Socrates and Anaxagoras

In the preceding post I discussed how Socrates exculpated Meno from any real effect on sentencing him to death. As Socrates says at the trial: ‘I think, so far as Meletus is concerned, I have even now been acquitted, and not merely acquitted, but anyone can see that, if Anytus had not come forward to accuse me, he would have been fined a thousand drachmas for not receiving a fifth part of the vote.’ (Pl. Ap. 36a-b)

Socrates asked Meletus whether in his view he did not believe in gods at all and was teaching this disbelief to other people. Meletus replied that this is what he was saying most decidedly. In the preceding post I omitted Socrates’ immediate response:

Socrates: ‘You amaze me, Meletus! Why do you say this? Do I not even believe that the sun or yet the moon are gods, as the rest of mankind do?’

Meletus: ‘No, by Zeus, judges, since he says that the sun is a stone and the moon earth.’

Socrates: ‘Do you think you are accusing Anaxagoras, my dear Meletus, and do you so despise these gentlemen and think they are so unversed in letters as not to know, that the books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian are full of such utterances? And forsooth the youth learn these doctrines from me, which they can buy sometimes (if the price is high – ei panu pollou) for a drachma in the orchestra and laugh at Socrates, if he pretends they are his own, especially when they are so absurd (allȏs te kai houtȏs atopa onta)! But for heaven’s sake, do you think this of me, that I do not believe there is any god?’

Meletus: ‘No, by Zeus, you don’t, not in the least (Ou mentoi ma dia oud’ hopȏstioun).’ Pl.Ap. 26d1-e5).

In the Apology Socrates did not explain why he believed sun and moon were gods. He simply says that he believes sun and moon are gods ‘as the rest of mankind do (hȏsper hoi alloi anthrȏpoi). Yet when Meletus justified his assertion by saying that ‘Socrates says that the sun is a stone and the moon earth’, Socrates, after identifying such view as that of Anaxagoras, called that view ‘patently absurd’ (houtȏs atopa onta). We may suppose that if anybody from ‘the rest of mankind’ were asked why they believed sun and moon were gods, would be hard pressed to answer it, let alone explain why the views of Anaxagoras on this matter were patently absurd. In Socrates’ defence speech there was no time and place for it. But Plato does not face these questions, concerning Socrates, in any of his other works. Socrates and early Plato appeared to have different views concerning Anaxagoras. Socrates’ negative view, so strongly expressed in the Apology, is in dissonance with Plato’s unbounded admiration of Anaxagoras expressed in the Phaedrus (269e-270a).

If we want to find why Socrates considered Anaxagoras’ views patently absurd, we must turn to Xenophon’s Memorabilia:

‘In general, with regard to the phenomena of the heavens, he deprecated curiosity to learn how the deity contrives them. He said that he who meddles with these matters runs the risk of losing his sanity as completely as Anaxagoras, who took an insane pride in his explanation of the divine machinery.

For that sage, in declaring the sun to be fire, ignored the facts that man can look at fire without inconvenience, but cannot gaze steadily at the sun; that their skin is blackened by the sun’s rays, but not by the fire. Further, he ignored the fact that sunlight is essential to the health of all vegetation, whereas if anything is heated by the fire it withers. Again, when he pronounced the sun to be a red-hot stone, he ignored the fact that a stone in fire neither glows nor can resist it long, whereas the sun shines with unequalled brilliance for ever.’ (Xenophon, Memorabilia IV.vii.6-7, tr. E. C. Marchant)

Socrates knew more about sun than Anaxagoras, yet he was well aware that he did not really know how sun works, what makes it be what it is.