The Socratic Turn. Dustin Sebell
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of knowledge we have” (344), it cannot be reasonably or consistently bypassed in favor of “the life-world.” Our concern for “what matters” (utility) can never wholly extinguish our concern for truth, and an analysis of “the life-world” cannot be truer than “the life-world” itself.
On the other hand, even if practical considerations played a role, more went into the Socratic founding of political philosophy than the usual sources seem to say. Cicero’s suggestion that Socrates founded political philosophy tends to elicit the objection that philosophers, and not only philosophers, gave serious thought to politics prior to Socrates. But Cicero was not unaware of this fact. And to suggest in full awareness of this fact that it was, nevertheless, Socrates who founded political philosophy is to suggest that serious thought about politics does not qualify as “political philosophy” unless it meets certain criteria, criteria which were not met by political thought prior to Socrates. “In early Greek philosophy the emergence of political philosophy and of a special field of politics was obscured by the [pre-Socratic] attempt to include all phenomena within ‘nature’ and to explain their workings by a common unifying principle” (Wolin 1960, 29–30). That means, before Socrates could develop a method for converting our prescientific, common sense opinions about justice into knowledge, he had to mount a theoretical defense of those opinions, especially over and against pre-Socratic natural science’s explicit, negative assessment of their cognitive status. The question of the basis of common sense opinions about good and evil had to be approached in such a way as to enable science, for the first time, to have genuine access to the question of their content. And a closer look at the usual sources corroborates the suggestion that Socrates founded political philosophy, or rejected natural science, especially or also as a result of theoretical considerations; which is to say, as a result of a concern with the whole of nature.24
There are, therefore, reasons to entertain the possibility that the Socratic turn is still directly relevant to the situation of political theory today. For the pre-Socratic natural science that Socrates rejected surely shares with modern natural science certain fundamental assumptions and objectives. Both seek more or less single-mindedly to explain human behavior, for example, “reductively,” that is, in terms of underlying material or efficient causes. And the causal accounts or explanations of human behavior ordinarily offered up in speech, explanations in terms of this or that end or “value,” are thus written off as red herrings by both. Yet if modern and pre-Socratic natural science share certain fundamental assumptions and objectives, then perhaps Socrates’ theoretical reasons for rejecting the latter still have a bearing on our stance toward the former?25 If so, and if indeed Socrates acquired “the true political art” by examining opinions about just or good things in accord with a method whose evidence or criteria are in principle “public, not private,” then perhaps scientific knowledge of “values” is not impossible after all?
Perhaps. But it is a long way, to say the least, from these prima facie reasons to the conclusion that Socrates originally conceived of political philosophy, both its basis and its method, in such a way as to safeguard it in advance against the difficulties that especially prevent it from laying claim to the mantle of science today. But we know where to start at any rate. For before Socratic political philosophy can be assessed, it must be understood. That inevitably means asking why—owing to precisely what reflections and concerns—Socrates founded it as he did. And Plato poses this question to his readers. For his Socrates was himself engaged in pre-Socratic natural science in his youth, and it was only much later in life, after turning away from pre-Socratic natural science, that he became a political philosopher. But Plato does not merely pose the question of Socrates’ intellectual development; he gives a comprehensive account of it whose aim is to help his readers undergo a similar development for themselves. That account is therefore the immediate focus of the following study.
The study has seven chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the way the comparatively recent preoccupation with Plato’s intellectual development has led scholars to disregard the question of Socrates’ intellectual development. And it situates Plato’s account of Socrates’ intellectual development in the context of the Platonic corpus. Then, on the basis of that account, Chapter 2 goes on to show that materialistic natural science is an attempt to confirm—and that it is of the essence of “antiscience” to deny—the basic premise of science as such; namely, that nothing can come to be without a cause. At least to begin with, as E. O. Wilson says, “reductionism is the primary and essential activity of science” (1999, 59). But, through an analysis of what a cause or a causal account is, Chapter 3 demonstrates that materialistic natural science is not equal to its task. As a matter of fact, it is derivative, incoherent, and incomplete. If Chapter 3 broaches the problem of science and its limits, Chapter 4 develops it more fully. It does so in such a way as to convey something of the true scope and depth of the so-called mind-body problem. For, contrary to popular belief, that problem is not, or not merely, the problem of the emergence of minds from bodies. Rather, we find ourselves in a world ordered into distinct classes or kinds of beings, and this heterogeneity is demonstrably noetic in origin. The beings of our experience—including “rocks,” to give the pertinent example—depend on mind for whatever unity they have. And we see in this way why natural or scientific teleology, as opposed to materialistic natural science, would alone seem to be worthy of the name “science.” (Partly because they aim to convey something of what science originally meant, which is hard to do today, Chapters 2–4 are more drawn-out than the rest.) Chapter 5 shows that even natural or scientific teleology is no more conceivable than materialistic natural science, however. The beings of our experience cannot be fully understood—either “from below” (materialistically) or “from above” (teleologically)—and this, the full understanding of this, leaves science itself teetering on the brink of collapse. Chapter 6 turns to the situation of man in society as it appears in light of the insight into the limits of science. And while it shows how knowledge of these limits makes it practically necessary for its possessor to examine opinions about justice, Chapter 7 shows how this knowledge finally makes it theoretically possible for its possessor to do so. Here we begin to make out what science is or can be when it is fully aware of the limits beyond which it cannot go if it is to remain science.26 And we see how exactly—by what method—opinions about justice, for one, are to be scientifically examined. The Introduction and Conclusion have to do with nihilism. All together, the following study focuses on the basis and method of political philosophy—on the cognitive status of the evidence from which political philosophy takes its bearings, in the first place, and on its manner of handling the evidence in question, in the second.
PART I
Chapter 1
The Problem of the Young Socrates
Socrates’ “Pre-Socratic” Past
For a long time now, scholars have been preoccupied with the question of Plato’s intellectual development. The well-known fact that the question cannot be answered with certainty, in large part because we lack unambiguous evidence for it from within the Platonic writings themselves or even from ancient sources more generally, has not discouraged scholars from forming, by turns, consensuses and factions in regard to it. Their willingness to pronounce with such confidence on an essentially open and controversial question is surely a testament