Socrates' Refutation of Apollo

Abstract

It has been argued about Plato’s early dialogues that Socrates is made there to privilege beliefs derived from “information” he receives through certain forms of divination. These beliefs, the argument continues, are allowed to supplement Socrates’s elenctically established human knowledge while remaining “logically independent” of it.Such a view is needed, some believe, to solve the paradox that, while Socrates disavows knowledge of anything great or small, he is convinced that his life is morally unimpeachable. Socrates will also claim that wrongdoing is the result of ignorance implying that virtue follows from knowledge. These apparent conflicts can be explained, it is supposed, by Socrates’s confidence in divine signs which, while failing to secure the knowledge Socrates is seeking in answers to his “What is F?” questions, gives him the warrant he requires to hold the beliefs he does. This warrant could be substantively challenged, however, if it turned out that Socrates also believes these divine signs may be subject to elenctic refutation. I show, here, that Socrates does refute Apollo or, rather, that Socrates performs an elenchus on the god’s pronouncement, and that this elenctic test sheds important light on the meaning and function of “refutation” in Socratic argumentation. What Socrates hopes to exhibit through his examinations of the politicians, poets and artisans is just that, since there is someone wiser than Socrates, he has reasons for believing the god means something other than what he appears at first to say. If the apparent meaning of Apollo’s pronouncement cannot be shown to be inconsistent with the god’s otherwise infallible wisdom, Socrates will have reasons for doubting his own claim to lack such wisdom and for accepting the indictment brought against him. At his trial, Socrates argues that he refuted Apollo, but the jury, ironically, disagrees and convicts him of impiety.