J. Burnet: Development of Greek Philosophy

Page 13

Now if this is a correct account of what Socrates taught, he must be regarded as inaugurating an entirely new period in the history of philosophy. That is implied in the common term 'Presocratics' generally applied to his predecessors, though the ordinary textbooks are by no means clear as to the grounds for assigning this pre-eminent position to Socrates. We can also see how natural it was for him to lay such emphasis on the conversion of souls as he certainly did. That purpose continued to dominate Greek philosophy to the very end. No doubt successive schools varied in their conception of what conversion meant, but that is the link which binds them all together. In fact, it gave rise to a new literary form, the 'hortatory discourse' (προτρεπτικος λογος {protreptikos logos}), which was more and more cultivated as time went on, and was at last taken over by the fathers of the Christian church along with much else of a more fundamental character.

It has been noted already that Socrates had followers among all the leading philosophical schools of the time, and the possibility is not to be excluded that we may still learn more of him from the discovery of new sources. For the present, the recovery of some new and fairly extensive fragments of the Alcibiades of Aeschines of Sphettos is the chief addition to our sources of information. We know that Aeschines was a disciple of Socrates, and the tradition of antiquity was that his dialogues gave the most faithful picture of the man as he really was. If so, that was probably because Aeschines had no philosophy of his own. For us the chief importance of the new fragments is that, if we read them along with those already known (and it is unfortunate that the old and the new have not yet been printed together), they strongly confirm the impression we get from Plato of the manner of Socrates and his method of argument, and that helps to reassure us as to the essentially historical character of the Platonic Socrates. The fragments of Aeschines also corroborate Plato by showing that the conversion of Alcibiades (whose life he had saved when a young man) was one of the things that lay nearest his heart.

But the real successor of Socrates was, of course, Plato himself (427-347 B. C.). It is not possible to give even an outline of Plato's philosophy here. Indeed the time has hardly come for that yet, though much admirable work is now being done, especially by a French professor, M. Robin, which promises more certain conclusions than have yet been possible. All that can be attempted here is to indicate the attitude of Plato to some of the problems we have been discussing. His very great contributions to the theory of knowledge will be passed over, as they are beginning to be well understood, and the Theaetetus in particular, with its sequel the Sophist, is more and more coming to occupy its rightful place as the best introduction to philosophy in general. It is necessary, however, just to notice in passing a fundamental question of method which the Platonic dialogues themselves suggest. It is this. While Socrates is present in every one of them except the Laws, he takes practically no part in some of them, and the dialogues in which this is the case are known on other grounds to belong to the later years of Plato's life. There must be some reason for this, and it is obviously prudent to treat these later dialogues in the first instance as our primary evidence for Plato's own views. Indeed, it is only after his philosophy has been reconstructed from these sources and from the sometimes obscure references to it in Aristotle, that it will be safe to attempt an answer to the question of how much there may be in the dialogues of his early life which is properly to be assigned to Plato himself rather than to Socrates. That is a historical question of great interest; but, as has been said, the solution of it, if that should ever prove possible, would not greatly affect the impression that Athenian philosophy leaves upon us as a whole.

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J. Burnet
Development of Greek Philosophy

Learned Freeware

J. Burnet Development of Greek Philosophy

Learned Freeware

J. Burnet
Development of Greek Philosophy