The 36 scholarly papers on the reception of Socrates collected by Moore at times reveal and at times obscure the fundamental problems in achieving understanding of Socrates’ place in the history of philosophy and, more widely, the history of Western civilisation. Among these problems are: Socrates wrote nothing. His disciples, the ‘circle of Socrates’, evidently responded to this charismatic figure in radically different ways. The most illustrious member of the circle, Plato, gives to his readers a Socrates who, so far as the evidence of the dialogues allows us to say, professes Platonic philosophy. Aristotle, completely aware of the difference between the historical Socrates and the figure in Plato's dialogues, mentions several substantial claims that the historical figure made, but is silent on any distinction between what if any arguments the historical figure made on behalf of these claims or whether the arguments that Plato makes on behalf of them were those of Socrates. Add to these issues the problem of determining Plato's arguments for the claims of his Socrates, and you have endless opportunities for speculation. Everyone knows that the historical Socrates was an inspiring and divisive figure. It is hardly surprising that people responded to him differently.
Moore, in his introduction, distinguishes reception from Quellenforschung, the latter being an attempt to ‘reveal’ the subject who is being received. In principle, Rezeptionsgeschichte and Quellenforschung are distinguishable, and in practice it is often clear when the former is being practised, but in the case of Socrates it is sometimes very difficult to separate the efforts to get at the real Socrates from the effort to express how that constructed figure impinges on the psyche of the receiver. Moore characterises reception as, among other things, ‘reconstructing and evaluating the arguments, self-descriptions, and deliberate intimations attributable to [Socrates]’ (p. 4). If we limit ourselves to the evidence for the historical Socrates, there is actually precious little to ‘reconstruct’ and ‘evaluate’. If, on the other hand, we focus on Plato's dialogues, manifestly what we are reconstructing and evaluating are Plato's arguments and his descriptions of Socrates, including descriptions that, taken to be historically accurate, sometimes conflict. If, as many, including myself, would argue, ‘Socrates’ names a character in the dialogues who is completely Plato's construction, we can still ‘receive’ and ‘source hunt’, but the circumstances have in that case changed. For example, we can focus on Socrates and the Athenian public, but we are really focusing on Plato's understanding of Socrates and the Athenian public. Moore makes the very tepid claim that ‘a regular part of Socrates’ conversational practice – might we say his philosophical teaching? – was retelling earlier conversations in which he took part, perhaps leaving it up to his audience to infer why he told them the conversation, or why he said what he did in the conversation itself’ (p. 6). To whom does the phrase ‘his audience’ refer? Obviously, Plato. How does that tell us anything about Socrates? When Moore says that ‘Socratic reception is strange … because Socrates’ philosophy was strange’ (p. 6), he invites the honest question regarding the actual sources for our knowledge of Socrates’ philosophy.
These reservations do not in my mind radically negate Moore's success in achieving his goal of providing a ‘resource for doing philosophy with Socrates’ (p. 6). This collection of essays displays a remarkable breadth in its account of the philosophical reception of Socrates over some 2,450 years. It ranges over the reflections on Socrates’ character, his ‘method’ and his teachings, often with no clear distinction among these. This is to be expected when one's imagination is seized by his forceful character and remarkable life and seeks to honour these by appropriating a certain way of interacting with others and a disparate set of inspiring and perplexing principles or maxims. For example, the historical Socrates evidently was eager to discuss the definition of virtues and so expatiate on the relevance of their possession to happiness. Somehow, their possession is related to knowledge of their real definitions. But these claims, variously interpreted, are discontinuous with Socrates’ absolutist prohibition of wrongdoing, that is, so far as we know. Plato draws these claims together with complex arguments, but the arguments seem for many to disregard the incorruptible, down-to-earth character of Socrates.
The first section includes essays on the ‘living reception’ of Socrates. This label refers to the early disciples and associates of Socrates, both philosophical and literary. It also includes those literary and rhetorical figures who perhaps did not know Socrates personally though they were sufficiently conversant with his reputation that they found it advantageous to allude to him in plays or in rhetorical displays. Only in this section are we not in danger of collapsing the historical figure with the accounts of him, especially of course by Plato. Reading through these papers and the many citations, one can see just how domineering, polarising and puzzling a figure Socrates was in his own day. In this section there is, surprisingly, only one essay devoted to the reception of Socrates by Plato. If Plato's Socrates is just the literary figure loosely based on the riveting historical personage, then that personage mostly drops out of the picture as we focus on the dialogues. If this is not the case, that is, if there is a kernel of the historical Socrates buried in the dialogues, we have no way of uncovering it without unduly weighing Plato's account against those of the other members of the Socratic circle. The essays in this section are written by J. Bromberg, D. Murphy, S. Peterson, M. Luz and D. Johnson.
The second section, ‘Greek philosophy’, which indicates the philosophy of those who could not have known Socrates personally, includes essays on Aristotle, the Pseudo-Platonica, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Damascius, all of whom are mainly, but not solely, concerned with the Socrates of the dialogues. One of the richest seams to mine is the path from Socrates’ self-declared follower Antisthenes, through the Cynics to the Stoics and on to the Roman Imperial Stoa and the ‘Roman Socrates’ Musonius Rufus. Both the Stoics and the Epicureans saw something of value in the person of Socrates, although they rejected the Platonic metaphysics and epistemology that were intended to provide the support for Socrates’ intuitions. The reception of Socrates in ancient Greek philosophy after Plato includes exercises in the construction of the ‘sage’ or ideal human being. No doubt, the Socrates of the dialogues was destined to serve as a paradigm for this construction. The essays in this section are written by Moore, M. Joyal, F.J. Campos-Daroca, B.E. Johnson, J. Sellars, M. Beck and D. Caluori.
The third section is ‘Roman Writers’. Moore makes the interesting point in the introduction that the ‘para-philosophical’ authors treated in this section – Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Apuleius, Quintilian and Aulus Gellius – represent Socrates not so much as a philosopher but as a representative of ‘Greekness’ and also as an anti-authoritarian political hero. So, Socrates the philosopher morphed into Socrates the cultural icon. Among Socrates’ contemporaries and among the first generation of disciples, the representation of Socrates in this way would have no doubt seemed strange. The essays in this section are by S. McConnell, C. Littlewood, C. Dozier and L. Holford-Strevens.
The fourth section has the label ‘Late Antiquity and the Medieval Period’. The essays included range very broadly over Latin and Byzantine Christian authors, the mysterious fifth-century anthologist Stobaeus, Syriac and Arabic authors, and the thirteenth-century Scholastics, especially Albert the Great. Socrates is for these authors clearly Plato's Socrates, now a prominent pagan, whose virtues are taken to be exemplary. Much of this material is tainted by an inadequate grasp of the history of philosophy owing to an ignorance of most of the texts, whether extant in translation or not. Here, Socrates is not even circumscribed by a complete picture of him as he appears in the dialogues, including dialogues like Theaetetus and Philebus where he says things that ardent Socratics find discordant with the Socrates of the early dialogues. The essays here are by J. Frank, S. Prince, U. Pietruschka, E. Wakelnig, N. Bray and M. Trizio.
The fifth section is titled ‘Early Modern Europe’. Missing here are substantive discussions of Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus, both of whom contributed so much to later reflections on Socrates. The essay on Montaigne shows Socrates both receding behind a curtain of doxography and being a source for an examination of the fundamental Socratic concept of self-knowledge. A surprising essay on the Scottish Enlightenment shows how Socrates’ scepticism about natural theology was actually thought to provide grounds for the necessity of revealed religion. The argument goes like this: Socrates, in his dialectical manoeuvres, showed that it was not possible for us to know divinity or God's laws. Therefore, we need revealed religion if we are to know God at all. This is a surprising sort of reception of Socrates, indicating the historical path from scepticism to fideism. The essays here are by J. Hankins, A. Calhoun and F. Loughlin.
The sixth section, ‘The Nineteenth Century’, contains the expected but nonetheless fascinating essays on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, each of whom can be said to have made Socrates his own or rather to have taken away from (Plato's) Socrates just what each wanted. James and John Stuart Mill made of Socrates something quite different, an avatar of liberal values and practical reasoning. The essays in this section are by H. Ausland, S. Frederick, B. Bowman, A. Loizides, D. Schur and L. Yamato, and C. Raymond.
The seventh and last section, ‘The Twentieth Century’, is the most eclectic. It includes essays on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and the ‘analytic’ approach to ancient Greek philosophy, exemplified by Gregory Vlastos. Each of these essays reveals a philosopher immersed in Plato and operating on the assumption that they possess a key to extracting the real Socrates from the Platonic context. Conveniently, they typically ignore Platonic metaphysical claims when spoken by Socrates if these claims do not cohere with their picture of a sceptical or ironic or individualistic or liberal philosopher. The essays here are by O. Kuusela, D. Amat, L. Lawlor, K. Thein and D. Wolfsdorf.
There are many surprising claims made in these essays. Hardly anyone will be sufficiently expert in all the areas covered to be able to make assessments of their accuracy. The answer to the question of the distinction between the historical Socrates and the literary figure in Plato's dialogues is not, as far as I can see, very clear in this collection. Perhaps there does not need to be a clear answer especially when considering Socrates’ ‘reception’ in Western culture.
