Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 16:25:24 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi-AT-statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: [Academical REVIEW] "Roslyn Weiss, Socrates Dissatisfied"   


Greetings Lists,

[Hi, following review is received via (brynmawr.edu) College Classics
Lists. The review of book, *Socrates Dissatisfied* is eloquently done
(with useful references) by Prof. Michael Pakaluk, Department of
Philosophy at Clark University. At this juncture, I would like to
tell other educators --Greek philosopher, Socrates has also initiated the
"Question-and-Answer" method of teaching. Regarding Teaching as a
Challenge, he said, "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them
think." and regarding True Knowledge, he said, "True Knowledge exists in
knowing that you know nothing --and in knowing that you know nothing, that
makes you the smartest of all." More on Socrates and other contemporary
philosophers, you can read at <http://www.san.beck.org> Also, In the early
dialogues (which includes Crito, Euthyphro, Protagoras) Plato (the
disciple of Socrates) also represents both the character and ideas of the
historical Socrates, while in the later dialogues (which includes
Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist AND Meno, Gorgias, Symposium, Phaedo,
Republic) Plato puts his own mature philosophical views into the mouth of
Socrates. But, What is most interesting fact here, is that the Socrates of
the early dialogues and the Socrates of the later dialogues are both
Plato's literary creations. Members!! your critics and thoughts are
welcome on review. Thank you. Sincerely. --Arun Tripathi]
============================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 15:21:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: owner-bmcr-l-AT-brynmawr.edu
[--]

-AT--AT--AT--AT-00.06.25, Weiss, Socrates Dissatisfied

Roslyn Weiss, Socrates Dissatisfied.  New York: Oxford University Press,
1998.  xii + 187pp.  $39.95.  ISBN 0-195-11684-4.

Reviewed by Michael Pakaluk
Department of Philosophy
Clark University
mpakaluk-AT-clarku.edu

Word count: 2,508

Roslyn Weiss' project in Socrates Dissatisfied may be understood as the
attempt to carry out as regards Socratic political philosophy what Gregory
Vlastos, in his influential essay, "Socratic Piety" [[1]], had attempted to
carry out, as regards Socratic religion. At Crito 46b4-6 Plato has Socrates
assert, "I, not only now but always, am such as to obey nothing else of
what is my own than that logos which appears best to me upon reasoning."
Vlastos argued, famously, that the passage affirms a radical principle of
autonomy, which might be expressed as follows:
	(PA): Each person should obey only his own best opinion
	as to what he ought to do.

No one who accepted PA could countenance any real authority of another
person over himself:  to act as another person says you should act, only
when doing so coincides with what you would have decided to do on your own,
is not to obey him, sc. to act because he says so.  If Socrates accepted
PA, then, he could not have countenanced any real authority of another
person, or of a divinity, over himself.  Thus it becomes Vlastos' project
to explain away those passages in which it seems that Socrates treats an
oracle, dream, or divine sign as authoritative.  For instance, when
Socrates says that his life is spent at the service of the god of Delphi
(Apol. 34-8), what he really means is that he has devoted his life to being
as reasonable as possible.  Vlastos' arguments are strained, and his
position is ultimately unconvincing. [[2]]

Weiss similarly takes Crito 46b4-6 to assert what might be called a
Modified Principle of Autonomy:
	(MPA): Each person should obey only his own best opinion
	as to what he should do, except in those matters in which the
	opinion of an expert is available, in which case he should
	defer to the expert.

The modification is necessary because, in the passage immediately following
46b4-6, Socrates urges precisely that one ought to follow the opinion of an
expert, whenever that is available.  But if we ascribe MPA to Socrates,
then he cannot consistently be taken to accept what the Laws are arguing
for in their speeches in the Crito.  The Laws argue that a child should
obey his parents (and ancestors generally, and the laws of his city), even
when he disagrees with them, and this on account of the benefits he has
received from them, not on account of any particular expertise they may
have.  They also argue that a man should follow through on something he had
previously agreed upon, even if that action is not something that he would
otherwise have concluded was correct to do, apart from that agreement.
Both of these positions are inconsistent with MPA.  Thus Weiss argues that
the speeches of the Laws do not represent Socrates' views. Moreover, if
they do not, and if Socrates is indeed convinced that he should not escape
from prison, then his grounds must be other than those articulated by the
Laws.  Thus it is another project of Weiss to show that Socrates presents
his reasons for remaining in prison by line 50a4 in the dialogue, before
the Laws begin their speeches.

Finally, if the Laws neither represent Socrates nor give his reasons for
staying in prison, then some function must be found for their lengthy
interventions in the dialogue.  Thus Weiss argues that they are meant to
express fundamentally unphilosophical considerations, aimed at convincing
Crito, himself an unphilosophical character: not everyone can understand or
accept the bracing autonomy of reason defended by Socrates; those who
cannot, such as Crito, must be persuaded by appeals to what they do accept,
viz. authority, tradition, family, loyalty, and piety in the fullest sense.

The book is admirable and praiseworthy for its intensely argumentative
character.  Weiss has got a bold thesis, and she argues for it skillfully
and with extreme tenacity.  Nonetheless, her interpretation would appear to
be unsound.  I shall state some more general criticisms before looking at
particular arguments.

There is little reason, first of all, to attribute MPA to Socrates.  The
principle is on its face unattractive and perplexing:  Why should deference
to an expert be consistent with radical autonomy, but not deference to
other authorities?  Moreover, if Socrates holds to MPA, then he does so, it
seems, without ever arguing for it, and thus his holding MPA would itself
be a violation of MPA.  Furthermore, although Weiss regards MPA as the
position adopted by Socrates in the Apology so that she conceives of her
interpretation as showing that the Socrates of the Crito is really the same
as the Socrates of the Apology, in fact the Apology seems to point in the
opposite direction: there Socrates represents himself to the jury as a man
entirely subject to the command of a god, revealed to him through an
oracle.  Weiss' discussion of the Apology in her first chapter effectively
concedes this point, since she in no way shows that Socrates in that
dialogue holds MPA; she merely argues, not plausibly, that various passages
that might seem to count against it (and there are several) admit of being
interpreted in another sense: for instance, she asserts that Socrates' talk
of his daimonion can be seen as only a colorful way of referring to his own
better judgment (19).[[3]]

Even Crito 46b4-6 seems not to espouse MPA.  The passage naturally takes a
more mundane sense.  Crito has been pleading with Socrates, trying to coax
him into escaping from prison.  He evidently believes that the mere fact
that a friend is urging him to adopt a course of action should be reason
enough for Socrates to capitulate:  presumably this is why Crito punctuates
his argument twice with "do what I say" (PEI/QOU MOI, 45a3, 46a9).
Furthermore, Crito might suspect that any man, even Socrates, would become
frightened, and that his devotion to abstract principles would waver as his
execution drew closer and seemed a concrete reality.  Socrates, however,
insists he will not change his mind on such grounds.  He will not simply
accede to Crito's wishes, although he is a friend (hence the qualification
"I am such as to obey nothing else of what is my own"); he will not allow
himself to make up his mind because of an emotion such as fear (hence he
refers to "the logos that appears best to me upon reasoning"); and he will
not alter his resolve on account of something so accidental and subjective
as a change in his own circumstances (hence he says that he is this sort of
man "not only now but always").  Hence, Crito will have to engage him in
philosophical discussion, if he hopes to persuade him; and this is in fact
what ensues.  The passage contains exactly what it needs to contain, given
the context.  Without further argument, we have no reason to understand it
as saying anything as grand and as controversial as MPA.

If Socrates held MPA and advocated it in the presence of the young men who
followed him, then, if we furthermore assume, as seems right, that Socrates
believed that the parents of those young men were not experts at
childrearing, and that Athenian lawgivers and administrators were not
experts in politics, it would follow that Socrates was effectively teaching
those around him that they need not obey their elders or the law.  That is,
the indictment against Socrates, that he was corrupting youths and was
himself impious, would be substantially correct.  But my concern here is
not with Socrates so much as with Plato and his intentions.  On Weiss'
interpretation of the Crito, Plato would be aware that his character was
the sort of man who was in fact guilty as charged.  Yet then how would it
not be duplicitous for him to write dialogues which passionately portray
Socrates as an unjustly convicted innocent?  Indeed, why should he have
written the apologetic dialogues at all?  On the usual understanding, the
Crito is at least part of a coherent picture: the dialogue continues the
apologetic of the Apology by showing Socrates as respecting the claims of
the city and the weight of his promises even unto death, when he might
easily have done otherwise and with some semblance of justification.
Weiss' general strategy of argument is broadly Straussian, insofar as she
makes a distinction between the surface and hidden meaning of the text and
regards the hidden meaning as something indicated by slight details of
language or action.  On the surface, Plato presents Socrates as deferential
to elders and political authorities; in reality, Socrates regarded these as
in themselves incapable of making any claim to be obeyed.  The surface
meaning is intended for those readers of the dialogue who, like Crito, can
be satisfied with it; it would not strictly deceive, since it contains
indications enough, discernible to the intelligent, that Plato's real
meaning is something different.

The chief problem with this mode of interpretation, of course, is that it
risks inverting the usual standard for inductive reasoning and taking the
lesser evidence to have more weight than the greater.  But Weiss'
particular applications of it are additionally unpersuasive.  For example,
she says that Plato's use of DOU/LOS at 50e3, and of QWPEU/EIN at 51b3, are
meant to indicate Socrates' distance from the viewpoint of the Laws: "When
you were born and nourished and educated, would not you say, first of all,
that you were both our offspring and slave (DOU/LOS), you and your
ancestors?"(50e2-3); "Are you so wise that you have lost sight of the fact
that you ought to revere your fatherland, and to submit to it and placate
(QWPEU/EIN) it, when it is angry with you, even more than you would your
father?"(51a4-3).  She takes the first to be an obvious overstatement,
which by implication makes the Laws into tyrannical overseers who are not
satisfied with anything less than the slavish obedience due to
slave-holders.  The second, she says, has the Laws requiring precisely the
sort of fawning, flattering appeal to the emotions that Socrates explicitly
rejected in his trial, when he refused to haul his children and relatives
into court to gain the jurors' sympathy.

True, the texts admit of being understood in that way.  But why is it best
to take them so?  Free children and slaves were similarly restricted in
what they were allowed to do in Greek households, to the extent that the
children were not yet educated (cp. Lysis 207e-210d)--and the text mentions
even the earliest type of education. [[4]] And although QWPEU/EIN typically
means 'to wheedle, to flatter', as LSJ have it, the word can also have a
more muted sense, as it must have here, since it is used in the context to
refer also to the attitude that a son properly has toward erring parents.
In any case, even if, as seems right, both passages are meant to indicate
some distancing of the Laws' viewpoint from Socrates, still, this falls far
short of what Weiss needs.  We would expect Plato to portray the Laws and
Socrates as not entirely in harmony; after all, Socrates does have a
self-interest distinct from what is required of him by the laws.  Moreover,
if Plato's point is that Socrates needs to honor the Laws just as one would
need to honor a misguided parent, why not have the Laws posture a bit and
bully?  We can say all this and not yet say that Socrates does not agree
with the Laws' basic argument or their conclusion. Again, Weiss interprets
Crito's arguments as unphilosophical and merely 'conventional': "he cares
about and believes one ought to care about what most people care about;
Crito's attempt to persuade Socrates to escape from prison turns on three
central considerations: money, reputation, and family"(43) and, therefore,
not on virtue and the welfare of one's soul, which would be Socrates' main
concerns.  As we saw, Weiss then argues that such an unphilosophical
interlocutor is helped best by an unphilosophical response, which the
speeches of the Laws are designed to provide.  Yet, as before, although
Crito's position admits of being interpreted thus, it need not be, and it
is not most naturally so interpreted. Crito's four reasons for escape all
have to do with the welfare of persons other than Socrates: (i) Socrates'
friends will suffer the great loss of a good friend; (ii) Socrates' friends
will acquire a bad reputation, as not making the sacrifice required to get
him out of prison; (iii) once they have a bad reputation, they are likely
to be dealt with badly by the Athenians, as was Socrates, on account of his
own bad reputation; and (iv) Socrates' children will suffer from the loss
of their father and his care.  Of course, Socrates' deliberations and
pleadings in the Apology took into account principally his own welfare: he
was the one on trial, after all.  It would not be 'conventional' but rather
clever and reasonable for Crito to hope that Socrates might be swayed if
his attention could be directed to others, on the grounds that
supererogatory heroism by its nature cannot be inflicted upon others.

Weiss typically thinks it enough to establish the weaker claim, that a
text, or group of texts, is consistent with Socrates' holding MPA, when
what she really needs to argue for is the stronger claim, that the text, or
group of texts, can be explained only on her interpretation, or is
explained better on her interpretation than on alternative interpretations.
Presumably she thinks that an interpretation that ascribes MPA, and a
viewpoint generally consistent with MPA, to Socrates is preferable to one
that does not: thus, in showing that there is a sustained reading of the
Crito consistent with MPA, she will have shown that that reading is most
preferable.

As was mentioned, Weiss does not think that the Laws articulate Socrates'
own reasons for not escaping from prison; she maintains that these are
given by 50a4 in the dialogue.  Briefly, her view is that Socrates thinks
it wrong to do anything unjust; but he could not escape from prison without
bribing the jailer and wearing deceptive disguises, and since these are
inherently unjust nothing more need be said.  Yet this is clearly
inadequate: the justice or injustice of giving a jailor money in exchange
for one's freedom and donning disguises depends completely upon the
injustice or justice of the imprisonment, and Socrates says nothing as
regards the latter before 50a4.

It is difficult to convey in a brief review the wide scope and great detail
of Weiss' argumentative resourcefulness.  Yet, as admirable as this is, in
my view the book contains hardly a single reliable result.  Weiss seems to
exercise her ingenuity in defending what is not simply unconventional,
unorthodox and non-traditional, but also false.  Yet the book will likely
lead to much good nonetheless, from the example it sets in aiming to
satisfy rather high standards of argument and from the carefulness in
reading the Crito that it must elicit from anyone who wishes reasonably to
disagree.

NOTES

[[1]] In G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, The Townsend
Lectures, volume L.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991, pp.
157-178.  The essay was originally presented as a lecture in the Boston
Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy: cf. its Proceedings, volume V, 1989.

[[2]] Cf. Mark L. McPherran, The Religion of Socrates.  University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, and the review of the same
by Michael Pakaluk in BMCR 97.12.11.

[[3]] We get some ridiculous results by the application of Weiss' theory of
the daimonion.  For instance, Socrates reasons at his trial that death must
not be such a bad thing, and thus he should not be disturbed by the
prospect of death, because his daimonion did not try to prevent him from
going to the trial.  On Weiss' theory, since the daimonion is merely
Socrates' own best judgment personified, what Socrates means is something
like, "I am not really agitated in facing death; thus, death must not be
such a bad thing", which reverses the proper order of justification.

[[4]] The argument implicit in the Laws' use of DOU/LOS would be something
like: "It is our care that at first liberated you from a condition akin to
servitude, when through us you received instruction and acquired the
character of a free man.  Do not think, then, that your freedom can be used
now to destroy us, or that it has no just limits."
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