Socrates as Enigma

Tags: Anecdotes, Aristophanes, Daedalus, Euthyphro, Plato, Psychology, Socrates, Symposium, The Clouds

Socrates as intangible ghost

In Euthyphro (written by Plato), Socrates claims to descend from the lineage of Daedalus, the mythic sculpture who created statues that, when completed, would begin to move in all directions, evading the grasp of the people. When someone would try to approach these statues, they would run away and disappear as if they were ghosts.

This story makes Socrates’ affinity with Daedalus revealing about how he sees himself (as written by Plato,of course): a personality that cannot be captured in a simple idea or definition, illusive like a ghost but filled with tantalizing beauty.

Socrates saw ideas very much in the same light as Daedalus’ statues. He felt that ideas that were written down died. As he tells Phaedrus:

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the appearance of life, and yet if you ask them a question, they preserve a solemn silence

Source: Phaedrus.

In the writings of Antisthenes, Plato, Euclides and Aristippus Socrates presents himself as a complex, contradictory character. The minute you think you understand him, you lost him. A true offspring of Daedalus.

Perhaps that is why that Alcibiades tells us is in Symposium that

none of you knows Socrates

A man few liked: Socrates as a ridiculous character

As the comedian Aristophanes’ summed up Socrates’ personality in The Clouds (a play written during Socrates’ life, when the philosopher was middle aged):

A bold rascal, a fine speaker, impudent, shameless, a braggart, and adept at stringing lies, and an old stager at quibbles, a complete table of laws, a thorough rattle, a fox to slip through any hole, supple as a leathern strap, slippery as an eel, an artful fellow, a blusterer, a villain a knave with one hundred faces, cunning, intolerable, a gluttonous dog.

Socrates was disliked by many and liked by few. Alcibiades portrayal of Socrates in Symposium is telling:

[Socrates] spends his whole life playing his little game of irony and laughing up his sleeve at the world.

Diogenes Laertius writes:

Frequently, owing to his vehemence in argument, men set upon him with their fists and tore his hair our; and for the most part he was despised and laughed at, yet bore all this ill-usage patiently.

Tags: Anecdotes, Aristophanes, Daedalus, Euthyphro, Plato, Psychology, Socrates, Symposium, The Clouds