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Socratic Citizenship: Delphic Oracle and Divine Sign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David D. Corey
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Socrates was not only a paradigmatic philosopher; he was also a paradigmatic citizen according to some contemporary political theorists—paradigmatic for his moral integrity and his political practices of dissent and noncompliance. What is perhaps most exemplary about Socrates, according to some commentators, is that his citizenship was “purely secular,” relying upon no sources of authority beyond the naked moral self. The present article challenges this dominant view of Socratic citizenship by examining Socrates′ relationship to the oracle at Delphi and the mysterious divine sign that frequently turned him away from certain civic activities. Arguing that these sources of authority affected Socrates′ practice of citizenship in significant ways, the essay presents a picture of Socrates that is at once truer to the texts to which these secular views appeal and more instructive for contemporary theorizing about citizenship.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , Spring 2005 , pp. 201 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

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References

The author wishes to thank Peter Euben, Stephen G. Salkever, Dwight Allman, Mary P. Nichols, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments on this essay.

1. Kymlicka, Will and Norman, Wayne, “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory,” Ethics 104 (1994): 352CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See especially Villa, Dana, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);Google Scholar the phrase “moderately alienated” comes from Kateb, George, The Inner Ocean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

3. See, e.g., Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

4. “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57 ([1954] 1990): 73–103Google Scholar; “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research 38 (1971): 417–46Google Scholar.

5. Kateb, George, “Socratic Integrity,” in Nomos XL: Integrity and Conscience, ed. Shapiro, Ian and Adams, Robert (New York: New York University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Villa, , Socratic Citizenship;Google Scholar and see also Wallach, J. R., “Socratic Citizenship,” History of Political Thought 9 (1988): 393–413Google Scholar.

6. I confine myself in this essay mostly to those dialogues upon which the advocates of “Socratic citizenship” themselves rely most heavily: Plato's Apology, Crito, and Gorgias. I do, however, supplement these texts in a few places with information from other Platonic dialogues and from Xenophon. The point of this study is not to contribute to the debate about the “historical Socrates,” but to take issue with the way certain scholars have interpreted key texts in the Socratic literary tradition, and to think about the implications of their misinterpretation for theorizing citizenship.

7. Though I am somewhat uneasy with the word “religious” in this context, it has become the standard term for referring to Socrates′ beliefs about the supernatural—see, e.g., Beckman, James, The Religious Dimension of Socrates′ Thought (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; McPherran, Mark L., The Religion of Socrates (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Smith, Nicholas and Woodruff, Paul, Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. Let me simply state at the outset that I do not use the word “religious” or “religion” here to refer to any necessarily conventional or publicly recognized practices; I use it to refer to belief in an intelligent divine force or forces that stand above human beings and whose will, if discernable, carries serious normative weight.

8. Thucydides, , History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Warner, Rex (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 147Google Scholar.

9. Apology 36b–dGoogle Scholar. All translations from the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro are from West, Thomas and West, Grace, Plato's Apology of Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

10. Socrates speaks to whomever he meets, he says in the Apology, young and old, foreigner and townsman, “but more so the townsmen, inasmuch as you are closer to me in kin” (30a); cf. Vlastos, Gregory, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Cf. Gorgias 513e–514aGoogle Scholar.

12. Apology 31c and 31bGoogle Scholar. The word polypragmosune is usually pejorative in Greek literature, but it is also usually applied to politicians and other public figures. Socrates thus confounds the categories of ordinary moral-political discourse by being strangely “privately, politically active.”

13. Nehamas, Alexander, The Art of Living (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar, stresses the philosophical side of Socrates′ activities to the point, in my view, of foreshortening the civic side. On this tension in general, see also Euben, Peter, The Tragedy of Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Strauss, Leo, “The Problem of Socrates,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Pangle, Thomas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

14. Arendt, , “Philosophy and Politics” pp. 86–87Google Scholar. Kateb, , “Socratic Integrity,” p. 99Google Scholar, rightly doubts whether conscience is the right word here, since Socratic self-examination is not always limited to topics of a moral nature.

15. Arendt, , “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” p. 423Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., p. 446.

17. See Apology 31c–e, 36b–cGoogle Scholar; and cf. Gorgias, 474a–bGoogle Scholar. Important exceptions to this rule include Socrates′ military service, his service on the Council of Five Hundred, and his participation in his own trial—all of which are discussed below.

18. Kateb, , “Socratic Integrity,” p. 80Google Scholar.

19. Ibid., pp. 81–84; Villa, Socratic Citizenship, pp. 25–27, 41–56Google Scholar.

20. See Kateb, , “Socratic Integrity,” p. 87Google Scholar; and Villa, , Socratic Citizenship, pp. 5–6, 25–27, 41Google Scholar, and 56–58.

21. See, e.g., Kraut, Richard, Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rosen, F., “A Creature of Modern Scholarship: Disobedience and the Crito Problem,” Polis 15 (1998): 1–12Google Scholar; and the reply to Rosen by Brickhouse, and Smith, , Polis 15 (1998): 13–22Google Scholar. Kateb, Both (“Socratic Integrity,” p. 88ff)Google Scholar and Villa, (Socratic Citizenship, pp. 41–56)Google Scholar wrestle with this problem.

22. Dana Villa, for his part, avoids the problem by inexplicably discounting passages from the Crito. The whole matter, Villa writes (Socratic Citizenship, p. 48Google Scholar), simply “alerts us to the hazards of assuming that the Socrates Plato presents in the Crito is as authentic a presentation of Socrates′ voice as that which we find in the Apology. Even within the ‘Socratic’ Platonic dialogues, we are bound to find gradations in relative faithfulness to Socrates′ thought.” How Villa knows which dialogues are more faithful and which are less is never explained.

23. On Socrates′ involvement in these battles, see Apology 28eGoogle Scholar; Symposium 220d–221bGoogle Scholar; and Laches 189bGoogle Scholar. For further descriptions of the battles see Thucydides, I. 56–65Google Scholar; 11.58, 70; V.6–10; and IV.90–101.

24. On Socrates′ view of Athens as unjust, consider his critique of Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades and Themistocles in the Gorgias 515d–516eGoogle Scholar.

25. See Apology 28dGoogle Scholar, which reveals that the tension between the Apology and the Crito is, in fact, already present within the Apology itself.

26. Villa, , Socratic Citizenship, pp. 40–41Google Scholar

27. Ibid.

28. Arendt, , “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” pp. 420–21, 427Google Scholar.

29. Kateb, , “Socratic Integrity,” p. 84Google Scholar.

30. Vlastos, , Socrates, p. 158Google Scholar.

31. Ibid.

32. The religious seriousness of the charges has recently been emphasized in Smith and Woodruff, Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy. Scholars in the past have sometimes viewed the impiety charge as disingenuous—arguing that is was merely a convenient way of ensuring conviction for Socrates′ political offenses (particularly, his association with the likes of Alcibiades and Critias). Parker, Robert, Athenian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, ch. 10, argues persuasively, however, that religion and politics are so intricately related in Socrates′ trial (and in Athenian political life in general) that to sever them would be anachronistic.

33. Apology 24b–cGoogle Scholar; cf. Laertius, Diogenes II.40Google Scholar; and Xenophon, Memorabilia I.1.1Google Scholar.

34. Apology 18c and 23dGoogle Scholar.

35. Orthodoxy can be a misleading concept in this context, since—as Burkert, Walter has famously written in Greek Religion, trans. Raffan, J. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 8—Google Scholar “there are no founding figures” of Greek religion, no “documents of revelation, no organizations of priests and no monastic orders.” Instead, what one finds is a complex of traditional myths, “always taken with a pinch of salt,” and a plurality of rituals, sanctuaries and regional idiosyncrasies. It makes more sense therefore “to speak in the plural of Greek religions,” than to speak of a Greek religion or of orthodoxy. On the friction between Socrates′ views and those of traditional Athenian religion, consider e.g., Euthyphro 6a–8aGoogle Scholar, and see Vlastos, , “Socratic Piety,” in Socrates, pp. 157–78Google Scholar.

36. Apology 24b4. This was not unusual for the oracle (pace Fontenrose, J., The Delphic Oracle [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981]), p. 236Google Scholar; see, e.g., Thucydides, II.17Google Scholar.

37. Apology, 21cGoogle Scholar. For a similar interpretation of this controversial passage, see Reeve, C. D. C., Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), pp. 21–23Google Scholar; see also Stokes, Michael, “Socrates′ Mission,” in Socratic Questions, ed., Gower, B. and Stokes, M. (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 33–37Google Scholar. For an alternative interpretation, one that regards Socrates′ initial response to the oracle as impious, see Hackforth, R., The Composition of Plato's Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933)Google Scholar; and West, Thomas, Plato's Apology of Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Although Socrates says he attempts to refute the oracle by examining others to find someone wiser than he, this is not necessarily inconsistent with his piety. Should he actually “refute” the oracle by finding someone wiser, he would have been impelled by the oracle to discover what human wisdom is. The pronouncement of the oracle, after all, is “a riddle,” which Socrates “obeys” by trying to solve. In the end, of course, Socrates discovers that the oracle is literally true, and his attempt to refute it has led him to its truth.

38. Apology 23a–bGoogle Scholar; cf. Plato Phaedrus 278dGoogle Scholar.

39. That his mission is, among other things, philosophical is clear from the Apology, where Socrates describes “investigating myself and others in accordance with the god” as philosophon (see, e.g., 28e–29a and 29d). It is interesting, however, to observe how various commentators reduce this three-fold mission. For Villa, , Socratic Citizenship, p. 44Google Scholar, Socrates has a strictly “philosophical/political mission,” no religious mission at all. For Nehamas, , Art of Living, pp. 12–14, 70–98Google Scholar, by contrast, even the political or civic dimension is suspect: Socrates′ “ultimate purpose was his own improvement,” Nehamas argues, not to devote himself to others. Nehamas's interpretation seems overly restrictive, however, in light of Apology 23c and 31a–bGoogle Scholar, where Socrates speaks explicitly of his commitment to god and to his fellow citizens.

40. See, e.g., Hackforth, , Composition of Plato's Apology, pp. 88–104Google Scholar; Brickhouse, Thomas and Smith, Nicholas, Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 98Google Scholar; Reeve, , Socrates in the Apology, pp. 25–28Google Scholar; and Stokes, “Socrates′ Mission.”

41. Apology 33cGoogle Scholar, my italics.

42. On Socrates′ irony in general, see Republic 337a4; and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1127a13–b32Google Scholar. See also Strauss, Leo, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), chap. 2Google Scholar; Vlastos, ,“Socratic Irony,”in Socrates, pp. 21–44Google Scholar; and Nehamas, , Art of Living, pp. 46–69Google Scholar.

43. See, for example, Burnet, John, Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 160, n. 38a 1Google Scholar.

44. Note that Socrates prefaces the oracle story with an assurance to his jury (20d):“Now perhaps I will seem to some of you to be joking. Know well, however, that I will tell you the whole truth.” And note that he concludes the oracle story with a similar assurance (24a):“This is the truth for you, men of Athens; I am hiding nothing from you either great or small in my speech, nor am I holding anything back.”

45. Consider, e.g., Socrates′ prophetic dream in the Crito (44a-c), in which he places confidence; or the numerous divine allusions in the Phaedrus (238c, 242c, 244b, 278d, etc.)Google Scholar and the Euthydemus (272e, 291a, 302c);Google Scholar or the numerous references to Socrates′ divine voice (daimonion: Euthyphro 3b-c;Google ScholarHippias Major 286c, 293d-e, 304c;Google ScholarRepublic 496c;Google ScholarAlcibiades 1103a-b).Google Scholar Must these all be taken ironically in the same way, even though they are uttered to numerous different sorts of interlocutors under widely varying circumstances?

46. The final (symbolically significant) word of the Apology is tô theô. After the verdict is handed down Socrates continues to speak about oracular divinations (38c, this time his own divination of the fate of his accusers) and about his “divine sign”(40a-c). He insists, moreover (38d-e), that his defense speech proper was free from the corruption of saying simply what his audience wanted to hear.

47. It cannot be a task of this essay to prove that the Delphic oracle account must be taken without irony. The purpose of this essay is not to prove that Socrates′ otherwise pervasive irony does not apply to his accounts of the oracle or the divine sign. It is to confront the advocates of“Socratic citizenship” (and those influenced by them) with their total failure to wrestle at all with the question of Socrates′ possible religious motivations. There is no discussion of irony among the advocates of Socratic citizenship; there does not need to be, because there is not even a suggestion that Socrates′ account of his citizenship includes a religious dimension (ironic or not).

48. The connection between the oracle and Socrates′ art of conversation is stressed by McPherran, Mark, “Elenctic Interpretation and the Delphic Oracle,” in Does Socrates Have a Method? ed. Scott, Gary Alan (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

49. Arendt, ,“Thinking and Moral Considerations,”pp. 431–32Google Scholar, quotes the second of these passages while omitting entirely all reference to the god. This is typical of the advocates of Socratic citizenship. (Cf. Villa, , Socratic Citizenship, pp. xii, 58)Google Scholar.

50. The difficulties involved in dating the oracle, and thus of gauging its effect on Socrates′ style of conversation are well treated in Stokes, “Socrates′ Mission,” pp. 52–54.

51. 21b, 23a. Some commentators doubt whether the oracle could have initiated Socratic conversation, since Socrates must have had a reputation for wisdom in order for Chaerephon to have asked: “Is anyone wiser than Socrates?” Yet it is quite possible that Chaerephon's question (like Chaerephon himself) was a bit overzealous (see Stokes, ,“Socrates′ Mission,” pp. 68–69)Google Scholar; and it is likewise possible that Socrates′ brand of wisdom and his style of questioning dramatically changed with the oracle.

52. Apology 21c, 21e, 23aGoogle Scholar.

53. Cf. Vlastos, , Socrates, p. 177Google Scholar: “Were it not for that divine command…there is no reason to believe that [Socrates] would have ever become a street-philosopher. If what Socrates wants is partners in elenctic argument, why should he not keep to those…congenial and accomplished fellow-seekers after moral truth? Why should he take to the streets, forcing himself on people who have neither taste nor talent for philosophy, trying to talk them into submitting to a therapy they do not think they need? [He]… is undertaking a thankless task. Would Socrates have given his life to this task if his piety had not driven him to it?”

54. Apology 29dGoogle Scholar, my italics.

55. For an excellent recent discussion of Socrates′ daimonion, see Joyal, Mark, The Platonic Theages (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000)Google Scholar; see also Joyal, , “Tradition and Innovation in the Transformation of Socrates′ Divine Sign,” in The Passionate Intellect, ed., Ayers, Lewis (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995)Google Scholar; and Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 402–405Google Scholar.

56. Apology 31d3; Phaedrus 242cl–2.

57. Apology 40a7.

58. Apology 40bl, 40c3; Euthydemus 272e3–4; Phaedrus 242b9.

59. Apology 40a4.

60. “Daimon” refers generally to “the veiled countenance of divine activity,” which drives a person forward in some act (Burkert, , Greek Religion, p. 180)Google Scholar; see further Joyal, “Tradition and Innovation.” Neither Plato nor Xenophon refer to Socrates′ daimonion as a daimon—it is evidently a related phenomenon, yet distinct.

61. Apology 31d2.

62. Apology 31dGoogle Scholar, Phaedrus 242cGoogle Scholar.

63. “Something divine,” see 31c8; on the relationship of the daimonion to Apollo, see Apology 40bl and C. D. C. Reeve's provocative “Socrates the Apollonian,” in Smith, and Woodruff, , Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy, pp. 24–39Google Scholar.

64. Xenophon's treatment of the daimonion dwells on many of these same characteristics, but there are two important differences to note. One is that Xenophon is much more prone than Plato to present the daimonion as something conventionally religious. The second difference goes hand in hand with this conventionalizing tendency: on Xenophon's account, the daimonion issues not only negative warnings, but positive advice as well; it tells Socrates what he ought to do (e.g., Apology of Socrates 13; Memorabilia IV.viii.1). What is more, it seems to do this not only for Socrates, but for others as well. According to Memorabilia I.i.4, “many of [Socrates′] companions were counseled by [Socrates] to do this or not to do that in accordance with the warnings of the god: and those who followed his advice prospered, while those who rejected it had cause for regret.”

65. However, this last point is not universally accepted; see, e.g., John Burnet, Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito; Euthyphro 3b5, and Apology 31dl; Burnet, John, Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato (London: MacMillan and Co., 1914), pp. 183–84Google Scholar; and Brisson, Luc, Apologie de Socrate (Paris: G. F Flammarion, 1997), pp. 39–41Google Scholar.

66. See, e.g., Arendt, ,“Thinking and Moral Considerations,” pp. 443–45Google Scholar.

67. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Human, All Too Human trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 126Google Scholar.

68. Apology 40b-c; 41d-eGoogle Scholar; and cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia I.i.4Google Scholar.

69. Nussbaum, Martha, “Commentary on Edmunds,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1985), p. 234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70. Nussbaum is (in her own way) also an advocate of Socratic citizenship (see her Cultivating Humanity [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997])Google Scholar. Though her “Socratic citizen” would be different in important respects from those put forth by Arendt, Kateb and Villa, it is likewise a purely secular Socrates she embraces.

71. Reeve, , “Socrates the Apollonian,” p. 33Google Scholar; Nussbaum's interpretation is also evaluated, and rejected, by McPherran, Mark, “Socratic Reason and Socratic Revelation,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991): 345–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. I assume this is how Kateb means to be understood, for he writes in “Socratic Integrity,” pp. 82–84, that“Socrates′ general abstention…derives from his wish not to implicate himself in the wrongdoing that the Assembly regularly sponsors.” His purity is “inseparable from avoiding injustice”; and yet “there is nothing religious in Socrates′ understanding of injustice. …[T]he existence of Socrates′ inner voice [does not] have anything to do with his moral heroism.”

73. Apology 31c-dGoogle Scholar; and compare Republic 496c4.

74. See further, McPherran, , Religion of Socrates, pp. 175–90Google Scholar.

75. The proper weight to be assigned to reason, on the one hand, and daimonic revelation, on the other, in Socrates′ thoughts and deeds is (not surprisingly) a topic of heated debate; see, e.g., McPherran, , Religion of Socrates, chap. 4Google Scholar; Vlastos, , Socrates, chap. 6Google Scholar; and the three-way correspondence between Gregory Vlastos, Brickhouse and Smith, and Mark McPherran, published for the first time as chap. 10 of Smith and Woodruff, Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy.

76. Just as it was “reasonable” for Socrates to have stayed out of politics (Apology 31d)Google Scholar as the daimonion suggested; so too was it reasonable to eschew Alcibiades as the daimonion suggested (Alcibiades I 103a–106a)Google Scholar. It was also immediately fruitful (in a way that makes a reasoned account unnecessary) for Socrates to have remained in the gymnasium as the daimonion had suggested (Euthydemus 272e–273a)Google Scholar. All this is to say that reason and daimonic warnings tend to work their way to eventual agreement in Socrates′ mind. When they do not agree, it is not because Socrates′ reason is at odds with the daimonion, but because Socrates′ reason is limited to what he can know in the present, while the daimonion takes account of the future.

77. See Apology 40a2-c3; and cf. Xenophon, Apology 13Google Scholar.

78. See, however, Joyal, Mark, “The ‘Divine Sign Did Not Oppose Me’: A Problem in Plato's Apology,” in Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition, ed., Wittaker, John (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1997)Google Scholar, who finds this whole way of thinking about the daimonion strangely unSocratic, since it seems to violate Socrates′ earlier claim that the sign always turns him away but never urges him forward. To this, I would respond that the sign itself does always turn Socrates away—that what Socrates infers from its absence is a separate question.

79. In this and the following paragraph, the reader should understand that I am speculating on the basis of very slight evidence. The passage from the Apology (40b)Google Scholar in which Socrates infers a positive endorsement from the absence of his customary sign, is the only passage of its kind in the corpus. I regard it therefore as suggestive only.

80. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 62Google Scholar.

81. Socrates′ resistance of Euthypro's suit against his father in Plato's Euthyphro is a good example.