Problems and Implications Within “History of Philosophy”
Socrates walks into a library and asks a historian, “has anyone ever asked this question?” The historian awaits for the question, becoming more dumbfounded as silence stretches on, until finally he asks, “what question?” Socrates replies, “haven’t you been listening?”
I must apologize to my reader for starting this essay with a joke I conceived using Socratic irony. I will expound upon it and link it to my essay more directly later in the essay. For my introduction, however, I would like to, as many who have discussed the history of philosophy before me, give my own idea of what it is to do philosophy.
The reason I have Socrates as my hero in the anecdote is due to what he represents to me in the discipline of philosophy. Socrates himself never wrote any of philosophical texts, and thus no historical records of his thought are canonized, except through the writings of other philosophers; cheifly,that of Plato. Due to the authorship concerning Socrates, therefore, it is difficult to pin down what were Socrates’ actual thoughts and that of Plato’s, especially in later writings. However this uncertainty itself gives us an idea of what philosophy meant to Socrates.
Despite not having authored any books, Socrates is revered as one of the most, if not the most, important figure in Western philosophy. This was due to his questioning nature, and the dialogue which his questions generated. Socrates was a gadfly, but as a gadfly he could only question others in real time, with the addressee listening and able to respond, to which he could continue his questioning. Socrates could thus only truly contribute to philosophy during the course of his life, in what he called the present, whereas most philosophers after him (the ones we know of, since they actually wrote), attempted to immortalize their philosophy for all time through the written word. Those who were successful at doing this are now called the classics. However, the written accounts of Socrates’ philosophizing, as transmuted through Plato, can never be considered to be fully his. He engaged philosophically with others and never sought for himself to be understood completely through a written expose of his knowledge. Instead, through questioning, he urged others around him to understand concepts for themselves. A good example of this is in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates asks the question “What is Justice?”, which begins a deluge of argument and conflicting ideas to which, in the end, Socrates declares that he does not know what justice is. But of course, this is Socratic irony; Socrates does know what justice is. He simply is stating, through pretended ignorance, that in order to know, you must figure it out for yourself as opposed to taking the idea from someone else.[1] It is with this sentiment of philosophy that I will engage with two different ways of conceiving “history of philosophy”; history of philosophy as philosophy, and history of philosophy as a narrative.
[1] As discussed by Dr. R. Maundrell in RB 3051, March 24th 2011 at Lakehead University.
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