著者

田中 享英

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典學研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, pp.1-11, 2002-03-05

---

Everyone believes and no one doubts that Socrates was a philosopher But when and how did he practise his philosophy ? We know that in conversation with Athenian people every day, he examined their opinions about moral virtues, asking a series of questions which would reveal that their opinions contained self-contradiction, and thus compelling people into the state of aporia or difficulty We know that in practising such refutation Socrates taught people their ignorance However, was this practice Socrates' own practice of philosophy ? To be a philosopher is to be a student of philosophy Did Socrates study philosophy in his refutation of other people? We must say "Yes" In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates declares that the greatest good for a human being is to converse with people and discuss virtue every day (38A) and that in his conversation with people, he examined both himself and others (ibid) In the Charmides Socrates says that he refuted his interlocutors for no other purpose than to examine what he, Socrates himself, was saying (166C-D) and inquired the meaning of the answers of other people just for his own sake (ibid) According to these words, Socrates must have been examining himself and refuting himself at the same time as he refuted other people, and he must have found his own ignorance each time he taught his interlocutors their ignorance But how is such practice possible? And in what way could such practice be called philosophy ? We would understand this if we would note the fact that Socrates and his interlocutors cooperated in their inquiry, that they collaborated in making an answer to their question, and that, at the end of the inquiry, both Socrates and his interlocutors shared in responsibility for their aporia This is just what we find in the Laches, for example In this dialogue Socrates asks Laches what courage is Laches answers that it is 'some endurance of the soul' But Socrates protests about the answer and proposes to change it to 'wise endurance' And Laches accepts this as his second answer It is obvious here for us to see that the new answer is a production of the collaboration between Laches and Socrates The new element in this second answer is the adjective 'wise,' and it was Socrates who proposed adding this element (we should notice Socrates' intellectualism here) In this way Socrates participates in the inquiry and in making an answer, and, consequently, he has to share responsibility for the failure of that answer Why, then, did Socrates not practise philosophy by himself, but needed to converse with Athenian people and cooperate with them ? Our answer will be that it is because philosophy is an inquiry into reality by means of words, the usage of which cannot be decided by one person In other words, philosophy is the practice of improving the usage of words in the community in which the philosopher lives In this practice Socrates shared aporia with his fellow citizens