Piet Hut: Socratic Questioning

Piet Hut, Oct. 1998

One of the most radical attempts at questioning all and everything was made by Socrates, a true beginner in the literal sense of the word. As Aristotle summarized it, ``It was the practice of Socrates to ask questions but not to give answers, for he confessed that he did not know'' [Soph. el. 183b6-8].

The story of Socrates is well-known: he went around through the city of Athens, talking with many different people, and questioning their views. Whenever somebody thought to have acquired some real knowledge, Socrates would show that knowledge to be uncertain or often downright inconsistent in some way or other.

Although he never tired from questioning, he did not come up with any answers. His questions were typically cast in the form of a search for definitions. We all know instances of X, he would say, where X could be courage, or beauty, or some other characteristic. But do we really have any firm knowledge about what X is? Can we give a definition of X?

This search for definitions stimulated the construction of several philosophical systems by others who were directly or indirectly inspired by him, Plato and Aristotle being the most famous two. Undoubtedly, both Plato and Aristotle considered that they had taken up where Socrates had left off, thereby completing the work left unfinished by the master. Indeed, many later commentators have looked at them in that way.

However, such an interpretation, I think, misses the point. If I imagine Socrates to meet somebody like the later Plato, or like Aristotle, somewhere in the market place in Athens, it would not be difficult to imagine the outcome of their conversations. Socrates would show great admiration for the acumen with which each of those two had build up a clever and elaborate philosophical system. But nonetheless, he would wind up pointing out to them the unfoundedness of some of their most fundamental assumptions. In the end, he would conclude that they, too, had no real knowledge --- that their elaborate systems, no matter how pretty, orderly, and ingenious, did not provide any ultimate basis for undubitable knowledge.

I think that Socrates' quest for knowledge was a quest for freedom. In this quest, he cheerfully investigated any type of limitation inherent in any type of belief, only to show the lack of solidity of these limitations and fixed conclusions. I see his quest for definitions more as a tool to unearth our unquestioned identifications.

The crucial point, I believe, is that Socrates was not really expecting to ever find closed definitions as the result of all of his questioning. He certainly did not seem dejected or disappointed toward the end of his life. Instead, I get a strong impression that he wanted to show the limitations of conceptual thinking. In this endeavor, he used conceptual thinking as the very weapon to dethrone conceptual thinking, fighting fire with fire so to speak. Not unlike a Zen master, he has the effect of puzzling his audience, prompting them to see their cozy conventional reality in a new light. This is expressed for example in the words of Meno[Meno 80a]:

And if I am indeed to have my jest, I consider that both in your appearance and in other respects you are extremely like the flat torpedo sea-fish; for it benumbs anyone who approaches and touches it, and something of the sort is what I find you have done to me now. For in truth I feel my soul and my tongue quite benumbed, and I am at a loss what answer to give you.

Socrates was clearly an exceedingly unconventional person. He comes across as an unusually honest and authentic. He is driven by a quest for truth, for wisdom, but a quest in which there is nothing desperate. He never seems to even begin to reach the end of questioning, but he also does not give the impression of treading a path which leads to exhaustion in a quicksand of never-ending questioning without getting anywhere. Paradoxically, while on the surface not getting anywhere, his questioning is meaningful for himself as well as for (at least part of) his spell-bound audience. Paradoxically, while disavowing the teacher role, he does seem to teach people. And he teaches them what he considers to be most important: that they in fact don't know while they think they know something.

Yet Socrates does make positive statements. Perhaps his most famous one is his conviction that `the unexamined life is not worth living' [Apol. 38a]. In other words, a life without self-reflection is worthless. But how do we reflect upon ourselves?

Very simple: we take anything we thought we know, and investigate it thoroughly. If we are careful enough, we will discover that our knowledge was only a veneer, covering a deeper not-knowing. This is the theme of what I would characterize as `Socratic deconstruction'.

What is interesting about his deconstructive approach is that it is never presented as an ideology. He does not try to convince others that reality cannot be captured through identification with concepts. Rather, he approaches the problem for the other side. He shows how any attempt at trying to capture reality that way fails miserably.

The technique he uses is a form of judo, applied in dialogue form. The momentum of the arguments of his opponent is taken up, swung around, and used towards a self-unmasking of the futility of their arguments.

However, it would be unfair to characterize this technique as a trick or a sleight of hand. Socrates has seen so clearly through the intrinsic impossibility of capturing reality in concepts that he is utterly confident to take on any challenge. But since he cannot prove his point by definition, the only way open is to make his point plausible by showing patiently how all other alternatives are not viable.

Why can Socrates not prove his point? The answer is implicit in his subversive attack on definitions. How can you define the limits of definitions? In order to define that borderline, you have to define both what can be defined and what cannot be defined. The latter is a tall order indeed, and implies a contradiction in terms.

This particular argument, of course, is only meant to be evocative and not an explanation, let alone a proof. It is intended to convey something of a feeling for what I think Socrates is up to. In this context I believe that Socrates is completely honest, and has no trickery in mind, when he says [Gorgias 506a]:

For I assure you I myself do not say what I say as knowing it, but as joining in the search with you; so that if anyone who disputes my statements is found to be on the right track, I shall be the first to agree with him.

When I read the various descriptions of Socrates, as they have come down to us (mainly through Plato and Xenophon), the picture that emerges for me is of a man who is in search of appearance.

I realize that this statement will raise many an eyebrow. Did not Socrates always try to look behind appearances, trying to find his way from the particular to the general? Was he not always groping for more abstract definitions, starting from more concrete examples only to discard them in an attempt to move beyond them? Did not Aristotle testify that Socrates was the initiator of a search for definitions?

As I already alluded to above, I think there are two problems with this conventional picture. First, in many instances it is clearly Plato who uses such an image to further his own message, using Socrates as a spokesman for his own ideas. But secondly, in Plato's early dialogues where a more authentically Socratic picture emerges, it is not clear how driven Socrates really is to find definitions. Yes, he is driven, but he is far from desperate. He is driven to show other people how they are ignorant of their ignorance (note: for the question of separating the real Socrates from the Platonic Socrates, see Vlastos, G. 1991, Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge Univ. Pr.), Ch. 2).

Here is Guthrie's summary of Socrates' approach [Guthrie, W.K.C. 1971, Socrates (Cambridge Univ. Pr.), p. 129.]:

Once his companion had understood the right way to the goal (the method in its Greek sense), he was ready to seek it with him, and philosophy was summed up for him in this idea of the `common search' . . . Neither knew the truth yet, but if only the other could be persuaded of this, they might set out together with some hope of finding it, or at least approaching it more closely, for the man who has rid his mind of a false conception is already nearer the truth .

The atmosphere of the Socratic dialogues, captured in Guthrie's summary, reminds me of the following Zen story:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. ``It is overfull. No more will go in!''

``Like this cup,'' Nan-in said, ``you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?''

A quest for freedom from identification seems to underly both Nan-in's and Socrates' way of questioning.

Two-thousand years after Socrates, Descartes also attempts to go back to square one, unmasking all conceptual knowledge as just that: more concepts that can be doubted in every which way. And like Socrates, Descartes considers each discovery of a lack of knowledge a positive contribution in and by itself. In Descartes' words [Descartes' Methods, p. 29]:

I never found anything that was so doubtful that I could not draw some rather certain conclusion from it, even if it were merely that it contained nothing certain.

Would it be far-fetched to read in Socrates' search for definitions a hidden urge to go ``back to the things themselves'', as the phenomenologists would say, three hundred years after Descartes? Could not the whole search for definitions be a skillful method to force us to blink our eyes, and have a good fresh look at daily reality, from a more directly lived vantage point?

I have the impression that Socrates is using the device of his time, intellectual dialogues, as a convenient vehicle to communicate his message. We know that a Zen master or any type of original mystic can use whatever usual or unusual means they like, in order to express their nonverbal understanding in creative and unexpected ways. And there are clear indications of a mystical or at least a rather nonrational bend in Socrates.

One indication is that Socrates spends a large fraction of his life testing the reply of the Delphic oracle, that no one was wiser than Socrates [see Guthrie, op. cit., p. 86, who argues that the Delphic response was indeed a turning point in his life.]. Another is the `divine sign' or inner voice, the daimonion that discourages him occasionally from undertaking some action he had planned to do. And then we have an explicit reference to a mystic voice in the Crito [Plato, Crito, last full paragraph (transl. B. Jowett; Dover)]:

This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other . . . Then let me follow the intimations of the will of God.

In addition, there are a couple occasions where Socrates was reported to stand immobile for hours, as if in a trance [Guthrie, op. cit. , p. 84, 85.]. All this taken together would suggest that our usual impression of Socrates as a rational intellectual searching for definitions is heavily skewed. During the last few centuries, our own `age of reason' may have mislead us in focusing to much on the verbal-reasoning aspects of Socrates, to the neglect of the other facets of his deeply personal involvement with a search for knowledge.

We have to conclude that Socrates' philosophical quest was never purely theoretical, but instead more like a craft, a highly applied activity.