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Ancient Philosophy of Religion

Graham Oppy, N. N. Trakakis

Socrates and Plato

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Mark McPherran
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4
socrates and plato
Mark McPherran

Socrates (469–399 bce) of Athens was the son of Sophroniscus (father) and
Phaenarete (mother), and husband of Xanthippe, with whom he had three sons.
Although Socrates never wrote anything, his many years of philosophical discus-
sion established him as the founder of Western moral theory. The main sources
for his views are the Clouds by Aristophanes (a parody), the dialogues of Plato,
various works by Xenophon and passages in Aristotle; since these sources offer
differing perspectives, the task of determining Socrates’ actual views is daunting.
Plato depicts Socrates as a man who disavows possessing any real wisdom
himself (except the mere human wisdom of understanding that lack) and who
pursues a divinely ordained philosophical mission that requires him to question
those who profess moral wisdom to see if they actually possess it. This questioning
– the famous Socratic method – involves asking interlocutors to define one of the
canonical virtues – piety, justice, courage, moderation, wisdom – and then elic-
iting various other statements from them that then turn out to be mutually incon-
sistent, thus showing their lack of knowledge of the relevant virtue. Socrates’ own
‘intellectualist’ moral theory holds that: (1) every kind of creature desires/aims
to achieve that kind’s particular good; (2) thus, every person aims to achieve the
human good (everyone desires to be an agathōs, a good, successful person); (3) the
human good is eudaimonia (‘happiness’, human flourishing) (and a person is not
a body, but is, rather, a soul, a psuchē); (4) the means to this end are the virtues
(aretai, ‘excellences’); (5) the virtues are a kind of craft-knowledge; (6) knowledge
is best obtained by means of philosophizing; (7) thus, the happiest (and most
pleasurable) life belongs to the philosopher. Some odd consequences of this view
(the ‘Socratic paradoxes’) are that no one does wrong knowingly or voluntarily
and that it is always better to suffer an injustice than to do it.
Socrates was indicted for impiety on the grounds that he corrupted the young
by teaching them to recognize not the gods of the state but new divinities instead.
He was sentenced to die by hemlock poisoning, and although given a chance to
flee (as depicted in the Crito), he obeyed the order. His death was a model of

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noble self-control (made paradigmatic by Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting

of the scene); his last words are reported to have been: “Crito, we owe a cock to
Asclepius: please pay the debt and do not forget” (Phaedo 118a7–8).
Plato (429–347 bce) of Athens, or Aristocles (Plato is a nickname), was the
son of Ariston (father) and Perictione (mother). He was a student of Socrates,
the teacher of Aristotle and established the first formal philosophical school in
Athens, the Academy. Plato’s approximately twenty-six dialogues are masterpieces
of Western literature, covering everything from epistemology, metaphysics and
ethics, to philosophy of education, aesthetics and political science; they are gener-
ally regarded as having established the central agenda of the Western philosoph-
ical enterprise.
Plato’s early Socratic dialogues (e.g. the Euthyphro) offer us a fictionalized
portrait of Socrates that arguably captures the style and substance of the historical
Socrates. Plato’s later, more constructive works (e.g. the Republic, Sophist), outline
a metaphysical theory – the theory of Forms – according to which there is, besides
the world of sensible material objects and their properties, a non-spatiotemporal
‘world’ populated by the objects that are the perfect exemplars of those proper-
ties – Forms – and also by gods. These super-sensible Forms are the objects of our
knowledge: ‘Triangle-itself ’ is, for example, what our knowledge of Triangularity
is ‘of ’. Since the objects of this world possess the properties they do by being in
relation to the Forms – by ‘participating’ in them – when we correctly judge
some person, say Helen, to be beautiful, we are able to recognize that instance
of beauty by reference to our knowledge of Beauty-itself. Because the sensible
world is constantly changing and because sensible objects have opposite proper-
ties in them, we can have warranted beliefs only and not knowledge concerning
the physical world of material objects.
In contrast to Socrates’ view of the soul as a rational intellect, Plato’s account of
the soul in several places (esp. the Republic) takes it to have ‘parts’ – the rational
intellect, the spirited element (thumos) and the appetitive element – where the
just, ‘happy’ soul is one whose parts are in harmony, that is, reason allied with
thumos exerting proper control over the appetites.
Plato argues in several dialogues (e.g. the Phaedo, Republic and Phaedrus) that
our souls are immortal, that they are able to apprehend the Forms in the afterlife,
are rewarded or punished there and are then reborn for a new round of learning.
The universe is governed by a single deity, the dēmiourgos, who looks to the Forms
as to blueprints in his maintenance of the world-order.
Plato’s dialogues and the characters they portray continually invoke the
realm of divinity by using the religious vocabulary of their own time and place.
Sometimes these allusions to gods, prayers and so on are merely figures of
speech, but typically Plato has his characters speak of the divine in an unmis-
takably serious fashion in order to make points that are simultaneously philo-
sophical and religious in nature. So prominent is this feature of Plato’s work
that the ancient world took it for granted that the chief goal of those who follow

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the Platonic line was to “become as much like god as is possible” (Sedley 1997:
329). Although this aspect of first Socratic and then Platonic thought has been
underplayed in modern scholarship, it should not surprise us: both Socrates and
Plato were born into a culture that took the existence of divinities for granted.
More importantly, Plato was a discerning student of Socrates, a thinker who was
himself not only a rational philosopher of the first rank but a profoundly reli-
gious figure as well. These commitments were, however, not those of a small
town polytheist but of a sophisticated religious reformer whose innovations
appear to have led to his trial and execution on a charge of impiety (see Beckman
1979; Vlastos 1991: ch. 6; McPherran 1996: ch. 3). Plato should be understood,
then, to have followed the path laid down by his teacher by appropriating,
reshaping and extending the religious conventions of his own time in the service
of establishing the new enterprise of philosophy. The results were far-reaching,
impacting his intellectual heirs (e.g. Aristotle, Plotinus) and with them Jewish,
Christian and Islamic thought. Within the limits within which I must work, I
shall trace out here the main threads of the religious dimension of first Socrates’
and then Plato’s philosophy.
I think it reasonable to make a rough distinction between Plato’s Socratic,
aporetic dialogues and those in which Plato appears to be following out a more
constructive line of thought (especially in view of the evidence that Plato devel-
oped a metaphysics and epistemology that went far beyond those claims that can
be reasonably attributed to his teacher; see e.g. Aristotle Metaphysics M.4, 1078b9–
32). This view, at any rate, accounts for the important differences between the way
the notion of piety and other religious topics are treated in Socratic dialogues such
as the Euthyphro as opposed to more explicitly theory-laden, constructive works
such as the Republic, Phaedrus, Timaeus and Laws.1
Next, it is important to note at the outset that the distinct phenomena we desig-
nate by using terms such as ‘religion’ were, for Plato and his contemporaries, seam-
lessly integrated into everyday life. Moreover, no ancient text such as Homer’s Iliad
had the status of a Bible or Koran, and there was no organized Church, trained
clergy or systematic set of doctrines enforced by them. What marked out a fifth-
century bce Greek city or individual as pious (hosios; eusebēs) – that is, as being
in accord with the norms governing the relations of human beings and gods – was

1. Listed in alphabetical order, the Socratic dialogues are Apology, Charmides, Crito,
Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras and Republic I (with Euthydemus,
Gorgias, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus, and Meno serving as ‘transitional dialogues’).
The more constructive dialogues are Cratylus, Parmenides, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic II–
X, Symposium, Theaetetus, Critias, Laws, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman and Timaeus. There
is not sufficient space here to address the complex issue of whether and how we might
legitimately use the testimony of Aristotle in conjunction with that of Plato’s dialogues and
Xenophon’s work to triangulate to the views of the historical Socrates in the manner of
Vlastos (1991: chs 2, 3); but see, for example, McPherran (1996: ch. 1.2).

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thus not primarily a matter of belief, but rather correct observance of ancestral
tradition. The most central of these activities consisted in the timely performance
of prayers and sacrifices (see e.g. Iliad 1.446–58; Odyssey 3.418–72).
Even though ancient conceptions of divinity were not elaborated or enforced
by an official theological body, religious education was not left to chance. The
compositions attributed to Homer and Hesiod were a part of everyone’s educa-
tion, and both authors were recognized as having established for the Greeks a
canon of tales about the great powers that rule over us. Later writers then drew
from this poetic repertory, “while simultaneously endowing [these] traditional
myths with a new function and meaning” (Zaidman & Pantel 1992: 144). Thus,
for example, the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles (e.g. Antigone) juxtapose
some present situation against the events represented in Homer’s texts, extending
that mythology while also calling into critical question some facet of the human
condition and contemporary society’s response to it. By the time of Socrates,
some of this probing of the traditional stories was influenced by the speculations
and scepticism of those thinkers working within the new intellectualist tradi-
tions of natural philosophy (e.g. Xenophanes) and sophistry (e.g. Protagoras). As
a result, in the work of authors such as Euripides and Thucydides even the funda-
mental tenets of popular religion concerning the gods and the efficacy of sacri-
fice and prayer became targets of criticism. Socrates should be placed within this
movement.

socrates

Socrates’ philosophical reputation has always rested on his adherence to the

highest standards of rationality, one given its clearest expression in the Crito:

T1 “I’m not the sort of person who’s just now for the first time persuaded by
nothing within me except the argument that on rational reflection seems best
to me; I’ve always been like that” (Crito 46b4–6, trans. Reeve, in Cohen et al.
2005).

Socratic reasoning commonly employs the Socratic method, and we are encour-
aged to believe that for many years Socrates subjected a wide variety of self-
professed experts on the topic of virtue to this form of examination (Apology
20d–23c). The result of this long effort, however, appears to be not a body of
knowledge, but the meagre pay-off of moral scepticism:

T2 “I’m only too aware that I’ve no claim to being wise in anything either great
or small” (Apology 21b4–5), “[except that] … I’m wiser … in just this small
way: that what I don’t know, I don’t think I know” (Apology 21d6–8, trans.
Reeve).

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This would not be so surprising an outcome were it not that Socrates represents
this awareness as resulting from a quest performed at the behest of Greece’s pre-
eminent religious authority, the Delphic Oracle. For as Socrates sees it, the god
Apollo, speaking through the Oracle, has stationed him in Athens as though he
is a warrior, ordering him to philosophize by elenctically examining himself and
others (Apology 28d–29a, 30e–31a). As he summarizes the matter:

T3 “I had to go to all those with any reputation for knowledge … So even now
I continue to search and to examine, in response to the god … I come to the
assistance of the god … I’ve had no leisure worth talking about … because of
my service to the god” (Apology 21e5–23c1); “the god stationed me here …
to live practicing philosophy, examining myself and others” (Apology 28e4–6,
trans. Reeve).

Socrates also emphasizes that his interpretation of the Delphic Apollo’s pronounce-
ment that “no one is wiser” than he as an order to philosophize has been confirmed
through other extra-rational sources:

T4 “I’ve been ordered to do [philosophy] by the god, both in oracles and dreams,
and in every other way that divine providence ever ordered any man to do
anything at all” (Apology 33c4–7, trans. Reeve; cf. Apology 30a; Crito 43d–44b;
Phaedo 60c–61c).

In addition, Socrates tells the jurors at his trial that ever since his childhood he
has been assisted in his philosophical mission through the frequent warnings of
his divine sign, the daimonion:

T5 “a sort of voice comes, which, whenever it does come, always holds me back
from what I’m about to do but never urges me forward” (Apology 31d2–4,
trans. Reeve).

Our texts should now prompt us to ask how it is that Socrates can also subscribe
to T2: for, lacking wisdom, how can Socrates be confident that gods such as
Apollo even exist, let alone be assured that Apollo always speaks the truth (21b)?
Moreover, since he also endorses T1, we can expect him to justify the claims
implied by these texts; but it is hard to see how the Socratic method could provide
that sort of warrant (since it appears to reveal only the inconsistency of interlocu-
tors’ beliefs; hence, their lack of expert knowledge; see Benson [2000] and Scott
[2002]). Texts such as T4 and T5 also make Socrates appear to be far more ‘super-
stitious’ than the average Athenian: not the sort of behaviour we expect from the
paradigm of the rationally self-examined life. After all, if enlightened contempo-
raries such as Thucydides could stand aloof from comparable elements of popular
religion, and if even traditionally minded playwrights such as Aristophanes could

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poke cruel fun at seers (e.g. Birds 521, 959–91), how could Socrates not do so as
well? Worse yet, it is hard to see how the Socrates who accepts T1, T3 and T4
as he investigates the religious claims of his interlocutors can be self-consistent
when he goes on to criticize such interlocutors for acting on ungrounded religious
judgements:

T6 “if you [Euthyphro] didn’t know with full clarity what the pious and the
impious are, you’d never have ventured to prosecute your old father for
murder on behalf of a day laborer. On the contrary, you wouldn’t have risked
acting wrongly because you’d have been afraid before the gods and ashamed
before men” (Euthyphro 15d4–8, trans. Reeve).

Here a rational principle of morality is implied: actions that are morally ambig-
uous ought not to be performed in the absence of a full understanding of the
relevant concepts involved. So we are then left to wonder how the epistemically
modest Socrates of T2 would respond if pressed to defend his risky conduct of
challenging the moral and religious views of his fellow Athenians. The mere cita-
tion of divine authority instanced by T3, T4 and T5 would appear inadequate in
view of the demands of T1; such a citation would also open up to interlocutors
such as Euthyphro (a self-professed diviner) the possibility of replying in kind
that they too, like Socrates, have been commanded in divinations and in dreams
to contest conventional norms.
The preceding texts exemplify the way that Plato presents us with a puzzling,
street-preaching philosopher who is both rational and religious, and whose rela-
tionship to everyday Athenian piety is anything but clear. To begin to make sense
of that relationship, and thereby resolve the tensions between these and related
texts, it is useful to examine Socrates’ own examination of a self-professed expert
in Greek religion: Euthyphro.
The Euthyphro’s discussion of the virtue of piety makes it a key text for deter-
mining the religious dimension of Socratic philosophy. It also provides vivid
examples of the Socratic method through its portrayal of Socrates’ relentless inter-
rogation of Euthyphro’s attempted definitions of piety. Definition (1) – piety is
proceeding against whomever does injustice (5d–6e) – is quickly dispensed with
because it is too narrow; Euthyphro holds there to be cases of pious action that
do not involve proceeding against wrongdoers (5d–e). Socrates also reminds
Euthyphro that he is seeking a complete account of the one characteristic (eidos) of
piety: that unique, self-same, universal quality the possession of which makes any
pious action pious and which Euthyphro had earlier agreed was the object of their
search (6d–e; cf. 5c–d; Meno 72c). Definition (2) – piety is what is loved by the
gods (6e–7a) – is next rejected on the grounds that since Euthyphro’s gods quarrel
about the rightness of actions, a god-loved and hence pious action could also be
a god-hated and hence impious action; thus, definition (2) fails to specify the
real nature of pious actions (7a–9d). Note, however, that by presupposing without

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restriction in his definitional search that the definition of piety must apply to every
pious action – and given his apparent rejection of divine enmity and violence (6a–
d, 7b–9c) – Socrates is committed to the claim (i) that there is but one universal
moral canon for all beings, gods and human beings alike, and thus must reject the
tradition of a divine double standard of morality (cf. e.g. Republic 378b). Socrates’
examination also suggests that his gods (ii) are perfectly just and good, and so (iii)
experience no moral disagreements among themselves.
Socrates’ rebuttal of Euthyphro’s third attempt at definition (3) – piety is what
is loved by all the gods (9e) – constitutes the most logically complex section of
the Euthyphro (9e–11b).2 Socrates’ apparent rejection of this definition comes at
the end of a long and complex passage (10e–11b) where he first drives home his
conclusion that Euthyphro’s various concessions undercut this third definition of
piety and then explains the apparent source of Euthyphro’s confusion; namely,
given Euthyphro’s claim that something is god-loved because it is pious, his
purported definition ‘god-loved’ appears to designate only a non-essential property
of piety rather than specifying piety’s essential nature. With this Socrates makes it
evident that he is no divine command theorist: that is, unlike gods modelled after
Homeric royalty, his gods do not issue morality-establishing commands such that
a pious action is pious simply because it is god-loved; rather, it seems, his gods
love things that are independently pious because they themselves are by nature
wise, virtue-loving beings. By tacitly allowing that the gods are of one mind on the
topic of virtue, Socrates here lays the groundwork for the view that there is ulti-
mately only one divinity (see below).

2. For analysis of this argument, see Cohen (1971) and Benson (2000: 59–62). McPherran
(1996: 43 n.43), provides a bare-bones version:
Euthyphro agrees that (1a) the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious and
that (1b) it’s not that the pious is pious because it is loved by the gods. He also
agrees that – as with the examples of seer and seen thing, carrier and carried thing,
lover and loved thing – (2) a god-loved thing is god-loved because the gods love
it, and (3) it’s not that the gods love a god-loved thing because it is god-loved. But
if D3 [his third definition: piety is what is loved by all the gods] were true (viz.,
that the pious = the god-loved), then by substitution from D3 into (1a), it would
be true that (4) the god-loved is loved by the gods because it is god-loved, and
by substitution from D3 into (2) it would be true that (5) a pious thing is pious
because the gods love it. However, (4) contradicts (3), and (5) contradicts (1b).
Thus, (1a), (1b), (2), and (3) cannot be jointly affirmed while also affirming D3
(resulting in D3’s rejection).
To conclude, “the god-loved is not what’s pious … nor is the pious what’s god-loved, as you
claim, but one differs from the other” (Euthyphro 10d12–14, trans. Reeve; cf. 10e2–11a6).
It should be noted that although Socrates takes himself to have established that D3 is
inconsistent with Euthyphro’s other commitments (to e.g. [1a]), he need not be taken to
also conclude that D3 is false; see Benson (2000: 59–61).

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Socrates assists Euthyphro in producing a fourth definition of piety by

confronting him with the question of piety’s relation to generic justice: are all the
just pious, or is justice broader than piety such that piety is then a part of justice
(11e–12e)? Subsequent to his adoption of the part-of-justice view, Euthyphro
attempts to differentiate pious justice from the remainder (‘human justice’) by
stipulating that piety involves the therapeutic tendance of gods (therapeia theōn)
(12e6–9). This differentia, however, is rejected by reference to a craft analogy
comparing those who would tend the gods in this fashion to those who tend
horses, dogs and cattle (13a–d). Such therapists possess the sort of expert know-
ledge that includes the capacity to benefit their particular kind of subjects substan-
tially by restoring or maintaining their health, or by otherwise meeting their
essential needs and improving the way in which they function. Obviously, then,
since mere mortals cannot benefit gods in these ways, the virtue of piety cannot be
a form of therapy (13c–e). By contrast, skilful service (hupēretikē) along the lines of
assistants to craftspeople contributes to an acceptable differentia of generic justice;
assistants to a shipwright, for example, serve the shipwright by satisfying his or
her desire to receive assistance in building ships but do not restore or improve on
the shipwright’s own nature or functioning. Socrates has thus brought Euthyphro
to the point of agreeing that:

P Piety is that part of justice that is a service of humans to gods, assisting the gods
in their primary task to produce their most beautiful product (12e–14a).

Within the constraints of this account, Euthyphro is then asked to specify

precisely the nature of that most beautiful product of the gods’ chief work in whose
production the gods might employ our assistance (13e–14a). Euthyphro, however,
tenaciously avoids answering this question (13d–14a), citing instead a fifth defi-
nitional attempt: (5) piety is knowledge of sacrificing and praying (14b–15c). To
this Socrates emphatically responds that Euthyphro is abdicating their search just
at the point where a brief answer might have finally given Socrates all the informa-
tion that he really needed to have about piety (14b–c). Many scholars have found
this good evidence for ascribing something like P to Socrates. The question then
becomes how Socrates would have answered the question of the identity of the
gods’ beautiful, chief product.
First, we can expect Socrates to maintain that although we human beings
cannot have a complete account of the gods’ work, since the gods are wholly good,
their chief project and product must be superlatively good. But what reasons, per
the rationality principle (T1), does Socrates have for holding that the gods are
entirely good? His thinking would seem to run roughly as follows. Since gods
are perfectly knowledgeable, they must be entirely wise (Apology 23a–b; Hippias
Major 289b3–6); but because wisdom and virtue are mutually entailing, it would
follow that a god must be at least as good as a good person; but then since the
latter can only do good, never evil (Crito 49c; Republic 335a–d), the same goes for

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the former (cf. Republic 379a–391e) (see Vlastos 1991: 162–5; McPherran 1996:
chs 2.2.2–6, 3.2).
Socrates’ moral reformation of the gods indicates that his gods cannot be fully
identified with those of tradition. For Greek popular thought assumed, as a funda-
mental principle from Homer onwards, that justice consists in reciprocation, in
repayment in kind: a gift for a gift, an evil for an evil (the lex talionis). Even among
the gods the principle of lex talionis is assumed as basic (e.g. Zeus suggests that
Hera might allow him to destroy one of her favorite cities in return for abandoning
Troy [Iliad 4.31–69]; cf. Sophocles Ajax 79). In respect of this venerable principle,
Socrates must be ranked a self-conscious moral revolutionary (Crito 49b–d): as
he sees it, since we should never do injustice, we should never do evil, and from
that it follows that we should never do an evil in return for even an evil done to us
(Crito 48b–49d, 54c; cf. Gorgias 468e–474b; Republic 335a–d). For Socrates, then,
not even Zeus can return one injury for another.3
Next, the Socratic view that the only or most important good is virtue/wisdom
(e.g. Apology 30a–b; Crito 47e–48b; Gorgias 512a–b; Euthydemus 281d–e) makes
it likely that the only or most important component of the gods’ chief product is
virtue/wisdom. But then, since piety as a virtue must be a craft-knowledge of how
to produce goodness (e.g. Laches 194e–196d, 199c–e; Euthydemus 280b–281e), our
primary service to the gods would appear to be to help the gods produce good-
ness in the universe via the protection and improvement of the human mind/soul.
Because philosophical examination of oneself and others is for Socrates the key
activity that helps to achieve this goal via the improvement of moral-belief consist-
ency and the deflation of human presumptions to divine wisdom (e.g. Apology
22d–23b), philosophizing is a pre-eminently pious activity (see McPherran 1996:
chs 2.2, 4.2).
Finally, Socrates’ treatment of Euthyphro’s fifth definition – (5) piety is know-
ledge of sacrificing and praying – makes evident that he rejects the idea that piety
consists in traditional prayer and sacrifice motivated by hopes of a material pay-
off (Euthyphro 14c–15c).
This appropriation and reconception of piety as demanding of us philosoph-
ical self-examination would, however, seem to be a direct threat to everyday piety.
For now it would appear that for Socrates time spent on prayer and sacrifice is
simply time stolen from the more demanding, truly pious task of rational self-
examination per T1. More threatening still, Socrates’ theology of entirely just,
relentlessly beneficent gods in conjunction with his moral theory would seem to
make sacrifice and prayer (and especially curses) entirely useless. To what extent,
then, is Socrates at odds with the ritual bedrock of Greek religion (see McPherran
2000)?

3. Cf. Xenophanes, who testifies that “Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all deeds
which among men are a reproach and a disgrace: thieving, adultery, and deceiving one
another” (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 9.193, trans. McKirahan).

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I think it is clear that Socrates rejects not conventional religious practices in

general, but only the narrowly self-interested motives underlying their common
observance. Xenophon, for example, portrays him as “the most visible of men”
in cult-service to the gods (Memorabilia 1.2.64) and has him testify that he often
sacrificed at the public altars (Apology 10–12; cf. Memorabilia 1.1.1–2, 4.8.11). It
seems unlikely that Xenophon would offer as a defence a portrait of Socrates that
simply no Athenian could take seriously. There is, in addition, some corrobo-
rating Platonic evidence on this point.4 Although it would not seem that Socrates
could consider prayers or sacrifices alone to be essentially connected to the virtue
of piety, their performance is nonetheless compatible with the demands of piety
reconceived as philosophizing. After all, since Socrates embraces the positive side
of the talio – the return of one good for another – we should reciprocate as best we
can the gods’ many good gifts (see e.g. Euthyphro 14e–15a) by honouring the gods
in fitting ways by performing acts with the inner intention to thank and honour
them (Memorabilia 1.4.10, 18; 4.3.17). While, again, serving the gods via philo-
sophical self-examination has pride of place in providing such honours, there is
no reason why such actions cannot include prayers and sacrifices (cf. Memorabilia
4.3.13, 16). Socrates may well hold that prayers and sacrifices that aim to honour or
thank the gods, or that request moral assistance from them, serve both ourselves
and the gods: they help to induce our souls to follow the path of justice (thus
producing god-desired good in the universe) by habituating us to return good for
good. These actions also help to foster and maintain a general belief in the exist-
ence of good and helpful gods and an awareness of our inferior status in respect
of wisdom and power, something that Socrates is clearly interested in promoting
(see e.g. Memorabilia 1.4.1–19, 4.3.1–17; Apology 21d–23c).
It appears, then, that with the perfectly wise and just deities of Socrates we
have few specific, materially rewarding imprecations to make; beyond the sincere,
general prayer that one be aided in pursuing virtue, there are few requests or sacri-
fices to which all-wise deities can be counted on to respond. This implication of
Socrates’ moral theory cuts straight to the heart of everyday self-interested moti-
vations underlying many cult practices. But if Socrates rejected the efficacy of
improperly motivated requests, then he was a threat to popular piety. After all,
to many Athenians the assistance of a Heracles would have meant, above all, help
against the non-human forces bearing down on them (e.g. plague), and for most
of them this meant material help against oppressive other deities. By taking away
the enmity of the gods and conceiving of them as fully beneficent, the need for
and the efficacy of this Heracles is also removed.

4. For example, Plato is willing to put twelve prayers into the mouth of his Socrates (see
Jackson 1971; Euthydemus 275d; Phaedo 117c; Symposium 220d; Phaedrus 237a–b, 257a–b,
278b, 279b–c; Republic 327a–b, 432c, 545d–e; Philebus 25b, 61b–c). Note too the stage-
setting of the start of the Republic (327a), where Socrates has travelled down to the Piraeus
in order to pray to the goddess Bendis and observe her festival.

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It seems clear that those jurors able to recognize the implications of Socrates’
views for sacrificial cult would have seen him as threatening the stability of the
state, for if you take away the conflicts of the deities and the expectations of
particular material rewards and physical protections in cult, you disconnect the
religion of everyday life and the state from its practical roots. To those not already
focused on the development of their inner lives, the substitute of the difficult,
pain-producing activity of philosophical self-examination would seem to offer
little solace in the face of life’s immediate, everyday difficulties. Socrates, therefore,
raised the stakes for living a life of piety considerably by making its final measure
the state of one’s philosophically purified soul.
As T3, T4 and T5 demonstrate, Socrates is portrayed as a man who gives clear
credence to the alleged god-given messages and forecasts found in dreams, divi-
nations, oracles and other such traditionally accepted incursions by divinity.5 But
the degree of trust Socrates places in such sources appears to put him at odds
with T1 and T2: what is the rational justification for heeding them and, by doing
so, are they not regarded as sources of wisdom? The natural response is, I think,
to hold that while Socrates accepts the everyday notion that the gods provide us
with extra-rational signs and so does not pursue a form of the intellectualist rejec-
tion of divination’s efficacy,6 he also does not take the operations of traditional
divinatory practices at face value. Rather, he insists in accord with T1 that conven-
tional methods of oracular interpretation must give way to a rational method for
evaluating such phenomena. These extra-rational sources, however, do not supply
Socrates with general, theoretical claims constitutive of the expert moral know-
ledge he seeks and disavows having obtained per T2. Rather, they yield items
of what we might call non-expert moral knowledge (e.g. that his death is good;
Apology 40a–c).7 Let us consider a few examples.
Early in his defence speech, Socrates explains that his reputation for wisdom
can be best understood by attending to the testimony provided by the god who
speaks through the Delphic Oracle, Apollo (Apology 20d–23b). As Socrates relates
the tale, his friend Chaerephon travelled to Delphi to ask the Oracle if anyone was
wiser than Socrates, and the response was “No one is wiser” (21a5–7). This report,
however, was at odds with Socrates’ own conviction that he possessed no real

5. During Socrates’ lifetime, divination (mantikē) was widely employed by both states and
individuals, and appeared in roughly three forms: (i) divination by lots; (ii) interpretation
of signs, such as thunder; and (iii) the production and interpretation of oral oracles by
a seer (mantis) (recorded and interpreted by ‘oracle-mongers’ [chrēsmologoi]). See e.g.
Zaidman & Pantel (1992: 121–8).
6. For example, in the manner of the characters of Euripides, who challenge both the abilities
and honesty of traditional seers (e.g. Philoctetes fr. 795) and the existence of the gods who
allegedly provide foreknowledge (Bellerophon fr. 286; The Trojan Women 884–7; fr. 480;
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 9.54).
7. For discussion of how Socrates can endorse T2 but also know (or justifiably believe) things,
see Brickhouse & Smith (1994: ch. 2) and Vlastos (1994).

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wisdom, and so – given that “it is not lawful for the god to speak falsely” (21b5–
7) – he was provoked to discover an interpretation that would preserve Apollo’s
veracity. He does this by going from one self-professed expert to another in hope
of finding someone wiser than himself so as to refute the apparent meaning of
the oracular pronouncement (and so uncover its real meaning). After continu-
ally failing to find such a person, Socrates concludes that what the god actually
meant is that Socrates is wisest by best grasping his own lack of real wisdom (this
is ‘human wisdom’). This, in turn, is taken to mean that Apollo has stationed
Socrates in Athens ordering him to philosophize and examine himself and others
(28d–29a). Thus, since one ought always to obey the command of a god at all costs,
Socrates is obliged to philosophize regardless of any dangers (29d). His jurors,
therefore, should understand that the Oracle’s pronouncement marked a turning
point in his life so profound that he now philosophizes under a unique and divine
mandate (T4 and 29c–30b). Socrates also continually interrogates others because
he has come to believe that the god is using him as a paradigm to deliver the
virtue-inducing message that that person is wisest, who – like Socrates – becomes
most cognizant of how little real wisdom he or she possesses (23b).8
This account, despite its complexity, suggests that Socrates takes it to be obliga-
tory to subject extra-rational signs to rational interpretation and confirmation
whenever possible, and especially if they urge him to act in ways that appear to
run counter to tradition or prudential considerations. That postulate dissolves
two of our initial puzzles. First, the conflict between reason per T1 and revelation
per T3, T4 and T5 is mitigated by noting how Socrates allows rationally inter-
preted and tested revelations to count as reasons in the sense of T1 (see below).
The second tension between revelation and T6 is dissolved as well: this principle
can be understood to claim that actions traditionally held to be unjust ought to be
refrained from in the absence of compelling rational or rationally interpreted and
tested divinatory evidence to the contrary. To confirm this account of Socrates’
treatment of extra-rational indicators, let us consider his reliance on his divine
sign, the daimonion.
Socrates’ daimonion, we are told, is an internal, private admonitory “sign”
(sēmeion; Apology 40b1, c3; Euthydemus 272e4; Phaedrus 242b9; Republic 496c4;
Memorabilia 1.1.3–5) and “voice” (phonē; Apology 31d1; Phaedrus 242c2; Xenophon,
Apology 12) caused to appear within the horizon of consciousness by a god. It
has occurred to few or none before Socrates (Republic 496c) and it has been his
companion since childhood (Apology 31d). The daimonion’s intervention in his
affairs is frequent and pertains to matters both momentous and trivial (Apology
40a). That Socrates receives and obeys these monitions is well-known in Athens
(Apology 31c–d; Euthyphro 3b), and they are understood to be apotreptic signs
that warn him not to pursue a course of action that he is in the process of

8. See Brickhouse & Smith (1983); Stokes (1992: 29–33); Vlastos (1989: 229–30; 1991: 166–73).

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initiating (Apology 31d; Phaedrus 242b–3; Theages 128–131a). These interven-

tions are regarded as unfailingly correct in whatever they indicate (Memorabilia
1.1.4–5), just as we would expect the gift of an unfailingly good divinity to be.
The daimonion’s generosity even extends to warning Socrates of the inadvisability
of the actions intended by others (Theaetetus 150c–151b; cf. Theages 128d–131a;
Memorabilia 1.1.4; Apology 13), but in no case does it provide him with general,
theoretical claims constitutive of the expert moral knowledge he seeks and disa-
vows having obtained per T2. Nor does it provide him with ready-made expla-
nations of its opposition. Rather, its occurrences yield instances of non-expert
moral knowledge of the inadvisability of pursuing particular actions because
those actions are disadvantageous to Socrates and others: for example, the know-
ledge that it would not be beneficial to let a certain student resume study with
him (see e.g. Xenophon, Symposium 8.5; Theaetetus 150c–151b; Alcibiades I 103a–
106a). Finally, these divine “signs” always target future unbeneficial outcomes, and
especially those whose reasonable prediction lies beyond the power of human
reason (Apology 31d; Euthydemus 272e–273a; Memorabilia 1.1.6–9, 4.3.12). It is,
in short, a species of the faculty of divination, true to Socrates’ description of it as
his ‘customary divination’ (Apology 40a4) and himself as a seer (mantis; Phaedo
85b4–6; cf. Phaedrus 242c4).
One important example that displays Socrates’ reliance on and rational confir-
mation of a daemonic warning is found at Apology 31c–32a, where Socrates notes
his obedience to the daimonion’s resistance to his entering public partisan politics
(cf. Republic 496b–c) and then offers an explanation for its warnings: namely, that
such political activity would have brought him a premature death, thus curtailing
his vastly beneficial mission to the Athenians (cf. Phaedrus 242b–243a; Alcibiades I
103a–106a). Another instance of daemonic activity is found at Euthydemus 272e–
273a. There we find that Socrates had formed the intention to leave his seat but,
just as he was getting up, the daimonion opposed him, and so he remained. In this
case, Socrates exhibits no doubt that its warning is utterly reliable; rather, Socrates
implicitly trusts the daimonion, although how or why it is that the result of his
obedience will be good-producing is opaque to reasoned calculation (Theaetetus
150c–151b; Memorabilia 4.3.12, 1.1.8–9). But this trust is in no way irrational –
and so does not contradict T1 – for it may be rationally confirmed in its wisdom
and so given credence on an inductive basis, since (i) in Socrates’ long experience
of the daimonion, it has never been shown not to be a reliable warning system
(Xenophon, Apology 13; Apology 40a–c), and (ii) the reliability of its alarms has
been confirmed by the good results that flow from heeding it.
Given the above account, the daimonion appears to be compatible with Socrates’
profession of T1 and T2: if, during or after a process of deliberation, the daimo-
nion should oppose his action, then, given the prior rationally established relia-
bility of the daimonion, it would seem that an occurrence of the daimonion would
count in a perfectly straightforward way as a reason for not performing that act.
For if one had very frequently in the past always obeyed the promptings of an

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internal warning that one has reason to believe comes from all-wise gods, and this
had always been judged to have resulted in the best outcome, then one has good
reason for letting this internal warning trump one’s merely human judgement.
Socrates’ claims to receive guidance from the gods bring us to our last puzzle:
how can Socrates satisfy the rational demands of T1, the sceptical restraint marked
by T2, and yet affirm that gods exist and that they have characteristics such as
wisdom (Apology 41c–d; Euthyphro 14e–15a; Gorgias 508a; Hippias Major 289b;
Memorabilia 4.4.25)? Unfortunately, Plato’s texts show Socrates simply assuming
and never proving the existence of gods. However, in Xenophon we are given an
innovative teleological cosmology and theodicy grounded on an argument for the
existence of an omniscient, omnipresent god: the maker of an orderly and beau-
tiful universe, a deity who also now governs it in a fashion analogous to the way
in which our minds govern our bodies (1.4.1–19; 4.3.1–18; cf. Sextus Empiricus,
Against the Professors 9.92–4; see McPherran 1996: ch. 5).
The relation between this omniscient, omnipresent deity and the other gods
is left entirely obscure. Socrates speaks at one moment of that singular deity as
responsible for our creation and aid and, in the next breath, depicts the plural gods
as doing the same (e.g. 1.4.10–11, 13–14, 18). Next, he distinguishes this one deity
from the other gods by characterizing it as that particular god who “coordinates
and holds together the entire cosmos” (4.3.13) but also treats that deity as fulfilling
all the functions of the gods. To reconcile such oddities with what evidence there
is that Socrates would affirm a belief in Delphic Apollo and plural Greek gods, we
might credit him with being a henotheist; that is, he may understand the maker-
god to be a supreme deity overseeing a community of lesser deities in the manner
of Xenophanes’ “greatest one god” (21 B23 DK). Alternatively, it is also possible
that Socrates shared the not-uncommon view that understood the gods to be
manifestations of a singular supreme spirit (Guthrie 1971: 156). In any event, we
may expect that Socrates holds that his reasons for affirming the existence and
nature of his maker-god do not constitute the sort of complete and certain account
that would give him the kind of theological wisdom he disclaims in T2.
In any event, in view of the preceding outline of Socratic religion, we should
not be surprised that Socrates’ defence against the charge of impiety laid against
him failed. In the end, the prejudices and allegations against Socrates proved so
numerous and wide-ranging that he was in effect put on trial for the conduct
of his entire life. His strange, provocative, street-preaching conduct, purport-
edly commanded by a divinity and exemplifying the new intellectualist concep-
tion of piety that Socrates had forged, proved all too prone to misrepresentation
before an undiscerning crowd. From outside the circle of Socratic philosophy, that
revised piety looked all too similar to the newfangled impiety Aristophanes had
lampooned in his Clouds long before (423 bce), an impiety that Socrates himself
would have condemned (Apology 19c–d).
In sum, Socrates should be understood to have appropriated the principles of
traditional Apollonian religion that emphasized the gap separating the human

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from the divine in terms of wisdom and power by connecting those principles
with the new enterprise of philosophical self-examination (see e.g. Iliad 5.440–
42).9 But as we shall now see, Plato proved much more philosophically ambitious
and optimistic about our natural capacities for knowledge and wisdom. Influenced
on the one hand by Socrates’ new intellectualist conception of piety as elenctic
‘caring of the soul’ and the success of the methods of the mathematicians of his day,
which he took to overcome the limitations of Socrates’ elenctic method, and on
the other by the aim at human-initiated divine status as expressed by some of the
newer, post-Hesiodic religious forms that had entered into Greece, Plato’s philo-
sophical theology offered the un-Socratic hope of an afterlife of intimate Form-
contemplation in the realm of divinity. Self-knowledge on Plato’s scheme leads not
so much to an appreciation of limits, then, as to the realization that we are ourselves
divinities in some sense: immortal intellects that already have within them all the
knowledge there is to be had (Meno 81c–d; Phaedo 72e–77e; Symposium 210a–
211b). In such a scheme there is little room for Socratic piety, since now the central
task of human existence becomes less a matter of assisting gods and more a matter
of becoming as much like them as one can (e.g. Theaetetus 172b–177c).

plato10

Plato’s most explicit statement of the way in which he intends to both retain
and transform traditional religious forms is to be found in his Republic and
Laws (here I focus on the Republic). The Republic contains over a hundred refer-
ences to ‘god’ or ‘gods’, with most occurring within the outline of the educational
reforms advanced in books 2 and 3. The traditional gods are first brought into the
conversation in their guise as enforcers of morality by Glaucon and his brother
Adeimantus (357a–367e). These gods are rumoured to repay injustice with
frightful post-mortem punishments, but ambitious people can create a facade of
illusory virtue that will allow them to lead profitable lives here and in the afterlife
(364b–365a; cf. Laws 909a–b).11 For (i) if the gods do not exist or (ii) if they are

9. He also uses the terminology of ecstatic cults such as the Corybantes to distinguish poetry
and sophistry from philosophy (e.g. Ion 533d–536d; Euthydemus 277d–e), and that of
shamanic medicine to recommend the methods of philosophy as an effective, rational
revisioning of their healing and salvational rites (e.g. Charmides 156d–157c; Morgan 1990:
ch. 1).
10. Parts of this section closely follow my “Platonic Religion”, in A Companion to Plato,
H. Benson (ed.), 244–60 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
11. Adeimantus alludes to begging priests and soothsayers who hold that through sacrifices,
incantations and initiations found in books by Musaeus and Orpheus divine punishment
of injustice can be averted (364b–365a; cf. Laws 909a–b). Plato is in general a harsh critic
of everyday prophets and priests; rather, the true priest must now be a philosopher (e.g.
Phaedrus 248d–e).

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indifferent to human misconduct, we need not fear their punishments; and (iii)
even if they are concerned with us, given “all we know about them from the laws
and poets” (365e2–3) they can be persuaded to give us not penalties but goods
(365c–366b, 399b; cf. Laws 885b). No wonder, then, that in the view of the many
“no one is just willingly” but only through some infirmity (366d). As a result, the
challenge that Socrates must now meet by constructing the perfectly just state
Kallipolis is to demonstrate the superiority of justice to injustice independently
of any external consequences (366d–369b). Then, when at last Kallipolis is estab-
lished, he must outline the educational system necessary for producing the char-
acter traits its rulers will require (374d–376c).
Socrates asserts that it would be hard to find a system of education better than the
traditional one of offering physical training for the body and music and poetry for
the soul, but he quickly finds fault with its substance. This form of education moulds
the character of the young by using stories to shape the form of their aspirations
and desires in ways conformable to the development of their rational intelligence.
However, although such stories are false, some approximate the truth better than
others and some are more conducive to the development of good character than
others (377a, 377d–e, 382c–d). Plato assumes that the most accurate representations
of the gods and heroes will also be the most beneficial, but the converse is also true,
and this means that there will have to be strict supervision of the poets and storytellers
of Kallipolis. Moreover, much of the old literature will have to be cast aside because of
its lack of verisimilitude and its debilitating effects on character-formation.
First on the chopping block is Hesiod’s Theogony, with its deceitful, harmful tale of
Cronos castrating Ouranos at the urgings of his vengeful mother Gaia, then unjustly
swallowing his own children to prevent his overthrow by Zeus (377e–378b). Poetic
lies of this sort that suggest that gods or heroes are unjust or disagree or retaliate
against each other must be suppressed. To specify with precision which myths are
to be counted false in their essentials, Socrates offers the educators of Kallipolis an
‘outline of theology’ in two parts, establishing a pair of laws that will ensure a suffi-
ciently accurate depiction of divinity (379a7–9) (L1, L2a, L2b below):

(1) All gods are [entirely] good beings (379b1–2).

(2) No [entirely] good beings are harmful (379b3–4).
(3) All non-harmful things do no harm (379b5–8).
(4) Things that do no harm do no evil, and so are not the causes of evil (379b9–
10).
(5) Good beings benefit other things, and so are the causes of good (379b11–
14).
(6) Thus, good beings are not the causes of all things, but only of good things and
not evil things (379b15–379c1).
(7) Therefore, the gods are not the causes of everything – as most people believe –
but their actions produce the few good things and never the many bad things
there are (379c2–8; 380b6–c3).

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L1 God is not the cause (aitia) of all things, but only of the good things; what-
ever it is that causes bad things, that cause is not divine (380c6–10; 391e1–2;
cf. Laws 636c, 672b, 899b, 900d, 941b).

The argument for conclusion (7) is a reasonably cogent inference, but we are
bound to ask how Plato can simply presuppose the truth of the non-Homeric
premise (1), which, once granted, drives the rest of the argument. He can do so, I
think, because of his inheritance of Socratic piety: the gods are good because they
are wise, and they are wise because of their very nature. That said, however, we are
left wondering how the new poetry is to depict the causes of evil, what those causes
might be and how they could coexist within a cosmos ruled by omnibenevolent
gods. Plato himself addresses this issue in his other, later work (see below). Here,
at any rate, the practical upshot of L1 is clear: stories of the gods’ injustices such as
those at Iliad 4.73–126 and 24.527–32 must be purged. If the poets insist, they may
continue to speak of the gods’ punishments, but only so long as they make it clear
that these are either merited or therapeutic (380a–b; cf. Gorgias 525b–c).
Next up for elimination are those tales that portray the gods as changing shape
or otherwise deceiving us. By means of two further arguments Socrates establishes
a law with two parts:

L2a No gods change (381e8–9); and

L2b The gods do not try to mislead us with falsehoods (383a2–6).

This second law will allow Kallipolis to purge traditional literature of all variety of
mythological themes, ranging from the shape-shifting antics of Proteus (381c–e)
to the deceptive dreams sent by Zeus (e.g. Iliad 2.1–34) (383a–b). Book 3 continues
with further applications of Laws 1 and 2 to popular poetry, and by its end the
gods of that poetry have been demoted to the status of harmful fabrications (Plato
retains this view into his Laws; e.g. 636c, 672b, 941b). Although the revisionary
theology that results puts Plato at striking variance with the attitudes of many of
his fellow Athenians, there is nothing in his theology that directly undermines the
three axioms of Greek religion (a–c) to which Adeimantus alluded earlier (365d–
e): the gods exist, they concern themselves with human affairs and there is reci-
procity of some kind between human beings and gods. Moreover, it would have
been no great shock for Plato’s audience to find his Socrates denying the poets’
tales of divine capriciousness, enmity, immorality and response to ill-motivated
sacrifice. As mentioned earlier, they had for years been exposed to such criticisms
by thinkers such as Xenophanes and Euripides, and Hesiod himself had admitted
that poets tell lies (Theogony 26–8).
Although Plato, like Socrates, vigorously rejects the idea that gods can be magi-
cally influenced to benefit us, it is clear that he retains a role for traditional-appearing
religious practices (McPherran 2000). There will still be sacrifices (419a) and hymns
to the gods (607a), along with a form of civic religion that features temples, prayers,

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festivals, priests and so on (427b–c; Burkert 1985: 334). Plato also expects the chil-
dren of Kallipolis to be shaped “by the rites and prayers which the priestesses and
priests and the whole community pray at each wedding festival” (461a6–8). The
Republic is lamentably terse on the details of all this, but that is because its Socrates is
unwilling to entrust the authority of establishing these institutions to his guardians
or to speculative reason (427b8–9). Rather, the foundational laws governing these
matters will be introduced and maintained by “the ancestral guide on these matters
for all people” (427c3–4): Delphic Apollo (427a–c; cf. 424c–425a, 461e, 540b–c).
(Plato assigns the same function to Delphi in his Laws [738b–d, 759a–e, 828a] and
pays better attention there to the details [e.g. 759a–760a, 771a–772d, 778c–d, 799a–
803b, 828a–829e, 848c–e].) This fact alone suggests that the ritual life of Kallipolis
will be very hard to distinguish from that of Plato’s Athens. Confirmation of this
occurs when we are told that the citizens of Kallipolis will “join all other Greeks in
their common holy rites” (470e10–11; cf. Laws 848d).
Plato holds that worship is a form of education that should begin in childhood,
where it can take root in the feelings; thus, he finds charming tales, impressive
festivals, seeing one’s parents at prayer and so on to be effective ways of impressing
on the affective parts of the soul a habit of mind whose rational confirmation can
only be arrived at in maturity (401d–402b; cf. Laws 887d–888a). Most citizens
of Kallipolis, however, will be non-philosophers who are unable to achieve such
confirmation, but who will still profit from the habitual practice of these rites in
so far as they promote the retention of their own sort of psychic justice. For phil-
osophers, however, such pious activity is quite secondary to the inwardly directed
activity that it supports; this is their quest for wisdom – an activity that focuses
directly on making oneself “as much like a god as a human can” (613a–b). The
education given to these future philosopher-kings of Kallipolis will thus take them
far beyond the limitations imposed by the anti-hubristic tenets of Socratic piety.
For by coming to know the ultimate Form, the Good-itself, they will no longer be
regarded as servile assistants of the gods, but will serve Kallipolis as the gods’ local
representatives (540a–b).
It should be clear by this point that the inner religious life of Plato’s philoso-
phers will be vastly different from that of the ordinary citizens of Kallipolis. Thus,
we might reasonably expect to learn more about the purified gods of Republic
books 2 and 3 in the later metaphysical books’ account of their heavenly abode:
the realm of Forms (books 5, 6, 7). However, despite this section’s discussion
of these immaterial and divine objects of knowledge, the gods hardly appear at
all (e.g. 492a). This fact, in concert with Plato’s confessions of the difficulty of
adequately conceiving of god/gods (e.g. Phaedrus 246c), can create the impression
that although Plato is willing to retain morally uplifting talk of all-good gods for
the children and non-philosophers of his Kallipolis, when he turns to the serious
business of educating his philosophers he reveals that the only true divinities are
the Forms. Nevertheless, justice-enforcing gods are redeployed as real features of
the cosmos in book 10 (612e; cf. Laws 901a). Secondly, Plato frequently alludes

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to genuine gods in dialogues contemporaneous with, and later than, the Republic
(e.g. Phaedrus, Parmenides, Laws). Hence, the most plausible stance is that Plato
affirms the existence of both gods and Forms.
Probably the clearest expression of the relationship between the middle-
dialogue Forms and gods occurs in the second half of the Greatest Aporia of the
Parmenides (133a–134e), where we find an argument purporting to establish the
impossibility that the gods could either know or rule over sensible particulars such
as ourselves. This argument is founded on the account of sensibles and Forms we
find in the Phaedo and Republic, with the clear implication being that the Form-
realm is also the heavenly home of gods who govern us as masters govern slaves
and whose business it is to apprehend all of the Forms, including Knowledge-itself
(134a–e). This brief glimpse of gods and Forms corresponds with the account of
the gods offered first in the Phaedo, and then in the more complex portrait of the
Phaedrus. In the course of the Phaedo’s affinity argument for the soul’s immor-
tality (78b–84b), for example, we are told that our souls are most like the divine
in being deathless, intelligible and invisible beings that are inclined to govern
mortal subjects (e.g. our bodies) (see below). When the philosophically purified
soul leaves its body, then, it joins good and wise gods and the Forms (80d–81a).
The sorts of activities they carry on together is left unclear, but since this section
and others parallel the Parmenides’ attribution of mastery to the gods (62c–63c,
84e–85b), we can expect that these gods are likewise able to rule wisely because of
their apprehension of the Forms.
The Phaedrus also features souls and gods who know Forms and who have
the capacity to rule, and by detailing their relations in his outline of “the life of
the gods” (248a1) Plato gives us a partial solution to the identity of the gods of
the Republic and other middle dialogues. As part of his palinode (242b–257b),
Socrates first offers a proof that the self-moving souls of both gods and human
beings are immortal (245c–e), and then turns to a description of their natures
(246a–248a). It is, he says, too lengthy a task to describe accurately the soul’s struc-
ture in a literal fashion: a god could do it, but not a mortal; but we can at least say
what the soul resembles (246a3–6; cf. 247c3–6). Dismissing the common concep-
tion of the Olympian deities as composites of soul and body (246c5–d5), Socrates
offers his famous simile, comparing every soul to “the natural union of a team of
[two] winged horses and their charioteer” (246a6–7), whose ruling part is Reason
and whose horses correspond to the spirited and appetitive parts of the soul
described in the Republic (book 4) Hackforth (1952: 72).12 Unlike the mixed team
with which mortal drivers must contend, however, the souls of gods and daimones

12. Plato’s appropriation of the immortal horses of the gods (the hippoi athanatoi, offspring of
the four Wind-Gods who draw the chariot of Zeus; Iliad 5.352–69) is typical of his entire
approach to the myths of Greek religion: he retains the traditional ambrosia and nectar
as food and drink for the lower, horsey parts of the soul (247e), but has the philosophical
Intellect feed on the new, true ambrosia of the immortal Forms.

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have horses and charioteer-rulers that are entirely good. The most important of
these gods are to be identified with the twelve traditional Olympians: their “great
commander” is Zeus, who is then trailed by Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo,
Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena and Hephaestus, while Hestia remains
at home. Being entirely good, these gods roam the roads of heaven, guiding souls,
and then travel up to heaven’s highest rim (247a–e). From these heights each
driver – each god’s Intelligence – is nourished and made happy by gazing upon
the invisible, fully real objects of knowledge to which he or she is akin: Forms such
as Justice and Beauty themselves. Even Knowledge-itself is here, “not the know-
ledge that is close to change and that becomes different as it knows the different
things that we consider real down here”, but “the knowledge of what really is what
it is” (247d7–e2). This account should recall both the Parmenides’ characteriza-
tion of the two kinds of knowledge there are – the Knowledge-itself that ruling
gods possess and the knowledge-among-us that we possess (cf. Theaetetus 146e)
– and the Republic’s declaration in L1 that the gods are the causes of only good.
Moreover, this Phaedrus myth parallels the Republic in so far as the latter alludes
to the knowledge possessed by those guardians who are able to rule by virtue of
the wisdom they have come to possess (428c–d) and whose intellects are nour-
ished and made happy by their intercourse with the Forms (490a–b). (Both texts
also possess parallel psychologies and eschatological myths that contain Olympian
post-mortem rewards and punishments [Phaedrus 256a–c; Republic 621c–d] and
reincarnation into a variety of lives [Phaedrus 247c–249d; Republic 614b–621d]).
In view of such parallels, it is reasonable to suppose that the deities sanctioned
by the Phaedrus would also be those of the Republic, and this seems especially
true when we consider the conservative streak Plato displayed by putting Delphic
Apollo in charge of the establishment of temples and sacrifices; hence, the instal-
ment of the specific deities the city will honour at Republic 427b–c (and note that
the Phaedrus similarly credits Delphi with the ability to offer sound guidance
to both individuals and cities; 244a–b). Thus, when Socrates acknowledges the
Apollo of Delphi at 427a–b and Zeus at 583b and 391c, and defends the reputa-
tions of Hera, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus and Poseidon at 390c and 391c, he is
affirming the existence of distinct deities with distinct functions who may still be
credited with distinctive personalities, each one resembling the kind of human
soul it will lead up to the nourishment of the Form realm (248a–e). The series
of cosmological etymologies concerning the names of the gods provided by the
Philebus (395e–410e) reinforces this account.
What, then, is the relation of that super-ordinate Form, the Good-itself
(Republic 504d–534d), to these gods? It was a commonplace in antiquity that the
Good is god (cf. e.g. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 11.70), a view that
still finds some favour. If that were right, we could then postulate that the image
of the Great Commander Zeus is one of Plato’s ways of conceptualizing the Good
in order to make it a subject of honorific ritual. In fact, we are encouraged to
think of the Good as a god in several ways: the Good is said to be (a) the archē

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– the cause of the being – of the Forms (509b6–8) and everything else (511b,
517b–c); (b) a ruler over the intelligible world in the way the sun, a god, rules
over the visible realm (509b–d); (c) analogous to the maker (dēmiourgos) of our
senses (507c7), the sun, one of the gods of heaven (508a–c [which is an offspring
of the Good; 508b, 506e–507a]). This identification can then (d) explain book 10’s
odd and unique claim that the Form of Bed is created by a craftsman-god, who
is – in a sense – the creator of all things (596a–598c). Finally, if the Good were
not a god, then (i) the gods of the Republic would apparently be the offspring of
a non-god (the Good), (ii) the Good would be subordinate to these gods or (iii)
the gods would exist in independence from the Good; but none of these possi-
bilities seem to make sense in light of (a–d) (Adam [1908] 1965: 442). Despite
all this, however, the characterization of the Good as being beyond all being in
dignity and power (509b8–10) means that it cannot be a mind, a nous, that knows
anything; rather, it is that which makes knowledge possible (508b–509b). Thus,
since for Plato a necessary condition for something’s being a god is that it be a
mind/soul possessing intelligence, the Good cannot be a god.
Plato’s maker-god, the Demiurge, marks another of Plato’s debts to his teacher.
As we saw earlier, Xenophon’s Socrates argued that since individual beings in
the universe are either the product of intelligent design or mere dumb luck, and
since human beings are clearly the products of intelligent design, we ought to be
persuaded that there exists a vastly knowledgeable god, a god who is moreover “a
wise and loving Maker (dēmiourgos)” (1.4.2–7; cf. 4.3.1–18). Plato’s mature expres-
sion of this idea in the Timaeus and elsewhere goes well beyond this Socratic
inheritance by incorporating his theory of Forms in a conscious attempt to rebut
materialists who deny the priority of soul over body (27d–29b; cf. Philebus 30c–d;
Laws 889b–c, 891e–899d). The “likely account” (29b–d) Plato puts forward there
is, in brief, that:13

(1) The cosmos is an ordered, perceptible thing.

(2) All ordered perceptibles are things that come to be.
(3) Thus, the cosmos is not eternal but came to be.
(4) Every ordered thing that comes to be has a craftsman as the cause of its
coming to be.
(5) Thus, the cosmos has a craftsman as the cause of its coming to be.
(6) The craftsman-cause of the cosmos patterned the cosmos after one of two
kinds of model: (a) a changeless model grasped by reasoned understanding
or (b) a changing model grasped by opinion involving sense-perception.
(7) If the cosmos is beautiful and its craftsman is good, then its craftsman used
(a) a changeless model grasped by reasoned understanding.

13. The account is only likely because “to find the maker and father of this universe is hard
enough” and impossible to describe to everyone (28c4–5; cf. Cratylus 400d–401a).

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(8) The cosmos is beautiful and its craftsman is good.

(9) Thus, the cosmos “is a work of craft, modeled after that which is changeless
and is grasped by a rational account, that is, by wisdom” (29a6–b1, trans.
Zeyl).

The claim that the craftsman is good in premise (8) appears to come out of
thin air, but is perhaps to be inferred from the evident beauty and order of the
cosmos, and its providential, human-serving design (cf. Memorabilia 1.4.10–19;
cf. 4.3.2–14). In any event, from that goodness it is then supposed to follow that
the Demiurge was free of jealousy prior to the creation, and hence, he desired
that everything that exists be as much like himself as possible, and thus, as good
as possible. This desire then led the Demiurge to bring order to the recalcitrant,
disorderly motion of visible material by making it as intelligent as possible. This
required that he put intelligence into a World Soul, placing that soul into the body
of the cosmos, thereby making it a living being “endowed with soul and intelli-
gence” (30b6–c1), modelling it after the generic Form of Living Thing (29d–31a; a
Form that contains at least all the Forms of living things, if not all Forms).
In Plato’s middle-dialogue account of physical change in the Phaedo (99c–
107b), the Forms are treated as having the ability to act as both the formal and effi-
cient causes of a subject’s possession of properties, somehow radiating instances
of themselves into sensible individuals (so that, say, Simmias comes to be tall
by coming to possess an immanent character instance of Tallness-itself; Phaedo
100b–105c). The Timaeus retains this same ontology of immanent characters and
Forms and appears to give the job of implanting immanent characters to god
(Timaeus 48d–53c). Then, in place of the plural sensible subjects of participation,
Plato posits a single particular subject that is the receptacle, nurse and mother of
all becoming (49b, 50d): like a plastic substance such as gold (50a–c), it provides a
place or space (52a–b) for Form-instances to manifest themselves in those various
locations that we call by individual subject names.
Apart from the Demiurge, the created cosmos and the stars, there is little
mention of the activities of other, more traditional gods. Although these gods
seem to be invoked generically at the outset of the creation story (27c–d), and
the Muses receive a mention (47d–e), the only other significant mention of gods
at 40d6–e4 (cf. Laws 948b) appears to undermine their having any genuine exist-
ence in this scheme. Here it is hard to resist the impression that the old gods have
become little more than noble lies that philosophers offer to children and non-
philosophers in order to train and keep in check their unruly souls.14

14. Cf. Phaedrus 229c–230a, where Plato has his Socrates disclaim the scepticism concerning
stories about lesser deities such as Boreas and Orithyia advocated by the men of science.
This is because, he says, he has no time for the investigation of such issues in view of the
priority of his mission of self-examination conducted on behalf of Apollo. Consequently,
he merely accepts the current beliefs about them.

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Nevertheless, gods bearing the names of the Olympians make a prominent

appearance in the Laws from its outset, as its discussants make their way from
Cnossus to Zeus’ birthplace and shrine on Mount Ida (625b). There are, for
example, close to two hundred references to god or gods. Moreover, when it comes
time to address the inhabitants of his new Cretan city, the Athenian Stranger tells
them that they must “resolve to belong to those who follow in the company of
god” (716b8–9) and so model themselves after god. The most effective way to do
this, he tells them, is to pray and sacrifice to the gods, and this means the gods
of the underworld, the Olympians, the patron deities of the state, and daimones
and heroes (716b–717b; see Burkert [1985: chs 3.3.5, 4] on daimones and heroes).
Later, as he mounts his case against atheism, the Athenian makes it clear that he
and his companions’ memories of seeing their parents earnestly addressing the
Olympian gods with an assured belief in their actual existence are not to be under-
mined by scepticism (887c–888a; cf. 904e). Finally, the argument for there being
a craftsman-god of the cosmos includes the existence of lesser gods spoken of in
the plural (893b-907b): this maker and supervisor of the universe has established
these gods as rulers (archontes) over various parts of the universe (903b–c). We
found similar gods in the Phaedrus – and such beings appear elsewhere (Politicus
271d, 272e; Timaeus 41a–d, 42d–e) – and thus it seems that Plato consistently
understood his maker-god to be a supreme deity who may be called Zeus (e.g.
Philebus 30d; Phaedrus 246e) overseeing a community of lesser deities (Morrow
1966: 131) who may still be called by the names of the Olympians.
At the end of the Apology Socrates expresses confidence that death is a good
thing, but it is an ambivalent confidence grounded in his dilemma that death is
either like being nothing or is like a journey from here to another place where
– if certain tales are true – our souls will have the supreme happiness of philoso-
phizing with great judges, poets and heroes (40c–41c) (McPherran 1996: ch. 5.1).
Plato, however, solves the dilemma in favour of this second optimistic horn by
advancing a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul; we find four
in the Phaedo (the cyclical argument [69e–72e]; the recollection argument [72e–
77e]; the affinity argument [78b–82b]; and the final argument [102a–107b]), a
rather different one in the Republic (608d–611c), and then another in the Phaedrus
(245c–246a). There is not sufficient space here, however, to assess the structure
and cogency of these arguments.
In a number of places Plato attempts to characterize the soul’s immortality
in terms of post-mortem rewards and punishments, followed by reincarnation
(Phaedo 107c–115a [cf. 63e–64a]; Republic 612c–621d; Phaedrus 246a–257b;
Timaeus 91d–92c; cf. Gorgias 522b–527e). These accounts are cast in the tradi-
tionally authoritative language of poetry, and incorporate many of the motifs and
patterns of action of various traditional myths of descent, death and judgement
(e.g. Iliad 23.65–107; Hesiod, Works and Days 178–94; Pindar, Olympian 2.57–
60, 63–73). The idea of reincarnation is itself called an “old legend” by Socrates
(Phaedo 70c5–6); it turns up before Plato in the works of Pindar and Empedocles,

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and was allegedly introduced into Greece by Pythagoras (Porphyry, Life of

Pythagoras 19). We are also led to believe that these myths are approximations
of the truth (Phaedo 114d; Republic 618b–d, 621b–d; cf. Gorgias 523a), although
we are given little help in determining which of their elements come closer to the
truth than others (see Edmonds 2004: ch. 1).
The Republic, for example, ends with a consideration of the previously
dismissed question of the rewards of justice by first proving the soul’s immortality
(608c–612a) and then arguing for the superiority of the just life in consequen-
tialistic terms. Plato first affirms Adeimantus’ earlier story (362d–363e) that the
gods reward the just person and punish the unjust during the course of their lives
(612a–614a), but then offers the Myth of Er to show how they also do the same
in the afterlife (614a–621a). This story is similar in theme and detail to Plato’s
other main eschatological myths that display a willingness to use the prospects
of pain and pleasure as inducements to virtuous behaviour for those of us as yet
unready to pursue virtue for its own sake.15 Nevertheless, its complex portrait of
the long-term rewards for striving after justice is often found to be depressing,
not reassuring (e.g. Annas 1981: 350–53). For although there are tenfold
rewards for the just and tenfold punishments for the unjust, there are also non-
redeeming, everlasting tortures for those who, because of impiety and murder,
have become morally incurable (615c–616b; cf. Gorgias 525b–526b). Moreover,
unlike the eschatologies of the Phaedo and Phaedrus, Plato rules out there being
any final liberation from the cycle of incarnations (Annas 1982: 136). True to
L1, however, Plato explicitly relieves the gods of all responsibility for the future
suffering we will experience in our next incarnation by means of a lottery (617e,
619c).16 As he constructs it, a soul’s choice of a happy life of justice will depend
both on the random result of that lottery and that soul’s ability to choose wisely.
But it is unclear if the lottery is rigged by Necessity and a soul’s degree of prac-
tical wisdom is constrained by its prior experiences, experiences that were in turn
the result of prior ignorant choices. This means that those who have lived lives of
justice – through habit and without philosophy – and so arrive at the lottery aft er
experiencing the rewards of heaven will, by having forgotten their earlier suffer-
ings, make bad choices and suffer further (617d–621b). Finally, aside from the
chancy work of the lottery, Plato has never adumbrated the many sources of evil

15. It is hard to know how to view this particular fiction in light of Plato’s earlier categorical
denigration of all mimetic writing (Republic 595a–608b).
16. In the Phaedo, a failure to purify oneself sufficiently of one’s ties to bodily desires by having
lived an irrational, bestial life automatically entails rebirth into an animal form appro-
priate to one’s ruling passion; for example, the gluttonous become donkeys and the merely
habitually virtuous become bees (81e–82b; cf. Phaedrus 249b–c). Thus, here reincarnation
is always a punishment for some fault, with final liberation from the wheel of incarnation
the reward for a life of philosophical virtue; cf. Phaedrus 248e–249c.

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mentioned in book 2, against which even the gods are powerless.17 So although the
last lines of the Republic encourage us to race after justice so that we may collect
our Olympian rewards (621b–d), given their uncertainly and lack of finality some
will find Thrasymachean short cuts a better gamble.
There is no sure way to determine how Plato meant for us to read this and
other such myths; perhaps modern readers are right to find its details of coloured
whorls and lotteries to be only entertaining bits of window dressing, not to be
taken as contributing to a philosophically coherent eschatology (cf. Annas 1981:
351–3). This is poetry, after all, and it is composed within the framework of a
dialogue that consistently disdains poetry. On the other hand, it is possible to read
Er’s tale of reincarnation as alluding to the beneficial initiations of Eleusis, but
now connected to the true initiation and conversion of the soul provided by philo-
sophical dialectic (Morgan 1990: 150). There are also reasons to suppose that the
display of whorls, Sirens and Necessity are symbolic of the metaphysical elements
of the Republic’s middle books, and are thus meant to impress on each soul prior
to its next choice of life and its drink from the River of Unheeding (620e–621c)
the message of those books: that the happiest life is the life of justice and the good,
and so ought to be chosen for that reason alone (Johnson 1999).
The message that does come through in all of Plato’s eschatological myths,
however, is that no god or daimōn can be blamed for whatever fix we may happen
to find ourselves in when we put down Plato’s texts. Moreover, the many compli-
cations of these stories and the way in which they put our future judgement in the
hands of gods and fate seem intended to undermine our using that future state as
a source of motivation and choice-making in the here and now; perhaps we are
being encouraged to dismiss the cheap motivations of carrot and stick that drive
the vulgar many so that we might recall the truly pious aspirations of philosophy
developed in the preceding main body of Plato’s text (cf. Phaedo 114d–115a; Annas
1982). At the same time, however, Plato appears to be using “traditional mythic
material … to ground his advocacy of the philosophical life in the authority of the
[mythic] tradition” (Edmonds 2004: 161), giving that life motivational substance
by persuasively picturing the unseen noetic realm that is the goal of every true
philosopher. These myths, then, can be read as returning us to both the stern, early

17. The role of chance here, though, suggests that Plato may have had his later Timaeus view
of the causes of evil in mind, causes that he locates in the disorderly motions of matter
(see Cherniss 1971; cf. Phaedrus 248c–d; Statesman 273c–e). The Republic does at least
make clear that human evil is a consequence of our having souls that are maimed by their
association “with the body and other evils” (611c1–2; cf. 611b–d, 353e; Phaedo 78b–84b;
Theaetetus 176a–b; Laws 896c–897c); for example, not even the Republic’s rulers are infal-
lible in their judgements of particulars, and so Kallipolis will fail owing to the inability
of the guardians to make infallibly good marriages (given their need to use perception;
Republic 546b–c). Such imperfection is, however, a necessary condition of human beings
having been created in the first place, a creation that Plato clearly thought was a good
thing, all things considered.

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Socrates of Republic, book 1 (and elsewhere; e.g. the Socrates of Crito 48a–49e),
who urges us to choose the path of justice simpliciter, and the hopeful Socrates of
the Phaedo, who foresees a return to the friendly divinities and Formal delights
of heaven (Phaedo 63c, 81a; Phaedrus 247c). Through all this and more, Plato laid
the groundwork for the flowering of Western religious thought.

further reading
Beckman, J. 1979. The Religious Dimension of Socrates’ Thought. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press.
Brickhouse, T. & N. Smith (eds) 2002. The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and
Controversies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Despland, M. 1985. The Education of Desire: Plato and the Philosophy of Religion. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Destrée, P. & N. Smith (eds) 2005. Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice, and Value in Socratic
Philosophy. Kelowna: Academic Printing & Publishing.
Feibleman, J. 1971. Religious Platonism: The Influence of Religion on Plato and the Influence of
Plato on Religion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
More, P. 1921. The Religion of Plato. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Morgan, M. 1990. Platonic Piety. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Morgan, M. 1992. “Plato and Greek Religion”. In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, R. Kraut
(ed.), 227–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parker, R. 1996. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, N. & P. Woodruff (eds) 2000. Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Solmsen, F. 1942. Plato’s Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Vlastos, G. 1989. “Socratic Piety”. In Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient
Philosophy, vol. 5, J. Cleary & D. Shartin (eds), 213–38. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America.

On forms/ideas see also Chs 11, 13; Vol. 2, Ch. 15. On henotheism see also Ch. 7. On immor-
tality of the soul see also Ch. 4; Vol. 2, Chs 12, 16; Vol. 4, Chs 10, 19. On intelligent
design see also Ch. 8; Vol. 3, Ch. 23; Vol. 4, Chs 11, 12. On monotheism see also Ch. 3. On
piety see also Chs 5, 6, 12.

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