Socrates Answers Student Questions
on Relativism and SkepticismBy Dr. Jan Garrett
Most recent revision: February 12, 2008
Note: This little dialogue was stimulated by student papers on passages from the Socratic works of Plato.
Characters: Socrates, two present-day students (Student 1 and Student 2) Student 1. Yo, Socrates, do you have time to answer some questions?
Socrates. My expertise is in asking them.
Student 1. They are about what you said, or are portrayed by Plato, as saying.
Socrates. You've been warned, but go ahead and ask.
Student 1. In your conversation with Euthyphro, you say that some gods love some things and other gods hate them, and you give examples. Are you a relativist? Do you believe that holiness is relative to the god or person who loves or dislikes something?
Socrates. Please understand that my method is to work within the belief system of the person with whom I am conversing. My friend Euthyphro was a priest, familiar with, and likely a believer in, most of the stories told about the gods by poets like Homer and Hesiod. My question aimed to see if he accepted at face value the stories that told of the gods' disagreements.
Student 1. You don't?
Socrates. Philosophers of my time (and even some of the poets) had doubts about the stories that earlier poets made up. We didn't disbelieve in the gods-as you know I spoke of the gods many times in my own defense speech, and I could have hardly said what I said if I disbelieved in them. But philosophers had a more refined, nobler conception of the gods than most of my contemporaries did.
Student 1. So you don't think the gods disagree about what is holy and what is not?
Socrates. What did I say in the defense speech about wisdom and the gods?
Student 1. Only the gods are wise.
Socrates. Wise about what? What kind of wisdom was I looking for, and not finding, among mortal men?
Student 1. About justice and holiness and virtue.
Socrates. And wisdom is equivalent to knowledge about these things?
Student 1. You seemed to have thought so.
Socrates. So, if the gods are wise and wisdom is about such things, then the gods must have knowledge of these things, that is, what they essentially are.
Student 1. And if they all know these things, they know the same things?
Socrates. You are learning to reason.
Student 1. And if they know the same things, those things cannot vary depending on perception.
Socrates. Go on.
Student 1. If they cannot vary dependent on perception, or the perspective of the beholder, then they are not relative.
Socrates. Congratulations.
Student 1. But different people have different perceptions or understandings of what holiness is.
Socrates. Does that make holiness relative?
Student 1. Not if these different people have no knowledge, if their beliefs about holiness are incomplete or otherwise incorrect.
Socrates. You have supplied both of us with a feast, my young friend.
Student 2. Socrates, I am trying to understand the point of your discussion with Euthyphro. Was it that nobody will ever know what holiness is? After all, Euthyphro tried many definitions of holiness and each one of them went down when he tried to answer the questions you raised as follow-ups? Were you teaching that we should just recognize our ignorance and be satisfied with that?
Socrates. Perhaps your comrade here can help you answer that question, based on his familiarity with my defense speech.
Student 1. I'm not sure but the impression I got from the defense speech is that you wouldn't have been satisfied simply to admit, and get your fellow Greeks to admit, that you didn't know what justice and courage and holiness were. You would want them to join you in an inquiry to find out what they were.
Socrates. What advantage would we have-and I am including you two among this "we"--if we all admitted our current ignorance rather than pretending that we knew when we didn't?
Student 2. We'd not be stubborn in holding onto our old views just because they were ours or our parents'. We'd be willing to look at new views.
Socrates. Mightn't they possibly be new combinations of parts of old views?
Student 1. They could be, I suppose.
Socrates. Wouldn't they have to be prodded and tested, like the views people once held onto stubbornly?
Student 1. The unexamined theory is not worth holding.
Socrates. Nobly said. Now, the more an account (or theory as you put it) is tested and compared with other accounts that are also being tested, and the more it seems to stand taller than the rest amidst those tests, what can we say about it?
Student 2. That we have knowledge of it? But, Socrates, wouldn't that contradict your claim that only the gods are wise?
Socrates. What if the gods are wise because they see Justice and Holiness and the rest directly, in full clarity of intellectual vision, because they know with no chance of being wrong at all?
Student 1. I see. Humans, even when they have found an account that has been thoroughly tested and cannot be improved upon in their own lifetimes, cannot be sure that there is no chance of a better account in a later generation.
Socrates. So human wisdom of this sort is not divine wisdom?
Student 2. No, it wouldn't be.
Socrates. What do you think--would it be worth seeking this human type of wisdom in this life, even if divine wisdom is out of reach? I mean, out of reach short of our soul's escaping the body and seeing with our liberated minds what the gods may continuously see.
Student 1. But it would be worth seeking, being both within the reach of mortals and probably closer to divine wisdom than theories accepted passively and without critical thinking.
Socrates. My young friends, you have had all the help from me that you need today. You know where to find me it you want to continue the conversation.
Note on "method": He means his method as portrayed by Plato in Plato's "Socratic" dialogues like Euthyphro, Lysis, Laches, Charmides, the first part of Meno, and the first book of Republic. Notes