5. Xenophon and Socratic Philosophy - Robert C. Bartlett, Ph.D.

So far, we've been examining the writings of those who knew Socrates directly, Aristophanes and Xenophon. And I've stressed what I called the Socratic revolution or the Socratic turn, a decisive change in Socrates' approach to and his understanding of the world that he speaks of most clearly in Plato's Phaedo. There, we'll remember, he makes perfectly clear what Plato and, as we'll see in a minute, Xenophon, went to some lengths to downplay and even to conceal. The fact that Socrates did, at some point, have an all-consuming interest in natural science, in what he calls the inquiry into nature. Now, this admission is controversial and even a dangerous one. Almost all the ancient philosopher-scientists were suspected of heterodoxy at best and atheism at worst. And I might add, that suspicion had a very good foundation, because the attempt to give a complete account of the world, how and why everything comes into being, persists for a time, and then perishes, is in effect to deny the agency of the gods, who are at least said to be responsible for the existence and the character of the world. Or let me put this another way. To trace the way of the world to impersonal, impersonal, and never interrupted workings of nature, is in effect to deny that the gods are the most important cause of the world. It is, in fact, to deny the gods altogether, at least as they were worshipped by human beings like Strepsiades, whom we met in the clouds. And as we saw in the clouds, Socrates there claims to know precisely the truth about divine matters. Above all, he claims to know the truth that, and I quote, Zeus doesn't even exist. And I suggested that Aristophanes questioned not only the prudence of Socrates' making such a bold claim, whether Socrates took fully into account the dangerousness of his activities, but I also made mention of the fact that Aristophanes questions Socrates' right to make that bold claim. Is Socrates finally just a boaster when he claims to know, really to know, and not merely just sort of suspect or believe that Zeus doesn't exist, the chief of the Greek gods? Now, Socrates himself confirms the wisdom of this early criticism when he admits in Plato's Phaedo that he hit a kind of dead end on the question of cause. That is, he came to realize that he really didn't know the true cause of things as he once thought he did. But, and this is a point that I really want to stress, to admit ignorance about this is to admit ignorance about the nature and existence of the gods. To flesh this out a bit, let's recall here an example from the clouds. The impersonal vortex, not the living being named Zeus, may well be the cause of thunder, but what's the cause of the vortex? The nature that the philosopher thinks is the deepest, the most fundamental cause of the world, may in truth be the wish or the will of the gods. And if the gods, not nature, are really the first cause of the world, philosophy becomes impossible. Philosophy would have to be replaced by something like theology or poetry. Now, what Socrates recounts in the Phaedo then amounts, I think, to nothing less than a kind of crisis in his life, a crisis that must have drawn into question for him the worth, even I think the very possibility, of philosophy as a way of life. But, as he also indicates in the Phaedo, he didn't abandon philosophy. Instead, he embarked on what he calls his second sailing, that is, on his attempt to settle in a new way the question of cause and therefore the question of the existence of gods. Are the gods or is nature somehow the most fundamental cause? Now, in order to understand better both the crisis that Socrates underwent and his response to it, I want to return now to Xenophon. And in the first part of my remarks today, I want to bring out the way in which Xenophon, too, was concerned with the question of the Socratic turn or revolution. In the second part of my remarks, I'll discuss Xenophon's Socratic dialogue that is entitled the Oikonomikos, a rather strange name. And this happens to concern the very day on which Socrates made his decisive turn to the moral political questions as somehow the most philosophically important questions. Now, we can begin by looking briefly at a particular scene from Xenophon's Symposium. And this is an immensely charming work. It's full of delightful episodes and a lot of lighthearted banter and so on, just as you would expect, I suppose, from an account of a symposium, which literally means drinking party. And there is a lot of drinking that goes on. Now, Xenophon's Symposium details what he calls the deeds, the playful deeds of Socrates and the members of Socrates's extended circle over the course of one evening. And it so happens that the host of the party has hired for the evening's entertainments a certain stranger from Syracuse. This, of course, is not in upstate New York, but the principal city on the island of Sicily. And this Syracusan stranger, this Syracusan fellow, has brought with him for the entertainment some dancers and some acrobats. Now, it probably won't surprise you that Socrates is much less interested in these sorts of things, the acrobats and so on, than he is with conversing with the assembled guests. And as a result, there follows a series of interesting discussions, above all on the subject of love, as it happens. The Syracusan, though, is not too pleased with Socrates for causing his program of entertainments to be neglected. And so the Syracusan, in his annoyance, he asks, quote, are you, Socrates, the one nicknamed the thinker? To which Socrates rather good-naturedly replies, surely that would be nobler than, if I recall, the thoughtless. But the Syracusan, who's still annoyed, presses Socrates harder. He says, quoting again, unless, that is, you were held to be a thinker of the things aloft, which is to say, the gods, as the Syracusan goes on to confirm, quoting again, by Zeus, they say that you don't care about the gods, but only about the least beneficial things. Now, at this point, Socrates tries, fairly gracefully, to avert this harsh criticism with a mild pun. But I think the Syracusan leaves no doubt as to the nature of the criticism he has in mind, or at least that he's overheard. Here's what he says. Tell me, the Syracusan asks finally, how many fleas feet are you from me? For they say you measure these things. So here we have, then, an explicit allusion to an early scene from Aristophanes' Clouds. And I might just note in passing here that the Xenophon Symposium is set a year, maybe two years, after the performance of The Clouds. So it would have been in the air. I think the thrust of this stranger's criticism is pretty clear. You, Socrates, you don't care about the gods. You care instead about things beneath human concerns. You see the whole world, even its fleas, just as something to measure, which is to say, to know it with a kind of precision that serves absolutely no useful purpose. Now, these exchanges that I've just quoted are found in the sixth of the nine chapters that make up Xenophon Symposium. And this sixth chapter is quite brief. It's less than a couple of pages long. And immediately before Socrates' exchanges with this Syracusan fellow, he is shown in chapter six conversing with a member of his circle, a rather dour man named Hermogenes. And Hermogenes is distinguished by his sort of somber devotion to the gods. At one point he claims that the thing he's most proud of is his friendship with the gods. And this earlier part of chapter six culminates in Socrates' declaration that he has been, and I quote, refuted by Hermogenes. In other words, even in the midst of Xenophon's most lighthearted Socratic writing, he alludes at least to the fundamental difficulty or challenge that Socrates faced. Socrates is, quote, refuted by the very pious man Hermogenes. And then immediately after, we're reminded explicitly of Aristophanes' criticisms of Socrates, the natural philosopher. Now to begin to see how Xenophon the Socratic might respond to a Hermogenes, that is, to a believer in the Orthodox gods on the one hand, and to an Aristophanes on the other, I think we have to return to Xenophon's longest Socratic writing, which is the Memorabilia. Now the first purpose of the Memorabilia is, as I noted in the previous lecture, to defend Socrates on the twofold charge that he faced at his very famous trial in 399 BC. First, that he didn't believe in the gods in whom the city believed. And here I could just note parenthetically that there was, of course, no separation of church and state in the ancient city or polis. There was no First Amendment. And it was, of course, a capital offense not to worship the city's gods. Now the second charge that Socrates faced was that of corrupting the young. And I think if we think just for a minute about these two charges, we see which is the more fundamental one. Socrates allegedly corrupted the young because he did not believe in the correct gods, the gods of Athens. Now the very first and relatively brief chapter of the Memorabilia is devoted to proving that Socrates wasn't impious as charged. Now given what we've already seen of the connection between the suspicion of impiety on the one hand and the pursuit of natural philosophy or science on the other, we should expect that in defending Socrates against the charge of impiety, Xenophon is forced to take up the suspicion that Socrates is indeed a natural philosopher, hence an atheist. Now I quoted a portion of this discussion in Lecture 2 where Xenophon seems flatly to deny that Socrates took any interest in nature or the cosmos at all. As Xenophon goes on to say, quoting again here, Socrates was always conversing about the human thing. Questions such as what is pious, what is impious, what is noble, what's shameful, what is just, what unjust and so on. But I think a closer examination suggests that Xenophon's view is a little more nuanced than that, than a flat denial of interest in these things. For example, Xenophon says, and I quote again, Socrates did not converse about the nature of all things in the way most of the others did. In other words, he may have had an interest in these things but he pursued them in a new, in a different way. And even more important, in reporting Socrates' very renunciation of the pre-Socratics as we call them today, Xenophon makes clear that Socrates was actually very familiar with their thought. Why? Because Socrates is able to sketch the fundamental alternatives that they represent, for example that being is only one thing or that it's composed of an infinite multitude and so on. Clearly then, Socrates had reflected on these doctrines and found them for some reason defective. But to reflect on those doctrines comprehensively is to engage in natural science or philosophy. Most important, I think, is Xenophon's statement in the fourth book of the Memorabilia. And there in the fourth book, Xenophon says that Socrates never ceased inquiring into what each of the beings is, each of the being, and therefore also, among other things, the heavenly being. So in his quiet way, I'm suggesting, Xenophon acknowledges that Socrates actually maintained an interest in natural science or philosophy, though he may have done it in a new way. His approach was somehow new. So my suggestion is that Xenophon in the Memorabilia is trying to, of course, vindicate his teacher from popular slander, and so he acts as a good defense attorney. He stresses those facts that put his client in a favorable light and covers over those that do not. Socrates did indeed stress the so-called human things, the famous or maybe notorious questions, what is, that he's always asking, what is justice and so on, as we see in the pages of Plato and Xenophon. But could there be some connection between Socrates' new and somewhat peculiar focus on moral questions and his earlier interest in natural science? In other words, might Socrates have turned to the examination of his and our moral opinions in order somehow to get to the bottom of the question of cause or of the gods? Now, it seems to me that our question is answered in the affirmative in Xenophon's most intriguing and in a way challenging Socratic writing, and that is the oikonomikos, as it's traditionally called. Now, the title is obviously an odd one. What does it mean? The title oikonomikos refers to a person, and it means, literally translated, the skilled household manager. This is, by the way, the original meaning of our word economist, is someone who knows the law or the governance, the nomos, of the household, oikos, hence oikonomia. Now, Xenophon himself narrates the dialogue. It begins with these words. I once heard him discourse on or converse about the management of the household as well. Him, of course, is Socrates. And the first six of the book's 21 chapters relate a conversation that Socrates once had with a young fellow named Cretobulus, who's the son of Socrates's old pal, Crito. By the way, Plato named the dialogue after Crito, as we'll see later on. And Cretobulus, we've actually met before. He's the same fellow who had taken the outrageously dangerous step of kissing someone who was beautiful, as we saw in the memorabilia. Here, in the oikonomikos, Cretobulus comes to sight as a young, charming, rather lazy, or fun-loving fellow who enjoys Socrates's company. Socrates notes here that Cretobulus is fond of attending the comedies, often with Socrates in tow, and Cretobulus spends a lot of money too lavishly. And this brings up the first and most obvious purpose of their conversation. Socrates urges him to become a more skilled manager of his household, of his wealth. Now, the oddity of this, I suppose, is clear. The notoriously poor Socrates gives economic advice to the extremely wealthy Cretobulus. At one point in the dialogue, by the way, Socrates estimates that Cretobulus is about a hundred times wealthier than Socrates himself. But here, Socrates's famous continence, or self-control, returns. Why? Because poor as he is, Socrates has more than he needs to satisfy his extremely modest wants, whereas Cretobulus hasn't nearly enough rich fellow that he is. Now, in the opening chapters of the Oeconomicus, we see the masterful skill with which Socrates chasten or humble the people he's speaking with, even on their supposed point of pride. By the end of chapter six, Socrates has succeeded in convincing Cretobulus of several things. For example, that he is, for all practical purposes, quite poor, that he must attend much more seriously to educating his young wife than he has done thus far, and that farming is an activity at once noble and good, to use the Greek formulation. Farming is good because it's profitable, and it's noble because a self-respecting gentleman could engage in it without shame or with honor, unlike, say, manual labor, from the aristocratic point of view, at least. The first six chapters of the Oeconomicus, then, constitute an effective critique of young Cretobulus, as well as a kind of exhortation to learn the art of household management with special attention to farming. Thomas Jefferson would approve. Now, as great a teacher as Socrates may be, there's a limit to what he can do here. After all, he himself isn't a farmer, and his own brand of economics, if we can call it that, these depend decisively on the extremely reduced character of his needs or his wants, something that we have no reason to think Cretobulus could ever match. And so Socrates is compelled to tell Cretobulus of a conversation he once had in the unspecified past with an Athenian gentleman farmer of the finest reputation, a fellow named Aeschomachus. And so the next 15 chapters, that is, chapters 7 through 21, are devoted entirely to Socrates' report to young Cretobulus of his conversation with this gentleman farmer named Aeschomachus. We don't hear about or from Cretobulus again in the book. Now, before we turn to consider some of the highlights of Socrates' conversation with Aeschomachus, we might just compare here what I'll call, for lack of a better word, the action of the oikonomikos with the action of Aristophanes' clouds. In the clouds, the philosopher Socrates educates or corrupts the son of an Athenian farmer in such a way that the son turns away from farming, from the traditional rural life with its worship of the traditional gods, and toward philosophy. The son is rendered, at best, useless to his farming father. In the oikonomikos, by contrast, we see the philosopher Socrates taking active concern for the rather useless son of an Athenian father and exhorting him to become a gentleman farmer. Far from being a sort of corruptor of Athenian sons, then, Socrates here is presented as an educator who supports the traditional rural life, which is, of course, the backbone of which, of course, is farming. Now, I suggest that in an appropriately muted way, the oikonomikos is Xenophon's most extended reply to Aristophanes. In fact, Xenophon even goes so far as to quote a line from the clouds in poetic meter. And Socrates here not only refers to himself explicitly as a philosopher, something he does fairly rarely in Xenophon's writing, but he repeats the popular view that he is, and I quote here from the oikonomikos, an idle talker and one who measures the air. This, I think, is clearly another allusion to Aristophanes' portrait of Socrates. Now, more than that, I suggest that the oikonomikos is Xenophon's depiction of the very day on which Socrates made his famous turn away from natural philosophy, properly or narrowly speaking, and toward the moral and political question. It was in and through his conversation with the perfect gentleman, Oikonomikos, in other words, that Socrates ceased to be a pre-Socratic and became instead the Socratic Socrates, so to speak. In this connection, I think we should never forget that Cretobulus is not the only person to whom Socrates reports this conversation. Xenophon lets us know that he himself was present also together with some unnamed other people, and this means, I think, that the oikonomikos can be read as a simple praise of farming directed at the rather wayward young fellow Cretobulus, and it is that, but I think it can also be read, I argue it should be read, as a subtle inquiry for the benefit of Xenophon and others, maybe us, into the foundations of the moral political life led by the gentleman farmer, and this inquiry is conducted not for the sake of becoming a farmer, this is something Socrates never did, but rather for the sake of philosophizing, of justifying philosophy as a way of life. Now in this way, roughly two-thirds of the oikonomikos becomes Socrates's polite but probing inquiry into the deepest convictions that guide the model citizen and the gentleman, the well-to-do farmer Iskomakos, and so great is the gulf between the two men and their respective lives that even Iskomakos himself notes on three occasions that Socrates has to be joking when he implies that he too might actually practice the art of farming. Iskomakos knows that's not going to happen. Now I've called Iskomakos a gentleman, and that's how he's referred to in the dialogue. This single English word, gentleman, translates actually a Greek word that has two components. A gentleman in Greek is one who is both noble, kalos, and good, agathos. He is a kalos kagathos. He's a person who is of course concerned with the truly good things, understood as things that are advantageous or profitable for him. Iskomakos, after all, is a very rich man. He makes that clear. But that concern with benefit or profit is strictly limited or guided by his concern for what is noble or admirable. Sure, Iskomakos seeks to increase his wealth, but not by just any old means. By respectable work, sure, but not by cooking the books or making phony stock deals, say. The gentleman, to use this maybe old-fashioned term, we could say more generally the moral person. The moral person, as such, limits his pursuit of the good things with a view to what's noble. And Xenophon presents Iskomakos as, in a way, the exemplar of the gentleman or the moral human being. Now, Socrates's lengthy conversation with Iskomakos covers many topics. How he's educated his wife, the details of how he manages his farm and sees to the obedience of his workers, the nature of the soil and the proper care that it requires, so nature comes up here in this way, and so on. An important theme emerges early in the conversation and it reappears throughout, and that is Iskomakos's convictions about the gods. Now, maybe it goes without saying by now, but this theme is the most important one, both in the oikonomikos and simply. In conversing with Iskomakos, Socrates is engaging one who firmly believes in the orthodox gods, and he attempts to live his life accordingly. And so, in probing the foundations of Iskomakos's life, Socrates is also, and I would say above all, probing his views about the gods. Now, Iskomakos's understanding of the gods is somewhat complex. He indicates that before undertaking any great task, for example, the proper education of his young wife, he sacrifices and prays to the gods. And this suggests that human planning or reason or diligence, it can only take you so far. The outcome of some things is just beyond our powers to know, and therefore it requires the watchful care of the gods, whom we appeal to through prayer. Now, it's true that Iskomakos presents to his wife a perfectly ordered world. The gods, he says, have seen to it that the male and the female natures are perfectly complementary, and even the law agrees with their specific duties assigned as husband and wife. So, as he presents it to his wife, at least, God, nature, and law, all in perfect harmony. But what he tells his young and rather naive wife differs in important respects from what he tells Socrates. For example, Iskomakos once went aboard a large Phoenician ship, and he talked with its boatswain, as he tells Socrates. And there he marveled at the order of everything on the ship. And the boatswain said to him the following, quote, when the god raises a storm at sea, there's no time to search for whatever may be needed or to get out something from an awkward place. The god threatens and punishes the slack. If only he doesn't destroy those who've not gone wrong, one should be very content. And if he preserves those who serve very nobly, one should know much gratitude to the gods. In other words, Iskomakos, like the boatswain, is convinced that there are gods who reward and punish us. But he also knows that sometimes they act in ways that are incomprehensible to us. Sometimes the god may not preserve those who, as he puts it, serve very nobly. We can be deserving of being saved at sea and perish anyway. Iskomakos, you might say, is perfectly aware of the problem of Job. And as the Oeconomicus as a whole makes clear, his response to that problem is to redouble his dedication to what is noble, to be a good gentleman, and so to be of greater hope that the gods will make his fate accord with his desert. Now this means that at the heart of Iskomakos's really impressive dedication to what is noble or admirable, there beats the hope to attain something good, something good for himself. He believes that the very act of sacrificing something good, say the wealth that he could achieve in a shady way, will do him some other greater good down the line with the gods. In fact, it's clear that because he believes he nobly sacrifices some good things, he's deserving of some reward from the gods. But if this is true, in what sense can those sacrifices really be sacrifices as opposed to, say, a kind of prudent strategy? The gentleman as gentleman believes he loves what's noble for its own sake or that he would do the right thing regardless. And it's this very belief that renders Iskomakos hopeful of receiving the care of the gods. When discussing Iskomakos's father, who buys farms, fixes them up and sells them on for a profit, Socrates says this in a somewhat odd sentence, all believe by nature that they love those things by which they believe they are benefited. Now this is a bit of a head-scratcher. In other words, Iskomakos wants to believe that he loves most what's noble, doing the right thing. When in fact, what he loves most is the benefit that he receives from his apparently selfless dedication to it. And this is a confusion that marks the center of the life of Iskomakos. And we'll have occasion again to come back to this confusion. Now let me conclude. Xenophon presents Socrates on the day of his turn, as I'm calling it. And on that day, he paid extremely close and patient attention to the speeches or the opinions of the perfect gentleman, Iskomakos, above all his opinions about the gods. Xenophon suggests that in order to get to the bottom of this matter of cause, and hence of the existence of gods, Socrates set aside pre-Socratic physics and founded a new moral political philosophy. We'll have occasion in our study of Plato to return to this admittedly very difficult line of reasoning. But to do that, we'll first have to discuss Plato's Socrates and the mysteries of the Platonic dialogue.