Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge in the Dialogues of Plato , livre ebook

Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge in the Dialogues of Plato
SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions

David Appelbaum, editor
Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge in the Dialogues of Plato
Sara Ahbel-Rappe
Cover art: Eleanor Rappe Raugust, Socratic Maze – The Agora , etching
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
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Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, author
Title: Socratic Ignorance and platonic knowledge in the dialogues of Plato / Sara Ahbel-Rappe, author.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2018] | Series: SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438469270 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438469287 (e-book)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
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CONTENTS
Preface • Socrates as an Esoteric Figure
Acknowledgments
Introduction • Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge
Chapter 1 • Socratic Philosophy
Chapter 2 • Socratic Receptions
Chapter 3 • Socrates and Self-Knowledge
Chapter 4 • Euthydemus : Native and Foreign
Chapter 5 • Alcibiades I : The Mirror of Socrates
Chapter 6 • Lysis : The Aporetic Identity of the First Friend
Chapter 7 • From Virtues to Forms in the Phaedrus
Chapter 8 • Theaetetus : Socrates’s Interrogation of Platonic Knowledge
Chapter 9 • “He Who Is Wisest among You”: Socratic Ignorance between the Parmenides and the Apology
Conclusion • The Socratic Paradigm
Notes
Works Cited
Index
PREFACE
SOCRATES AS AN ESOTERIC FIGURE

This book constitutes a reading of the figure of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. It starts from what I take to be a promise to the reader, embedded in the Apology ’s revelation that “no one is wiser than Socrates” (21a4). The promise, as I understand it, is that this revelation will bear fruit in the reading of the dialogues; it will turn out not to be merely an ironic statement. Socratic wisdom will prove in some way worthy of this distinction as the highest wisdom. Now, the way that this promise does bear fruit in the reading of the dialogues depends on how we understand the Socratic persona. What I want to show in this book is that the statement “No one is wiser than Socrates” amounts to the claim that no one can be wiser than Socrates, since Socrates stands in for the inherent wisdom of the reader’s own mind. Thus, it turns out that the reader can be no wiser than the reader is willing to be. The extent to which the Socratic persona puzzles the reader, troubles the reader, interrupts the reader, awakens the reader into a search for wisdom will, then, function as a gauge of the reader’s wisdom. And so, in this sense, “No one is wiser than Socrates” is a statement that can not only bear fruit in the reading of Plato’s dialogues, but it can also bear fruit in a much larger way, in the very life of wisdom that each reader is likely to pursue. 1
I argue that this Socratic persona represents wisdom, and as such it is the larger container within which Plato constructs his philosophy, which operates as a form of knowledge. Socratic wisdom contains Platonic knowledge. But how do we get at the meaning and contents of Socratic wisdom, especially in light of Socrates’s infamous disavowal of both wisdom and knowledge? What is Socratic wisdom, and how does it differ from knowledge? To begin to answer this question, I invoke a distinction between an inner and an outer Socrates. There is an outward aspect of Socratic philosophy, which might be what Socrates himself, alluding to the Delphic oracle, refers to in the Apology as the appearance of Socrates, when he says, “[The god] appears [φαίνεται] to mention this man, Socrates, whereas he is availing himself of my name …” (23a9–b1). 2 So, Socrates and his name are an appearance. At once the reader is alerted to the Platonic language of appearance and reality. In fact, Socrates goes on to say that the god makes him a paradigm, 3 thus employing the two terms of the Platonic metaphysical spectrum: paradigm (form) and appearance. At the outset, then, we are introduced to “this man, Socrates,” a particular individual living in the world at particular place and time, and to the paradigm, the eternal Socrates. Plato portrays “this Socrates” as a street philosopher, whose primary intellectual tools are inductive logic, universal definition, and moral reasoning. 4 In Plato’s Apology , this Socrates avers that he has neither knowledge nor wisdom and, consistent with this disavowal, employs philosophical techniques that might seem similar to those employed in modern analytic philosophy, involving sampling the views of others, pointing out inconsistencies in those views, and refining the conceptual networks associated with major ethical categories.
Yet there is also an inward aspect of Socratic philosophy, which might be what the oracle references in the Apology when it indicates that no one is wiser than Socrates (21b5). 5 This paradigmatic Socrates stands for the inner mind present in everyone. This philosopher does not transmit knowledge to others, just because he attempts to foster self-knowledge. He accordingly employs a philosophical technique that involves introspection—the reader’s own introspection—or self-inquiry. Only by assuming this particular stance of self-inquiry, can the reader meet this other Socrates, the one who appears in her own mind, and not in the streets of Athens. In summary, by the “inward Socrates” I mean within the reader. So, to say that “no one is wiser than Socrates” is to say that this highest wisdom can only be accessed as self-knowledge, is only available through self-inquiry.
This book addresses many of the major appearances of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, and attempts to show how they foster the practice of self-inquiry. I argue that Plato’s dialogues present a contemplative orientation by means of the figure of Socrates. Accordingly, as with other such contemplative traditions (i.e., certain forms of yoga or of Buddhist meditation), so in the Platonic dialogues there is an assumption that the raw ingredients of wisdom are furnished by the mind itself, considered as field of study and exploration. I will draw attention to the way in which the Socratic aspect of Plato’s dialogues purports to teach the student how to investigate the mind and its objects directly. According to this interpretation, the Socratic element of the dialogues aims to point to a unique kind of awareness, which Socrates refers to as the “awareness that he possesses no wisdom, great or small” ( Ap . 23b3; ἐγὼ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε μέγα οὔτε σμικρὸν σύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ σοφὸς ὤν). There will be more to say about this idea of no wisdom, great or small, as the book unfolds.
I will be arguing, then, for an esoteric Socrates, not so much one that appears hidden within the lines of the dialogue or even orally transmitted outside of the dialogues, 6 but one with whom the reader becomes familiar just by holding open the space of self-inquiry as she encounters the figure of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. In this book, I argue that it is this open space of self-inquiry that is the larger ground within which all constructions of Platonic philosophy ought to be held. Yet in speaking of the esoteric Socrates through a kind of calque based on the word esoteric (e.g., inward, inner as opposed to outer), I risk running into associations made with the word esoteric as it is frequently applied to Platonic studies. In one common use, the idea of the esoteric suggests doctrines that circulated within the Academy. For example, Krämer (1990) both surveys the evidence for and makes a case for the existence of Plato’s “unwritten doctrines,” a term that is borrowed initially from Aristotle’s Physics , where Aristotle mentions certain principles of Plato’s metaphysics revealed in his “so-called unwritten doctrines” (209b14; ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἀγράφοις δόγμασιν). As evidence for this idea of the esoteric Plato, it is founded on ancient testimonia purporting that Plato’s metaphysics is rooted in a system of principles, the monad and the dyad, which themselves are iterations of Pythagorean ideas.
Another important association with the idea of an esoteric Plato lies in the quasi-political concept of “esoteric writing.” Melzer (2014) touches broadly on this more politic