| Voltaire poses the problem of Socrates: either Socrates thinks he is telling the truth about his daimonion and is insane, or he is sane but deceitful. A tacit premise is that a reasonable person would not believe in a personally existing daemon---granted. But the further assumption that Socrates means to say that he has a personal daemon demands scrutiny. On the alternate view that Socrates' sign is covertly philosophic and ironically daemonic, the position of this dissertation, Socrates is neither a madman nor a liar. Instead, Socrates is a riddle-maker. On the basis of the identity of the erotic and the daemonic, established in the Symposium, one gathers that the natural yet rare erotic instrument, the daimonion, seeks the true, virtuous, and beautiful, and averts the false, base, and ugly. In practice it puts Socrates in touch with beautiful and good people and, through question and answer, negates and confiscates false opinion bringing to birth the true. The daimonion produces orthe doxa (because the opinion hits upon what is) but not episteme (because the opinion is unaccounted-for, alogon). The Republic shows that the sufficient condition for giving a logos is the turning of phronesis by the power of dialectic to the good itself. Without dialectic, Socrates is sterile, and his speech is hyperbolic. Socrates credits the daemonic for doing for another what Socrates claims to be unable to do on his own, deliver sophia. The daemonic is not only the source of discord between Socrates and the city---the source of the accusation. It is his only hope for accord. It is his power of persuasion and conversion, potentially preparing the political order for the acceptance of the philosopher and the rule of the just. It is his defense. Socrates, though barren, possesses a power to make the young better. The phenomenon of determining the true, virtuous, and beautiful comes to the gifted as if by divine inspiration, neither by birth nor by learning but in a sudden flash of brilliance. It is thus aptly dubbed "daemonic.". |
