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Socrates exhibited many traditional signs of deeply spiritual people. He would often spend time in meditation, and sometimes would go into deep meditational trances where he did not move for hours. (Symposium, 175a-b, 220c) He received messages in his dreams and he always followed these messages. (Crito, 44a; Apology, 33c; Phaedo, 60e) He might have been initiated by a woman shaman, Diotima. (Symposium, 201d) He was totally unconcerned for money, power, or status, and spent all his time on his spiritual work. (Apology, 23b) Like Indian monks, he had great powers of enduring physical hardships. While on military campaigns with other Athenian soldiers, he walked over ice barefoot, marched in the winter cold with just regular clothes, and outdid every other soldier in enduring the lack of food. (Symposium, 219e-220b) He had total self-control so that he was never drunk (Symposium, 220) and although the young beautiful men sometimes tried to seduce him, he would just laugh and scorn them. (Symposium, 219c) When it was time for him to die, he had no fear of death at all. (Phaedo, 117a-118a) He also had such tremendous charisma that the young men of Athens would flock to him.
The best-known of his spiritual characteristics, however, was his divine messages. Socrates received many spiritual messages from his daimonion, or divine sign. (Sometimes this is called his daimon or demon, but in the original Greek it is daimonion and the “ion” at the end of the word makes it a little daimon). In Plato’s Apology, he said this “something divine or spiritual” sign was “a sort of voice” that has come to him since childhood. (Apology, 31d) He also said this voice always tells him not to do something he is thinking of doing, but never tells him to do something. (Apology, 31d) For example, Socrates was about to leave a place when his divine sign came to him, telling him not to go. So he just sat down and waited, and in a little while some people he was happy to talk to showed up. (Euthydemus, 272e-273a)
Another student of Socrates, Xenophon, said that Socrates’ divine sign told him both to do things and not to do things. (Memorabilia, I.I.2-4 & 4.3.12) Xenophon even said this divine sign told him to tell other people to do some things or avoid other things. Xenophon said that the people who followed Socrates’ urgings were always happy and those who did not repented. (Memorabilia, I.I.4)
Socrates unquestioningly followed his divine guidance because he assumed these divine messages would guide him well. Although he never spelled out why he assumed this, it is based on the assumption that “gods know all things” (Memorabilia, 1.1.19) and are truly wise. (Apology, 23a) As he thought wisdom and virtue was the same thing, this meant the god was completely good and virtuous. He also thought all good things came from god. (Euthyphro,15a; Republic, 379c)
The extent of his trust in god’s guidance through his daimonion or divine sign is revealed when he faced death. After he has been condemned to death by the Athenians because he would not stop examining people, Socrates said death must be a good thing. He said this because his divine sign never opposed him as he was about to give his defense to the jury. He said that “which has happened to me [being condemned to death] is doubtless a good thing, and those of you who think death is an evil must be mistaken. A convincing proof of this has been given me; for the accustomed sign would surely have opposed me if I had not been going to meet with something good.” (Apology, 40a-c)
Socrates was not enthralled by modern non-traditional spirituality which emphasizes people’s supposed oneness with God. In fact he thought his divinely-given mission in life was to counter this way of thinking. When a friend of his went to the oracle at Delphi and asked if anyone was wiser than Socrates, the oracle said no. (Apology, 21a) Socrates could not understand this as he did not think he knew anything. After long puzzling about this (oracles were known for their cryptic messages whose meaning had to be puzzled out), he came to the conclusion that no one was wiser than him because while he knew he did not know anything, other people did not know anything but still thought they did. (Apology, 21b-23c) Thus he was the wisest because he was the humblest. For him, “human wisdom was of little or no value,” while god alone was wise. (Apology, 23a) He thought there was such a big separation between men and god that he said “the wisest man is to a god as an ape is to a man.” (Hippias Major, 289b)
Socrates then decided god meant for him to help other people realize they knew much less than they thought they did. God wanted them to be humble and give up their pride. He saw this as a service to god. (Apology, 23b) He spent his life examining other people’s basic assumptions about how they should live their lives. He would use logic and reason to get people to see the implications of their ways of thinking and acting. This helped them see they knew less than they thought they did and he tried to get them to care for their soul. He said concern for wealth, reputation, honor, were trivial matters and we should instead care for virtue and “the perfection of the soul.” (Apology, 29e-30b)
Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living. (Apology, 38a) So much was he known for using reason and analysis that nowadays “professional philosophers routinely hold him up as a model of the sort of thinker they try to encourage their students to become- free to question anything.” (Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Plato’s Socrates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 188.) Scholars often forget, however, that this emphasis on critical thinking and logic was deeply connected with a spiritual view of life. Socrates said he examined people, not because he loved logic or critical thinking, but because god had told him to do it. In Plato’s dialogue Apology, (which is Socrates’ speeches to the Athenian jury which was trying him for impiety), he said “when the god gave me a station with orders to spend my life in philosophy and in examining myself and others, then if I were to desert my post through fear of death or anything else whatever, it would be a terrible thing.” (Apology, 28e-29a) He says that it is evil to disobey god and that if the Athenians were to let him go on the condition that he stop examining people he said he would not agree to the condition. He said, “I shall obey the god rather than you . . . for the god commands me to do this.” (Apology, 29e-30a)
Interestingly, he just took all of his spiritual assumptions for granted. He never examined them or questioned them. Nor did he give arguments for why he believed in any of these spiritual matters. One scholar said he had “an astonishing lack of intellectual interst in critical inquiry regarding religion.” (Brickhouse and Smith, 189)
Some people find it hard to reconcile Socrates’ emphasis on reason and critical thinking with his many spiritual ideas. It seems to me obvious that he is much more committed to his spiritual ideas and his critical thinking comes second. Other scholars wonder about this. Here are some papers on the wonderings of these scholars.
The papers here are graduate school papers and so are academic writing which means they are very tightly focused on a single topic. These papers are not what I would write as an introduction to Socrates’ spiritual ideas. Anyone wanting that should first read Plato’s Apology and look for the parts where he talks of his divine sign. Then they might read something by Mark McPherran, Thomas D. Brickhouse or Michael Morgan, scholars who have written many books and articles on this subject.
The first paper, Socrates: Reconciling Reason and Divine Guidance, deals with the question of reconciling Socrates’ commitment to reason and his commitment to following his divine voices. While most recent academic commentators think Socrates is committed first to reason and questioning everything, this paper argues Socrates first and most important commitment is to following his divine voices.
The second paper, Socrates’ Piety, is a study of Michael L. Morgan’s claims that Plato and Socrates were heavily influenced by Greek new religious movements. He particularly claims that Socrates’ and Plato’s philosophy were a rationalized version of ecstatic initiation rituals with the purpose of achieving divine union.
The third paper, Socrates: Reconciling His Skepticism and Divine Knowledge, deals with the question of reconciling Socrates’ claims to know nothing and all the religious and moral claims he makes.
First Paper: Socrates: Reconciling Reason and Divine Guidance
It is hard to reconcile Socrates’ frequent disavowals of knowledge (e.g. Apology 21b4-5, 21d2-7, 20c1-3, Gorgias 506A and 509A) with his continual assertions that he does know some very important religious and moral things. A major puzzle is how to put these two differing classes of statements together into a consistent whole.
One solution to this dilemma was offered by T. H. Irwin in Plato’s Moral Theory. [Oxford University Press, 1977] Irwin’s solution is that “Socrates has renounced knowledge and is content to claim no more than true belief.” (pp. 39-40.) The problem for Irwin’s account is the many times that Socrates really does claim to know things. He does not claim true belief but to know something. These claims are especially damaging to Irwin’s solution because many of these claims to knowledge are strongly expressed and are about things that Socrates continually asserts as the most important of all things to be concerned about. So he says he knows such things that it is evil and disgraceful to do wrong and to disobey a superior. (Apology 29b6-7) He also knows that being concerned with the education of children is of utmost importance. Of the latter he says “I know what I am about, I said: I know I shall never deny it.” (Euthydemus, 283c5-6) He further says that we should bear in mind one truth that no evil can come to a good man in life or in death. (Apology, 41d) As these are not assertions of merely true belief, Irwin’s solution is inadequate.
One interesting feature of many of Socrates’ claims to knowledge is that many of them could be considered religious claims. Indeed the most basic Socratic claims, such as the vital importance of watching out for your soul, never doing an injustice to others, and obeying your superiors in all things, are considered by many people to be the quintessential religious concerns. So maybe there is an alternative source to Socrates’ claims about knowledge that is being ignored by contemporary scholars.
In what is a growing movement amongst scholars, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith pick up this line of thought and apply it to the Apology and various cases of divine knowledge Socrates claims in that book. In one article [“The Divine Sign Did Not Oppose Me,” Canadian Journal of Canadian Phiilosophy 16: 1986, pp. 511-26] they focus their attention on Socrates’ claim about the divine sign not opposing him when he was about to make his appearance in court and this was a proof that a good thing had happened to him. Socrates claims that “which has happened to me is doubtless a good thing, and those of you who think death is an evil must be mistaken. A convincing proof of this has been given me; for the accustomed sign would surely have opposed me if I had not been going to meet with something good.” (Apology 40B8-C4) Not only is Socrates claiming that a good thing has happened to him, but he even says that the fact that his sign did not oppose him is a convincing proof of this.
Brickhouse and Smith consider this statement and wonder how Socrates could be so sure that what happened to him is a good thing. Brickhouse and Smith try to solve the puzzle by claiming that things told to Socrates by his divine sign don’t meet the requirements of knowledge as Socrates would not be sure what he is supposed to do any time his divine sign tells him to stop. (p. 523) So in their view, when Socrates is disavowing knowledge, he means that he can’t provide a logos for certain claims or that he lacks expert knowledge or the knowledge that a craftsman would have in this area. (p. 524) When he says that he is convinced that death is a good thing or that he should pursue his divine mission, he is only talking about some specific action. Furthermore about these actions he would not be able to give a philosophical account and thus Socrates does not count them as instances of knowledge.
The first critique that could be brought against Brickhouse and Smith’s account is that they are ignoring the Socratic claims about knowing basic theses about virtue such as it’s good to obey your superior or not good to do injustice. So Socrates does claim to know general theses about virtue. Secondly, and even more importantly, Socrates does not understand his divine sign in the way that Brickhouse and Smith think he does. For when Socrates talks about his divine sign, he gives absolutely no indication that he has trouble understanding what the divine sign wants him to stop doing; indeed he always seems to be able to understand the message quite easily. Thus in Euthydemus, Socrates is about to get up and go and his accustomed divine sign came to him and he just sits down and waits.(272E) He had no trouble at all understanding what the divine sign wanted him to do. Similarly in the Phaedrus he is about to cross a stream and he gets his divine sign and just waits. (242C) Likewise in the Apology he talks of often getting this sign and acts like understanding what this sign wants him not to do is a very simple matter. In these instances and others, Socrates gives absolutely no indication that he has any trouble at all understanding what his divine sign wants of him and he takes it as an easy matter to understand what he should do once he gets his sign. So Brickhouse and Smith just misread the situation and think Socrates would have trouble knowing what the divine sign wanted of him when the evidence indicates the exact opposite.
Most interestingly, with the easy way that Socrates can follow his divine sign, he might even have expert knowledge in regards to it. For he can follow its messages, knows how to get the desired result and knows it will lead to something that is considered valuable. Even more telling, it is quite possible that Socrates does have a logos he can give concerning the general principle of following his divine sign: Gods are our superiors or masters, (Phaedo 62B & 62D) superiors always do what is best for the ones they watch out for, (Phaedo 62D-E), superiors should be obeyed, (Apology, 29B) the divine sign comes from the gods, (Euthydemus 272e5) so thus the divine sign should be obeyed and when I do obey it it will be the best thing for me. So while Socrates may not at first understand the account behind every particular divine sign or other type of divination, Socrates has an account that he can give of why he should obey it and why he knows following it will lead to the best and most virtuous results. Furthermore he follows this divine sign as easily and naturally as one would expect of someone who has craft knowledge.
For all these reasons, Brickhouse and Smith’s solution to the problem is not acceptable. Thus we are still left with the problem of reconciling Socrates’ claims of knowledge and his claims of ignorance.
Michael L. Morgan on Religion in Plato and Socrates
Michael L. Morgan strenuously emphasizes the importance of religion for Socrates and Plato, but he pushes it farther than it warrants, especially concerning Socrates.
In his recent article “Plato and Greek Religion,” [The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Ed. Richard Kraut. Cambridge University Press, 1993. Cambridge University Press] Morgan points out that many new cults came into Greece right before and around the time of Socrates and Plato and these new cults became very prominent and influential. (p. 229) So while there still was the traditional Delphic theology which stressed the discontinuity between the divine and the human, at the same time there was also on the religious scene an entirely different kind of religious practice. This kind of religious practice consisted of the many alternative salvation-oriented cults. Most importantly these cults had a very different attitude regarding the connection between the human and the divine. For unlike the Delphic theology, in these new cults the gap between the human and the divine could be bridged through ecstatic rites and practices. (p. 231) While there are many variations of this type of cult, they all involve the same kind of ecstatic union with the divine and thus can be easily contrasted with the more traditional theology which emphasized that man had to stay within his limited bounds and it would be hubristic to attempt connection with the divine. In these cults humans have a soul of divine-like nature and human life aims at knowledge of the divine. The most important point that Morgan maintains is that Plato accepts the ecstatic model of the new cults but makes the process of achieving union with the divine into a rational process. So Plato thinks the soul can achieve divine status, but instead of using Dionysian or emotional rituals to achieve this purpose, Plato uses rational inquiry. (p. 232) Morgan maintains that Plato is a rational version of the ecstatic rituals because it has the same aim as the ecstatic cults, is precisely organized like they are and is motivated by the same religious desire they are. (p. 232) To support this claim, Morgan presents much evidence Plato used vocabulary of the mysteries, depicted Socrates as a Bacchic celebrant and saw philosophy as a form of initiation rite. (pp. 232-9)
Morgan makes a very good case for the existence of these other kind of ecstatic rituals and the fact that they might be important for our understanding of Plato. For far too often, those interested in piety in Socrates and Plato only paid attention to the Delphic strands in the dialogues and totally ignore this other strand. Morgan does a great service by bringing this other strand to our attention. Nevertheless, while Morgan presents much convincing evidence for the central importance of religion for Plato, he does not make a convincing case for religion’s importance in the case of Socrates.
In a portion of his book Platonic Piety, [Yale University Press, 1990] Morgan devotes the first chapter to Socrates and how Plato saw Socrates’ piety. Here Morgan again presents the same picture of two kinds of religious practices with different ideas about the relationship of the human and the divine. Furthermore, he also asserts that just like Plato, Socrates also saw his method as a philosophical version of the ecstatic initiation rites. (p. 8) Morgan presents evidence for this thesis but it is ultimately not convincing.
First he points out that in the dialogues Socrates is often depicted as associating with people who were involved with other new religious movements. (p. 21) Secondly he makes the point that Plato thought it was important to distinguish Socrates from the more traditional ecstatics as he thought Socrates could be confused with them and thus it was important to distinguish Socrates from them. (p. 22) These two points do seem to make sense of many dramatic features of the dialogues and especially about why Plato spends so much time on what we now find so unusual.
While he has shown there is clearly something going on between Socrates and the new religious movements, Morgan does not establish his much stronger claim that Socrates’ method is a rationalized version of the ecstatic rituals. While he maintains that three passages support his claim, they do not adequately support his grand claim.
His first passage is the long section in the Charmides (156d-157c) where Socrates talks of Zalmoxis, a Thracian doctor. Morgan points out that Socrates went on a military campaign near Thrace and he showed unusual powers that come from magical and ecstatic rituals. So he maintains that Socrates’ ability to withstand the cold by going barefoot in the snow, not needing food, and staying in a trance for a long time all come from being influenced by non-Greek ecstatic religious traditions. (p. 25) This is the best explanation of Socrates’ unusual feats that I have heard as it is well-known that religious people of a certain type do get strange powers just like Socrates had. Furthermore, if Zalmoxis was an important religious figure at the time Plato was writing, Plato could easily be using code words in the dialogue for some kind of religious practice—practices that we no longer understand.
Unfortunately this passage does not seem to help us much with Socrates’ philosophy and here is where Morgan’s speculations go awry. For he claims that it is from Thracian gods and cults that Socrates picks up the themes of the centrality and immortality of the soul. While he may have got his doctrine of the centrality of the soul from those people, the evidence does not support the claim Socrates even thought the soul was immortal. For in the Apology, it is quite clear that Socrates is not sure what happens to the soul when he dies. Indeed we are not able to make sense of many things that happen in the dialogue unless Socrates is not sure of what happens to him when he is dead. Furthermore, there does not seem to be any real philosophical connection with the rest of the dialogue and what Socrates says about Zalmoxis. Certainly the dialogue doesn’t seem to be about merging with the divine or anything else that would involve Zalmoxis. Indeed the dialogue as a whole is much more about the purging of various interlocutors’ intellectual conceit and so actually fits in much better with the Delphic oriented theology. Because of this fact, the long passage about Zalmoxis does not seem to be much more than a literary device to introduce Socrates’ way of doing things. Until more of a connection is shown, Morgan’s thesis remains no more than an interesting point that needs to be more firmly established and only then can it be shown to be relevant and important for our understanding of Socrates.
Morgan’s second passage from Euthydemus 277d5-e3 (pp. 26-7) may support the small claim that Socrates or Plato or both were familiar with the Corybantic rites, but this fact alone tells us very little. Nor does it support the much larger claim that the sophist is a rationalized version of the Corybantic rites, much less the statement that Socrates thought philosophy was like that. So again Morgan has not presented us with any real evidence that Socrates saw philosophy as a rational form of the ecstatic rites.
The last passage Morgan cites also does not give him what he needs. For in this passage from the Ion Socrates distinguishes between poetry in which the poet is possessed by the Gods and the people who have knowledge. Morgan claims that this distinction has the gap between human and divine wisdom bridged and Socrates does not dispute this. The only issue is how the gap is bridged and under whose initiative. (p. 27) This passage does acknowledge that there is not a total gap between the human and the divine, nevertheless this passage does not give Morgan what he needs. For in poetry the gods still control the bridging of the gap and there is still an unbridgeable gap between humans and the divine unless gods wish it otherwise; there is little if anything humans can do to bridge that gap. Again the evidence that Morgan points to does not outweigh the evidence from the Apology where the Delphic theology of the gap between the two is so prominent.
Morgan addresses this tension with the Apology but he fails to adequately solve the problem. For he says that in the Apology Socrates thinks “human striving to perfect its divine status should take the form of a disciplined search for knowledge.” (p. 30) But Morgan still is doing nothing more than just asserting his view. Indeed, the more traditional view fits the texts much better: Socrates is doing the Delphic god’s work by showing that humans do not have wisdom by ridding them of their conceit. This explains the elenchus [Socrates’ way of investigating claims] and the way Socrates practices it and his sense of mission from Apollo. Again Morgan has not so much established his view, but merely asserted it.
Unfortunately there is another important matter that Morgan does not mention that does not fit with his hypothesis: Socrates’ daimonion or inner spiritual voice. For because it is always negative (at least in Plato), the daimonion would seem to be Delphic with no elements of the ecstatic rituals union with the divine.
While Morgan is pointing in an interesting direction of taking the religious elements of Plato’s and Socrates’ thought very seriously, we need more evidence before we can maintain that Socrates was influenced in any important way by the ecstatic rituals.
While we are in Morgan’s debt for bringing many interesting passages to our attention and he is right that these passages may indicate something which may be very important for our understanding of Plato and Socrates, Morgan has not come close to really establishing his thesis that the philosophical method of Socrates is a rational version of the ecstatic rites.
Third Paper: Socrates: Reconciling His Skepticism and Divine Knowledge
At the beginning of “Socratic Piety” [in Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Cornell University Press, 1991], Gregory Vlastos defends an interpretation of the nature of Socrates’ piety which has reason as the final arbiter of truth in the moral realm. (p. 157) Vlastos then quotes a passage from the Crito which he says supports this position because Socrates says that he is “persuaded by nothing in me except the proposition which appears to be the best when I reason about it.” At the same time though, Socrates also obeys commands which he gets by supernatural means. Most surprisingly, Socrates assumes these two seemingly different sources of wisdom or knowledge are in perfect harmony. (p. 157) For Vlastos, the way Socrates harmonized these two different things was that he “adhered uncompromisingly to the authority of reason, brooking no rival source of knowledge on any matter whatever.” (p. 166)
For Vlastos then, Socrates could only have harmonized these two different sources of possible knowledge because he had reason as the only source of knowledge. (p. 166) Although it may seem to be a source of knowledge, Vlastos maintains that the unusual divine promptings and dreams that Socrates often received were not a source of knowledge. (p. 167) Vlastos first looks at the evidence concerning dreams and poetry and maintains they provide no knowledge or give any trouble to the supremacy of reason. The divine sign is a much tougher case and here Vlastos also maintains that the daimonion or inner divine voice still allows for the unlimited scope of reason. (p. 170) He agrees the daimonion may be divinely caused, but this gives no threat to reason’s full authority to determine truth or falsity. So in Vlastos’ interpretation of Socrates’ piety, there is never any conflict between reason and revelation, as only by the use of reason can Socrates determine the meaning of signs and extract truth from them. (pp. 170-1)
The first question to ask is if the Crito passage, the only evidence Vlastos cites for the fact that Socrates considers reason so important, actually supports his case as much as Vlastos claims it does. This passage which Vlastos cites is at 46b and goes as follows: “Not now for the first time, but always, I am the sort of man who is persuaded by nothing in me except the proposition which appears to me to be the best when I reason about it.”
This passage, on Vlastos’ own translation, does not really support his position. For in the passage Socrates says that he is persuaded by nothing in him other than what appears best when he reasons. This passage does not establish Vlastos’ point for two reasons. First of all, Socrates says he is persuaded by nothing in him other than the best reason, but the messages or possible supernatural knowledge would come from the gods or other divine sources outside him and so this passage does not establish Socrates’ allegiance to reason. Secondly the passage also says that he is persuaded by the best reason when he reasons, and this does not say anything at all about how often he reasons or when he reasons. All that Socrates says is that when he reasons, he only is persuaded by things in him to follow the best argument; he is making absolutely no claim that he reasons very often or that he claims reason to be superior to his supernatural signs. So there is a flaw at the very beginning of Vlastos’ argument and it has not been established that Socrates is as concerned with reason as much as Vlastos maintains he is.
Mark McPherran in “Socratic Reason and Socratic Revelation” [Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 29, Number 3, July 1991] does not agree with Vlastos’ characterization of the relation between reason and spiritual revelation for Socrates. Indeed, McPherran thinks there is a much different relationship between the two than Vlastos does. While he thinks that Socrates is primarily a vigorous practitioner of the elenchus [Socrates’ way of investigating things], that is not all he is. For when it’s not possible to be guided by reason, then Socrates accepts the guidance of divination. (pp. 347-8) So Socrates will do elenctic testing of all beliefs when it is appropriate, but there are also some beliefs that come from sources that are extrarational. (p. 348)
While Vlastos lumps dreams, poetry and the daimonion together, McPherran sharply distinguishes these three supernatural things. For the daimonion is a special sort of supernatural source that is very different from dreamsas the daimonion is a source of practical certainty. (p. 361) Furthermore, Vlastos is simply wrong in saying that the scope of reason concerning the content of the daimonion is totally unconstrained. Indeed reason has very little to do with interpreting the daimonion and is very constrained in regards to it in McPherran’s interpretation. Thus when Socrates is about to get up from his seat and the daimonion comes to him, he is heavily constrained to only think about what he is about to do and stop that. (p. 363) He could not reasonably interpret that the daimonion was telling him to take up sewing or knitting. So reason is very constrained in interpreting the daimonion and Vlastos is simply wrong not to have realized that.
Furthermore, Vlastos is also wrong in thinking that the daimonion never trumps reason. As the sign comes to Socrates often, unless we are to think that Socrates is an extremely impulsive person and doesn’t have reasons for his actions, then reason is obviously trumped quite often.
Unlike Vlastos’ interpretation which has reason at the foundation and revelation resting on that and reason never being trumped by revelation, McPherran sees quite a different relationship between the different elements of Socrates’ life. For McPherran maintains that neither reason nor revelation is foundational and they both support each other as avenues of knowledge or information. (p. 372)
In a letter to the Times Literary Supplement, (Jan. 5-11, 1990, p. 11), Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith offer support to McPherran’s interpretation but then put a different twist on it. They say that as the divine sign opposed Socrates when he was about to go into politics, either we think that this major decision of Socrates was impulsive and he had no good reasons to go into politics, or we have to face the fact that the daimonion could trump whatever reasons he might have had to go into politics. As the divine sign came to Socrates often, it is clear that both McPherran and Brickhouse and Smith are right that the daimonion could trump reason and probably often did. Thus Vlastos is simply wrong to think that reason is the sole foundation for Socrates’ life. Nevertheless what the exact relationship between reason and supernatural revelation has yet not become clear to me. In the same letter, Brickhouse and Smith offer an intriguing interpretation. They say that while Socrates is the paragon of reason, he defers to the daimonion because he regards human reason as faulty and his own wisdom as worth little or nothing. As only god is truly wise, (Apology 23a5-7) Socrates does not regard it as irrational to trust the daimonion as he thinks of it as a pure message from the wise god. In this view it becomes the epitome of reason not to be reasonable. For if there is a better source than our own reason, the wise person would take it. While this makes Socrates less reason oriented than many modern people would wish, it would fit in with his high regard for experts and following them. For on this view, the gods become the ultimate experts and it is rational to follow them.
While Vlastos is wrong in his overall picture of the relationship of reason and revelation, there is a final very interesting claim that Vlastos makes about Socratic piety and the role it plays in Socrates’ ethics. For Socrates, piety is doing God’s work to benefit other human beings and the fact that Socrates is so centered on piety and thus helping others, dissolves the charge of egocentricity that is often raised against Socrates’ eudaemonism. (p. 177) For his piety and his unselfish obedience to the god by helping others stops Socrates’ ethics from sinking into selfishness. Thus Vlastos shows the tremendously important role that piety plays at the heart of Socratic moral theory.