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Why does Socrates claim to know nothing.

solid~liquid onwards

14:30 / 05.12.02

ive got to have this done in a few days so i can go home earl for christmas, and the questions bugging me a wee bit

"Why does Socrates claim to know nothing? Is he sincere? and is he right"

anyone know any good online philisophical websites or resources, and even better would anyone like to give their opinions and discuss ideas with me

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:48 / 05.12.02

With reference to what The Apologia? The Gorgias?

17:41 / 05.12.02

I think it was Bugs Bunny or someone who said, "The truly wise man knows that he knows nothing."

Or, maybe it was Lao Tze.

Same diff, I think. Both historical figures, given to blabbing.

::a::

ONLY NICE THINGS

17:55 / 05.12.02

OK, the fact taht this thread is pretty much dead in the water means that, for the moment, I cannot even be bothered to look behind me for my copy of the Apologia - if anyone displays any interest, the who knows - I may turn on my swivel chair. In a fit of rage.

OK. The bit about knowing nothing is most often cited in tyhe Apologia. A waggish chum of Socrates has asked the Oracle whether any man is wiser than Socrates. The oracle replies that nobody is. Socrates, a little confused by that, went out and interviewed various thinkers, leaders, craftsmen, artists and so on. What he discovered was that, while he knew nothing, he at least knew that he knew nothing, and was therefore doing better than they were.

What he means by "nothing" is nothing "meaningful". This distinction depends on some sort of acceptance of one of the various iterations of the Theory of Forms - the subtext is that the things people knew about were things about the impermanent and meaningless world of our sensory perceptions, rather than the permanent and very meaningful things apperceived by reason. One of the iterations had the Form of the Good operating as the equivalent of the Sun in our shadow-world - it is the thing that gives all the other forms perceivability. Therefore, knowledge of the form of the Good (arguably, that is, virtue) allowed knowledge of the form of everything else. Therefore, ultimately, somebody who truly understood good could not but do good. But we're straying off topic.

So, these other fellows did not know anything of the *real* world, the world of Forms, but neither did Socrates. The next question is whether the *real* world (a highyl counter-intuitive phrase) is comprehensible, and subsequently if it can be communciated successfully to anyone else. That's a bit of a struggle, and something that keeps being returned to in the early dialogues, in various ways - can virtue be taught?

How are we doing?

18:47 / 05.12.02

Seems on-track to me. Been ages since I read Plato, but there's always the notion of an Absolute Reality, a Reality beyond what our senses can perceive, lurking behind everything—outlined most famously in the allegory of the cave. Without knowledge of the Absolute Reality, we can't really know anything. We may think we know, but we're really just guessing, based on the evidence provided by our imperfect senses: we don't have all the information.

Socrates recognized this, and asserted that those who mistook the reality perceptible to our senses for the true reality were like those poor bastards in the cave, mistaking shadows on the wall for the real things of which they were only representations.

The important thing is not that Socrates "knows nothing," but that he knows that he knows nothing: he's figured out that he's down in the cave, looking at shadows of reality, but not reality itself.

Haus, what's the reference in the Apologia? Is it in the discussion of the possibility of an afterlife?

18:49 / 05.12.02

Never mind, you just answered that. And it's not the Apologia I'm thinking of anyway--it's Crito, isn't it?

Been far too long since I read the dialogues...

19:33 / 05.12.02

well if you know nothing then why am i listening to what you have to say?

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:35 / 05.12.02

Because you don't know any better, obviously.

As to "was he sincere"? That's a ridiculous question.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:00 / 06.12.02

Sorry, not very productive there - got sidetracked.

It's ridiculous *because* - we are talking about Socrates as if he is a person, with sincerity, motivations, te tum te tum. He isn't. He's a literary construction designed to advance positions, and even more so than most philosophers, as "Socrates" himself has no surviving writings.

So, to talk in terms of sincerity is meaningless. If we mean "are you meant to take on faith that Socrates actually believed himself to know nothing", then I suppose the answer is probably something closer to "yes and no". Clearly Socrates believed that he had abilities, such as stonemasonry or speaking. However, he did not identify these skills as actual, because they dealt with the plastic world. He could be said to be confessing his ignorance of the unchanging world; as it is explained in the Republic, in the plastic world somebody with a knowledge of the unchanging world is goignt o get into terrible trouble, because the plastic world is corrupt and distanced from the Good; even curiosity has led to him being put on trial for his life, after all. Thus, the conditions in the plastic world make it prety much impossible truly to understand the world of forms. It's a problem - comparable to Kant and the Kingdom of Ends in way, and leads to the counter-intutive position - the phenomenal world is unreal, the noumenal world is real, even though I cannot see or touch the noumenal world. It;s a challenge to our understanding of "reality". Whether he sincerely believed he knew nothing is debatable - *Plato* certainly doesn't, although he might defend hiself assaying that, although Socrates (and he) speculated about the world of Forms, and perhaps came to understand it better, they did not really grasp it perceptually, and thus, since Forms are Ideas (after a fashion, vbut real rathe rhtna inside people's heads), knew *of* them and something *about them*...

As for whether he was right - that depends on whether ytou believe i) in a metaphysicalworld of forms and b) on Socrates' ignorance of it, surely? Better to take the idea as a thought exercise, surely?

solid~liquid onwards

11:54 / 06.12.02

Hah, finished!... thanks people

the "is he right question was a little nasty, but i think youve summed it up nicely haus. I eventually took the position that he was right as i beleived in the metaphysical (world of forms), and my beleif is backed up by my experiences and no other hard evidence that would convince others to agree with me

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:14 / 06.12.02

Which (although you have probably no more need for this now it's done) is why the Gorgias is interesting - Gorgias says that the world does not exist and if it does exist it is not comprehensible, and if tit can be comprehended then that comprehension cannot be communicated. Socrates opposes this idea, but actually his position is in practical terms not dissimilar, although philosophically completely different. The world cannot be perceived, except by reason, and if it is perceived and understood by reason, this cannot be explained, except to others who perceive it by reason. And yet, the way to understand the world of by dialectic...

14:23 / 06.12.02

Don't you have to believe, not just that there is a Real World of Forms but that it's perfect and unchanging? That's the bit I have trouble with, that metaphysics shouldn't change. I understand why Plato said it, I just don't buy it. What about the Form of Change?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:27 / 06.12.02

Well, just because something *represents* change, doesn't mean it has to change itself...I think a look at Parmenides and the preSocratics might be useful here...

15:13 / 06.12.02

If it *represents* change, then it's *not* change, it's the representation of change. That hardly seems like a Perfect Form, a bunch of stuff that stands for things we know but actually is not anything we know -- it seems like 'forest for the trees.' I'd expect the perfect form of something to be everything I know and more. What about the Form of Corruption? Accident? Error? Why do Platonic Forms only correspond to things Plato finds good? I'm not claiming to be smarter than Plato here, I'm just not convinced. Would it be possible to give me the bullet on Parmenides and the preSocratics?

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:00 / 06.12.02

Well, a) you would not be able to recognise the form of x as like x, probably, from mere affinity, because one is perceived phenomenally and one noumenally. This is why (in the Meno?) numbers are interesting because they never change, or rather algebra never changes and b) you're looking at change the wrong way, I don't think there is likely to be a form of change at all, because change isn't a thing; it's a perceptual process brought about by the failings of our reason. Nothing real actually does change if correctly perceived, and anything that changes is, ipso facto, not being correctly perceived.

I must rush out for drinks now, but will try to get an elevator-thing on what I remember of pre Socratic philosophy later.

22:49 / 06.12.02

Socrates sometimes says the only thing he does know anything about is erotics. Grrrr.

actually, as im sure some of you know, the platonic metaphysical vision of the unchanging world of form is something that has been the subject consistent critisism in continential philosophy, im thinking of Nietzsche and Heidegger in particular, though i neednt. the contingient nature of histroy, in that "school" of thinking, has risen to replace the unchanging forms, such as juistice or courage which cannot be known absolutly by socrates because they have no absolute reality.

The irony of socrates's claim not to know is that everyone else does arbitrarily make that positive claim. This then is the catch cry for the diaologes in which Soc points out the fatousness of the athenian pretence to knowledge and they kill him.

solid~liquid onwards

23:40 / 06.12.02

i really wish i had more to contribute here, but socrates is relatively new to me, thanks for the discussion

but feel free to carry on, im finding all this quite intereting

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:15 / 07.12.02

Creepster: welcome to the Head Shop. I agree entirely that Socratic philosophy is, due to a combination of lingustic problems and poliics, absolutely shot full of holes. Could you expand a bit on Neitzsche and Heidegger's arguments against, either here or in a new topic?

On the presocratics - philosophy before Plato was much concerned with eh ambiguity of the presence of change. In many cases, the pre-Socratics assigned the existence of life to one or other of trhe elements (Thales, for example, believed that life was a function fo the action of water). However, for our purposes it might be useful to look at the opposition of eris and eros.

Essentially, eris is seen as the force of chaos, , and eros that which keeps them together. There are various views of the world that emerge form that, but the general idea is that the universe started in either total stasis (nothing moving) or total chaos (lots of animals with bits of every other element mixed in), and has either degraded or coagulated from there.

Socrates' position is contra those who believed that the universe is static and all action an illusion, but also contra those who believed that the universe existed ina state of constant, arbitrary flux. Bear in mind that the idea of free will was only beginning to be explored at about the same time...

Tryphena Absent

01:25 / 07.12.02

Creepster, are you talking Being here?

02:37 / 08.12.02

The Haus that knows John Aldridge better than itself
Creepster: welcome to the Head Shop.

Thank you 'The Haus that knows John Aldridge better than itself' its good to be here.

Could you expand a bit on Neitzsche and Heidegger's arguments against, either here or in a new topic?

not easily. i think here we run up against one of the limits of the medium.

Heideggers vison of (yes Invincibly Temazepammed Janina) Be-ing is one that breaks with that of traditional western metephysics which he characterizes as essentially platonic obscuring the true nature of being revieled to us as being-in-the-world. it is though the 'cultural'(in the broadest sense) world that we encounter 'objects' in the first instance as either something we are using or as missing, not the other way round where you come to know the world as it truely is through the study of objects and the theoretical discourse abstracted from encountering them in-the-world. the radical new player is time and history and if we're talking plato i guess death. the socratic/post-scoratic project operated in spite of the world.
appologies for the hackned response but im at work at the moment and arent really suppose to use the net.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:22 / 08.12.02

So we're saying that existence precedes essence, to use the Heideggerian tag? That objects have meaning through their interaction with individual Dasein, rather than through a connection to a purer metaphysical conception of the object?

Fair enough. Now, how does that tie in to Socrates saying that he knows nothing? Because I'm thinking here that we can model this fairly closely in some ways to Heideggerian conceptions of authentic and inauthentic existence...

22:12 / 08.12.02

So we're saying that existence precedes essence, to use the Heideggerian tag? That objects have meaning through their interaction with individual Dasein, rather than through a connection to a purer metaphysical conception of the object?

Fair enough. Now, how does that tie in to Socrates saying that he knows nothing? Because I'm thinking here that we can model this fairly closely in some ways to Heideggerian conceptions of authentic and inauthentic existence...

If inauthenticity is to live as a thing present-at-hand, as a shoe-maker or a banker or whatever but in terms of those kinds of obligatory, external, societal expectations, in conformity etc, then soc's being 'the wisest of men' and 'knowing nothing', as it were, characterises his attempt to shatter the complacent inauthentic everyday world("view") of the athenian punter. what is courage? what is justice? he doesnt know these things because they arent obvious, objective present-at-hand as they are by defualt supposed to be. the platonic appeal to the full stop of the changeless forms which reason can approach might in contrast to the above socratic project be inauthentic.

on the other hand nietzsche characterizes socrates as particularly unpoetic in nature; poetry being of great importance unltimately to heideggers authenticity.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:31 / 08.12.02

So, one could see the return of the Delphic Oracle as a point of angst? By being confronted withthe Oracle, Socrates is forced not only to engage critically (with the status of a man no man in Athens is wiser tan), but to attempt to force others to engage authentically as well? It always strikes me that Heidegger is creating a mirror here, using angst as the mirror of aporia..

I think you may be representing N.'s view on Socrates a little simply, though. Will dig up Gotzendammerung/Antichristen ASAP to have a look.

23:03 / 08.12.02

yes in truth i dont have much faith in my understanding nor in the possibility of its transmission in this way. perhaps the character of the internet in general is a little too journalistic in nature. not that its not worthwhile but there really is no possible substitute for a care-full reading of the texts at large.