Socrates: A Man for Our Times

by Paul Johnson

  This is a hard doctrine, and it is not surprising that the world in the last two and a half millennia has often, even usually, found it too hard to follow, even while accepting it in principle. There is some evidence that Plato found it hard, and abundant references show that Aristotle could not quite swallow it. He felt that revenge was a constant impulse in human nature, as ineradicable as the anger that prompted it. Indeed, he defined anger as “the desire to inflict retaliatory distress.” The absolutely fundamental moral truth that a wrong done to me gives me no right whatever to inflict the same wrong on the doer was a little too much for Aristotle to take. In fact, Socrates was the only Greek to grasp and fully accept the moral axiom that retaliation, or revenge, or whatever we choose to call it, is wrong and must never be accepted or defended. He was the first to articulate the axiom, and to insist upon it contra mundum.

  Since Socrates first laid down, or discovered, this new moral law—God’s law, as opposed to man’s law—it has been broken countless times, by statesmen and generals and democracies, let alone dictatorships and absolute monarchs, as well as by countless individual men and women in their personal dealings. If we examine World War II, for instance, we are forced to admit that the self-righteous democracies, Britain and the United States, in pursuing what they reasonably argued was a just war, against infamous enemies, on occasions—some might say often—yielded to the temptation of retaliation. Yet they recognized that it was a temptation, and that what they did was open to criticism. Even at the time, and certainly on many occasions since, the rightness of the bombing of Germany and Japan and the use of the atomic bomb has been debated endlessly. The fact that these debates took place at all is due to the initial moral revelation of Socrates and its subsequent illumination of the universal conscience.

  There was another aspect of justice to which Socrates devoted attention and produced new insights: the position of women and men’s attitude to them. Now Socrates had important things to say about women, which again marked a historic turning point, but before we come to them, it is convenient to clear out of the way the question of homosexuality in ancient Greece and the extent to which it was fashionable and involved Socrates. In the late seventh and sixth centuries B.C. a large number of Attic black and red figure cups were inscribed “[a boy] is beautiful,” and one or two vessels that have survived even show men and boys engaged in anal intercourse. In the second half of the fifth century B.C., however, such visual evidence of the practice declined and by Socrates’ death was rare.

  The practice was largely confined to the landowning and wealthy families whose young, well-dowered virgins, once they became nubile, were strictly segregated. It was hard, up to the mid-fifth century B.C., for a young man of good family to find himself alone with a young woman, and romantic lovemaking in upper-class circles was difficult if not impossible. Instead, young men formed romantic friendships with older men, exchanging their good looks for instruction, wisdom, guidance, and patronage. These liaisons were further promoted by the formal sports and exercise of the elite, in which men were naked, by the institution of the symposium, or all-male dinner party, and by warfare, with its stress on courage, friendship, and glamorous display. But it is doubtful if many of these friendships took a physical form. Male prostitutes, we know, were held in detestation, and males who enjoyed the passive role in sodomy were despised by Greeks of all classes. There was a good deal of talk about the beauty of male youth, however, and this found itself reflected in literature, including the works of Plato.

  Socrates spent his life in argument with men (chiefly), not least young men, and regularly attended symposia. Inevitably, then, he has been said to have had sexual relations with men or at least to have tolerated homosexuality among his society friends. In my reading of the relevant texts, I find no evidence that Socrates ever engaged in homosexual lovemaking. He certainly agreed that a boy or young man might be beautiful. But Socratic love for males was limited to eye and mind contact. The endless talk of passion between males at symposia he put up with in rather the same way he accepted popular polytheism and superstition. But when he participated in it his tone was jocular. There is an important passage in Plato where a speech by Lysias, a metic (immigrant second-class citizen), son of a rich shield maker, who himself became wealthy by speech-writing, is analyzed. In it, Lysias says a youth should grant his favor to a man who is not in love with him rather than to one who is. Socrates treats it as a joke: “Splendid! I would have walked to Megara and back to hear such a speech!” Then he says, “I wish Lysias would add that a youth should grant his favors to a poor man rather than to a rich man, to an elderly man rather than to a young man and, in general, to ordinary people like myself. What an attractive democratic thing that would be!”

  Elsewhere, in the Phaedrus for example, when a piece of writing is held up for admiration, Socrates objects to the notion of love as chiefly a matter of physical desire. There seems to be a wide difference between Plato’s mature notion of the word eros and Socrates’. For Plato, eros can generate an intoxicating force, a kind of madness. Socrates’ eros is measured, moderate, lighthearted, genial, jocular, and sane. Again, Plato rejects sexual bliss because it defeats the attempt to separate the soul from the body (part of his absurd notion of the complex soul), and therefore, though allowing body contact between males, he forbids “terminal gratification.” Socrates has no objections to orgasm, but will allow it only between male and female. Pederastic lovemaking of any physical kind, but especially leading to orgasm, he thinks bad for both boy and man. He calls it “devouring.” He utters a key passage in Xenophon’s Symposium : “The man reserves the pleasure for himself, the most shameful things for the boy. . . . The boy does not share, like a woman, the delight of sex with a man, but looks on sober at another’s intoxication.”

  A clearer example of Socrates’ view of homosexuality, as distinct from benevolent male friendship, comes in Plato’s Symposium, when Alcibiades arrives at the dinner drunk, and seeing Socrates there, makes a long and embarrassingly frank speech about his relationship with the seer. Among other things, he gives a detailed description of his unsuccessful attempt to seduce Socrates. Alcibiades in his youth was a person of exceptional beauty and allure, as all accounts agree, who had no difficulty in making himself irresistible to any older man who had a taste for boys. What he wanted from Socrates, whom he admired enormously as a fount of wisdom, was an intimate relationship, in which he would exchange the delights of his body in return for Socrates giving him the delights of his mind. Socrates would have none of it. He rejected Alcibiades’ advances, which took various forms, indeed not with harshness but courteously and with rational arguments. At last Alcibiades contrived an occasion when Socrates was obliged to sleep at his house, and “when the lamp was put out and the servants had retired, I felt I must be open with him and cast aside all doubt.” So he shook Socrates to make sure he was awake and explained his intentions without any possible ambiguity: his beauty for Socrates’ brains. Socrates tried to argue him out of it, but Alcibiades persisted:

  And so, wishing to hear no more from him in words, I got up, and threw my coat about his body. I then slipped under his threadbare cloak (it was winter, and cold) and put my arms about him. There I lay the entire night, holding this superhuman genius tightly.... But, despite all my efforts, he showed himself completely above all my solicitations. I felt him to be disdainful and superior and almost contemptuous of my beauty—though he was perfectly polite—and his virtue had a kind of courteous but proud rejection of my body thus laid before him. Nothing whatever happened, and I eventually fell asleep. When I awoke—let all the gods and goddesses be my witness—I was still as unviolated as if I had slept with my father or an elder brother.

  This passage may strike a modern reader as surprising. While it shows that Socrates was not inclined to homosexuality, it also shows him passively acquiescent in the face of Alcibiades’ advances. There was no rejection because Socrates saw only too well that his failure to re
spond would be a grievous injury to Alcibiades’ pride. Anything more would have been unbearably brutal. His passivity was exact and well judged.

  We can now turn to his relationships with women and his view of their function in society. The evidence is not very plentiful, but what there is proves exceptionally interesting. During the Symposium, as described by Plato, the conversation turns to love, and Socrates introduces the character of Diotima of Mantinea, a city in Arcadia. He says, “She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall try to repeat to you what she said to me.” He says she was “a woman wise in this and many other kinds of knowledge.” He also says that she advised the Athenians on the way in which they should offer sacrifice to prevent the plague, which was spreading over Greece, from coming to Athens, and as a result of her efforts, it was delayed ten years. She seems, then, to have been some kind of priestess.

  There follow, in Plato’s account, several thousand words of dialogue between Diotima and Socrates, the woman taking the lead and Socrates submitting. Much of the substance, on the nature of love, is pure Plato, with his “forms” and his peculiar view of the soul and the “recovery” of knowledge. It need not concern us here, merely illustrating his irritating habit of foisting his personal views on others, in this instance Diotima as well as Socrates. There are, however, three aspects of this section of the Symposium that strike us forcibly. First, this is the only time Socrates tells us directly about his education and how he was taught by this remarkable woman. There has been much speculation about who influenced him as a young man and shaped his approach to philosophy. But here we are actually given a glimpse of his training, and it is fascinating to learn that his teacher was female—most unusual in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. Second, Diotima uses what we have come to call the Socratic method of questioning, with Socrates, in this instance, on the receiving end. She “examines” him. Now it is true that she then goes on to teach and impart knowledge in a way Socrates himself usually avoids, so that the discussion of love reaches a conclusion. All the same, it is striking that Socrates was introduced to his examination technique by a woman. He extended and refined it, but he did not entirely invent it. Diotima was thus more important in creating the Socrates we know than any other human being.

  Third, there is a remarkable passage in Diotima’s account of love concerning childbirth: its suffering, its glory, and its beauty. There is nothing quite like it in the whole of Greek literature. It leads me to suppose that his mother, the midwife Phaenarete, played a part in his relationship with Diotima. Perhaps she was responsible for introducing them. It is possible, indeed I feel quite likely, that Diotima, too, had experience of midwifery. The two women may have consulted together over a difficult case or worked in concert. This is the only time when we can fairly speculate about the part one of Socrates’ parents played in his intellectual upbringing.

  The second woman who played a part in Socrates’ life was even more remarkable. Aspasia came from Miletus, the most southerly of the large cities Greek colonists built on the coast of what is now Turkey. Her origins were lowly but probably not slave class. However she is usually described as a hetaera, the term used for a mistress or woman in an irregular relationship with a man, one class higher than a prostitute. Hetaerae were usually aliens or slaves or freed women. They had some legal rights and paid a tax but rarely enjoyed full citizenship in Athens. They were often musicians or dancers or flute players hired to perform at all-male dinner parties.

  Aspasia was exceptional in that she was a highly literate, well-read woman, who became a member of Pericles’ circle and, five years after he divorced his wife, became his consort and remained so until his death. She clearly knew Socrates well, having met him on his peregrinations through Athens and, I surmise, having been “examined” by him. He had a high opinion of her intellect and literary accomplishments; when asked by the parents of a young man to recommend a master to teach him rhetoric, he mentioned Aspasia. This caused astonishment, but his advice was taken and proved sound. She taught other young men and helped Pericles with his speeches. Indeed, she might be regarded as the first professional speechwriter in history, and it is odd that this role should have been initiated by a woman. Whether she wrote all of his famous funeral oration, however, is doubtful, for it contains a disobliging reference to women: He said the woman in best repute is one who “contrives never to have her name mentioned, either in praise or blame.”

  Aspasia was popularly believed to be a power behind Pericles’ throne and was attacked in plays and skits, most notably by Aristophanes in his comedy Acharnians, which won the first prize in 425 B.C. So she had in common with Socrates the enmity of this bitter playwright, though it is likely that, as with Socrates, he did not know her at the time of his assault. She seems to have been envied and resented in theatrical circles, for some years earlier, when Pericles was still alive, she was publicly prosecuted for impiety by the actor Hermippus. Pericles defended her with great skill and passion, and she was acquitted. After his death in 429, she took up with the politician Lysicles, but he was killed the following year. Her association with Pericles might not have gotten her into the history books, but her friendship with Socrates and his obvious admiration for her did. She figures not only in Plato but in Aeschines and Antisthenes.

  Socrates was much influenced by these two brilliant women, so much so that he argued that women ought to play a much bigger role in Athenian society, and in particular ought to be prepared for it by receiving as full an education as males. He thought the elevation of women from their lowly status a matter of simple justice. As it was, they were under relentless pressure never to go out, never to acquire accomplishments, and never to lead a life of culture and pleasure, being simple household drudges and sex slaves. Even high-class women were expected to spin, weave, and make clothes. In Athens, unlike Sparta, where their status and rights were considerable, they could not as a rule own or dispose of property or sue in the courts, except for divorce. This may well have been in accord with Dr. Johnson’s dictum that “Nature has given women such power that the law, rightly, gives them little,” for Greek writers discoursed endlessly on the wiles of women and the tremendous and often disastrous effects of their sex appeal. Socrates thought that women were just as intelligent as men, ought to be educated accordingly, and should occupy responsible positions in society. The only constraint on their activity ought to be lack of physical strength. He believed they should be taught to ride and might even be trained as warriors if they wished.

  Socrates’ views on women are reflected in Plato’s Republic , where he is shown advocating their education, training, and holding of official posts. Some of the guardians, the rulers of Plato’s ideal state, are to be women. Unfortunately, Plato goes far beyond Socrates in rearranging society and the lives of women. He advocates, in effect, the abolition of the family for a community of wives and children, a proposition that Socrates would have laughed to scorn and that Plato himself came to repudiate in his later work, Laws.

  What Socrates really wanted was no more than a system that allowed women to develop their minds and skills and realize their potentials. He liked to think of them leading responsible and fulfilled lives, but he had no objections to their confining themselves to looking after their husbands and children, if that is what they wished. But if they desired to run for office, even for strategos, let them. He trusted them. An Athenian custom he found repellent was the rule that an upper-class woman never went out unless accompanied by a slave, usually a male one. This was partly for her protection but also so that the slave might report back to his master if the wife did anything strange or reprehensible.

  That brings us to the question of slavery. Among the inhabitants of Athens, about half were not eligible for citizenship: debt bondsmen, unfree (enslaved indigenous populations), metics or aliens, and chattel slaves. Slaves performed various jobs, especially those involving service to a master, such as working in a bank. Greek citizens, especially in Athens, were reluct
ant to work for another, believing this compromised their independence and amounted to a form of slavery. So slaves had opportunities to prosper, and that is how Pasion became the richest banker in Greece and also a free man. But for most slaves, born in servitude or battle captives, there was little chance of freedom, and in the colony of Ephesus in Asia Minor, there was a busy slave market to which they might be sent by an indigent master.

  Slavery was an obvious affront to justice, as Socrates understood it. It is therefore strange that our sources do not show him opposing it, recommending its abolition, or even commenting on its existence. Perhaps there is a missing dialogue, which was “suppressed” by subsequent generations simply by the failure to have it copied—the fate of many works society found insupportable. Once again, we bitterly regret Socrates’ decision to write nothing. His failure to examine slavery is the greatest lacuna in his otherwise comprehensive view of justice, indeed in his entire philosophy. Given his influence after his death, a sharp and reasoned condemnation of slavery would have had incalculable consequences, and perhaps have led to the abolition of this scourge of humanity many centuries ago. Of course it is possible that Socrates habitually questioned the justice of slavery in his conversations. I think it possible, indeed quite likely. If so, the implied rejection of slavery, like the explicit rejection of retaliation, would have played a part in the hostility to Socrates among some Athenians that led to his prosecution, conviction, and death. To these events we now turn.