Essay IV
This essay is due next Tuesday, 10/20. Let us return to our original two-page limit on this one.
Plato adopts three different metaphors to explain the role of the philosopher: In Apology we get the notion of the philosopher as gadfly; in Meno, a dialogue we aren't unfortunately reading, the self-stinging torpedo fish; and in Theaetetus, the philosopher as midwife. Thus,
Apology
Now if by saying this I corrupt the young, this advice must be harmful, but if anyone says that I give different advice, he is talking nonsense. On this point I would say to you, men of Athens: “Whether you believe Anytus [c] or not, whether you acquit me or not, do so on the understanding that this is my course of action, even if I am to face death many times.” Do not create a disturbance, gentlemen, but abide by my request not to cry out at what I say but to listen, for I think it will be to your advantage to listen, and I am about to say other things at which you will perhaps cry out. By no means do this. Be sure that if you kill the sort of man I say I am, you will not harm me more than yourselves. Neither Meletus nor [d] Anytus can harm me in any way; he could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse; certainly he might kill me, or perhaps banish or disfranchise me, which he and maybe others think to be great harm, but I do not think so. I think he is doing himself much greater harm doing what he is doing now, attempting to have a man executed unjustly. Indeed, men of Athens, I am far from making a defense now on my own behalf, as might be thought, but on yours, to [e] prevent you from wrongdoing by mistreating the god’s gift to you by condemning me; for if you kill me you will not easily find another like me. I was attached to this city by the god—though it seems a ridiculous thing to say—as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and [31] reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.
Another such man will not easily come to be among you, gentlemen, and if you believe me you will spare me. You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me; if convinced by Anytus you could easily kill me, and then you could sleep on for the rest of your days, unless the god, in his care for you, sent you someone else. That I am the kind of person to be a gift of [b] the god to the city you might realize from the fact that it does not seem like human nature for me to have neglected all my own affairs and to have tolerated this neglect now for so many years while I was always concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue. Now if I profited from this by charging a fee for my advice, there would be some sense to it, but you can see for yourselves that, for all their shameless accusations, my accusers have not been able in their impudence to bring forward a witness to say [c] that I have ever received a fee or ever asked for one. I, on the other hand, have a convincing witness that I speak the truth, my poverty.
Meno
MENO: Socrates, before I even met you I used to hear that you are always [80] in a state of perplexity and that you bring others to the same state, and now I think you are bewitching and beguiling me, simply putting me under a spell, so that I am quite perplexed. Indeed, if a joke is in order, you seem, in appearance and in every other way, to be like the broad torpedo fish, for it too makes anyone who comes close and touches it feel numb, and you now seem to have had that kind of effect on me, for both [b] my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you. Yet I have made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions, very good speeches as I thought, but now I cannot even say what it is. I think you are wise not to sail away from Athens to go and stay elsewhere, for if you were to behave like this as a stranger in another city, you would be driven away for practising sorcery.
SOCRATES: You are a rascal, Meno, and you nearly deceived me.
MENO: Why so particularly, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I know why you drew this image of me. [c]
MENO: Why do you think I did?
SOCRATES: So that I should draw an image of you in return. I know that all handsome men rejoice in images of themselves; it is to their advantage, for I think that the images of beautiful people are also beautiful, but I will draw no image of you in turn. Now if the torpedo fish is itself numb and so makes others numb, then I resemble it, but not otherwise, for I myself do not have the answer when I perplex others, but I am more perplexed than anyone when I cause perplexity in others. So now I do not know what virtue is; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you [d] are certainly like one who does not know. Nevertheless, I want to examine and seek together with you what it may be.
Theaetetus
THEAETETUS: But I assure you, Socrates, I have often tried to think this [e] out, when I have heard reports of the questions you ask. But I can never persuade myself that anything I say will really do; and I never hear anyone else state the matter in the way that you require. And yet, again, you know, I can’t even stop worrying about it.
SOCRATES: Yes; those are the pains of labor, dear Theaetetus. It is because you are not barren but pregnant.
THEAETETUS: I don’t know about that, Socrates. I’m only telling you what’s happened to me.
SOCRATES: Then do you mean to say you’ve never heard about my being [149] the son of a good hefty midwife, Phaenarete?
THEAETETUS: Oh, yes, I’ve heard that before.
SOCRATES: And haven’t you ever been told that I practice the same art myself?
THEAETETUS: No, I certainly haven’t.
SOCRATES: But I do, believe me. Only don’t give me away to the rest of the world, will you? You see, my friend, it is a secret that I have this art. That is not one of the things you hear people saying about me, because they don’t know; but they do say that I am a very odd sort of person, always causing people to get into difficulties. You must have heard that, surely?
[b] THEAETETUS: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: And shall I tell you what is the explanation of that?
THEAETETUS: Yes, please do.
SOCRATES: Well, if you will just think of the general facts about the business of midwifery, you will see more easily what I mean. You know, I suppose, that women never practice as midwives while they are still conceiving and bearing children themselves. It is only those who are past child-bearing who take this up.
THEAETETUS: Oh, yes.
SOCRATES: They say it was Artemis who was responsible for this custom; [c] it was because she, who undertook the patronage of childbirth, was herself childless. She didn’t, it’s true, entrust the duties of midwifery to barren women, because human nature is too weak to acquire skill where it has no experience. But she assigned the task to those who have become incapable of child-bearing through age—honoring their likeness to herself.
THEAETETUS: Yes, naturally.
SOCRATES: And this too is very natural, isn’t it?—or perhaps necessary? I mean that it is the midwives who can tell better than anyone else whether women are pregnant or not.
THEAETETUS: Yes, of course.
[d] SOCRATES: And then it is the midwives who have the power to bring on the pains, and also, if they think fit, to relieve them; they do it by the use of simple drugs, and by singing incantations. In difficult cases, too, they can bring about the birth; or, if they consider it advisable, they can promote a miscarriage.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is so.
SOCRATES: There’s another thing too. Have you noticed this about them, that they are the cleverest of match-makers, because they are marvellously knowing about the kind of couples whose marriage will produce the best children?
THEAETETUS: No, that is not at all familiar to me.
SOCRATES: But they are far prouder of this, believe me, than of cutting [e] the umbilical cord. Think now. There’s an art which is concerned with the cultivation and harvesting of the crops. Now is it the same art which prescribes the best soil for planting or sowing a given crop? Or is it a different one?
THEAETETUS: No, it is all the same art.
SOCRATES: Then applying this to women, will there be one art of the sowing and another of the harvesting?
THEAETETUS: That doesn’t seem likely, certainly.
SOCRATES: No, it doesn’t. But there is also an unlawful and unscientific [150] practice of bringing men and women together, which we call procuring; and because of that the midwives—a most august body of women—are very reluctant to undertake even lawful matchmaking. They are afraid that if they practice this, they may be suspected of the other. And yet, I suppose, reliable matchmaking is a matter for no one but the true midwife.
THEAETETUS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: So the work of the midwives is a highly important one; but it is not so important as my own performance. And for this reason, that there is not in midwifery the further complication, that the patients are [b] sometimes delivered of phantoms and sometimes of realities, and that the two are hard to distinguish. If there were, then the midwife’s greatest and noblest function would be to distinguish the true from the false offspring—don’t you agree?
THEAETETUS: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: Now my art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing [c] about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom. The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough. And the reason of it is this, that God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbidden me to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim as the [d] child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom. But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make progress—a progress which is amazing both to other people and to themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring. And a proof of this may be seen in the [e] many cases where people who did not realize this fact took all the credit to themselves and thought that I was no good. They have then proceeded to leave me sooner than they should, either of their own accord or through the influence of others. And after they have gone away from me they have resorted to harmful company, with the result that what remained within them has miscarried; while they have neglected the children I helped them to bring forth, and lost them, because they set more value upon lies and phantoms than upon the truth; finally they have been set down for ignorant fools, both by themselves and by everybody else. One of these people was [151] Aristides the son of Lysimachus; and there have been very many others. Sometimes they come back, wanting my company again, and ready to move heaven and earth to get it. When that happens, in some cases the divine sign that visits me forbids me to associate with them; in others, it permits me, and then they begin again to make progress.
There is another point also in which those who associate with me are like women in child-birth. They suffer the pains of labor, and are filled day and night with distress; indeed they suffer far more than women. And this pain my art is able to bring on, and also to allay.
[b] Well, that’s what happens to them; but at times, Theaetetus, I come across people who do not seem to me somehow to be pregnant. Then I realize that they have no need of me, and with the best will in the world I undertake the business of match-making; and I think I am good enough—God willing—at guessing with whom they might profitably keep company. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus; and a great number also to other wise and inspired persons.
Well, my dear lad, this has been a long yarn; but the reason was that I have a suspicion that you (as you think yourself) are pregnant and in [c] labor. So I want you to come to me as to one who is both the son of a midwife and himself skilled in the art; and try to answer the questions I shall ask you as well as you can. And when I examine what you say, I may perhaps think it is a phantom and not truth, and proceed to take it quietly from you and abandon it. Now if this happens, you mustn’t get savage with me, like a mother over her first-born child. Do you know, people have often before now got into such a state with me as to be literally ready to bite when I take away some nonsense or other from them. They never believe that I am doing this in all goodwill; they are so far from [d] realizing that no God can wish evil to man, and that even I don’t do this kind of thing out of malice, but because it is not permitted to me to accept a lie and put away truth.
So begin again, Theaetetus, and try to say what knowledge is. And don’t on any account tell me that you can’t. For if God is willing, and you play the man, you can.
How do these explanations of the role of the philosopher differ and in what ways are they alike? Are these characterizations compatible with one another? Why or why not? In any case, how might these characterizations serve to illuminate not just the philosopher's role but the very nature of philosophical inquiry itself as you've taken part in it in this course (whether, notably, in class, or outside of class in other discussions)? Finally, if philosophy is an activity, as Wittgenstein asserts, then what kind of an activity is it?