Friedrich Schleiermacher

“ In the second period, on the other hand, the idea of science has become a subject of consciousness. Hence the main business everywhere is to distinguish knowledge from opinion, hence the precision of scientific language, hence the peculiar prominence of dialectics, which have no other object than the idea of science; things which were not comprehended even by the Eleatics in the same way as by the Socratic schools, since the former still make the idea of being their starting-point, rather than that of knowledge. ”

“ It was with a view therefore to become masters in this art, and thereby to keep the faster hold of the idea of science, that men of vigorous and speculative minds formed a circle round Socrates as long as circumstances allowed, those who were able to the end of his life, and in the mean while chose to tread closely in their master's steps, and to refrain for a time from making a systematic application of his art in the different departments of knowledge, for the more elaborate cultivation of all the sciences. ”

“ And this is confirmed, when we consider what sort of doctrines and opinions are attributed to Socrates in conformity with this view. For in spite of the pains taken to trick them out with a shew of philosophy, it is impossible after all to give them any scientific solidity whatever : the farthest point we come to is, that they are thoughts well suited to warm the hearts of men in favour of goodness, but such as a healthy understanding, fully awakened to reflexion, cannot fail to light upon of itself. ”

“ The foundations of ethical philosophy had been laid before the time of Socrates, in the doc- trines of the Pythagoreans, and after him it only kept its place by the side of physics, in the philosophical systems of the Greeks. In those of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the Stoics, that is, of all the genuine Socratic schools of any importance, we again meet with physical investigations, and ethics were exclusively cultivated only by those followers of Socrates who themselves never attained to any eminence in philosophy. ”

“ For if we exclude all depth of speculation, nothing is left but results, without the grounds and methodical principles on which they depend, and which therefore Socrates can only have possest instinctively, that is without the aid of philosophy. ”

“ For there in all that belongs to Plato there is something of Socrates, and in all that belongs to Socrates some- thing of Plato. Only if any one is desirous of describing doc- trines peculiar to Socrates, let him not, as many do in histories of philosophy for the sake of at least filling up some space with Socrates, string together detached moral theses, which, as they arose out of occasional discussions, can never make up a whole, and as to other subjects, let him not lose sight of the above quoted passage of Aristotle, who confines Socrates'* philosophical speculations to principles. ”

“ It is because the spirit and the method of Socrates are everywhere predominant, and because it is not a merely subordinate point with Plato to adopt the manner of Socrates, but is as truly his highest aim, that Plato has not hesitated to put into his mouth what he believed to be no more than deductions from his fundamental ideas. ”

“ Here however we must for the present be content to say, that the property which is peculiar to the post-Socratic philosophy, beginning with Plato, and which henceforward is common to all the genuine Socratic schools, is the coexistence and intercommunion of the three branches of knowledge, dialectics, physics, ethics. ”

“ And still less should we be able to comprehend, why men of such abilities as Critias and Alcibiades, and others formed by nature for speculation, as Plato and Euclid, set so high a value on their intercourse with Socrates, and found satisfaction in it so long. ”

“ We cannot therefore conclude from this that Socrates did not wish that physics should be cultivated, any more than we are authorised to suppose, that he fancied it possible to form ethics into a science by sufficiently multiplying those fragmentary investigations into which he was drawn in discussing the received opinions on the subject. ”

“ And even with regard to the elder Socratics, we find more satisfaction in tracing their strictly philosophical speculations to any other source rather than to this Socrates ; not only may Aristippus, who was unlike his master in his spirit as well as his doctrines, be more easily derived from Protagoras, with whom he has so much in common, but Euclid, with his dialectic bias, from the Eleatics. ”

“ Now he feels that he cannot place a man endowed with no other qualities than these at the head of a new period, and therefore he ranges the sophists by his side, not indeed without some inconsistency^ for he himself sees in them the perverse tendency which was to be counteracted by the spirit of the new age ; but yet he prefers this to recognizing the germ of a new gradation in Socrates alone, whose highest philosophical worth he makes to consist in his martyrdom, which however cannot by any means be deemed of equal moment in the sphere of science, as in that of religion or politics. ”

“ Fictitious, in the proper sense, I hold, he is not, and his reality is not a merely mimic one, nor is Socrates in those works merely a convenient person who affords room for much mimic art, and much cheerful pleasantry, in order to temper the abstruse investigations with this agreeable addition. ”

“ Though in form this course of Ast's is opposite to Krug's, in substance it is the same: its result is likewise to begin a new period of philosophy with Plato. For Ast perceives nothing new or peculiar in the struggle Socrates made against the Sophists, only virtue and the thirst after truth, which had undoubtedly animated all the preceding philosophers ; what he represents as characteristic in the Athenian philosophy, is the union of the elements which had been previously separate and opposed to each other ”

“ And if we consider the general tendency of the abovenamed schools, and review the whole range of their tenets, nothing can be pointed out, that could have proceeded from a Socrates, endowed with such qualities of mind and character as the one described to us, unless it be where their theories have been reduced to a familiar practical application. ”

“ These are no doubt excellent qua- lities; but yet they are not such as fit a man to play a brilliant part in history, but rather, unless where peculiar circumstances intervene, to lead a life of enviable tranquillity, so that it would be necessary to ascribe the general reputation of Socrates, and the almost unexampled homage which has been paid to him by so many generations, less to himself than to such peculiar circumstances. ”

“ For Plato, though he descends into all the sciences, still lays the principal stress on the establishment of principles, and expati- ates in details only so far as they are necessary, and so much the less as he has to draw them from without : it is Aristotle who first revels in their multiplicity. ”

“ For how could he have said so generally, that the things which depend on God ought not to be made the subject of inquiry, before those which depend on man have been despatched, since not only are the latter connected in a variety of ways with the former, but even among things human there must be some of greater moment, others of less, some of nearer, others of more remote concern, and the proposition would lead to the con- clusion that before one was brought to its completion, not even the investigation of another ought to be begun. ”

“ For his proofs always hinge on this assumption: that it is impossible to start from one true thought, and to be entangled in a contradiction with any other, and also that knowledge derived from any one point, and obtained by correct combination, cannot contradict that which has been deduced in like manner from any other point ”

“ The base of his intellectual constitution, we are told, was rather religious than speculative, his exertions rather those of a good citizen, directed to the improvement of the people, and especially of the young, than those of a. philosopher ”