1. The Socratic Way

2. Beginnings Philosophy What is it?
It’s hard to say
I’ll approach this obliquely
Began in the West with the Greeks (about 500 BC)
The ‘love of wisdom’
We begin real philosophy with
Socrates ( BC)

3. Socratic Method Socrates wrote nothing He claimed to know nothing
Spent his life talking in the Athenian town square
Plato wrote down his dialogues
The early ones have Socrates’s ideas
The later ones have Plato’s thoughts
He claimed to know nothing
He thought seeking truth had to be a collaborative effort

4. Socratic Method Begin by claiming ignorance of some issue
Seek enlightenment from a person who knows
Show that they don’t know
End by having a better idea of what is to be known

5. Socratic Method Elenchus Socrates asks all the questions.
The interlocutor must answer every question.
A definition or principle is sought from the interlocutor.
Socrates seeks clarification, gaining assent for various propositions.
These propositions are used to show that the proposed definition or principle is unsatisfactory.

6. Euthyphro Socrates meets Euthyphro on the way to the law courts
Euthyphro is going to prosecute his father for unlawfully causing death – a capital crime
His father had mistreated a slave to the point that he died
Euthyphro thinks it is the right and pious thing to do to prosecute in such cases
Socrates is going to be tried for impiety
He thinks this is a good time to have a philosophical discussion on piety

8. Euthyphro
Soc. Do you know enough about piety to be sure that bringing an action against your father is not itself impious?
Euth. Yes, I have an exact knowledge of all such matters.
Soc. Is piety in every action always the same? and impiety just whatever is impious?.
Euth. Yes

9. Euthyphro
Euth. Piety is doing what I’m doing and prosecuting my father. After all, Zeus punished his father Cronus (who’d also punished his father Uranus)
Soc. But aren’t there also other pious actions?
Euth. Yes
Soc. I don’t want a list of some pious actions: I want to know what principle makes them pious.

10. Euthyphro
Euth. The principle is this: piety is what the gods love and impiety is what they hate.
Soc. OK. So let’s think about that. Do the gods quarrel amongst themselves?
Euth. Yes
Soc. And what sort of differences give rise to the sort of long-lasting quarrels that the gods have?

11. Euthyphro
Soc. I say that that sort of dispute arises when we differ over what is just or good or honourable: any other questions we can eventually resolve
Euth. Sure
Soc. And the gods’ quarrels must also be like this
Euth. That seems to be true

12. Euthyphro
Soc. And doesn’t everyone love what they deem just and noble and hate the unjust and ignoble?
Euth. Yes
Soc. Then some things will be both loved by the gods and hated by the gods?
Soc. Aha! So you agree that some things are both pious and impious!

13. Euthyphro But: a contradiction can never be true
Nothing can be a thing loved by the gods and at the same time a thing not loved by the gods.
And: any proposition that yields a contradiction must be false
Therefore: piety can’t be ‘what is loved by the gods’

14. Aporia
This argument doesn’t tell us what piety is; only what it is not
This is typical of Socrates’s arguments
We are left in a state of indecision and perplexity – which the Greeks called aporia
The Socratic style is called aporetic

15. Philosophical Reflexivism
What’s the process in that argument
Find Euthyphro, who claims to know what piety is
Get a definition of piety
Derive consequences from this definition
Identify a falsehood (contradiction) in the consequences
Conclude that the definition must be false
Conclude finally Euthyphro didn’t know what piety was

16. Philosophical Reflexivism
That argument depended on an assumption that if you know what piety is then you can give a definition of it.
That assumption was typical for Socrates: If you say you know what X is, then you can define X
But is it a good assumption?
How might Euthyphro have continued the argument?

17. Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. You say I don’t know what piety is, so you clearly have an idea of what it is to know something. Do tell.
Soc. Surely: to know something is to be able to define it
Euth. And this applies to everything?
Soc. Of course!

18. Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. Well, we’ll see about that. I ask you to look now at that man with the shiny head who is buying figs.
Soc. That’s Cephalus. Ha ha. He’s bald.
Euth. Bald? But I’m sure I can see a couple of hairs there.
Soc. Not enough though. He’s definitely bald.

19. Euthyphro’s reply
Euth. If I added one more hair to his head would he still be bald?
Soc. Yes.
Euth. So a single hair doesn’t make the difference between baldness and non-baldness. OK, so what if I then added one more hair
Soc. I think I get your point.
Euth. Which is?

20. Euthyphro’s reply
Soc. Since I can’t tell you how many hairs make a bald man non-bald, I can’t define baldness, so I don’t know what baldness is.
Euth. Almost! But I think we do know what baldness is. My real point is that there are lots of words like ‘bald’ that we use but can’t define.
Soc. Ah, and so you reject my assumption that to know what baldness is to know its definition.

21. Philosophical Reflexivism
That argument is an application of Socrates’s method to Socrates’s method.
A sort of meta-elenchus!
This sort of self analysis – reflexivity – is typical of philosophy
The philosophizing mind never simply thinks about an object, it always, while thinking about any object, thinks also about its thought about that object. Philosophy may thus be called thought of the second degree, thought about thought.

22. Philosophical Reflexivism
Could we take reflexivity as being definitive of philosophy?
No. Consider mathematics, history, sociology
If we can’t define philosophy, does that mean we can’t know what it is?
What do you think?