Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
Evil in Socratic Dialogue
Dr. Viktoria Bachmann
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Germany)
Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for their kind invitation to talk about the
Socratic understanding of evil. On the one hand this is a fascinating question, because
Socrates asserts the necessity of evil for the good. On the other hand, it is an extraordinary
difficult question to answer, since Socrates is usually concerned about the good and not about
evil per se. I would therefore like to begin with a few words about the methodological
difficulties within this issue.
Preliminary remarks about the method
The main difficulty in dealing with the texts of Plato is their dialectical form. Since more than
one position is usually presented in a dialogue, it is not readily apparent which view can be
assigned to Socrates. If we want to explicate the Socratic understanding of evil, we must be
able to justify identifying a certain position within the dialogue as the Socratic position.
One could assign everything Socrates says as his own position. However, another feature of
the dialogue renders this method as not fully valid. The Socratic dialogues are no discussions
or debates in which opposing opinions about an issue are simply set alongside, or against, one
another. Rather, Socrates explicates and examines the opinions of his interlocutors.
Thus, many of Socrates’ utterances are in fact often explications, plausibilities, or
clarifications of a different position. In the dialogue “Theaetetus”, for example, he describes
this kind of conversation, establishing an analogy to the obstetrical work performed by
midwives but with one important difference: Socrates examines the newborn thoughts of men
(149b–151d). Thus, in the dialogue “Apology”, he claims that his lifelong activity of
examining is his specific vocation (28e).
In the face of these facts, it is not enough to search for Socrates’ own explicit assumptions to
grasp the genuine Socratic understanding of a certain issue. The context of a certain statement
is of immense significance for assigning it to Socrates. Furthermore, the specific Socratic
position does not seem to lie in a certain statement but rather in his examination of it—that is,
in a certain way of thinking. Thus the Socratic position and philosophy should be seen much
more in his treatment of certain theories than in his theory about one particular issue.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
How do I deal with this methodological difficulty in this lecture? If Socratic philosophy is for
the most part presented in examination of theories, then the method of interpretation has to
adopt to this problem and has to rethink this line of thought. In the process of such a rethinking, Socratic thinking can be distinguished from that of his interlocutors in its specific
context. The conceptual representation of the specifics of this process of thinking can only be
the second step.
Such an enactment is fairly small detail and cannot be presented in its entirety in this lecture.
Therefore, I will rather present the results of my work today, focussed on the question of the
Socratic understanding of evil. Since usually the good, not evil, is the object of the Socratic
dialogues, another translation is to be accomplished. I will attempt this by analysing some
explicit Socratic utterances on the relationship of evil to the good (Theaetetus, Apology). To
illustrate the Socratic understanding of evil, I will [then] refer to some aspects of the Socratic
dialogue about virtue (Charmides, Republic I).
What is evil for Socrates?
I have compiled a few quotes from the dialogues “Theaetetus” and “Apology” that allow a
good introduction to the topic of the relationship between good and evil. I have chosen these
two dialogues because Socrates reflects in them on his philosophical activity, and its results
are unusually detailed.
First the passages in “Theaetetus”: In the first quote, Socrates proposes the somewhat startling
thesis that evil cannot be eradicated because the good always needs to have an opposite. He
does not rely on anthropological considerations to explain the evil in the world, as was usually
done during the European Enlightment. According to Socrates, the good itself renders evil
necessary. To understand evil, one therefore has to examine the nature of good, not the nature
of man. Furthermore, Socrates expresses in the aforementioned quote that evil moves around
in the mortal world. If you wonder where in the world evil is to be found, then man returns
into focus. It is only man who can become good or evil (Quote 2).
Socrates’ demand to become like God or the personification of the good suggests that there is
a transition between being evil and being good. The “Theaetetus” does not mention the
process of becoming good in detail, but its basic features do characterize the unjust, evil man.
In citations three and four you can find the basic features of the unjust man: first, his claim for
mastery and, second, his misunderstanding of himself.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
With regard to the claim for mastery: Wherein does the unjust man claim to be the master? On
the one hand, Socrates says about them that they think they are men “as men should be”
(ἄνδρες οἵους δεῖ ἐν, 176d, Quote 3). The claim to mastery thus refers to a realization of the
right kind of being a human or a man; in other words, they claim virtue for themselves. The
drawback of this claim is marked by the quote “clever through knavery” (ibid.). The unjust
man has not sought to become like God but was unjust instead. He has taken advantage of
others and nevertheless, or precisely because of it, claims to live properly.
With regard to his misunderstanding of himself: Socrates sees the most serious problem of the
unjust man in his self-image (knavery = virtue). The unjust man’s belief that he is the man as
he should be, although he is the exact opposite, deepens his own misery (Quotes 3 and 4).
Misunderstanding of oneself means two things in this context. First, the self-image of the
unjust man and his reality do not correspond to each other. Second, the unjust man insists that
his claim for virtue is fulfilled. If he continues to act out of such a self-misunderstanding, then
he only deepens the difference between expectations and reality. He sees no necessity for a
change. Thus, evil does not exist exclusively in the aforementioned difference between selfimage and reality but also in the relationship to this difference. Therefore, if he insists on the
claim for virtue without a corresponding reality, then he becomes evil in its full sense (Quote
4).
How can you recognise if the self-image of a certain person corresponds with reality? Quote 5
points that out that if a person has to bring up reasons for his or her views about good and evil
then reality reveals itself. His mastery vanishes and he stands there like a child, i.e. as a
beginner who is still inexperienced and ignorant. The place where evil manifests itself,
therefore, is in conversation. In the “Theaitetus”, one can only assume that Socrates does not
mean any kind of conversation but rather his specific form of conversation: Socratic dialogue.
Plato displays these conversations in his early dialogues on virtue. For example, in the first
book of the “Politeia”, the sophist Thrasymachus’ notion of justice is examined and refuted by
Socrates. The same happens to the politician Critias’ notion of temperance in the dialogue
“Charmides”.
Why is evil necessary?
The interpretation of evil as insisting on an unfulfilled claim for virtue is supported by
Socrates’ discussion of his philosophical activity in Plato’s “Apology”. In addition to that,
some passages show Socrates’ understanding of his statement that evil is necessary for the
good.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
As is generally known, Socrates justified his public philosophical activities with the statement
made by the Oracle at Delphi, who confirmed that no one was wiser than Socrates (Plato,
Apology, 20c- 24a). Since this statement from the Pythia did not correspond to the self-image
of Socrates, who was aware that he knew nothing, Socrates decided to investigate the
meaning of the saying in conversations with others who were considered to be wise (Quote 6).
The result of these investigations is known: Socrates discovers that only craftsmen have some
kind of knowledge at all. However, they make the mistake of generalizing from their
competence in a particular subject to a competence in all important subjects (Quote 7). They
wrongly claim knowledge of the good and beautiful—that is, of virtue. During these
conversations, Socrates recognizes own wisdom in knowing that he does not know what he
does not know (ibid. 21d).
The relevance of the “Apology” for the question of evil is shown in the Quotes 8 and 9.
There, Socrates identifies the wrongly claimed knowledge with infamous ignorance and
equates his activity of examination with the human good. What is discussed on the level of
knowledge of the good in the “Apology” is considered in the context of the human being in
the “Theaetetus”. While it remains vague in the “Apology”, what the examined interlocutors
are missing, this point is addressed to in the “Theaetetus”. The one who wrongly claims to
have knowledge of the good misses the reality of being good. According to the
aforementioned quotes from the “Theaetetus”, the insistence on the above statement is evil
and eventually causes that the human becomes evil, too.
Socrates further asserts that his style of inquiry is the human good and that the unexamined
life is therefore not worth living (Quote 9). Now we can understand why evil is necessary for
the good. First, the nature of such a good is to be understood procedurally—that is, it only
exists in the process of examination. Therefore, if someone wants to be good and live well
permanently, he needs to realize this activity again and again. Second, Socrates develops and
realizes his examination of the alleged knowledge of his interlocutors (Quote 6). The
examination requires the alleged knowledge as the material on which the examiner is
working. To repeat the examination, it permanently needs the alleged knowledge. As
mentioned above, the phrase “alleged or supposed knowledge” means that the person who
claims a knowledge cannot account for it. One can conclude that not only is the good fully
realized in the examination but also evil can be seen to its full extent therein.
Since Socrates is the examiner, it is likely that the good is to be found on his side of the
dialogue and evil on the side of his interlocutors. I will try to sketch this hypothesis based on
the Socratic dialogue “Charmides”.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
How does evil appear?
A Socratic dialogue can be characterized by the question of a certain virtue, for example,
“What is justice?”, or “What is temperance?” The dialogue can be divided into at least two
parts: a preliminary and a main conversation. The preliminary part develops the philosophical
question for a virtue from an everyday problem. The main part explicates and examines the
notion of virtue, which was presupposed in the first part.
To illustrate this I will now look at the early Platonic dialogue about temperance, the
“Charmides”. In its first part, several different judgments are made about the temperance of
the young man Charmides. In the second part, Socrates examines several notions of
temperance, first with Charmides, then with his eulogist and teacher Critias. He shows that
not only can the word temperance be problematic but its content must also be sufficient
(citations 11–13).
The aforementioned difference between a claim for a reality and the actual reality becomes
increasingly evident in the course of the dialogue. The initial notions of temperance as
quietness (Plato, Charmides 159b–160d) and modesty (Plato, Charmides 160e–161b) at least
contain the possibility of describing appearances of temperance. The last answer of Critias—
that temperance is knowledge of knowledge—does not contain any possibility of connecting
the claim for virtue and reality. The good cannot be identified with knowledge (quote 14), but
temperance as a virtue is necessarily something good. At the end of the dialogue, the maximal
difference of explicated understanding and claim is disclosed. Critias, who insists on the
correctness of his initial statement about the temperance of Charmides (even after the
refutation of his notion of temperance) (quote 15), displays exactly the kind of evil, Socrates
spoke about in the “Theaetetus”: that is, an absolute certainty, a claim to mastery.
Conclusion
Finally, I would like to return to two questions: why evil might be necessary for the good and
how evil is thus understood.
First, the understanding of evil: evil in the Socratic Dialogues can be understood as the
insistence on knowledge about virtue—knowledge that is shown to be unsubstantiated. Put
differently, the insistence on an unfounded prejudice about the good is in fact evil. From this
perspective, someone’s unjust actions outside of the dialogue are a result of this reversal
within his thinking.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
Second, the necessity of evil for the good: as Socrates claims that his inquiry itself is the
human good, the necessity of evil can be explained by the internal structure of the
examination. Since it is performed on certain notions or knowledge, it depends on a form of
thinking that claims knowledge of the good. At the same time, this very thinking shows the
necessity of turning around one’s thinking towards examining thought itself and thus proves
evil’s need of the good.
Thank you for your attention!
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
Quotes from Platos Theaetetus, Apology, Charmides1
1. “But it is impossible that evils should be done away with, Theodorus, for there must
always be something opposed to the good; and they cannot have their place among the
gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth” (Plato, Theaetetus,
176a).
2. “Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as
we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like
God is to become righteous and holy and wise” (Plato, Theaetetus, 176b).
3. “Therefore by far the best thing for the unrighteous man and the man whose words or
deeds are impious is not to grant that he is clever through knavery; for such men glory in
that reproach, and think it means that they are not triflers, “useless burdens upon the
earth,” but such as men should be who are to live safely in a state. So we must tell them
the truth - that just because they do not think they are such as they are, they are so all the
more truly” (Plato, Theaetetus, 176d).
4. “Two patterns, my friend, are set up in the world, the divine, which is most blessed, and
the godless, which is most wretched. But these men do not see that this is the case, and
their silliness and extreme foolishness blind them to the fact that through their unrighteous
acts they are made like the one and unlike the other” (Plato, Theaetetus, 176e-177a).
5. “However, there is one thing that has happened to them: whenever they have to carry on a
personal argument about the doctrines to which they object, if they are willing to stand
their ground for a while like men and do not run away like cowards, then, my friend, they
at last become strangely dissatisfied with themselves and their arguments; their brilliant
rhetoric withers away, so that they seem no better than children” (Plato, Theaetetus,
177b).
6. “For when I heard this, I thought to myself: “What in the world does the god mean, and
what riddle is he propounding? For I am conscious that I am not wise either much or little.
[…] And for a long time I was at a loss as to what he meant; then with great reluctance I
proceeded to investigate him somewhat as follows. I went to one of those who had a
reputation for wisdom, thinking that there, if anywhere, I should prove the utterance
wrong and should show the oracle” (Plato, Apology, 21b-c).
7. “because of practicing his art well, each one thought he was very wise in the other most
important matters, and this folly of theirs obscured that wisdom, so that I asked myself in
behalf of the oracle whether I should prefer to be as I am, neither wise in their wisdom nor
foolish in their folly, or to be in both respects as they are. I replied then to myself and to
the oracle that it was better for me to be as I am” (Plato, Apology, 22d-e).
8. “And is not this the most reprehensible form of ignorance, that of thinking one knows
what one does not know?” (Plato, Apology, 29b).
9. “and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you
hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the
unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato, Apology, 38a).
10. “But, gentlemen, it is not hard to escape death; it is much harder to escape wickedness, for
that runs faster than death. And now I, since I am slow and old, am caught by the slower
runner, and my accusers, who are clever and quick, by the faster, wickedness. And now I
1
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press;
London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
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Workshop „Evil and Social Sciences”
Viktoria Bachmann “Evil in Socratic Dialogue”
IWM Vienna, 02.06.2014
shall go away convicted by you and sentenced to death, and they go convicted by truth of
villainy and wrong” (Plato, Apology, 39a-b).
11. “but there is another view of temperance on which I [Charmides] would like to have your
opinion. I remembered just now what I once heard someone say, that temperance might be
doing one's own business. I ask you, then, do you think he is right in saying this? […]
Yes, on my word, I [Socrates] said: but I shall be surprised if we can find out how it
stands; for it looks like a kind of riddle. Why so? he [Charmides] asked. Because, I
replied, presumably the speaker of the words “temperance is doing one's own business”
did not mean them quite as he spoke them” (Plato, Charmides, 161b-d).
12. “So if you [Critias] concede that temperance is what he [Charmides] says, and you accept
the statement, for my part I [Socrates] would greatly prefer to have you as partner in the
inquiry as to whether this saying is true or not” (Plato, Charmides, 162e).
13. “Well, I will allow you any application of a name that you please; only make clear to what
thing it is that you attach such-and-such a name” (Plato, Charmides, 163d).
14. “you [Critias] have all this time been dragging me [Socrates] round and round, while
concealing the fact that the life according to knowledge does not make us do well and be
happy, not even if it be knowledge of all the other knowledges together, but only if it is of
this single one concerning good and evil. […] And that science, it seems, is not
temperance, but one whose business is to benefit us; for it is not a science of sciences and
lack of sciences, but of good and evil: so that if this is beneficial, temperance must be
something else to us” (Plato, Charmides, 174b-d).
15. “Very well, said Critias: now, Charmides, if you do this, it will be a proof to me of your
temperance—if you submit to be charmed by Socrates and do not forsake him through
thick and thin” (Plato, Charmides, 176b).
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