readers to see something particular in him.

Their accounts even differ over what happened during his trial.

Remember Plato's description of the penalty stage?

According to Plato, Socrates initially suggested that he deserved public maintenance and eventually proposed a financial penalty.

Xenophon tells a different story.

In Xenophon's Apology, Socrates refuses to propose an alternative punishment or allow his friends to propose one. He considers doing so an admission of guilt.

These are conflicting accounts of the same important moment.

Xenophon was not present at the trial. He attributes some of his information to Hermogenes, another companion of Socrates. Neither account can be checked against a surviving official record.

We cannot confidently combine the two versions into a single account of what Socrates said. But comparing them shows how differently the same event could be remembered, even by people who admired him.

If the historical Socrates interests you, reading Plato's and Xenophon's Apologies alongside one another is particularly rewarding.

The Socrates Athenians laughed at

Not every ancient portrayal of Socrates was flattering.

In 423 BCE, decades before his trial, Aristophanes presented him as a comic character in Clouds.

The Socrates of the play runs a peculiar intellectual establishment and is associated with ridiculous investigations and clever but questionable arguments.

It isn't a reliable description of what the historical Socrates taught.

Aristophanes was writing comedy, and he drew on a range of intellectual ideas and stereotypes to create a character audiences could laugh at.

But comedy can still tell historians something important.

Why would an audience find this version of Socrates funny? What assumptions were they expected to recognise?

The play suggests that intellectuals could be mocked for appearing detached from ordinary life or for using clever arguments to undermine accepted values.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates complains that damaging impressions of him had circulated long before the formal charges were brought.

Clouds gives us an idea of what some of those impressions might have looked like.

There is one complication with the surviving text. Aristophanes revised the play after its first performance, so we cannot assume that every passage we read today appeared in the version performed in 423 BCE.

Still, it remains one of our most interesting sources for the public image of Socrates.

It's well worth reading alongside Plato's Defence, particularly if you want to understand why Socrates' reputation was already complicated long before his trial.

Following Socrates to his final day

Phaedo presents Plato's account of Socrates' final day in prison.

It's often grouped with Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, but I would leave it until you've read at least a few of the shorter dialogues.

The philosophical discussion is more demanding.

Plato frames the work as an account told by Phaedo, who had been present during Socrates' final hours, to a man named Echecrates.

Through this account, Socrates discusses death, the soul and arguments for its immortality.

His friends are distressed by his approaching death, but Socrates continues talking with them until the prison attendant brings the poison. Plato then describes his final moments.

The arguments in Phaedo belong to a much larger discussion of the soul and reality. We cannot confidently assign all of them to the historical Socrates.

Where does Socrates end and Plato begin?

Plato was influenced by Socrates, but he went on to develop his own far-reaching philosophical arguments.

Scholars have long debated which dialogues may preserve more of Socrates' characteristic questioning and which reflect Plato's developing ideas. Even the order in which Plato wrote the dialogues is not entirely settled.

For readers who want to explore that transition, Julia Annas' Plato: A Very Short Introduction is a good place to continue.

Annas explains how Plato uses dialogue to explore philosophical problems, rather than simply presenting a set of beliefs for readers to memorise.

If love, friendship and relationships have caught your attention, Plato on Love, edited by C. D. C. Reeve, offers a focused collection.

It includes Lysis, Symposium and Phaedrus, together with other relevant material from Plato's writings.

If you're more interested in justice, political power and the organisation of society, you may want to read Plato's Republic.

Joe Sachs' translation in the Focus Philosophical Library is one edition worth considering.

Republic begins with the question of justice and develops into a much larger discussion of education, political authority, knowledge and the human soul.

It is one of Plato's most influential works, but it is also a considerable undertaking.

I wouldn't recommend it as someone's first book on Socrates. By the time you reach Republic, you're exploring Plato's philosophy more broadly, and some experience with the shorter dialogues will help.

You don't need to study everything Plato wrote to understand why Socrates matters. But if his questions have caught your interest, Plato offers plenty of places to continue.

A reading path through Socrates

For readers who want to explore the subject beyond the two introductory books, the following sequence offers a sensible route through the material.

There's no need to complete every stage. The introductory books and shorter dialogues are enough for a rewarding beginning. Xenophon, Gorgias, Phaedo and Plato's more substantial works are there when you want to investigate further.

The questions are yours now

One of the pleasures of reading Socrates is discovering how quickly an ordinary question can become difficult.

Courage is a good example.

Most of us recognise courageous behaviour when we see it. We might think of a soldier in battle, someone protecting another person or somebody standing up for what they believe is right.

But what makes those actions courageous? Is it the danger involved, the person's intentions or their understanding of what they're doing?

Follow Socrates through Laches and you may begin to question an answer that once seemed perfectly reasonable.

You're not just learning about a man who lived in Athens more than two thousand years ago. You're following his arguments and considering what you believe yourself.

You may agree with him. You may find him irritating. You may finish a conversation thinking that one of his companions had a perfectly good point.

By the time you close the dialogue, you might still not have a satisfactory definition of courage. But you'll have a much better idea of why the question is worth asking.