Socrates in Aristotle's History of Philosophy

chapter 6 Socrates in Aristotle’s History of Philosophy

Christopher Moore

1 Introduction

Several late biographical sources on Aristotle link him in two ways with Socrates, his Doktorgroßvater, neither of which is likely but both of which hint at some truth. Relying on a letter purportedly from Aristotle to Alexander of Macedon, they say that he studied with Socrates for three years.1 He could not have, growing up in Macedonian Stagira fifteen and more years after Socrates’ execution.2 Yet the pedagogical and “academic” lineage is close to direct—the teacher of one’s teacher is (also) one’s teacher—and Aristotle refers often to Plato’s teachings in his dialogues as coming from Socrates. The same ancient Lives of Aristotle also report that, under threat from harsh anti-Macedonian reprisals following Alexander’s conquest of Athens, Aristotle fled to Chalcis to avoid legal reprisal and a capital sentence: he claimed “not to want Athens to sin against philosophy twice.”3 It is doubtful he would have said this: in no extant work does he mention Socrates’ trial, call Socrates’ efforts “philosophy,” or present Socrates as a moral hero. Yet the parallels of political and intellectual history really are striking. Both anecdotes thus stumble in their strain to connect the lives of Aristotle with Socrates, a connection at once undeniable but with a content or form deceptively difficult to establish. This difficulty may have roots in Aristotle’s own writing. In extant work he never makes reference to Socrates’ role in his pedagogical lineage. Maybe it goes without saying, Plato’s tutelage with Socrates and his own with Plato being evident facts. Even aside from personal relations, however, Aristotle gives Socrates remarkably little explicit discussion, given the importance of

1 Vita Marciana 5 (~ Vita Vulgata 4); Vita Latina 5, adding that it was the Delphic Apollo that sent him to Athens. 2 Some scholars have interpreted the referent of “Socrates” as Socrates the Younger, an important mathematician in the Academy, mentioned frequently by Plato (Tht. 147d2, Soph. 218b, Plt. passim, probably Ep. 11 358d–e, cf. Arist. Metaph. Ζ.11 1036b25); others have emended the text to read “Isocrates” (e.g., Chroust 1973, 1.96–103). Neither interpretation gets corroboration: Düring 1957, 108; Natali 2013, 156 n. 32. 3 Vita Marciana 41 (~Vita Vulgata 19); Vita Latina 13, Elias in Ar. Cat. 123.15, Sen. Otio 8.1, Orig. Adv. Cel. 1.380. Cf. Natali 2013, 63–4.

Socrates to Plato and other fourth-century philosophers. In the thirteen-book Metaphysics, for example, Socrates appears meaningfully only three times, each time in subordinate clauses or sub-arguments. Across the three Ethics, the philosophical topic that Socrates practically inaugurated, he earns about a dozen sentences, most relatively ungenerous and about a narrow range of topics. Across thousands of pages of Aristotle’s private and public work, we know only about forty substantive references to Socrates.4 To be sure, Aristotle also uses the name “Socrates” in logical examples, but his reason and even referent are uncertain;5 and he refers to the authoritative voice in Platonic dialogues as “Socrates,” but with so little sensitivity for the person that he calls the Laws’ speaker, the Athenian Stranger, “Socrates” too.6 A philosopher’s relative silence about another philosopher at a two-generation remove may in general matter little; I, for example, have never cited my advisor’s (still-living) advisor. But Socrates and Aristotle are special cases! Socrates has perhaps the leading position in our history of philosophy: as icon of the practice, as pivot in its focus, and as inspiration to its first real impresario, Plato. Aristotle had a zealous concern to articulate the history of his discipline, to use it as a crèche for dialectical endoxa, and to reflect on philosophical methodology and its relevance to understanding the human condition. Would we not expect Socrates to play a more explicit role in Aristotle’s writing? Not all scholars have been so puzzled, for at least three kinds of reasons. Some believe that by the late 370s even Plato had moved on to his own constructive metaphysical and epistemological interests, and the Academy in general focused on mathematics; Aristotle would have entered an Academy already sentimentally and intellectually divorced from Socrates.7 Important

4 Deman 1942, which collections and discusses Aristotle’s testimony of Socrates, provides forty-one texts; this includes references in works of dubious provenance and those using the adjective “Socratic,” as in the genre of dialogue writing. See also SSR I C 1–40. 5 E.g., Metaph. A 991a25–27, Soph. el. 5, etc. Taylor 1911, 43–44, argues that the name refers to Socrates the Younger; Jackson 1920, 194–195, infers the existence of a portrait of Socrates (the Elder) in Aristotle’s lecture room; Fazzo 2013, 331, says Socrates the Elder has a ubiquitous reputation and “paradigmatic individuality.” I observe that Plato already had Socrates use himself as a generic example in, e.g., Phd. 98c and Tht. 203a. 6 As authoritative Platonic voice: see, e.g., Gen. Corr. 335b10; Rh. 1367b7–9 and 1415b30–32 (both about a remark in the Menexenus, though the imperfect ἔλεγον in one of them might suggest that Aristotle believes that the dialogue captured a favorite Socratic saying; cf. Taylor 1911, 45); Rh. 1419a8–12 (from the Apology, which Aristotle might but need not take as historical); Pol. 1260a20–21, 1261a6–1264b40, 1265a11 (Laws); etc. 7 E.g., Jaeger 1962, 13–23; Dillon’s 2003 study of the “Old Academy” reveals this in particular; there is no index entry for “Socrates,” and its two substantive references to Socrates make the