the circle of socrates readings in the first-generation socratics edited and translated by GEORGE BOYS -STONES and CHRISTOPHER ROWE THE CIRCLE OF SOCRATES Readings in the First-Generation Socratics Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 1 12/27/12 10:26 AM Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 2 12/27/12 10:26 AM THE CIRCLE OF SOCRATES Readings in the First-Generation Socratics Edited and Translated by George Boys-Stones and Christopher Rowe Hackett Publishing Co. Indianapolis/Cambridge Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 3 12/27/12 10:26 AM Copyright © 2013 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Abigail Coyle Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson Composition by William Hartman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boys-Stones, G. R. The circle of Socrates : readings in the first-generation Socratics / George Boys-Stones and Christopher Rowe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-1-60384-936-4 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-60384-937-1 (cloth) 1. Philosophy, Ancient. 2. Socrates. I. Rowe, C. J. II. Title. B171.B73 2013 183’.2—dc23 2012036535 Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-989-0 Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 4 12/27/12 10:26 AM Contents Abbreviations vi Introduction vii Chapter 1: Argument and Truth 1 Chapter 2: Happiness and the Good 28 Chapter 3: Virtue and Pleasure 63 Chapter 4: Body and Soul 124 Chapter 5: Education 147 Chapter 6: The Erotic Sciences 167 Chapter 7: Alcibiades and Politics 191 Chapter 8: Aspasia and the Role of Women 233 Chapter 9: God and the World 253 Chapter 10: Lesser Divinities and Socrates’ “Sign” 278 Chapter 11: Debates and Rivalries 293 Bibliography 299 Index of Socratics 302 Index of Sources 314 Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 5 12/27/12 10:26 AM Abbreviations CAG Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (various editors). 23 vols. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1882–1909). DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3 vols. 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1954). PCG R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983). SSR Giannantoni, G. (ed.). Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae. 4 vols. (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1990). TrGF B. Snell, R. Kannicht, and S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. 5 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986–2004). FGrH F. Jacoby et al., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1926–1998). vi Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 6 12/27/12 10:26 AM Introduction Scope and Purpose of the Volume We know the titles of some two hundred works written by follow- ers of Socrates; we possess fewer than forty-five of these works.1 That statistic by itself says something about the difficulty that scholars have faced in assessing the legacy of Socrates. But consider next that those forty-five-or-so works are by just three people: Plato accounts for the vast majority of them (at least twenty-seven—precision is not possible because of unresolved debates over the authenticity of some items his- torically attributed to Plato), Xenophon for another fourteen (including the historical works), and we have two very short pieces by Antisthenes (translated here in full as an appendix to Ch. 1). The fragments of Socrates’ other followers were collected for the first time in 1983 by the Italian scholar Gabriele Giannantoni, in a volume called Socraticorum Reliquiae (The Remains of the Socratics), which he later expanded to include further texts relating to the life and work of Socrates himself (as well as the fragments of Aeschines, which the earlier volume omits). Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, com- monly known as SSR, is now the standard work of reference in the field. The fragments it collects testify to just how many individuals and philosophical traditions traced their inspiration to Socrates, how diverse they were in their thinking, and how much they could do to enrich our understanding of the context in which Plato and Xenophon (not to mention Antisthenes) were working. The present volume is an attempt to highlight and make more read- ily available what we consider to be some of the more interesting and illuminating material by the first-generation followers of Socrates, and to make the case that it ought to be taken into account by mainstream scholarship on classical philosophy. By this, we have two main constitu- encies in mind. The first is scholars interested in Socrates. This book— and it is especially important to bear this in mind—is not itself about Socrates, at least not directly. But it is very much about the principal evidence for him. Since Socrates wrote nothing, his voice comes to us only as mediated through his followers, and a proper understanding of 1. Cf. Rossetti (2003); and see our Index of Socratics for the lists. vii Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 7 12/27/12 10:26 AM viii Introduction their conversations and the context in which they report and represent Socrates is a precondition for any attempt to approach the historical Socrates.2 The second existing constituency we have in mind consists of schol- ars working on Plato and Xenophon. What the most casual acquain- tance with SSR shows is that, while Plato and Xenophon may have been preeminent among their contemporaries (a judgment made since antiquity, and by those who still had much fuller access to the evidence on which such a claim could be justified), we run the risk of serious distortion if we read their work as if it arose in a vacuum. Even to see where and how they were original requires that we know what their contemporaries were saying—and that, as we have found in prepar- ing this volume, can lead to some surprising answers and fruitful new perspectives. Less important to us—although it is a central organizing principle in SSR—is the notion of “Socratic schools”: the movements and institu- tions that traced their origins back to first-generation Socratics. The most prominent of these (for the record) are the Cynics, of a tradition that traced itself via Diogenes of Sinope to Antisthenes; the Megarians (also known as the Eristics and the Dialectics), who belonged to a school founded by Euclides in his hometown of Megara; the Elians (later called the Eretrians), belonging to a school founded by Phaedo of Elis; the Cyrenaics, whose “founder” was Aristippus of Cyrene; and the Academics, members of Plato’s school in Athens (known as the “Academy” from a shrine to the hero Academus on the land where it was founded). We have occasionally resorted to testimony about these schools to speculate about the views of their “founders,” but cautiously, and as a last resort. In the course of our work for this volume, two things have become increasingly clear to us. First of all, that it is in general unhelpful to think of the work of any of the Socratics as if it were oriented toward the foundation of a distinctive “school” (rather than toward conversation with their peers). Secondly, our picture of the first-generation Socratics can be quickly distorted by anachronisms introduced by unchecked inferences from the work of the later schools to the views of their “founders.” To take one striking example: we are told that Euclides was interested in various aspects of dialectic (the art, as it were, of philosophical conversation), but it turns out to be very 2. We say this without prejudice to the controversial question of whether the attempt can succeed. The point is that, if it can, it will be through the help of this material; if it cannot, the material itself will have to stand proxy for the figure who inspired it. Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 8 12/27/12 10:26 AM Introduction ix misleading to conceive of this interest as the sort of interest in logic that characterized the Megarian school later on (see texts and discussion in Ch. 1). These, then, are the thoughts that have guided the selection of texts we have included here. We have tried to choose just those texts which bear witness to the thinking of first-generation followers of Socrates (or purport to do so), and which resonate with lines of thought to be found in Plato and Xenophon; and we have tried to provide just enough in the way of excerpts from Plato and Xenophon to show what the reso- nance is. We have brought together texts from as many first-generation Socratic thinkers as we could, but have been deliberately parsimonious with Plato and Xenophon, and the reader will quickly think of texts we might have added. That, of course, is part of the grounds for our par- simony: the reader is invited, indeed encouraged (and certainly able), to go back to the full texts that we possess to find resonances of their own. To include here even a significant fraction of what in Plato and Xenophon is relevant to any one of the themes would be to overwhelm the voices of the other Socratics and drown out the conversations that we are trying, in some measure, to recover.3 Membership of the “Circle” of Socrates But what, exactly, do we have in mind when we talk of the “circle of Socrates”? One thing which is evident about the historical figure of Socrates is that he was a conspicuous and charismatic figure: a public intellectual, in the literal sense of being highly visible (and notoriously ugly with it). To the ordinary eye, he would have counted as belonging to the type called “sophists,” professional teachers of rhetoric and sometimes of other subjects, who claimed to be able to train people (mainly young, ambitious men) in the qualities and competences needed to succeed in life. How fair that is (or how fair it is to the sophists that followers of Socrates such as Plato tried so hard to deny the association) may be a matter for debate (there is some relevant discussion in Ch. 5). But what 3. One source we have not used (although some are included in SSR) are the so-called Socratic Epistles, thirty-five letters purporting to have been written by members of the circle to each other. In fact, they seem to be entirely fictional products, maybe of the third century CE; and, whatever their own sources, they also have remarkably little to say about the philosophical views of their purported authors. See Malherbe (1977), which includes an English translation. Rowe-CircleOfSoc_00bk.indb 9 12/27/12 10:26 AM