V. Socrates (1954)
Two Lectures By Heinrich Blücher
New School For Social Research
Lecture I: (In Two Parts) April 30, 1954
Lecture II: May 7, l954
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Lecture XII (S-II) 5-7-54 [Lecture 2]
III
When Socrates came to realize his ignorance saying he knew that he did not know he really knew everything. In his Apology he tells the story of how a friend had gone to the temple at Delphi and asked the God the silly but suggestive question, because he had prepared it for the God to answer in a certain way:
"Is there any man wiser than Socrates"?
to which the God replies "No". "There is no man wiser than Socrates". And he also tells how frightened he became upon hearing the reply, because he had never thought himself to be wise and he knew of the irony of the gods. Many people had foundered, because they did not know that the Oracle could never be understood if they did not know and understand themselves. That was the condition, and so he had to ask himself exactly what was he to make of the answer of the Oracle? The danger was great. All Greeks (and not only Socrates) were very superstitious about one thing. They distrusted their gods.
There is a wonderful anecdote about a man who is about to walk out of a house where a celebration is going on. At the very moment he leaves the house it falls down and everyone is killed. What is the mans reaction? He looks up to the heavens and says:
"Oh Zeus, what are you sparing me for?"
This "Oh Zeus, what are you sparing me for" is the ingrained skepticism of the Greek race and it shows itself most strongly in Socrates. That is why he makes his own interpretation of the Oracles answer.
"Yes, the Oracle says no man is wiser than Socrates, and the Oracle is right. No man is. I know that I do not know. They all only think that they know. They do not know that they do not know".
If he had accepted being the wisest of men he would have agreed that he really was a wise man, not only the wisest, but he saw and knew that nobody can be wise. We will hear the same thing centuries later when Jesus of Nazareth says to a man who asks him;:
"Good Rabbi, what must I do to inherit eternal life"?
and Jesus answers:
"Why do you call me good? Nobody is good but God". (Mark. 10:17)
That is what Socrates says to his judges, No one is good but God. We do not have that wisdom. We cannot be sophists. We cannot teach the truth because we do not have the truth. All we can do is realize that this is our predicament and take up the possibility of following and really establishing the truth. That means to understand that freedom becomes possible only under the conditions of absolute uncertainty.
It was Schopenhauer who said that the basic qualities of man are dumbness and laziness. Of course they are, but the conclusion to be drawn from that is not that life isn't worth living. We can also draw the Socratic conclusion: Namely, that if this is what we basically are then we have a big chance to overcome it, and if we do overcome it then it is we who have done that and not the gods. It has not been given to us. That is the irony of the Greek gods and in that irony is contained the secret of freedom. We do not see any comparable irony in Abraham's God, even though it is still there. Because if the gods have made us good, if it is they who have given us absolute truth or the possibility of reaching absolute truth, then everything we do would be done automatically as if we were machines, because we couldn't help ourselves. We would be wise, because we couldn't help being wise, which would be a boredom that can only be compared to hell. It means we wouldn't be human.
Socrates decided that he wanted to be human. He did not want to be a god, because he did not understand how a god could possibly live with all of that wisdom, therefore he became ironical and decided that we cannot logically say anything about the absolute wisdom of an absolute mind. Every time we try to account for such a state and explain it we always stumble over the question as to how such a being could enjoy itself, because it is not free and nothing that it does is done out of any merit. It is above all of that. It would be bored, though God is certainly not bored, so it all only means that we cannot possibly know or understand the conditions of an absolute being or an absolute mind.
It is exactly this knowledge of our non-knowledge that Socrates wanted us to start with. This knowledge that we do not have the truth, that we are not wise, and that we can only become wiser step by step handling each case on its own merits. And at this point a very amazing thing happens. This man, who denies he can teach, suddenly starts teaching. What he does is two things that can clearly be recognized in the Platonic dialogues. The first, is when he meets those big talkers like the Sophists who claim to know the truth and say they can teach it. To them he says:
"Well, you see, I am not such such a brilliant fellow as any of you. I haven't even learned how to make a speech, as a matter of fact, I can't make a speech. I can only ask questions. I ask myself questions, I ask you questions, and since you are so wise will you please answer my questions"?
and of course they can't. He does the same thing with his students but here he interrupts his performance and suddenly the man who pretends that he cannot make speeches makes one of the most brilliant orations we can find in all of history, but still, he is not an orator. Instead, he discovers something. What he does is to sit down in the company of other men (and we must remember that he never had students because he called them his companions) and after a long period of self questioning and of questioning them makes what appears to be a speech. He pretends that somebody has said something to him and so he tells them a long story. He is still not talking. Rather what he is really doing here is sitting and reading his own mind. He is opening his mind to them.
He is thinking out loud.
And that is what makes the speeches as Plato has rendered them so tremendously impressive. If we compare them with the greatest oratory in the world like the funeral oration of Pericles as rendered by Thucydides, we still find that they have one quality more, and this quality is exactly that he is not an orator. That he has only this one capability of sitting and reading his mind out loud, thinking out loud in one straight line of reasoning while the others sit watching. Watching that is, not him, but rather his mind. They are watching a human mind working in one straight performance.
These then are the two things he does and he uses both methods alternating from one to the other, but he is very very stingy with the last one, because before he can read his own mind he must first clear the path to find the inherent capabilities of reasoning in the others. This "clearing of the path" he calls dialectics. He does this because he knows that the truth can only be approached in community. The lonely thinker may be very good but if he does not even test out his thoughts before an audience of peers who can think with him then he might fail, because reasoning and the acquisition of judgment can only be done with other persons. That is his conviction and that is his practice. The others are called his companions precisely because through this act of thinking he has prepared the way to draw them into his company.
What this all means is something very ironical. It means that as soon as human beings recognize their basic predicament of non-knowledge then they discover their capabilities of reasoning and judgment. Men cannot have the truth but in this "not having" they can begin to judge things and to make things truer. They can become more wise and proceed creatively, through the use of their reason, and reason here means philosophical reason, that is, the power of judgment. Not reason in the scientific sense as Heraclitus first discovered it. Reason in the sense of Heraclitus is something that is dictated to us, because we can discover the law of events in nature end therefore the reason for things in nature. This reason we call "causes" and we can find them, because nature moves according to a minor logos. Our own logos, that is, our own reason is a higher one precisely because it involves the capacity of judgment. This reason manifests itself in all human affairs and Socrates cared only for human affairs, because as we said before, he discarded all of the fields that belong to science. He doesn't care for them. The only science he takes into account is medicine, because that is the science where the logos of nature in the human body meets the logos of the mind, the higher logos. There he still shows a little bit of concern but that is all. He doesn't even care for art although he loves art. Rather his only concern is for pure philosophy and he is the only one who pursues this way completely. He is never mixed up. He only moves according to the principles of pure philosophic thinking, to the human logos, to human reason, and to nothing else.
Now, he is able to prove what Heraclitus could never prove. Namely, that this higher logos of man is infinite. How? By observing a simple fact. Men have the capability of sitting together and arguing with one another about the best reason that can be found to do such and such. They can design their own deeds and if they do it according to this higher reason, philosophic reason, then whatever proofs they are able to give in support of their own "reasons" are proofs of philosophy. Someone will say "let us do this for such and such a reason" and then someone else will try to find a still better one, and then they can compare and find a reason that will finally prevail. This capability of man is infinite and it guarantees the establishment and creation of something in the world that is more meaningful, more beautiful, more just, more courageous, and more judicious then had ever existed before it. It means that men, by their deeds, can establish and create facts in the world and therefore they can create truth in the world. Truth can exist within themselves, even though they do not know the truth.