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6 - Socratic piety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

Gregory Vlastos
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Summary

Socrates' commitment to reasoned argument as the final arbiter of claims to truth in the moral domain is evident throughout Plato's Socratic dialogues. He refers to it in the deliberation by which he justifies to Crito the decision to remain in prison and await execution:

tiCr. 45B: “Not now for the first time, but always, I am the sort of man who is persuaded by nothing in me except the proposition which appears to me to be the best when I reason (λογιομένῳ) about it.”

And yet he is also committed to obeying commands reaching him through supernatural channels. When explaining at his trial why the state's power of life and death over him could not scare him into abandoning the public practice of his philosophy, he declares:

T2 Ap. 33c: “To do this has been commanded me, as I maintain, by the god through divinations and through dreams and every other means through which divine apportionment has ever commanded anyone to do anything.”

Between these two commitments – on one hand, to follow argument wherever it may lead; on the other, to obey divine commands conveyed to him through supernatural channels – he sees no conflict. He assumes they are in perfect harmony. Can sense be made of this? I want to argue that it can.

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Socrates
Ironist and Moral Philosopher
 , pp. 157 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

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