Criticisms of Socratic thought

Peripatetics

Aristoxenus accused Socrates of bigamy as did other Peripatetics (Morrison); Callisthenes, Demetrius of Phalerum, Satirus, and Hieronymus (Long).

Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus of Tarentum, during the latter parts of the fourth century B.C., wrote a polemic Life of Socrates. According to Aristoxenus, Socrates was an individual who was uneducated, ignorant (uneducated and ignorant are perhaps the same thing in the modern reading) and also he exhibited licentiousness, and was "guilty of violent anger and shameful dissoluteness", and undisciplined.

He went so far as to state of Socrates irascibility, to produce within him behaviour outside of something which was societally acceptable i.e. indecorum (via Baron).

A person named Spintharus, who was Aristoxenus' father, or teacher (Wehrli), apparently claimed Socrates was not always able to control his emotions. In respect to this as a reliable disclosure on the nature of Socrates, he is thought at least to have at sometime associated himself with Socrates, if this is the case, then presumably as a student of his.

Opinion on Aristoxenus

Mansfield (1994) thinks him to be "unkind", and to have written the work to discredit Socrates' thinking. Fitton and Bicknell consider Aristoxenus to have found some elements of truth in his account.

See also: Kindness

Epicurean

Criticisms were established on the perception of differences as to the role of the philosopher and how he should provide lecture to pupils. Persons of this school of thought including Epicurus and Metrodorus, Idomeneus, Zeno of Sidon and Philodemus, Diogenes of Oenoanda all represented figures of history who were apparently hostile to the teachings of Socrates. Colotes, who was a follower of Epicurus during the 3rd century B.C., considered Socrates famous claim to wisdom by ignorance as hypocritical, Socrates as an "imposter", and an individual who said one thing but did another i.e. he was not true to his words (Sedley).

Aristophanes

His work, The Clouds, is a critique of Socrates.

In one view of Aristophanes, there is the propensity to find him derogatory and slanderous of Socrates. (Scott).

An alternative view is of the poet in his characterisation of Socrates in his play, is of a person motivated not for an assassination of the character of Socrates, but instead to constructively criticise Socrates, and to communicate a kind of warning to the philosopher (Benardete).

Plato' Symposium treats the criticisms of Aristophanes.

Polycrates

Polycrates wrote an oppositional work c.393 B.C. entitled The Prosecution of Socrates or, alternatively titled, The Accusation of Socrates. The work is lost, and is known primarily through the later transmission of Isocrates in his work Busiris. The work is thought to have considered Socrates as being anti-democratic, according to Wilson.

Plato

Anne-Marie Bowery thinks Plato was critical.

Parmenides

Parmenides criticised Socrates' theory of forms.

Callicles

In Gorgias, the figure Callicles, is contrary to Socrates' position. Nothing of a biographical nature is known of Callicles.

Aristotle

Aristotle criticised the ideas put forward by Socrates within the Republic. While Socrates champions unity in the city, which is to promote community (please see also communism as indicated by ref. M.P. Nichols p.157), Aristotle, in view of the writing of Plato in his work, finds the existence of a diversity to be significant, and additionally, that the idea of unity which corresponds to Socratic thought, does not correspond to the necessities for unity, in the view of unity a city might possess, in the thought of Aristotle (LG. Rubin 1997).

Nietzsche

Nietzsche rejected the ideas of Socrates to some extent, in-as-much, he thought Socrates "a villain" (Kaufmann), and as being dogmatic (Nehamas).