Was the Ancient Greek Philosopher Socrates a Real Person?

Socrates is commonly cited as the most influential of ancient Greek thinkers and is arguably a significant founder of Western philosophy, but why do accounts written about him by his contemporaries vary so much?

The first unusual thing about Socrates is that, owing to the fact that he supposedly prized dialogue over writing, the ancient philosopher left no written work to be examined by future societies.

Instead, we are left with accounts of his dialectical conversations and intellectual life by ancient Greek philosophers and historians who only knew him in his later life.

The four ancient Greeks who have contributed most to our current understanding of Socrates’ teachings are Plato and Xenophon, students of the great philosopher, Aristophanes, a comic playwright and contemporary of Socrates, and Aristotle, a student of Plato.

Were Ancient Greek Portrayals of Socrates Accurate?

Plato, arguably the best-known semi-biographer of Socrates, may not present an entirely trustworthy account of who he was. According to William Guthrie’s book A History of Greek Philosophy, Plato outlived Socrates by some fifty years. Thus, he can only have known the Gadfly during the latter part of his life, meaning anything Plato wrote about Socrates’ early life should be taken with a grain of salt.

There is a lot of skepticism among modern day academics as to whether Plato represented Socrates accurately in his dialogues. This is as a result of inconsistencies in Plato’s representation of Socrates, as explained in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates.

In Robin Waterfield’s Quest for the Historical Socrates, the author states a common explanation of the inconsistency is that Plato originally tried to accurately convey the historical Socrates. However, in later works, Plato was content to voice his own thoughts and views through Socrates’ words. This is how the distinction between the Socratic Socrates of Plato’s early work was made from the Platonic Socrates of the ancient Greek thinker’s later work.

It has also been argued by Guthrie that Plato’s and Xenophon’s accounts of Socrates differ in their characterizations of the man. Xenophon presents Socrates as dull, humorless, and lacking in irony, while teaching that self control is of the utmost importance. Plato, nevertheless, claims Guthrie, paints a picture of Socrates as being everything that Xenophon said he lacked.

The earliest recorded mention of Socrates was by Aristophanes, who centered his comedy The Clouds in 423 BC on the great philosopher. Socrates would have then been 47, according to Postmodern Platos, by Catherine Zuckert at the University of Chicago.

In the play, Socrates is depicted as an eccentric intellectual who is always trying to avoid paying his bills. The character runs a school of science and draws an income by training young people to torment their parents and overcome debt collectors with rhetoric.

The Trial of Socrates

Two charges got Socrates sentenced to death. According to Plato’s trial record, Socrates remarked that Aristophanes’ depiction of him in The Clouds, was both popular and false.

Xenophon also wrote about Socrates’ trial, despite the fact that he wasn’t in attendance, as reported by Guthrie, who adds that Xenothon’s version of The Apology (Apologia) differs from Plato’s. According to Guthrie, Plato clarifies that Socrates was at peace with the possibility of his death because of his commitment to the life of the mind, whereas Xenothon wrote that Socrates would rather die before he went senile.

As stated in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, the contradictory tales from various ancient Greek accounts have served to complicate scholars’ ability to determine the true thoughts of Socrates. This has become known as the Socratic problem.

The literary genre that Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes helped to create—that of a dialogue between Socrates and his interlocutors—was given a name by Aristotle: Socratic dialogues.

According to The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Aristotle was the first to note that the extent to which the dialogues accurately convey Socrates is a matter of some debate.