Socrates accepting his fate. The Death of Socrates – Jacques-Louis David, 1787

2,083 words

In Plato’s Euthydemus, Socrates argues for the paramount importance of philosophy because philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom is the most reliable way to attain happiness, which all men are pursing. Happiness requires many goods, but they won’t be good for us, unless we use them wisely. In fact, wisdom is so important for happiness that foolish people are better off having fewer goods, because these just provide them the means to harm themselves. A simple example of this is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict. They are better off poor.

Socrates argues that we should pursue philosophy because, “Wisdom makes men fortunate in every case, since I don’t suppose she would ever make any sort of mistake but must necessarily do right and be lucky—otherwise she would no longer be wisdom” (280a).[1]

As Socrates sums up his argument:

[…] It seems likely that with respect to all the things we called good in the beginning, the correct account is not that in themselves they are good by nature, but rather as follows: if ignorance controls them, they are greater evils than their opposites, to the extent that they are more capable of complying with the bad master; but if prudence and wisdom are in control, they are greater goods. In themselves, however, neither sort is of any value. . . . Then what is the result of our conversation? Isn’t it that, of the other things, no one of them is either good or bad, but of these two, wisdom is good and ignorance bad? (281d–e).

This passage has given rise to the same dramatic misunderstandings for thousands of years, namely the idea that Socrates held that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness.[2]

Socrates’ point is simply that wisdom is intrinsically and unconditionally good. Other goods are merely conditionally good. Basically, they are good if they contribute to our happiness. Wisdom takes conditional goods and uses them rightly to contribute to happiness. The opposite of wisdom, folly (here deemed “ignorance”), uses conditional goods wrongly to contribute to misery.

Thus Socrates’ conclusion should be read as, “The things other than wisdom and folly are not unconditionally good or bad. Only wisdom and folly are unconditionally good and bad.”

If, however, you take this to mean that, “The only good thing is wisdom, and the only bad thing is folly,” that means that all other things are neither good nor bad. They are only as good or bad as we make them. That implies that the wise man can be just as happy in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, because no matter what happens to him, he has the ability to turn it to his advantage and be happy.

But is this true? People wish and pray for things like health, money, and good looks. They don’t wish and pray for poverty, sickness, and ugliness. Clearly, some things are more conducive to human happiness than others. This is based on objective reality. Health is better than sickness, wealth is better than poverty, etc. before we even acquire them, much less use them. But if these things are only as good or bad as your usage of them—if you are the one who makes them good or bad for you—then why would we prefer health to sickness or wealth to poverty?

Moreover, if “The only good thing is wisdom, and the only bad thing is folly,” and nothing is good for us unless we use it rightly and nothing is bad for us unless we use it wrongly, this implies that “Wisdom is necessary for happiness.” There is no other way to gain it.

But is this true? Socrates suggests an alternate source of happiness in the Euthydemus itself: fortune. Many of the goods Socrates discusses are gifts of fortune not things that we achieve on our own, for example good looks, noble lineage, etc.

But Socrates doesn’t just treat good fortune as a source of conditional goods. He also suggests that good fortune is a force that can make conditional goods good for us. This is implicit in Socrates’ suggestion that good fortune is identical to wisdom. If good fortune is like wisdom, that is because good fortune can make conditional goods good for us, just as wisdom can.

If it is possible for fortune to deliver radically different outcomes in terms of things like health and beauty, then surely it is possible for it to also make conditional goods good for us. Some people can simply luck out and lead happy lives without making particularly wise or thoughtful decisions. Such people may be living in a “fool’s paradise.” It may not be the most reliable and responsible way to secure happiness. But it is at least possible.

Finally, if “The only good thing is wisdom, and the only bad thing is folly,” wouldn’t that imply that one could be happy with no external goods at all? Maybe the best way to use things is simply not to acquire them in the first place. This is the idea that wisdom alone is sufficient for happiness.

But is this even meaningful? It might be wise to eliminate unnecessary external goods. But if wisdom alone is sufficient for happiness, doesn’t that imply that we can do without all external goods? Would that include food, water, and oxygen? If so, your happiness won’t last very long.

The most sensible interpretation of the “wisdom alone” thesis is simply that wise people are better at making the best of bad situations. This is surely true. But it is a far cry from establishing that wisdom alone is sufficient for happiness.

In effect, the “wisdom alone” thesis denies that there are any bad situations, because no matter what life throws at him, the sage’s happiness is invulnerable. But this is obviously false. It commits one to saying that being buried alive isn’t really a bad situation for the wise. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but even the wisest man’s happiness encounters a hard limit when the oxygen runs out.

If we acknowledge that there are indeed bad situations, can wisdom ensure that you at least die happy? Yes, and Socrates offers support for this in Plato’s dialogues. But to understand his argument, we first need to raise a question: Is wisdom (1) happiness itself, or is it (2) merely a means to happiness, or is it (3) both a means to happiness and part of happiness itself?

We have already seen that wisdom is not happiness itself, since even the wisest people might find themselves in situations that make happiness impossible, e.g., being buried alive.

In the Euthydemus, Socrates treats wisdom as merely a means to happiness. The other principal means of gaining happiness would be good luck. If it is possible to be a happy fool, then wisdom is merely one means to happiness, not a necessary component.

To know if wisdom is not just a means to happiness but a constituent part of happiness, we need to know where wisdom resides in us. Socrates does not deal with this in the Euthydemus, but in other dialogues, he makes it clear that wisdom is a state of the soul. In the Gorgias and Republic, Plato identifies wisdom and the other virtues as the health of the soul.

Happiness, of course, could also be described as the health of the soul. If there are happy fools, this means that happiness and wisdom are not exactly the same. But surely they overlap, in which case wisdom is not just a means to happiness, it is part of happiness itself.

If wisdom is part of happinesss, then the possession of wisdom makes our happiness less vulnerable to changing fortune. If wisdom is merely a means to turn external goods into sources of happiness, then if we lose these external goods, we lose our happiness. If, however, wisdom is part of happiness, then as long as we maintain our wisdom—and our virtue more generally—we can maintain some of our happiness in the face of ill fortune.

This is why Socrates maintains in the Gorgias that, although he would prefer not to suffer or commit injustice, if forced to choose between the two, he would choose to suffer injustice. His rationale is that doing injustice to others is also a crime against himself. It sullies his soul with vice, which is evil, which is unconditionally bad. Suffering injustice, however, can only take away what we are calling conditional goods, including life itself. But note that the preferable state—dare I say the happiest state—is having both one’s virtue and conditional goods like life.

This allows us to make sense of Socrates’ bold statements in the Apology:

Perhaps you think that I was convicted for lack of such words as might have convinced you, if I thought I should say or do all I could to avoid my sentence. Far from it. I was convicted because I lacked not words but boldness and shamelessness and the willingness to say to you what you would most gladly have heard from me, lamentations and tears and my saying and doing many things that I say are unworthy of me but that you are accustomed to hear from others. I did not think that the danger I ran should make me do anything mean, nor do I now regret the nature of my defense. I would much rather die after this kind of defense than live after making the other kind. Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost. . . . It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury, it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.[3]

Socrates faced the choice of saving his life at the cost of his virtue or dying with his virtue intact. He chose the latter, because he regarded life as only conditionally good but his virtue as unconditionally good. Thus he would not trade a greater value for a lesser one.

Consider also these remarks of Socrates in the Crito:

As we have agreed so far, we must examine next whether it is just for me to try to get out of here when the Athenians have not acquitted me. If it is seen to be just, we will try to do so; if it is not, we will abandon the idea. […] For us[…]the only valid consideration[…]is whether we should be acting rightly. […] If it appears that we shall be acting unjustly, then we have no need at all to take into account whether we shall have to die if we stay here and keep quiet, or suffer in another way, rather than do wrong.[4]

Here Socrates faces the choice of staying in jail and dying or breaking out and continuing to live. For him, the question hinges entirely on whether breaking out of jail is the right thing to do. If it is right, he will leave. If it is wrong, he will stay and die. Because to prolong his life by commiting an act of injustice is again to trade an unconditional good (his virtue) for a mere conditional good (some additional life). Socrates does not wish to live on that way.

Note that this argument would still be sound even if Socrates did not believe in an afterlife in which virtue is rewarded and vice is punished.

In sum, for Socrates and Plato, one can argue that one’s moral character is immune to bad fortune, because bad fortune can strip us of all conditional goods. But it cannot strip us of our moral character without our consent. And Socrates refuses to give that consent.

The immunity of virtue to misfortune is a beautiful thing, for it allows us to face ill fortune with the inner citadel of our souls unbreached and some of our happiness intact. But making the best of a bad situation is not the same thing as the thesis that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness.

Notes

[1] Plato, Euthydemus, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

[2] This was the interpretation of the Stoics Zeno and Aristo in the fourth century BCE. See A.A. Long, “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” Classical Quarterly 38 (1988): 150–71. In the 20th century, it was the interpretation of Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

[3] Plato, Apology, trans. G.M.A. Grube, Collected Works, 38d–39b.

[4] Plato, Crito, trans. G.M.A. Grube, Collected Works, 48b–d.