Part ofa series on
Socrates
"I know that I know nothing" "The unexamined life is not worth living" Gadfly Trial of Socrates
Eponymous concepts
Socratic dialogue Socratic intellectualism Socratic irony Socratic method Socratic paradox Socratic problem Socratic questioning
Category
v t e

In historical scholarship, theSocratic problem (also calledSocratic question)^[1] concerns attempts at reconstructing a historical and philosophical image ofSocrates based on the variable, and sometimes contradictory, nature of the existing sources on his life. Scholars rely upon extant sources, such as those of contemporaries likeAristophanes or disciples of Socrates likePlato andXenophon, for knowing anything about Socrates. However, these sources contain contradictory details of his life, words, and beliefs when taken together. This complicates the attempts at reconstructing the beliefs and philosophical views held by the historical Socrates. It has become apparent to scholarship that this problem is seemingly impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable.^[2][3] Early proposed solutions to the matter still pose significant problems today.^[4]

Socrates was the main character in most of Plato's dialogues and was a genuine historical figure. It is widely understood that in later dialogues, Plato used the character Socrates to give voice to views that were his own. Besides Plato, three other important sources exist for the study of Socrates:Aristophanes,Aristotle, and Xenophon. Since no writings by Socrates himself survive to the modern era, his actual views must be discerned from the sometimes contradictory reports of these four sources. The main sources for the historical Socrates are theSokratikoi logoi, orSocratic dialogues, which are reports of conversations apparently involving Socrates.^[5] Most information is found in the works ofPlato andXenophon.^[6][7]

There are also four sources extant in fragmentary states:Aeschines of Sphettus,Antisthenes,Euclid of Megara, andPhaedo of Elis.^[8] In addition, there are two satirical commentaries on Socrates. One isAristophanes's playThe Clouds, which humorously attacks Socrates.^[9] The other is two fragments from theSilloi by thePyrrhonist philosopherTimon of Phlius,^[10] satirizingdogmatic philosophers.

There are four works ofXenophon that deal with Socrates. They areApology of Socrates to the Jurors (which apparently reports the defence given by Socrates in court),^[11][12]Memorabilia (which is a defence of Socrates and so-called Socratic dialogues),^[11]Oeconomicus (which concerns Socrates' encounter with Ischomachus andCritobulus),^[12] andSymposium (which recounts an evening at a dinner party to which Socrates was an attendee).^[13][14][15]

Socrates—who is often credited with turningWestern philosophy in a more ethical and political direction and who was put to death by thedemocracy ofAthens in May 399 BC—was Plato's mentor. Plato, like some of his contemporaries, wrotedialogues about his teacher. Much of what is known about Socrates comes from Plato's writings; however, it is widely believed that very few, if any, of Plato's dialogues can be verbatim accounts of conversations between them or unmediated representations of Socrates' thought. Many of the dialogues seem to use Socrates as a device for Plato's thought, and inconsistencies occasionally crop up between Plato and the other accounts of Socrates; for instance, Plato has Socrates denying that he would ever accept money for teaching, whileXenophon'sSymposium clearly has Socrates stating that students pay him to teach wisdom and that this is what he does for a living.

Stylometric analysis of Plato's work has led some scholars to classify dialogues as falling approximately into three groups, Early, Middle and Late.^[16] On the assumption that there is an evolution of philosophical thought in Plato's dialogues from his early years to his middle and later years,^[17] the most common modern view is that Plato's dialogues contain a development of thought from closer to that of Socrates' to a doctrine more distinctly Plato's own.^[18] However, the question of exactly what aspects of Plato's dialogues are representative of Socrates and what are not, is debated. Although the view that Plato's dialogues aredevelopmental in their doctrines (with regard to the historical Socrates or not) is standard, the view is not without objectors who propose aunitarian view or other alternative interpretations of the chronology of the corpus.^[19][20] One notable example isCharles Kahn who argued that Plato had created his works not in a gradual way, but as a unified philosophical vision, whereby he uses Socratic dialogues, a non-historical genre, to flesh out his views.^[21] The time that Plato began to write his works and the date of composition of his last work are unknown and, adding to the complexity, even ancient sources do not know the order of the works or dialogues.^[22]

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(March 2022)

Two relevant works pertain to periods in Socrates' life, of whichAeschines could not have had any personal first-hand experiential knowledge. However, substantial amounts are extant of his worksAlcibiades andAspasia.^[23]

Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, and was known to accompany him.^[24]

Aristophanes (c. 450–386 BCE) was alive during the early years of Socrates. One source shows Plato and Xenophon were about 45 years younger than Socrates and states that when Aristophanes wroteClouds in 423 BC, both Plato and Xenophon were infants.^[25] other sources show Plato as something in the range of 42–43 years younger, while Xenophon is thought to be 40 years younger.^{[26][27][28][29]} During the conversations with Socrates in Xenophon'sSymposium, scholarly calculations place Xenophon as an infant of only a few years old.^[30]

Apart from the existing identified issue of conflicting elements present in accounts and writings, there is the additional inherent concern of the veracity of transfer of meaning by translation fromclassic Greek to contemporary language, whether that be Greek, English or any other.^[31]

Efforts have been made by writers for centuries to address the problem. According to one scholar (Patzer) the number of works with any significance in this issue, prior to the nineteenth century, are few indeed.^[32]G.E. Lessing caused a flurry of interest in the problem in 1768.^[33] A methodology for analysis was posited, by study of Platonic sources, in 1820 with Socher. A break of scholarly impasse in respect to understanding, resulted from Campbell making astylometric analysis in 1867.^[33]

An essay written byFriedrich Schleiermacher in 1815 ("The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher"), published 1818 (English translation 1833) is considered the most significant and influential toward developing an understanding of the problem.^[34][35]

Throughout the 20th century, two strains of interpretation arose: the literary contextualists, who tended to interpret Socratic dialogues based on literary criticism, and the analysts, who focus much more heavily on the actual arguments contained within the different texts.^[36]

Early in the 21st century, most of the scholars concerned have settled to agreement instead of argument about the nature of the significance of ancient textual sources in relation to this problem.^[37]

A fragment of Plato'sRepublic (588b-589b) was found in Codex VI, of theNag Hammadi discoveries of 1945.^[38][39]

The Latin language corpus was byFicinus during 1484, the first of a Greek language text was Aldus in 1513.^[40][41]

TheMemorabilia appeared in the Florence Junta in 1516.^[42][43]

The firstApology was byJohann Reuchlin in 1520.^[44]

This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The German classical scholarFriedrich Schleiermacher addressed the "Socratic problem" in his essay "The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher" (published in 1818).^[45] Schleiermacher maintained that the two dialoguesApology andCrito are purely Socratic. They were, therefore, accurate historical portrayals of the real man, and hence history and not Platonic philosophy at all. All of the other dialogues that Schleiermacher accepted as genuine he considered to be integrally bound together and consistent in their Platonism. Their consistency is related to the three phases of Plato's development:

1. Foundation works, culminating inParmenides;
2. Transitional works, culminating in two so-called families of dialogues, the first consisting ofSophist,Statesman andSymposium, and the second ofPhaedo andPhilebus; and finally
3. Constructive works:Republic,Timaeus andLaws.

Schleiermacher's views on the chronology of Plato's work are rather controversial. In Schleiermacher's view, the character of Socrates evolves over time into the "Stranger" in Plato's work, and fulfills a critical function in Plato's development, as he appears in the first family above as the "Eleatic Stranger" inSophist andStatesman, and as the "Mantitenean Stranger" in theSymposium. The "Athenian Stranger" is the main character of Plato'sLaws. Further, theSophist–Statesman–Philosopher family makes particularly good sense in this order, as Schleiermacher also maintains that the two dialogues,Symposium andPhaedo, show Socrates as the quintessential philosopher in life (guided byDiotima) and into death, the realm of otherness. Thus the triad announced both in the Sophist and in the Statesman is completed, although the Philosopher, being divided dialectically into a "Stranger" portion and a "Socrates" portion, is not called "The Philosopher"; this philosophical crux is left to the reader to determine. Schleiermacher thus takes the position that the real Socratic problem is understanding the dialectic between the figures of the "Stranger" and "Socrates".

Søren Kierkegaard addressedthe Socratic problem in Theses II, III and VII of hisOn the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841).^[46][47]

Karl Popper, who considered himself to be a disciple of Socrates, wrote aboutthe Socratic problem in his bookThe Open Society and Its Enemies (1945).^[48]

Four solutions elucidated by Nails were proposed early in the history of the Socratic problem and are still relevant, even though each still poses problems today:^[4]

1. Socrates is the individual whose qualities exhibited in Plato’s writings are corroborated by Aristophanes and Xenophon.
2. Socrates is he who claims “to possess no wisdom” but still participates in exercises with the aim of gaining understanding.
3. Socrates is the [individual named] Socrates who appears in Plato’s earliest dialogues.
4. The real Socrates is the one who turns from apre-Socratic interest in nature to ethics, instead.

• Popper, Karl (2002).The Open Society and Its Enemies. New York: Routledge.ISBN 978-0-415-29063-0.
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1973).Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato. Ayer Co. Publishers.ISBN 978-0-405-04868-5.
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1996).Ueber die Philosophie Platons. Philos. Bibliotek. Band 486, Meiner Verlag.ISBN 978-3-7873-1462-1.

• Socrates
• Historical controversies
• Historicity

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles to be expanded from March 2022
• All articles to be expanded
• Articles needing additional references from April 2015
• All articles needing additional references