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TRAGIC IRONY: SOCRATES IN HEGEL’S
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
by
Patrick Matthew Farr Jr.
____________________________
Copyright © Patrick Matthew Farr Jr. 2013
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
In the Graduate College
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
2013
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STATEMENT BY AUTHOR
This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an
advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library
to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.
Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission,
provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for
permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole
or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.
SIGNED: Patrick Matthew Farr Jr.
APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR
This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:
Rachana Kamtekar
______8/5/2013____
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………...4
ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………..5
CHAPTER 1: WILL AND TRAGEDY.…………………………………….6
CHAPTER 2: DEFENDING HEGEL’S SOCRATES AS A TRAGIC
HERO……………………………………………………………………..30
CHAPTER 3: THE SOCRATIC METHOD AND DIALECTIC………….58
CHAPTER 4: THE CRITIQUE OF IRONY…….………………………...78
CHAPTER 5: TRAGIC IRONY………………………..………...………102
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION………………………………….………135
WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………141
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ABSTRACT
The following thesis outlines Hegel’s interpretation of Socrates in order to prove that as a
negative dialectician, Socrates constitutes both a world historic personality who met a
fate (Schicksal) which was tragic and practiced a philosophy which was tragically ironic.
In this undertaking, Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy takes central importance which defines
tragedy as two equally justified opposing forces which clash and destroy one another.
This Theory of Tragedy is extended to show that through Socrates’ absolutely free will he
brought himself to a tragic clash with the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), the
Sophists’ arbitrary will, and the phenomenological will of uneducated Athenians. This
clash is described in terms of a Hegelian Tragedy within which both Socrates and Athens
were right and just in their actions against one another, but in the end were destroyed
through those actions. His Method and Dialectic is then argued represent a negative
dialectic which through the negation of negativity becomes positive as a midwifery of the
consciousness. Next, because his Method and Dialectic begin in negativity and end in
positivity, Socratic Elenchus is argued to not be representative of what has been termed
“the Socratic Irony,” but instead only the negative moment of the Socratic Method.
Finally, the Socratic Irony which Hegel argues is representative of both Socratic
Philosophy and world history is defined as a Tragic Irony which sublates the finite
consciousness of the phenomenological will, and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and the
infinite arbitrary will of the Sophists in order to become a trans-subjective absolutely free
will which becomes infinite itself like the Sophists’ will through reflection on the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit).
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ABBREVIATIONS
HoP GWF Hegel History of Philosophy
HoT GWF Hegel Hegel on Tragedy
PoS GWF Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit
PoH GWF Hegel Philosophy of History
PoR GWF Hegel Philosophy of Right
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CHAPTER 1:
WILL AND TRAGEDY
In the following sections it shall be argued that Athens was a true Ethical Life that was
provided a foundation by the family, civil society, and the state, and none of these three
moments in the Athenian society could be destabilized without disrupting the foundations
of Athenian society (HoP 2.B.2.b.g.3). Likewise, the philosophy of Socrates was aimed
at the good of Athenians, and as such cannot be considered merely a criminal element
acting against the city. Instead Socrates must be read as performing his duty according to
the demands of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). The destructive power which
Socrates brought had to be destroyed itself in order for this society to continue, and this
action was both right and rational, for Socrates had demonstrated that the Ethical Life of
Athens, although true as a determination of objective freedom, was a false consciousness
which had to be destroyed in order to attain truth, and it is this which was formed his
tragedy (HoP 2.B.2.b.g.3; HoP 2.B.3.c.3). In order to make clear these statements it is
necessary to describe the moments of the objective and subjective wills in order to show
in what ways the will of Socrates conflicted with the objective and subjective wills of the
average uneducated Athenian, the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and the Sophists, poets, and
politicians.
The first section shall deal Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy which defines the perfect
tragedy as containing two opposing rights which come into conflict and in the end
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destroy one another. This theory is the foundational moment for the entire project of
interpreting Hegel’s Socrates, for as shall be argued in subsequent chapters it is this form
of tragedy that defines both the fate of Socrates at to the hands of the Athenians
(Schicksal) and the philosophy that Socrates taught. Yet in order to understand how the
tragedy becomes his fate (Schicksal) and philosophy, it is further necessary to
comprehend his conflict with Athens. The final section describes the clash between the
objective and subjective freedom within Athenian society between Socrates, the Athenian
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the will of the Sophists, poets and politicians.
The
objective and subjective freedom shall be discussed in detail as involving: 1) a) the
subjective phenomenological will which describes the will of the uneducated Athenian,
b) the object of that will, 2) a) the subjective arbitrary will which describes the will of the
Sophist, b) the objective form which is the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and 3) the
subjective free will of Socrates which is an object to itself through its infinite circularity.
It is the will of Socrates which as an infinitely free will brings together the bad infinity of
the Sophists’ will and the limitedness of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) by teaching
individuals to actualize the potential freedom within Athenian Society. This is foundation
to the entire project of interpreting Hegel’s Socrates, for it is this which is the content of
his tragedy.
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The Hegelian Theory of Tragedy
In Hegel’s view, both drama and history through both narrative and content follow a
progression toward human freedom which appears as a dialectic including the primitive
foundation of a society, the rise of conflict within that society leading to social change,
and the conflict of opposing factions mediated through the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). In
the first instance, history begins with the primitive tribalism that is founded in mythical
beliefs and stories of origin which together build a coherent structure for a people to live
side by side in a social system (PoH Para. 65; PoH Para. 69). Yet the myths and legends
which found this society are not stories that document the history of that society’s origin,
rather these stories only form the basis of dogmatic belief. This society which has been
founded on mythology finds its beliefs about the world and its people in superstition and
dogmatic social norms, but the rigidity of these structures displays contradictions
between the appearance of the world through the individual consciousness and the
narrative ascribed to it by the myths and legends (PoH Para. 83-86). The content of these
contradictions is found between the rigidity of these social systems and the individuals
within these systems who find at times conflict between their own beliefs of rightness and
the rightness ascribed by their society’s Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (PoH 85-86). The
conflicts which arise between individuals’ beliefs about rightness and the objective
rightness ascribed by their society’s Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) may have one of two
distinct features that give rise within the conflict a distinct narrative (PoH 88-91). On the
one hand, the conflict may be unavoidable in its clash between the individual and society,
and on the other hand the conflict may be suppressed within the individual consciousness
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(PoH Para. 93-95). If the first course of history is followed, the conflict results in a battle
between the individual and the society, and this, if the individual is right in her claims
embodying the character of a world historical personality, necessarily results in an
epochal change leading to a violent reconciliation between those opposing rights and the
destruction of either the individual or of the previous Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (PoH
Para. 86; Para. 90). Yet if the second course is followed, and the individual merely
capitulates to the norms dictated by her society’s Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), then the
individual gives into the power of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the opposing rights
are left unresolved (PoH Para. 95).
As with the narratives ascribed to history, the similar narratives exist in the
dramatic arts which Hegel believed are not only the highest form of artistic achievement,
but also allow a glimpse into the rational principle behind the development of the world.
The oldest and most foundational drama for human social development particular to
Greece is the epic poem, for in the epic one may find the beginnings of history as it
appears in mythical tales of origin and the individual’s struggle as an individual (HoT
100-105; Hot 2-3). In this type of drama the hero appears as a rugged individual who
through her struggle establishes herself and founds the basic structure of a society (HoT
3; HoT 104-105; HoT 14). Yet the highest form of art contains two main considerations
which come into conflict which are not present in the epic, namely the moral
consciousness (moralische Bewusstsein) of the individual and the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) of a people, and through this conflict the two opposing sides must come to
resolution (HoT 70-71).
These conflicting sides of the drama represent concrete
historical developments within a society in that both sides represent an opposing right
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which is equally rational as its opposite in constitution, and through the overcoming of
the struggle between these rights, the individuals who succeed or fail in the reform of the
Ethical Life (Sirrlichkeit) of that society become both morally righteous and Ethically
guilty (HoT 123-129). It is these two opposing rights which form the conflict that Hegel
argued created the foundation for the Theory of Tragedy and Comedy of which the first
results in the tragic ending of the hero and the second results in the capitulation of the
hero to the norms of her society. Most important of these genres for the discussion below
is that of tragedy, yet in order to grasp the theory in its subtleties, the two opposing rights
that come to resolution through their clash must be defined.
On the one hand, there is the moral consciousness (moralische Bewusstsein) of
the hero who acts according to her individual will embodied within her beliefs about
some aspect of the Ethical life (Sittlichkeit). The will of the hero is defined by her
subjective freedom in the face of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), for her will is of a higher
sort than the superstitious founders of her society’s origins (HoT 67-68). Although the
hero acts according to what is right in the face of her struggle, and through her acts she
necessarily comes in conflict with something stronger and more powerful than herself
(HoT 73), even in her conflict with the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of the society that she
lives within, she cannot act in conflict with her own will to do what is right, for if she
does then the gravity of her action too would cause her to condemn herself as a common
criminal. Nonetheless, as committing an action that is in conflict with the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), she remains righteous.
On the other hand, there is the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) of the society that the hero is expected to conform to and within which there
exists an established system of laws, customs, and social norms. The Ethical Life
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(Sittlichkeit) must be adhered to in order for the hero and her fellows to continue living
harmoniously within the given social arrangements (HoT 63-64). These arrangements
have created the life and love of the people within that society, and although subject to
change over time, these arrangements cannot be subjected to the destructive force of the
hero’s actions without repercussions (HoT 70-72). According to Hegel, if the hero’s
actions go unpunished then the entire system of social harmony might crumble leaving
nothing but a wake of destruction and social chaos, thus the hero cannot be left without
the vindication of society for her actions, even if right, against the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), for “the highest Power paramount over particular gods and mankind cannot
suffer this (HoT 72).” Hegel explains:
“We must above all place on the one side the false notion of guilt and innocence.
The heroes of tragedy are quite as much under one category as the other. If we
accept the idea as valid that a man is guilty only in case that a choice lay open to
him, and he deliberately decided on the course of action which he carried out,
then these plastic figures of ancient drama are guiltless. They act in accordance
with a specific character, this pathos, for the simple reason that they are this
character, this pathos. In such a case there is no lack of decision and no choice.
The strength of great characters consists precisely in this that they do not choose,
but are entirely and absolutely just that which they will and achieve (HoT 70).”
This above characterization of the tragic hero is quite similar to the Stoic definition of
responsibility, for as in Cicero’s quotation of Chrysippus, “just as he who pushed the
cylinder gave it the start of its motion, he did not, however, give it its ‘rollability’
(Inwood and Gerson II.90.43).” Yet as with the Stoic definition of responsibility, it may
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be fate which brings the tragic hero to her action, but it was her character which shaped
these actions. On this point Diogenes Laertius writes that once when Zeno the Stoic
caught a slave stealing, he beat him for punishment. The slave cried out that “’it was
fated for me to steal,’ [Zeno] said, ‘and to be flogged (Inwood and Gerson II.1.23).’”
Although the Stoic definition of responsibility resembles Hegel’s characterization of
tragedy, there remains a central difference that makes the Stoic definition appear
insufficient. Hegel remarks “that which stirs [the tragic hero] to action is this very pathos
which implies an ethical justification and which, even in the pathetic aspects of the
dialogue, is not enforced in and through the merely personal rhetoric of the heart and the
sophistry of passion (HoT 70).”
Thus the central function of the tragedy is to
demonstrate in what ways there can be conflict between the morality of an individual and
the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of a society as two opposing rights both of which are
completely rational (HoT 70-71). Neither of these two rights contains wrong, but in the
conflict between these two rights, one proves stronger than the other and defeats its
opposition thereby ending in a rational resolution that appears as tragic (HoT 71-72). In
the case of the historical tragedy, because the affect which is felt by other individuals
within that society is painful, the defeat of opposition forces a change within the structure
of the society. The punishment of the hero is therefore right and correct within the
bounds of the hero’s social existence, but in history and drama the hero faces different
punishments.
The conflict which the tragic hero finds herself in with the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) of society must end in punishment for the hero (HoT 71), and this
punishment that is endured by the hero is the necessary effect of the actions chosen by
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her will as they appear in contradiction with the rules and regulations of her society. Her
actions however cannot be wrong according to the requirements of her moral
consciousness (moralische Bewusstsein), for it is in her moral consciousness that her
pathos forms her character, hence in her injustice against the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
she has also acted rightly from her character. Still, the society which punishes her is also
acting justly, for the hero has come into ethical (sittlich) conflict with the foundations of
that society (HoT 70). To illustrate such conflicting rights in the drama, it shall be
helpful to examine Hegel’s favorite tragedy from which he believed all other tragedies
both dramatic and historical followed the path of.
The archetypal tragedy in Hegel’s view is Sophocles’ Antigone, for in this
tragedy Hegel sees the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of a society come into perfect conflict
with the morality (Moralität) of the individual (HoT 73-74). Hegel remarks that “of all
the masterpieces of the classical and the modern world – and I know nearly all of them
and you should and can – the Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and
satisfying work of art of this kind.” The tragedy involves Antigone, the daughter of
Oedipus and Jocasta, whose two brothers have both been killed in a fight against one
another for the throne of Thebes. The newly crowned king of Thebes, Creon, decides
that one of the brothers should be honored as a hero while the other is shamed. Creon
commands that Polyneices be left in the open air for carrion and dogs. Antigone attempts
to convince her sister Ismene to help her clandestinely perform burial rites on their
brother’s corpse, but Ismene refuses. Antigone performs the burial rites herself, but the
dust which she sprinkled on Polyneices body is later removed by Creon’s guards. She
returns and again sprinkles dust on his body, but she is caught by Creon’s henchmen. As
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punishment, Creon sends Antigone to be buried alive in an underground tomb but allows
Ismene to live because although she conspired with Antigone, her hands remained clean.
While Antigone lies in her underground tomb, Creon is approached by a diviner who tells
him that Polyneices ought to have been buried and not Antigone, and for this crime his
own son Haemon, the fiancé of Antigone, shall die. Creon attempts to rectify his
mistakes, but upon reaching the tomb he finds that Antigone has hung herself and
Haemon too has already commit suicide beneath her corpse. Soon after, Creon is told
that his wife too has committed suicide. Through the harsh authoritarian rule of Creon’s
lordship and the civil disobedience of Antigone’s love and affinity towards her brother,
the tragedy of these opposing rights leaves Thebes in affectual anguish. Yet so too,
because Antigone would not capitulate to the edicts of the king and his rightful claim to
make such commands has Thebes been brought into this turmoil. Antigone is dead as
Creon had desired, but the conflict between the right of the family and the right of the
state has caused his son to die.
Both sides of the tragedy, according to Hegel’s reading, were rational and right in
their actions towards one another, and it is through this that makes the drama truly tragic.
Antigone had a moral (moralische) imperative to perform the burial rites on her brother,
for according to the tribal custom, if the dead were not provided such rites they would not
be allowed to enter the afterlife, but Creon had the Ethical (sittliche) imperative to
command respect for the new kingdom, for according to the logic of statism, if the leader
is not respected the kingdom shall fall to pieces. In this way, both of these sides are
represented as fundamental interests that are right and just according to their different
positions. Antigone’s ethic which comes into conflict with the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
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is based in the right of the family, and this right is not the right of the individual
consciousness opposed to the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), but rather the morality
(Moralität) of the individual as conditioned by the tribal ethicality that brought her into
the world. The Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of the opposing right of Creon to Antigone is
the right of society developing into a more complex society which is governed by the
state rather than the tribal family. Nonetheless, the conflict which arises can be expressed
as opposing rights between the individual and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). On the one
hand, Antigone is just and right in her actions because her actions are governed by the
right of the family which demands that she bury her brother while on the other hand,
Creon is right and just in his actions because his position as king demands that he make
those who oppose him and his rule bend to his will which is right according to the
structure of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). The importance of these conflicting rights
appearing as the conflict between tribalist Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) as it is represented in
the morality (Moralität) of Antigone and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of a developing
statism is in the conflict’s appearance as an image of historical development away from
tribalism. It is therefore representative of a real historical development that brought the
classical age into being and ended the dogmatic rule of tribal mythology.
The content of tragic poetry is the display of the struggle between the moral
consciousness of the individual who sees her own position in opposition to her society
and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of the people which mark out the boundaries of
rightness in that society (HoT 46-52). Yet as described above in the case of Antigone, the
poetry itself in Hegel’s estimation is representative of real historical events that have
shaped society into new forms of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). In the city of Athens
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there is no exception to this rule, and thus too there may be found stories which both fit
the narrative of dramatic poetry ascribed to tragedy and the historical transformation of
one epoch to the next. In the Hellenic age, Athenian society had come into itself and
developed a concrete, i.e. an actual, Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) which defined the people of
Greece (HoT 60). The transformation to this society was brought about through the
tragedy involved with the transformation from the tribal society to the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) of the classical age as described in Hegel’s reading of the Antigone. This
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) drew Ethical (sittliche) parameters for the individual to abide
by, hence the movement away from the composition of epic stories of origin that formed
the foundation for the tribal society and the development of drama consisting in the
stories of individuals in their struggles with their own society (HoT 63). The Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) which became the foundation of the Greek society was constructed from a
system of laws, a judicial and legislative process, and norms of conduct between
individuals, but there were nonetheless moments when the individual came in conflict
with that Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (HoT 64-65).
Yet in order to truly grasp the
importance of the conflict between the individual and society, one must look to Hegel’s
concept of the will in the Philosophy of Right. As the following section shall show, this
conflict of the moral consciousness and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) was a conflict
between finitude and infinitude of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the subjective will.
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The Conflict of Wills
The concept of the will (Begriff des Willens) is described in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
as six moments of the subjective and objective will (subjectiver und objectiver Wille)
each of which corresponds to a concrete moment within the individual’s consciousness
(Bewusstsein) and the freedom (Freiheit) of the society which she lives in. These six
different types of will (Wille) include three types of subjective will which ascend toward
freedom and three types of objective will which descend away from freedom (PoR Para.
25-26). The subjective and objective will are quite different than the typical Hegelian
dialectic in that the two types that form three pairs do not follow the basic structure of
positive, negative and sublation (Aufhebung) between subject and object (PoR Para. 26).
The opposition between subjective and objective will is rather a binary that pass over into
eachother as two distinct moments simultaneously existing within each and every society
as a finitude (Endlichsein) (PoR Para. 26; PoR Add. 18), for the will becomes infinite
(Unendlichsein) only when the object has become itself as subject. Hegel comments that
“it is usually supposed that subjective and objective stand rigidly in opposition to one
another. But this is not the case … [they rather] pass over into each other, since they are
not abstract categories like positive and negative but already have a more concrete
significance (PoR Add. 18).” As concretely significant, these two sides of the will exist
as realities within the society these moments are found, and thus for the reason that the
subject and object are not a dialectic, one must look at the subjective side and objective
side independently in order to witness the six types as a single triptych dialectic which
has a subjective and objective side to each moment. These moments of the will further
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represent the objective freedom of societies and the subjective freedom of individuals
within these societies.
The first moment of the will is found in the early struggles of human history for
self-sufficiency against the natural world, but continue up through the present within the
uneducated. Hegel calls this the Oriental world–historic realm which began its ascent
toward freedom as a tribal foundation to society, and this tribal ethic (sittlich) arose from
a particular type of will which views the world around as objects the will desires to
control and dominate (PoR para. 355). As an instance of this first moment of the will,
Greece is representative of this world-historic realm (PoR para. 356). Through the will’s
desire and its ability to satisfy that desire, the first moment of the will appears in Greece
as the individual’s self-sufficiency. Hegel believed during ancient history the importance
of the individual’s struggle and her separation from other individuals meant that the
community itself was based on the might of individual leaders within that society. The
actions of individuals in this context are aimed at the self-interested attainment of status
within the world through domination. Of this first type of will Hegel says that the
subjective will is “pure form or absolute unity of self-consciousness with itself. This
unity is the equation “I = I,” consciousness being characterized by a thoroughly inward
and abstract self-dependence. It is pure certitude of itself in contrast with the truth (PoR
Para. 25).”
This will is the purely immediate consciousness of the world as it is
experienced in sensations, and because it is filtered through the senses, appears to be
potentially “mine” thereby becoming purely phenomenological (PoR para. 13). Hegel
defines the first phase of subjective will further:
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(i)
When the will’s self-consciousness takes the form of desire and impulse,
this consciousness is sense consciousness, just as sensation in general
denotes externality and therefore the condition in which selfconsciousness is self-external (PoR Para. 21).
This first moment of subjective will furthermore corresponds to the moment of objective
will in that it is the “one-sided form in opposition to the subjective phase of will; it is
direct reality, or external existence (PoR Para. 26).” Hence, the will is not free from its
existence in the world which opposes it as an object that it has no control over, for at this
level, the will has not the ability to assert itself as an independent subject with the facility
to confront through morality the structure of the Ethical Life, but instead surrenders itself
to the contingencies of the world in which its basic desires can be met (PoR Para. 20-21;
187). As the foundation of an Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), the phenomenological objective
will corresponds to the ethic (Sittlich) of master over the slave and of the family patriarch
still present within more developed societies. Yet as an ethic in the most basic level of
society, this moment of the objective will does not form a legal structure for a society
except through pure domination in order to achieve social cohesion. These societies are
in Hegel’s view led by individual desires for power and thus only in procuring the basic
objects of desire does such a will have any freedom. Hegel remarks that “in this sense
the will becomes objective only by the execution of its ends (PoR Para. 26),” for these
ends are the fulfillment of its basic desires.
The objective will of the powerful leader who seizes the objects of her desire is
objective only through the exercise of domination and the regulation of dogmatic beliefs
that are enforced by her power. The individual in pursuit of her desires and impulses
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seeks the freedom to gratify herself through the accumulation of those objects that give
her pleasure and becomes an objective will through this gratification. Hegel believed that
as the foundation of early Greek life, the importance of the individual’s struggle and her
separation from other individuals meant the struggle between individuals for the
foundations of one’s own freedom. Yet the objective will as the purely phenomenological
will’s opposite cannot by itself create an Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) in its higher
manifestation, for this will is objective only through the execution of the subjective will’s
ends through the founding of patriarchal ethic (PoR para. 349).
Although this first
moment of the subjective will corresponds to the moment of objective will in the familial
ethic (Sittlich), it is also the execution of the subjective will’s ends that sets the sufficient
condition for the society to develop into a higher form of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
(PoR para. 353).
While in Hegel’s view Athens was founded on the pure self-sufficiency of the
phenomenological subjective will and the foundations of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) are
laid through the principle of phenomenological self-sufficiency as the sufficient condition
for an Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), the phenomenological will itself cannot become an
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) as a state without alteration to become a collective will (PoR
para. 353). Nevertheless, this collective will is arbitrary according to the contingencies
based on language, customs, and religion which constitute non-universal elements
forming the backbone of a people (PoR para. 355). Thus, the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) is
an objective will of a people as the arbitrary collective will which through the social and
historical contingencies of a particular society creates arbitrary foundations for a familial,
social, and state ethic (Sittlich) (PoR para. 349).
Hegel remarks that an objective
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arbitrary will as “being without the infinite form of self-consciousness, is the will
absorbed in its object or condition, whatever the content of these may be; it is the will of
the child, ethical will, also the will of the slave, the superstitious man, etc. (PoR Para.
26).” These arbitrary foundations have special importance within Athens’ new system of
governance as a democracy, for because it was a democracy there arose the potentiality
of individuals to grasp a higher form of consciousness as a collective who were
responsible for their own destiny. Individuals were given choices from which together as
a collective they were to deliberate and come to agreement through a process that ensured
the equality of free citizens through the fulfillment of needs by slaves (PoR para. 356).
Hegel explains that when the subjective arbitrary will is grasped, it becomes the
“particular will as the arbitrary will and contingent content of optional aims (PoR para.
25).” It was this moment of the subjective will that made an appearance within Greece to
give individuals the ability to choose their own happiness, yet through arbitrary decisions
there is no reason for the individual to choose one object or way of life over the other nor
does the decision itself have any significance on the process of the individual actualizing
themselves (PoR Para. 112). Instead, the decisions which one is confronted with in this
moment are decisions which have to do with the ability to choose between different ends
all of which are insignificant to the absolute freedom that is attained by the philosopher
(PoR Para. 140). Thus the conflict which comes about through this form of subjective
will cannot provide a true ground because it sees only decisions to be made but cannot
adjudicate which of the decisions are right and which are wrong (PoR Para. 140 note 3).
Hegel defines this will as involving both the desire for objects of the primitive will and a
universality of thought which extends beyond the mere desire of objects:
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(ii)
When the will is reflective, it contains two elements—this selfconsciousness [as in “the form of desire and impulse, this consciousness is
sense consciousness” from (i) above] and the universality of thought (PoR
Para. 21).
This first step away from the purely phenomenological subjective will of the tribal
society is that of the politicians, tragedians and Sophists who grasped the universality
implicit in the self-consciousness of the Athenian democracy as an objective arbitrary
will. The general conception of Protagoras’ “man as the measure of all things,” which
Hegel takes to be the Sophist concept of freedom (HoP 2.A.1.1 ff), serves as a model for
the type of will which is necessary for the adjudication of conflicting rights as is found
within the democracy. If man is the measure, then the truth is the choices which a man
makes in order to find happiness. Hegel argued that this comes as a direct result of the
citizen’s ability to take part in democratic deliberation, for if the democracy must
deliberate which of several choices to pursue then the implication is that whatever choice
is decided upon through deliberation is the true choice that ought to be made (HoP
2.A.1.1 ff). The process of deliberation thus provides the individual with the truth, and
hence when this process of deliberation is internalized to make individual choices about
one’s own happiness, the result is that the choices made through internal deliberation are
likewise the true choices albeit tautologically true as choices actually made. Hegel says
that “to the Sophists the satisfaction of the individual himself was … made ultimate, and
since they made everything uncertain, the fixed point was in the assertion, ‘it is my
desire, my pride, glory, and honour, particular subjectivity, which I make my end (HoP
2.A.21).’”
23
Hegel argues that the Sophists did not find true freedom, but rather it was
Socrates who grasped the true subjective freedom found within the objective freedom of
Athens a potential. Yet in his grasp of freedom, Socrates was a threat to the established
customs and indeed to the legal system of this democracy, for he challenged 1) the finite
purely phenomenological consciousness of the master’s desire, 2) the finite objective
arbitrary will of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and 3) the infinity of the Sophists’
subjective arbitrary will (HoP 2.B.2.b.g.2). This challenge must be explained in terms of
finitude and infinitude so that the significance of Socrates’ consciousness can be located,
for the will of Socrates is a sublation of finitude and infinitude to become a true infinity.
The phenomenological will suffers from a finitude that cannot escape itself, for
because the world is limited, the phenomenological will too is limited, and through the
individual’s sensual experiences of the world there is no place else except in experience
to find solace (PoR para. 10). Similarly, the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) is described in
terms of an objective arbitrary will which is determined by the contingencies of history,
and because these contingencies are determined before one’s birth as a limited number of
possibilities, the arbitrary objective will too suffers externally defined finitude (PoR
para.3).
The arbitrary subjective will also suffers, but as the opposite of the
phenomenological will, it suffers from a bad infinity which Hegel says is like a line that
travels in either direction forever in that there may be infinite options of objects to gain
mastery over (PoR para.15). This bad infinity is explained as an infinite number of
options or arbitrary choices that the will must decide between (PoR Para. 26). Yet while
this moment of the arbitrary subjective will is a bad infinity, it is also an important phase
in the development of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of Athens albeit a phase of
24
immaturity, for it is between the phenomenological will’s finite experience of the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit) and the infinite moment of the Sophists’ arbitrary will that leads to the
will of Socrates as a sublation of the finite and infinite moments.
The freedom of Socrates was rather a good infinity, captured in the inscription at
Delphi ‘know thyself,’ which is like a circle that forever turns back upon itself and
through pure thought becomes thought thinking itself (PoR Para. 26; PoH Para. 23).
Although the finite Athenian consciousness had not grasped the universal implications of
its objective freedom as a democracy, through the Sophists’ actualization of the
subjective arbitrary will through the potential within the Athenian objective arbitrary will,
i.e. Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), the purely phenomenological finite will from which the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) grew was merely subverted by an infinite will. Yet
while this will was infinite and universal, it was only arbitrarily so, and thus because the
Sophists’ had only actualized the infinite will in its arbitrary form, there remained a
potential within the democracy for a truly infinite will that turned reflexively back upon
itself. It is through the actualization of this potential that Socrates uncovered the infinite
subjective will which ensures ones self-determination even in bondage. The result of
Socrates’ actualized subjective freedom is self-determination which Hegel identifies as
the infinite subjective will, and the will of Socrates is special in that through its infinity it
turns back upon itself unlike the will of the Sophists thereby becoming a master of the
self (PoR Para. 25; HoP 2.B..2). It is this freedom which can be considered substantial,
for it is through the infinite subjective will which turns back upon itself that the
individual becomes in and for-herself. Without the actualization of this circular infinite
will, both the Athenian finite objective freedom and the Sophists’ infinite subjective
25
freedom were unable to become truly self-determining. Hegel says that this final moment
of the subjective will is “in general a one-sided form, in so far as that which is willed is at
first an unfulfilled end, or a content which simply belongs to self-consciousness
(Selbstbewusstsein) (PoR Para. 25).” He defines this will as truly infinite for:
(iii)
When the will’s potentialities have become fully explicit, then it has for its
object the will itself as such, and so the will in its sheer universality—the
universality which is what it is simply because it has absorbed in itself the
immediacy of instinctive desire and the particularity which is produced by
reflection and with which such desire eo ipso becomes imbued (PoR Para.
21).
The absolutely free will is from the above definition a subjective will which creates for
the consciousness the content of consciousness, and is therefore reflective by finding
content within the consciousness itself. Yet the subjective will of Socrates was different
than the typical absolutely free will, for Socrates did not simply create the content of
consciousness like a metaphysician, but rather brought the content into consciousness as
a concrete determination of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). Hegel tells that this “is the
assisting into the world of the thought which is already contained in the consciousness of
the individual — the showing from the concrete, unreflected consciousness, the
universality of the concrete, or from the universally posited, the opposite which already is
within it (HoP 2.B.1.b.1).” Socrates had developed the truly infinite will as a turning back
of thought upon thought itself, for he had found an immanent critique of both the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will which brought him to
the goal of freedom. In this way, the content which belonged to Socrates’ consciousness
26
was a concrete content existing outside of his own consciousness but brought into his
consciousness as critique. Thus through Socrates’ absolutely free will he did not create
this content in his own consciousness from nothing, but rather discovered through
concrete experience the good which as the content of his consciousness was also the
object of his consciousness. Hence with Socrates, “is the point at which it becomes clear
that it is only as thinking intelligence that the will is genuinely a will and free (PoR Para.
21).”
By turning back in onto itself, the will is thus an object to itself, and hence the
subject becomes the object through this reflexive activity. Hegel defines this moment of
the infinitely free will as “purely and simply objective as it has itself for its determination
and so is in correspondence with its concept and genuinely a will (PoR Para. 26).” In the
sense that this externalization of the will is simultaneously an internalization of thought,
the final moment of the objective will is an expression of the truly free subjective will,
for through the circular reflexivity of thought back upon itself, the will has made itself an
object and thus universalized its freedom through thought alone.
Yet while this
universalization is the objective expression of the truly free subjective will, the
universalization is without concrete content, and so the infinity which is expressed in the
infinitely free subjective will, is only an infinity with itself (PoR para. 135). Lacking
concrete content, the infinitely free will is therefore universal only as an abstract
universality which “has won its firm foundation and starting-point for the first time
owing to the thought of its infinite autonomy, still to adhere to the exclusively moral
position, without making the transition to the concept of ethics, is to reduce this gain to
an empty formalism, and the science of morals to the preaching of duty for duty’s sake
27
(PoR Para. 135).” This is problematic in Hegel’s assessment, for because the infinitely
free subjective will has as its object only itself, it too views itself as the last word in
moral decisions, and as the final arbiter of morality, this moment of the will also has the
potential to become evil as determining the good for the individual divorced from society,
for “this is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. of self-creative
reason; and it is the universal principle of Philosophy for all successive times (HoP
2.B.3.c.2).” The only way to avoid the absolutely free subjective will becoming empty of
content outside of itself is for the will to return to the concrete content of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) (PoR para. 137).
Hegel believed that Kantian Ethics were guilty of this infinite freedom of which
the outcome is a contentless duty that was determined only through abstract universality,
for through positing duty and autonomy as the central tenets within ethics, Kant had
ignored the concrete actuality of duty which could only be determined through the
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (PoR para. 135-137).
Socrates is discussed along side in
Hegel’s section on Morality (Moralität) in the Philosophy of Right, yet Socrates differs
from Kant in that he located the universal not through the abstract, but rather through the
concrete case of individual beliefs (PoR para. 138).
Furthermore, the morality of
Socrates and his quest for the good was not an exercise in metaphysics that sought to
locate the good through abstraction, but instead as a search for the good when the
Athenian society was suffering from moral decay. It is during times of moral decay that
the infinitely free subjective will of the philosopher turns back upon herself and her own
consciousness in order to locate the good of “better men (PoR Para. 138).” Hegel
explains the difference between the Kantian morality and the Socratic morality as
28
products of different historical moments of which the Socratic morality represents a
historical transition:
“As one of the commoner features of history (e.g. in Socrates, the Stoics and
others), the tendency to look deeper into oneself and to know and determine from
within oneself what is right and good appears in ages when what is recognized as
right and good in contemporary manners cannot satisfy the will of better men.
When the existing world of freedom has become faithless to the will of better
men, that will fails to find itself in the duties there recognized and must try to find
in the ideal world of the inner life alone the harmony which actuality has lost.
Once self-consciousness has grasped and secured its formal right in this way,
everything depends on the character of the content which it gives itself (PoR Para.
138).”
The content which Socrates examined the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the concrete
consciousness of the individual, and through the examination of concrete determinations,
he found the universal. Equally so, the universal which Socrates found was a negative
moment that meant the transformation of the Athenian world. Hegel argues that it was
through the negativity of the Socratic morality (Moralität), Socrates had readied the
Athenian world for historical change by bringing into the consciousness of the Athenians
the true good. Yet this good was only in the form of negativity, and thus it was through
the critique of the concrete that Socrates found the universal within the concrete
determinations of individuals. Hegel defines this morality in explicitly historical terms,
for “the principle of morality, of the inner life of Socrates, was a necessary product of his
age, but time was required before it could become part and parcel of the self-
29
consciousness of everyone (PoR Add. 166).” It is here that Socrates’ fate and his
philosophy come together to form a single body as his dialectic. Socrates’ method was
based in the Elenchus which took the consciousness of an individual and analyzed it
through questions to show that this consciousness, although arising from the true
determination of objective freedom, was false as either a dogmatic belief from the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) or a bad infinity in its subjective will (HoP 2.B.2.a.13).
30
CHAPTER 2:
DEFENDING HEGEL’S SOCRATES AS A TRAGIC HERO
From this basic structure of the Hegelian Tragedy and the Conflict of Wills, it is now
possible to fit the story of Socrates into a form which adheres to the Theory of Tragedy.
Hegel argues that the story of Socrates should not be as described by those later ancients
who wanted to believe him an innocent such as Plato, Xenophon and Diogenes Laertius,
but instead as a tragedy that fits perfectly the framework of the Hegelian theory (HoP
2.B.3.c.1). Hegel claimed that in order to see the Socratic Narrative as the Tragedy
which it truly was, one must evaluate two main points which display Socrates’
accusations and conviction as either just or unjust, and this must first be developed in two
parts (HoP 2.B.3.c.2): 1) demonstration of the just conviction and punishment of Socrates
by the Athenians for subverting the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and 2) demonstration of the
righteous action of subverting that way of life yet submitting to the punishment entailed
by that action (HoP 2.B.3.a.1; HoP 2.B.3.c.2).
The demonstration of Socrates’
righteousness has been outlined in the previous section and thus the following shall stress
the just conviction. It is in only through the demonstration of these opposing rights that
the rational actions of both sides of this story make it a true tragedy, for in the
inescapable fate at the hands of the people brought about through the willful actions of
the hero and his subsequent submission to this fate while holding a righteous position
provides the rational basis for the actions of both parties as opposing rights (HoP
31
2.B.3.c.2). In the first instance Socrates had bent to the just and right external judgment
of the oracle while simultaneously implementing his subjective freedom to critique which
brought destruction to the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) that gave the oracle power, and it was
this subversion of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) for which he was justly tried (HoP
2.B.3.a.1-3). In the second instance he became a teacher within Athens similar to the
teachers of Athenian virtue whose lessons were grounded not in virtue itself but in the
Method of refutation which improves the condition of the citizen through the destruction
of the externally imposed judgments that reside within the individual’s consciousness,
and for bringing the individual to see her own faults he is worthy of praise (HoP
2.B.3.b.7). The following sections concern the trial of Socrates as provided by Xenophon
and Plato’s Apology. In the first section, the accusations against Socrates and the right of
the state to make these accusations shall be detailed so that Socrates’ guilt may be seen
through the eyes of the state.
The second and third section shall outline the two
accusations against Socrates in detail and demonstrate both his and the state’s
righteousness. Finally, the fourth section shall outline the apparent contradiction between
the Apology in which Socrates claims his innocence and the Crito in which Socrates
accepts the verdict.
32
The Athenian Right
As regards Socrates’ relation to his accusations, the accusations raised against him were
twofold: first, he was accused of bring new gods to Athens, and second, he was accused
of corrupting the Athenian youth (Plato Apol 24b-c; Xen Apol Para. 4). Yet according to
Hegel, the truth of his just conviction has been covered up by the historians and
philosophers who succeeded him. Thus Diogenes Laertius claims these charges were
brought to the court against Socrates by Anytus, Lycon and Meletus who brought him to
court each for their own reasons: “Anytus was roused to anger on behalf of the craftsmen
and politicians, Lycon on behalf of the rhetoricians, Meletus of the poets, all three of
which classes had felt the lash of Socrates (DL II.39).” This sentiment is echoed from
Plato’s Socrates who says in the Apology nearly the same words: “Meletus attacked me,
and Anytus and Lycon, Meletus being vexed on behalf of the poets, Anytus on behalf of
the craftsmen and politicians, Lycon on behalf of the orators, so that, as I started out
saying, I should be surprised if I could rid you of much slander in so short a time [as the
Apology] (Plato Apology 23e-24a).” The importance of this echo in the context of
Socrates’ guilt or innocence is central to the fiction which grew around the philosopher in
that Socrates became narrated as a victim of his accusers rather than as a free citizen who
had been brought to a fair trial. If these charges were brought against him for personal
reasons, as claimed by Laertius, then it might appear as it did to the rectifiers of Socrates’
death that these men were guilty of a crime against Socrates, yet Hegel argues that this is
a mistake. From the last section, the conflict which Socrates came to with the Sophists,
poets and politicians is between the arbitrary and absolute will, and thus the personal
33
reasons of his prosecutors for bringing these accusations forward should not be taken into
consideration but rather the accusations themselves, for it is only through a review of
these accusations and the evidence with which they were brought forward that an
investigation into the guilt or innocence of Socrates may be accomplished.
These accusations appear absurd, for the guilty are not praiseworthy, yet in the
case of Socrates one finds in Hegel’s view the greatest of men who through his fate
(Schicksal) was not guilty. Socrates is characterized by his students as the progenitor of
moral philosophy and in the History of Philosophy as he who brought thought to become
a critical philosophy, the central moment of Hegel’s dialectic. The question becomes:
how could such a man be given blame and put to death without some sort of injustice
occurring against him? The later rejection of the guilty verdict and the embrace of the
narrative as a crime against Socrates are corroborated by Diogenes Laertius who claimed
that his accusers were later punished for injustices committed against Socrates one of
whom, Miletus, was put to death (Lives of Eminent Philosophers II.XXIII). Surely this
reprimand of his accusers would seem to demonstrate his innocence to the accusations
and thus make his punishment an injustice, yet Hegel argues that to accept this narrative
is to miss the point of the Socratic genius, for although through his genius, Socrates
founded the Socratic Method which requires that both new gods are introduced through
his consciousness and that the youth be taught to resist the cultural tyranny brought
through the Athenian way of life, the Athenians were likewise required to defend their
way of life against the aggressions made by Socrates (HoP 2.B.3.b.7).
The demonstration of right on the side of Athens to prosecute him for these
crimes is difficult to comprehend without an exposition of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
34
as formulated by Hegel in the Philosophy of Right. This includes the definition given
above of the arbitrary objective will, but must be outlined in more detail. In the third part
of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel describes three moments of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) which make up the totality of a society. These parts include: 1) the family
in which individuals learn moral behavior and become accustomed to act in the right way
towards others within their society (PoR Para. 158-181), 2) civil society in which
individuals come into conflict with each other as competitors on the market which drives
a wedge between individuals, yet through the market individuals also form bonds of trade
that unite professions together in guilds (PoR Para. 182-256)), and 3) the state which
mediates the chaos of the market in civil society thereby lifting individuals up toward the
actualization of freedom which that society holds as a mere potentiality (PoR Para. 257360).
Each of these moments is required in Hegel’s view to form a modern society, for
each satisfies a need for the character of individuals as atomic and as a collective. In the
first case of the family, it is here that the individual learns to fulfill her duty to society
and learns the morality and customs which reproduce that society as a living entity. In
the second case of civil society, it is here that individuals learn to make a living through
trade bringing them into contact with their countrymen, but in so doing they must leave
the family unit that sustains the individual as atomically moral in order to compete with
others in the market. The market has the potential to destroy the cohesiveness of a
society if it were not for the state to mediate these competitive relationships. Hence, in
the third case of the state, it is here that the conflict between individuals which takes
place in civil society and which threatens to tear asunder the moral sustenance of the
35
family becomes mediated and a higher ethicality placed to hold together the instability of
a market society.
Athens was such a society that through its Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) brought
together the disparate moments of the family, civil society, and the state. The Athenian
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) has a special significance according to Hegel’s narrative, for it
is through the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) that Athens is demonstrated by Hegel to
prosecute Socrates in accordance with the requirements of justice. For Hegel, “what is
real is rational (Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich) (PoR Preface p.10),” and therefore as
an Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) positively existing in the world as a real entity, the Athenian
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) was also rational. Furthermore Hegel believed that justice is
the embodiment of rationality within a society and its systemic manifestation, hence as a
positively existing social institution which regulates the laws within a society, the system
of justice which that society has accepted as the arbiter of those laws is necessarily
rational. Such positively existing systems of justice are not restricted to advanced legal
frameworks, but may be seen in tribal societies as well which through the collectivity of
the people deem the accused guilty or innocent by means of custom and tradition. Later
sociologists such as Weber and Marx would develop this further in order to explain the
rationality in the case of Weber and the rightness in the case of Marx of seemingly
irrational and/or unjust contemporary social frameworks, yet in the case of Hegel the
primary consideration is the rationality and rightness of a seemingly irrational and/or
unjust social framework within the history of Western Civilization. Hegel argued that
during any particular epoch there existed a World Spirit (Weltgeist) which defines that
epoch as the actualization of the potential freedom embodied within that epoch, and
36
Athens represented the World Spirit (Weltgeist) of the ancient epoch as the actualization
of the potential freedom through the Athenian democracy.
The case of Athenian democracy is no less rational or right but is an example of a
more advanced form of a justice system than the older tribal systems based on the family,
for the Athenian justice system brought the accused before a collective body of citizens
rather than the clan leader in order to arbitrate disputes (PoR para. 356). Athenian law
required that citizens accused of crimes were brought before a court in which the
evidence against the accused was presented to a collective body of citizens in order to
deem the accused guilty or innocent according to the evidence brought against her. The
case of Socrates was no different in the process that the democracy had set up. He was
brought to trial before equals who were presented with the evidence collected against
him. Socrates was allowed to defend himself against the prosecution as dictated by the
standards of Athenian legal proceedings. Finally, after the evidence had been presented
and Socrates made his defense, the body of citizens who were his equals voted in order to
deem him guilty or innocent. Thus Socrates was brought before a panel of rational equals
who decided by due process that the evidence brought against him was adequate to
prosecute him for the crimes that he had committed. Socrates was given a fair trial and
the proceedings were conducted in accordance with the standards of Athenian law.
Hence as a real system of justice that positively existed in the world and which
prosecuted Socrates according to the rational legal standards there could not have been an
injustice committed against him by bringing him to trial. Only if he was unjustly
prosecuted could there have been an injustice committed, and this can only be found
through the presentation of the evidence brought against him which according to Plato,
37
Xenophon, and Diogenes Laertius were slanderous and therefore unjust, but according to
Hegel, were accurate assessments of the philosophical work which made Socrates a key
figure within his Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
It is to these points that the argument must now turn, for according to Hegel
unless Socrates can be shown to be just and right in his actions against the Athenians, and
the Athenians can likewise be shown to be just and right in their actions against Socrates,
both the fate and the Method which belonged to this great philosopher cannot be said to
be tragic (HoP 2.B.3.c.2). On the first point, one must look at the relation of Socrates to
the accusations raised against him, and on the second point, one must look at his relation
to the people of Athens as guilty according to the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (HoP
2.B.3.a.a-b).
Hegel argues that the accusations raised against Socrates were later
characterized as unjust by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle who built their own
systems from the Socratic teachings, and the reason for this may be found in his character
which demonstrated a moral greatness that is just and right (HoP 2.B.3.c.1).
Furthermore, the narrative which describes his prosecution as an injustice was popularly
held by the Athenians who learned from the narratives of Xenophon and Plato that his
fate was due to an injustice committed against him by enemies to both him and Athens
that argued had committed crimes against the Demos (HoP 2.B.3.c.1). Both Xenophon
and Plato argued that Socrates’ fate was the result of a criminal element which became
known as the Thirty Tyrants, for as an example, in Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims that
Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon doing a greater harm to themselves than to Socrates by
“attempting to have a man unjustly executed (Plato Apology 30d).” Hegel revises this
story in order to demonstrate a concrete example of reconciliation between opposing
38
rights. The popular story of Socrates the moral philosopher is rejected by Hegel who
argues that the hero worship of Socrates after his death is a symptom of externally
imposed values of a later Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) that was unconnected to the epoch in
which Socrates was prosecuted. It is through his relations to his accusations and to the
Athenian people that Socrates can be shown to have been guilty according to his
accusations, but his fate was death because he refused to bend to the will of the Athenians
in his guilty judgment (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.3-2.B.3.b).
The First Accusation
The first accusation against Socrates that he brought new gods to Athens appears at first
ridiculous, for as he claimed in Xenophon’s Apology, he brought the same offerings as
every other Greek to the appropriate rituals (Xen Apol 11). Yet his sacrifices were not
under scrutiny, but rather his allegiance to the external divinations of the Oracle, for
Socrates had an internal voice which guided him throughout his life from the time of his
childhood: his Daemonion (Xen Apol 12-13). The Daemonion which spoke to Socrates
was in Hegel’s opinion the centerpiece of all Socratic Philosophy, for through the
Daemon Socrates had come to discover the self-knowledge that brought into reality the
dictum at the gate of the Oracle commanding its visitors to ‘know thyself’
(Ch2.B.3.a.a.3). The very foundation of the Socratic Dialectic rested in Hegel’s view on
39
this self-knowledge, for by knowing the self through claiming ignorance Socrates was
also able to cleanse the consciousness of Athenians as a physician might have burned
disease out of her patient (HoP2.B.2.a.1-2). According to his accusers, the new gods
which Socrates had brought came in the form of his Daemonion, and although it was not
a god in the proper sense of the word as an external being, it nonetheless conflicted with
the religious beliefs of Athens (Xen Apol 12). The Greeks had placed their morality with
the contingency of the individual in the circumstances of her life, but the judgments of
those circumstances were placed in external oracles (Xen Apol 12; Hegel HoP2.B.3a.1).
Socrates had introduced a new kind of god that was not external to the consciousness, but
resided within it, and this god who resided in the consciousness of Socrates gave him the
power of negativity which he employed in the use of his destructive Elenchus (HoP
2.B.3.a.a.3).
Thus the internal Daemonion which led Socrates to embrace his own
judgments was in contradiction to the external model of morality which the Athenians
had developed (HoP 2.B.3.a.a.3). Xenophon describes Socrates defense as follows:
“One thing that I marvel at in Meletus, gentlemen, is what may be the basis of his
assertion that I do not believe in the gods worshipped by the state; for all who
have happened to be near at the time, as well as Meletus himself,—if he so
desired,—have seen me sacrificing at the communal festivals and on the public
altars. As for introducing ‘new divinities,’ how could I be guilty of that merely in
asserting that a voice of God is made manifest to me indicating my duty? Surely
those who take their omens from the cries of birds and the utterances of men form
their judgments on ‘voices.’ Will any one dispute either that thunder utters its
‘voice,’ or that it is an omen of the greatest moment? Does not the very priestess
40
who sits on the tripod at Delphi divulge the god’s will through a ‘voice’? But
more than that, in regard to God’s foreknowledge of the future and his
forewarning thereof to whomsoever he will, these are the same terms, I assert, that
all men use, and this is their belief. The only difference between them and me is
that whereas they call the sources of their forewarning ‘birds,’ ‘utterances,’
‘chance meetings,’ ‘prophets,’ I call mine a ‘divine’ thing; and I think that in
using such a term I am speaking with more truth and deeper religious feeling than
do those who ascribe the gods’ power to birds. Now that I do not lie against God I
have the following proof: I have revealed to many of my friends the counsels
which God has given me, and in no instance has the event shown that I was
mistaken (Xen Apol 11-13).”
Xenophon tells us that Socrates was never seen by any Athenian to ever commit any
actions which could constitute impiety or godlessness nor did Socrates ever enter into
speculation on natural philosophy and the beginning of the world which his predecessors
had done (Xen Mem 1.c.1.2; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.a.a.1). Yet as pointed out by Hegel,
Socrates used his daemon in his defense to the Athenian court by claiming that it was the
voice of god who had led him to pursue the moral knowledge which he did (Xen Apol
13; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.a.a.1), and this knowledge which was grounded in a professed
ignorance was the basis for his negative philosophy (HoP 2.B.2.c.1).
His accusers
scoffed at such a defense, for Xenophon notes, half of them were envious that Socrates
was spoken to by god and the other half were in disbelief (Xen Apol 14). Hegel argues
that this reaction is no different than in our own time of individuals who claim to have
divine manifestations shown to them, for just as today there are very few who would have
41
believed such stories and would rather believe a person to claim such voices to suffer
insanity (HoP 2.B.3.a.a.2). Regardless, the god that resided in Socrates was not like the
God of the Christians whose Saints have claimed come to them and gives them messages,
but rather this internal voice has a stronger significance than being the voice of god:
Socrates had begun to rely on his own consciousness for the rightness and wrongness of
actions (HoP 2.B.2.c.1). Rather than seeking guidance from the religious interpreters of
divinations who were deemed capable of reading the messages from the gods sent
through the occurrences of external signs, Socrates looked inside his own consciousness
which he found could give him greater insight than the external interpretations given by
the religious hierarchy. Moreover, through his contact with god, his Daemonion gave
him the ability to be truly pious within his own consciousness and not merely appear
externally so.
The internal voice allowed Socrates to find god internally, but it was also in direct
conflict with the external manifestations of gods through the oracles and the rituals which
the Greeks accepted as significant of objectively true divination (HoP 2.B.3.a.a.1). The
objective truth of the external divinations was thus challenged and no longer did Socrates
rely on the religion of Athens in order to know the rightness of actions. The old way of
divination had prescribed specialists for the purpose of interpreting the flight of birds, the
entrails of sacrifices, or the bolts of lightning as having particular meanings which were
then relayed to the untrained individual (Xen Apol 12; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.a.a.1). The
process given by the diviners through the external judgments had provided Athenians a
basis for the spiritual growth of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), yet as an act of defiance
against the spirituality of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) Socrates had discovered
42
a Method in which he could refute the beliefs of the Athenians through the Elenchus
thereby allowing him to interpret for himself the signs given to him by his Daemonion
(HoP 2.B.2.c.1-2; HoP 2.B.3.a.a.3). His Daemonion became a medium for discovering
the truth of his subjective freedom which existed as an incubus within the Athenian
objective freedom, but which conflicted with the entire foundation of the Athenian
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), for through this new medium Socrates no longer had a need for
the external divinations of oracles (HoP 2.B.2.c.1-2; HoP 2.B.3.a.a.3). The subjective
freedom that Socrates actualized already existed as a potential within the Athenian
objective freedom, and thus because in Hegel’s philosophy the telos of human history is
the realization of freedom, Socrates was right and just to bring the voice within his
consciousness even as a negation of the Athenians’ externally imposed judgments. Yet
the external judgments provided by the oracle and diviners constituted the objective truth
of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and thus so too were the Athenians correct in resisting
the judgments of Socrates’ refutations (HoP 2.B.3.b.7).
Although through Socrates’ Daemonion and the new medium for discovery he
thereby cut out the need for the external divination of oracles, the oracle of Delphi had
declared him to be the wisest of the Greeks (Plato Apol 21a; Xen Apol 14) which for
Hegel is greatly significant in that the subjective freedom represented by Socrates’
internal judgments was also attested to as an objective truth through the external
divinations of the oracle (HoP 2.B.3.a.a.3). In Xenophon’s Apology, Socrates argues in
his defense: “let me tell you something more, so that those of you who feel so inclined
may have still greater disbelief in my being honoured of Heaven. Once on a time when
Chaerephon made inquiry at the Delphic oracle concerning me, in the presence of many
43
people Apollo answered that no man was more free than I, or more just, or more prudent
(Xen Apol 14).” The difference between Xenophon and Plato’s accounts of
Chaerophon’s excursion to the Delphic Oracle is extremely important for Hegel, for
rather than using the words “more free,” “more just,” and “more prudent,” Plato makes
Chaerophon’s question concern wisdom. Plato writes that Socrates argued: “Chaerophon
went to the Delphi at one time and he asked the oracle… if any man was wiser than I, and
the Pythian replied that no one was wiser (Plato Apol 21a). Yet for Hegel these two
different accounts are considered together in relation to his accusations, for through the
command “to know thyself” Socrates had replaced the need for the oracle’s power to
show individuals who they truly were through external judgments with power of the
internal judgments in the consciousness of the subject, and this action not only made the
individual subjectively free, but also gave her knowledge (HoP 2.B.2.c.1; HoP
2.B.3.a.a.3). In the place of external divinations was put the individual herself who from
the philosophy of Socrates was to become an oracle to herself, and thanks to his gift, only
through the process of self-discovery could the individual now find who she truly was
(HoP 2.B.2.c.1). Hegel believed that this was different than other philosophers who
looked into themselves because the consciousness of Socrates brought the consciousness
of individuals coming from the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) into his own consciousness so
that he might find the truth within the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit as a concrete
determination while other philosophers who looked within saw merely arbitrary choices
to be made between the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and their own fancy.
In Hegel’s terms this represents the replacement of the oracle with the individual
consciousness, for if the divinations revealed through the Daemonion can be interpreted
44
by the individual herself then there is no longer any reason to seek interpretation from
external sources (HoP 2.B.2.c.1; HoP 2.B.2.a.a.1). In the Hegelian philosophy this too is
the telos of all philosophy as the attainment of self-knowledge approaching the
knowledge of god as Aristotle defines her which is “thought thinking itself.” Similar to
the Christians of the Reformation who translated the Bible into their own languages and
interpreted it for themselves, Socrates had brought thought back into itself from
subjective freedom, which existed as a mere potential within the objective freedom, to the
attainment of self-knowledge as it reflects back upon itself (HoP 2.B.2.a.2; HoP
2.B.3.a.a.3). Socrates had pulled the heavens down to Earth, but in so doing had also
pulled the external objective truth of the Athenians to the ground where these dogmas
could be refuted as any other belief held by an individual. Nonetheless, in discovering
his own Method of interpretation through the Daemonion, Socrates had brought into
Athens a new method of discovery which took the power away from the religious
hierarchy thereby putting it into the hands of the people, yet this blasphemous act against
the religion of Athens was a criminal act that brought individuals to look into themselves
rather than the gods, who existed as external beings, for the truth which they sought. On
this account Socrates was guilty of the accusation, for Athens would never return to its
prior ignorance regarding the potential for subjective freedom within the truth of its
objective freedom after Socrates had liberated the consciousness to assume a position as
subjectively free. Even with the declaration of the oracle which gave him the external
reason to accept his subjective freedom, Socrates still had committed this first crime that
he was accused of and for this was deemed guilty on the first accusation.
45
The Second Accusation
In regards to the corruption of the Athenian youth, his teachings to the youth of Athens
whom he surrounded himself with was centered on the same moral teachings that his
Daemonion had led him to embrace, and this too taught the youths to lose respect for the
external truth of the Athenian Ethical Life (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.3). He taught the youth to
question the external judgments which had been accepted as objectively true through the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), for through his teaching of Morality (Moralität) he
instructed the youth to perform a negative dialectic upon the externally imposed objective
truths as taught through the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.3). To
this accusation Socrates argued that he was told by the oracle herself that he was the
wisest of all the Greeks, and was therefore fit to instruct the youth in the way he did, yet
because the oracle had made an external judgment, and because through this external
judgment he was given the sanction to teach the youth wisdom, Socrates was also
required to teach the youth to judge from their own consciousness thereby laying waste to
all external judgments of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (Xen Apol 15-21; HoP
2.B.3.a.b.3). Through his teaching he could help other Athenians seek the heights of selfknowledge which he himself had attained thereby raising the standard of the Athenian
citizen through the actualization of the potential within the Athenian objective freedom to
the same subjective freedom which he had been raised to. The entire manner of life
which Socrates instructed the youth to follow was greater than the common Athenian,
and this was evident in the declaration of the oracle, but this manner of life meant
46
destruction in order to bring the Athenian society to a new moment of consciousness
(HoP 2.B.1.c.2). On these points, Xenophon’s Socrates argues:
“Do not believe the god even in this without due grounds, but examine the god’s
utterance in detail. First, who is there in your knowledge that is less a slave to his
bodily appetites than I am? Who in the world more free,—for I accept neither
gifts nor pay from any one? Whom would you with reason regard as more just
than the one so reconciled to his present possessions as to want nothing beside
that belongs to another? And would not a person with good reason call me a wise
man, who from the time when I began to understand spoken words have never left
off seeking after and learning every good thing that I could? And that my labour
has not been in vain do you not think is attested by this fact, that many of my
fellow-citizens who strive for virtue and many from abroad choose to associate
with me above all other men? And what shall we say is accountable for this fact,
that although everybody knows that it is quite impossible for me to repay with
money, many people are eager to make me some gift? Or for this, that no
demands are made on me by a single person for the repayment of benefits, while
many confess that they owe me a debt of gratitude? Or for this, that during the
siege, while others were commiserating their lot, I got along without feeling the
pinch of poverty any worse than when the city’s prosperity was at its height? Or
for this, that while other men get their delicacies in the markets and pay a high
price for them, I devise more pleasurable ones from the resources of my soul, with
no expenditure of money? And now, if no one can convict me of misstatement in
all that I have said of myself, do I not unquestionably merit praise from both gods
47
and men? But in spite of all, Meletus, do you maintain that I corrupt the young by
such practices? And yet surely we know what kinds of corruption affect the
young; so you tell us whether you know of anyone who under my influence has
fallen from piety into impiety, or from sober into wanton conduct, or from
moderation in living into extravagance, or from temperate drinking into
sottishness, or from strenuousness into effeminacy, or has been overcome by any
other base pleasure (Xen Apol 15-19).”
The accusers could not argue without further evidence, thus they set about to find
something more substantive to put forward against him, and thus the accusation was
further defined when Meletus came forward to say that Socrates had actually taught
youths to disrespect their parents (Xen Apol 20; 29-31; Mem I.ii.49; Hegel
Ch2.B.3.a.b.1). The example of Anytus’ son was cited which peculiarly resembles the
story of the lord and bondsman from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Socrates had told
the son of Anytus that he should seek other employment than that of his father’s industry
in the tannery, for he should desire an employment that was of higher standing in society
fit for a free man rather than the tannery which was thought of as work fit for slaves (Xen
Apol 30; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.a.b.1). The work of a slave in the Phenomenology is the work
of an individual who is made to suppress her desires in order to gratify the desires of the
master.
Through the suppression of desires the slave reaches a higher state of
consciousness because the slave is a slave only to the master and not to the desires within
herself while the master is master only to the slave but a slave to the desires within
herself. Although his father owned slaves who did most of the work, there was still
something which marked the individual who owned such a business as lower than others.
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The son of Anytus took Socrates’ advice to heart, but Socrates also told others among
him that this boy would turn to vice in the end, and it is the cause of the vice prophesied
that Socrates believed would give the boy his true slavery (Xen Apol Para. 20; Hegel
Ch2.B.3.a.b.1), for just as in the story of the lord and bondsman the son of Anytus
remained a master of the slaves in the tannery while simultaneously becoming a slave to
himself. This prophecy came to pass, and the son of Anytus began to drink day and night
without regard to his duties, for the boy although in desire of a different life, was unable
to seize that alternative for himself (Xen Apol 31).
Socrates had given him the opportunity to become a true master of the self, but
instead the son of Anytus had taken this to mean that within society he was thought of as
second class due to the work which his father had given him (Xen Apol 31). In the work
of the master ruling over the slave, the boy had only the option of becoming a slave to
himself, but nevertheless, the evidence given by Meletus of teaching this boy to
disrespect his father was a clear case of Socrates corrupting the youth (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.12). Socrates replied to this accusation by making a comparison between his own work
and the search for individuals to lead in public offices (Xen Apol Para. 8-10; HoP
2.B.3.a.b.2). Who should be looked to for doing such work? Surely the individuals who
should lead in public offices should be able to lead the city to be greater than it was when
they came to office, and he continued that in the same way that leaders should be sought
who can improve the city it was not surprising that he had been sought after by youths for
his teaching rather than these youths looking to their parents, for in Socrates was a
teacher who could help individuals find the highest good and live the most noble life
(Xen Apol 17; HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2). Xenophon’s Socrates argued:
49
“I admit it…at least so far as education is concerned; for people know that I have
taken an interest in that. But in a question of health, men take the advice of
physicians rather than that of their parents; and moreover, in the meetings of the
legislative assembly all the people of Athens, without question, follow the advice
of those whose words are wisest rather than that of their own relatives. Do you not
also elect for your generals, in preference to fathers and brothers,—yes, by
Heaven! in preference to your very selves,—those whom you regard as having the
greatest wisdom in military affairs? [And] does it not seem to you an amazing
thing that while in other activities those who excel receive honours not merely on
a parity with their fellows but even more marked ones, yet I, because I am
adjudged by some people supreme in what is man’s greatest blessing,—
education,—am being prosecuted by you on a capital charge (Xen Apol 20-21)?”
Regardless, Hegel argues that this defense is unconvincing, for the external judgments
made by the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) required that sons and daughters not
looked outside of the home for their guidance, yet Socrates’ defense does not undo his
responsibility as an Athenian to follow the guidance of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and
instead of providing proof of his innocence, the argument instead strengthens the
accusations against him (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2-3). Hegel reads this passage as proof that
through Socrates’ claim to lead children to the good and noble he incriminates himself to
taking the part of a third party between parent and child, thus calling into question the
basic structure of the family which forms the backbone of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
(HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2). As discussed above, the family is the most basic level of the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit) in society, for in the family an individual learns her morality in
50
accordance with a communal structure, and hence through Socrates’ mediation between
parent and child he has disrupted the most basic foundation of society (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.1-2;
HoP 2.B.3.c.3). Yet this is representative of the Hegelian Tragedy within Socrates’ fate
as both bending to the standards laid by Athenians for a leader who improves the city,
which Socrates had done through his education of the youth, while at the same time
laying the foundation for the destruction of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) within the city
through that education for the purpose of improving it (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.1-2; HoP
2.B.3.c.3).
Hegel remarks that through the Method which Socrates developed, he had brought
the desire for something other than that which Anytus had taught his son to value into his
consciousness, and coming from the mouth of a great man like Socrates, this was of great
significance (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2). Although the lessons which Socrates had given him were
not the lessons taken, the story of Anytus is representative of the general lead Socrates
gave to youths that taught them to disregard the external judgments made by the Athenian
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and in teaching this to the youth Socrates had disrupted the
foundation of Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) as such (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2). As a structure of
family, civil society and the state, the ethical life of Athens is through Socrates’ teachings
attacked at its most basic level which thus begins a chain reaction of destruction, one link
to the next, until it reached the state (HoP 2.B.3.c.3). Socrates had taught youths to
disregard their parents’ teachings by providing them with the instruction that entailed the
subjective freedom held within the consciousness was greater than that of the objective
freedom held within the external judgments of Athenian culture, and by committing such
a crime he had become an enemy to the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) of the Athenians.
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Hegel claims that obedience to one’s parents is the first moral principle in the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit) of society, hence through teaching children disobedience, Socrates had
laid waste to the entire system (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.2). Hegel admits that in the modern era
such teaching would not be punished, and one may criticize the Athenian court on this,
but this criticism would be completely external laid upon the justice of Athens out of
context while according to the historical context of Socrates’ trial, the Athenian’s
accusations and subsequent verdict of guilt were perfectly justified, yet so too was
Socrates righteous, for he had discovered the source of Athenian freedom through his
absolutely free will (HoP 2.B.3.a.b.3).
Refusing Guilt and Choosing Death
Thus through the introduction of his daemon into the Athenian society, and the teachings
which he delivered to the young, Socrates had in fact committed the crimes which his
accusers raised against him.
His daemon had introduced a new internal subjective
divinity beyond that possible by the external divinities of the Athenian religion, and the
distribution of his thought amongst the Athenian youths had taught them that they could
look elsewhere than to their parents for guidance. Yet none of this explains why Socrates
had to die, for such a harsh punishment appears unjustified (HoP 2.B.3.a.1; HoP
2.B.3.a.b.2; HoP 2.B.3.b.1). In order to understand this turn of events one must look next
52
to the structure of Athenian laws, for in these laws and Socrates reaction to them, Hegel
believes one may find the answer to the question of why he had to die.
Hegel claims that according to Athenian laws there was a provision which
allowed the accused to choose or suggest an alternative punishment to that given by the
accusers, yet the punishment had to be in accordance with the crime that the accused had
been convicted of, and thus the guilty Socrates had this choice before him at the closing
of the trial. The choice of punishment according to Athenian law did not consist of
challenging the accusation and subsequent verdict which Socrates continued to do after
the court had read the results of the vote, but instead only what sort of punishment the
accused would face (HoP 2.B.3.b1). In the case of Socrates, he had the choice of either a
monetary payment or exile from the city of Athens, both of which he refused to accept as
punishment for the reason that he believed even after the verdict that he was innocent of
the alleged crimes (Xen Apol 23; DL II.ii.XXI; Plato Apol 36a-38b). Socrates declares
that “those who instructed the witnesses that they must bear false witness against me,
perjuring themselves to do so, and those who were won over to do this must feel in their
hearts a guilty consciousness of great impiety and iniquity; but as for me, why should my
spirit be any less exalted now than before my condemnation, since I have not been proved
guilty of having done any of the acts mentioned in the indictment (Xen Apol 24)?” While
he had been judged guilty by a jury of equals, and, as Hegel argues, he had in fact
committed the crimes for which he had been accused, Socrates was still unwilling to
admit this guilt. Hegel cites Xenophon in saying that Socrates would not accept these as
punishment, for if he had then he would be forced to admit his guilt, and the only other
53
punishment which the court found acceptable was death, so Socrates had this before him
as the only other alternative (Xen Apol 22-23; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.b1). Xenophon writes:
“[W]hile Socrates’ whole concern was to keep free from any act of impiety
toward the gods or any appearance of wrong-doing toward man, he did not think
it meet to beseech the jury to let him escape death; instead, he believed that the
time had now come for him to die. This conviction of his became more evident
than ever after the adverse issue of the trial. For, first of all, when he was bidden
to name his penalty, he refused personally and forbade his friends to name one,
but said that naming the penalty in itself implied an acknowledgment of guilt
(Xen Apol 22-23).”
Although he had not refused to allow either his associates or himself to name a
punishment other than death because it would entail his guilt, the question of his guilt
was no longer under consideration, for Socrates had been given a fair trial rather than
being rubbed off as tyrants tend to do to their enemies, and as described above, this fact
signifies the fairness involved in his prosecution (HoP 2.B.3.b1). If the Thirty Tyrants
had decided not to give him a trial before the Athenian people or if Meletus, Anytus, and
Lycon had assassinated him in the night then it would be clear the injustice which was
laid upon him, but such counter-factual nonsense is not the case. Furthermore, any
injustice committed against him only appears as an injustice according to revisionist
narratives, for as shown above, the crimes committed by Socrates were in Hegel’s view
justly accused of him: 1) he was guilty of these crimes, 2) although Socrates was correct
in committing these crimes against Athens, he nonetheless had done so, and 3) he refused
to admit his guilt even after he had been justly tried. The crimes committed against the
54
Athenians did not warrant such a harsh penalty as death, but so too was this penalty not
chosen by the Athenian court, but rather it was Socrates himself who chose the ultimate
punishment by his silence in the face of his conviction (HoP 2.B.3.b.1). The court would
have allowed Socrates to provide a suitable punishment for himself if he had so desired,
yet as quoted above, “he believed that the time had now come for him to die (Xen Apol
22).” Thus his silence which represented his own wishes for a capital punishment was
the cause of his death sentence, for there was in fact a choice to be made that would have
allowed him to continue his philosophical work outside of Athens if he had so desired
(Xen Apol 22-23; Plato Crito 43ff).
Hegel remarks that this appears to be contradicted by his conversation later in
prison with Crito when Socrates says that he would not flee Athens for the reason that he
found it better to submit to the Athenian laws than to wrong Athens (Crito 50a-ff; HoP
2.B.3.b.2), for Socrates remarks that “if we leave here without the city’s permission, [we
are] harming people whom we should least do harm to (Crito 49e-50a).” Yet this later
submission was far different than his refusal to submit in the court, for in court he was
confronted by the consciousness of individual Athenians’ beliefs while in prison he was
bending to the will of the Athenian people as a true way of life embodied in the objective
freedom of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (HoP 2.B.3.b.2). He willingly drank the poison
knowing that his death was the will of the people which he had to acknowledge as a true
power, and as Hegel claims the noblest and highest of powers (HoP 2.B.3.b.3). To do
wrong to the city at this point would have made Socrates commit three crimes: 1) against
his parents who raised him as an Athenian citizen, 2) the city which educated him, and 3)
against the legal process which would allow him “to persuade [it] to do better (Crito 51e-
55
52a).” Before the court his silence was a mark of his bravery to fight for the actualization
of the Athenians’ individual consciousnesses through his own subjective freedom, but in
prison his submission was an acknowledgement that there too was truth in the people’s
will as the actualized objective freedom of the city. The contradiction of his earlier
silence and his later submission is contained in Hegel’s quotation of the last words of
Antigone before her death (Soph Antig Verses 925-926; Hegel HoP 2.B.3.b.2):
“If this seems good unto the gods,
Suffering, we may be made to know our error.”
As in the case of Antigone, the contradiction between the rightness of Socrates refusal
and the just conviction laid upon him is resolved in the Hegelian theory of tragedy, for it
was the rightness of his acts and the justness of his Athenian accusers that make his story
a true tragedy. Hegel explains that it was the rationality of both the objective and
subjective sides in this tragedy that led up to the contradiction, and in the contradiction’s
resolution through Socrates’ death can be found a tragic resolution that replays itself in
the rational unfolding of other great historical characters (HoP 2.B.3.c.2). The quotation
from Antigone represents the reconciliation of the tragic hero with the structure of society
as it develops around her and the capitulation of the hero to her tragic fate. While she
does let fate seize her in the end, the cause of this fate is found in the character herself
who refuses to accept the judgments made by the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), for through
her resistance she has shaped not only her own future, but also the future of her society.
Socrates tells Crito at the very end of the dialogue something which appears as an
allusion to Sophocles and Plato’s own literary background as a poet when he says:
56
“Let it be then, Crito, and let us act in this way, since this is the way the god is
leading us (Crito 54d-e).”
Socrates had accepted his fate as the only path to follow into the future, and his final
capitulation to the power of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) was a central part of his refusal.
It was indeed the path which the god, or his Daemonion, was leading him, for it was only
in this direction toward death as the martyred philosopher that philosophy itself could
come to actualize the potential as a world changing device which it held within itself. He
was both rational and just in his action. His misfortune could only have been rational if
he had willed it himself in his subjective freedom, and had been completely justified in
his actions, but so too must have been the actions of the collective will which he battled
against (HoP 2.B.3.c.1). Between these two sides of the Tragedy both Socrates and the
Athenian state were completely rational, right, and just in their actions toward the other
(HoP 2.B.3.c.2). It is here that the story proves to be a true tragedy according to Hegel,
for through the rational actions of both parties there cannot be said one side was unjust,
and this should be extended to the entirety of the Socratic Method in order to understand
Hegel’s criticisms of the Romantic Irony as it appears in the arbitrary will. The death of
Socrates is not just a sad story of an innocent man punished for a crime which he did not
commit, for he did in fact commit the crimes of which he was accused and prosecuted,
yet at the same time, Socrates was right for committing those crimes, and “from the
regret it does not follow that in itself it should not have occurred, but only that it should
not have happened for their consciousness. Both together constitute the innocence which
is guilty and atones for its guilt; it would only be senseless and despicable if there were
no guilt (HoP 2.B.3.c.1).” The will of the people and the subjective freedom of Socrates
57
both had to be correct in order for this story to be considered a tragedy, for if he had been
an innocent man deemed guilty by tyrants then his death would be merely a sad ending to
his incredible life (HoP 2.B.3.c.2). Yet although his silence signified his refusal to
capitulate to the Athenian authority and his dissent against the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit),
this silence is in Hegel’s interpretation a testimony of Socrates’ moral greatness. In his
refusal to submit to the court and through his Apology, Socrates had brought into the
formalities of the Athenian legal system his destructive negative philosophy (HoP
2.B.3.b.4).
It was through the universal content of his negative methodology that
Socrates had come to acquire his accusations, and so too it was through this negative
methodology that he would refuse to submit to his accusations.
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CHAPTER 3:
THE SOCRATIC METHOD AND DIALECTIC
It is with the comprehension of the conflict of wills that the Socratic Method becomes
central to the discussion of Socrates’ fate (Schicksal), for as outlined in the previous
sections, it was the conflict of Socrates’ absolutely free will turned back upon the
concrete objective will of the Athenians which brought about his trial. It is with the
dialectic of will that the Socratic dialectic may be discovered as the Socratic Method.
Hegel describes the Socratic Method as containing three parts which each serve as keys
unlocking the potential within an individual and freeing one from the tyranny of the
collective. These three parts include: 1) the critique of the Socratic irony which is
confused with his elenchus, 2) the art of midwifery which allows him to assist into
thought that which is already in the consciousness via making abstract ideas concrete, and
3) the surprise that the individual feels when she realizes that the Truth is already in the
consciousness. These three moments in the Socratic Method are the origin and cause of
his demise, but they are so too the origin and cause of philosophy becoming in and for
itself. The reason for this is that the method is always directed at something else, thus it
cannot have an affirmative character but rather must be destructive toward whatever is in
its view. Yet in its destructiveness Socrates has brought Philosophy into being in and for-
59
itself by touching on the critical negativity which allows for the philosopher to dismantle
false consciousness.
The Socratic Method as Negative Dialectic
This project of the negative consciousness as represented in the infinitely free
consciousness demonstrated that through the elenchus Socrates could critique
immanently the consciousness of those who claimed to have knowledge of justice, piety,
courage, moderation and wisdom, for their knowledge actually came from external
judgments about the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) or the Sophists’ arbitrary will which
created in their mind a limited or unlimited but arbitrary consciousness (HoP 2.B.2.a.1;
HoP 2.B.2.c.1-2).
It is within this gulf between the truth, external judgments, and
arbitrary decisions that Socrates discovered the subjective freedom (subjektive Freiheit)
to actualize the potential held within the Athenians’ objective freedom thereby unlocking
the potential for universal truth found within the arbitrary wills of the Athenian citizens,
for through the elenctic proofs given by Socrates, the concrete false consciousness of the
Athenians as a whole were brought into the consciousness of the interlocutor (HoP
2.B.1.c.2). This project is the starting point for all philosophy, for as Hegel argues, all
philosophy must “begin with a puzzle in order to bring about reflection; everything must
be doubted, all presuppositions given up, to reach the truth as created through the concept
(HoP 2.B.1.c.2).” Yet in the search for knowledge through the negative philosophy one
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must lay waste to the false consciousness as a concrete determination that makes its
appearance as the object of the infinitely free subjective will in order to make way for the
creation of something new.
It is this that gives rise to the Elenchus, and Hegel
characterizes the Socratic Method as follows:
“What he wished to effect was, that when other people brought forward their
principles, he, from each definite proposition, should deduce as its consequence
the direct opposite of what the proposition stated, or else allow the opposite to be
deduced from their own inner consciousness without maintaining it directly
against their statements. Sometimes he also derived the opposite from a concrete
case. But as this opposite was a principle held by men as firmly as the other, he
then went on to show that they contradicted themselves (HoP 2.B.1.a.1).”
From the above the Elenchus is described as a discourse which is always between
interlocutors, one of whom asks questions and the other of whom answers, but peculiarly
the puzzle which is sought to be solved comes not merely from some externality outside
of the mind, rather the puzzle itself comes directly from the consciousness of the
interlocutors. Even as a deduction of the opposite from a concrete case, it is the concrete
case as it is comprehended by an individual, for the as a concrete case of the external
judgments are from the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) so too must these cases be grasped by
the individual as a concrete case by the individual in order for the refutation to enter the
consciousness. The Elenchus is the above quotation thus has a double sided importance,
for on the one hand, the Elenchus is directed against an individual consciousness and
therefore is subjective in its determination, but on the other hand, the Elenchus is also
directed toward the concrete external case of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and therefore
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is objective in its determination (Bestimmung). Because the concreteness of the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit) is an external judgment as a true determination brought into the mind
through participation within one’s society, and because the arbitrary will is the grasping
of the tautologous truth that a judgment is truly made, Socrates is required to accept the
answers given by his interlocutors as the truth while asking questions about that truth
(HoP 2.B.2.a.1). Yet as a determination within the consciousness of an individual, the
Elenchus remains as a concrete determination outside of the consciousness of Socrates
and his interlocutor as an inter-subjective relationship between him and his interlocutor,
and hence as an inter-subjective relationship the Elenchus becomes a concrete
determination of the truth. The centrality of this claim to the following argument must be
explained in order to continue the characterization of the Socratic Method. This requires
one to look at the concepts of inter-subjectivity and trans-subjectivity within Hegel as
described by Seyla Benhabib in her book Critique, Norm, and Utopia.
Benhabib argues that on the one hand, through participation within an Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), there is a relationship between subjective wills that becomes objective
through inters-subjectivity, while on the other hand, through the absolutely free will, the
philosopher is able to see the world from an externalized (entauserte) viewpoint as does
an audience member watching a tragedy (Benhabib1986). She is critical of the transsubjective for viewing society from a distance as not involved while the inter-subjective
is integrally a part of the social fabric, but this can be extended from Benhabib’s own
interpretation and further explained as a problem of metaphysics. Hegel took Kant’s
problem of knowing the thing-in-itself as central to his own philosophy. The solution to
the problem is explained as a confusion of the thing-in-itself, which Hegel says is a thing
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in mere potentiality, and the thing-for-itself, which is a thing in actuality. Only conscious
beings can have an actuality for-themselves, but human beings can also unlock the
potential held within things-in-themselves so that they may become actualized for-us. It
is through concepts of things-for-us that one can come to a concept of the world as a
system of inter-subjective relations which are all distinct for-themselves and also united
in their totality of conflicting elements. In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit he explains
that in order to get from pure subjectivity to objectivity one must communicate with
others in a shared language that can convey a conceptual understanding of the world and
describe things in that world as they are for-her, and it is this inter-subjectivity which
further forms the foundation of objective freedom. Hence through this inter-subjectivity
she can also bring into the consciousness of others the conflict between opposing rights
of the individual and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), for the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) itself
is a system of inter-subjective relationships between individuals. Yet in order to grasp
these inter-subjective relationships outside of subjectivity, the individual who
contemplates the relationship between an individual and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit),
must position herself as a third person. The position of third person as a trans-subjective
individual, assuming the role of intermediary between the first and second person,
becomes the interpreter of the conflict between the individual and the Ethical Life of her
society.
Thus, as a critical theory, the necessity of the trans-subjective position is found
within the philosopher’s ability to critique, and hence, the dispute between the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit) of Athens and the Sophists’ arbitrary will which grasped the potential
for subjective freedom within the Athenian objective freedom was mediated by Socrates
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who found the truth in his own consciousness. In part this makes Benhabib seem to have
been wrong, yet she is also correct, for it was inter-subjectivity that allowed Socrates to
take advantage of the moment within the objective and subjective freedom as
potentialities for his infinite subjective will. Through an inter-subjective relationship to
the world as it is for-her and as she is for-others, the individual is given the ability to
know the world beyond her own perception thereby cutting to the core of social reality.
It is this relationship to the world as it is for-others that the potential for the individual to
become subjectively free resides, yet although this process can only be achieved through
collective interaction in a shared language, the moments of consciousness which allow
one to become self-conscious are all internal processes which cannot be experienced by
any other than the self-conscious subject. Hence through the process of becoming forherself, the individual must confront both herself through her own consciousness, the
subjective freedom of others, and the objective freedom of the society in which she finds
herself. It is in this confrontation that the individual finds her own subjective freedom in
opposition to the subjective freedom of others, yet it is only through the trans-subjective
relationship to this inter-subjective relationship that the individual comes to grasp an
infinite subjective will such as Socrates’. Therefore, both the inter-subjectivity and the
tran-subjectivity described by Benhabib can be found in the will of Socrates, and thus as
the original instance of critical theory, Socrates brings together both moments of intersubjective and trans-subjective.
As an inter-subjective relationship between Socrates and his interlocutors, the
Elenchus represents a moment in which the determination of the consciousness becomes
aporetic, yet the aporia that Hegel associates with this moment of the Elenchus is only
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inter-subjective at the first level as an interlocution between individuals. Through the
Elenchus and the universal determination of the Good, Socrates goes beyond the mere
inter-subjectivity required of the refutation to become a trans-subjective judge of the
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the arbitrary will. Between the Ethical Life (Sitlichkeit)
and the arbitrary will there too is an inter-subjectivity found between the individual’s
consciousness and the consciousness of other individuals within her society. As the
trans-subjective mediator, the initial step taken by Socrates against the positive
appearance of a concrete determination within the dialectic was negative as a negation of
negativity, and in order to take this step, he had accept the truth of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) and the arbitrary will as two truths, subjective truth and objective truth,
related to one another through an inter-subjective relationship of individuals. Yet in
order to take the step of the trans-subjective mediator, he was required to also restrict
himself from assenting to a subjective truth within his own consciousness, and “thus
Socrates taught those with whom he associated to know that they knew nothing; indeed,
what is more, he himself said that he knew nothing, and therefore taught nothing (HoP
2.B.1.a.1).” Hence through the ignorance which Socrates asserted as his starting point of
the search for knowledge, one may find the trans-subjective relationship of himself to
both the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the arbitrary will, for only by refusing to assent to
his own subjective judgments could he enter into dialogue with his interlocutors as
representative of the truth. As such, it is to the claim of ignorance that the source of
negativity is found as the starting point for both the Socratic dialectic and philosophy
itself.
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The negativity behind the Socratic Method is displayed explicitly in the Elenchus,
for it is here that the contradiction found within the consciousness of the interlocutor is
negated as a consciousness based in merely external or arbitrary judgments, but the
foundation behind Socrates’ Elenchus is found in his professed ignorance which is
documented in Plato’s Apology where Socrates claims in to “know what [he] does not
know (Plato Apol 21d).” When compared to the external judgment of the Delphic oracle
that he was the wisest among the Greeks, a contradiction seems to appear, for the
common assumption about wisdom is that those who possess it have knowledge and thus
are not ignorant. According to Socrates in this dialogue, his affirmation of ignorance
brought him to search for an individual who held any sort of knowledge from which he
could infer that he was not himself the wisest as the Delphic oracle had claimed (Plato
Apol 21b-c).
In Hegel’s assessment, it is this contradiction between wisdom and
ignorance that Socrates imports the foundation of philosophy from his own consciousness
into the objective freedom of Athenian society and the subjective freedom of the
interlocutor. Hence the consciousness which Socrates refutes is representative of the
false consciousness associated with external judgments from the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) belonging to the normal everyday Athenian and the false consciousness of
the Sophists’ arbitrary will as a merely tautological truth.
Thus the Athenians’
consciousness as concrete beliefs about the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) or the arbitrary
judgments about the Good became the object of refutation for the trans-subjective
critique. The uncovering of the consciousness as either limited or unlimited arbitrary
through questions that assent to the truth of the subjective and objective judgments within
the consciousness of the interlocutor represents Socrates’ negation of both the Athenians’
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objective freedom and the Sophists arbitrary will, and thus the power of negativity is the
actualization of the concrete universal truth from the potentiality in both the objective
and subjective wills hidden within the consciousness of his interlocutors. This universal
truth is the self-consciousness which knows that the good has not yet been determined by
the Ethical Life (HoP 2.B.2.a.3), yet at this point in the dialectic this universal truth is
negative in that Socrates professed to be ignorant of the Good.
It might appear from this above characterization of the Elenchus that Socrates is a
Skeptic in Hegel’s narrative, and the centrality of Skepticism in Hegel’s philosophy is
defended by Forster in his book Hegel and Skepticism (Forster 1989), but this misses the
point of the importance of Socrates in the overall narrative, for although the Elenchus is
negative in this first moment, it is only as a negation of the negativity within the
consciousness of the interlocutor. Still, this does not make Hegel’s Socrates a skeptic as
Nicholas White has argued, for it is not that Socrates has become a skeptic in the face his
interlocutors asking for proof of their conviction, but rather that his interlocutor’s can be
tested whether or not their beliefs are true through the elenchus (White 372ff). The
elenchus acts as a method of criticism which demonstrates the universal truth of the
interlocutor’s beliefs through refutation rather than the skeptical suspension of belief
which would be required had Hegel thought this to be the case. This is the standard of
Socrates universality which must be grasped in order to move from the negative moment
to the negation of negativity. The problem with White’s interpretation of Hegel is that he
does not understand (admittedly) Hegel’s philosophy which would include the
importance of the negative moment in the Logic. With this in mind it becomes very
difficult to interpret Hegel’s Socrates as anything other than the Socrates who by all
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contemporary resources seems to have practiced philosophy through the refutation of
beliefs. Through an immanent critique of his interlocutor’s negativity, Socrates brings
first into the consciousness that there is contradiction, yet as the first moment of deducing
contradiction, this is a completely formal step from which no positive results follow, and
hence cannot constitute an accurate depiction of the dialectical project that Hegel finds in
Socrates. Rather as a negative moment, the Elenchus is only the first moment of Socratic
Method which seeks to actualize within the individual the true potential hidden inside her
consciousness as a subjective will as the negation of negativity within this first moment.
The Socratic Method as the Source of Positivity
It is in this actualization of the self as a conflict of will between the Socratic Genius
(Daemonion) and Athens that Hegel locates the positivity of the Socratic dialectic, and
this dialectic is the Socratic Method. Hegel explains “Socrates’ philosophy is found, as
also what is known as the Socratic method, which must in its nature be dialectic (HoP
2.B.1.a.1),” for in the Method is located the path for his interlocutors to follow him
toward self-actualization, and while appearing as purely negative in the Elenchus, its
effect is in the end positive as the negation of negativity. It is here that the dialectic
becomes positive, for in the Parmenidean paradox of Being and Nothingness which
blemishes the aspirations of his predecessors, Socrates escapes by finding the self where
there is nothing and thus as in his claim to know nothing Socrates actually comes to know
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the self. It is through the Socratic Method that nothingness becomes Being, in that what
is admitted to be unknown frees Socrates to come to know the potential for freedom
within the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will. This
actualization of the potential within the objective and subjective will is described by
Hegel as Socrates’ art of midwifery with which he said to have learned from his mother
Phaenarete (Plato Theaetetus 149a). Socrates explain in the Theaetetus (148e-1151d) that
through bringing others to admit to their ignorance the philosopher can bring them to find
in their own consciousness the truth of what was before unknown.
Through the process of refutation, Socrates instructs firstly that the individual is
ignorant of what was before dogmatically believed and secondly that the individual knew
that she was ignorant all along. This is the moment of recollection from the Meno which
is left unexplained by Plato until the Theaetetus. The Genius (Daemonion) of Socrates is
his daemonion which brings him from the potentiality within the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will to actualize his own subjective freedom by
knowing himself.
This return into himself from the externality of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) and back into externality from the pure internality of the arbitrary will is
present in Hegel’s reading of recollection in the Meno. As discussed above regarding
Socrates’ infinitely free subjective will, the Delphic categorical imperative “know
thyself” represents the recollection of oneself and requires the reflection on the
externality of experience within the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). The arbitrariness of the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) was actualized by the pure internality of the Sophists’
arbitrary will as in the Protagorean judgment that “man is the measure,” yet because the
individual through the Sophists’ arbitrary will represents the pure internality of self-
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reflection as a bad infinity, the actualization of freedom was incomplete. In order to
bring one from the bad infinity of the arbitrary will to the good infinity of the free will
Socrates was required to recollect his subjective freedom as it exists within the
externality of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit).
It is for this reason that Hegel argued against reading of the Socratic Method as a
purely negative Method ending only in destruction, and because it is this midwifery
which acts as a negation of negativity thereby becoming a positive determination in the
world, the dialectic itself is negative and destructive only in order to heal. This moment
of negativity is found in the medical analogy of the Gorgias where Socrates argues that
“what cosmetics is to gymnastics, pastry baking is to medicine (Gorgias 465c),” and
hence what democracy is to dialectic. Cosmetics merely cover up imperfection that
might have been avoided through gymnastics, pastry baking brings pleasure to the body
for a short time while medicine brings health in the long term, and democracy brings
arbitrary freedom that might become actualized so that the Athenian citizens are truly
free. The analogy goes further in Socrates’ interlocution with Callicles quoted above, for
the true political craft is representative of the dialectic, and thus as the refutation of
Socrates’ interlocutors leads from the negation of positive dogmas to the negation of the
negation as the actualization of freedom, the true political craft is the cure to the disease
found within the democracy. Medicine, especially during this era, was often times
painful involving burning and the drinking of poison in order to bring about regained
health through the destruction of disease in the body. If the disease was an external
infection, the application of burns upon that infection were meant to eliminate the
infection from that portion of the body while if the disease was internal, the drinking of
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poisons were meant to bring the body back into balance from its diseased state through
eliminating the infection within. Similarly, through the negation of positive dogmas
within the Athenian democracy through dialectic which in the Socratic Method is often
times painful for the interlocutor, Socrates eliminates the disease within the democracy in
order to bring about a stronger individual.
When the veil is lifted the interlocutor not only is in contact with her own
ignorance, but is also in contact with the self which before had been veiled. Socrates
explains the art of Midwifery as the conclusion to bring his interlocutor to aporia, for “at
first some of [my interlocutors] may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but
as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make
progress—a progress which is both amazing to other people and themselves. And yet it
is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned anything from me; it is that they
discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the
light. But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them their offspring (Plato Theaetetus
150d-e).” As the bringing into the consciousness of his interlocutors a positive judgment,
the art of Midwifery represents the positive resolution as a negation of negativity to the
negativity contained in the Elenchus. Hegel explains:
“It is the assisting into the world of the thought which is already contained in the
consciousness of the individual — the showing from the concrete, unreflected
consciousness, the universality of the concrete, or from the universally posited,
the opposite which already is within it. Socrates hence adopts a questioning
attitude, and this kind of questioning and answering has thus been called the
Socratic method; but in this method there is more than can be given in questions
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and replies… [T]he reason why Socrates set to work with questions in bringing
the good and right into consciousness in universal form was that he did not
proceed from what is present in our consciousness in a simple form through
setting forth the conception allied to it in pure necessity, which would be a
deduction, a proof or, speaking generally, a consequence following from the
conception, but this concrete, as it is in natural consciousness without thinking of
it, or universality immersed in matter, he analyzed, so that through the separation
of the concrete, he brought the universal contained therein to consciousness as
universal (HoP 2.B.1.b.1-3).”
The effect of this midwifery as a positive determination on the interlocutor is an
astonishment to find that the truth as the infinite free will was hidden within their
consciousness all along. As Plato wrote, it was “amazing to both other people and
themselves (Plato Theaetetus 150d),” for all along the truth of infinite freedom had been
hidden in their own consciousness that they themselves did not have access to. From the
prior determination of the consciousness which was contained in a false belief of the
interlocutor, Socrates guides the interlocutor into a new consciousness which allows the
universal to appear from the concrete case under inspection. The consciousness attained
through this midwifery enters into thought, thus what was within the consciousness all
along goes from the concrete of sensuous experience to the abstract thought and then
back to the concrete in thought by displaying to the interlocutor that what was before a
concrete determination has become an abstraction which must be negated through
thought. All of this was before at the fingertips of the interlocutor without her seeing it,
but before Socrates had guided them to this new level, the truth had never occurred to
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her. Hegel explains this final moment of surprise as the result of the negativity within the
Socratic Elenchus extended to the consciousness of his interlocutor:
“The result [of the Elenchus] attained was partly the altogether formal and
negative one of bringing home to those who conversed with Socrates, the
conviction that, however well acquainted with the subject they had thought
themselves, they now came to the conclusion, “that what we knew has refuted
itself.” Socrates thus put questions in the intent that the speaker should be drawn
on to make admissions, implying a point of view opposed to that from which he
started. That these contradictions arise because they bring their ideas together, is
the drift of the greater part of Socrates’ dialogues; their main tendency
consequently was to show the bewilderment and confusion which exist in
knowledge. By this means, he tries to awaken shame, and the perception that what
we consider as true is not the truth, from which the necessity for earnest effort
after knowledge must result(HoP 2.B.1.c.1).”
From the inter-subjective relationship between Socrates and his interlocutors which is the
Elenchus, and the trans-subjective relationship of Socrates to the relationship between his
interlocutors’ consciousness and the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) which is in the art of
Midwifery, the final moment is thus the arrival of the concrete determination of thought
as the actualization of potential within his interlocutors. The nothingness which is held
within the abstract thought that negates the prior concrete determination becomes a
concrete thought that is a negation of the negativity within that abstract thought. All of
this comes as a result of the negativity within the Socratic Method which depends upon
the affirmation of ignorance. There can be no positive beliefs held by Socrates, in that
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the Method requires only the positive beliefs of Socrates’ interlocutors in order to refute
these beliefs immanently, for through negativity the positive concrete determination of
the truth in consciousness is born, and through the universal truth actualized by the
negation Socrates has become the first philosopher to come to grasp the universal truth in
the historical consciousness. Before the arrival of this Method, the Methods of his
predecessors were not based in a negative philosophical Method which challenged
previous philosophical views dialectically, but instead just new philosophies which were
claimed to be stronger through an external critique of those preceding them. Before
Socrates, if a system of thought could explain more than its rivals, then that system was a
better system of thought, but through the immanence of critique and the positive
resolution through the Socratic dialectic, thought itself evolved into what is today
considered philosophy.
Thus negativity is the central characteristic of Socrates’ philosophy, and is
extended to all dialectical treatments of philosophical subjects coming after him, for to
prove external judgments false through an internal evaluation of those judgments
becomes the universal determination of truth through the concrete case and this is the
method of immanent critique. This is too the embodiment of philosophy’s telos, for in
finding consciousness the individual attains a level of thought beyond that of sensuous
experience. The thought which is found within consciousness approaches that of god
which, as described above, is thought thinking itself. So too does the individual find
themselves in and for themselves, for through the bringing of the thought into
consciousness the individual finds their potential and becomes actualized in their
subjective individuality. The destruction brought on the individual through the elenchus
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builds a new structure within the consciousness that leaves the individual as a new
person. Yet in becoming for themselves, the interlocutor too finds that through the
knowledge of nothing which Socrates had claimed becomes the destruction of the old
way of life. The individual becomes self-determined in their subjectivity, but this selfdetermination is the end of the ethical life which had before been the concrete
determination constituting the society’s freedom.
Conclusion
The judgments which Socrates made through this method attained the form of universal
judgments that come from concrete cases, and it was because these judgments were of the
concrete case that they represented the object of his infinitely free subjective will. The
objective will in this moment is thus a manifestation of the absolutely free subjective will
as an external concrete determination of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the
Sophists’ arbitrary will. Yet this act of negation was the not basis for the infinite
subjective freedom of Socrates, for it was only through his negative consciousness that
Socrates came to know the universal truth of the Athenian’s unactualized freedom (HoP
2.B.2.a.2). It was through his infinitely free subjective will that Socrates attained his
power to find within the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) a consciousness that had not
yet grasped its potential. His power was attested to by the testimony of the oracle at
Delphi who said that he above all other Greeks was the wisest (Plato Apol 21d), and in
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Hegel’s view, this coming from the oracle as an external judgment gave his own internal
judgments an authority which as internal judgments alone they could not have. His
wisdom according to Hegel came in the form of his Daemon which allowed him to
reflexively turn back upon himself in pursuit of knowledge, and through this reflexivity
came to actualize the maxim ‘know thyself.’ The fact that this maxim came as an
external imperative for those who went on pilgrimage to the oracle, Socrates had also
followed the external imperative to its logical conclusion, for he had come to know
himself through his reflexivity, and Socrates’ claim that he knew nothing gave him
reason to search for knowledge in order to prove that he had no wisdom (Plato Apol 21bc).
It was not the mere feigning of ignorance which brought Socrates to reach truth,
but the truthful claim that he in fact did know nothing which allowed him to analyze the
thoughts of Athenian citizens to find that Athens had reached an age in which all
determinations of the Good were founded on falsity. Hegel explains that “it may actually
be said that Socrates knew nothing, for he did not reach the systematic construction of a
philosophy. He was conscious of this, and it was also not at all his aim to establish a
science (HoP 2.B.1.a.1).” Unlike his predecessors, Socrates found that through ignorance
one might find the truth within one’s own consciousness where the negativity that false
beliefs had implanted in consciousness can be negated. Hence, the claim to ignorance
was important for Hegel, but not because it was ironic, rather because it appeared as the
fountainhead of Socratic negativity which required the dialectic to dissent from positive
beliefs through a negation of negativity that allowed the Elenchus to actualize within the
individual universal truth as a concrete determination of his interlocutor. This negation
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of negativity within the consciousness directs consciousness back into itself in order
discover what may be truly known. Hegel explains this turning back into consciousness
as follows:
“[The] direction of consciousness back into itself takes the, form — very
markedly in Plato — of asserting that man can learn nothing, virtue included, and
that not because the latter has no relation to science. For the good does not come
from without, Socrates shows; it cannot be taught, but is implied in the nature of
mind. That is to say, man cannot passively receive anything that is given from
without like the wax that is moulded to a form, for everything is latent in the mind
of man, and he only seems to learn it. Certainly everything begins from without,
but this is only the beginning; the truth is that this is only an impulse towards the
development of spirit. All that has value to men, the eternal, the self-existent, is
contained in man himself, and has to develop from himself. To learn here only
means to receive knowledge of what is externally determined (HoP 2.B.2.a.2).”
The power behind the Socratic Method is in the immanent critique of concrete
determinations (konkrete Bestimmungen) which brings him to grasp the universal truth in
his own consciousness. Throughout the corpus of both Plato and Xenophon this bringing
into consciousness of the truth appears in the first instance as refutation which cleans the
minds of the interlocutor, and then as a midwifery which in the end surprises she who has
given birth to a new consciousness.
Socrates brings forth within the minds of his
interlocutors the truth which was all along hidden from view: that which was already
within their mind. This is not ironic, for the teachings which can be ascribed to Socrates
cannot be said to be a systematic philosophy in the way that philosophers both prior and
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after him had developed as external systems of describing the world, but instead as a
negative dialectic which brought truth through self-actualization (HoP 2.B.2.a.1).
Socrates was thus able to demonstrate that from negativity alone one might find a
positive determination, for the judgments which came from the external truth of the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) as represented in the objective arbitrary will and those
which came from the Sophists’ arbitrary subjective will were located as a unactualized
potentials of the interlocutor through a destructive negativity in order to bring into the
consciousness the truth as the actualization of freedom. In this way, the teachings of
Socrates, the greatest among Athenian philosophers in Hegel’s estimation, are the
negation of philosophy itself, for Socrates brought the destruction of both philosophy as it
had existed in its external accounts and the end of the Athenian way of life.
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CHAPTER 4:
THE CRITIQUE OF IRONY
The arch-ironists of the nineteenth century in Germany were surely Fichte and Schlegel,
who through their work on Kantian ethics and as post-Kantian philosophers who viewed
the requirement set by Kant’s autonomy as the highest ideal, found the impetus of a truly
radical subjectivity.
For the radical subjectivist, the founding principle of such irony is
individual freedom to control one’s own values and destiny, and the world around her is
completely arbitrary unless it interferes with her own freedom. The freedom to arbitrate
for oneself what is right and good is of central importance, for in this form of radical
subjectivity, in order to know one’s duty, one must have the autonomy to find within
one’s own consciousness the true nature of the good. The image of the ironist is thus the
image of the autonomous individual who has that power to arbitrate for herself the right
and good that she seeks. In Hegel’s view, the freedom that is preached by both Fichte
and Schlegel is thus nothing more than the ability to make arbitrary choices of what
appears to be right and good to the individual. As such, Hegel argues against any
interpretation that would make Socrates appear as a hero of modern radical subjectivity,
and in his assessment this must too means that Socrates was not an ironist in the jocular
sense. There are moments that Socrates is clearly sarcastic, but as below shall be argued
by Vlastos, while this definition of ‘irony’ may be a part of the ancient definition, there is
in the ancient use of ‘irony’ meanings which appear alien to the modern definition. In the
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following sections it shall be argued that the word ‘irony’ has been closely associated
with Socrates for a little over two millennia, but the word itself has transformed from the
time that Plato and Xenophon wrote the Socratic dialogues. As shall be argued bellow,
this is partly due to the philosophy which Socrates practiced and the ancient
commentators who looked to him for inspiration, but this transformation that lead to the
modern view of irony as a radical subjectivity was due to the German philosophers who
made Socrates their patron saint. The following sections look at the idea and definition
of the Socratic Irony from the perspective of both ancient and modern sources in order to
demonstrate how Hegel’s own critique of irony departs with the ancient sources and
aligns itself with the modern. The critique of irony as radical subjectivity must be put on
hold until the final chapter, for it is only possible to comprehend the full importance of
Hegel’s critique after his complete reading of Socrates has been outlined. The first
section outlines Vlastos’ account of Irony which demonstrates the original meaning of the
word in Greek and the probable meaning for Socrates himself. The second section
encounters the Roman Rhetorician Quintilian who became the final word and most
complete author of rhetoric in the ancient tradition. Finally, between these first two
sections and the previous chapters, the critique of Irony and interpretation of Socratic
negativity given by Hegel may be completely outlined.
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Vlastos on Irony
The account of Irony made by Gregory Vlastos in his last book Socrates: Ironist and
Moral Philosopher develops two different definitions of Irony both of which he believes
are central to Socratic Irony. Form these two different definitions, the transformation to
the German interpretation of Socrates as a radical subjectivist come to light and aid the
reader in comprehending their claim that Socrates is an Ironist at the heart of his work.
Vlastos names these two different kinds of Irony the simple and the complex. The first
definition of simple irony is closest in Vlastos’ assessment to the definition of the word
‘eironeia’ to Socrates’ contemporaries who called him ironic while the second definition
of complex irony was developed in later rhetoric and is more similar to the modern
definition of the word ‘irony’. It is his argument that Socrates was not ironic in the same
way that the early modern interpreters would consider him so, but between these two
definitions one is supplied with the needed information to comprehend how Socrates
became known to ancient commentators as an Ironist from the original definition of Irony
in ancient Attic use that then demonstrates how this earlier definition developed through
ancient commentary into the term from which one may now call Socrates an Ironist. The
discussion bellow shall look first at Vlastos’ definition of the simple irony and how this
transformed into a definition of the complex irony.
According to Vlastos, a simple irony is similar the modern definition of
‘pretending’ or as an expression which is simply false. Vlastos explains that this first
characterization clarifies the translations of ‘eironeia’ as ‘mocking’ which appear in lines
such as 489d-e of the Gorgias where Socrates having said, “[T]each me more gently,
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admirable man, so that I won’t run away from your school.” Callicles responds, “You are
mocking me (ειρωνευη).” Peculiarly and present in the above quotation to the ancient
Attic usage was that the word ‘eironeia’ was used as an expression of abuse. Callicles
was not merely saying that Socrates was mocking him, but also that Socrates was a
“damned mocker son of a…” With this dual significance, Vlastos argues that when the
word ‘eironeia’ appears in ancient use, its meaning could include anything from
purposeful deception where an individual is clearly lying to mockery where an individual
is simply calling another a crude name. It is only with this knowledge that Vlastos
believes that the association of Socrates with the word ‘irony’ can be grasped, for the
significance of the Socratic Irony as a Method of philosophy in its own right of which has
been passed down through the ages is not included in the characterization given by the
third century Attic definition. Thus concerning this sort of irony which Vlastos calls the
simple irony, Socrates is often times abused rather than attributed some particular way of
speech.
Another example of the simple irony may be seen in the Republic Book I when
Thrasymachus exclaims, “By Heracles! He said, that’s just Socrates’ usual irony. I knew,
and I said to these people earlier, you’d be unwilling to answer and that, if somebody
questioned you, you’d be ironical and do anything rather than give an answer.” The use
of the word ‘irony’ in the above quotation represents Thrasymachus’ contempt of
Socrates as a deceitful person who is pretending to have answers of his own to the
questions which he poses while in reality not having such answers. He here is not a
commenting on the Method which Socrates is employing on him, but instead he is
commenting on Socrates’ deceitfulness in claiming that he wishes to be taught by those
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who know better than he, yet in pretending to desire education, Thrasymachus believes
that he rather wants his interlocutor to play the fool while he appears the wiser. Vlastos
does not believe that this is a form of irony which is recognizable in the modern
significance of the term, but instead that Thrasymachus is belittling Socrates as merely
deceiving in order to trick his interlocutors into backing themselves into a corner which is
closer equated with lying. Vlastos argues that the above sort of usages imply that irony is
a sort of mockery while in third century Attic usage the term ‘eirōneia’ was so broad as to
include every sort of act which included pretending and was used as a term of abuse
(Vlastos p.28).
The formulation of the simple Irony is contrasted to another type of irony which
Vlastos finds in the ancient works concerning Socrates. Vlastos calls this other type of
irony complex, for it is in this form of Irony that he sees a transformation from the earlier
Attic usage to the later definitions given by Quintilian and Aristotle who viewed irony as
particularly Socratic. This later form of irony that comes directly from Socrates is the
word which entered the rhetorical tradition as a more regal form of irony, but for this
development to occur it took one hundred years in Greek and three hundred years in
Latin. Thus it was long after the death of Socrates that eirōneia was transformed to
become systematically implemented within rhetoric as a trope (Vlastos p.28). This is of
particular importance when evaluating any claim about the Socratic Irony, for if one is to
claim that the Socratic Irony and the Socratic Method are even related, there may be an
issue of anachronism by defining the Socratic Irony through resources that are postSocratic. The complex irony which Vlastos sees in Socrates has two parts, first it loses
the abusive connotations that were associated with ‘eironeia’ in fourth century Greek, and
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second it both means and does not mean what it literally says. In order to understand
how this complex irony may be attributed to Socrates, it shall be first necessary to look at
the rhetorical definitions given by Quintilian and Aristotle.
As an example of this later definition that loses its abusive connotations, ‘irony’ is
found in Vlastos’ appeal to Quintillian who says that “irony [is a figure of speech or
trope] in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood (9.22.44).”
Quintilian’s definition comes from nearly four hundred years after the death of Socrates,
and thus represents the final synthesis of the term ‘irony’ into the rhetorical canon, but as
pointed out by Vlastos, if one compares Quintillian’s definition to Aristotle’s in
“Rhetoric to Alexander” (the authorship is questioned but probably written in fourth
century BCE), there is a striking similarity. Aristotle remarks that “irony is saying
something while pretending not to say it or calling things by contrary names (Aristotle
Rhetoric to Alexander 21).” Because this text was most likely written in the fourth
century, there is reason to believe that this complex form of irony was already present in
the ancient Attic usage, and for this reason may be attributed to Socrates. Yet as
discussed in the case of the simple irony above, in the fourth century there were many
more meanings to the word ‘irony’ then this complex form, and thus the second
definition provides evidence that in the fourth century ancient usage of the word
‘eironeia’ there was room for Socrates to be counted as an Ironist. Vlastos believes that
this is the definition of Irony that has passed itself through western cultures and become
the modern conception of irony, yet this definition is inadequate to understanding
Socrates as an Ironist. The mark of the Socratic Irony includes these past two definitions
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with an amendment that allows for Socrates to both say “something contrary to what is to
be understood” and say what is meant to be understood at the same time.
In the Xenophon’s Memorabilia Socrates is depicted as displaying this sort of
Irony on several occasions such as in his interlocution with the beautiful Theodote who
after asking him to be her lover and partner Socrates says that “I have my own girlfriends
who won’t leave me day or night, learning from me philters and enchantments (3.11.16).”
Vlastos comments that the irony in this statement referring to Socrates’ students who
follow him around learning from his interlocutions is a much different variety than the
irony which Thrasymachus accused him of (Vlastos p.31). On the one hand, Socrates
does not mean that he has “girlfriends” as a group of women who follow him around, but
on the other hand, he does mean that he has a group of followers who follow him around
like lovers. This passage is ironic in the sense which the post-Socratic philosophers
defined Irony, for this represents Socrates saying something in which the meaning meant
is different than what is said while at the same time meaning what he says. It is not as
simple as modern sarcasm or as ancient mocking, but rather appears as something deeper
and more complicated that brings into the dialogue his character as an Ironist. Still, this
is just a sketch of what is to come, and bellow a more detailed analysis of Quintilian is in
order, but as a starting point to grasping Hegel’s criticism of modern irony, the discussion
has done its job.
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Quintilian on Irony
Of the extant works of rhetoric, there are no works which fully cover the topic of irony
before the death of Socrates, yet there are within these later works key places that give
the reader a more complete knowledge of the Socratic Method in its incorporation of
irony as a rhetorical devise. The work which gives the strongest account of irony as a
post-Socratic development while remaining an ancient source is Quintilian’s Institutio
Oratorica, within which he covers the topic of irony in three places: 6.2.15, 8.6.54, and
9.22.44. These passages define ‘irony’ in three different ways each of which adds
significant information to the search for a Socratic Irony. In the first place, the definition
of ‘irony’ shall prove to be closely aligned to the Elenchus which by many accounts is the
heart of the Socratic Method. Secondly, ‘irony’ is defined as a type of allegory within
which something different than what is said is meant to be understood. This form of
‘irony’ shall appear as associated with the Platonic Socrates and his use of didactic myths
and stories to illustrate his philosophical points. Finally, Irony shall appear as the
foundational building block to understanding the philosophy of Socrates through his
affirmation of ignorance.
The following examination shall place these passages in
relation to Vlastos in order to better illustrate the points made by Quintilian and to grasp
how his definitions of ‘irony’ came to develop into the Fichtean-Schlegelian irony.
Quintilian explains in the first passage that “εἰρωνεία (eirōneia), “irony” in asking
questions [is that] which means something different from that which it expresses
(6.2.15).” The key phrase in this passage is “’irony’ in asking questions” which directs
our attention to the Socratic Elenchus. The Elenchus or refutation is the first aspect under
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consideration in the development of the Socratic Irony, for it is in the Elenchus that the
truth which Socrates’ interlocutors believe to hold is formally proven false. The Irony
through questions means to show that the false beliefs are false while supposing for the
proof that they are true in order to find contradictions ad absurdum. The irony of asking
questions is thus located within the interlocutions as Socrates would know that these
beliefs were false while simultaneously “pretending” for his interlocutor that he assents to
their truth, for similar to Quintilian’s quotation given above in the discussion of Vlastos,
what is said by Socrates is not what is meant to be understood. On this model, the above
definition of ‘irony’ by Quintilian can be explained through the asking of questions in
order to refute an interlocutor which is also the definition of ‘Elenchus’. Socrates seeks
agreement on assertions which he himself does not believe but “pretends” to thereby
“tricking” his interlocutor into asserting contradictory premises. It is this “pretending”
which appears as ironic in the elenchus, for in asserting premises which he himself does
not believe, Socrates has said something that “means something different from that which
it expresses.” While this “pretending” of Socrates to believe the answers given by his
interlocutors would constitute an irony, Vlastos rejects the Elenchus as ironic, for in the
Elenchus is merely a Method of formal proof which Socrates brings his interlocutor’s
into so that he might refute them.
Vlastos on the other hand does not believe the Elenchus to be a component within
the Socratic Irony, but rather treats the subject of refutation as a different consideration
completely from irony. Because his concept of Irony does not incorporate the Elenchus,
and he describes the Elenchus as a kind of formal proof, he has developed a system for
comprehending the elenchus that finds a strange bedfellow with Hegel. In his influential
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work titled “the Socratic Elenchus” he formulates a model based on formal ad absurdum
argumentation which may be ascribed to Plato’s Elenctic dialogues.
According to the
following characterization of the Elenchus, there is no irony involved, and thus there is
firther reason for rejecting the Fichtean-Schlegelian account.
Vlastos claims the
Elenchus can be formulated as follows:
1. “The interlocutor, "saying what he believes," asserts p, which Socrates considers
false, and targets for refutation.
2. Socrates obtains agreement to further premises, say q and r, which are logically
independent of p.
3. The agreement is ad hoc: Socrates does not argue for q or for r. Socrates argues,
and the interlocutor agrees, that q and r entail not-p.
4. Thereupon Socrates claims that p has been proved false, not-p true (Vlastos
p.46).”
One problem Vlastos notes in this formulation of the Elenchus is that Socrates’
interlocutor could deny the truth of the premise q which would allow her to continue to
affirm the premise which is refuted. This seems like it would be a good way out for
Socrates’ interlocutor, for then the belief which Socrates believes to be false could be
further argued. It would seem that under such circumstances Socrates would not be able
to bring the interlocutor to come to realize her belief in p is false. The example of Polus
is given to shed light on this option. Polus argues that “(p) to commit justice is better
than to suffer it. Socrates defends what he takes to be the logical contradictory, (not-p) to
suffer injustice in better than to commit it. Attacking in standard Elenctic fashion, he
gets Polus to Agree to a flock of further premises, only one of which need be recalled
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here: (q) to commit injustice is baser than to suffer it, while all the rest can be bundled up
in a single gather-all conjunct r, whose contents need not concern us (Vlastos p.53)… But
[Polus doesn’t] have to concede that p is false (Vlastos p.53)… [he] could decide that p is
true and q is false (Vlastos p.55).” It would appear as if this could be the case with any
refutation, for the refutand always has the option of denying their assent to the premise q.
Vlastos argues that the solution to this problem can be found in the Socratic
Method itself, in that it does not matter whether the interlocutor denies q and embraces a
new premise, for Socrates has the resources to refute this new premise as well. There is
no reason to believe that this could not be the case, and that Socrates could continue on
with his Elenchus ad nauseam. The refutand would have to eventually come up against
new premises q and r that Socrates could prove to be contrary to their premise p. This
thesis which Vlastos attributes to the Elenctic dialogues leads to a list of requirements
that Vlastos believes must be attributed to Socrates in order for the refutation to prove the
negation of the original statement p. Vlastos comes to the conclusion in this work that if
these assertions are not attributed to Socrates the dialogue cannot avoid the problem.
These assertions are as follows: firstly, any individual who holds some false moral belief
will necessarily hold other beliefs that are true which prove the negation of the false
belief (57); secondly, Socrates only holds consistent moral beliefs (Vlastos p.59); and
finally, these moral beliefs of Socrates are all true (Vlastos p.60). This picture fits
perfectly with the picture Hegel sketches of this first moment within the Socratic Method,
for the Method itself must prove to be formally negative only in the first moment which
opposes the Romantic Irony at the basest level of its exposition.
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In the second entry concerning irony, Quintilian discusses the use of tropes and
defines irony as a form of allegory that allows the speaker to point the attention of the
listener toward the opposite of what is being said. Quintilian explains that one type of
“allegory, where what is expressed is quite contrary to what is meant, there is irony,
which our rhetoricians call illusio, and which is understood either from the mode of
delivery, the character of the speaker, or the nature of the subject. If any of these are at
variance with the words, it is apparent that the intention is different from the expression
(8.6.54).” In Quintilian’s definition there is an important caveat which leads to the
deepest meaning of the Socratic irony as “the character of the speaker” being “at variance
with the words.” Such variance can be witnessed in Plato’s dialogues which have
Socrates telling stories as a didactic measure within the total project. Under such a
definition of a type of allegory as constituting a form of irony has extensive implications
on both Socrates and Plato, for under such a definition many of the stories told by
Socrates in the works of Plato would count as a form of irony. Should one consider the
“Myth of Er,” “the Allegory of the Cave,” or “the Allegory of the Chariot” amongst the
instances of the Socratic Irony? If one does count such instances as Socratic Irony, then
this may also have further implications on the Socratic Method as such, for the common
definition of the Socratic Method is as a method of asking questions. Whether or not this
is Socrates’ Method is yet to be seen, but it is an interesting point to consider that the
allegories within Plato’s dialogues might be considered a component of the Irony one
may attribute to Socrates.
For the purposes of this paper this small note of the
relationship between allegory and irony is sufficient, and because the Fichtean-
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Schlegelian Irony of which Hegel is critical does not come to bear on this form of Irony,
the relationship shall be considered no further.
The elenchus is certainly not in light of Vlastos’ work the most apparent of
Socrates’ modes of irony, but if one assumes with Quintillian and the FichteanSchlegelian thesis that the Elenchus is ironic, then the irony which appears in his
elenchus can also be found bleeding into every aspect of his individuality. In this view
Socrates was more than a philosopher who applied irony in his methodology, but instead
he was philosopher who lived a life of negativity that can be called an irony. This
definition of ‘irony’ is elaborated by Quintilian as being very different from the use of
irony as a trope, for “the trope is less disguised, and though it expresses something
different from what it means, it can hardly be said to pretend anything different (9.2.45).”
The most striking characterization as it relates directly to Socrates is given by Quintilian
in his final discussion of irony when he remarks that “the whole life of a man may wear
the appearance of a continued irony, as did that of Socrates, for he was called εἴρων
(eiron) because he assumed the character of an ignorant man and affected to be the
admirer of other men's wisdom (9.2.46).”
Socrates is well known to have been judged by the Delphic Oracle as the wisest
among the Greeks, and when taken with his own affirmation to be ignorant, his claim
seems quite ironic, for how could he both have been judged wisest and claim ignorance
without some sort of pretending to occur on his part. It would seem that Socrates knew
that he was the wisest and yet claim ignorance as a purposefully made ironic remark.
This represents an irony in that there appears to be deception on the part of Socrates
through his claim to be ignorant of the Good while at the same time searching for the
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Good through refutation. Quintilian writes on this point that “in irony considered as a
figure, there is a disguise of the speaker's whole meaning, a disguise perceptible rather
than ostentatious…the sense of a passage in a speech, and sometimes the whole
configuration of a cause, is at variance with the air of our address (9.2.46).” The irony
described in this passage is similar to the simple Irony described by Vlastos, for the
passage does commit the Ironist to a sort of pretending, yet it may also be possible to
construct this simple irony as a complex irony.
In Vlastos’ work on the Socratic Irony the quotation which he uses by Quintilian
and which is quoted above in the section concerning his book comes from the same
section of Institutio Oratorica as the quotation given in the preceding paragraph, yet
peculiarly the quotation above does not appear except in a short footnote where Vlastos
points out that the later rhetoricians in their theory of irony refer “to Socrates and only to
him (Vlastos p.29).” This strikes one as a strong deficiency of the account of Irony
attributed to Socrates by Vlastos, for surely this is one of the most famed accounts of the
Socratic Irony, and was given by nearly all post-Socratic ancient philosophers and
rhetoricians, but the point that Vlastos is making is an important one. The irony of
Socrates as regards his life being an irony between judged wisdom and professed
ignorance is nothing but a piece of the narrative attributed to him by later writers and
something that neither he nor Plato believed to be ironic. Nevertheless, this irony does
fit with the form of irony which Vlastos describes as a “complex irony” of saying
something of which the opposite is supposed to be understood while simultaneously
meaning what is said. The complex irony of the above passage would have Socrates’
claim to ignorance signify that he truly was ignorant of the knowledge that he desired, but
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also that he had been judged as the wisest, and so between these two points one may see a
gulf. Yet this must be added in from outside of the text. Thus while Quintilian seems to
think that the irony is an ironic gesture more in line with the early definition of the simple
irony rather than as a substantial claim that he truly does know nothing, in Vlastos the
complexity of the irony must be added in from outside of his text.
The Critique of the Fichtean-Schlegelian Socratic Irony
Hegel explains the Socratic Method as having two parts: on the one hand, the Elenchus
enacts the total destruction of the Athenian false consciousness arising from the true
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) (HoP 2.B.3.c.2), but on the other hand, there is a healing
principle through its destruction of the disease within the Athenian consciousness, which
had made the purely objective freedom associated with the Athenian way of life and the
purely subjective freedom of the sophistic arbitrary will, thereby gives rise to a healing
principle within the philosophy attributed to Socrates (HoP 2.B.1 ff).
In this way,
Socrates who brought forth upon his interlocutors the destructive Elenchus so too brought
to his interlocutors the ability to heal their own wounds by way of bringing the truth into
their consciousness (HoP 2.B.1.c.1-2). Yet for Hegel this interpretation of Socrates and
the Socratic Method was contrary to the explanation given by his contemporaries, for in
the Fichtean-Schlegelian model of the Socratic irony, it was the irony itself that both
characterized the Socratic Method and the figure of Socrates as a free individual. The
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term Fichtean-Schlegelian irony is a term borrowed from Robert Williams in his work on
the Socratic Irony in Hegel, and replaces the term used by Hegel himself of the
“Romantic Irony.” In Hegel’s view this Fichtean-Schlegelian model that places all power
in the autonomy of the individual better characterizes the Sophists’ arbitrary will than the
infinitely free will of Socrates.
In the first subdivision of Hegel’s account of the Socratic Method he outlines the
Fichtean-Schlegelian rendition of the Socratic Irony as a purely negative will that through
the Elenchus finds the arbitrary truth of individual autonomy, yet as discussed above, the
Fichtean-Schlegelian model was rejected by Hegel. Instead, he believed, as outlined
above, that this project was realized through moments within the consciousness of
historical epochs, and both the Irony of the Sophists and of Socrates which was a reaction
to this earlier Irony represented two particular sorts of subjective consciousness. The
consciousness of Socrates was of particular world historical importance in this matter, for
in the consciousness of Socrates the historical personality of the philosopher affirmed the
historical character of his consciousness and aided in the actualization of his
interlocutor’s consciousness while at the same time negating that historical character of
the popular Athenian consciousness. Hegel argued that the common definition of the
irony associated with Socrates was equivocated by his contemporaries with the irony of
the Romantic era, yet this is a misinterpretation on the part of Romantics such as Fichte
and Schlegel, for the concept of the Socratic Irony passed down through the ancient
rhetoricians is not ironic at all, but rather a starting point to understanding the philosophy
of Socrates as dialectic.
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The philosophic irony of the romantic era is defended by Fichte and Schlegel who
in Hegel’s reading represent the self-affirmation that “it is I who through my educated
thoughts can annul all determinations of right, morality, good, etc., because I am clearly
master of them, and I know that if anything seems good to me I can easily subvert it,
because things are only true to me in so far as they please me now (HoP 2.B.1.a.1).”
Hegel’s rejection of this Romantic Irony is closely connected to his rejection of the
arbitrary will as a true infinity, for through the ‘I’ and its opposition to all determinations,
the determination of the self becomes an arbitrary decision of the particular individual
consciousness. The Romantic Irony is thus a key point in Hegel’s narrative of Socrates
as a reflection from ancient history into the present of a critique leveled against the
arbitrary will. This Romantic form of Irony attributed to Socrates is not the Irony that
Hegel sees in Socrates, but instead that of the Sophists, for this purely negative
consciousness is the ‘I’ as absolute determiner rather than the ‘I’ as infinite subjective
will. In this popular view of the Socratic Irony as developed by the Romantic Classicists,
the Irony appears as purely negative, but Hegel denies this purity in that the negativity
which the philosopher Socrates embodied was not put to rest through negativity alone:
the consciousness of Socrates attained a self-knowledge that brought history into a new
epoch of thought. Similarly, the reading of Socrates as embodying the Romantic irony is
misleading, for as Hegel argues, Socrates did not seek the same arbitrary freedom of the
Sophists, but rather the infinite freedom that would allow him to criticize the freedom of
both the Sophists and Athens generally. The Fichtean-Schlegelian model of Socratic
Irony requires the acceptance of the first and third definitions given by Quintilian in the
previous section, namely, the irony of asking questions and the irony of the philosophical
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life. Yet as argued in the previous section, neither of these two forms of irony are
attributable to Socrates on either Hegel’s or Vlastos’ readings, for in the first instance, the
irony of asking questions is confused with the formal proofs of the Elenchus, and in the
second instance, the irony of the philosophical life is confused on Hegel’s reading with
the true affirmation of ignorance given by Socrates.
As in the first definition given by Quintilian of the irony involved in asking
questions, a similar definition begins the section of the History of Philosophy on the
Socratic Irony, yet this irony, as discussed above, is not ironic. Hegel explains that “if we
proceed from the general account of Socrates’ method to a nearer view, in the first place
its effect is to inspire men with distrust towards their presuppositions, after faith had
become wavering and they were driven to seek that which is, in themselves (HoP
2.B.1.a.1).” Seeking “that which is in themselves” means the seeking of truth within the
arbitrary will as a tautological certainty that an arbitrary choice has been made. Because
‘man is the measure of all things,’ the truth of consciousness is in the decisions made by
human beings, and thus the Sophists’ arbitrary will had taken root. Hegel continues,
“now whether it was that he wished to bring the manner of the Sophists into disrepute, or
that he was desirous to awaken the desire for knowledge and independent thought in the
youths whom he attracted to himself, he certainly began by adopting the ordinary
conceptions which they considered to be true (HoP 2.B.1.a.1).” Thus Socrates took the
positive beliefs held by his interlocutors as true concrete determinations that exist within
concrete consciousnesses, yet he did this only so that he might negate those positive
beliefs. So far the irony has not yet appeared, and with the characterization given up to
this point Hegel would agree. All that have been described so far are the role of the
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Sophists’ arbitrary will and the necessary first step of the Elenchus as accepting the truth
of positive beliefs in order to negate those beliefs. It is the next step that appears as
ironic, for “in order to bring others to express these [positive beliefs], he represents
himself as in ignorance of them, and, with a seeming, ingenuousness, puts questions to
his audience as if they were to instruct him, while he really wished to draw them out.
This is the celebrated Socratic irony, which in his case is a particular mode of carrying on
intercourse between one person and another (HoP 2.B.1.a.1).”
The “celebrated Socratic Irony” is from the description given above nothing more
than the irony in asking questions which as a technique of providing formal proofs is not
ironic. Nonetheless, as shall be discussed below, the “celebrated Socratic Irony” has
another aspect which is equally incorrect as the irony of the philosophical life. On this
next definition of ‘irony,’ Socrates is the central representative of Fichtean-Schlegelian
irony, for through the very life of the philosopher, the radical subjectivity associated with
the arbitrary will is brought into every aspect of the philosopher’s life. Yet as with the
definition of ‘irony’ as the irony of the philosopher’s life in Quintilian, this assumption
that Socrates was ironically affirming his ignorance as anything less than in earnest
should be rejected. Hegel describes his contemporary Ast for following this line of
argument:
“Ast repeated [Schlegel’s philosophical irony to describe Socrates], saying, “The
most ardent love of all beauty in the Idea, as in life, inspires Socrates’ words with
inward, unfathomable life.” This life is now said to be irony... Socrates and Plato
were falsely stated to be the originators of this irony, of which it is said that it is
the “inmost and deepest life,” although they possessed the element of subjectivity;
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in our time it was not permitted to us to give effect to this irony. Ast’s “inmost,
deepest life” is just the subjective and arbitrary will, the inward divinity which
knows itself to be exalted above all (CH2.B.1.a.3).”
The definition of the philosopher’s life as ironic in Quintilian is echoed in the passage
cited by Hegel as the “inmost, deepest life,” for within the life of Socrates on both
Quintilian’s and Ast’s reading one is struck by the centrality of the ironic claim to be
ignorant of the Good while simultaneously having been labeled the wisest by a highly
regarded external source. In fact, when Quintilian was writing his treatise, the Oracle at
Delphi was still functioning as a central part of both Greek and Roman religion. Yet in
Hegel’s reading the claim is in all earnest as a pronouncement on Socrates’ own lack of a
systematic philosophy, and thus the association of Socrates with an irony in the above
quotation is contained the kernel of Hegel’s critique of the Fichtean-Schlegelian irony.
His critique was that irony itself is representative of a mere “subjective and arbitrary
will,” which like the liberal concept of the pursuit of happiness and individual liberty is
nothing more than an expression of one individual in opposition to every other. Such
assessments of Socrates cannot be correct in Hegel’s reading, for in Socrates is found the
individual who brought the consciousness of a people out of its darkness and into the
light. Hegel argues in the subsequent sections on the Socratic Method that Socrates has
both a negative and a positive aspect which can be extracted from his importance as a
world historical figure ready to push the world into a new epoch of freedom (HoP
2.B.3.c.2). The Elenchus which appears as a purely negative irony in the FichteanSchlegelian assessment is also negative in Hegel’s, but it is negative as a purely formal
tool that negates the positivity within the interlocutor in order to burn out the arbitrary
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consciousness. When the Elenchus has done its job, then Socrates can begin the true
purpose of his Method which is to bring into the consciousness the truth, and this truth is
the actualization of the arbitrary consciousness so that it might grasp itself as being free.
This critique of the Fichtean-Schlegelian Socrates as an arch-ironist has caused
much confusion and disagreement among interpreters since his initial Lectures on the
History of Philosophy, confusion and disagreement of which the above explication
provides much illumination.
According to the above argument, there is no irony in
Socrates’ Method or philosophy, but rather confusion arising from his negative Elenchus
that appears as irony according to ancient rhetoric. Yet there are interpreters of both
Hegel and Socrates today who are still uncomfortable with this pronouncement that
Socrates was not ironic, for generally since Kierkegaard’s dissertation on the Concept of
Irony it has been assumed that while Hegel did not view Socrates as a negative
philosopher, he nonetheless viewed him as an ironist who through employed the famed
Socratic Irony within his Method. According the above argument, this interpretation is
mistaken on two different levels: 1) Socrates was not ironic in his Method, and 2) his
Method was negative as first the negation of positive beliefs as Elenchus, and second the
negation of negativity as Midwifery. In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy Hegel
is quite clear in saying that Socrates employs these negative characteristics in his Method.
The mistaken interpretation probably is because of Kierkegaard’s work which attempted
to follow Hegel’s argument to a contradictory conclusion that Socrates was in fact the
purely negative philosopher who represented the concept of irony for all times.
Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Socrates as the arch-ironist extended into his entire
philosophy and is most highly apparent in Either/Or which provided a series of fictitious
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letters arguing over the right and good between two opposing characters of a bohemian
dandy and a staunch pastor. Yet as the paper has argued thus far, Hegel would have
considered this sort of formulation of an either/or dichotomy as the bifurcation
entrenched in the Fichtean-Schlegelian Irony as an arbitrary will.
Beginning with Kierkegaard’s dissertation, Hegel’s own work on Socrates has
been relegated to a mere footnote in Kierkegaardian scholarship as the trigger which fired
Kierkegaard’s bullet. Even within the scholarship on Hegel, Kierkegaard plays such a
prominent role that Hegel’s own readings become lost and confused in the explication
given by Kierkegaard. One example of this sort of mistaken interpretation is outlined by
Robert R. Williams who argues that within the debate over the Socratic Irony there are
two predominant sides of “the Fichtean-Schlegelian destructive irony, and the PlatonicHegelian constructive irony (Williams p.70).”
Williams further defines these two
positions: the destructive irony is marked off as “a self-sufficient position, a posture in
which the self recognizes nothing equal to or greater than itself, nothing that could limit
it… [it is]an absolute position [in that] it is radical, unrestrictive, destructive, and selfisolating (Williams p.70)” while the constructive irony “ is not a final or absolute
position, but rather a transition from immersion in finitudes towards something higher
that both limits and disposes the self… [it] involves both liberation of the self from
finitude, and a free self-determination that is not arbitrary but in accordance with a
substantial interest (Williams p.70).” The characterization of Socrates is partly correct in
that Hegel argues that the Socratic Method does act as a force which allows the
philosopher to liberate herself from the finite being of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and
as such become a self-determining individual in conflict with the arbitrary will as
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represented in the Sophists’ subjective freedom, but the characterization is mistaken in
that Socrates is viewed as an ironist and his Method is not negative.
The view is highly influenced by Kierkegaard’s reading of Socrates as an ironist,
so much so that according to Williams if Socrates had any positive aspects to his
philosophy then there cannot have been any negative aspects even if it would have
entailed his positive position in the end, and thus accordingly, Socrates must be on
Williams reading of Hegel a positive ironist. This mistake was also made by Kierkegaard
in his portrayal of the Socratic Irony in contradiction to Hegel as an infinitely negative
force which destroys rather than that of an earnest infinitely free will entailing negativity
in its undertaking to heal the Athenians. In Hegel’s reading, the Socratic Method ends in
positivity, but in order to reach the final moment of positivity, the negativity within the
Method requires destruction as a clearing of consciousness. While it is true that Hegel
makes remarks that seem to be critical of the destructive aspect within the Socratic Irony
in his critique of the Fichtean-Schlegelian Socratic Irony, he also makes central the
entailment of negativity within Socrates’ consciousness.
In the first place, the
consciousness of the arbitrary will is described as “the ‘I’ [such as in the FichteanSchlegelian ironist] is negative unity, but just in that very way individual, and not yet the
universal reflected within itself (HoP 2.B.1),” but in the second place he continues on this
point by stating that “Socrates expresses real existence as the universal ‘I,’ as the
consciousness which rests in itself (HoP 2.B.1),” and as an ‘I’, Socrates has retained the
first moment of negative unity while also negating that negativity in order to actualize his
freedom. The difference between the two is that through the Socratic Method the ‘I’ as
negative unity reaches universality through its immanent critique of the Athenian Ethical
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Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will while through the negative unity alone,
there is only the phenomenological and arbitrary will left without the actualization of
freedom. Adorno argues a similar point in Negative Dialectics that between the arbitrary
and the negative there remains the need for critique, for “from the negative, the subject
withdraws to itself, and to the abundance of its ways to react. Critical self-reflection
alone will keep it from a constriction of this abundance (Adorno p.31).” Hence it is the
negation of negative unity thereby becoming the universal ‘I’ that leads to the
actualization of Socrates’ freedom, and likewise, it is the midwifery as the negation of the
elenctically cleared consciousness that brings the positive moment of healing through
destruction. The true meaning of the Socratic Irony shall be outlined in the final chapter
on Tragic Irony.
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CHAPTER 5:
TRAGIC IRONY
Although Socrates is not ironic in the traditional sense that is attributed to him according
to Hegel, there is a sense in which Hegel describes Socrates as ironic. The following
section shall bring together all of the pieces laid out above so that the reader may witness
Hegel’s final assessment of Socrates and why he remains ironic without the irony
attributed to him by ancient and modern interpreters. This requires one to examine 1) the
circumstances that make the fate (Schicksal) of Socrates a true tragedy, 2) the conflict
with the Sophists and Athens that brought about his fate (Schicksal), and 3) the critique
of the Socratic Irony. It is from these three points that the true irony is illuminated as the
irony of world history within which Socrates is but one character albeit a character of
world historical importance. In the closing lines of his critique of the Socratic Irony,
Hegel explains the tragic irony as the true irony of Socrates in the History of Philosophy
as follows:
Socrates’ premeditated irony may be called a manner of speech, a pleasant
rallying; there is in it no satirical laughter or pretence, as though the idea were
nothing but a joke. But his tragic irony is his opposition of subjective reflection to
morality as its exists, not a consciousness of the fact that he stands above it, but
the natural aim of leading men, through thought, to the true good and to the
universal Idea. (HoP 2.B.1.a)
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The above quotation argues that while the “manner of speech” that Socrates employs in
his Method to draw out his interlocutor’s contradictory beliefs may be labeled an irony in
that it is premeditated, there is no jocular intention behind it. Because the “premeditated
irony is not funny and means not to be funny, it is a misnomer to call it irony, for
according to the previous section, the first moment of Socratic Method that is commonly
assumed as irony is nothing more than a formal method of proof ad absurdum which
through its negativity proves false the premises of the interlocutor. Instead, the true irony
is a tragic irony as the conflict of wills between Socrates and the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), and Socrates and the Sophists’ arbitrary will.
This conflict is the
“opposition of subjective reflection to morality as it exists.” Yet in Hegel’s argument,
Socrates did not and could not grasp his own importance as a world historical personality,
and thus his aim was not the tragic irony, but instead the “natural aim of leading”
individuals towards the truth. This final significance which Hegel ascribes to the Socratic
Irony has been little discussed in works pertaining to the treatment of Socrates in the
History of Philosophy, but ought to be considered the most profound aspect found in
Hegel’s critique of the Socratic Irony. Still, there is a puzzle as to what in the final
assessment makes Socrates a tragic ironist. It is clear why Hegel believed him to be
opposed to the irony conceived by the ancient and modern sources, but what does Hegel
mean by “tragic irony?”
In order to answer this question the following sections shall canvass three
different options for defining a ‘tragic irony’ and in what ways these three different
options demonstrate the fate (Schicksal) of Socrates to represent a tragic irony. As with
the Hegelian theory of tragedy, each of these different options represent a reconciliation
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between two conflicting parties both of which are right in their assessment of the other,
but the adjudication of both sides being right requires a trans-subjective individual to
locate rightness. The first of these options has come down through the literary canon as
viewed by the spectator of tragedy. This form of tragic irony is ironic because the
witness knows the fate of the hero and that each of her decisions will lead naturally to
this fate. The second of these options look at Hegel’s notes within the Philosophy of
Right on his contemporary Solger who first used tragic irony to describe the character of
Socrates as opposed to the Fichtean-Schlegelian Irony. It is this form of tragic irony that
describes Socrates as a world historical personality who brought the world into a new era,
but as a tragic ironist could not see his own importance. Finally, the last option identifies
the Socratic Method and Philosophy as a tragic irony in its conflict with both the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will. This final form of
tragic irony demonstrates in what ways the conflict of wills that prove Socrates’
importance as a world historical personality who through his ideas alone transformed the
western world lead to his tragic fate (Schicksal).
Literary Tragic Irony
The most natural way to interpret Socrates as representative of a tragic irony is through
the literary definition of ‘tragic irony.’ This definition would make the appearance of
tragic irony within the History of Philosophy come not from the Socratic Method per se,
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but rather by the character of Socrates as he appears to the reader. A tragic irony, also
called a dramatic irony, is ironic because the audience who watches the drama unfold and
recognizes their own position as spectators of the drama knows how this drama will end
for the tragic hero while at the same time the hero continues to make the decisions
leading to her fate. All the while, the drama slowly unfolds up to its conclusion thereby
making the tragic fate of the character apparent to her which had been concealed
throughout from the hero. This type of irony is little discussed in connection to Socrates,
for even in ancient times, Socrates was taken to be ironic in the asking of questions and
feigned ignorance he appeared to employ in his philosophy rather than as a dramatic
character in his own right. Although amongst most interpreters of the Socratic Irony it is
not the artistic achievements of the authors Plato and Xenophon who wrote these
dialogues that the irony is ironic, if one views the dialogues as texts of literary art then
such a view is possible. Throughout the Socratic texts one is constantly confronted by
the knowledge that this philosopher was made to suffer the ultimate punishment, and in
each and every discourse which he finds himself we as readers know that this will be his
fate. All the while, the character that appears in these texts is completely unaware that
his death will come about because of the philosophy which he practicing. Frances
Muecke writes on the tragic irony in Virgil:
"Tragic Irony" [is] detected in the words of a speaker who is deliberately using
ambiguity to deceive the person addressed (4.478 ff., Dido To Anna), or in the
words of a character which unconsciously betray ignorance of his true situation
(1.731-35, Dido's Prayer at the banquet), or in the words of the author which call
attention to a discrepancy between the character's situation and his knowledge of
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it (1.299, Fati nescia Dido). It is only the first case, that of Verbal Irony, which
was recognized as ironia by the ancient commentators. From my description of
the last two cases it can be seen that they are very similar in that both depend on a
gap in knowledge between the audience and the protagonist as to the meaning of a
given situation. (137 Frances Muecke)
Frances Muecke’s above quotation lends itself quite well to formulating a Hegelian
definition of tragic irony as a reconciliation between the audience who witnesses the
events within a drama knowing the fate ahead of the hero and the character who does not
know her concealed fate. In order to see this reconciliation between the audience and
actors it is necessary to refer back to the concept of the trans-subjective individual who
sees the relationship between two other individuals and can adjudicate the rightness of
the two conflicting sides of a tragedy and understand the gap in knowledge between the
circumstances of the speech and the speaker’s knowledge of those circumstances. For
Hegel the rightness adjudicated by the audience in the case of many tragedies such as the
Antigone are bound up in the fate of the character who does not stray from her course but
naturally moves toward that fate with a stone cold constitution. It is from this perspective
that the above definitions of tragic irony ought to be examined.
The first definition is clearly an example of the simple irony that Vlastos spoke of
as an irony which is found in the mere deception of the speaker’s words, but this simple
irony becomes complex when viewed by the audience who knows that the speaker’s
words are meant to deceive. This knowing on the part of the spectator relies on a transsubjective relationship to the drama in which the audience can adjudicate between the
intention of the speaker and the actions of the listener upon hearing the speaker’s words.
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In the second definition there appears a twist that as Muecke notes the ancient
commentators did not recognize as ironic, for it is here that the irony is located
specifically within the words of the speaker as it relates to her unrecognized fate.
Allthewhile the spectator familiar with the drama recognizes the speech as a forward
looking proclamation on the speaker’s unknown fate which shall come about just as the
speaker has said. The relationship between the fate of the speaker who does not know
and the speech betraying the knowledge of what leads the speaker toward that fate are
known by the audience, and this takes the form of a trans-subjective relationship within
which the audience grasps the speaker’s words looking ahead toward her fate. Finally,
the author of the tragedy and her part in making the gap in knowledge between the actor’s
actions and her unknown fate take central importance as a trans-subjective relationship to
the drama. As the story teller who delivers the message to the audience that the speaker
does not know what her fate holds, this position of trans-subjective mediation is the point
of departure for philosophy. Plato and Xenophon’s role in the creation of the tragedy of
Socrates take on such importance, for it is they who see the relationship between Socrates
and his actions that lead him toward his fate. This is more apparent in Plato than
Xenophon, but while Xenophon does not appear to grasp the tragic character of the story
as more than an honest man who suffered an injustice, his testimony is central to
understanding why Hegel thought Socrates to be a tragic hero.
According to Diogenes Laertius, Plato began his career as a poet and tragedian,
hence within his writings it is not surprising to come across the same literary devices
used by the tragedians. Even in the style of dialogue that one finds Socrates, it is unclear
whether Plato meant to have these dialogues read aloud or if he meant to have the solitary
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reader dote over every word as does the modern interpreter. As discussed above, the
story of Socrates fits perfectly with Hegel’s own requirements for a tragic drama, and it is
not out of the question that Plato himself felt similarly about the overall story that he
wrote. Yet there is something quite different in the writings of Plato than the other
tragedians: Plato embedded within the drama of Socrates a critique of the Athenian
politics, religion, and culture. An excellent example of this critique along side the form
of literary tragic irony is found in Socrates interlocution with Callicles. This section of
the dialogue not only displays the tragic irony that Plato must have self-consciously
added within the text, but also a critique of the Athenian politics. In this section Socrates
looks back at the medical analogy that becomes extremely important for Hegel which he
had delivered to Polus earlier in the dialogue, and it is also the place where he speaks of
the true political craft. Although the following quotation is rather long, the example is so
important in grasping Plato’s use of the literary device and Hegel’s reading of Plato’s
Socrates that it is important to read the entire text with these in mind. When looked at
from this perspective, the medical analogy and the allusion to true politics become clear
indications of the tragic irony that Plato saw as forward looking within the story towards
Socrates’ inescapable fate. Socrates begins:
Callicles: How sure you seem to me to be, Socrates, that not even one of these
things will happen to you! You think that you live out of their way and that you
wouldn’t be brought to court perhaps by some very corrupt and mean man.
Socrates: In that case I really am a fool, Callicles, if I don’t suppose that anything
might happen to anybody in this city. But I know this well: that if I do come to
court involved in one of those perils which you mention, the man who brings me
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in will be a wicked man—for no good man would bring in a man who is not a
wrongdoer—and it wouldn’t be at all strange if I were to be put to death (Gorgias
521b-c).
In this initial passage one finds the tragic irony defined above in both Callicles and
Socrates’ words. The tragic irony appears as Muecke’s second definition, for Socrates
does not yet know that his fate will be uncovered in the Athenian court nor does he know
that he shall be put to death in accordance with the court’s conviction. It takes the transsubjective adjudication of the audience or reader to grasp the relationship between this
speech and the gap in knowledge on the part of Callicles and Socrates in order to
reconcile the apparent ignorance with the future fate. The gap in knowledge of this future
happening is apparent in both Callicles’ exclamation that Socrates does not believe he
will succumb to this fate and in Socrates reply that he has no illusions that he might
succumb to such a fate, yet within this interlocution there is something peculiar which
Hegel would not have agreed to. Both Callicles and Socrates refer to his future accusers
as a “corrupt and mean man,” but as discussed in the above section on Soctrates’ fate
(Schicksal) as tragic, Hegel argued that his accusers were acting rationally and rightly. In
this way, Plato as the author of the dialogue is taking on the tragic irony from Muecke’s
third definition as the author writing in a time after the fate occurs. Plato’s own judgment
of the fate as brought about by individuals acting unjustly is brought into the dialogue, for
Plato was writing from the perspective of future developments within the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) that could not have been known by the historical Socrates. Instead, the
above interlocution is significant of Plato’s own position as a trans-subjective mediator in
his narrative of the Socratic Tragedy as a work of literature that is to be grasped by the
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audience or reader. It is viewing the trans-subjective mediation of Plato as writing from a
future perspective of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) that Hegel would argue that
Plato did not grasp the importance of Socrates as a world historical individual who
through his philosophy and actions transformed the Greek world. By viewing Socrates as
a victim of injustice, the entire project that Hegel sees in Socrates is lost to a narrative of
injustice and hence the tragic character of his fate (Schicksal) becomes a mere sad story
of which the significance as transformatory becomes cast in a light of historically bound
ignorance. Nevertheless, the following remarks by Plato attributed to Socrates do have
significance that Hegel would believe to incorporate the philosophy of the historical
Socrates. Socrates continues from the last quotation:
Socrates: I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians… to take up the true political
craft and practice true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each
occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best. And because I’m not
willing to make do those clever things that you recommend, I won’t know what to
say in court… I’ll be judged the way a doctor would be judged by a jury of
children if a pastry chef were to bring accusations against him… Don’t you think
he’d be at a total loss as to what he should say… That’s the sort of thing I know
would happen to me, too, if I came into court. For I won’t be able to point out
any pleasures that I’ve provided for them, ones they believe to be services and
benefits, while I envy neither those who provide them nor the ones for whom their
provided. Nor will I be able to say what’s true if someone charges that I ruin
younger people by confusing them or abuse older ones by speaking bitter words
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against them in public or in private. I won’t be able to say, that is, “Yes, I say and
do all these things in the interest of justice (Gorgias 521d-522b)…”
Similar to the previous quotation, the tragic irony involved in the above quotation follows
the second and third definitions provided by Muecke. There is a gap in knowledge
between Socrates speech and the circumstances that shall bring him to his fate, and Plato
provides clues for the listener or reader as to what shall become of this great man. As
representative of a literary tragic irony, Socrates makes constant reference to his lack of
ability in oratory and even questions what would happen if he were ever on trial, yet the
character that appears in these texts is completely unaware that his death will come about
because of the philosophy which he practicing. Accordingly, the audience or reader
familiar with the story picks up on all of these clues so that they might see the
interlocution as a tragic irony. Yet the tragic irony in the above quotation is much deeper
than in the previous quotation, for while both quotations demonstrate a gap in knowledge
between the speaker and his fate, in Socrates’ recognition that he practices the true
political craft and that he is like a physician who through painful treatment helps
Athenians heal, Socrates makes a claim which Hegel would read as pertaining to the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will.
Firstly, as a practitioner of the true political craft, Socrates recognizes his own
position as the trans-subjective mediator of the conflicting wills within Athens. Through
his interlocutions brings individuals to actualize their own freedom from the potential
within the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the arbitrary will which as the goal of history in
Hegel’s assessment is the true political craft. Yet as a philosopher Socrates importance is
greater than the external impositions of politicians on the citizenry, for rather than
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pushing history into a new epoch from the power of government Socrates instead
accomplishes this goal through ideas alone. This claim becomes a tragic irony when one
looks ahead to the future fate that Socrates must succumb to in order for the Athenians to
recognize their own consciousness as caged and unfree. Socrates cannot make the claim
in an Athenian court that he has brought the truth into the minds of Athenian citizens
through Method which spells the end of the externally imposed judgments of the Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit), for it is in these externally imposed judgments that the Athenian reality
is made real and therefore rational. Socrates’ reference to the true political craft is thus
tragically ironic because it’s actualization in the minds of Athenians as an infinitely free
will which adjudicates for itself rightness and wrongness means the end of both the
Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the life of Socrates.
Secondly, as a physician who performs painful procedures on his patients,
Socrates cuts out cancers and cauterizes wounds in order to bring the Athenians health,
yet the Athenians themselves are like children who would blame him for giving them
pain and not see the benefits that the treatment affords them. The medical analogy is a
tragic irony as the gap in knowledge between the Athenians painful treatment and the
healing that this treatment gives them which causes them to bring Socrates to trial for
crimes. As discusses in the section on tragedy, these crimes were criminal as actions
against the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), but so too were they right and just for Socrates to
perform. He had practiced the true political craft which required him to perform these
painful treatments on the Athenians, and thus had sealed his own fate through these
actions. As a conflict of wills, the analogy lends itself to the conflict found between
Socrates and Athens, and Socrates and the Sophists, for the inter-subjective relationship
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between the educated Sophists who relied on their own individual measure to locate the
truth and between the uneducated Athenians who relied on the external judgments of the
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) were mediated from a trans-subjective position that destroyed
the phenomenological and arbitrary wills like a cancer in order to actualize the infinitely
free will like a healthy body. While the process is grasped by Socrates, the fate which he
shall succumb because of this remains unseen by Socrates, and hence the gap in
knowledge requires the audience to grasp as a tragic irony.
Historical Tragic Irony
The tragic irony is found within the text as a literary device employed by Plato, yet from
the above discussion of the true political craft and the medical analogy the tragic irony is
something which is not literary but real and rational, for within the story of Socrates is
hidden a real historical personality. Like the literary irony described above, through his
conversations with his future accusers, he does not know what the future holds, yet there
is one important difference between Socrates and literature, namely, Socrates was a real
person. This is the irony of the world history. As rightly postulated by Williams, Hegel
believed with Vlastos that the Socrates of history can be found in the philosophical
writings which present him as a philosopher. Hegel states that he preferred to use the
Memorabilia of Xenophon to find the content of his philosophy, and Plato to find the
Method and Principle of his philosophy and the psychological sketch for the historical
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Socrates, but Hegel believed that this historical Socrates did in fact exist. Socrates was
real man who lived a life which is discoverable. Yet Hegel also believed that the views
as described by the ancients which have informed the Classicist’s project must be
reworked to leave behind the Romanticists’ tastes so that it might fit the idealist vision. It
is through this vision that the Tragic Irony as the Socratic Irony may be formulated so
that Socrates takes the position as the true founder of modern philosophy. As such,
Socrates’ irony is a tragedy which demonstrates not just the irony of an individual’s
contradictory beliefs within the biographical novel, but the irony of world history, for
history itself is not only a text which one engages with, but a living experience which one
participates in the creation of. This irony comes about through the individual case, but so
too does the individual case touch on something which is universal. Hegel tells us that
this negative thinking which refutes the beliefs of the Athenians not only proves the
Athenian society to be based on inconsistencies, but also the entire world of human
beings. It is when the philosopher paints grey in grey that a way of life has grown old,
and the example of Socrates is only a single instance of this. His picture of the Athenian
way of life is the same picture of every way of life, for the individual case is but an
instance of the particular kind that comes in contact with the universal experience of all.
This cannot be a mere irony, for as the tragic comedy of all human life like Dante’s
Devine Comedy human lives are set upon the slaughter bench of history (Schlachtbank
der Geschichte) so that the world may be made anew, history itself remains a living
experience that comes to us and forms us as a part of it. This is the true content of the
tragic irony which leaves behind all pretenses to Romantic taste thereby leaving only the
kernel of tragedy as it is experienced universally.
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The tragic irony so conceived as the irony of world history is discussed in the
Philosophy of Right in a footnote towards the end of paragraph 140. In this paragraph
Hegel discusses morality as the positive end of particular actions as related to the
arbitrary will, but in the last section of the paragraph he discusses specifically irony
which is formulated as the Fichtean-Schlegelian irony discussed above. This irony, he
says, “is borrowed from Plato… [but] the name alone, however, is taken from Plato; he
used it to describe a way of speaking which Socrates employed in conversation when
defending the Idea of truth and justice against the conceit of the Sophists and the
uneducated. What he treated ironically, however, was only their type of mind, not the
Idea itself. [Thus] irony is only a manner of talking against people (PoR para. 140 sect.
f).” This seems to contradict what has been said in the previous section that the Socratic
Method is not ironic, but rather that the moment which appears as ironic is the negative
moment within the dialectic, yet the above quotation does not mention the actual Socratic
Method. The argument in the above quotation is rather leveled against the FichteanSchlegelian irony and to a lesser extent the description of the Socratic Method given by
Plato. The quotation continues, making this more clearly an indictment of Plato: “Except
as directed against persons, the essential movement of thought is dialectic, and Plato was
so far from regarding the dialectical in itself, still less irony, as the last word in thought
and a substitute for the Idea, that he terminated the flux and reflux of thinking, let alone
of a subjective opinion, and submerged it in the substantiality of the idea (PoR para. 140
sect. f).” This description of the Platonic Philosophy is clearly a divorce from the
description of the Socratic. Hegel’s section on Plato in the History of Philosophy makes
this point clear, for Plato had moved away from the immanence found in the Socratic
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Method, which through the search for the Good looked into the self, by positing the
Forms and the grasping of the Forms as the submerger into “the substantiality of the
Idea.”
The irony in Hegel’s view spoken of by Plato was of no importance to the
philosophy which he expounded, but rather a literary device that he implemented to show
Socrates in dialogue with others. Furthermore, this holds no weight against the claim that
the Socratic Method and Philosophy were not ironic, for Hegel believed that in order to
find the Method and Philosophy one must read Socrates out of both Plato and Xenophon
who each had their own ulterior motives in using the character Socrates to represent the
man. This point is made within the Philosophy of Right in order to level a critique
against the Fichtean-Schlegelian Irony that takes Plato for his word as the final say in the
Socratic Irony, and with this raises the irony up to become a philosophical principle that
neither Plato nor Socrates would ascent to. The importance of returning to this point is
found in the footnote that describes what Hegel considers to be the true Socratic Irony as
the tragic irony of world history. The discovery of this critique of irony as the irony of
world history is one of the few positive attributions Hegel gives through his writings to
any of his contemporaries. The man who he says discovered this sense of tragic irony is
Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger whose work Kritik uber die Vorlesungen des Herrn
August Wilhelm vom Schlegel uber Dramatische Kunst und Literatur contains a view of
irony that Hegel found to far surpass Schlegel’s own. Hegel introduces Solger with the
highest reverence as “My colleague, the late Professor Solger, adopted the word ‘irony’
which Friedrich von Schlegel brought into use at a comparatively early period of his
literary career and enhanced to equivalence with the said principle of subjectivity
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knowing itself as supreme. But Solger’s finer mind was above such an exaggeration; he
had a philosophic insight and so seized upon, emphasized, and retained only that part of
Schlegel’s view which was dialectic in the strict sense, i.e. dialectic as the pulsating drive
of speculative inquiry(PoR para. 140 sect. f footnote).” After this initial introduction
Hegel quotes Solger at length:
“’True irony’, arises from the view that so long as man lives in this present world,
it is only in this world that he can fulfill his “appointed task” no matter how
elevated a sense we give to this expression.
Any hope we may have of
transcending finite ends is foolish and empty conceit. Even the highest is existent
for our conduct only in a shape that is limited and finite… And just for this reason
the highest is in us as negligible as the lowest and perishes of necessity with us
and our nugatory thoughts and feelings. The highest is truly existent in God
alone, and as it parishes in us it is transfigured into something divine, a divinity in
which we would have had no share but for its immediate presence revealed in the
very disappearance of our actuality; now the mood to which this process directly
comes home in human affairs is tragic irony… We see heroes beginning to
wonder whether they have erred in the noblest and finest elements of their
feelings and sentiments, not only in regard to their successful issue, but also to
their source and their worth; indeed, what elevates us is the destruction of the best
itself (PoR para. 140 sect. f footnote Solger p.92).”
Each and every individual must succumb themselves to what they were meant to be and
do. Sometimes what one is meant to do is of world historical importance as in the case of
Socrates, but more often one’s appointed task is as simple as completing one’s work, and
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interestingly, this definition of an ‘appointed task’ may be found in Socrates’ definition
of ‘justice’ from the Republic as “doing one’s own work (433a-b).” Such work represents
the finite being of the individual which Solger explains cannot be transcended, for as a
particular individual cannot leave behind the historical epoch which one is bound, this
particularity too binds the individual to the limitedness and finitude of that epoch.
Grasping the finitude of one’s existence leaves one to understand that both the highest
values to which one aspires and the lowest actions to which one performs are all
superfluous according to the complete story of humanity. Both the basest and greatest of
aspirations are arbitrary according to the universal history that all of humanity travels
through. Every epoch and culture has a particular character which is but finite in this
history as an arbitrary determination which has a beginning and an end, and as with the
finitude of the epoch and culture that begins and ends, so too do individuals who live
within these epochs and cultures. One day each and every individual shall come to her
own end thereby leaving the behind this world and defining the lines around her
limitedness and finitude as from the cradle to the grave.
Yet Hegel takes issue with this formulation and argues in his commentary that if
one makes the finite individual the end then this is the same as the Fichtean-Schlegelian
irony that makes the arbitrary aims of the individual the end. The Fichtean Schlegelian
irony is what Solger had argued for up to this point in the text, but Hegel remarks that the
idea formulated by Solger is already a departure from the Fichtean-Schlegelian irony, for
early in the same publication he had made the argument which comes to the conclusion
that the finite individual aims themselves are the end in itself. As the arbitrary will, the
end in itself would thus become an evil end in that the individual could aim at whatever
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fit her fancy whether it is one’s own work or the satisfaction of base desires.
Nevertheless, with a slight adjustment from the formulation of the Fichtean-Schlegelian
irony as arbitrary will this becomes correct, for the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) is the
objective correlate to arbitrary will. As viewed from the perspective of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) the individual who completes her own work in accordance with her position
within society comes into contact with the universal truth of history as the actualization
of human freedom. Coming in contact with this universal requires another step which
brings the individual from her own finite particularity to the universal truth of God’s
infinity. Within the history of human civilizations there is always a being which stands
above it and views the world as a universal story which through its particular tragedies
becomes complete rather than as finite stories which end only in tragedy and are
completed.
Only God can grasp the highest good, and in the suffering of individuals that are
reconciled with God at death within the divine comedy is located the highest good as
beginning and ending with the infinity of God. The history of the world is thus ironic in
Solger’s view as a divine comedy which appears to individual’s living within a particular
historical epoch as tragic, yet while the events that individuals in the world must succumb
to may bring with them destruction, from the perspective of God, these events are but
small instances within the universal story of the divined comedy which all come to
conclusion at the end of an individual’s life in the hands of God. Yet the divine comedy
or irony of world history is only comic on the view which can be taken by God or the
philosopher who recognizes within history God’s purpose while on the level of individual
humans the events that make up parts of the divine comedy appear as tragedy. It is this
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conflict between the particular view of individuals and the universal view of God that
make history itself a tragic irony, for from the perspective of humans the divine comedy
is tragic yet one may grasp from the tragedy the divine comedy. The philosopher who
grasps the universal within the divine comedy has found the infinite good that is in God,
yet because this philosopher is but a mortal human, she too must suffer the tragedies that
all mortals must suffer, and hence within her grasp is the universal of history as coming
from the particularity of finite existence. From the particularity of finite existence within
and the universal of infinite good within God, there is the tragic irony behind all history
as it is experienced by the individual from her finite life into the infinity of God. Hegel
comments that “the arbitrary name ‘irony’ would be of no importance, but there is an
obscurity here when it is said that it is ‘the highest’ which parishes with our nothingness
and that it is in the disappearance of our actuality that the divine is first revealed (PoR
para. 140 sect. f footnote).”
The recognition of individuals laid out on the slaughter-bench of history
(Schlachtbank der Geschichte) performing their own work and succumbing to destruction
raises one’s consciousness to grasp the tragic irony. The hero may question her position
and whether or not she has fulfilled her duty in doing her work, but it is this questioning
that makes her fate a tragic irony. Even in the greatest individuals there is doubt yet it is
this doubt that makes these heroes great thereby affecting the witness of the tragic irony
with laudation for their greatness. The hero’s destruction is thus the most significant
moment within the divine comedy, for while it appears as tragic to the witness, in the
hero’s greatness that is recognized through the tragedy the witness finds within the hero
universal good as it is in God. As the trans-subjective individual who takes the position
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above the tragedy itself and between the opposition within the tragedy, the conflict
between the particularity of finite existence and the universal of God’s infinity become
one as the tragic irony. When heroes suffer and die for the good which stands above the
particularity of the historical epoch’s finite existence, and individuals find that good
within the hero’s story as the universal within the divine comedy through their transsubjective relationship to the hero’s tragedy, the individual comes closer to knowing God
as the infinite universal within the story of humanity. Thus in grasping the tragic irony of
world history, individuals are brought up toward grasping the goodness of God through
the universal, and as discussed above, the grasping of this universal is the aim of
humanity. Hegel explains the importance of Solger’s work as related to his own theory
of tragedy:
“The tragic destruction of figures whose ethical life is on the highest plane can
interest and elevate us and reconcile us to its occurrence only in so far as they
come on the scene in opposition to one another together with equally justified but
different ethical powers which have come into collision through misfortune,
because the result is that then these figures acquire guilt through their opposition
to an ethical law. Out of this situation arises the right and wrong of both ethical
parties and therefore the true ethical Idea, which, purified and in triumph over this
one-sidedness, is thereby reconciled in us. Accordingly, it is not the highest in us
which parishes; we are elevated not by the destruction of the best but by the
triumph of the true. This it is which constitutes the true, purely ethical, interest of
ancient tragedy. But the ethical Idea is actual and present in the world of social
institutions without the misfortune of tragic clashes and the destruction of
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individuals overcome by this misfortune.
And this Idea’s (the highest’s)
revelation of itself in its actuality as anything but a nullity is what the external
embodiment of ethical life, the state, purposes and effects, and what the ethical
self-consciousness possesses, intuits, and knows in the state and what the thinking
mind comprehends there (PoR para. 140 sect. f footnote).”
In this commentary Hegel makes clear the connection between his theory of tragedy and
tragic irony which as acts of destruction elevate the witness to grasp the ethical (Sittliche)
through the conflict between ethical parties.
It is furthermore the trans-subjective
relationship of the witness to the tragedy that the conflict becomes elevated to the pointed
of grasping the “true ethical.” As in his explanation of Sophocles’ Antigone in its conflict
between the right of the family and the right of the state, ancient tragedies generally are
shaped in Hegel’s view by this clash of opposing ethical sides. This is different than “the
just destruction of utter scoundrels and criminals who flaunt their villainy—the hero of
modern tragedy, die Schuld, is one—[who] has an interest for criminal law, but none at
all for art proper (PoR para. 140 sect. f footnote).” The main consideration is that both
sides are right and just in their actions towards one another, yet through their ethicality
come into conflict. It is in this relation to tragedy that the fate (Schicksal) of Socrates
represents not only a tragedy, but the tragic irony of world history, for in Socrates is
found the reconciliation of opposing ethical powers that through their clash come to
resolution in us as the assessment of this clash and its world historical importance. Thus
as a tragic irony, Socrates might be said to be one individual laid out on the slaughterbench of history (Schlachtback der Geschichte) who through his own work brought on
both his own and the fate (Schicksal) of Athens. Yet the highest in us does not parish in
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this reconciliation, for as trans-subjective observers, the individual who examines this
fate finds not only the destruction of an individual and an Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), but
also the particularity of a finite individual coming to touch the universal truth of the good
through his clash with a particular Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit).
The tragedy is found in the clash of two opposing rights which through their clash
destroy one another, but the tragic irony is not found in this destruction but in the place of
the tragedy as an event within the continuing cycle of world history. Thus to say that the
true irony of Socrates is a tragic irony places Socrates in a position outside of himself
where he could not know where his place amongst other individuals laid out on the
slaughterbench of history was. Socrates in this sense can only be comprehended by an
observer from the outside who as a trans-subjective individual sees the entire narrative
from beginning to end.
This view is seized upon by Sarah Koffman in her book
Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher when she claims that Hegel read Socrates as not an
ironist but as a “only a tragic ironist (Kaufman p.84),” yet while Socrates certainly was a
figure who fits within the theory of tragic irony explicated above as an individual who
did his own work and came to a tragic end because of it, there is also another sense of
tragic irony that would have Socrates’ philosophy and Method fit a mold more similar to
the classical view of the Socratic Irony. While there is no doubt that the story of Socrates
is tragically ironic in the Solgerian sense and that Hegel delivered his section on Socrates
in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy with Solger in mind, there is textual
evidence that tell a story in which Socrates is tragically ironic on more than this level of
historical significance alone.
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The Tragic Irony of Socrates’ Will
It has only now become possible to perceive the contrast between the view that the
fictional Socrates represented a tragic irony through the literary figure, the view that the
real Socrates was a tragically ironic world historical character, and the view that both the
life and philosophy of Socrates are a tragic irony. The characterization given by Hegel of
the Socratic Method describes the negative moment of the Elenchus as a formal step in
the externalization of the dialectic from the Socratic Genius to his interlocutors so that he
might cleanse their consciousness before giving birth to the true, yet in this negative
moment which the History of Philosophy describes as not ironic, Hegel claims that the
Socrates’ “tragic irony is his opposition of subjective reflection to morality as its exists,
not a consciousness of the fact that he stands above it, but the natural aim of leading men,
through thought, to the true good and to the universal Idea (HoP 2.B.1.a).” Like the
Solgerian tragic irony which Hegel reformulates to represent the conflict between the
universal truth in the divine comedy as infinite and the particularity of individuals set
upon Slaughterbench of History (Schlachtbank der Geschichte) as finite, the tragic irony
described in the History of Philosophy comes about through the individual case, and
through the particularity of experience becomes universal. Yet it is different, for Hegel
tells us that this negative thinking which refutes the beliefs of the Athenians not only
proves the Athenian society to be based on inconsistencies, but acts as the foundation for
all future philosophy (HoP 2.B.1.c.2).
The concrete determination (konkrete
Bestimmung) which comes about through this destructive thought becomes the concrete
universal truth of the infinitely free will of Socrates (HoP 2.B.1.b.3) and when given to
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the Athenian world both Socrates and Athens die like a waning fire after his poison is
taken (HoP 2.B.3.c.3). It is here that one may find the beginnings of Socrates’ fate and
the reproduction of his tragedy in his Method. For this reason Hegel claims the Socratic
irony to be a tragic irony, for through his destructive thought against the Athenian Ethical
Life (Sittlichkeit), Socrates has become criminal in the eyes of the Athenians, yet in so
doing remains righteous in his criminality. In this final analysis of tragic irony the
contradiction of opposing rights is also the groundwork for the entire Socratic Method as
two opposing rights of the subjective wills of Socrates against the Sophists, and the
subjective will of Socrates against the objective will of the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit). Hegel explains the relation of the Tragedy to the Socratic Method as
follows:
“Two opposed rights come into collision, and the one destroys the other. Thus
both suffer loss and yet both are mutually justified; it is not as though the one
alone were right and the other wrong. The one power is the divine right, the
natural morality whose laws are identical with the will which dwells therein as in
its own essence, freely and nobly; we may call it abstractly objective freedom.
The other principle, on the contrary, is the right, as really divine, of consciousness
or of subjective freedom; this is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, i.e. of self-creative reason; and it is the universal principle of Philosophy for
all successive times. It is these two principles which we see coming into
opposition in the life and the philosophy of Socrates.”
In the above quotation Hegel describes the tragic fate (Schicksal) of Socrates as has been
described above, but interestingly he elaborates on this fate (Schicksal) as the opposition
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between the right of the objective freedom of Athens which he calls the will and may be
rightfully interpreted as the objective will of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), and the right
of the subjective freedom of Socrates which may be rightfully interpreted as the infinitely
free will. This infinitely free will of Socrates he explains further as “the universal
principle of philosophy for all successive times,” which signifies the importance of
subjective reflection for all philosophy back into itself. Yet most importantly is the
naming of these two wills as principles of subjective and objective rightness which come
“into opposition in the life and philosophy of Socrates (my own stress added).” This
signifies the infinitely free will of Socrates as involving both the subjectivity of abstract
reflection and the objectivity of concrete determinations within the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) which has been stressed above in the section on the conflict of wills.
Furthermore, Hegel’s claim that it is not only the life of Socrates as tragic which is only
interpretable by the trans-subjective witness to his biography, but also the philosophy of
Socrates as tragic. Because Hegel claims that the real Socratic Irony is a tragic irony, and
because it is the opening section of the section on the Socratic Method within the History
of Philosophy that describes the Socratic Method as dialectic, it would be surprising if
Hegel did not mean something more significant than the Solgerian tragic irony which
would describe the Socratic Dialectic as a tragic irony itself.
The claims made above regarding the Socratic Irony and the Hegelian tragedy as
it applies to Socrates have created the conditions from which the irony itself can be
reinterpreted as a tragedy that is enacted within each and every Socratic dialogue. Yet
the tragic irony which is now to be described is not that of the tragic irony described as a
tragic irony that has come from the Romantic era to take its place in the literary rhetoric
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of the modern drama nor the Solgerian tragic irony of world history which requires a
trans-subjective consciousness outside of the story to interpret. Instead, the tragic irony
which shall be described is integrally based in the Socratic Method itself, for just as the
Tragedy of Socrates required that 1) both Socrates and Athens were right and just in their
offenses against one another, and 2) in the end Socrates bends to the judgments of Athens
and takes his poison with courage, the tragic irony too requires that 1) both Socrates in
his interlocutors are right and just in their questions and answers to one another, and 2) in
the end the interlocutor bends to the aporia brought through Socrates’ interlocutions and
swallows the poison of ignorance thereby actualizing freedom through Socrates’
midwifery which before was a mere potentiality within the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit).
Yet while the interlocutors represent the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists’ arbitrary will, the result of the interlocutors’ aporia is
found rather in the conflict between the will of Socrates and the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), and his will and the Sophists’ arbitrary will. This conflict of wills is what
spells Socrates’ Fate (Schicksal), but also it is within the very philosophy of Socrates and
this conflict of wills in its externality between interlocutors that the Socratic Method
itself is a tragic irony.
The primary texts from which this interpretation are possible are all Plato’s and
have quoted in the above sections to argue for Hegel’s interpretation of the Socratic
Method and the literary tragic irony. These texts include the Theaetetus, the Meno, and
the Gorgias all of which have strong indications of how Hegel developed his reading of
Socrates. As a brief recap, from the Theaetetus Hegel found the art of midwifery which
Socrates uses to help his interlocutor give birth to the actualization of their self-
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cosciousness; from the Meno he found recollection which Socrates employs to return
back into his own thought like the infinitely free will in order to find the truth; and from
the Gorgias he found the medical analogy which Socrates demonstrates the power of
thought to cure the disease of the Athenian and Sophists’ consciousness. Together within
these texts may be extracted an interpretation that demonstrates Socrates to have
characteristics of a tragic irony as a Method and Principle of his philosophy. It is the
tragic irony as a clash between Socrates and his interlocutors, and between Socrates and
the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) that brings Socrates closer and closer toward his Fate
(Schicksal) as in the literary tragic irony, that demonstrates Socrates as a world historical
personality as in the Solgerian tragic irony, but most importantly that shows the tragic
irony within the dialogue as the philosophy of Socrates which through its dialectic
follows the pattern of Hegel’s theory of tragedy.
Beginning with the Gorgias, the tragic irony of Socrates’ philosophy is found
within the claim to be one of the only practitioners of true politics and the medical
analogy. Firstly, as one of the only practitioners of true politics, Socrates shows through
his interlocutions that the Athenian democratic assembly which is meant to bring the
polis to true decisions through democratic deliberation in the end only brings about an
arbitrary choice which is true only in the sense that it was chosen, and hence
tautologically.
In this way, the tragic irony is not only between Socrates and his
interlocutors, but also between Socrates and the foundations of the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), for although his interlocutors represent the part of the beliefs through their
interlocutions held by the Athenians and Sophists, the conflict is truly between Socrates
and Athens. The conflict thus appears upon the cursory reading as a purely Solgerian
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tragic irony that represents the transformation of the Athenian world through the tragedy
of the world historic personality, yet Socrates himself in the Hegelian picture may be read
as argued above to fit the pattern of a trans-subjective consciousness between the finite
and infinite wills who grasps the conflict as its mediation. The true political craft
practiced by Socrates takes on this characteristic of trans-subjective consciousness as the
Genius (Daemonion) which through critique discovers the falsity of arbitrary will within
the Athenian people and through this discovery brings into the consciousness of his
fellow citizens the actuality of their freedom. The democracy is thus a false political craft
because it is an external representation of the arbitrary will which can only come to
tautologically true choices as choices truly made. The philosophy of Socrates on the
other hand is quite the opposite, for through immanent critique Socrates cleanses the
consciousness of his interlocutors in order to aid them into a state of regained health.
This begins as a negation of the positive dogmas within the Athenian Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit), but continues on to bring the consciousness to grasp the actuality of its
freedom. The true political craft takes on this importance as the dialectic which negates
positive beliefs and then negates the negativity of the negation by bringing the
consciousness from potentiality into actuality, from in itself to for itself, and hence as true
politics it is the foundation of freedom.
Of centrality, within the above claims about the true political craft and the claims
about Socrates’ interlocutions as a mirror of his Fate (Schicksal), is the Medical Analogy
also from the Gorgias. The medical analogy is the negative moment with the Socratic
Method as the elimination of disease within the polis, and as the tragic irony is the mirror
image of Socrates’ Fate (Schicksal), the poison hemlock which Socrates drank thereby
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becoming a world historic personality so too is the medicine which he delivers to his
interlocutors a poison which brings them to actualize their potential freedom. As a tragic
irony both the true political craft and the medical analogy as an analogy with the true
political craft Socrates becomes the trans-subjective consciousness who grasps the
relationship between the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the Sophists arbitrary will in order
to bring about the actualization of his interlocutors so that they may become free. Yet
medical analogy as an analogy with the true political craft is only negative, for it is only
through treatment as the elimination of disease that an individual can come to a state in
which health may be regained. Hence as the negative moment of the Socratic dialectic is
only the negation of positive dogmas held by his interlocutors, after the treatment is given
and health is regained his interlocutors must practice gymnastics in order to remain in the
state of regained health, and through the gymnastic activity come to know their own
bodies as their own. Similarly, the dialectic brings individuals to know themselves by
bringing their consciousness to turn back into themselves so that the Ethical Life
(Sittlichkeit) and the arbitrary will are reflected upon. As a trans-subjective mediator
who grasps the conflict of wills within individuals, Socrates shows himself to be a tragic
ironist through this negation and negation of negation as does he likewise appear a tragic
irony to those who look back on him as a world historic personality. Yet this gymnastic
moment of dialectic comes about more suddenly within his interlocutions than the
gymnastic analogy might lead one to believe, and in this respect the negation of
negativity which takes the gymnast years of practice is brought into the consciousness of
the interlocutor as quickly as is born an infant.
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The moment of actualization through the negation of negativity in the Socratic
dialectic takes form as the art of midwifery which through the elimination of disease in
the interlocutors’ consciousness makes possible the actualization of freedom.
As
discussed above regarding the Socratic Method in the Theaetetus, the art of midwifery
allows Socrates to bring forth what was already present within the consciousness of his
interlocutors’ as a mere potentiality.
The art of midwifery consequently is the
actualization of the potential freedom lying dormant within the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
and the arbitrary will. Socrates takes on the characteristics of a trans-subjective mediator
by locating this potentiality and aiding in the interlocutors actualization, and hence as a
trans-subjective mediator in this process he so too takes on the characteristics which are
present in locating the tragedy as a Solgerian tragic irony of world history by transsubjective witness to the events of his death. Yet, as noted by Kaufman in her discussion
of the Socratic Method, the midwife aids in the birth of many stillborns of which the
potential of life has already been nullified, and as an elaboration on her insight, even if
the birth is not a stillborn, it is nonetheless up to the interlocutor to keep this infant alive.
Thus regards to the gymnastic analogy, the interlocutor must exercise their new found
actualization so that it does not become weak thereby leading to the disease going into
remission.
This exercise of the consciousness is found in the infinite freedom of
Socrates’ subjective will that through reflection on the positivity of concrete dogmas
within the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the skepticism of the arbitrary will recollects the
truth held within his own subjective freedom. The knowledge of one’s self represents the
actualization of this potential freedom, and because it lays dormant within the
consciousness as oneself who is not yet known, all that is required in order to reach this
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actualization is to recollect oneself. The tragic irony of this recollection is that this
actualization requires the negation of external dogmas of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
held internally by the interlocutor so that she might know the truth that is already within,
and hence because both the truth which lays dormant within and the external dogmas of
the Ethical Life (Sitlichkeit) are both right and just according to the ethicality of tragic
clash and destruction, the actualization brought through the art of midwifery takes shape
as the mirror image of Socrates’ Fate (Schicksal). While the Fate (Schicksal) can only be
interpreted by the trans-subjective witness to the conflict ending in the philosopher’s
death, this actualization within the consciousness of his interlocutors is interpreted by the
trans-subjective Socrates as the conflict of wills within Athens.
Through the theory of recollection found in the Meno, the return into the self from
the externality of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and then a return from the internality of
consciousness back out into the world, is found the final significance of Socrates’ tragic
irony. The recollection of the infinite freedom which resides in the consciousness, but
which remains arbitrary without a return back into the finite world while retaining that
infinity of the will is possibly the most important moment of the Socratic Dialectic. The
finitude of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the bad infinity of the arbitrary will together
become the good infinity of the free will which as discussed above in the Solgerian tragic
irony is a mirror reflection of the finitude involved in the experience of mortals and the
infinitude involved in the divinity of God. Together the finitude and infinitude found
within experience of limited mortal lives and the unlimited divinity are grasped by the
trans-subjective consciousness so that she might see history itself as a tragic irony, and
likewise in the case of Socrates, together the finitude and infinitude found within the
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limited Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and the unlimited arbitrary will are grasped by the
philosopher so that he might see the potential for infinite freedom within Athens. This
trans-subjective grasping is accomplished by Socrates through his own and his
interlocutors’ recollection of their consciousnesses which bring him and his interlocutors
to “know thyself.”
As Socrates and his interlocutors look into themselves for the truth of their
freedom, the tragic irony takes on a form as the tragic irony described by Solger, for both
involve the reconciliation between infinitude and finitude as mirror images of one
another. Yet in the case of the Solgerian tragic irony, the infinitude is the unlimited good
found within God’s divinity while in the case of the Socratic philosophical tragic irony,
the infinity is the unlimited evil within the arbitrary will as ready and able to make any
choice because it is merely arbitrary. It is this that explains Hegel’s criticism of the
Fichtean-Schegelian interpretation of Plato’s irony the culmination of his discussion of
evil. Hegel describes this arbitrary irony as “the culminating form of this subjectivity
which conceives itself as the final court of appeal… [and which] can be nothing except
what was implicitly present already in its preceding forms, namely subjectivity knowing
itself as the arbiter and judge of truth, right, and duty (PoR para. 140 sect. f).” This evil
irony has no hope of attaining the infinitely free subjective will, for unlike Socrates’ will
“it consists then in this, that it knows the objective ethical principle, but fails in selfforgetfulness and self-renunciation to immerse itself in their seriousness and to base
action upon them (PoR para. 140 sect. f).” Socrates returns into his own consciousness
but with the content of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) as the absolute determination of his
own historically bound life which is necessarily limited as a mortal but which becomes
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infinite in knowing.
The Sophists’, Kantians’, Fichteans’ and Schlegelians’
“subjectivism not merely substitutes a void for the whole content of ethics, right, duties,
and laws—and so is evil, in fact evil through and through and universally—but in
addition its form is a subjective void, i.e. it knows itself as this contentless void and in
this knowledge knows itself as absolute (PoR para. 140 sect. f).” To the contrary,
Socrates knows himself through sublation of this bad infinity and the finitude of the
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) to become a truly infinite absolutely free will as containing both
the infinity of self-knowledge and the limited content of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). It
is as such that Socrates represents a philosophy which is a tragic irony both in externality
of Method and internality of dialectic.
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CHAPTER 6:
CONCLUSION
The argument from the preceding sections is that the critique behind the Socratic Method
is not ironic, but rather is an immanent critique of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit),
and of the Sophists’ arbitrary will through the infinitely free will of Socrates. It is the
destruction of both of these agencies that Socrates acts as a midwife in aiding the
interlocutor’s emergence from their cocoon of potentiality to become an actualized free
consciousness. It is negativity and destruction that are necessary components to the
Socratic dialectic, for as in the phrase by the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin: “The
urge to destroy is also a creative urge (Reaction in Germany).” It is this urge to destroy
which can be found in the Socratic Method as a critique of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit)
and arbitrary will that also proves Socrates to not be an ironist, but instead appear as an
instance of tragic irony within the History of Philosophy, for through his destructive
Elenchus he not only spelled the demise of Athens, but also the beginning of a new era.
Socrates, in Hegel’s view, became the quintessential world historical personality who
through his own aspirations pulled with him the entirety of Western Civilization, and it is
this that made the figure ironic as an instance of the irony of world history.
Hegel
explains the transition that Socrates marked the Athenian’s centrality as a political center
and their downfall in terms of ideas, for Socrates taught a new philosophy of discovery
136
within the individual that meant the external judgments that Athens depended on for the
Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) could no longer be depended on:
“This principle of self-determination for the individual has… become the ruin of
the Athenian people, because it was not yet identified with the constitution of the
people; and thus the higher principle must in every case appear to bring ruin with
it where it is not yet identified with the substantial of the people. The Athenian
life became weak, and the State outwardly powerless, because its spirit was
divided within itself (HoP 2.B.3.c.3).”
It is through this principle of self-determination thereby destroying the external
determinations that the healing principle is brought forth to the individual who begins to
overcome her disease through the power of her own consciousness, yet as explained
above, this plays no part in the Socratic Irony. Nevertheless, it is through this process
that the Socratic Philosophy becomes ironic, for through the destruction of the false
consciousness within the ego, and the process of the ego becoming self-determining,
history is forced by the ideas to transform into a new epoch. While the impetus for the
historical transformation results from the immanent critique of the concrete objective
freedom in the Athenian state as it is embodied in the concrete false consciousness of the
interlocutor through her attainment of self-consciousness and subjective freedom (HoP
2.B.2.a.1), it is nevertheless only in Socrates’ death that this appears as ironic for us.
This irony which Socrates represents in Hegel’s interpretation is not the philosophical
irony in any estimation, but instead it is a tragic irony that as the true Socratic Irony is
central to both the Socratic Method and the fate (Schicksal) of Socrates. The final aspect
of the Irony as Tragic Irony is in Hegel’s estimation of the greatest importance when
137
analyzing the both the Socratic Method and the centrality of this world historical
personality’s philosophy on the future determinations of all western societies. This
aspect not only allows one to see in what way Hegel viewed the importance of the
philosophy of Socrates as it has influenced all subsequent philosophers, but also allows
one to comprehend in what way he viewed the circumstances of his life as leading
naturally to his fate.
The tragic irony found in the life and philosophy of Socrates can be found not
only in the literary tragic irony implemented by Plato or in biographical narrative as a
world historic personality described in the Solgerian tragic irony, but also in the very
philosophy of Socrates.
All three of these forms of tragic irony are found within
Socrates, but this return to Socrates as an ironist transforms the classical philosophical
irony described by Quintilian into an irony which is much deeper and more important to
the project of German philosophy. It is thus in Socrates that philosophy finds its true
beginning as dialectic. The story of Socrates plays itself out as does the tragedy of a
drama in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art, but in the tragic irony within
Socrates as a philosopher it sublates the positivity of the Athenian dogmas and the
negativity of the arbitrary will by bringing together infinity and the finite found dialectic.
As with the Janus-Head that represented the two sides of the tragedy in his death, there
too is a dual nature to the Socratic dialectic itself, for in the externalization of the
dialectic, Socrates brought his interlocutors to find within themselves the truth through
the limited content of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit).
The same tragic irony discussed above in the Gorgias, the Meno and the
Theaetetus may be found within the Apology, for it was through this clash with Athens
138
that Socrates expressed his greatness, for in bringing his dialectic into the actual arena of
legal affairs, he too brought the universality of his philosophy to the very heart of the
Athenian city state. Hence, although accused justly by the standards of Athenian law,
Socrates showed, through his prosecution and defense, the truth of both his own actuality
and the actuality of the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). The act of accepting such a
fate (Schicksal) requires the moral greatness which was behind the man Socrates, for to
risk death for the sake of truth is the mark of the highest courage. In Socrates one finds
an individual who was willing to accept the fate given to him by the people’s will while
at the same time affirming his own infinite subjective freedom. Hegel explains this
cannot be said of the Athenians after his death, and in the self-determining character
which he showed the Athenians existed within their own consciousness became the selfdestruction of Athens itself. Like the poison which cured his patients required exercise to
keep their new consciousness alive, because the Athenians did not keep to their regimen
the actuality of their freedom too passed away. Hegel tells that “he saw Athens in its
greatness and the beginning of its fall; he experienced the height of its bloom and the
beginning of its misfortunes (Ch2.B.1.c.4).” He was the tragic hero who accepted death
in order to give atonement to the people that gave him life, and as trans-subjective
mediators looking back on his greatness, his later interpreters might see his world historic
greatness as a tragic irony.
It is with this punishment of the philosopher who found the actuality of the
Athenian subjective freedom that the story of Socrates narrates the goal and purpose of
world history, for in the philosopher who unlocked the potential of Athenian freedom is
the truth of freedom, and this truth is what Hegel believed was the final aim of humanity
139
as such. Throughout Hegel’s work, he described Athens as the first state to recognize the
purpose of the human being as freedom, but the aim itself is in common with all human
aspirations to be one with god whose purpose with the world was freedom. Hegel
explains this goal in the Philosophy of History:
“The destiny of the spiritual World, and… the final cause of the World at large,
we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and
ipso facto, the reality of that freedom… This final aim is God's purpose with the
world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing
other than himself — his own Will. The Nature of His Will — that is, His Nature
itself — is what we here call the Idea of Freedom (PoH Para. 23).”
From this quotation, the goal of human freedom aligns itself with the Nature of god’s
Will which is the Idea of Freedom, and because this goal of human freedom is destiny of
the world, the goal of human history is to become like god. It shall be shown below that
Socrates discovered this goal through his infinite moral consciousness and as such
became like a god himself through his new philosophy that allowed him to question the
Athenian world as it appeared in both its objective and subjective freedom. It was he
who first actualized the potential of human freedom in the narrative elaborated by Hegel,
and without his radical break from the Athenian Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit), this freedom
could not have been discovered. In this sense, through Socrates’ life and philosophy, he
became a world historical personality whose influence extended outside of thought and
into the social reality of the Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit). Therefore, through the life of
Socrates, one can find the goal of history as it appears in both thought and action. From
history, one may begin to comprehend Hegel’s entire system of philosophy, for through
140
the development of history, humanity strives to attain its freedom, and this freedom is
embodied in the process of political development (PoH Para. 61-63).
The dictum of this self-knowledge is found upon the entrance to the oracle of
Delphi which read in carved stone “know thyself,” and which Hegel argued is the telos of
all past, present and future philosophy. It is through this dictum that philosophy finds the
in-itself or potentiality of human beings, for in coming to know the self the individual
becomes an actualized being for-herself, and in knowing the self, an individual unlocks
the potential within her own historical epoch as the telos of history which may be defined
as Aristotle’s definition of God: “thought thinking itself.”
141
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