Daniel Graham, “The First Ethical Man: Reflections on the Life of Socrates and Why It Should Matter to Philosophers.”

Scholars of Socrates have taken wildly divergent views on the historicity and reliability of the Socratic dialogues and the figure they portray.  While it is largely agreed today that most dialogues are fictional in character, there are major disagreements about what evidence they provide.  Some scholars hold that they provide no reliable evidence of the historical Socrates; some that, while they may hint at the historical Socrates, they provide insufficient evidence to judge what is genuinely Socratic; and some that they are faithful to the methods and views of the historical Socrates.  So there are skeptics, agnostics, and believers on the question of what we know about the historical Socrates.

I side with the last group.  I believe that the circumstances in which the Socratic dialogues were published by followers of Socrates supports the view that they were, inter alia, meant as introductions to the thought and practices of their master, as well as vindications of his project.  In fact we have surprisingly rich sources on the life and activities of Socrates, which deserve more attention than philosophers usually give them.  I shall offer some well-documented facts about Socrates’ life, some of which are well known, some not, as reference points for discussion.

Although Socrates studied natural philosophy with Archelaus, he seems to have found much more in common with the sophists (as Prof. Notomi pointed out in his lecture in this series).  He did, however, go beyond the sophists in crucial ways, in particular, in his devotion to what Vlastos called the Sovereignty of Virtue.  Using as his premises only theses advanced by his interlocutors,  and employing only a negative method of refutation to examine these, he arrived at general ethical principles.  He lived a life of moral rectitude in light of these principles, risking his life on several occasions to stay true to them.  In the Crito we see how he could apply these to evaluate the correct course of action.  In light of these facts and commitments, we seem to have in Socrates the first ethical man—the first individual to develop and live by a code of conduct based solely on rational theory.  This allows us to see him as a revolutionary figure in the history of thought, and as an individual worthy of the devotion his followers showed to him.