Philosophy Matters - The Way of the Gadfly

The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency of Socratic Thought by Ryszard Legutko

Ryszard Legutko asks us to ask ourselves, “How successful was Socrates in teaching virtue?” Since it confirms the intuition I am forming from my current reading of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, I think Legutko’s somewhat iconoclastic answer is worth quoting explicitly:

My first intuition concerns Socrates’ moral impact on the people around him. To my surprise, quite possibly the most illustrious teacher of morality, famous for his miraculous ability to open the minds of his interlocutors, suffered a stunning defeat in educational terms. Much has been written about his influence on others, yet that is not the picture painted by the ancient authors. Those surrounding Socrates, those who considered themselves his students or disciples or were regarded as such by others, seemed to understand precious little of his teachings. It is difficult to identify a single character in Plato’s dialogues who could be said to have taken Socrates’ teachings to heart and changed his life accordingly. It is more likely that his interlocutors’ approval of his ethical guidelines had no influence on their conduct. Even those in the closest and longest-standing relation to the philosopher failed to draw any conclusions from their master’s and friend’s teachings. His intellectual impact on the philosophers who came after him was immense; his impact on the actions and lifestyle of those who surrounded him—negligible.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 2). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

This is particularly noticeable in Xenophon. Xenophon consistently introduces his vignettes with a statement about how Socrates instilled a particular virtue in his friends, but the stories are fairly hit or miss in demonstrating that the friend in question actually adopted the virtue. Platonic dialogues are even worse; does anyone come away from a discussion with Socrates in Plato resolving to amend their life?

Legutko’s thesis is that the personal development of others was a secondary interest for Socrates. Socrates controlled his dialogues to lead to “predefined or anticipated conclusions.” [1]

Legutko argues that Socrates had a core principle from which his arguments arose and to which they returned. Socrates was not episodic or free-wheeling. He did not let the conversation with interlocutors go wherever they turned. He did not act as a midwife for the ideas of others, however much he might have claimed the contrary, perhaps as a matter of “Socratic irony.”

Legutko begins with Socrates’ theory of knowledge. Legutko argues that knowledge for Socrates was a “system of logically connected propositions.” Socrates held to a “naïve” version of the “coherence theory” of truth” “according too which justification of the propositions is, in fact the criterion of truth, and the propositions cannot be justified but by other propositions.”

Legutko has a way of developing concepts to which he assigns acronyms; the reader’s job is made easier by writing a list of the acronyms for reference. He develops his theory of Socrates’s theory of knowledge through a deep analysis of Platonic texts. One acronym is “SCK” which means “Socrates ’ Criteria of Knowledge.” The SCK presupposes conditions that must be met for Socrates to agree that something constitutes knowledge. The conditions are (a) the correct identification of the proper object of knowledge (“IO”), e.g. poets know poetry; craftsmen know their craft, both are mistaken if they go beyond their subject; (b) hierarchy of the objects of cognition (“HO”) by which objects of cognition are arranged in a hierarchical order with “kalon kagothon” – the most important things, such as politics, occupying the higher levels and therefore having the dignity of knowledge as opposed to a “knack” like baking; (c) the hierarchy of expertise (“HEX”) by which some people are bona fide experts who should be listened to and some are ‘just guys’ like the voters in a democratic system (or the newly minted experts in “tariff policy” or immunology that we see crop up in social media); (d) “elenchus” or “critical analysis” (“CA”) - the crucial aspect of this analysis is consistency; and finally (e) “knowledge to be expressed in speech; the interlocutor had to give a “theoretical account” (“TA”) of what they believed to be true – fail that and the interlocutor could not be said to have knowledge of the subject.

Knowledge is defined by a system, a logos[2]:

This means that what constituted knowledge was logos—not simply a practical skill or an ability to give correct answers—but logos in the sense of a proposition, but rather a chain of propositions forming an argument and a theory.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 15). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Given the SCK, it becomes obvious why Socrates was always pressing for definitions. Definitions were universal abstractions at the highest level, usually obtained from experts. To define a concept is to define its essence in what Legutko calls the “eidetic interpretation of definitions” (“EID”)[3]

Socratic elenchus was designed not to “discover the truth but to detect inconsistencies in the interlocutor’s views.” Legutko points to several dialogues where the issue at hand dealt with the consistency of positions rather than the truth of the position:

It would be impossible to deny that in Plato’s dialogues, there are several examples that indicate consistency rather than truth. Q2 is a case in point. Meletus made himself an easy object of criticism when he ascribed atheism to Socrates—not believing in gods “at all.” Then it was enough to find one case to the contrary to refute the claim. If the daimonia were divine signals, Meletus could not argue that Socrates accepting the daimonia did not believe in the divinities which sent those signals. Of course, Socrates could find a more tangible example to contradict Meletus’ claim, such as his devotion to Apollo, but for some reason, he did not seek material proof but only inconsistency on the part of his accuser. He explicitly stated that Meletus contradicted himself (27a1–6).

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 30-31). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Legutko deals with the issue of “true opinion” (ortho doxia) where some people get the right answer, such as the slave in the Meno. It may be that Socrates postulated a latent store of knowledge that could be activated under the right circumstances, but Socrates may have loaded the circumstances. Thus, in the Meno, the slave is led to the correct conclusion about a geometric question, but Socrates knew the answer, he drew the picture, and he asked the properly limited, leading questions. Socrates “introduced the concept of the diagonal, which made possible the solution to the problem.” “In other words, a lot of information came to him from the outside, not from within.” Further, Socrates had an agenda beyond geometry: “To put it crudely, the slave boy’s success in doubling the square enables Socrates to talk about the immortality of the soul.”

Legutko also tackles the paradox of Socrates’ claim of ignorance. Socrates claimed to be ignorant of everything except his own ignorance, but he also claimed to know when other people lacked knowledge, and he made numerous truth claims that were anything but claims of ignorance. In this context, Legutko presents something Socrates is very sure is true, namely “SBT” or Socrates’ Basic thesis, which was that “it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice” or that “one must never do wrong.” Legutko writes:

These three blocks of statements constitute what we may call Socrates’ Basic Theory, or in case they do not amount to a proper theory, Socrates’ Basic Theses (SBT). Whether they really form a theory may be debatable, but now let us examine them. The simplest and easiest to justify is the E group. It amounts to the statement that wrongdoing is inadmissible, and that inadmissibility generates a categorical prohibition—namely, one must never do wrong. When we compare the F statements with other statements from the remaining groups, we will see that they stand out in their unequivocal simplicity, clarity, and intransigence. If there is anything Socrates was absolutely and unmistakably sure of, it was the forceful condemnation and prohibition of adikein.

The verb adikein has two major meanings—a narrow one: to harm others; and a more abstract one: to violate a nomos, human or divine. The same goes for the nouns that are etymologically related—namely, adikia and adikēma, meaning acts of harming someone and acts of violating nomoi. This, of course, creates a problem of whether Socrates would have accepted harming people whenever it would accord with the nomos. And the answer is he would not. He accepted punishment, even severe, provided its intention was to help the wrongdoer to liberate himself from evil and not just to make him suffer.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 58-59). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

And:

With this proviso in mind, we can say that for Socrates the ban on adikein was absolute and that the ban also covered retaliation: the person who was wronged must not do wrong in return. Adikein, whatever the circumstances, was so bad that Socrates called it not only evil but the greatest evil. The last phrase suggests that there were other kinds of evil, lesser ones. And this is, indeed, what Socrates stated explicitly in the Gorgias, where he made the distinction between the greatest evil and lesser evils, and in the latter category, he included poverty or sickness (477b), and also—to use Polus’ examples—being put on the rack, having the eyes burnt out, being crucified, burnt in a pitch coat, etc. (473c).

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 59). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

According to Legutko, the prohibition on adikein conformed to SCK for several reasons. First, justice and injustice were completely different things; there is no excuse or exemption to commit injustice in the course of justice. Injustice contaminates the action, transforming its essential nature into injustice. Second, the highest object of knowledge corresponds to the highest human pursuit (or kalon kagathon), which puts moral questions at the top of the hierarchy. “The highest human pursuit is to make the soul the best (ariste) and this best state of the soul Socrates calls virtue (arete.)”

Legutko’s examination of these ideas leads to this:

6.3 Socrates’ basic theses (SBT) As reconstructed above, SBT consists of three pillars, each derived from and justified by the criteria of knowledge: the first is the rejection of adikein; the second is the positive concept of the human pursuit toward the best state of the soul; and the third is the directive that the first and second must develop independently of and in opposition to the mind of the Democratic Man and hoi polloi.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 64). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Knowledge and virtue mirror each other:

Perhaps the closest we can approach and read Socrates’ intention is the first part of the Crito, where Socrates spells out three logoi that allow him to act rightly (46b1). The first stipulated that it is always necessary to act in keeping with “nothing . . . but the logos that on reflection seems best. . .” (46b5–6). The second was the “logos about opinions (doxōn)” according to which the opinions of some people were more valuable than those of others (46c7–d2). The third logos stated that “[one must not] when wronged, inflict wrong in return, as the majority believe since one must never do wrong” (49b10–11).[4]

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 67). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

This observation is near the conclusion of Legutko’s theory of Socratic knowledge, but it seems like it should fall in the section on virtue, thus indicating the connection between knowledge and virtue.

Concerning Socratic virtue, Legutko argues that the Socratic Man’s systemic conduct has three features: (a) unity – it is always the same man who is acting, (b) consistency in words and deeds in following the logoi; (c) sense of hierarchy in always striving for the best, the goodness (arete) of his soul.

Unity implies that all virtues are one. Legutko links this idea to EID, presumably because “virtue” is linked to a single “eidos” – a single snapshot idea that can articulate in one go the essence of “virtue.”

There is much that is very good in Legutko’s discussion of virtue, but I found his discussion of Socratic irony to be very insightful. Legutko observes:

A part of the problem was that Socrates’ logoi were uttered and argued for in a special atmosphere, which remains notoriously difficult to describe and employ cheekiness, uncertainty, distance, suspension of judgement, sometimes an apparent or actual change of mind, occasional ambiguity of Socrates’ own position, contradictions that were difficult to unravel, and a mixture of mockery and seriousness. All this and much more is usually referred to as eirōneia, or “irony.”

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 205). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

The meaning of irony is subject to debate:

To elaborate on this, we can say that irony consists in saying things that stand in opposition to what is believed to be true while, at the same time, signaling a subtle difference between the statement explicitly made and that which is held to be true by the speaker. Irony, therefore, borders on a lie and yet is not a lie because it contains a hidden sign pointing to the truth, albeit one which is discernible to the trained ear and eye. This association of irony with truth and falsehood may have been the reason why Aristotle mentioned Socratic irony in his Nicomachean Ethics in a passage that deals with truthfulness.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 206-207). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

The problem with irony is that other people can misconstrue it as a person’s true position:

Whether Socrates’ irony in the above sense derived from a tactical game or, as Aristotle maintained, was proof of his noble character, the jurors did not find any redeeming feature in his conduct and failed to notice any self-deprecation, real or pretended. On the contrary, they found him adamant and raised clamor in reaction to his words, considering them “boastful” (mega legein); at least, this is how Socrates interpreted their indignation (20e3–4). Moreover, it was not a passing impression they experienced during the trial, but many felt it over a long period of time (18b3–d2).

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (p. 209). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

This raises the question of whether irony is a good rhetorical strategy. Socrates himself noted that people did not believe him, thinking that he was being ironic when he was being serious:

This statement is genuinely perplexing: Socrates, at the very end of his life, admitted that people did not believe in his words, even the most important ones about the divine mission and virtue because they thought he was not being serious. The word “irony” thus reflected the mistrust of the society at large or at least uncertainty as to whether Socrates actually meant what he was saying. They might have suspected that he had been distancing himself from his words. This led to a disturbing conclusion. If irony is a deliberate aspect of Socrates’ method, then in educational terms, the method would be self-defeating: instead of bolstering his own teachings, Socrates undermined them.

The problem was a chasm that separated the views of Socrates and those of hoi polloi. Socrates was fully aware of it and knew that his proposed path was so difficult that it was impossible to convey its significance to the vast majority of people. He explained to Crito, “For I know that only a few people hold this view or will hold it, and there is no common ground between those who hold this view and those who do not, but they inevitably despise each other’s views” (49d1–5, Grube trans.).4 It may then very well be that what the interlocutors perceived as his irony resulted from his awareness that, by and large, there was little chance his arguments would genuinely reach the minds of the people.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 210-211). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Legutko offers an interesting analysis of the presentation of this subject as it was raised in the Gorgias.

Did the Socratic approach bear fruit? Legutko is skeptical. Referring to a passage in the Theaetetus about how some of his students made amazing progress, Legutko observes:

The second problem with this passage is that no names of the successful young men are mentioned, which substantially weakens its credibility. It is striking that Socrates mentioned those who abandoned him, dissatisfied with his company,5 but never gave names of those who could testify to his success. The truth is that hardly ever do we encounter in Plato’s dialogues the persons who match the description in the Theaetetus. From Socrates’ perspective, it would have been rational to provide some positive examples, not necessarily to defend himself against the charges raised against him but to prove the power of the elenchus. Even if he had been only an accoucheur, the successful delivery would have been a memorable event, especially when what those young people brought forth to light was “a multitude of beautiful things” and their progress was “amazing.” But we do not meet a single one of those beautiful things, nor hear the names of those who brought them to light.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 221-222). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Not encouraging.

Legutko observes further:

But generally, the outcome of Socrates’ conversations was, indeed, far from impressive. Some of his interlocutors, such as Callicles, Thrasymachus, Meletus, Polus, Anytus are the antagonists whom he could not convince. In all these conversations, Socrates had the last word in arguments, but his interlocutors knew better. Others like Protagoras and Gorgias had their own views, which they did not change after a confrontation with Socrates. Still, others like Euthyphro, or Charmides, or Laches, or Meno did not quite understand the thrust of Socrates’ argument. The intellectual skirmishes he had with all of them certainly did not improve his position in Athens, and finally, the battle was lost in the sense that his life ended and the mission was terminated.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 237-238). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Definitely not encouraging.

Legutko argues that Socrates viewed himself as a man with a mission assigned by the gods to spread a kind of gospel:

So, in a nutshell, he claimed that the god ordered him to practice elenchus to advance his own (that is, Socrates’) view of virtue among the Athenians and encourage them to live according to the standards that follow from it. The superiority of virtue over wealth and fame was one of the propositions of SBT, and its possible justification stemmed from SCK, which, among others, stipulated the hierarchy of the objects of cognition. At the top of this hierarchy were “the most important things” (kalon kagathon), which referred to the goodness of the soul, as contrasted with the satisfaction of the body.

Legutko, Ryszard. The Way of the Gadfly: A Study of Coherency in Socratic Thought (pp. 234-235). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.

Legutko concludes with some observations about Socrates’ “charm.” Charm here is used in the sense of “enchanting.” People saw Socrates surrounded by acolytes and concluded that he was charming or enchanting them through his use of both aporia and words and sentences that captivated his listeners. Legutko does not mention, but could have, a passage from Xenophon’s Memorabilia where Socrates used the same image to explain to a friend how that friend could make friends:

[10] “But how are friends hunted?” he said.

“They say that there are certain incantations, which those who understand them chant to make friends for themselves of whomever they wish; and that there are love charms, too, which those who understand them use on whomever they wish to become beloved by them.”

[11] “Where then might we learn these things?” he said.

“You have heard in Homer what the Sirens chanted to Odysseus, which begins somewhat as follows: ‘Come here, much-praised Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans.’”

“Did the Sirens,” he said, “hold fast other human beings too, Socrates, by chanting this incantation with the result that the enchanted didn’t depart from them?”

[12] “No, but they chanted in this manner to those who love the honor accorded to virtue.”46

“Are you all but saying that one should chant to each person praises of the sort that he who hears them will not hold that the one praising him is ridiculing him?”

“For one would thus be more hateful and drive human beings away from oneself, if one were to praise a person who knows he is short, ugly, and weak by saying that he is beautiful, tall, and strong.”

“Do you know any other incantations?”

[13] “No, but I have heard that Pericles47 understood many that he chanted to the city to make it love him.”

Xenophon; Bonnette, Amy L.. Memorabilia (Agora Editions) (pp. 54-55). Cornell University Press. Kindle Edition.

This is a book worth reading. There is a lot to unpack and contemplate.

Footnotes:

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[1] Legutko also offers a “third intuition” in his introduction concerning Socrates’ attitude toward democracy, namely, Socrates was deeply critical of democracy. Legutko himself is deeply critical of “liberal democracy” as it now exists in Western Europe on the grounds that it is far more totalitarian than it ought to be. This view is explored in Legutko’s “The Demon in Democracy.” See here for a review of “The Demon in Democracy. Legutko is a Member of the European Parliament with nationalist views, as evident in this YouTube video.

[2] “Logos” can mean “principle,” “logic,” “reason,” and similar concepts or ideas.

[3] “Eidetic” is defined as “relating to or denoting mental images having unusual vividness and detail, as if visible.” It is a “snapshot memory” in ultimate detail. It may also be what Aristotle and Aquinas referred to as a “phantasm,” an intelligible idea shorn of any particularity.

[4] Later, Legutko identifies a “fourth logos,” “when one has come to an agreement that is just with someone, one should fulfill it,” as part of the Crito to explain Socrates’ rejection of Crito’s escape plan.