Was Socrates a real person? is one of the most googled questions about perhaps the most important philosopher in history. Socrates’s existence as a historical figure is, however, universally accepted by scholars. He was executed in 399 BCE, aged over seventy, so it’s estimated that he must have been born around 470 BCE. He was an Athenian citizen and served as a hoplite, or heavy infantryman, in several major battles of the Peloponnesian War. However, most of what we are told about his life and character comes from sources whose reliability is questionable, and which are often regarded as semi-fictional in nature. Socrates left no writings of note behind, although we’re told he did begin composing poetry in his prison cell, while awaiting execution (and a couple of surviving lines are attributed to him). Virtually everything we know of his life and thought comes from plays, dialogues, and later anecdotes, in which fact and fiction appear to rub shoulders. Scholars refer to this as the Socratic problem–the challenge of figuring out who Socrates was and what he believed, based on the questionable evidence that we have to go on. That is presumably why some people are asking Google whether we even know if Socrates existed. He certainly existed but it’s difficult to say for certain what sort of person he was or what he believed.
Our earliest source of information is a satirical play called The Clouds, written by Aristophanes in 423 BCE. This is at least contemporary, and Socrates himself knew the play and perhaps even saw it being performed. From a historical perspective, Aristophanes’s unflattering portrayal of Socrates is frustratingly at odds with the depictions in later sources. Aristophanes lampoons him as a pretentious intellectual charlatan who teaches his students philosophy in a building called The Thinkery and charges hefty fees for his courses. This play came last in a contest where at least one other contender, a lost play called Connus, was also a satire about Socrates. The Clouds depicts Socrates as an amalgam of natural philosopher and Sophist, two intellectual traditions that predated Socrates and which he actively challenged. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says that some people confuse him with the natural philosophers because of a famous play, presumably this one, but that all of his friends and students know that’s not the sort of philosophy he actually teaches. At the very least, though, this suggests that Socrates was already a famous, and controversial, philosopher by the time he was about 47 years old.
Our primary source of information about Socrates is, of course, Plato, his most famous student, who wrote over thirty dialogues, most of which feature Socrates, and all of which survive today, along with several attributed to Plato but of disputed authorship. Plato, however, was one of Socrates’s younger students, and probably only knew him in the last half-dozen years or so of his life–when Socrates was already in his sixties. Diogenes Laërtius, a biographer writing centuries later, claims Plato is said to have read one of his dialogues to Socrates, who exclaimed, “By Heracles, what a lot of lies the young man has told about me!” Although this anecdote is generally viewed with skepticism, it does tell us that already in the ancient world doubt was being cast on the accuracy of Plato’s dialogues. Most scholars, however, believe that Plato did not begin writing about Socrates until after his death. It’s generally believed that Plato’s dialogues can be grouped into those written during his early, middle, and late period, and that whereas the early ones portray Socrates in a broadly accurate way, over time, Plato increasingly used the literary character of Socrates in his dialogues as a mouthpiece for ideas that the real Socrates is unlikely to have held. Aristotle, for instance, who was Plato’s most famous student, claims that the metaphysical Theory of Forms was first introduced by Plato. (The theory that the world we experience through our senses is not entirely real but that the abstract concepts on which it is based exist eternally in a “heaven of pure forms”.) If we can take that literally, it would mean that Socrates could not have known of this theory, despite the fact Plato depicts him discussing it at length in several dialogues. That conclusion gains weight because our other main source of information on Socrates, the Socratic dialogues of Xenophon, never mentions the Theory of Forms but portrays Socrates as a much more down-to-earth philosopher, who focuses on everyday ethical questions rather than abstract metaphysics.
In addition to the plays of Aristophanes and the philosophical dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, we also have dozens of fragmentary references to Socrates from later sources, many of which form what is known as the anecdotal tradition. These fragments are often of doubtful authenticity but what they do flesh out our understanding of “Socrates” as a literary character in the ancient world. They tell us how people saw Socrates and the sorts of things they imagine that he would have said. It frustrated me that there appeared to be a remarkable story about the life of Socrates, and his philosophical development, right under our noses, which had largely been forgotten or ignored in the modern world. The ambiguities, gaps, and inconsistencies in the story prevented it from being told. To pick just one example, Plato’s Apology famously portrays Socrates, during his trial, explaining how the Oracle of Delphi announced that no man is wiser than him. This appears as the seminal moment that inspired his philosophical mission. However, we do not know when it happened. Our understanding of Socrates’s philosophical journey hinges on whether we place the Oracle’s pronouncement before or after other key events, either early or later in his life. Even worse, some experts doubt that it ever happened and are inclined to dismiss it as fiction! However, this incident is absolutely integral to the story of Socrates handed down to us.
In my book, How to Think Like Socrates, I therefore chose just to bite the bullet and tell his story without attempting to critically evaluate its historical accuracy. I set aside the historical Socrates in favor of the character constructed in the ancient dialogues and anecdotes.
This book tells the story of Socrates’s life, as a philosophical journey. It is a dramatized account, which treats Socrates as a literary character in order to explore the connection between his thought and life.
I had to gloss over contradictions, fill in gaps, and make decisions concerning details with which some historians might disagree. By presenting my version of Socrates’s life as explicitly semi-fictional, while attempting to ground it as much as possible in the available evidence, I was free to tell his story in a way that I hope will make it engaging to modern readers, and help them find their way to a deeper appreciation of his philosophy.
Donald J. Robertson is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, trainer, and writer. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, and after living in England and working in London for many years, he emigrated to Canada, and now resides in Quebec. Robertson has been researching Stoicism and applying it in his work for over twenty years. He is one of the founding members of the non-profit organization Modern Stoicism. He is also the founder and president of the Plato’s Academy Centre non-profit in Greece. Robertson is the author of Verissimus and How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.
