The Case Against Socrates ( Anti-Socrates Polemic )

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The Case Against Socrates

It is often assumed that Socrates was one of the greatest and wisest philosophers, that he was the embodiment of nobility; but I strongly beg to differ on this; in reality, he was nothing more than a bitter and resentful walking abortion, who corrupted the youth of Athens with his life-negating drivel.

The ancient Athenians believed in the value of both the mind and body. But Socrates, being the hideous creature he was, devalued physical beauty all together and placed ’ spiritual ’ beauty on a pedestal. He did this, because, as prior mentioned, he was extremely ugly, and out of resentment, relegated physical beauty to a low status and sought to promote that which could give him some sort of recognition in the world: the soul, the non-physical.

Physical appearance is not superficial, as Socrates and many today still believe; it is the manifestation of genetic potential! There is an evolutionary reason why we are attracted to beautiful people and it is most certainly not some trivial, superficial reason. Good looking people have superior genetics, thus provide a better chance of having healthy offspring.

Socrates reaped what he sowed; that piece of vermin was rightly condemned! He sullied the Greek aesthetic of physical perfection.

Fuck Socrates!

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I think you make some interesting threads — probably because your focus is often philosophical and cultural pillars.

I am wondering though, which Dialogue (or play, Clouds (?)) brought you to this conclusion?

The dialogue that comes to my mind right away is Symposium but a lot of Socrates’ speeches give an opposing view to the one you give here:

Those are a few passages from the Symposium.

I think there is more Socrates than you might give him credit for. I would understand if you felt his moral teaching had set thought in a bad direction, but if you look at another of Socrates’ students, Xenophon, you might find something more in the Socratic teaching than mere moralism. Or not. :open_mouth:

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Socrates became blamed for the void of values after the war, and preached anti democratic principles and Atheism to his students. That he can be likened to Nietzche in this respect, a very early version, of a repeating post war rebellion against the status quo.
The mere fact that his morality was anti democratic is a far jump from the idea that he degraded the beauty of the human form. It is perhaps an allusion to message the illusions nature of ideals, to those to whom such a gift offers little recompense.The genetic program is not what he was sore about, perhaps he saw the transitory nature of real versus aesthetic ideal, the latter retaining more conceptual than perceptual durability. This is no sign of weakness, it is mere,y a transformation, of mature perceptions. After all is not wisdom its’self more significant then mere beauty? Is not beauty not evident, if not through the perceptions of the wise interpreters of aesthetic principles?

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OK, that is one interpretation, but I find this more credible.
Socrates was fighting a rearguard action trying to prevent what he thought
was a degeneration of Athens. His true opponent was the relativism of thought
that had invaded Athens. He was fighting the sophists who by their arguments
was creating a relativist society. “Man is the measurement of all things” That viewpoint
was the target of Socrates. Plato was a RELIGIOUS thinker and if Socrates believed in
or created the idea of Forms that Plato used, then Socrates was at heart an religious
thinker also. think of them both, as conservatives of today, who are claiming they
are doing god’s work, following god, obeying god. That would be Socrates and Plato.
Both are fighting the “liberal” (to use the modern term) ideal of relative thinking
in terms of morality and government. This is no different than the culture wars of the
last thirty years in America. The liberals in this picture would be the Sophists.
They were trying to turn Athens back into the “paradise” that it once was by
the same thoughts, ideals and actions that conservatives use today. A hankering for
the good old days and the good old days were superior to this modern times and
we just need to return to the old time morality, a believe in a fixed god who decides
everything. Fate played a big role in ancient Greece and they too believed in this idea
of fate. The idea of free will did not make that big of a presence in Athens,
Oedipus would be an example of a man who used his free will and look what happened to him.

It was important for Athenians to follow and obey the will of the gods and the sophist by
their teaching was teaching something quite different and this is what Socrates and Plato were
fighting.

Kropotkin

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By the sheer luck of the genetic draw, some are born ugly and some are born beautiful.

Well, however subjective and/or objective that might actually turn out to be.

But a few of the “beautiful ones” are just not content to leave the implications of this to chance. Instead, they feel compelled to ennoble their own beauty by embedding it in something analogous to a philosophical destiny in turn.

One is reminded of the manner in which Ayn Rand turned both her beautiful heroines and less than beautiful [but supremely masculine] heroes into cartoon characters. One could not be an Objectivist unless one looked like an Objectivist. Hell, they even had Objectivist names, didn’t they?

But then all objectivists seem hell bent on sharing this reductionist mentality.

Was Socrates ugly? Really, who gives a fuck. More to the point he becomes an intellectual device that Plato is able to mold and manipulate into a narrative that is ultimately linked to the transcendental formalism that is philosophical realism.

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Maybe that dialogue… about twilight and idols?

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It had occured to me that it was inspired by Nietzsche, but I was wondering if he had come across any earlier (Greek) sources (namely from Plato, Xenophon, or Aristophanes) that would confirm that view of Socrates’ teaching.

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Peter Kropotkin

Did they know what ‘god’ was? Didn’t they slander the ‘gods’ and religion of their time. The only thing spiritual was perhaps the idea of eternity [and form of some types], but they didn’t personify it as far as I know?

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   Hey, inspiration can 'come across' in more ways then happening to find something written in a conscious mode.  You can come across by sub-conscious means, as if an intuitive form of communication connected multiple psyches.  This is what makes Socrates immortal, he touched an ephemeral nerve which transcended it's self.  the same goes for Nietzche, perhaps time traveles back, also, and Socrates may picked him up, similarly?  A transcended time. Absurd?  Think about it. Back,

To the Future.

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Peter Kropotkin:
think of them both, as conservatives of today, who are claiming they
are doing god’s work, following god, obeying god. That would be Socrates and Plato."

Amorphos: Did they know what ‘god’ was? Didn’t they slander the ‘gods’ and religion of their time. The only thing spiritual was perhaps the idea of eternity [and form of some types], but they didn’t personify it as far as I know?

K: Here is part of the problem. We tend to mix up the various different aspects of the Greeks and by doing
so, miss what is the basic’s of each different person. The charge of slander was applied to Socrates in
a political trial, where he was charged with Atheism AND preaching different gods than was the city’s gods.
The Greeks were clearly very religious and had a long history with the religious, otherwise this charge against
Socrates makes no sense. He was charged with both atheism and blasphemy which is a really strange charge
but this charge carries about 40 years of Athenian history behind it. Recall that the play the “Clouds” was
produced about 20 or more years before the trial and it wouldn’t have meant anything if Socrates didn’t have
a reputation many years before that, so we are dealing with a lot of Athenian history which was the result
of the trial. The idea of forms of Plato is directly about god. His eternal forms was about God eternal forms
and the temporary forms was about man. Augustine book, “The City of man” is nothing more
than a reworking of Plato’s eternal god and man temporary, transitory idea’s. A look at Greek gods show us
that they were basically humans with super powers. They were flawed and messy and quite often not much
more than a soap opera put into the heavens. Plato as with Socrates was trying to have a dignified
idea of God, not the messy soap opera that they did have. You can run a straight line from Plato idea’s
on religion to the mediaeval Catholic church. Plato is the architect of the Catholic church.

Kropotkin

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Socrates was Plato’s mouthpiece in his dialogues. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is not the real Socrates. But you are probably right.

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“You can come across by sub-conscious means, as if an intuitive form of communication connected multiple psyches.” — I’d like some clarification on this. This is how I see it at this point. You are implying something like, ‘One may intuit that a given influence has an effect beyond the original overt cause.’

One may intuit in this way, but one may be wrong. One should be able to show a connection between a cause and its origin.

Even if one said, Socrates had influence on Plato, Plato had influence on Cicero, Cicero had influence on Augustine, therefore Socrates had influence on Augustine (or anything along these lines), it should still be shown in what way Socrates had influence on Augustine in order to clearly evaluate a “Case Against Socrates”. None of this is to say Socrates couldn’t have had the influence Eric says in the OP, I just have not personally come across anything that confirms those specific features of his thought in particular “Socrates, being the hideous creature he was, devalued physical beauty all together […]”

Which seems to be the main bone of contention against Socrates in the OP, as evidenced by the following paragraph:

" is not superficial, as Socrates and many today still believe; it is the manifestation of genetic potential! There is an evolutionary reason why we are attracted to beautiful people and it is most certainly not some trivial, superficial reason. Good looking people have superior genetics, thus provide a better chance of having healthy offspring. "

“Socrates reaped what he sowed; that piece of vermin was rightly condemned!” Erik says, but I demand a fair trial! :wink:

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Artful Pauper, this video below is the source of my inspiration for this view. I’ve had similar thoughts about Socrates before, mostly centered around him being an obnoxious troll, who got kicks out of nit-picking and so on; but this video articulated something I entertained about him loosely, namely that he was resentful about his aesthetic inferiority. It’s only a 4 minute video, but very much worth the watch:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgpzQ-iK02g[/youtube]

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I watched the video.

As I have encountered, the arguments against Socrates’ teaching on mind/body dualism (the soul) is true, and it is most clearly expressed in the Phaedo.

I am still skeptical about the idea that Socrates’ views were entirely based on his ugliness, and I am pretty sure he never preached against the worth of the physical form.

Here’s another quote of Socrates’ from Xenophon’s Memorabilia:

The underlined sentence near the end shows Socrates’ teaching was that it was base to neglect the body and not experience the perfect of physical strength and beauty.

Socrates did no doubt pave the way for dualistic philosophies taking off under the influence of Christianity, so I would agree with you in a criticism of his theory of the soul, but the complete devaluation of the physical world I would attribute more to St. Augustine, in particular his City of God.

Even if you read the Euthyphro, though Socrates’ does not criticize religion outright, he is clearly bringing a “pious man” to doubt and confusion. Socrates’ opened up the conversation of what constitutes the good, and I might even put more blame on philosophers who came after him for not seeing through any of his false doctrines. It could be asked, why did the philosophers who followed go along with it? Though perhaps Epicurus and his followers didn’t they propagated the idea of striving after pleasure as the ultimate good.

If you wish to indict Socrates on the grounds of his body/soul dualism I would have less of an argument against that, though I still think there is much worthwhile in his teaching as presented through Plato and Xenophon.

EDIT: This is more of a question than anything, but that video says that before Socrates, the Greeks held no dualism between mind and body.

I know that Greek mythology prior to Socrates held that humans go to Hades after death, does anyone know if the belief was that the physical body literally went there, or that it was some other part of the human that was transported to Hades?

Couldn’t this have been an origin to the soul/body dualism that Socrates took inspiration from and codified in a philosophical system?

I don’t mean to be an instigator or anything, but there may have been precident for the dualism at least as early as Homer (if not earlier) where he describes ‘spirits’ going to Hades after death:

http://www.theoi.com/Kosmos/Haides.html#Iliad

Hades (from the Greek word Aïdao) also means unseen, which would point to the fact that there was already an “other world” before Socrates, it just hadn’t been valued… but if you think of it, Greeks worshipped their ancestors, and if all the great dead Greeks went there… anyway :-"

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Socrates was lustful for the beauties of many young male Atheneans. That is possibly the most consistently recurring theme in his speeches. He did thus not depreciate beauty as such. But it is true that in his departing speech he denounces the physical world as being less than the world that awaits him. Whether that be nothingness or merely the unseen, or some just and spiritual realm he imagined, it is true that Socrates did not possess the real Greek spirit of Homeric gods and heroes, but was antithetical to it in his metaphysical ideology - even despite his passions still knowing the value of physical body. He did not value fate, did not know himself as a Greek to be privileged, and thus dis not possess that nobility that gave birth to our world.

But as Nietzsche remarked - Plato is boring. The only thing that matters about the Greeks is their mastery of the physical world, which rose from their appreciation of it, rather than from a fear of it. They had fear, but it drove them to greatness, because their voluptuous health (selfvaluing) made their fear into reverence and courage. Therefore the Greek gods are the highest creations.

Indeed the fact that the god of dread is called after the unseen says plenty. “Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance.”

But what majestic might it took to not only stop at, but to shape such magnificent surfaces.

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Socrates can be fairly criticized for his doctrine of the soul and afterlife particularly expressed in the Phaedo, I would not deny that.

I would not say that Socrates was without courage. He brought philosophy to the streets of Athens and endured the hate and criticism of many of his fellow citizens. And not everything he taught was metaphysical.

Honestly I think this was one of Nietzsche’s stupidities. Looking at Plato as merely a metaphysician is a blatant reductionism. The Republic and Statesman alone vindicate his contributions to philosophy.

Also, seeing Socrates/Plato as a direct link to Augustine and Christian teaching is misleading. There was a phase of academic skepticism which was totally agnostic before neoplatonism which originated in Plato’s academy. Another argument could be made for a lineage being traced from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle to Alexander who he taught.

Plato and Socrates did theorize from the eidos (what comes most readily to the eye). A crisis had already arisen which caused doubt to spread regarding what was good, and Socrates dealt with this by focusing on the dialectic of opposing opinions.

The had already crisis arose as the Greeks perfected their arts. Self conscious creation brought simultaneously the recognition that other cultures had different gods and different conceptions of the good, even the citie states of Greece were founded on the laws of different gods — consider Plato’s Laws, skepticism had already grown around what was good and pious, and all this is to say nothing about the overturning of traditional authority which resulted from the democratic revolution.

Consider even Socrates discussions with certain young Athenians such as takes place in the Republic, or similarly with Alcibiades, these were the youth who had already questioned the traditions of the city. Besides the competing teachings of the Sophists, Parmenideans and so on.
I understand that Nietzsche had reasons for wishing an overturning of the Socratic/Platonic tradition, but an argument can be made that he himself was part of that tradition — not least of all because he studied Spinoza, whose connection with Plato can at least be traced through Maimonides which was an inspiration for the Theological Political Treatise, and Schopenhauer who through Kant had direct origins in the Platonic rationalist tradition.

There are still many things we can learn from Socrates and Plato today, even if we disregard his metaphysics, not least of all that his doctrine of the good expresses and order of rank and provides a counterbalance to the Epicurean philosophical hedonism.

I suppose if nothing else this is at least one thing he shared with his contemporaries.

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Pauper,

I don’t remember which book this is from, but I do recall a scenario where Socrates was chatting with some good-looking youth about how he ( Socrates ) was better looking than him, that his ’ spiritual/mental ’ beauty was superior to the youth’s physical beauty.

Also, Alcibiades lusted after Socrates, not for his physical beauty; but for, as prior mentioned, his intellectual beauty, which the moral of the story has it is far, far superior than physical beauty.

The Greeks believed that physical beauty and heroism ( battle prowess ) were very important, but along came wretched Socrates, like some creeping cockroach, to proclaim the superiority of the spiritual and the baseness of the physical.

Platonic tradition has it that physical beauty is at the lowest level of the spectrum and that non-physical, immaterial beauty ( forms ) is the highest. Guess who had such an influence upon Plato? Yep, you got it!

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Ha well it’s possible, I’d like to find the dialogue though. It is also possible that there was some tongue in cheek humor being made if the contention was that Socrates was physically more beautiful.

It’s true that Plato, Socrates and if I’m not mistaken Aristotle all felt that wisdom was the highest good. For Plato the forms would be the mind’s direct contact with ideas. Out of curiousity, do you hold physical beauty to be higher than wisdom?

Also keep in mind that the Greek word for ideas and forms was the same, and the form of a thing is also its appearance, and so to talk about perfect forms (or perfect ideas for that matter) would also include the perfection of the physical form, and there is a connection between this concept and the Greek notion of the perfect form of beauty (symmetry etc.)

I honestly think at least some of the hate on Plato/Socrates is due to misconceptions and that many could learn much from studying Plato’s works (and Xenophon’s who was also a Socratic).

The criticism of the Phaedo, as I’ve said, I think is fair. Though if you read it a lot of the arguments are pretty weak, and I think it is unlikely that a thinker of Plato’s caliber would have truly believed them…

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Nor did I claim that Socrates was without courage (neither is a jihadi suicide bomber), or that everything he taught was metaphysical.

Types, kinds.

Is it stupid to have a certain taste? Plato, to Nietzsche, is a bore because of his form. This is not an argument against all that Plato said or accomplished, mind you.

That sounds like an interesting project, if you can pull it off. To unify Plato and Aristotle, that is quite something.

We all know, I assume, the difference between symptoms and their causes. Plato nor Socrates was to blame for their natures. Socrates was a symptom. But also a figurehead, and as a symptom he became a cause to further developments, which to my tastes aren’t wholesome.

When men begin searching for ‘the Good’, it means that they have lost or lost sight of their health, their vigor, their commanding spirit. If they ever had it. It is not said that it can not be re-attained. But I do not think Plato or Socrates came close to that.

If you can still learn from this, I encourage you to further your studies. If you think you can teach on this, teach.

Indeed. Nor is this a bad thing at all. But it was the only idea of beauty left to them. The Gods (untamed nature) had become too terrible for them to be regarded as beautiful.

Beauty is terror can be translated as: what is beauty to the strong is terror to the weak. Lightning strikes fear in some hearts and alights supreme joy in others. Neither type is to say what is good for the other. Tastes, types, kinds.

But after Athens had fallen, Rome was about to take the stage. Zeus the untouchable fate-maker transformed into Jupiter the integrated State God. In many ways Rome was superior to Athens. But not in terms of creative genius, which to me is the supreme good.

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Socrates’ courage was to trust in reason, part of the fabric of the world. There is appreciation in this, and I think you can appreciate that reason is not highly valued among the herd to which he brought it with his discussions in the agora. This is a noble courage. You said Socrates did not value fate, but yet he was aware that there may be nothing after death and still he risked his life and did not grovel or beg before his judges, I see that as a deep appreciation of fate.

I hope that nothing needs to be said about a comparison between him and jihadists…

It is not stupid to have a certain taste, but it is stupid to try to pass one’s taste off for the truth: “Plato is boring”, not “I find Plato boring” or something of the kind. Such a comment in could only breed prejudice. If Nietzsche backed it up, he is boring because he was a metaphysician, then I respond that Plato was not only a metaphysician and I would vidicate his contribution by pointing to some of his dialogues, that’s all.

I don’t see a search for the good the same way you do. I think it can also be a sign of strength that one is willing to risk all one believes to ask if there is a truth accessible to reason on which to base one’s life and wisdom. You say you don’t think Plato or Socrates came close to accomplishing this, but I think they have come closer than any philosopher since, though I would be more comfortable if I could include Aristotle among them. Ronna Burger, a ‘second generation’ student of Strauss has already gone some way to unifying Aristotle and Socrates’ ethics. The main difference between them (and this is my own take on it) is that Aristotle abandoned much of Socrates’ idealism (not all), and is more interested in contingencies than of an idea of the good. In this sense Aristotle’s teaching resembles that which is presented in the Statesman, and the teaching there is not presented by Socrates. Aristotle does still hold ideals, which keeps him from Machiavellianism, because his focus on contingencies are for the sake of the good and not just by any means necessary.

You also say that Socrates was a symptom, and I don’t see it this way at all. I think there was a crisis, but Socrates attempted to become a cure. Was he successful? Maybe not. Did he make things worse ultimately? Maybe. But these are also only maybes, because we still possess something of his spirit through the works he inspired, and many have rejected God on grounds of reason and not prejudice alone. I would say that philosophers respond to crises to attempt cures (and that is not all they do, they also discover and create), this separates them from the Sophists. Nietzsche too attempted a cure, but I would say too that he left behind some undesirable elements. If this is my mistake, okay.

You say that I should teach, but I am teaching in my own way, and I feel the best way to teach is also to learn, to engage in dialogue. If nothing else it can be a stronghold against dogmatism. And, I am trying to teach that there is still dignity left in the Socratic dialogues to discover. I am playing the part of Socrates’ defense on his trial.

I think many don’t understand that the ancients were aware of the distinction between convention and nature. To criticize Plato because he wrote about justice as if it was a thing in itself is to not truly understand him, and to reject justice because it is a convention is to reject the city, and so society and philosophy with it because philosophy is not only ideas but a creative project among people. Philosophy is a way to build a new people, a people who dare to question and to know and to seek the highest things.

Nietzsche has given his voice to the great dialogue, he has taught us to watch we are not confusing justice with ressentiment and he has urged us to see the nobility in power once again, but the dialogue goes on because our creation has not yet ended. To me, to salvage Socrates is to salvage philosophy, and I don’t see Socrates as being without the Dionysian spirit. Consider Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, though Socrates is recruited by Crito to teach his son about the value of hard work and Socrates takes the boy to the theatre, the seat of Dionysus, to watch a comedy. Maybe there is also a lesson in the dialogues for us to laugh with Socrates. How many philosophers can we say the same about? Did not Nietzsche also tell us to learn to laugh?