Far from having any system,
physical or metaphysical, to enunciate, Socrates rejected
"the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake“ as a
delusion and a snare;
a delusion, in as much as knowledge, properly so
called is unattainable, and a snare, in so far as it draws us away from the study of conduct. He has therefore
no claim to be regarded as the founder of a philosophical
school. But he had made some tentative contributions to a
theory of morality; he had shown both in his life and in his
death that his principles stood the test of practical
application; and he had asserted
“the autonomy of the individual intellect.” Accordingly,
not one school but several schools sprang up amongst his
associates, those of them who had a turn for speculation
taking severally from his teaching so much as their
pre-existing tendencies and convictions allowed them to
assimilate.
Thus Aristippus of Cyrene interpreted
hedonistically the theoretical morality; Antisthenes the Cynic
copied and caricatured the austere example; Euclides of Megara
practised and perverted the elenctic method; Plato the
Academic, accepting the whole of the Socratic teaching, first
developed it harmoniously in the sceptical spirit of its
author, and afterwards, conceiving that he had found in
Socrates’s agnosticism the germ of a philosophy,
proceeded to construct a system which should embrace at once
ontology, physics, and ethics. From the four schools thus
established sprang subsequently four other schools; the
Epicureans being the natural successors of the Cyrenaics, the
Stoics of the Cynics, the Sceptics of the Megarians, and the
Peripatetics of the Academy. In this way the teaching of
Socrates made itself felt throughout the whole of the post
Socratic philosophy. Of the influence which he exercised
upon Aristippus, Antisthenes and Euclides, the “incomplete
Socratics,” as they are commonly called, as well as upon the
“complete Socratic,” Plato, something must now be said.
The “ incomplete Socratics “ were, like Socrates,
sceptics; but, whereas Aristippus, who seems to have been in
contact with Protagoreanism before he made acquaintance with
Socrates, came to scepticism, as Protagoras had done, from the
Incomplete standpoint of the pluralists, Antisthenes, like his
Socratics. former master Gorgias, and Euclides, in whom the
ancients
rightly saw a successor of Zeno, came to scepticism from the
standpoint of Eleatic henism. In other words, Aristippus was
sceptical because, taking into account the subjective element
in sensation, he found himself compelled to regard what are
called “things” as successions of feelings, which feelings
are themselves absolutely distinct from one another; while
Antisthenes and Euclides were sceptical because, like Zeno,
they did not understand how the same thing could at the same
moment bear various and inconsistent epithets, and
consequently conceiyed all predication which was not identical
to be illegitimate.
Thus Aristippus recognized only feelings,
denying things; Antisthenes recognized things, denying
attributions; and it is probable that in this matter Euclides
was at one with him. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to see how, if the founder of the school had
broken loose from the Zenonian paradox, his
successors, and amongst them Stilpo, should have reconciled
themselves, as they certainly did, to the Cynic denial of
predication.
While the “incomplete Socratics” made no attempt to
overpass the limits which Socrates had imposed upon himself,
within those limits they occupied each his department.
Aristippus, a citizen of the world, drawn to Athens by the
fame of Socrates, and retained there by the sincere affection
which he conceived for him, interpreted the ethical doctrine
of Socrates in accordance with his own theory of pleasure,
which in its turn came under the refining influence of
Socrates’s, theory. Contrary, Antisthenes, a rugged but not ungenerous nature, a hater of
pleasure, troubled himself little about ethical theory and
gave his life to the imitation of his master’s asceticism.
Virtue, he held, depended upon “ works,” not upon
arguments or lessons; all that was necessary to it was the
strength of a Socrates. Yet here too the
Socratic theory had a qualifying effect; so that
Cyrenaic hedonism and Cynic asceticism sometimes exhibit
unexpected approximations. The teaching of Euclides, though
the Good is still supposed to be the highest object of
knowledge, can hardly be said to have an ethical element; and
in consequence of this deficiency the dialectic of Socrates
degenerated in Megarian hands, first into a series of
exercises in fallacies, secondly into a vulgar and futile
eristic. In fact, the partial Socraticisms of the incomplete
Socratics necessarily suffered, even within their own narrow
limits, by the dismemberment which the system had undergone.
Apparently the theory of education was not valued by
any of the three; and, however this may be, they deviated from
Socratic tradition so far as to establish schools, and, as
it would seem, to take fees like the professional educators
called Sophists.
Of the relations in which the metaphysic of Plato stood to
the Socratic search for definitions there are of necessity
almost as many theories as there are interpretations of the Platonic
system.
Initiated into philosophical speculation by the Heraclitean
Cratylus, Plato began his intellectual life as an absolute sceptic, the followers of Heraclitus having towards
the end of the 5th century pushed to its conclusion the
unconscious scepticism of their master. There would have been
then nothing to provoke surprise, if, leaving speculation,
Plato had given himself to politics. In 407, however, he
became acquainted with Socrates, who gave to his thoughts a
new direction. Plato now found an occupation for his
intellectual energies, as Socrates had done, in the scrutiny
of his beliefs and the systematization of his principles of
action. But it was not until the catastrophe of 399 that Plato
gave himself to his life’s work. An exile, cut off from
political ambitions, he came forward as the author of
dialogues which aimed at producing upon readers the same
effect which the voice of the master had produced upon
hearers.
For a time he was content thus to follow in the steps
of Socrates,’ and of this period we have records in those
dialogues which are commonly designated Socratic. But Plato
had too decided a bent for metaphysics to linger long over
propaedeutic studies. Craving knowledge, not merely
provisional and subjective knowledge of ethical concepts, such
as that which had satisfied Socrates, but knowledge of the
causes and laws of the universe, such as that which the
physicists had sought, he asked himself what was necessary
that the “ right opinion “ which Socrates had obtained by
abstraction from particular instances might be converted into
“knowledge” properly so called. In this way Plato was led
to assume for every Socratic universal a corresponding unity,
eternal, immutable, suprasensual, to be the cause of those
particulars which are called by the common name.
On this
assumption the Socratic definition or statement of the “what
“ of the universal, being obtained by the inspection of
particulars, in some sort represented the unity, form, or
“idea “from which they derived their characteristics, and
in so far was valuable; but, in as much as the inspection of the
particulars was partial and imperfect, the Socratic definition
was only a partial and imperfect representation of the
eternal, immutable, suprasensual, idea. How, then, was the
imperfect representation of the idea to be converted into a
perfect representation? To this question Plato’s answer was constant
revision of the provisional definitions which imperfectly
represented the ideas he hoped to bring them into such
shapes that they should culminate in the definition of the
supreme principle, the Good, from which the ideas themselves
derive their being.
If in this way we could pass from
uncertified general notions, reflections of ideas, to the
Good, so as to be able to say, not only that the Good causes
the ideas to be what they are, but also that the Good causes
the ideas to be what we conceive them, we might infer, he
thought, that our definitions, hitherto provisional, are
adequate representations of real existences. But the Platonism
of this period had another ingredient. It has been seen
that the Eleatic Zeno had rested his denial of plurality upon
certain supposed difficulties of predication, and that they
continued to perplex Antisthenes as well as perhaps Euclides
and others of Plato’s contemporaries.
These difficulties
must be disposed of, if the new philosophy was to hold its
ground; and accordingly, to the fundamental assertion of the
existence of eternal immutable ideas, the objects of
knowledge, Plato added two subordinate propositions, namely,
(1) the idea is immanent in the particular and (2) there is an idea wherever a plurality of particulars is called
by the same name. Of these propositions the one was
intended to explain the attribution of various and even
inconsistent epithets to the same particular at the same time,
whilst the other was necessary to make this explanation
available in the case of common terms other than the Socratic
universals. Such was the Platonism of the Republic and
the Phaedo, a provisional ontology, with a scheme of
scientific research, which, as Plato honestly confessed, was
no more than an unrealized aspiration. It was the non Socratic
element which made the weakness of this, the earlier, theory
of ideas.
Plato soon saw that the hypothesis of the idea’s
immanence in particulars entailed the sacrifice of its unity,
whilst as a theory of predication that hypothesis was
insufficient, because applicable to particulars only, not to
the ideas themselves. But with clearer views about
relations and negations the paradox of Zeno ceased to
perplex; and with the consequent withdrawal of the two
supplementary articles the development of the fundamental
assumption of ideas, eternal, immutable, suprasensual, might
be attempted afresh. In the more definite theory which Plato
now propounded the idea was no longer a Socratic universal
perfected and hypostalized, but rather the perfect type of a
natural kind, to which type its imperfect members were related
by imitation, whilst this relation was metaphysically
explained by means of a thoroughgoing idealism. Thus, whereas in the earlier theory of ideas the
ethical universals of Socrates had been held to have’ a
first claim to hypostatization in the world of ideas, they are
now peremptorily excluded, whilst the idealism which
reconciles plurality and unity gives an entirely
new’significance to so much of the Socratic element as is
still retained.
The growth of the metaphysical system necessarily influenced
Plato’s ethical doctrines; but here his final position is
less remote from that of Socrates. Content, in the purely
Socratic period to elaborate and to record ethical definitions Plato as
such as Socrates himself might have propounded, as soon as the theory of ideas offered itself to his
imagination, looked to it for the foundation of ethics as of
all other sciences. Though in the earlier ages the
individual and the state sounded utilitarian morality of
the Socratic sort was useful, nay valuable, the morality of
the future should, he thought, rest upon the knowledge of the
Good. Such is the teaching of the Republic, ,But with the
revision of the metaphysical system came a complete change in
the view which Plato took of ethics and its prospects.
Whilst
in the previous period it had ranked as the first of sciences,
it was now no longer a science; because, though Good absolute
still occupied the first place, Good relative and all its
various forms; justice, temperance, courage, wisdom - not
being ideas, were incapable of being “known.” Hence it is
that the ethical teaching of the later dialogues bears an
intelligible, though perhaps unexpected, resemblance to the
simple practical teaching of the unphilosophical Socrates.
Yet throughout these revolutions of doctrine Plato was ever
true to the Socratic theory of education. His manner indeed
changed; for whereas in the earlier dialogues the
characteristics of the master are studiously and skilfully
preserved, in the later dialogues Socrates first becomes
metaphysical, then ceases to be protagonist, and at last
disappears from the scene. But in the later dialogues, as in
the earlier, Plato’s aim is the aim which Socrates in his
conversation never lost sight of, namely, the dialectical
improvement of the learner.