Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [11]
He lived during the first half of Athens’ era of greatness (the span from its defeat of the Persians at Salamis in 480 to the death of Alexander in 323), when philosophy and the arts flourished as never before. The son of a sculptor and a midwife, he was fascinated by what he learned of philosophy in his youth from Protagoras, Zeno of Elea, and others. He early decided to make it his life work, but, unlike the Sophists, he took no fees for his teaching; he would talk to anyone who wanted to discuss ideas with him. He occasionally worked as a stonecutter and carver of statues but preferred the luxury of thought and discourse to the comforts money could buy. Content to be poor, he wore one simple shabby robe all year and went barefoot; once, looking about in the marketplace, he exclaimed with pleasure, “How many things there are that I do not want!”
Not that he was an ascetic; he liked good company, sometimes went to banquets given by the wealthy, and freely confessed to feeling a “flame” within him when he peered inside a youth’s garment. Uncommonly homely, with a considerable paunch, a bald head, broad snub nose, and thick lips, he looked like a satyr, his friend Alcibiades told him. Unlike a satyr, however, he was a model of moderation and self-control; he seldom drank wine, remained sober when he did, and was chaste even when in love. The beautiful and amoral Alcibiades, slipping into Socrates’ bed one night to seduce him, was astonished to be treated as if by a father. “I thought I had been disgraced,” he later said, according to Plato’s Symposium, “and yet I admired the way this man was made, and his temperance and courage.”
Socrates kept himself in good physical condition; he fought bravely during the Peloponnesian War, where his ability to withstand cold and hunger amazed his fellow soldiers. After long years of instructing his pupils, he was tried and condemned for his teachings, which Athenian democrats said corrupted youth. The real problem was that he was contemptuous of their democracy and numbered many aristocrats, their political foes, among his followers. He accepted the verdict with equanimity and refused the opportunity to escape, preferring to die with dignity.
Although the Delphic Oracle once declared Socrates the wisest man in the world, he disputed that pronouncement; it was his style to claim that he knew nothing and was wiser than others only in knowing that he knew nothing. He claimed to be a “midwife of thought,” one who merely helped others give birth to their ideas. This, of course, was a pose; in reality he had a number of firmly held opinions about certain philosophic matters. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he was uninterested in cosmology, physics, or perception; as he says in Plato’s Apology, “I have nothing to do with physical speculations.” His concern, rather, was with ethics. His goal was to help others lead the virtuous life, which, he said, comes about through knowledge, since no man sins wittingly.
To help his students attain knowledge, Socrates relied not on lectures but on a wholly different educational method. He asked his students questions that seemingly led them step by step to discover the truth for themselves. This technique, known as dialectic, was first used by Zeno, from whom he may have learned it, but it was Socrates who developed and popularized it. In doing so, he promulgated a theory of knowledge that would be the major alternative to perception-based theories from then on.
According to that theory, knowledge is recollection; we learn not from experience but from reasoning, which leads us to discover knowledge that exists within us (“to educate” comes from the Latin meaning “to lead out”). Sometimes Socrates asks for definitions and then leads his partner into contradictions until the definition is reshaped. Sometimes he asks for or offers examples, from which his partner finally makes a generalization. Sometimes he leads him, step by step, to a conclusion that contradicts one he had previously stated, or to a conclusion he had not