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The fifth chapter of Socrates: A Very Short Introduction, C.C.W Taylor tells us how the influences of Socrates were passed down from writings of Plato and others and out of all of these the most important legacy was Socrates influence on Plato.

            He starts out with two close associates named Antisthenes and Aristippus. Antisthenes was a sophist with interests in language and its relationship to reality. He denied that a statement can have both a truth and a falsity to it, a view that was held by the sophists Prodicus and Protagoras. Since Antisthenes was also influenced by Socrates views of ethics he was considered to have been an eclectic figure. He believed that goodness could be taught, but it also required ‘Socratic strength’.  This strength could be viewed to keep goodness and conflicting desires out of the same message, a view he learned from the sophists. Thus, he became an advocate of a strict lifestyle as was Socrates and later became the founder of Cynicism.

            Aristippus migrated to Athens by the attraction of Socrates. He too wrote on ethics and language and is credited with starting the Cyrenaic school, a school noted for its empiricist views. It’s a view that espouses a ‘live for the moment’ ideal which in their view was the supreme good and that the past and future are not accessible.  Because of this view, they reject Eudaimonia and the concept of living life as a whole.

            Stoics grew out of the Cynics and Socrates. The Stoics believed human goodness was consistent with the order of the universe which meant knowledge of nature was required before ethical knowledge. Socrates somewhat limited himself to ethics, although he does refer to nature as in Xenophon’s Memorabilia when he tries to convert an atheist by arguing of the existence of gods and their ‘larger quantity of intelligence’.

Socrates was a model for the Stoics as they esteemed the way he accepted death from suicide as an honorable way to die as in the suicide of one of the most famous Stoics, Seneca.

            Taylor mentions two schools of skepticism in this time period, the Pyrrhonians and the Academics. The latter was a school of Plato’s with the former initiated with the views of Pyrrho of Elis. Both of these schools embraced skepticism, unlike Socrates who kept positive doctrines and did not defer judgment as the skeptics did and were known to be dogmatic as claimed by Arcesilaus. Cicero however disagreed, and saw Socrates as a man who did not keep doctrines, but merely asked what others thought and argued against them.w

            Not all following philosophers were fans of Socrates. Aristoxenus wrote a scathing biography of Socrates bigamy and the Epicureans were hostile because of their professional opposition.

            The Christian apologist Justin wrote in the second century AD that both Socrates and Christian were both accused of atheism as they rejected the Greek mythological gods and supported monotheism. The author goes on to say Augustine speculated that Plato knew the Old Testament scriptures, a sentiment I agree with since many philosophers were drawn to Athens to discuss new and different thoughts. While some Christians of medieval philosophy see Socrates as an innocent man put to death unjustly, others see him as a person dealing with the demonic world.  

            By medieval times, Platonic thought was primarily replaced by Aristotelian thought and remained so until Neo-Platonism revived Platonic thought by melding it with Christianity. Comparisons of Socrates and Jesus even appeared as they both were condemned, had virtue and wisdom, and received divine signs. But there were also objections to this thought since Socrates had moral issues such as homosexual tendencies and neglected his family.

            In the Arabic world he was seen as having a detailed monotheistic viewpoint and strong in his belief that he would not recant even in the face of death. He was also considered a sage, a wise man, and holder of many virtues. He was so esteemed that he was associated with the forefathers of the Islamic faith such as Abraham, the prophets Jesus and Mohammed.

            The tradition of fitting Socrates view with one’s own continues with the nineteenth century philosophers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.  Hegel in a lecture stated that before Socrates the people of Athens believed in objective morality. Socrates changed that by questioning people’s beliefs and turning objective morality into subjective morality, but this individual morality lacks the determinant account of the good, which he later states is determined by conscience or as in Socrates case a divine sign.

            Kierkegaard had similar views to Hegel regarding Socrates, with the exception in which he believed irony is the way to transform morality. By irony, he means the Socratic irony where objective morality is broken down first and followed by the ironic person no longer taking morality seriously because of its subjective nature (confusing concept see questions). Kierkegaard gives Socrates credit not only for his stance on subjective morality but to subjective faith in God as well.

            Of Nietzsche, Taylor describes him as one that expressed ambivalent views across his different works. An example he uses is in Nietzsche works called The Birth of Tragedy. In it, he describes Greek tragedy as evolving from two facets from Greek creativity, one from delightful dreams from imaginary worlds and the other a dark side with violent and sexual impulses with the occurrences usually taking place during religious festivals. Also in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche tells of a principle he calls aesthetic Socratism which reads “To be beautiful is to be intelligible.” This would be counter to Socrates knowledge is virtue principle. With Plato’s Socrates, the virtue is knowledge principle was enough for Eudaimonia since understanding is what’s needed to keep wrongdoing away. Nietzsche uses the term decadence in describing Socratisms breakdown of the spirit. This term associates Nietzsche ambivalent attitude to his view of Socrates as having superhuman qualities and whose knowledge and rationality liberated him from the fear of death and at the same time calling him riff-raff from the lowest social class. The rest of the Nietzsche section tells of other Nietzsche examples of ambivalence toward Socrates and concludes by saying, “Even to the end, it appears, Nietzsche fought against Socrates because he was so close to him.

           

Questions:

What is Kierkegaard view on irony? In this chapter in reading that a person is left with no morals at all by viewing this irony is confusing. Also, what does he mean when he says irony functions as a border between aesthetic and the ethical?

Out of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, who do you think has had the most influence on our society and why?