Socratic Philosophy, Rationalism, and “Obedience”: Decision Making without Divine Intervention

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to explain why Plato’s Socrates devotes himself to philosophy. In so doing, I hope also to show that he does not sincerely believe that any of his decisions, about philosophy or anything, involve any kind of divine intervention. As my conclusions are contrary to a good bit of first-rate, recent scholarship on the subject, and also contrary to part of what Socrates himself says in Plato’s Apology of Socrates, I think it is especially important to clarify these issues, however repeated commentary (by, again, the best scholars in the field) on the same texts may seem to have exhausted the need for further clarification. Confusion about these issues entails grave misunderstandings of the Socratic philosophy that Plato meant to depict, at least in his “early” dialogues.