A World Without Socrates

[jkay]

Socrates was real, but didn't invent doubt

Socrates was mentioned by two separate contemporary historians - Thucydides of his Peloponnesian War service, Xenophon of a courageous stand against the Assembly, so I tend to think he was real.

Now, it's also probably true that his name was taken by other Athenian intellectuals, both as advertising, and as a handy extra in socratic dialogues. The practice even persists today.

I think the ideas of doubt and of placing faith in observable facts must precede Socrates by at least a generation, because there's a generation of great Greek men of Socrates' generation whom all made great progress in arts and sciences that very way. They included Thucydides, whom invented modern history, Socrates himself, and Democritus, originator of atomic theory. All also preceded Aristotle on the scene by atleast eight decades.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Taking about Aristotle, the reason most of the science-y people I know criticize him is that he basically made a lot of assertions without properly testing them. Eg., he said 'heavier things fall faster than smaller things'. But if you have two outwardly identical objects of much different weight, like a sphere made of lead versus a sphere made of some lighter wood, and drop them at the same time, it can easily be seen that they fall at the same rate. Aristotle was also so smart and influential that no one seemed to want to test his assertions until the beginning of the scientific revolution.

 

[tbrookside]

I think that Socrates is extremely well-attested by the standards of his era and if we doubt his literal existence, there aren't too many historical figures whose existence can be trusted.

With regard to the argument about Aristotle being a negative influence, I agree with those who have argued that the problem wasn't Aristotle himself at all, but the later society that accepted proofs based on arguments from authority, rather than experimentation. Aristotle, like Galen, just happened to be declared one of the authorities early on. Had he not existed, some other authority would have been put in his empty place.

Plato was a far, far, far more pernicious influence on Western thought and development. Take Plato out, and you might speed up western intellectual and scientific development quite a bit. The churchmen loved Plato because he was at heart a mystic and not a rationalist at all. Frankly, a lot of the doubt about the existence of a historical Socrates is probably due to the fact that Plato put a lot of his own mystical nonsense into his teacher's mouth in the dialogues. It's pretty likely, to me at least, that the "real" Socrates was an extreme skeptic and proto-Cynic, and the aporeia material in the Platonic dialogues was his actual teaching, along with the questioning method. But all the Forms stuff and the totalitarianism in the Republic was all Plato's. Because this mishmash of material doesn't fit together very well, that opens the door for revisionists to argue that Socrates didn't really exist and was a composite - when the truth is that he did exist, but Plato was just a liar.

 

[Alexandru H.]

Plato did invent his Socrates, but he should be excused for that: Plato is really the greatest thinker of the Ancient Era. Neoplatonism, Christian and Islamic mysticism, modern philosophy, all are connected, one way or another, to him. And I think that Socrates wouldn't have gained this kind of popularity without him. Most other schools of thought deriving from his disciples were either gone by the 3rd century, or transformed (as was the case with cynicism) quite radically by a later philosopher. In reality, Socrates was just a local sophist that did not ask for money and placed well-thought questions to athenians. The earliest Platonic dialogues constitute a proof: by taking the discussion further, Socrates manages to convince his companions that the original statement can be reversed and still seem true, a well-known sophist tool.

If you take Plato out, you might get cars in the 1700s, but they'll be driven by mindless drones, not much smarter than apes...

 

[Maur]

Plato was a moron

 

[tbrookside]

Plato did invent his Socrates, but he should be excused for that: Plato is really the greatest thinker of the Ancient Era. Neoplatonism, Christian and Islamic mysticism, modern philosophy, all are connected, one way or another, to him. And I think that Socrates wouldn't have gained this kind of popularity without him. Most other schools of thought deriving from his disciples were either gone by the 3rd century, or transformed (as was the case with cynicism) quite radically by a later philosopher. In reality, Socrates was just a local sophist that did not ask for money and placed well-thought questions to athenians. The earliest Platonic dialogues constitute a proof: by taking the discussion further, Socrates manages to convince his companions that the original statement can be reversed and still seem true, a well-known sophist tool.

If you take Plato out, you might get cars in the 1700s, but they'll be driven by mindless drones, not much smarter than apes...

Just a quick question for the board in general:

Basically here we have an occasion where I find the thought of Plato to be a net negative for western development because it disguised mysticism as reason and in doing so allowed 1000 different flavors of mysticism to flourish. Alexandru, OTOH, thinks that Plato's work was a boon to mankind, essentially for the same reason.

I'm new here, and don't want to offend anyone. What is the etiquette for debates about the impact of religious or quasi-religious belief on social development? I don't want to start making counterfactual statements that others will see as a slur on their beliefs, but at the same time it's such a central aspect of alternate history that it's hard to avoid.

Can I get some guidance on this issue?

 

[IMP CAES AVG]

Just a quick question for the board in general:

Basically here we have an occasion where I find the thought of Plato to be a net negative for western development because it disguised mysticism as reason and in doing so allowed 1000 different flavors of mysticism to flourish. Alexandru, OTOH, thinks that Plato's work was a boon to mankind, essentially for the same reason.

I would say the main reason Platonic philosophy has come to be associated with an anti-rationalist stance is largely due to the the fact that many elements of Platonist thought were co-opted by the Christian Church in the 3rd and 4th centuries, which in turn lead to the suppression of the traditional Hellenic philosophical rationalism and Aristotelian empiricism. However this is far more a result of Christianity's adoption as the Roman imperial state religion then with its preference for Platonic doctrines. Regardless, one can hardly argue that it was Platonism itself that retarded Western scientific developement -- after all, it was a Neo-platonist philosopher, Proclus, who made the last recorded astronomical observations of antiquity, and also wrote extensive commentaries on the mathematics of Euclid, and many of the late Neo-platonists, among the Iamblichus, Simplicius, and Proclus himself made efforts to integrate Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic systems.

 

[Elidor]

allowed 1000 different flavors of mysticism to flourish.

Earnest philosophical dialogue, even when it is "bullshit", is infinitely better than silence. No man can make a claim to absolute truth that is not uncontested somehow, so all we have is a multitude of useful interpretations, all generated, essentially by dialogue (even in the case of science) . Instead of judging philosophers by how close to our observations they were, we should judge philosophers and people in general by their creativity in stimulating dialogue and thought, and like Alexandru said earlier, Plato tops the list.

 

[Alexandru H.]

Besides, I find it strange to associate Plato with retarded scientific development when he was a guy truly interested in science. I cannot but associate Aristotle's later career with the teachings he gained at the Academy, one cannot forget the Plato obsession regarding mathematics, numbers, geometry.

Greek philosophy has something special: it can be used to defend many different positions because it wasn't always a "clean" affair. Take Pythagoras: a mathematician might love him, but so will a mystical teacher. The sophists might be regarded as simple rhetoricians but they also taught the importance of the discourse and dialogue (not to mention inventing our modern liberal curricula). It's not even just a greek affair: Newton's interest in alchemy, Galilei's foraging into theology...

Another thing: I don't believe mysticism to be a bad thing and I don't believe we should, as a society, only contribute to the evolution of science. Christianity (and Islam, for that matter) used Plato in creating better-thought-out doctrines and I'm happy for it. The interest for Plato fueled the Medicis and the early Renaissance. Ok, it's good that some people want to promote science, but it's a bit tiresome to hear that everyone in antiquity or middle ages destroyed the possibilities of the early automobile. Science is not (yet) God...