Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy, Long

“Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy”. A. A.
Long, Classical Quarterly 38 (i) 150-171 (1988)

150: “Epictetus’ Socrates is the Stoics’ patron
151: saint”. “According to Philodemus, the Stoics actually wanted to be called ‘Socratics’”.
“Timon focuses upon Socrates’ powers of wit, censure, and irony”. “The witty, sometimes
caustic and ironical Socrates (…) drops completely out of the early Stoic tradition”. “As the
mentor of Antisthenes, and, through him, of Diogenes and Crates, a censorious and caustic
Socrates was cherished
151: by the Cynics, with whom Timon felt some sympathy”.
152: “Control of the material, we can conjecture, was determined not by preconceptions about
the superiority in historicity or philosophical sophistication of Plato to Xenophon, but by the
need to derive from both of them a well-founded philosophical paradigm that would be internally
coherent and consistent with the Hellenistic philosopher’s own stance”.
“Timon’s observation that Socrates concentrated on ethics and repudiated physics is the best
starting-point for viewing the Hellenistic philosophers’ attitude and approach to the great man”.
También en Aristot. Metaph A. 6, 987b1-2. “it would become the most commonly repeated
Socratic characteristic in the doxographical tradition”.
153: “Xenophon is describing the Socrates whom Antisthenes, Aristippus and Diogenes claimed
to be following, and whom the Stoic Aristo would take as his model”. “By the end of the
Hellenistic period it is a commonplace that Plato attributed to Socrates interests and theories
which were entirely Plato’s own (cf. Cicero, Rep. 1.15-16)”.
154: “Xenophon’s readers, in Antisthenes and Diogenes, had living embodiments of the
ἐγκράτεια which he so constantly emphasises as Socrates’ dominant characteristic. No ancient
writer, I think, ever regarded the life of Plato as emblematic of Socrates. It was not too difficult,
on the other hand, to think of the Cynics as his genuine if one-sided imitators”.
Críticas
155: Los peripatéticos decían que Sócrates era bígamo “The fact that it became a common
Peripatetic practice suggests a more studied attempt to undermine the ethical integrity of
Socrates’ life”.
“Socrates’ repudiation of physics and theological speculation was one, but only one, of the many
charges levelled against him by the Epicureans”
156: “It is legitimate to guess that much of the basis for Epicurean criticism of Socrates should
be sought in the central role he was now playing as a paradigm for their Stoic rivals”
157: “Xenophon’s Socrates, like that of Aristippus and the Cynics, repudiates any interest in the
inquiry into nature”.
158: “At the beginning of the Hellenistic period, what Socrates most prominently stood for, I
think, was the thesis that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance”.
Dos Sócrates: Escéptico, de los diálogos platónicos y la confesión de no saber nada que se toma
literalmente: “Arcesilaus’ scepticism, on this view, was actually the outcome of his Reading of
Plato’s Socrates”
160: “throughout the history of the Stoa, Socrates is the philosopher with whom the Stoics most
closely aligned themselves”. Los primeros estoicos son hostiles con Platón
161: “Acorrding to the biographical tradition, Zeno’s decision to devote himself to philosophy
was generated by his readings about Socrates”. D.L. VII 2-3, VII 31 “What they attest to is a
tradition, which Zeno’s followers must have encouraged, that Socrates was the primary
inspiration of his philosophy. The next step is to consider this tradition in relation to Zeno’s
studies with the Cynic Crates and the Academic Polemo.
“From the Cynics Zeno is likely to have acquired an account of Socrates’ philosophy that did not
differ essentially from ethical doctrines attributed to Anthistenes (Diog. Laert. 6.10-13)” “’the
same men are noble and virtuous’, ‘virtue is sufficient for happiness’, ‘the wise man is self-
sufficient’, ‘virtuous men are friends’, ‘prudence (φρόνησις) is the most secure fortification’…”
“Zeno’s agreement to all those propositions, which he could, of course, check against Xenophon,
Plato, etc., shows the extent to which he appropriated the Cynic Socrates” “Beginning with
Antisthenes, a Cynic tradition of hostility to Plato developed”. “Zeno’s Republic seems to have
been overtly anti-Platonic”.
162: “Antisthenes’ anti-Platonic claim that he could see a horse but not ‘horseness’ could be
interpreted as an anticipation of Zeno’s reduction of universals to mere thoughts” “But Zeno
made physics and theology indispensable to ethics, and an entirely Cynic Socrates should abjure
the study of nature”

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“Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy”. A. A.

Long, Classical Quarterly 38 (i) 150-171 (1988)

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