Socrates… was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and locate her in cities, and even introduced it into homes, and made [people] search about life and customs, and about things good and bad.” (Tusculan Disputations , 5.4.10-11, by Cicero 106-43-b.c.)
Socratic Platonism is distinctive in that it is able to start from the very ordinary everyday perceptions of non-philosophers (such as Socrates met on the streets of Athens), and use this as a basis for arriving at a very otherworldly worldview.
Socratic/Platonic reasoning is a particular method of critical reasoning, based on four basic principles.
1. First Principle, the ultimate goal:
The ultimate goal is to create a virtue-concept that an individual could use to mold her character on in long-term self-cultivation, being assured that each step in such molding would make her a more admirable person.
Socratic reasoning is individualist, in the sense that it assumes an individual who is doing this reasoning for her own purposes, to create virtue-concepts to mold her own character on. It is not important that anyone else agree to the particular definitions she arrives at. The goal is not to bring everyone to universal agreement on the choice of virtues to cultivate, or on the definition of particular virtues.
2. Second Principle, the ultimate basis of this reasoning.
The ultimate basis is personal perceptions of what is admirable and not admirable in very clear concrete cases. Each individual should be confident that she can recognize what is admirable and not admirable when she sees it in very clear concrete cases.
A “very clear” concrete case is a story which is not doubt-provoking, not a dilemma, not a case in which reasonable persons can disagree as to what is admirable and not-admirable. Socrates’ story about an insane person wanting his weapons returned to him is such a “very clear” concrete case, in that both he and his conversation-partners regard it as perfectly obvious that the weapons should not be returned. Dilemmas and doubt-provoking stories are useless in Socratic discussion.
Socratic reasoning is what philosophers call ” inductive ” reasoning. (Already Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, characterized Socratic reasoning as “inductive” see his Metaphysics 13.4, 1078B 22-23). Inductive reasoning is making generalizations from observations in specific concrete cases. Isaac Newton was using inductive reasoning when he derived the general law of gravity from many specific concrete observations about falling apples, the movement of the planets, and so on.
Inductive reasoning is contrasted with deductive reasoning, deducing particular conclusions from some general principle. Deductive reasoning assumes we can be certain about general abstract principles. Euclidean geometry is built on deductive reasoning, since it starts from general abstract axioms assumed to be self-evident, such as “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” Utilitarian moral philosophy is also based on deductive reasoning. It is all based on a single general principle: “Morally good actions are actions that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” It uses this principle as a basis for deciding what is good or not good to do in particular circumstances.
Inductive Socratic reasoning assumes instead that we can be more certain about our perceptions of what is admirable and not admirable in clear concrete cases than we can ever be about general principles. As in all inductive reasoning, when some general principle conflicts with a specific concrete observation (a “counterexample”), this is assumed to show a weakness in the general principle, which needs revising in the light of the concrete perception. ( Click here for a more extended description of the difference between inductive Socratic reasoning and deductive utilitarian reasoning.)
Putting 1 and 2 together:
Socratic reasoning consists in mentally moving from perceptions of specific, concrete, externally visible behavior, to the formulation of virtue-concepts that are more general and abstract, describing internal/invisible character traits.
Virtue-concepts are more general than specific behavior, in that the same virtue such as “kindness” can manifest itself in many different specific behaviors.
Virtue-concepts describe things that, unlike visible external conduct, are internal and not directly visible. A kind person will act kindly when the situation calls for it, but the kind action is not the essence of the virtue of kindness, only its external manifestation. For example, on the one hand, a person can imitate the actions of a kind person without really having the habitual motivations and attitudes that constitute kindness as a character trait. And on the other hand, a kind person does not cease being a kind person if she is temporarily paralyzed or stranded on a desert island with no opportunities to show her kindness in action.
The third and fourth principles are applications of principles 1 and 2.
Third Principle: The negative, critical use of concrete stories: Counterexamples followed by Clarifications.
In Plato’s Republic, Polemarchos initially thinks that the general principle “return to each what belongs to him” is a definition of “right-mindedness.” But when he reflects on Socrates’ counterexample story about the man gone insane, he realizes that his personal perception in this concrete case conflicts with his belief in this general principle.
Socratic reasoning requires a willingness to be extremely self-critical, to go out of one’s way to think up counterexamples that reveal conflicts and problems within one’s own thought. This can be difficult, because it requires individuals to go against the normal human desire to make up stories that confirm and illustrate general principles they think they believe in, and think of stories that undermine these beliefs instead.
Whenever a person uncovers a conflict between her general beliefs and her perceptions in very clear concrete cases, she should trust her perception in the concrete case, and regard the conflict as showing a weakness in the general principles she thought she believed in. This is the nature of inductive reasoning. (In the physical sciences, when objective data contradicts an established general scientific principle, this requires revision in the general principle — this is the source of progress in the sciences.)
In Socratic reasoning, a counterexample doesn’t show that some given general idea or principle is completely wrong, only that it is ambiguous. Every counterexample shows a particular ambiguity, which can be remedied by a particular clarification of the general idea or principle. Socrates presents to Laches some counterexamples to Laches’ definition of courage as “standing at one’s post and not running away.” This eventually leads Laches to clarify his general concept of courage, “courage is a certain tenacity of soul.” That is, “standing at one’s post and not running away” is not completely wrong — in many cases such behavior is a manifestation of genuine courage. It is just ambiguous, in that such behavior would manifest foolish stubbornness rather than admirable courage if the plan is pretended withdrawal followed by ambush. “Tenacity of soul” is not ambiguous in this particular way.
One can notice also that “tenacity of soul” constitutes a move from concrete visible behavior toward describing an internal character-trait not directly visible in itself.
We can know that some given virtue-concept is perfect in its goodness (= a “Platonic Form”) if it can withstand all attempts to find weaknesses in it through Socratic questioning-by-counterexample.
One key result of applying this principle: Everything concrete and visible, including rules prescribing specific concrete behavior, will represent a changing mixture of good and not good. How can we know this in the case of concrete rules? A cynical politician or a terrorist can follow whatever rules you might prescribe to her, for bad purposes. Plato’s doctrine that the essence of goodness, that remains good in all circumstances, can only be described in “abstract” concepts — this is not a dogmatic assertion appealing to blind belief. It is the logical result of thoroughgoing application of Socratic questioning-by-counterexample.
Fourth principle: Analogy and Participation
The positive use of concrete stories illustrating obviously admirable behavior.
Inductive Socratic reasoning can also use concrete examples of positively admirable external behavior, in order to make generalizations about internal character traits that constitute the essence of a virtue. For example, Socrates points out that “courage” is not only characteristic of soldiers. A discussion of courage should discuss also “those who are courageous in the face of dangers at sea, in the face of sickness and poverty, in or politics, or those who are courageous not only against pain or fear, but show strength in contending against desires and pleasures.” This invites a person discussing courage to think of or make up stories of people acting in an obviously admirable way in these situations also. In other words, the single internal virtue, “courage” can manifest itself in many different ways in many different circumstances. A person who wants to cultivate courage as a personality trait must not just try to imitate the externally visible behavior of particular persons, but must cultivate certain internal attitudes and skills that would lead her to spontaneously act courageously in a courageous way in many different circumstances. There is no way of anticipating ahead of time all the circumstances that might require courage, and defining courage by prescribing what courageous conduct would consist in in each of these circumstances.
So again, Socratic reasoning consists in moving from concrete, specific, externally visible behavior, to more general descriptions of internal character-traits that are not directly visible, and which might manifest themselves in very different ways in different circumstances. Laches move from “stand at your post and not run away” to “tenacity of soul” illustrates this kind of move, from specific concrete behavior appropriate to Greek foot soldiers, to a very general description of an invisible character-trait that might manifest itself in many different ways in different circumstances not related to soldiers in battle.
That is, a perfect Platonic virtue-Form is necessarily “abstract” — separated from anything specific and concrete — in two senses:
(1) It refers to internal and invisible character-traits (motives, attitudes, skills, etc.), in contrast to concrete/visible external conduct and rules prescribing such conduct
(2) It is general , able to manifest itself in many different concrete behaviors.
Concrete-mindedness, a kind of thinking that can only focus on what is concretely visualizable, and a lack of skill in thinking in more “abstract” terms, is the main psychological obstacle that needs to be overcome in order to be able to do Socratic reasoning well.
One result of Socratic reasoning is:
A- Concrete examples and easy-to-understand concepts of goodness are our only direct source of knowledge of virtue. They are most readily accessible to understanding, but also imperfect in their ability to represent something only and always admirable.
B-Platonic Forms are pure and precise representations of what is only and always admirable, but they are hardest to grasp, and least readily accessible to understanding. We only come to know them by using concrete examples and familiar concepts as starting points. The way we come to know them is by generalization from, and refinement of, our perceptions of concrete admirable examples.
Plato expresses this point in the image of a ladder. In the case of courage, for example, concrete examples of admirably courageous actions lie at the bottom of the ladder, are easiest to understand, and are the indispensable source of all our knowledge of courage. But rules for how to act courageously in concrete circumstances can never capture the essence of admirable courage. The perfect essence of admirable courage – the Platonic Form of courage lying at the top of Plato’s Ladder — is much more difficult for human understanding to grasp. A person trying to understand the perfect essence of admirable courage cannot begin by leaping to the top of the ladder, but must start at the bottom with concrete examples. The passage describing the ladder from Plato’s Symposium is quoted in an Appendix to this essay.
Another analogy: Pure silver exists in silver ore, but it exists there in an impure way, mixed with other things. We get pure silver by starting with impure silver ore and refining it to extract the pure silver from the rest of the materials in the ore. In the same way, it can be said that pure goodness exists in our perceptions of goodness in concrete cases. But no particular concrete case represents something purely, only and always admirable. Platonic reasoning is a process of mentally extracting pure and perfectly refined concepts of goodness from these imperfect concrete representations.
I will call this “The Principle of Analogy” because it was the basis for the Medieval doctrine of Analogy explaining how knowledge of God is possible. E.g. Perfect divine love is difficult to understand because it is unlike imperfect human love. But it is also something like, or “analogous to” imperfect human love. So examples of imperfect human love can serve as the “bottom rungs” on Plato’s ladder, giving us the first steps on the mental ascent to understanding perfect divine love.
It can also be called the principle of “Participation” because it is connected to Plato’s ideas that concrete/imperfect reality “participates in” the perfect Forms.
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