Socrates moves further down the overrated philosophers list

I've blogged before about overrated philosophers, and why Socrates' earns his place on the list. And I've explained that there's the myth vs. the reality, and my moniker is based on the myth.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, in the latest installment of his Book Club extended blogging series, is tackling Plato's early dialogues in the Penguin Classics series. Well, in this intro to the book initial post in the series, he's sharpened exactly what I think about Socrates and why, therefore, he's overrated.

First, we have the problem of the "historic Socrates." Just like the historic Jesus. I disagree with the likes of Gregory Vlastos as to just how much Socrates can be untangled from Plato, just like it's questionable how much we can untangle a historic Jesus from a New Testament and early Christianity as it evolved down to us today largely based on the weighty shadow of Paul.

To the degree we can disentangle, I think the Socrates of the middle dialogues is already pretty much a Platonic mouthpiece.

Next, what about the other people who sketch him? Throw away Xenophon, but I'm still half convinced or more than Aristophanes was at least half right in depicting him as a semi-Sophist himself. Certainly, in many of his dialogues, Socrates does little more than eristic type arguments designed to refute Sophists – or strawmen versions (remember, other than Gorgias, we have almost no extant writings of them) — without saying "I therefore say virtue is Y," rather than just letting them appear to founder.

I told Massimo about that, too;

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I know that in many cases, Socratic answers are implied from Socratic questioning. But, I think Plato doesn’t spell this out so that Socratic reasoning doesn’t get subjected to its own elenchus. 

It’s like a trial, per the parallels, where you don’t have one attorney do a formal closing statement — so that the other one can’t make his or her own closing statement! And, yes, I mean that, too. Because, if Plato as the author gave the ancient equivalent of a semi-formal, stipulative closing argument to Socrates, in some cases, his straw men would look too obvious. While, among the Sophists, we only have writings from Gorgias today, except for scraps, circa 2400 BCE, all the major Sophists had their own books and pamphlets out, of course. In other words, holding a thumb on the scale might work, but three whole fingers would be overkill. Doing it this way? “Made the stronger argument the better,” at least for Plato’s students.

It's very convenient. And, to extend a biblical parallel, that may be part of why Mark, like Philostratus' "Life of Apollonius," doesn't have actual resurrection appearances.

I then realized more about Socrates as an elitist. I do think Izzy Stone projected too much 20th century America into his take on Socrates as an elitist, and didn't look at Athenian, or Hellenic, context.

First, Athens wasn't the only Greek city, or colony, to at least dabble in democracy at this time. Corinth and Syracuse are two other examples. Take note that all three were cities with large revenues from trade.

Note second that Sophists claimed to be able to teach one how to succeed well at "all things polis."

The old, landed gentleman had the time to learn this on his own. The equivalent of "nouveau riche" did not. But, since money can be timelike at times, to reverse a cliche, they would certainly pay for a crash course on operating in the ekklesia, the boule and the court – even if as part of a group rather than one-on-one.

Note that the Sophists weren't teaching in Athens alone. They were visiting other cities. They probably targeted cities like Corinth and Syracuse that were having similar large socio-political shifts.

Sure they were teaching how to make the stronger argument better. Don't tell me that most of Socrates' peers in Athens' "ancien regime" didn't do similar. Socrates' elenchus just has a better press.

Socrates, in this sense, strikes me as a mid-1800s British Tory landed gentleman caviling against Whig merchants seeking more political, and social, power. Remember that Britain passed its first political reform bill in the 1830s AND started shifting toward free trade at that time, both of which benefited these Liberal-leaning merchants. Disraeli's bid to further expand the electorate in the 1860s was a direct bid for more everyday voters to join the Conservatives to offset this.

Finally, there's the broad picture of Socrates that Plato paints. In a different way, he looks like as much a strawman as most of his Sophist (and other) opponents. That's especially true when you factor in what Plato said about how he was Athens and why – and the Oracle of Delphi saying that.

Add in Socrates' claim to have been motivated by his personal daimon since childhood, and you get someone who comes off as smarmy at a minimum and sanctimonious at a max.

Here's my take on that, befitting for an Existential Comics strip, of a boiled-down version of Socratic dialog:

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Socrates: Hey, Gorgias, do you know what the oracle at Delphi said about me?
Gorgias: No, what?
Socrates: That I’m the wisest man in Athens.
Gorgias: Really?
Soc: Of course, I’m far to humble to believe that, at least not without testing it.
Gor; Of course not.
Soc: So, I figured I would ask others, people whom I and society deem wise, what they know about things like virtue and goodness.
Gor: I see.
Soc: So, that’s why I’m talking to you now.
Gor: OK, so what would you like to talk about.
Soc: Can you tell me what you understand virtue to be?
Gor: Virtue is A.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is B.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is C.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: Virtue is D.
Soc: Nope.
Gor: I give up.
Soc: You know, I’ve talked to 14 other philosophers, Sophists and non-Sophists alike. You know what else, Gorgias?
Gor: NO, I don’t know what else, Socrates.
Soc: Glad you asked back. Every conversation has ended this same way.
Soc; You know what that means, Gorgias?
Gor: NO, I DON”T know what that means, Socrates.
Soc: I guess I am the wisest man in Athens. I at least admit what I don’t know.
Soc; And you know why?
Gor: NO, I DON”T know why, Socrates.
Soc; Because, from childhood, I’ve been guided by this wonderous inner daimon, to whom I owe my ultimate authority.

Smary at the least? Sanctimonious? Insufferable even? At least somewhat, and at times?

If the Platonic caricature is halfway close to reality, I don’t understand why Socrates wasn’t hauled up on charges earlier. Perhaps he was tolerated ‘on sufferance,’ to be mocked by an Aristophanes and others, until the loss of the Peloponnesian War and the two coups made people finally admit they were that tired of him.

Ehrman hits foul ball with rise of Christianity book

The Triumph of Christianity: How a Small Band of Outcasts Conquered an Empire by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Nice try in theory, falls well short in reality

This was a book tough to rate.

I generally like Ehrman. I generally think that mythicists unfairly belittie him, though I disagree with some specifics of his own supporting material offered for a historic Jesus.

The idea of the book isn’t new, but presented in popularizing form from a knowledgable New Testament scholar, promised to be good, possibly very good.

But, it fell short. Short enough in some ways that I took fairly detailed notes at chapter breaks.

Without explicitly saying so, Ehrman seems to indicate that Christian evangelism and Christiam miracle-working both had moderate boosts for the early decades of Christianity, but then it was primarily word-of-mouth, just like you and I buy a car or toothpaste today.

However …

First, the evangelism issue is nowhere near as simple as Ehrman paints.

First, we know that Christianity was NOT the only evangelistic religion of antiquity.

Ashoka’s Buddhist missionaries to the West went as far as Macedonia and Cyrenaica. Four hundred years later, Clement of Alexandria and other Christian fathers knew about ongoing Buddhist proselytizing. And, Will Durant even speculated it may have been an element in Christiann missions. See more here.

Either Ehrman is surprisingly uninformed here. Or else, Ehrman’s definition of antiquity is narrow. Neither speaks well for this book.

That said, per reading between the lines in Acts, and in some of Paul’s letters, and my take on J. Massyngberde Ford’s Anchor Bible volume on who wrote the original core of Revelation, we know that at least a few followers of John the Baptist evangelized.

Paul himself mentions Apollos and Peter, even talking about Peter getting paid to take his wife with him.

So, Ehrman has a foul ball here.

On the miracle working, whether real or not, Ehrman doesn’t mention that this was common outside Christianity. Indeed, Jewish charismatics such as Honi the Circle Drawer come to mind. Or Morton Smith’s “Jesus the Magician.” Or the name Simon Magus. Ehrman doesn’t go into a lot of depth here. He even mentions Apollonius of Tyana, the contemporary of Jesus, but never goes into detail about his own reported miracle-working.

So, if Christian miracles were more powerful than Jewish, Greek philosophical, or pagan religious ones, why? They were all common.

It’s true that no ancient author writes an unbiased account of this in detail. But Ehrman, while noting that no actual such miracles likely happened, doesn’t explain why Christians were perceived to be (as he would seemingly have us believe) better miracle-workers or magicians.

And, beyond the scope of the book, this also is no different from Exodus showing Moses and Aaron outdueling the Pharaoh's magicians. Or 19th-century European missionaries telling stories about wonderworking to the dusky pagans of darkest Africa. Or 9th-century Carolinian missionaries supposedly outdueling pagan Saxon and Slav religious leaders.

All Ehrman is doing is doubling down on repeating Christian myth.

And, if evangelism were as low as Ehrman thinks it was after Paul, and pagans and philosophers did magic, too, then why was word-of-mouth as successful as Ehrman thinks it was?

Reality is that, with people like Polycarp, or Clement of Rome, their letters to other churches were surely part of an ongoing program not just of church maintenance but church planting and spreading. Look at the pseudo-Pauline letter to “Ephesians.” Originally a circular letter, it probably was written in similar spirit.

And, the third failing, a partial one.

I agree with Ehrman that many of the details of Rodney Stark’s projected growth rates of Christianity don’t withstand scrutiny.

However, even though Decius’ persecution wasn’t specifically against Christianity, Diocletian’s was. In a sort of analogy, American whites will start to flee suburban neighborhoods and even whole communities when an influx of minority population, and above all, African-American population, hits a certain percentage, usually around 10 percent.

Ehrman doesn’t ask if a similar phenomenon were in play here. If it was, his believed population percentage of Christians, empire-wide, was too low at the time of Diocletian to be such a trigger. Now, the persecutions were carried out most commonly in the eastern half of the empire, and we have some fairly good indications Christianity was stronger there.

Nonetheless, Ehrman doesn’t follow up.

A fourth partial failing, in my opinion?

Ehrman seems to believe Christianity was not just majority-gentile, but strongly so, by circa 100 CE.

Yet, he fails to mention the “desynagoging” that happened circa 100 CE, per John. If this really did happen, it undercuts Ehrman’s thesis. If it didn’t, he should have offered a bit of exegesis on John here to explain this.

Despite John speaking bluntly of “the Jews,” I think something did happen.

Finally, Ehrman makes a partial version of the same error Stark does on population growth, and it’s connected to his overlooking or ignoring Buddhist evangelism.

He focuses on growth within the Roman Empire.

Armenia became officially Christian in 301 CE, nearly a century before Theodosius so proclaimed Rome. Various kingdoms that today make up Georgia became officially Christian before that time. Ulfilias proselityzed Goths, presumably with some Goths previously Christian, before Theodosius. Legends of Thomas Christians aside, there were Christians in India before this time. Ditto for ancient Nubia, beyond Rome’s Nile frontier.

In critiquing and criticizing Stark, I have noted all of this and said that at least 10 percent of Christians at the time of Constantine were outside imperial borders.

And, of course, by the period that closes Ehrman’s book, Christianity had not swept “the world.”

Finishing up this last section of the notes as I got ready to post this led me to take Ehrman down from three to two stars. Several three-star readers seemed too kind in their detailed reviews.

Ehrman – and his agent who suggested this – should either have committed to an additional 20-30 pages and more rigor, or else suggested this as a series of magazine essays only, or similar.

The one problem with this review is that, at least on Amazon, where I read through reviewers, it basically left me in the company of mythicists who wrongly attack Ehrman. I gave several them a piece of my mind on their reviews.


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