The Socratic Turn. Dustin Sebell

Yet, despite claiming that they “came to be,” Hesiod does not make the claim that these beings came to be out of or from anything else, as he does in the case of the succeeding generations or births.²⁷ Even then, he says of these succeeding beings that, though they need not have come into being, they can never perish, from which it follows that they have not, strictly speaking, come to be out of anything else. And if in fact something can come to be from nothing, as Hesiod suggests, then there are no fixed limits to what can and cannot occur. Anything would be possible, no matter how incredible. A dog might come to be from a horse, out of which, in the next place, a calf might come to be.²⁸ An immortal might even come to be from a (mortal) human being.²⁹ As long as the cause—if it can, properly speaking, be called a cause at all—of coming to be and perishing remains free or unlimited and therefore shrouded in darkness,³⁰ not one of the beings, each of which is contingent on it, could be said to have fixed characteristics and powers of its own, or a nature. Should the assumption that there is nature—in the sense of a first material necessity—be unable to be confirmed, science, being the attempt to know the natures of the beings, would seem to be fatally flawed.³¹ For it would seem to depend in that case on nothing but the belief or assumption that there is nature, and is not such dependence (on mere belief) fatal to science or philosophy (cf. 84a7–b1, Crito 46b4–6)?

      By overturning nature in this way, Hesiod’s claim undermines the hope that human beings might obtain by themselves genuine knowledge of the world.³² In doing so, however, it nourishes other hopes. For it makes room for beings whose unlimited freedom in thinking and choosing is not merely derivative from that which, being fixed or necessary, lacks thought and choice. Having come to be without a cause, and thus contingent on nothing, such beings could well be immortal. These immortal beings might, insofar as they think, think about human affairs; and, insofar as they act, choose to perform actions in our regard. Moreover, since they are among the first beings, their power over the beings contingent on them could be such that they can do whatever they choose. In making room for beings such as this, whose unlimited freedom in thinking and choosing comprehends, orders or causes all (other) things, Hesiod’s claim jettisons science, to be sure. Yet it replaces nature or necessity, on which science seems to depend, with such inscrutable darkness as would allow for providential gods or the gods of the city. The world, being unfathomably deep, may be the work of gods who, in minding our business as well as theirs, make it responsive to our hopes or prayers when they wish it, regardless of any supposedly “natural” or “necessary” limits.³³

      Thus, to assume as the natural scientists do that the first thing is necessary or fixed, or that it lacks the freedom to act through thought or choice, is to deny the existence of the gods in whom the city believes. For, assuming that there is nature, all freedom and indeterminacy must be merely derivative from it.³⁴ Moreover, given that they are composed of some fundamental material, all other things—including what could otherwise appear to be free or animate, such as “gods” or human beings—must be essentially perishable, since they would have causes (elements of which they are composed) that do not support their being except incidentally.³⁵ Put simply, the philosophers and those who believe in the gods of the city regard the same thing, the first thing (or things), as possessing opposite or mutually exclusive attributes—as, that is, being either necessary (“air”) or purposeful (“Zeus”) (cf. Symposium 195b7–c5).³⁶ Socrates’ reticence with regard to nature, the ultimate subject matter of natural science (96a7), may be attributed to his mindfulness of this difference, and of the reputation for impiety that philosophy is almost bound to acquire as a result of it. That reputation was not harmless. Because of it, “the many” in Athens and even elsewhere (in oligarchic Thebes) believed that philosophers, such as Socrates and Anaxagoras before him, deserved to die (64a4–b8), and the Phaedo makes abundantly clear that they were not unwilling to act on this belief.³⁷ Socrates knew he could not have spoken in plain terms of nature without making the shocking and dangerous admission that philosophers are, as they are widely reputed to be, nonbelievers in the gods of the city. Still, there is another reason why Socrates refuses to acknowledge openly that the account of human growth he accepted in his youth rested ultimately on an appeal to nature. For not only does that refusal protect philosophy’s future in the city, as in fact it did, but it also serves to bring out more fully a crucial feature of the sort of knowledge the young Socrates supposed he possessed.

      The Complex Relation Between Science and Common Sense, Revisited

      As Socrates put it at the outset, natural science involves knowing the causes “of each thing” (96a8, 97c6–7, 97b4–5). More exactly, according to his elaboration of this remark, it involves knowing “through what” each thing comes to be and perishes and is the way it is (96a8–9). Oddly enough, however, Socrates’ report of his engagement with natural science as a young man does not altogether reflect this. For his report makes clear only this much: that when he was young, he examined “first” (96b1) “through what” things come to be, whereas after this, or “in turn” (96b9), he examined “through what” these same things perish (96b2–c1). He makes no mention, that is, of ever having examined “through what” each thing is the way—or what—it is. There can be no question of the young Socrates’ somehow forgetting to try to acquire knowledge of the very thing, or one of them, that he himself says he sought to know. In any case, even if he did not undertake a separate examination of (the cause of) the way of being of each thing, he was still persuaded, presumably on the basis of his other examinations, that he knew “through what” a thing is the way it is (97b3–6). The young Socrates did not forget to examine “through what” each thing is what it is then. He merely assumed that in or by examining “through what” each thing comes to be and perishes he was also, at the same time, examining “through what” each thing is what, or the way, it is. We are not entirely unprepared to find this assumption here or to grasp its bearing.

      We recall that the young Socrates was led to reduce “human being,” for one, to its materials or elements—to those things of which it consists, out of which it comes to be, when it comes to be, and into which it perishes, when it perishes. As it seemed to him, its materials or elements are what somehow cause the coming to be and the perishing of the compound, “human being.” And these materials or elements are for their part ultimately reducible to some fundamental material that somehow causes the coming to be and perishing of all things. Socrates’ search for this first material nature followed from the basic premise or requirement of science. This objective, the discovery of nature, was taken up then insofar as it formed a part—albeit an apparently indispensable part—of another, larger objective or overarching goal. For the young Socrates’ account was intended primarily to grasp the cause of what “everyone” knows in a certain way already. Although it eventually developed into a search for nature in the sense of a first material necessity, the young Socrates’ search for the cause of human growth was from its beginning, and it would remain to its end, a search for the cause responsible for human beings being the way—or what—they are.³⁸ Accordingly, he must have assumed that the materials or elements of each thing, as what each thing consists of, comes from, and perishes into, not only accounted for its coming to be and perishing, but, in so doing, supplied its way of being as well. He must have assumed, in short, that the way of being of each thing—what it is, or what it can do as well as suffer (cf. 98a6–7)—having no distinct existence of its own, could be understood adequately in this way, in terms of the whole process of becoming leading up to it.

      This is not an assumption that science can dispense with, at least not without putting itself at risk of being wrecked. Indeed, the young Socrates sought the cause of each thing’s being the way it is and not otherwise in the causes of its coming to be and perishing in response to the need that emerged from the basic premise of science to trace the characteristics and powers of each thing to something that could ensure, by being fixed itself, their own fixity. Each thing’s way of being, if it cannot be traced to such a ground (or to nature, in that sense), cannot necessarily be counted on to possess the fixity that is a prerequisite for full knowledge of it—and, hence, for science or philosophy in the fullest sense—to be possible. Had the young Socrates, together with the others engaged in natural science, refused to make the aforementioned assumption, he would have been compelled to admit that what he primarily