The Socratic Presence: A Study of The Sources (review)

Book Reviews Luis E. Navia. The SocraticPresence:A Study of The Sources.Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Volume 1787. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993. Pp. viii + 4o3 . Cloth, $61.oo. At a time when book after book and article after article all seem to agree that the only Socrates worth talking about is Plato's Socrates, Navia reviews the testimony of not just one ancient witness but all four (17 n.3). Obviously taken by the life Socrates lived, which is considered as inseparable from his philosophy, Navia disagrees that Socrates is a literary legend. On the contrary, when Aristophanes first presented Socrates to the Athenians as an atheist buffoon, this image was not treated as fiction but recognizable caricature. Nor is Navia put off by Plato's saintly Socrates. That both of these men could be one and the same sounds paradoxical. Still Navia submits that almost everything is possible where Socrates is concerned: "laughter and tears .... ridicule and canonization" (2~). This is one way in which Navia speaks of the Socratic presence. By then comparing what Aristophanes says about Socrates with allusions later made by Plato to what Aristophanes says, Navia weighs the evidence of each to suggest how they fit. To do so, Navia raises this question: How can jokes laughed at when Socrates was middle-aged not only have shaped the charges brought against him when he was seventy but have been instrumental in condemning him? Navia suggests this, after describing the first C/ouds as composed to appeal to the vulgar tastes of displaced country peasants who mistook Aristophanes for their moral hero. Unable to differentiate fantasy from reality, what had lived on as a wish in the minds of Aristophanes' audience was the violent ending supplied for a second version of his play: the burning down of Socrates' thinking shop. Molding the fate of the historical Socrates after this image, the Athenians did not burn down a nonexistent school. But they did act on a similar wish when silencing the man whose teaching they had come to believe responsible for corrupting many young Athenians,just as happens in Aristophanes' play. This is the reason why the Socrates of Plato's Apology classifies Aristophanes as a dangerous enemy, who "by means of envy and slander" has for many years been telling "many falsehoods" about him (46). Navias completes his account of Socrates' historical presence by showing exactly how Xenophon's testimony fits together with Plato's. In contrast with Aristophanes' atheistic and evil Socrates, Xenophon's is law-abiding and pious, and in many ways like the hero of Plato's earlier dialogues. Anxious to procure a fresh hearing for him, Navia examines Xenophon's reason for writing remembrances.Since Xenophon does not exam- [159] ~6o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:~ JANUARY 1995 ine the arguments of Socrates' accusers to see why they were accepted, scholars who blame him for too successfully defending Socrates miss the point of his writing a Memorabilia (9~). Indeed, since what Xenophon has put into letters is what he and others recall hearing Socrates say, what is documented is why Socrates should not have been charged at all. After locating what Plato and Xenophon created as halfway between orality and literacy, Navia quite sensibly asks how Socrates made a living. Observing that he enjoyed nothing so much as talking, it is this which is characterized as his profession and distinguished from the talking of the sophists by Socrates' refusal of remuneration. As long as the Athenians were affluent, few were annoyed by his talk, but after a corrupted city had lost the war, earlier jokes were no longer funny. Then the talk of this eccentric finally looked dangerous. After gazing at Socrates from the outside, it is time to look within and discover the images of the gods as seen through the eyes of the most infamous young man who was said to have been corrupted by him. Why Navia is moved by Alcibiades' praise of the divine gods within Socrates to describe Plato as our most influential witness becomes clear from Navia's later allusion to a primordial presence. For now what is plain is how...