Socrates’ Questnow a vocation. It was a quest that deployed reason as a tool,
to test the limits of what people really knew: scholars today
talk of Socrates’ method, the so-called elenchus – meaning the
drawing out of the consequences of a position or belief to see
whether they are contradictory or inconsistent. But Socrates
was also conscious that reason has limits. Like a pianist who
quickly learns that technique is only the start of making music,
Socrates learnt that reason is far from the whole of life. Reason
can do much work – notably alerting you to your ignorance.
But the development of matters as diverse as your character and
intuitions, your circle of friends and the cultivation of what you
love, and the challenge of the Delphic imperatives, must also
play their part.
Are gods good?
But even all these elements do not capture the whole of it. There
is a theological dimension to incorporate too. His references
to the gods were a pervasive and subtle part of his make-up,
made all the difference to his philosophy, and are as important
as the personal and political aspects of his life. If questioning is
the beginning of wisdom, it seems that he thought a religious
sense is what draws it out.
Consider one of Socrates’ most famous theological arguments,
found in another dialogue, the Euthyphro. It tells the story of
another of Socrates’ conversations with a young man, after
whom the dialogue is named, and takes place in front of the
magistrates’ courts in the marketplace. Euthyphro had come
there to prosecute a charge of murder, and no ordinary murder,
but one allegedly committed by his father. What is even more
startling about the case is that the person whom his father had
supposedly killed was only a slave. What had happened was
that this slave had himself killed another slave in a drunken
rage. Euthyphro’s father had bound the offender and dumped
him in a ditch. However, he had then forgotten about him and,
left there, the slave died of exposure. Euthyphro is a puritanical