Introducing Philosophy:
Questions of Knowledge and Reality
Preliminary Edition
Edited by Peter Atterton
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INTRODUCING PHILOSOPHY:
Questions of Knowledge and Reality
Preliminary Edition
Edited by Peter Atterton
San Diego State University
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ISBN: 978-1-60927-887-8
Dedicated to my students
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
Contents
Introduction
1
By Peter Atterton
The Value of Philosophy
9
By Bertrand Russell
Part I
Historical Background
13
The Pre-Socratics
15
By Louis Pojman
Apology
25
By Plato
Where Are All the Women and Non-Western Philosophers?
41
By Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins
Part II
Introduction to Logic
45
Arguments, Premises, Conclusions, and Fallacies
47
By Patrick Hurley
Part III
The Existence of God
65
Euthyphro
67
By Plato
Divine Command Theory in Plato’s Euthyphro
By Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith
81
Proslogion
87
By Anselm
In Behalf of the Fool, with Anselm’s Reply
91
By Gaunilo
The Ontological Argument
95
By Nicholas Everitt
Summa Theologica
101
By Thomas Aquinas
The Cosmological Argument
107
By William Lane Craig
Natural Theology
123
By William Paley
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
129
By David Hume
The Teleological Argument
135
By Robin Collins
Rebellion
149
By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Leibniz, Theodicy, and the Best of All Possible Worlds
157
By Nicholas Jolley
Child Hurbinek
163
By Primo Levi
The Problem of Evil
165
By Richard Swinburne
On Free Will
173
By Augustine
Why the Evidence for Miracles Is Weak
By David Hume
191
Part IV
Knowledge of the External World
The Enlightenment and
the Age of Newton
199
201
By William F. Lawhead
Discourse on Method
209
By René Descartes
First Meditation
213
By René Descartes
The Problem of the External World
217
By Barry Stroud
Part V
The Mind-Body Problem
229
Second Meditation
231
By René Descartes
Third Meditation
237
By René Descartes
The Mind-Body Problem
247
By Richard Popkin and Avrum Stroll
Descartes’ Error
255
By Antonio R. Damasio
Physicalism or the Three-Pound Mind
263
By Barbara Montero
Part VI
Personal Identity
269
Personal Identity
271
By Marya Schechtman
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
By John Locke
279
Locke on Personal Identity
287
By Raymond Martin and John Barresi
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
293
By Thomas Reid
A Treatise of Human Nature
299
By David Hume
Part VII
Free Will, Determinism, and Compatibilism
309
Freedom, Determinism, and Responsibility
311
By Quentin Smith and Nathan L. Oaklander
Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind
323
By Thomas Reid
The System of Nature
331
By Baron d’Holbach
The Dilemma of Determinism
341
By William James
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
349
By David Hume
Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility
357
By Harry Frankfurt
Part VIII
Modern Theories of Human Nature
365
On Human Nature
367
By Arthur Schopenhauer
Human All Too Human
375
By Friedrich Nietzsche
An Outline of Psychoanalysis
By Sigmund Freud
395
Existentialism, Humanism, and Bad Faith
411
By Jean-Paul Sartre
Darwinism and the Selfish Gene
423
By Richard Dawkins
Glossary
By Stuart Brown
431
Introduction
What is Philosophy?
By Peter Atterton
The unexamined life is not worth living.
—Plato, Apology
Everything you believe is questionable. How deeply have you questioned it? The uncritical acceptance
of the beliefs handed down to you by parents, teachers, politicians, and religious leaders is dangerous. Many of the beliefs are false. Some of them are lies to control you. Even when what has been
handed down is true, it is not your truth. To merely accept anything without questioning it is to be
somebody else’s puppet, a second-hand person. Beliefs can be handed down. Knowledge can perhaps
be handed down. Wisdom can never be handed down. The goal of philosophy is wisdom. Trying to
hand down philosophy is unphilosophical. Wisdom requires questioning what is questionable. Since
everything is questionable, wisdom requires questioning everything. That is what philosophy is: the
art of questioning.
—Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, The Experience of Philosophy
A
ccording to tradition, the first person to describe himself as a philosopher was the Greek
mathematician Pythagoras (570–495 BCE).
He is reported to have said that there are three kinds
of men and women, just as there are three classes of
people who attend the Olympic Games. The lowest
are those who go to the Games to buy and sell; next
above them are those who go there to compete; and
“the best people” are those who are content simply to
be nonparticipating spectators. Philosophers resemble
the third class. They are not lovers of money or honor.
They are lovers of wisdom. Indeed, the Greek word
philosophia literally means “the love of wisdom.” Let us
take a closer look at this definition.
1. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. This is not to
claim that philosophy is wisdom. Wisdom is something
the philosopher searches for, not something that she
currently possesses. Plato (427–347 BCE) says, “Love
is always the love of something, and … that something
is what one lacks” (Symposium, 200e). In other words,
nobody desires what she already has. You do not desire
the ability to read; you already have that ability. If you
Introduction  1
suffered a stroke that left you unable to read, then you
would probably desire to read. Similarly, we typically
only want health after we have fallen sick and lost our
health. In such cases we say, “I want my health back.”
What about people who are already rich but who want
to get richer? Don’t they desire what they already have?
Not in the least. What they seek is more money to
increase their wealth, not the riches they currently possess. King Midas already possessed considerable wealth,
but it was not enough for him; he wanted more (and
paid a tragic price for it by inadvertently turning his
daughter into gold!).
The implication is clear: the philosopher who seeks
wisdom does not yet possess wisdom. This is what
distinguishes the philosopher from the white-bearded
sage of antiquity. The sage already has the wisdom,
whereas the philosopher is still searching for it. The
sage seems to have found a shortcut to wisdom; he
has it by direct intuition or in the manner of inspired
guesses, or else through some sort of mystical experience. The philosopher, in stark contrast, is essentially
rational or critical; she is always in search of reasons for
believing something is true, reasons that are clear and
communicable.
The fact that the philosopher does not yet possess
true wisdom is not meant to imply that she is ignorant.
Indeed, it might be that the very recognition that one
does not yet possess wisdom is the wisest thing of all!
The first of the great philosophers, Socrates (470–399
BCE), did not claim to have any special wisdom or
insight. On the contrary, he repeatedly claimed to
know nothing. Many people at the time found this
hard to believe. Socrates was intellectually superior to
his contemporaries, and, moreover, was fond of irony.
Naturally, people assumed he did not mean it when
he claimed to be ignorant. There is a story in Plato’s
Apology (21a–d) about a loyal friend of Socrates,
Chaerephon, who went one day to consult Apollo, the
god of truth, at the oracle at Delphi, asking if there were
anyone wiser than Socrates. The answer was no. When
Chaerephon returned to Athens and told Socrates what
2  Introducing Philosophy
the oracle had said, Socrates was taken aback. How
could it be true that he was the wisest person when he
knew himself to be so bereft of wisdom? So, he decided
to test the wisdom of the oracle. This might seem like a
very impious thing to do, since Socrates was, in effect,
calling into question the god of truth himself! (Socrates
would later be placed on trial and executed for alleged
impiety.1) Thus, he proceeded to engage all manner
of people to see what they knew. He questioned, for
example, politicians, poets, and artisans, only to find
to his dismay that they too knew nothing! It was at
this point that the light bulb switched on. He was able
to reconcile his claim that he was ignorant with the
oracle’s claim that he was the wisest, because he knew
at least one thing more than those he had questioned,
namely, he knew that he knew nothing. The god Apollo
had spoken the truth after all.
This is an extremely important tale. The wisest person
is the one “who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is
in truth worth nothing (Apology, 21d). Socrates was so
concerned that others would not be motivated to seek
wisdom if they thought they had all the answers that he
set about the thankless task of showing them that they,
too, were ignorant. This is why, for the most part, we
do not have a body of positive philosophical knowledge
(positions, views, etc.) from Socrates himself, only a
catalogue of negative assaults on the dogmatic opinions
and beliefs of others. He tried to bring others to the
same realization that wisdom is something we do not
yet possess, but something all of us need to strive for.
2. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Wisdom is not
the same as mere “knowledge of facts” or “information.” The Greeks had a word for such knowledge,
which they called episteme, but they drew a distinction
between it and a true philosophical wisdom (sophia).
The Greeks would have considered someone who is
good at Jeopardy! to have episteme, but not necessarily
sophia. To gain a better understanding of the difference
between the two, consider the following questions:
1. What is a byproduct of photosynthesis?
2. What does cephalalagia mean?
3. Who shot and killed the American rapper Biggie
Smalls?
4. What is the best way to win friends and influence people?
5. What is the good life?
Only question five is a philosophical question. To
answer it requires one to possess wisdom. The rest are
nonphilosophical questions. To answer them, knowledge of facts alone suffices. If you study plant biology
or do a simple experiment using an elodea plant, a jar
containing water, and a toothpick, you will know that
plants release oxygen as a by-product in photosynthesis.
A good English dictionary will tell you that a cephalalagia is a headache. We do not know who murdered Mr.
Wallace. Was it the result of a bicoastal rap rivalry? We
will probably never know. However, this is not because
we lack wisdom but because it is often very difficult
to know the truth about events that occurred in the
past, perhaps the very distant past, which we cannot
directly observe and whose footprint becomes fainter
as time goes by. Now, you might think that question
four is different from the rest because we probably will
not be able to agree on how best to win friends and
influence people. Is it better to give honest and sincere
appreciation to someone, or never say, “You’re wrong”
(when you know the person clearly is)? What is more
important when meeting somebody for the first time?
Remembering to smile or remembering her name? But
even if we cannot agree about these things, presumably there is an answer to be found somewhere. If we
knew enough about human psychology and about the
person’s cultural background, then we would know the
answer. We just can’t say in the abstract whether smiling is more important than remembering someone’s
name if we want that person to like us.
“What is the good life?” is truly a philosophical
question. Not only is there no obvious answer to
the question, we won’t be able to find the answer by
simply doing an experiment, reading the dictionary,
extracting a confession, examining various cultures,
studying human psychology, or taking an opinion
poll. To attempt to answer the question requires us to
think philosophically. To ask “What is the good life?”
is equivalent to asking: “What is the right way to live?”
or “What things should I strive toward?” This question
has spawned a wide range of competing answers and
arguments: knowledge (Plato), happiness (Aristotle),
pleasure (Epicurus), reason and virtue (Stoicism), love
(Augustine), moral duty (Kant), faith (Kierkegaard),
freedom (Marx), creativity (Nietzsche), and authenticity (existentialism). Only someone who has formulated
a clear, articulate, discussable, rational system of ideas
and principles will be able to convince us that any one
of these answers is correct. Only a person who is able
to give reasons that will stand up to cross-examination
will stand any chance of being taken seriously by people
who think about such issues. That is a philosopher! One
thing we can say for sure is that a truly good indication
of a truly philosophical question is that the answer is
not at all easy to come by. Nor will it win immediate
acceptance by people who are not used to thinking
philosophically, that is to say, people who from childhood have grown accustomed to certain ways of seeing
things and who know particular facts or skills that
allow them to carry out a specific task or plan but never
stand back from what they are doing to reflect on why
they are doing it.
WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY?
Philosophy requires slow judgment and laborious
thinking. In such contexts, the philosopher may well
look just the opposite of someone who is clever and
intelligent. And studying philosophy almost certainly
will not make you rich. So why bother? It will not
always make you popular because it forces you to question not only your own but also other people’s beliefs
(for which they may not thank you). It will occasionally
keep you awake at night when you should be sleeping.
Indeed, there are a number of reasons not to bother
Introduction  3
with philosophy. But there is one reason why we should
bother that outweighs them all: Philosophy will free
or liberate your mind. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970),
one of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth
century, had this to say about the study of philosophy:
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake
of any definite answers to its questions,
since no definite answers can, as a rule, be
known to be true, but rather for the sake
of the questions themselves; because these
questions enlarge our conception of what is
possible, enrich our intellectual imagination
and diminish the dogmatic assurance which
closes the mind against speculation.2
If we want to free ourselves from prejudice—from
“prejudgments” that seem to infiltrate our minds without our even knowing it—then we must stand back
and reflect on what we believe and why.
Indeed, as human beings we cannot avoid asking
philosophical questions. As Aristotle said in the very
first line of his great work Metaphysics, “All human
beings by nature desire to know.” Philosophical questioning comes naturally to us; it is part of our essential
makeup. The Greeks offered two famous definitions of
human being (anthropos):
1. A human being is a rational animal. By this
the Greeks meant that unlike other animals,
we have the ability to think and make rational
judgments. We can ask questions and theorize
about things, formulate ideas, and generate hypotheses. We can use reason to unlock the secrets
of the universe, discover laws of cause and effect,
explain the workings of the atom, and devise
new technology.
2. A human being is a moral being. What also
makes us special as human beings is our ability
to make moral judgments. For the Greeks, this
is a consequence of our ability to reason. Unlike
4  Introducing Philosophy
other animals, human beings do not merely live,
they do not merely have a life, but they also have
a conception of life. That means they can ask
questions about what is the right way to live,
what things should be striven for, whether life
has any meaning, and, if so, what that meaning
is.
Why study philosophy? Because as human beings
we cannot help but ask questions that we cannot
hope to answer without training. Philosophy provides
that training, and in the process frees the mind from
prejudice while opening us up to new ways of thinking
and new experiences. In this type of questioning, nothing is taken for granted. Nothing is accepted as true
unless it has run the gauntlet of argument. Philosophy
is thus radically opposed to dogma, the acceptance of
things on the basis or authority or faith. It is a matter
of thinking for oneself. Another word we could use is
criticism, not in the negative sense of faultfinding, but
as a questioning of the hidden assumptions, beliefs,
and opinions behind what is said. Why do we say the
things we say? Why do we assume that we’re right to
say them? Are the reasons for believing something to be
true my reasons?
This is, of course, what a college education is—or
should be—all about. Albert Einstein once said,
“The value of a college education is not the learning
of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”3
Philosophy trains the mind to think. It is a strenuous,
intellectual workout in which concepts and ideas are
“muscles of the mind.” It will not only get you to
question all the stock responses that have been handed
down from generation to generation, from tradition
and the Church, from the television and the internet,
from politicians and one’s parents, from one’s Sunday
School teachers and one’s high school teachers; it will
not only get you to question yourself because it suspects
that you are dreaming, sleeping, or naively accepting as
true what may turn out to be false; but it will also help
you to think clearly and rationally, as well as critically
and independently.
FIELDS OF PHILOSOPHY
Unlike other disciplines, philosophy does not
have a well-defined subject matter. In contrast to
a discipline such as biology, which is the science
of life, or sociology, which is the study of society,
philosophy cannot be defined in terms of any particular object of inquiry. This is because everything
you believe is questionable from a philosophical
point of view—everything, that is to say, nothing
in particular. There is a philosophy of mathematics
(Do numbers exist independently of the mind?), a
philosophy of science (How do you distinguish science from non-science?), a philosophy of history (If
history can be said to progress, what, if anything,
is the driving force of that progress?), a philosophy
of law (What is the origin and justification of legal
systems?), a philosophy of art (What is art?), and
even a philosophy of cooking (Can anybody do it?).
Indeed, some philosophers (called “postmodernists”)
are currently asking a philosophical question about
philosophy itself: Has philosophy basically said all
that it has to say?
There are, however, various fields or divisions
within philosophy, each with their own particular focus and set of questions. The major divisions are logic,
epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. Here is a brief
sketch of each.
Logic (from Greek logos, meaning “speech,” “account,” or “reason”) is the discipline that studies the
procedures by which we distinguish good from bad
reasoning and discover when our thinking is muddled
or confused. Logic helps us to assess whether a person is
rationally justified in drawing the conclusion she wishes
to draw; it also examines general forms that arguments
may take (which arguments are strong, which are fallacies, and which forms are valid). In addition, logic
helps us to unearth assumptions we did not know we
were making and forces us to makes explicit what must
be the case if our reasoning is sound or cogent.
Epistemology (from Greek episteme, meaning
“knowledge,” and logos) is the study of the nature and
scope of knowledge. It includes these questions and
many others: What is the difference between knowledge
and opinion? What does it mean to know something is
true? What is the nature of truth itself? What kinds of
things can be known? How is knowledge acquired? Is
there knowledge beyond the reach of science? What is
the difference between knowing something is true (e.g.,
Everest is the tallest mountain) and knowing how to do
something (e.g., ride a bike)?
Ethics (from Greek ethos, meaning “character,”
“habitual way of life”) is the study of the nature of
goodness in the area of human conduct. It examines
questions to do with right behavior, obligation, and
duty. What do we mean when we say, “You ought to
give money to help the poor”? What criteria are appropriate for deeming something morally right or good?
Is goodness objectively part of the universe? Or is it
the case that, as Hamlet says, “There is nothing either
good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare,
Hamlet 2.2)? How are we to formulate principles to
guide moral actions and decisions? What are our moral
obligations to others? How can moral disagreements
be rationally settled? What rights must a just society
accord its citizens?
Metaphysics (from Greek meta, meaning “beyond”
or “after,” and physika, meaning “physical”) is the
study of ultimate reality lying beyond the natural world
studied by scientists (e.g., physicists). We are all used
to the idea that things are not always as they seem.
Things look smaller at a distance, the moon appears
larger when it is close to the horizon, oars in water
look bent, and 3-D movies make dinosaurs “pop out”
at you when you know they are only images projected
onto a flat surface. It seems, then, that we can draw an
important distinction between appearance and reality,
between how something appears and what it really is.
Thus we can ask the following questions: What is the
Introduction  5
world really like apart from the way it appears to us?
Are there mental as well as physical things, or merely
matter and energy? Is there a realm beyond the senses?
Are persons simply a collection of physical particles
or is there a part of them that cannot be reduced to
the stuff of physics or biochemistry? How is the mind
related to the body? Who or “what” is the self? Is there
a constant self that remains the same throughout the
whole of life? Do we change with our experiences? If
my actions are the results of biochemical, psychological, and evolutionary processes over which I have no
control, in what sense, if at all, can my actions be said
to be free? Is freedom of the will and choice an illusion?
Is there a soul, although I cannot see it? What came
before the Big Bang? Why is there something rather
than nothing? Does God exist?
As you might expect, metaphysics, because it talks
about things that lie outside the scope and purview
of natural science, is the most controversial of all the
divisions of philosophy. Indeed, some philosophers,
particularly trained logicians, have been known to
reject it altogether as simply meaningless. That seems
a little harsh, but we have to be on our guard against
straying too far from the path of enlightened scientific
fact if we are to avoid getting lost in fanciful speculation
and empty meanings when thinking metaphysically.
THE GREEK ROOTS OF PHILOSOPHY
It is important to note that the whole of Western
philosophy has descended from Greek roots. It was
the Greeks who were the first to formulate in a rational
manner the fundamental questions of philosophy (e.g.,
What is the good? The true? The beautiful?). They also
attempted to provide many of the answers. And where
they were unable to provide answers, or where their
answers were shown to be inadequate, they fashioned
and passed down the various tools (language, terminology, and concepts) by which we might attempt to
answer them. They founded the fundamental fields of
philosophy (logic, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics)
6  Introducing Philosophy
and the various subfields (political philosophy, aesthetics, rational psychology, etc.).
Also, it was the Greeks who came to link philosophy
with the moral way of life. Philosophy and the good life,
which includes the ideal of living in perfect freedom, go
hand in hand. Insofar as philosophy accepts nothing
which cannot be justified or backed up by argument, it
is primarily freedom from superstition, freedom from
the chains of dogmatism, whether those chains exist in
the form of religion, politics, or biological inheritance.
Philosophy is also freedom from the slavish appetites
of the body, since it is principally a life of the mind.
Philosophy, in its Greek beginnings, included the freedom to live life as one saw fit. It is literally “autonomy”
(self-government). The leading Greek thinkers lived as
philosophers. For them, philosophy exemplified the
good life. It was not a way of making a living, but, as
Pythagoras suggested, a way of living.
Philosophy can properly be said to have got under
way in the 6th century BCE on the east coast of Asia
Minor. The first of the early or “pre-Socratic” philosophers probably did not call themselves “philosophers,”
but the kinds of questions they asked had an unmistakable philosophical ring about them. “First philosophy”
was cosmology. Cosmology (from the Greek kosmos,
meaning “order,” “the physical, visible universe”) is the
study of the universe as a whole. Does the universe have
a beginning and an end? What is the underlying stuff
of all things? How is change possible? Cosmology can
be seen as the first attempt to make sense of the origins
and nature of the universe outside a purely theological
or mythic view. It is rational rather than religious. It
attempts to explain things according to natural rather
than supernatural principles.
But why so much emphasis on Greece? Not every
culture has produced philosophers. Many cultures have
saints, prophets, religious experts, and so on, but no
philosophers. True, there were other peoples of antiquity who came close to philosophy as it is understood in
the West. The Chinese, Hebrews, the people of India,
and the Persians produced some great thinkers. But
these thinkers were chiefly concerned with religious or
mystical systems of thinking, rather than the impartial
judgments of reason. Their philosophy, if they had
one, played second fiddle to their worship and religion. Philosophy in Greece marks a departure for the
religious mindset. It was in this spirit that the Greeks
were enabled quite early on to recognize their religion
and gods (Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, etc.) for what they
actually were—strikingly beautiful creations of their
own artistic imagination, but not possessing one iota
of truth. This was all part of what is sometimes called
the “Greek miracle.” How did the Greeks become so
independently minded? Nobody really knows.
Notice I said “independently minded”; I did not
say “learned” or “knowledgeable.” The Egyptians and
Babylonians were very learned and knowledgeable. The
Egyptians, for example, calculated the length of the
solar year in 4000 BCE and developed a breathtaking
skill in mathematics. But their knowledge was always
useful or pragmatic—never knowledge for its own
sake—and was linked to utilizing the flood waters of the
Nile. One needed to know when the floods were going
to occur so as to manipulate water levels for irrigation
purposes. One needed a sophisticated geometry to
determine the size of irregular grain growing lands, etc.
But the idea of pure speculation for its own sake was
altogether foreign to the Egyptians. They knew about
the “3–4–5 triangle,” which they used for land surveying and to help design their pyramids, but Pythagoras’s
famous theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) was a thoroughly Greek
invention.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Introducing Philosophy: Questions of Knowledge and
Reality contains a broad selection of some of the best
works—both classical and modern—on many of the
central issues in philosophy. It purposely omits topics
of ethics, which is a course unto itself. Aimed at the
freshman–sophomore level, the collection presupposes
no familiarity with the concepts it addresses and offers a
well-balanced and accessible approach to the field, while
avoiding the Scylla and Charybdis of either “dumbing
down” the material or having unrealistic expectations of
today’s college students. The readings vary in difficulty,
but all of them are—with effort—comprehensible if
the student applies herself.
The structure of the text is simple. It has forty-five
chapters arranged into eight distinct parts: historical
background, introduction to logic, the existence of
God, knowledge of the external world, the mind–body
problem, personal identity, free will, determinism
and compatibilism, and modern theories of human
nature. To enhance its pedagogical value, it also has an
introductory reading on the value of philosophy and a
glossary. This stand-alone text is designed to be covered
in a single semester-long course.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the team at Cognella—especially Seidy
Cruz, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor; Jennifer
Bowen, Academic Production Coordinator; Jessica
Knott, Project Editor; and Brent Hannify, Production
Assistant—who put the book on a fast-track production
schedule, and Stephen Milano, Graphic Designer, for
the beautiful book cover. It has been a delight to work
with such a talented team. Thanks also to Christopher
Burden, who offered useful suggestions for improving
the introduction.
Peter Atterton
San Diego State University
July 2010
NOTES
1. Another capital charge brought against Socrates
and of which he was found guilty was corrupting the youth. See Plato’s Euthyphro, included in
this volume.
Introduction  7
2. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
(New York: Galaxy, 1959), p. 161 (included in
this volume).
3. Taken from Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life
and Universe, (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2007), p. 299.
The Value of Philosophy
By Bertrand Russell
H
aving now come to the end of our
brief and very incomplete review of the
problems of philosophy, it will be well to
consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more
necessary to consider this question, in view of the
fact that many men, under the influence of science
or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether
philosophy is anything better than innocent but
useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is
impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly
from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly
from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which
philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science,
through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus
the study of physical science is to be recommended,
not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in
general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If
the study of philosophy has any value at all for others
than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly,
through its effects upon the lives of those who study
it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the
value of philosophy must be primarily sought.
But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to
determine the value of philosophy, we must first free
our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly
called ‘practical’ men. The ‘practical’ man, as this
word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must have food for
the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing
food for the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty
and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible
point, there would still remain much to be done to
produce a valuable society; and even in the existing
world the goods of the mind are at least as important
as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the
goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be
found; and only those who are not indifferent to these
goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy
is not a waste of time.
Bertrand Russell, “The Value of Philosophy,” from Problems of Philosophy. Published by Henry Holt & Company,
1912. Copyright in the Public Domain.
The Value of Philosophy  9
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily
at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind
of knowledge which gives unity and system to the
body of the sciences, and the kind which results
from a critical examination of the grounds of our
convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be
maintained that philosophy has had any very great
measure of success in its attempts to provide definite
answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician,
a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained
by his science, his answer will last as long as you are
willing to listen. But if you put the same question to
a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess
that his study has not achieved positive results such
as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that
this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as
definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes
possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy,
and becomes a separate science. The whole study of
the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was
once included in philosophy; Newton’s great work
was called ‘the mathematical principles of natural
philosophy’. Similarly, the study of the human mind,
which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of
psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty
of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are
placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at
present, no definite answer can be given, remain to
form the residue which is called philosophy.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many
questions—and among them those that are of the
profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so
far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human
intellect unless its powers become of quite a different
order from what they are now. Has the universe any
unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part
10  Introducing Philosophy
of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in
wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet
on which life must ultimately become impossible?
Are good and evil of importance to the universe or
only to man? Such questions are asked by philosophy,
and variously answered by various philosophers. But
it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy
are none of them demonstrably true. Yet, however
slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it
is part of the business of philosophy to continue the
consideration of such questions, to make us aware of
their importance, to examine all the approaches to
them, and to keep alive that speculative interest in
the universe which is apt to be killed by confining
ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish the truth of certain answers to
such fundamental questions. They have supposed that
what is of most importance in religious beliefs could
be proved by strict demonstration to be true. In order
to judge of such attempts, it is necessary to take a survey of human knowledge, and to form an opinion as
to its methods and its limitations. On such a subject
it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; but
if the investigations of our previous chapters have
not led us astray, we shall be compelled to renounce
the hope of finding philosophical proofs of religious
beliefs. We cannot, therefore, include as part of the
value of philosophy any definite set of answers to such
questions. Hence, once more, the value of philosophy
must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those
who study it.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought
largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no
tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned
in the prejudices derived from common sense, from
the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from
convictions which have grown up in his mind without
the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason.
To such a man the world tends to become definite,
finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions,
and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously
rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the
contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters,
that even the most everyday things lead to problems
to which only very incomplete answers can be given.
Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty
what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises,
is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our
thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to
what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge
as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled
into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive
our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an
unfamiliar aspect.
Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its chief
value—through the greatness of the objects which
it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and
personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The
life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle
of his private interests: family and friends may be
included, but the outer world is not regarded except
as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle
of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something
feverish and confined, in comparison with which the
philosophic life is calm and free. The private world of
instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a
great and powerful world which must, sooner or later,
lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge
our interests as to include the whole outer world, we
remain like a garrison in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate
surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace,
but a constant strife between the insistence of desire
and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another,
if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this
prison and this strife.
One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic contemplation does not, in its
widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile
camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good
and bad—it views the whole impartially. Philosophic
contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at
proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man.
All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the
Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is
not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for
knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does
not wish in advance that its objects should have this
or that character, but adapts the Self to the characters
which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self
is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try
to show that the world is so similar to this Self that
knowledge of it is possible without any admission of
what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of
self-assertion and, like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle
to the growth of Self which it desires, and of which
the Self knows that it is capable. Self-assertion, in
philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world
as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the world
of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to
the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the
contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through its
greatness the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through
the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in infinity.
For this reason greatness of soul is not fostered
by those philosophies which assimilate the universe
to Man. Knowledge is a form of union of Self and
not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion,
and therefore by any attempt to force the universe
into conformity with what we find in ourselves. There
is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the
view which tells us that Man is the measure of all
things, that truth is man-made, that space and time
and the world of universals are properties of the mind,
and that, if there be anything not created by the mind,
it is unknowable and of no account for us. This view,
The Value of Philosophy  11
if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue;
but in addition to being untrue, it has the effect of
robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it
value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it
calls knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but
a set of prejudices, habits, and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The
man who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge
is like the man who never leaves the domestic circle
for fear his word might not be law.
The true philosophic contemplation, on the
contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies
the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject
contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that
is personal or private, everything that depends upon
habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and
hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By
thus making a barrier between subject and object,
such personal and private things become a prison to
the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might
see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears,
without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole
and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for
man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value
more the abstract and universal knowledge into which
the accidents of private history do not enter, than the
knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent,
as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and
personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs
distort as much as they reveal.
The mind which has become accustomed to the
freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom
and impartiality in the world of action and emotion.
12  Introducing Philosophy
It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the
whole, with the absence of insistence that results from
seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world
of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man’s
deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is
the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality
of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion
is that universal love which can be given to all, and
not only to those who are judged useful or admirable.
Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of
our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and
our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe,
not only of one walled city at war with all the rest.
In this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true
freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.
Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of
philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the
sake of any definite answers to its questions since no
definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true,
but rather for the sake of the questions themselves;
because these questions enlarge our conception of
what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination
and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes
the mind against speculation; but above all because,
through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great,
and becomes capable of that union with the universe
which constitutes its highest good.
Part I
Historical Background
Part 1: Historical Background  13
The Pre-Socratics
By Louis Pojman
INTRODUCTION
Philosophy begins with wonder, and even
now it is wonder that causes philosophers
to philosophize. At first they wondered
about the obvious difficulties and then
they gradually progressed to puzzle about
the greater ones, for example, the behavior
of the moon and sun and stars and the
coming to be of the universe. Whoever is
puzzled and in a state of wonder believes
he is ignorant (this is why the lover of
myths is also in a way a philosopher, since
myths are made up of wonders). And so, if
indeed they pursued philosophy to escape
ignorance, they were obviously pursuing
scientific knowledge in order to know and
not for the sake of any practical need.1
(aristotle)
T
hey looked into the heavens and wondered
how the universe had come about. They
pondered the structure of the world. Is
there one fundamental substance that underlies all
of reality or are there many substances? What is the
really real, and not just a matter of appearance?
The first philosophers were Greeks of the sixth
century B.C. living on the Ionian coast of the Aegean
Sea, in Miletus, Colophon, Samos, and Ephesus.
Other people in other cultures had wondered about
these questions, but usually religious authority or
myth had imposed an answer. Typically, as in the
Hebrews’ Genesis 1 or the Greek Hesiod’s Theogony
the world order was said to have arisen from God or
the gods. Now a break occurred. Here for the first
time a pure philosophical and scientific inquiry was
allowed to flourish. The Great Civilizations of Egypt,
China, Assyria, Babylon, Israel, and Persia, not to
mention those of the Incas, Mayans, and Africans,
had produced art and artifacts and government of
advanced sorts, but nowhere, with the possible exception of India, was anything like philosophy or science
Louis Pojman, “The Pre-Socratics,” from Classics of Philosophy, Volume I: Ancient and Medieval, pp. 3–11. Copyright
© 1998 by Oxford University Press. Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.
The Pre-Socratics  15
developed. Ancient India was the closest civilization
to produce philosophy, but it was always connected
with religion, with the question of salvation or the
escape from suffering. Ancient Chinese thought, led
by Confucius (551–475 B.C.), had a deep ethical
dimension. But no epistemology or formulated logic.
Now Greek philosophy, especially from Socrates on,
also had a practical bent and was concerned with ethics, but it went deeper and further than ethics, asking
for the nature of all things, aiming at knowledge and
understanding for its own sake, seeking systematic
understanding of metaphysics, and using experiment
and logical argument, rather than religion or intuition
alone, to reach its conclusions. Indeed, Socrates was
the first to develop dialectical argument (the “Socratic
Method”) and Aristotle invented formal logic, the
system of syllogisms.
The first Greek philosophers were materialists and
naturalists, sometimes called Hylicists (from the Greek
hule, which means matter), for they rejected spiritual
and religious causes and sought naturalistic explanations of reality. The standard date for the beginning of
philosophy is May 23, 585 B.C., when, according to
Herodotus, Thales of Miletus (625–545 B.C.) on the
coast of Asia Minor (then called Ionia, now Turkey)
predicted a solar eclipse.2 What has the prediction of
an eclipse to do with philosophy? Thales used mathematical and astronomical investigation to make his
prediction. In this sense he may have been the first
scientist, and since at this early stage of development
science cannot be separated from philosophy, the
prediction of the solar eclipse serves as a clothespin
holding one end of the long sheet of the history of
philosophy to the clothesline of world history.
Thales, who was an engineer by training, asked,
“What is the nature of reality? What is the ultimate
explanation of all that is?” and speculated and experimented in order to come up with the answer.
What was his answer? “Water.” Water is necessary
for the production and sustenance of life. Water is
everywhere; look past the coastline and you’ll find a
16  Introducing Philosophy
sea of water, dig under the ground and you’re bound
to find water. It rises as mist from the sea and falls
down to earth as rain. Heat water and it becomes a
gas like air, freeze it and it becomes solid. So Thales
concluded that earth was just especially solid water,
a hard flat cork which floated in a sea of liquid of
the same substance. It is the first recorded attempt
to give a naturalistic answer to the question “What
is reality?”
A simple beginning? No doubt, but it is worth
quoting Friedrich Nietzsche here.
Greek philosophy seems to begin with a
preposterous fancy, with the proposition
that water is the origin and mother-womb
of all things. Is it really necessary to stop
there and become serious? Yes, and for
three reasons: Firstly, because the proposition does enunciate something about
the origin of things; secondly, because it
does so without figure and fable; thirdly,
because in it is contained, although only
in the chrysalis state, the idea—Everything
is one. The first-mentioned reason leaves
Thales still in the company of religious and
superstitious people; the second, however,
takes him out of this company and shows
him to us as a natural philosopher; but by
virtue of the third, Thales becomes the first
Greek philosopher.3
After Thales his fellow Ionian Anaximander (c.
612–545 B.C.) rejected the idea that water was the
root substance and hypothesized that ultimate reality
could not be equated with any one material substance,
but was neutral between them, yet underlying all matter. It was an unknown boundless material substance
(Apeiron), the Infinite or Boundless.
Anaximander asserted that the source and
elements of existing things is the infinite.
He was the first to introduce this name
for the source. He says that it is neither
water nor any of the other so-called “elements,” but of another nature which is
infinite, from which all the heavens and the
world-order in them arise.
No mention is made of the gods, nor of a beginning
nor end of reality.
Everything either is a beginning or has a
beginning. But there is no beginning of the
infinite; for if there were, it would limit
it. Moreover, since it is a beginning, it is
unbegotten and indestructible. For there
must be a point at which what has come
into being reaches completion, and a point
at which all perishing ceases. Hence, as we
say, there is no source of the Infinite, but
it appears to be the source of all the rest
and “encompasses all things” and “steers all
things,” as those assert who do not recognize other causes besides the infinite. And
this, they say, is divine; for it is “deathless”
and “imperishable” as Anaximander puts
it, and most of the physicists agree with
him.
The Infinite is externally in motion and the source of
time, space, matter and mind. An opposition of forces
keeps the world in its revolving place. These opposites
“make reparation to one another for their injustice,”
creating an exterior homeostasis or equilibrium of
forces.
Into those things from which existing
things have their coming into being, their
passing away, too, takes place, according to
what must be; for they make reparation to
one another for their injustice according to
the ordinance of time.4
Analogously, health is an inner homeostasis, an
equilibrium of opposing forces within us. Our world
is only one of many worlds produced by the Infinite
in its eternal motion, a motion which is perpetually
whirling. This Whirl separates as in a vortex or whirlpool in which heavy objects move to the bottom and
light to the top. Hence the colder elements, earth and
water, move downward and the lighter ones, fire and
air, upward. This seems to be the beginning of the idea
of Natural Law in which natural causes, blind and
impersonal, replace the gods. Wind, not Zeus, causes
lightning. He rejected Thales notion of a stationary
flat earth and suggested that the earth was a revolving,
cylindrical body, whose flat top was our home.5
Rejecting the anthropocentric notions of the religious and mythological explanations and anticipating
Darwin by 2,500 years, Anaximander put forth a
theory of evolution based on the need for species to
adapt to their environment. Human beings evolved
from fish or fish-like creatures who had to adapt to
land and so developed the characteristics we now have.
Anaximander’s disciple Anaximenes (585–528
B.C.) accepted his teacher’s notion that reality is infinite, but observing evaporation and condensation and
how breath animated both humans and animals, he
posited air as the ultimate substance. “Just as our soul,
being air, keeps us together in order, so also breath
and air encompass the whole cosmos.”
One other philosopher from the Ionian coast
deserves mention. Xenophanes (c. 570–c. 478 B.C.)
noted the anthropomorphic nature of the gods, their
immorality, their stealings, adulteries, and deceivings,
their ethnic qualities, suggesting that each culture
creates its gods in its own image.
The Ethiopians make their gods black and
snub-nosed. The Thracians make theirs
have grey-eyes and red-hair. And if oxen
and horses and lions had hands and could
paint with their hands, and produce works
The Pre-Socratics  17
of art as men do, horses would paint the
forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like
oxen, and make their bodies in the image
of their own.6
He argued that there was one God beyond all these
mythological and anthropomorphic counterfeits, who
seeks, hears and thinks all over. “He remains forever
in the same place, without moving; nor is it fitting
for him to go about from one place to another. But
without labor he sets all things in motion by his intelligent willpower.”
PYTHAGORAS
The first philosopher of which we have substantial
information is Pythagoras of Samos (580–496 B.C.),
who settled in Croton in southern Italy, where
he founded the first community of philosophers.
Pythagoras either visited Egypt himself or learned
from those who did, since the Greek historian
Herodotus points to similarities between his ideas and
the Egyptians’ (religious customs forbidding people to
wear wool in temples and belief in an afterlife).7 It
could be argued that not Thales but Pythagoras was
the father of philosophy, for with him a comprehensive study of the fundamental questions of philosophy
first takes place: What is reality? How does one come
to know the truth? How shall I live my life? Here is an
early document on what he taught:
First he said that the soul is immortal;
second, that it migrates into other kinds of
animals; third, that the same events are repeated in cycles, nothing being new in the
strict sense; and finally, that all things with
souls should be regarded as related to each
other. Pythagoras seems to have been the
first to introduce these ideas into Greece.8
18  Introducing Philosophy
Pythagoras rejected the Hylicist’s materialism and
opted for a refined spiritualism, a mathematical mysticism, aiming at the purification of the whole person,
body and soul. Knowledge (or Science) and Music
would purify the soul and Gymnastics and Medicine,
the body. All living things (including plant life) had
souls and were related to one another and involved
in the transmigration of souls. Pythagoreans generally
despised the body as inferior to the soul, which they
sought to purify by ascetic practices. They were vegetarians, eating neither meat nor eggs nor beans, nor
drinking wine. A story circulated in the ancient world
that when Pythagoras noticed a man beating a dog, he
cried to him to desist, claiming that he recognized in
the dog the “voice of a dear friend.”
Pythagoras related morality to the harmony of the
soul. A good soul has a proper order of standards and
impulses within itself like beautiful music and the
sublime system of the heavens. Pythagoreans were
renowned for their mutual friendship, altruism, integrity, devotion to duty. At the end of each day they
asked themselves what wrongs they had committed,
what duties they had neglected, what good they had
done.
Pythagoras is the first person on record to hold the
doctrine of universal brotherhood, which led him to
provide equal opportunity for men and women. Two
centuries before Plato’s famous declaration of this
doctrine in the Republic Pythagoras accepted women
on an equal basis with men, admitting them into
his school. He also called for, and himself practiced,
humane treatment of slaves. He was reputed to have
never chastised a slave.
Under the government of the Pythagoreans,
Croton succeeded in establishing an intellectual
aristocracy over a territory about four times the size of
Attica, which was destroyed by the democratic party
in the second half of the fifth century B.C. The democrats massacred the Pythagoreans, surrounding their
assembly house, in which the leadership was lodged,
and burning it to the ground.
Pythagoras’s fundamental doctrine was that the
world is really not material but made up of numbers.
Numbers are things and constitute the essence of reality. The original “one,” being fire, sets the surrounding
cold air in motion, drawing it upon itself and limiting
it. From numbers the world is created:
From numbers points, from points lines,
from lines plane figures, from plane figures
solid figures, from these sensible bodies, of which the elements are four: fire,
water, earth, and air. These change and are
wholly transformed; and from them arises
a cosmos animate, intelligent, and spherical, embracing earth (itself spherical and
inhabited all around) as its center.
Pythagoras was led to this doctrine by his musical
studies. He recognized that the pitch of tones depends
on the length of the strings on musical instruments
and that musical harmony is determined by definite
mathematical propositions. The recognition of this
fact led the Pythagoreans to the soul, which was not
contained in matter itself but was suprasensual. Thus
the anthropological dualism of body and soul was extended to the cosmic dualism of matter and form, or,
as they expressed it, of the unlimited and the limited.
Hence number was for them something essentially
different from water for Thales, or the Apeiron for
Anaximander or air for Anaximenes; it was something
opposed to matter and distinguished from it although
closely connected with it, something which limits it
and gives it shape. Matter, as such, was presupposed
by the Pythagoreans, and they seem to have imagined
it in a way that combined Anaximander’s Unbounded
and Anaximenes’ air. Matter is unlimited breath, that
is, the endless expanse of air beyond the cosmos from
which the world draws its breath.
Now that number was established as a
world-principle, they proceeded to make remarkable
speculations on its nature. They drew distinctions
between straight and not-straight, unity and duality,
and thus derived two further pairs of opposites, whose
number was later rather arbitrarily extended up to
ten. Individual numbers were considered particularly
sacred. One (1) is the paradoxical point, both the limited and the unlimited, 2 is the line, 3 the plane, 4 the
solid, 5 physical qualities, 6 animation, 7 intelligence,
8 health, 9 love and wisdom, 10 the sacred Decad,
by which they were accustomed to take oaths. From
their experiments with numbers they were led to the
discovery of the “Pythagorean Theorem” (the sum of
the squares of the sides of a right angle triangle are
equal to the square of the hypotenuse). Theophrastus
tells us that the Pythagoreans were the first to speak of
the spherical shape of the earth, the harmony of the
spheres and planetary motion. Pythagoras supposed
there to be a Central Fire around which the round
earth revolved.
Mystic and mathematician, Pythagoras held that
we are strangers and pilgrims in the world, that the
body is the tomb of the soul, that the visible world of
matter is appearance, which must be overcome if we
are to know reality. In this life there are three types of
people who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest
class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, the
next above them are those who compete. Best of all,
however, are those who come simply to look on. These
three types of people correspond to three parts of the
soul: the love of gain, of honor, and of wisdom. We
must aim at Purification from the world, which comes
about through the disinterested pursuit of philosophy.
We will meet all these ideas again in Plato, who seems
have been influenced by Pythagoras.
Pythagoras apparently wrote nothing, so we cannot study his writings.
THE ELEATICS
With Parmenides (540–470 B.C.) a further advance
in philosophical discourse took place. Parmenides
observed that nature is constantly changing and noted
The Pre-Socratics  19
that such flux was inimical to the idea of knowledge: to
have knowledge there must be permanence, something
which is unchanging. He theorized that the real world
was unchanging on the order of Pythagoras’s number,
whereas the apparent, illusory world was the world of
change. The senses grasped the changing world of unreality or Non-being, whereas reason alone could grasp the
real world of Being. Being never comes into existence,
nor does it cease to be, for it always is. It cannot be
divided or added onto, for it is whole and complete in
itself, one. It is unmoved and undisturbed, for motion
and disturbance are forms of becoming. Being is. It
doesn’t become. It is self-identical and uncaused. This
view is sometimes called Absolute Idealism: there is
an Absolute Idea which makes up all there is, and all
change is illusory. All is One and Permanently at Rest.
Three theses can be identified in Parmenides’ work.
1. That which is, is and cannot not-be; that which
is not, is not and cannot be. The real is and
cannot be nonexistent.
2. That which is can be thought or known and
truly named. That which is not, cannot.
Thinking and the thought that it is are the same
thing.
3. That which is, is one and cannot be many. The
real is unique. There is no second thing besides
it. It is also indivisible. It does not contain a
plurality of distinct parts.
Being or Reality is one, immaterial, continuous, indivisible, motionless, beginningless, imperishable, and
everywhere. It is wholly indeterminate and can only be
described in negative terms. It cannot be created nor
pass away. It cannot be created, for if it were, it would
have to be created from Nothing, which is impossible.
It cannot be destroyed, for if it could, then something
could become nothing, which is impossible. When
thought has negated all that can be negated, it is Being
which remains, the unique, godlike One.
20  Introducing Philosophy
Parmenides’ most famous disciple was Zeno of
Elea (c. 490–c. 430 B.C.), who defended the Eleatic
Idealism against those who claimed that there were
both multiplicity and motion. Zeno is the first philosopher we know of who self-consciously makes use
of the law of noncontradiction to argue against his
opponents. Using universally acceptable premises,
he develops a series of paradoxes which leads to the
conclusion that there is no motion or multiplicity.
One of his paradoxes, The Line, attempts to show that
motion does not exist.
The Eleatics held that a line was one, whereas their
opponents held that it was divisible into parts, discrete
units. Zeno argues that if a line was divisible into units,
it must be divisible into an infinite number of discrete
units, so that each unit must be infinitely small. But
if there were an infinite number of these units, then
if we multiplied them, we would get a line which was
infinitely large, for the smallest magnitude multiplied
by infinity becomes an infinite magnitude. So what
started out as a finite line turns out to be infinitely
long, which is a contradiction.
A second paradox is his Arrow Paradox:
the Argument Against Movement. If
everything is at rest when it is in a place
equal to itself, and if the moving object
is always in the present and therefore in a
place equal to itself, then the moving arrow
is motionless.9
Consider an arrow flying from one place to another.
Does it really move? No, movement is only an illusion. Consider.
1. The arrow could not move in the place in which
it is not.
2. But neither could it move in the place where
it is.
3. For this is “a place equal to itself.”
4. Everything is always at Rest when it is “at a
place equal to itself.”
5. But the flying arrow is always at the place where
it is.
6. Therefore the flying arrow is always at Rest and
cannot move.
A body must either be moving in a place where it is or
where it is not. It can’t be moving in a place where it
is not, for it is not there. But if it is in place, it cannot
be moving. For the arrow is at rest at any point in
the trajectory and what is at rest at any point cannot
move. Therefore the flying arrow cannot be moving.
All of the paradoxes have the same form. Any
quantity of space must either be indivisible or divisible ad infinitum. If it is composed of indivisible units,
these must have magnitude which can’t be divided. If
it is composed of divisible units, it must be divisible
ad infinitum and we are faced with the contradiction
of supposing that an infinite number of parts can be
added up to make a finite sum total.
Zeno’s paradoxes were in part aimed at destroying
Pythagorean doctrines that motion and plurality could
be explained by mathematics and logic. He showed
that logic led to paradoxes that undermined the notions of motion and plurality. In this he vindicated
the Eleatic doctrine that Reality was One, immovable,
eternal, and uncreated.
HERACLITUS
Heraclitus (535–475 B.C.) of Ephesus, a cynical,
aloof, solitary aristocrat, sometimes called “the weeping philosopher,” was contemptuous of democracy
(“most men are bad”) and scornful of the Pythagorean
and Eleatic Idealism and set forth an opposing philosophy (“Pythagoras claimed for his own wisdom
what was but a knowledge of many things and an art
of mischief ”). Rejecting the notion that only Being
is, he posited that only Becoming is (“nothing ever is,
everything is becoming”). All things are in perpetual
flux (Greek panta rhei), and permanence is an illusion.
There is a single principle at work in the universe. It is
fire. “Mind is fire.” Fire, an infinite mass of substance,
uncreated and eternal, is identical with the universe.
The world order was not made by a god or
a man, but always was and is and will be an
ever-living fire.10
Fire consumes fuel, thus changing all, but is in constant flux. Transforming all that it comes in contact
with, fire replaces Anaximander’s Unlimited. Reality is
like a stream of fire in constant motion. Nothing is
stable. All comes from fire and to fire it shall return. At
the same time Heraclitus posited logos (reason) as the
lawlike process which governed the world.
The world follows an orderly process, though one
of conflict and survival of the fittest. Hence war is
reason’s way of justice in the world. It is the “father of
all and the king of all.”
The logos, as the rational principle of the universe,
has independent existence and according to it all
things come into existence. It perpetually confronts
people, calling on them to awake from their sleep of
illusion. “To those who are awake the world-order is
one, common to all, but the sleeping turn aside each
into a world of his own.”
The logos is hidden in humanity. We become
intelligent “by drawing in the divine logos when we
breathe.” In sleep we are separated from the source
of our being and forget. Further, Heraclitus said that
the laws of the city were but a reflection of the logos
which runs through all things.
It is necessary for men who speak with
common sense to place reliance on what is
common to all, as a city relies upon law,
and even more firmly. For all human laws
are nourished by the one divine law. For it
governs as far as it will, and it is sufficient
for all things and outlasts them.
The Pre-Socratics  21
THE PLURALISTS: EMPEDOCLES AND THE
ATOMISTS
Three philosophers rejected both the absolute monism of the Eleatics and the spiritual dynamics of
Heraclitus. The first was Empedocles (ca. 450 B.C.)
who argued that the world was made up of different
combinations of four basic elements, water, earth,
air, and fire. At the center of the universe there are
two forces: attraction and repulsion, called “Love”
and “Hate,” which are in constant strife. When Love
prevails, all things tend toward unity. When Hate
prevails, all things separate, individuate. An eternal
cosmological battle is waged, so that as one seems to
be winning, the other experiences a resurgence.
According to Empedocles it is literally the case that
“Love makes the world go round.” But, so does Hate.
The second reaction to the Eleatics was that of the
materialists, who hearkened back to the Milesians.
Leucippus (c. 450 B.C.) and his more famous disciple,
Democritus (c. 460–370 B.C.) taught that the ultimate
constituents of the world were atoms (from the Greek a
for “not” and tome for “cut” or “separable”). They were
simple, indestructible, internally solid, homogeneous
particles which are perpetually in motion in the void
of empty space. Their combination and interaction
account for all that is. Materialists were hedonists who
believed that the only thing that is good is pleasure and
the only thing bad is pain. They did not believe in the
gods or in immortality.
ANAXAGORAS OF CLAZOMENAE
Anaxagoras (500–428 B.C.) was the first philosopher
to make his home in Athens. He reintroduced pluralism, going against the Eleatic stream of monism, but
he also rejected Empedocles ‘s notion of the four elements (earth, fire, air, and water) of which all things
were composed. They failed to account for the infinite
variety and differentiation of the world of experience.
Instead Anaxagoras taught that all things contain a
portion of everything else.
22  Introducing Philosophy
In everything there is a portion of everything.
For how else could hair come from what is not
hair? or flesh from what is not flesh? unless hair
and flesh as well as teeth, eyes, and bone, et
cetera are contained in food?11
Nous is a material (airy) substance but it is the purest
and most rarefied of things, having power over all else.
As an efficient cause, Nous sets up a rotary motion in
the undifferentiated mass of being and causes separation and differentiation.
Anaxagoras was accused of uttering blasphemy in
saying that the sun was a red hot stone and the moon
was made of earth, for the Athenians regarded the
heavenly bodies as gods. He was condemned, tried,
found guilty of blasphemy, but escaped Athens to
another country.
Socrates heard someone reading from a book of
Anaxagoras. He was struck by the phrase, “Mind orders
all things,” and got hold of the book. Although the book
proved a disappointment, concerning itself mainly with
mechanical causation, it was a catalyst in turning Socrates
away from speculations about the physical world and
toward the study of human existence.
NOTES
1. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.2 982b.
2. Discussed and quoted in G. S. Kirk and J. E.
Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1957), pp. 74–81.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche quoted in ed. L.
Miller, Questions That Matter (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1987), p. 61.
4. Quoted by Simplicius in his Physics. Quoted
in John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to
Early Greek Philosophy (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1968), p. 34.
5. Alcameon developed this thought, applying it to
health: The essence of health lies in the “equality”
of the powers—moist, dry, cold, hot, bitter, sweet,
and the rest—whereas the cause of sickness is the
“supremacy of one” among these. For the rule of
any one of them is a cause of destruction … while
health is the proportionate mixture of the qualities. Quoted in Robinson, Introduction, p. 35.
6. Quoted in Robinson, Introduction, p. 52.
7. See Richard McKirahan, Jr., Philosophy Before
Socrates (82-87) for a lucid discussion of this
point.
8. Diogenes Laertius viii.5 quoted in Robinson,
Introduction, p. 57.
9. Aristotle, Physics 6.9, 239.
10. This and the following quotations are from
Diogenes Laertius ix.
11. Diels and Kranz, Fragments of the Presocratic
Philosophers 59 B 11.
The Pre-Socratics  23
Apology
By Plato
Trans. by Benjamin Jowett
SOCRATES’ DEFENSE
H
ow you have felt, O men of Athens, at
hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive
words almost made me forget who I was—such was
the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken
a word of truth. But many as their falsehoods were,
there was one of them which quite amazed me;—I
mean when they told you to be upon your guard,
and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of
my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of
saying this, because they were sure to be detected as
soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency;
they certainly did appear to be most shameless in saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean
the force of truth; for then I do indeed admit that I
am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs!
Well, as I was saying, they have hardly uttered a word,
or not more than a word, of truth; but you shall hear
from me the whole truth: not, however, delivered
after their manner, in a set oration duly ornamented
with words and phrases. No indeed! but I shall use
the words and arguments which occur to me at the
moment; for I am certain that this is right, and that
at my time of life I ought not to be appearing before
you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile
orator—let no one expect this of me. And I must beg
of you to grant me one favor, which is this—If you
hear me using the same words in my defence which
I have been in the habit of using, and which most of
you may have heard in the agora, and at the tables of
the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask
you not to be surprised at this, and not to interrupt
me. For I am more than seventy years of age, and this
is the first time that I have ever appeared in a court
of law, and I am quite a stranger to the ways of the
place; and therefore I would have you regard me as
if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if
he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion
of his country;—that I think is not an unfair request.
Never mind the manner, which may or may not be
Plato, “Socrates’ Defense,” from Apology, Benjamin Jowett, trans. Copyright in the Public Domain.
Apology  25
good; but think only of the justice of my cause, and
give heed to that: let the judge decide justly and the
speaker speak truly.
And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to
my first accusers, and then I will go to the later ones.
For I have had many accusers, who accused me of old,
and their false charges have continued during many
years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus
and his associates, who are dangerous, too, in their
own way. But far more dangerous are these, who began
when you were children, and took possession of your
minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a
wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and
searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse
appear the better cause. These are the accusers whom
I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and
their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this
sort do not believe in the gods. And they are many, and
their charges against me are of ancient date, and they
made them in days when you were impressible—in
childhood, or perhaps in youth—and the cause when
heard went by default, for there was none to answer.
And, hardest of all, their names I do not know and
cannot tell; unless in the chance of a comic poet. But
the main body of these slanderers who from envy and
malice have wrought upon you—and there are some of
them who are convinced themselves, and impart their
convictions to others—all these, I say, are most difficult to deal with; for I cannot have them up here, and
examine them, and therefore I must simply fight with
shadows in my own defence, and examine when there
is no one who answers. I will ask you then to assume
with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are of two
kinds—one recent, the other ancient; and I hope that
you will see the propriety of my answering the latter
first, for these accusations you heard long before the
others, and much oftener.
Well, then, I will make my defence, and I will endeavor in the short time which is allowed to do away
with this evil opinion of me which you have held for
such a long time; and I hope I may succeed, if this
26  Introducing Philosophy
be well for you and me, and that my words may find
favor with you. But I know that to accomplish this is
not easy—I quite see the nature of the task. Let the
event be as God wills: in obedience to the law I make
my defence.
I will begin at the beginning, and ask what the
accusation is which has given rise to this slander of
me, and which has encouraged Meletus to proceed
against me. What do the slanderers say? They shall
be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in
an affidavit. “Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious
person, who searches into things under the earth
and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the
better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines
to others.” That is the nature of the accusation, and
that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy
of Aristophanes; who has introduced a man whom he
calls Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk
in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense concerning
matters of which I do not pretend to know either much
or little—not that I mean to say anything disparaging
of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. I
should be very sorry if Meletus could lay that to my
charge. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I
have nothing to do with these studies. Very many of
those here present are witnesses to the truth of this,
and to them I appeal. Speak then, you who have heard
me, and tell your neighbors whether any of you have
ever known me hold forth in few words or in many
upon matters of this sort. You hear their answer. And
from what they say of this you will be able to judge of
the truth of the rest.
As little foundation is there for the report that I am
a teacher, and take money; that is no more true than
the other. Although, if a man is able to teach, I honor
him for being paid. There is Gorgias of Leontium, and
Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis, who go the
round of the cities, and are able to persuade the young
men to leave their own citizens, by whom they might
be taught for nothing, and come to them, whom they
not only pay, but are thankful if they may be allowed
to pay them. There is actually a Parian philosopher
residing in Athens, of whom I have heard; and I came
to hear of him in this way:—I met a man who has
spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias the
son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons,
I asked him: “Callias,” I said, “if your two sons were
foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding
someone to put over them; we should hire a trainer
of horses or a farmer probably who would improve
and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they are human beings, whom are you
thinking of placing over them? Is there anyone who
understands human and political virtue? You must
have thought about this as you have sons; is there
anyone?” “There is,” he said. “Who is he?” said I, “and
of what country? and what does he charge?” “Evenus
the Parian,” he replied; “he is the man, and his charge
is five minae.” Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if
he really has this wisdom, and teaches at such a modest charge. Had I the same, I should have been very
proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no
knowledge of the kind.
I dare say, Athenians, that someone among you
will reply, “Why is this, Socrates, and what is the
origin of these accusations of you: for there must have
been something strange which you have been doing?
All this great fame and talk about you would never
have arisen if you had been like other men: tell us,
then, why this is, as we should be sorry to judge hastily of you.” Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and
I will endeavor to explain to you the origin of this
name of “wise,” and of this evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may think I am
joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth.
Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come of
a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask
me what kind of wisdom, I reply, such wisdom as is
attainable by man, for to that extent I am inclined to
believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom
I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom, which I
may fail to describe, because I have it not myself; and
he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking
away my character. And here, O men of Athens,
I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem
to say something extravagant. For the word which I
will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness
who is worthy of credit, and will tell you about my
wisdom—whether I have any, and of what sort—and
that witness shall be the god of Delphi. You must have
known Chaerephon; he was early a friend of mine,
and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the exile of
the people, and returned with you. Well, Chaerephon,
as you know, was very impetuous in all his doings, and
he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell
him whether—as I was saying, I must beg you not
to interrupt—he asked the oracle to tell him whether
there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian
prophetess answered that there was no man wiser.
Chaerephon is dead himself, but his brother, who is
in court, will confirm the truth of this story.
Why do I mention this? Because I am going to
explain to you why I have such an evil name. When I
heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god
mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for
I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What
can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of
men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would
be against his nature. After a long consideration, I
at last thought of a method of trying the question.
I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than
myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation
in my hand. I should say to him, “Here is a man who
is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.”
Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation
of wisdom, and observed to him—his name I need
not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for
examination—and the result was as follows: When I
began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that
he was not really wise, although he was thought wise
by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and
tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise,
but was not really wise; and the consequence was that
Apology  27
he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several
who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying
to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful
and good, I am better off than he is—for he knows
nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know
nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then,
I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I
went to another, who had still higher philosophical
pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same.
I made another enemy of him, and of many others
besides him.
After this I went to one man after another, being
not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked,
and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid
upon me—the word of God, I thought, ought to be
considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to
all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of
the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog
I swear!—for I must tell you the truth—the result of
my mission was just this: I found that the men most
in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some
inferior men were really wiser and better. I will tell
you the tale of my wanderings and of the “Herculean”
labors, as I may call them, which I endured only to
find at last the oracle irrefutable. When I left the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all
sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be detected;
now you will find out that you are more ignorant than
they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most
elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked
what was the meaning of them—thinking that they
would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am
almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say
that there is hardly a person present who would not
have talked better about their poetry than they did
themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by
wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius
and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers
who also say many fine things, but do not understand
the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me
28  Introducing Philosophy
to be much in the same case; and I further observed
that upon the strength of their poetry they believed
themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in
which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving
myself to be superior to them for the same reason that
I was superior to the politicians.
At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious
that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure
that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not
mistaken, for they did know many things of which I
was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than
I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell
into the same error as the poets; because they were good
workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of
high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed
their wisdom—therefore I asked myself on behalf of the
oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in
both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I
was better off as I was.
This investigation has led to my having many
enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and
has given occasion also to many calumnies, and I
am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that
I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in
others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God
only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the
wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking
of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like
Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth
nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the god,
and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone,
whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise;
and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle
I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation
quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either
to any public matter of interest or to any concern of
my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my
devotion to the god.
There is another thing:—young men of the richer
classes, who have not much to do, come about me
of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders
examined, and they often imitate me, and examine
others themselves; there are plenty of persons, as
they soon enough discover, who think that they
know something, but really know little or nothing:
and then those who are examined by them instead of
being angry with themselves are angry with me: This
confounded Socrates, they say; this villainous misleader of youth!—and then if somebody asks them,
Why, what evil does he practise or teach? they do not
know, and cannot tell; but in order that they may
not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made
charges which are used against all philosophers about
teaching things up in the clouds and under the earth,
and having no gods, and making the worse appear the
better cause; for they do not like to confess that their
pretence of knowledge has been detected—which is
the truth: and as they are numerous and ambitious
and energetic, and are all in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they have filled your ears with their
loud and inveterate calumnies. And this is the reason
why my three accusers, Meletus and Anytus and
Lycon, have set upon me; Meletus, who has a quarrel
with me on behalf of the poets; Anytus, on behalf of
the craftsmen; Lycon, on behalf of the rhetoricians:
and as I said at the beginning, I cannot expect to get
rid of this mass of calumny all in a moment. And this,
O men of Athens, is the truth and the whole truth; I
have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing.
And yet I know that this plainness of speech makes
them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof
that I am speaking the truth?—this is the occasion
and reason of their slander of me, as you will find out
either in this or in any future inquiry.
I have said enough in my defence against the first
class of my accusers; I turn to the second class, who
are headed by Meletus, that good and patriotic man,
as he calls himself. And now I will try to defend myself
against them: these new accusers must also have their
affidavit read. What do they say? Something of this
sort:—That Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter
of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of
the state, and has other new divinities of his own.
That is the sort of charge; and now let us examine the
particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil, who
corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that
Meletus is a doer of evil, and the evil is that he makes
a joke of a serious matter, and is too ready at bringing
other men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest
about matters in which he really never had the smallest
interest. And the truth of this I will endeavor to prove.
Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question
of you. You think a great deal about the improvement
of youth?
Yes, I do.
Tell the judges, then, who is their improver;
for you must know, as you have taken the pains to
discover their corrupter, and are citing and accusing
me before them. Speak, then, and tell the judges who
their improver is. Observe, Meletus, that you are
silent, and have nothing to say. But is not this rather
disgraceful, and a very considerable proof of what I
was saying, that you have no interest in the matter?
Speak up, friend, and tell us who their improver is.
The laws.
But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want
to know who the person is, who, in the first place,
knows the laws.
The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.
What do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are
able to instruct and improve youth?
Certainly they are.
What, all of them, or some only and not others?
All of them.
By the goddess Here, that is good news! There are
plenty of improvers, then. And what do you say of the
audience,—do they improve them?
Yes, they do.
And the senators?
Yes, the senators improve them.
Apology  29
But perhaps the members of the citizen assembly
corrupt them?—or do they too improve them?
They improve them.
Then every Athenian improves and elevates them;
all with the exception of myself; and I alone am their
corrupter? Is that what you affirm?
That is what I stoutly affirm.
I am very unfortunate if that is true. But suppose I
ask you a question: Would you say that this also holds
true in the case of horses? Does one man do them harm
and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite of this
true? One man is able to do them good, or at least not
many;—the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them
good, and others who have to do with them rather injure
them? Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or any other
animals? Yes, certainly. Whether you and Anytus say yes
or no, that is no matter. Happy indeed would be the
condition of youth if they had one corrupter only, and
all the rest of the world were their improvers. And you,
Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a
thought about the young: your carelessness is seen in
your not caring about matters spoken of in this very
indictment.
And now, Meletus, I must ask you another question: Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or
among good ones? Answer, friend, I say; for that is a
question which may be easily answered. Do not the
good do their neighbors good, and the bad do them
evil?
Certainly.
And is there anyone who would rather be injured
than benefited by those who live with him? Answer,
my good friend; the law requires you to answer—does
anyone like to be injured?
Certainly not.
And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them
intentionally or unintentionally?
Intentionally, I say.
But you have just admitted that the good do
their neighbors good, and the evil do them evil.
30  Introducing Philosophy
Now is that a truth which your superior wisdom has
recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age,
in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that
if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by
me, I am very likely to be harmed by him, and yet
I corrupt him, and intentionally, too;—that is what
you are saying, and of that you will never persuade
me or any other human being. But either I do not
corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally,
so that on either view of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of
unintentional offences: you ought to have taken me
privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I
had been better advised, I should have left off doing
what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should;
whereas you hated to converse with me or teach me,
but you indicted me in this court, which is a place
not of instruction, but of punishment.
I have shown, Athenians, as I was saying, that
Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the
matter. But still I should like to know, Meletus, in
what I am affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose
you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that I
teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the
state acknowledges, but some other new divinities or
spiritual agencies in their stead. These are the lessons
which corrupt the youth, as you say.
Yes, that I say emphatically.
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are
speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat plainer
terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand
whether you affirm that I teach others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore do believe in gods
and am not an entire atheist—this you do not lay to
my charge; but only that they are not the same gods
which the city recognizes—the charge is that they are
different gods. Or, do you mean to say that I am an
atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.
That is an extraordinary statement, Meletus. Why
do you say that? Do you mean that I do not believe in
the godhead of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not believe in
them; for he says that the sun is stone, and the moon
earth.
Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing
Anaxagoras; and you have but a bad opinion of the
judges, if you fancy them ignorant to such a degree as not
to know that those doctrines are found in the books of
Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, who is full of them. And
these are the doctrines which the youth are said to learn
of Socrates, when there are not unfrequently exhibitions
of them at the theatre (price of admission one drachma
at the most); and they might cheaply purchase them,
and laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father such eccentricities. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do
not believe in any god?
I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none
at all.
You are a liar, Meletus, not believed even by yourself. For I cannot help thinking, O men of Athens,
that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and that he
has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado. Has he not compounded
a riddle, thinking to try me? He said to himself:—I
shall see whether this wise Socrates will discover my
ingenious contradiction, or whether I shall be able
to deceive him and the rest of them. For he certainly
does appear to me to contradict himself in the indictment as much as if he said that Socrates is guilty of
not believing in the gods, and yet of believing in
them—but this surely is a piece of fun.
I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me
in examining what I conceive to be his inconsistency;
and do you, Meletus, answer. And I must remind you
that you are not to interrupt me if I speak in my accustomed manner.
Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of
human things, and not of human beings? I wish, men
of Athens, that he would answer, and not be always
trying to get up an interruption. Did ever any man
believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in
flute-playing, and not in flute-players? No, my friend;
I will answer to you and to the court, as you refuse to
answer for yourself. There is no man who ever did.
But now please to answer the next question: Can a
man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not
in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
I am glad that I have extracted that answer, by
the assistance of the court; nevertheless you swear in
the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or
spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that);
at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies, as you say
and swear in the affidavit; but if I believe in divine
beings, I must believe in spirits or demigods;—is
not that true? Yes, that is true, for I may assume that
your silence gives assent to that. Now what are spirits
or demigods? are they not either gods or the sons of
gods? Is that true?
Yes, that is true.
But this is just the ingenious riddle of which I was
speaking: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say
first that I don’t believe in gods, and then again that
I do believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods.
For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods,
whether by the Nymphs or by any other mothers, as is
thought, that, as all men will allow, necessarily implies
the existence of their parents. You might as well affirm
the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and
asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been
intended by you as a trial of me. You have put this
into the indictment because you had nothing real of
which to accuse me. But no one who has a particle
of understanding will ever be convinced by you that
the same man can believe in divine and superhuman
things, and yet not believe that there are gods and
demigods and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of
Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary; but as I
was saying before, I certainly have many enemies, and
this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed;
Apology  31
of that I am certain;—not Meletus, nor yet Anytus,
but the envy and detraction of the world, which has
been the death of many good men, and will probably
be the death of many more; there is no danger of my
being the last of them.
Someone will say: And are you not ashamed,
Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you
to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There
you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything
ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying;
he ought only to consider whether in doing anything
he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good
man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the
heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and
the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised
danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his
goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay
Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus,
and slew Hector, he would die himself—“Fate,” as she
said, “waits upon you next after Hector”; he, hearing
this, utterly despised danger and death, and instead
of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and
not to avenge his friend. “Let me die next,” he replies,
“and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here
by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth.”
Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For
wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he
has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a
commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of
danger; he should not think of death or of anything,
but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true
saying.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of
Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals
whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and
Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed
me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now,
when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to
fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through
fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be
32  Introducing Philosophy
strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for
denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the
oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be
fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this
fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and
not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the
unknown; since no one knows whether death, which
they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil,
may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit
of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance?
And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps
fancy myself wiser than other men,—that whereas I
know but little of the world below, I do not suppose
that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and
dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible
good rather than a certain evil. And therefore if you
let me go now, and reject the counsels of Anytus, who
said that if I were not put to death I ought not to have
been prosecuted, and that if I escape now, your sons
will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words—if
you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind
Anytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition,
that are to inquire and speculate in this way any more,
and that if you are caught doing this again you shall
die;—if this was the condition on which you let me go,
I should reply: Men of Athens, I honor and love you;
but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have
life and strength I shall never cease from the practice
and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I
meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O
my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great
and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much
about laying up the greatest amount of money and
honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and
truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which
you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed
of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing
says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go
at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine
him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only
says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the
greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say
to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and
alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they
are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as
I would have you know; and I believe that to this day
no greater good has ever happened in the state than
my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about
persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take
thought for your persons and your properties, but first
and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of
the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money,
but that from virtue come money and every other
good of man, public as well as private. This is my
teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the
youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone
says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an
untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you,
do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either
acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that
I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die
many times.
Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me;
there was an agreement between us that you should
hear me out. And I think that what I am going to say
will do you good: for I have something more to say, at
which you may be inclined to cry out; but I beg that
you will not do this. I would have you know that, if
you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves
more than you will injure me. Meletus and Anytus will
not injure me: they cannot; for it is not in the nature
of things that a bad man should injure a better than
himself. I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him,
or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights;
and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he
is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not agree
with him; for the evil of doing as Anytus is doing—of
unjustly taking away another man’s life—is greater far.
And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my
own sake, as you may think, but for yours, that you
may not sin against the God, or lightly reject his boon
by condemning me. For if you kill me you will not
easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a
ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to
the state by the God; and the state is like a great and
noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his
very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that
gadfly which God has given the state and all day long
and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. And as you
will not easily find another like me, I would advise
you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel irritated
at being suddenly awakened when you are caught
napping; and you may think that if you were to strike
me dead, as Anytus advises, which you easily might,
then you would sleep on for the remainder of your
lives, unless God in his care of you gives you another
gadfly. And that I am given to you by God is proved
by this:—that if I had been like other men, I should
not have neglected all my own concerns, or patiently
seen the neglect of them during all these years, and
have been doing yours, coming to you individually,
like a father or elder brother, exhorting you to regard
virtue; this I say, would not be like human nature.
And had I gained anything, or if my exhortations had
been paid, there would have been some sense in that:
but now, as you will perceive, not even the impudence
of my accusers dares to say that I have ever exacted or
sought pay of anyone; they have no witness of that.
And I have a witness of the truth of what I say; my
poverty is a sufficient witness.
Someone may wonder why I go about in private,
giving advice and busying myself with the concerns
of others, but do not venture to come forward in
public and advise the state. I will tell you the reason
of this. You have often heard me speak of an oracle
or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which
Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have
had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which
comes to me and always forbids me to do something
which I am going to do, but never commands me to
Apology  33
do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my
being a politician. And rightly, as I think. For I am
certain, O men of Athens, that if I had engaged in
politics, I should have perished long ago and done no
good either to you or to myself. And don’t be offended
at my telling you the truth: for the truth is that no
man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of
unrighteousness and wrong in the state, will save his
life; he who will really fight for the right, if he would
live even for a little while, must have a private station
and not a public one.
I can give you as proofs of this, not words only, but
deeds, which you value more than words. Let me tell
you a passage of my own life, which will prove to you
that I should never have yielded to injustice from any
fear of death, and that if I had not yielded I should
have died at once. I will tell you a story—tasteless,
perhaps, and commonplace, but nevertheless true.
The only office of state which I ever held, O men
of Athens, was that of senator; the tribe Antiochis,
which is my tribe, had the presidency at the trial of
the generals who had not taken up the bodies of the
slain after the battle of Arginusae; and you proposed
to try them all together, which was illegal, as you all
thought afterwards; but at the time I was the only
one of the Prytanes who was opposed to the illegality,
and I gave my vote against you; and when the orators
threatened to impeach and arrest me, and have me
taken away, and you called and shouted, I made up
my mind that I would run the risk, having law and
justice with me, rather than take part in your injustice
because I feared imprisonment and death. This happened in the days of the democracy. But when the
oligarchy of the Thirty was in power, they sent for me
and four others into the rotunda, and bade us bring
Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, as they wanted to
execute him. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were always giving with the view of
implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and
then I showed, not in words only, but in deed, that,
34  Introducing Philosophy
if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I cared
not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the
fear of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing. For the
strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten
me into doing wrong; and when we came out of the
rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetched
Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might
have lost my life, had not the power of the Thirty
shortly afterwards come to an end. And to this many
will witness.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public life, supposing
that like a good man I had always supported the right
and had made justice, as I ought, the first thing? No,
indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other. But
I have been always the same in all my actions, public
as well as private, and never have I yielded any base
compliance to those who are slanderously termed my
disciples or to any other. For the truth is that I have
no regular disciples: but if anyone likes to come and
hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether
he be young or old, he may freely come. Nor do I
converse with those who pay only, and not with those
who do not pay; but anyone, whether he be rich or
poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words;
and whether he turns out to be a bad man or a good
one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never
taught him anything. And if anyone says that he has
ever learned or heard anything from me in private
which all the world has not heard, I should like you to
know that he is speaking an untruth.
But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in
continually conversing with you? I have told you
already, Athenians, the whole truth about this: they
like to hear the cross-examination of the pretenders to
wisdom; there is amusement in this. And this is a duty
which the God has imposed upon me, as I am assured
by oracles, visions, and in every sort of way in which
the will of divine power was ever signified to anyone.
This is true, O Athenians; or, if not true, would be soon
refuted. For if I am really corrupting the youth, and
have corrupted some of them already, those of them
who have grown up and have become sensible that I
gave them bad advice in the days of their youth should
come forward as accusers and take their revenge; and
if they do not like to come themselves, some of their
relatives, fathers, brothers, or other kinsmen, should
say what evil their families suffered at my hands. Now
is their time. Many of them I see in the court. There
is Crito, who is of the same age and of the same deme
with myself; and there is Critobulus his son, whom
I also see. Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettus,
who is the father of Aeschines—he is present; and
also there is Antiphon of Cephisus, who is the father
of Epignes; and there are the brothers of several who
have associated with me. There is Nicostratus the son
of Theosdotides, and the brother of Theodotus (now
Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore he, at any
rate, will not seek to stop him); and there is Paralus
the son of Demodocus, who had a brother Theages;
and Adeimantus the son of Ariston, whose brother
Plato is present; and Aeantodorus, who is the brother
of Apollodorus, whom I also see. I might mention a
great many others, any of whom Meletus should have
produced as witnesses in the course of his speech;
and let him still produce them, if he has forgotten—I
will make way for him. And let him say, if he has any
testimony of the sort which he can produce. Nay,
Athenians, the very opposite is the truth. For all these
are ready to witness on behalf of the corrupter, of the
destroyer of their kindred, as Meletus and Anytus call
me; not the corrupted youth only—there might have
been a motive for that—but their uncorrupted elder
relatives. Why should they too support me with their
testimony? Why, indeed, except for the sake of truth
and justice, and because they know that I am speaking
the truth, and that Meletus is lying.
Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is nearly
all the defence which I have to offer. Yet a word more.
Perhaps there may be someone who is offended at
me, when he calls to mind how he himself, on a
similar or even a less serious occasion, had recourse to
prayers and supplications with many tears, and how
he produced his children in court, which was a moving spectacle, together with a posse of his relations
and friends; whereas I, who am probably in danger
of my life, will do none of these things. Perhaps this
may come into his mind, and he may be set against
me, and vote in anger because he is displeased at this.
Now if there be such a person among you, which I
am far from affirming, I may fairly reply to him: My
friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature
of flesh and blood, and not of wood or stone, as
Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and sons. O
Athenians, three in number, one of whom is growing
up, and the two others are still young; and yet I will
not bring any of them hither in order to petition
you for an acquittal. And why not? Not from any
self-will or disregard of you. Whether I am or am not
afraid of death is another question, of which I will
not now speak. But my reason simply is that I feel
such conduct to be discreditable to myself, and you,
and the whole state. One who has reached my years,
and who has a name for wisdom, whether deserved
or not, ought not to debase himself. At any rate, the
world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men. And if those among you who are
said to be superior in wisdom and courage, and any
other virtue, demean themselves in this way, how
shameful is their conduct! I have seen men of reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in
the strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they
were going to suffer something dreadful if they died,
and that they could be immortal if you only allowed
them to live; and I think that they were a dishonor
to the state, and that any stranger coming in would
say of them that the most eminent men of Athens,
to whom the Athenians themselves give honor and
command, are no better than women. And I say that
these things ought not to be done by those of us who
are of reputation; and if they are done, you ought
not to permit them; you ought rather to show that
you are more inclined to condemn, not the man who
Apology  35
is quiet, but the man who gets up a doleful scene,
and makes the city ridiculous.
But, setting aside the question of dishonor, there
seems to be something wrong in petitioning a judge,
and thus procuring an acquittal instead of informing
and convincing him. For his duty is, not to make a
present of justice, but to give judgment; and he has
sworn that he will judge according to the laws, and
not according to his own good pleasure; and neither
he nor we should get into the habit of perjuring
ourselves—there can be no piety in that. Do not then
require me to do what I consider dishonorable and
impious and wrong, especially now, when I am being
tried for impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if,
O men of Athens, by force of persuasion and entreaty,
I could overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and convict
myself, in my own defence, of not believing in them.
But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are
gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any
of my accusers believe in them. And to you and to
God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as
is best for you and me.
The jury finds Socrates guilty.
SOCRATES’ PROPOSAL FOR HIS SENTENCE
There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men
of Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected
it, and am only surprised that the votes are so nearly
equal; for I had thought that the majority against me
would have been far larger; but now, had thirty votes
gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted. And I may say that I have escaped Meletus. And
I may say more; for without the assistance of Anytus
and Lycon, he would not have had a fifth part of the
votes, as the law requires, in which case he would have
incurred a fine of a thousand drachmae, as is evident.
And so he proposes death as the penalty. And
what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens?
Clearly that which is my due. And what is that
36  Introducing Philosophy
which I ought to pay or to receive? What shall be
done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle
during his whole life; but has been careless of what
the many care about—wealth, and family interests,
and military offices, and speaking in the assembly,
and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting
that I was really too honest a man to follow in this
way and live, I did not go where I could do no good
to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest
good privately to everyone of you, thither I went,
and sought to persuade every man among you that
he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom
before he looks to his private interests, and look to
the state before he looks to the interests of the state;
and that this should be the order which he observes
in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one?
Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he
has his reward; and the good should be of a kind
suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a
poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure
that he may instruct you? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O
men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more
than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia
in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots
were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in
want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the
appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality.
And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that
maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
Perhaps you may think that I am braving you in
saying this, as in what I said before about the tears and
prayers. But that is not the case. I speak rather because
I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged
anyone, although I cannot convince you of that—for
we have had a short conversation only; but if there
were a law at Athens, such as there is in other cities,
that a capital cause should not be decided in one day,
then I believe that I should have convinced you; but
now the time is too short. I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am convinced that I never
wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I
will not say of myself that I deserve any evil, or propose
any penalty. Why should I? Because I am afraid of
the penalty of death which Meletus proposes? When I
do not know whether death is a good or an evil, why
should I propose a penalty which would certainly be
an evil? Shall I say imprisonment? And why should
I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates
of the year—of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a
fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid? There
is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison,
for money I have none, and I cannot pay. And if I say
exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you
will affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of
life if I were to consider that when you, who are my
own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words,
and have found them so grievous and odious that you
would fain have done with them, others are likely to
endure me. No, indeed, men of Athens, that is not
very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age,
wandering from city to city, living in ever-changing
exile, and always being driven out! For I am quite sure
that into whatever place I go, as here so also there, the
young men will come to me; and if I drive them away,
their elders will drive me out at their desire: and if I
let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me
out for their sakes.
Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you
hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now
I have great difficulty in making you understand my
answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a
disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that
I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I
am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good
of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that
concerning which you hear me examining myself and
others, and that the life which is unexamined is not
worth living—that you are still less likely to believe.
And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which
it is hard for me to persuade you. Moreover, I am not
accustomed to think that I deserve any punishment.
Had I money I might have proposed to give you what
I had, and have been none the worse. But you see that
I have none, and can only ask you to proportion the
fine to my means. However, I think that I could afford
a minae, and therefore I propose that penalty; Plato,
Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here,
bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties.
Well then, say thirty minae, let that be the penalty; for
that they will be ample security to you.
The jury condemns Socrates to death.
SOCRATES’ COMMENTS ON HIS SENTENCE
Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return
for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates,
a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I
am not wise when they want to reproach you. If you
had waited a little while, your desire would have been
fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced
in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death.
I am speaking now only to those of you who have
condemned me to death. And I have another thing to
say to them: You think that I was convicted through
deficiency of words—I mean, that if I had thought
fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might
have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which
led to my conviction was not of words—certainly not.
But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to
address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and
saying and doing many things which you have been
accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say,
are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to
do anything common or mean in the hour of danger:
nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and
I would rather die having spoken after my manner,
than speak in your manner and live. For neither in
war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of
escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt
Apology  37
that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his
knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in
other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if
a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty,
my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding
unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I
am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has
overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick,
and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has
overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned
by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they, too,
go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the
penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by
my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that
these things may be regarded as fated,—and I think
that they are well.
And now, O men who have condemned me, I
would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and
that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic
power. And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far
heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await
you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape
the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives.
But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For
I say that there will be more accusers of you than there
are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained:
and as they are younger they will be more severe
with you, and you will be more offended at them.
For if you think that by killing men you can avoid
the accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken;
that is not a way of escape which is either possible
or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be
crushing others, but to be improving yourselves. This
is the prophecy which I utter before my departure, to
the judges who have condemned me.
Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would
like also to talk with you about this thing which has
happened, while the magistrates are busy, and before
I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then
awhile, for we may as well talk with one another
38  Introducing Philosophy
while there is time. You are my friends, and I should
like to show you the meaning of this event which has
happened to me. O my judges—for you I may truly
call judges—I should like to tell you of a wonderful
circumstance. Hitherto the familiar oracle within
me has constantly been in the habit of opposing me
even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or
error about anything; and now as you see there has
come upon me that which may be thought, and is
generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But
the oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I
was leaving my house and going out in the morning,
or when I was going up into this court, or while I
was speaking, at anything which I was going to say;
and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of
a speech; but now in nothing I either said or did
touching this matter has the oracle opposed me.
What do I take to be the explanation of this? I will
tell you. I regard this as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who
think that death is an evil are in error. This is a great
proof to me of what I am saying, for the customary
sign would surely have opposed me had I been going
to evil and not to good.
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that
there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for
one of two things:—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say,
there is a change and migration of the soul from this
world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no
consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who
is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will
be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select
the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by
dreams, and were to compare with this the other days
and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how
many days and nights he had passed in the course of his
life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think
that any man, I will not say a private man, but even
the great king, will not find many such days or nights,
when compared with the others. Now if death is like
this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only
a single night. But if death is the journey to another
place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what
good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than
this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world
below, he is delivered from the professors of justice
in this world, and finds the true judges who are said
to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus
and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God
who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage
will be worth making. What would not a man give if
he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and
Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die
again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest
in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and
Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who
have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and
there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall
be able to continue my search into true and false
knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find
out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is
not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able
to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition;
or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men
and women too! What infinite delight would there be
in conversing with them and asking them questions!
For in that world they do not put a man to death for
this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that
world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is
said is true.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about
death, and know this of a truth—that no evil can
happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my
own approaching end happened by mere chance. But
I see clearly that to die and be released was better for
me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which
reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my
condemners; they have done me no harm, although
neither of them meant to do me any good; and for
this I may gently blame them.
Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons
are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I
have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or
anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend
to be something when they are really nothing,—then
reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring
about that for which they ought to care, and thinking
that they are something when they are really nothing.
And if you do this, I and my sons will have received
justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our
ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God
only knows.
Apology  39
Where Are All the Women and
Non-Western Philosophers?
From A Passion for Wisdom
By Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins
PHILOSOPHY DISCOVERS “THE OTHER”:
THE QUESTION OF POSTMODERNISM
S
imone de Beauvoir sparked an important
question: Where are all the women? Western
philosophy has historically discussed or
included women only as an afterthought, if at all.
Some feminists have suggested that philosophy has
been based on a “masculine” style of disputation and
confrontation exemplified by Socrates. But whatever
else it may have been, philosophy has always been a
refuge, a luxury enjoyed primarily by those who have
(one way or another) been free from the demands of
exhausting physical labor, earning a living, or cleaning
and caring for a household. For that reason, it should
not be surprising that most of the men we have discussed, and many of the greatest philosophers, were
gentlemen bachelors (or, often, priests). Surprisingly
few talk very much about the family, and interpersonal relationships in general play an embarrassingly
minuscule role in the history of Western philosophy.
Then, again, making a name for yourself in
philosophy depends not just on talent but on time,
teachers, colleagues, an audience, publishers, readers,
and one’s students. The sad truth is that women have
been shut out at virtually every level of philosophical success. Relatively few women have been allowed
even to become interested in philosophy. Before this
century, few women were admitted to the appropriate
schools, and those who were allowed to study philosophy (some of the students of Plato and Pythagoras,
for example) were rarely allowed to achieve stature.
If a woman did manage to disseminate some ideas
of her own and attract a following, she would rarely
be recognized as “one of the boys,” in all probability remaining unpublished and unknown. If she was
published, her books did not survive. The absence of
women in philosophy was not, we can be sure, due
to lack of talent. But no woman philosopher ever
found her Plato, as did Socrates, to carry her legend
to posterity. (If there was such a Plato, she evidently
never got published, either.).
Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, “Philosophy Discovers ‘the Other’: The Question of Postmodernism”
from A Passion for Wisdom, pp. 125–128. Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press. Permission to reprint granted
by the publisher.
Where Are All the Women and Non-Western Philosophers?  41