The Death of Socrates. Romano Guardini

       INTRODUCTORY NOTE

      THE FATE of Socrates is one of the principal themes in the history of the western mind. Whatever might be the paths of philosophical reflection from the year 399 B.C., they must lead back sooner or later to that enigmatic figure which so deeply touches all who come in contact with it. Socrates is not a systematic philosopher, yet he tells us more about the meaning of philosophy than many systematic writings. He is inimitable, yet he has had a deeper influence on men’s minds than most others who have taught a way of life. There is in his fate, which is so completely the result of a given situation and so intimately bound up with his personal idiosyncrasy, a typical significance which scarcely any other historical figure possesses.

      Not every personality admits of what is called contact in such a degree. This requires a character which is not simply equivalent with greatness of mind or human lovableness. A man may have admirable qualities, but of such a kind that they raise a barrier between him and those who would approach him. Another has the greatest influence, but only through his achievements, while he himself, personally, remains in the background. Again there are characters which captivate people, but are of no significance beyond that. “Contact” means the meeting with an historical figure which is unmistakably itself but yet represents something universally valid. History cannot show many such figures, which by their very unrepeatable singularity lead straight to the essential things; and among them it is perhaps Socrates who possesses in the highest degree this power of touching and moving people.

      The Socrates of the Platonic dialogues is himself the result of a contact. Thoroughly real, but as perceived and drawn by Plato—just as Plato himself is inescapably the man who lived for ten years under the influence of Socrates. It is true, there are parts of his literary work in which the two personalities fall further apart. Thus the Socrates of the earlier dialogues is nearest to the peculiar man who held himself aloof from all theory and was ever retreating into inaccessible regions; while in the Laws, the work of Plato’s old age, the figure of Socrates is missing altogether, and the speaker is the absolutist philosopher himself with his urge towards a system. But the Socrates of the early dialogues too is the Socrates whom Plato saw and loved, and even in the latest flights of Plato’s metaphysical thought the spirit of his long dead master is still active.

      The reader of the Platonic dialogues is always having to stop and ask himself whether the figure who speaks under the name of Socrates really is Socrates. Often enough the answer is that it cannot be decided, but that for the most part the mind and character of the figure point back to tendencies which must, or at least might, have been found in the original Socrates. That this man, who may be regarded equally as a great sophist or as one driven by the force of Eros, as the first critical philosopher or as one guided by numinous intimations, is nevertheless a real personality of the highest potency, proves the genuine historical reality that lies behind him—and indeed also the artistic genius of the man who has drawn his portrait.

      For Plato, who makes such keen demands on accuracy of thought and shows such watchful mistrust of artistic talents, is really no mere thinker, but a poet of a high order. He writes delightful scenes which betray the born dramatist, and invents thought-laden myths which interpret the meaning of life. Forms full of life and individuality move through his dialogues: the Sophists with their pretentiousness and inward emptiness; the practical men who call themselves realists and yet have to be told that they are trading in uncertainty; the poets who claim divine inspiration, and the priests who claim to be initiated, but who alike can give no rational account of their utterances; above all, the young men with their thirst for knowledge and their impetuous will for the ideal, all alike in their faith in what is new, but each with a recognizable manner of his own. In the midst of this bustling world he presents Socrates, showing his influence in all directions, and the lights that fall on his character from all sides. There is something quite peculiar to the poetic genius of Plato in his ability to make convictions grow into forces, ideas into flesh and blood. The characters of his dialogues have each an intellectual locality and definite views; but their picture is constructed from their respective standpoint and from their conviction or uncertainty. Their relation to truth becomes itself a live figure. A dramatism of the mind sways Plato’s works, and what appears as a dialectic of thought is at the same time the expression of an inward process in the thinker himself. But the point towards which and from which this living thought-process is set in motion, and this dramatism evolves, is Socrates. Plato’s thought does not work from out of itself in the manner of a monologue, but springs continually from the living tensions which arise between master and disciple, between the pioneer and his opponents—as, indeed, it was awakened in himself by that contact, made at the height of his youthful receptivity, which led to many years’ fellowship of life and learning. It gave him the original philosophic experience, and it recurs in the various contacts with Socrates which his dialogues describe.

      Plato has built up a work of thought which can be analysed from its fundamental motives and followed in its development. We should, however, only grasp the aim of his philosophy in part if we looked for it merely in theoretical propositions. Just as urgent for him, if not more urgent, than the search for philosophic truth, is the consideration what sort of a man one must be if one is to have any prospect of finding truth. Plato has undertaken not only a critique of reason in general, but of reason in the concrete too. He is one of that quite small number of philosophers who have seen in philosophy the content of existence as well as that of propositions, and who have enquired what sort of a man one must be to become a philosopher, and what sort of a man one becomes when one has decided for philosophy. This philosophical existence he has defined theoretically—especially in the Sixth Book of the Republic—by laying down the gifts which the prospective philosopher must have and the formation he must receive; but he has repeatedly shown him too in the very act of philosophizing. And he has portrayed him in significant situations of life, mastering them in a way that is valid and produces knowledge: for instance, in the Symposium, discoursing of the highest things on a festive occasion; in the Republic, engaged in building up, in a spirit of deepest responsibility, that whole which is to form the synthesis of all individual achievements and at the same time the foundation which will make each particular achievement possible, namely the State; finally, in the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, confronted with death and enabled by his convictions to undergo it in the right way. This philosopher however, the existential counterpart of the philosophical proposition, is no abstract construction, but the most living actuality—that very Socrates who moves to and fro throughout the Platonic dialogues. Thus what was said above of “contact” acquires a new meaning and urgency.

      The present work proposes to examine four dialogues from Plato’s works: the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo. They describe Socrates, the philosopher, in the situation of death. First he is shown, already under indictment, meeting an acquaintance in the street, outside the office of the Archon Basileus, when in the course of conversation the coming event throws its shadow before; then at the trial before the supreme court, defending his life-work against the various accusations; next in prison, at the moment when, towards the end of his imprisonment, a friend urges him to flight and he reassures himself as to his highest duty; lastly, just before the end, as he sums up, in animated conversation with his disciples, the result of his enquiries and knowledge. These texts will tell us how Socrates sees death, how his life appears to him in the face of death, and how he meets his end.

      We are concerned indeed here with the theoretical proposition, what is the meaning of death, how far the possibility of death reaches into man’s existence, whether there is anything indestructible in this existence, and so forth—but also with the concrete