The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul Professor John Burnet, LL. D
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1 THE BRITISH ACADEMY SECON D AN N U AL PH IL OS OPH I CAL LECTU RE H E NR IE TTE H E R T! TRU ST The S oc ra ti c Doc t rin e of the S ou l D Professor John Bu rnet , LL . L ondon P ublished for the British Acad emy B r lf d Ox f d U s s y Humph ey Mi or , or niver ity Pres E C A . men Corner, S E C O ND A N N U A L P H IL O S O PH ICA L L E C TU R E HENRIE ’I‘TE HERT! TRUST THE S OCRATI C DO CTR IN E OF THE SOU L D BY ROF E SSO R J B T LL . P OH N URNE , Janua r 26 1 91 6 y , M Y O R DS A DI E S A N D E N T L E M E N L , L G , When the President and Council did me the honour of inviting me to deliver the Annual Philosophical Lecture, and when they asked me of to take Socrates as my subject, they were, course, aware that the f treatment o such a theme must be largely philological and historical . I, certainly, have no claim to be regarded as a philosopher, but I have tried hard to understand what Socrates was and what he did, and of I conceive that to be a question genuine philosophical interest . is one of Whatever else it , philosophy, in aspect it, is the progressive ff of to e ort man find his true place in the world, and that aspect must of be treated historically, since it is part human progress, and philo of logically, since it involves the interpretation documents . I am not of of to afraid, then, the objection that most what I have say to- day is history rather than philosophy . We are men , not angels, ' and for many of us our best chance of getting a glimpse of things on is of their eternal side to approach them along the path time . More of W of over, some us have hat may be called a sense loyalty to great no men . In a way, doubt, it does not matter whether we owe a truth to or S or for Pythagoras ocrates Plato, but it is natural us to desire u r to know o benefactors and keep them in grateful remembrance . for of I make no apology, therefore, the historical character much that to I have lay before you, and I shall begin by stating the problem in a strictly historical form . to Themistiu s J In a letter the philosopher , the Emperor ulian says The achievements of Alexander the Great are outdone in my eyes son of S 0 hroni u It e W by Socrates p sc s . is to him I ascrib the isdom of of of Plato, the fortitude Antisthenes, the generalship Xenophon, M 4 SECOND ANNUAL PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURE Eretriac S im mias the and Megaric philosophies, with Cebes, , Phaedo To and countless others . him too we owe the colonies that they S planted, the Lyceum , the toa and the Academies . Who ever found salvation in the victories of Alexander ! Whereas it is thanks to Socrates that all who find salvation in philosophy are being saved 1 even now . J ’ These words of ulian s are still true, and that is partly why there S is so little agreement about ocrates . The most diverse philosophies u new have so ght to father themselves upon him, and each account of him tends to reflect the fashions and prejudices of the hour . At one . time he is an enlightened deist, at another a radical atheist He has been lauded as the father of scepticism and again as the high priest of mysticism as a democratic social reformer and as a victim of democratic intolerance and ignorance . He has even been claimed ! u N o with at least equal reason as a Q aker . wonder that his latest : biographer, H . Maier, exclaims In the presence of each fresh attempt to bring the personality of is Socrates nearer to us, the impression that always recurs the same The m an whose influence was so widespread and s o profound cannot have been like that 2 ’ Unfortunately that is just the impression left on me by Maier s own bulky volume, though he has mastered the material and his treatment of U it is sound as far as it goes . nless we can find some other line of u s approach, it looks as if Socrates must still remain for the Great Unknown . ’ That, to be sure, is not Maier s view . He thinks he knows a great or 600 deal about Socrates, he would not have written pages and more about him . The conclusion he comes to is that Socrates was S not, properly peaking, a philosopher, which makes it all the more of remarkable that the philosophers the next generation, however ff S much they di ered in other respects, all agreed in regarding ocrates difierences as their master . Maier makes much of the between the Socratic schools and urges that these could not have arisen if Socrates had been a philosopher with a system of his own . There seems to be something in that at first sight, but it only makes it more puzzling that these philosophers should have wished to represent their philo sophies as Socratic at all . In modern times the most inconsistent l C or K phi osophies have been called artesian antian or Hegelian, but in these cases we can usually make ou t how they were derived from 1 264 c . 2 ’ H Maier Sokm tes sein Werk und s in schzchtlic tellu n Tubi . e e e he S e , , g g ( ng n , 1 91 3) p . 3 . THE SOCRATIC DOCTRINE OF THE SOUL K or . e Descartes, ant, Hegel respectively Each of th se thinkers had set up some new principle which was then applied in divergent and even contradictory ways by their successors , and we should expect to of ! find that Socrates did something the same kind . eller, from whom most of us have learned, thought he knew what it was . ' B e r s hilow hie Socrates discovered the universal and founded the g ifl p p . Maier will have nothing to do with that, and I rather think he is wise . not The evidence does bear examination , and in any case the hypo thesis would only account for Plato (if it would even do that) . The remain . other Socratics h unexplained If, however, we are to be of to deprived this ingenious construction, we want something replace f or . it, and this we look to Maier in vain He tells us that Socrates was of not a philosopher in the proper sense the word, but only of own f a moral teacher with a distinctive method his , that o ’ n dialectical protreptic In other words, his philosophy was nothi g more than his plan of making people good by arguing with them in S a peculiar way . urely the man whose influence has been so great cannot have been like that ! Now it is clearly impossible to discuss the Socratic question in all of so its bearings within the limits a single lecture, what I propose to do is to take Maier as the ablest and most recent advocate of the Vi was not ew that Socrates really a philosopher, and to apply the Socratic method of reasoning from admissions made by the other side . see u s If we try to where these will lead , we may possibly reach d conclusions Maier himself has faile to draw, and these will be all the i more cogent if based solely on evidence he allows to be valid . He s s o a candid writer, and the assumptions he makes are few that, if out on a case can be made these alone, it stands a fair chance of being a sound one . The experiment seemed at least worth trying, and the f o m so . result it was new to yself at any rate, it may be new to others ’ . n of I resolved not to quarrel , the , with Maier s estimate the value of ou r of sources . He rejects the testimony Xenophon, who did not belong to the intimate Socratic circle, and who was hardly more than -fiv twenty e years old when he saw Socrates for the last time . He also disallows the evidence of Aristotle, who came to Athens as a lad of of S eighteen thirty years after the death ocrates, and who had no important sources of information other than those accessible to our . u our selves That leaves s with Plato as sole witness, but Maier does not his . accept testimony in its entirety . Far from it For reasons as I need not discuss, since I propose to accept his conclusion a basis 6 SECOND ANNUAL PH ILOSOPHICAL LECTURE ’ m o we to for argu ent, he h lds that must confine ourselves Plato s out A olo Crito earliest writings, and he particularly singles the p g y and , to of S m osium which he adds the speech Alcibiades in the y p . In of these two works, and in that single portion a third, he holds that ’ Plato had no other intention than to set the Master s personality and lifework before ou r eyes without additions of his own This does A olo of not mean , observe, that the p gy is a report the speech actually b S his Crito delivered y ocrates at trial, or that the conversation with S m in the prison ever took place .