This correlation struck a chord, and with a bit of research I was able to find a host of scholarly research comparing Socrates to Christ and vice versa. In fact, Percy Shelley called Socrates the "Jesus Christ of Greece, " and Voltaire went so far as to term Christ "the Socrates of Galilee." If you reduce Plato’s final Socratic Dialogue, Phaedo, to a simple plot—it is actually quite similar to countless stories of martyrdom. The innocent man dies for his beliefs.
In W.L. Courtney’s article, “Socrates, Buddha, and Christ” many of these parallels are examined: poverty, simplicity, ethical reform, and then—apotheosis. Courtney begins by pronouncing that, “within certain limits, all the grand ethical and religious reforms of history have much the same characteristics” (63).
Paul Gooch, in his article “Socrates: Devious or Devine?” tells of “the fifteenth-century Florentine Platonist, Marsilio Ficino. Ficino was known to keep a perpetual flame burning before a bust of Plato; and he writes of Socrates in imagery which reminds us of biblical passages. His commentary on the Symposium endows Socrates with all the perfections of love, including a compassionate concern for the salvation of his followers. Socrates cares for the souls of others; and thus Ficino makes him into a pastor/saviour in the language of the Christian tradition.”
Courtney claims that, “the ideal Socrates gains his apotheosis in Plato’s dialogues” in effect doing for Socrates what the “Lalita Visara” did for Buddha or the “Gospel of John” did for Christ (64).
The similarities in the stories of each man are laid out in impressive detail, and while I won’t have time for them all, I will list a few of the most identifiable points:
· Socrates has his early mission conveyed to him in the answer of the oracle; Buddha learns to know his task while under the Bo-tree; Christ passes his initiatory ordeal in the desert. Buddha sustains a pro-tract-ed conflict with the Prince of Darkness, before the final victory is gained.
· Socrates has as his foes sophists, dem-a-gog-es, and those who accused him of “introducing new divinities.”
· Socrates finds that Critas, his own pupil, consents his death ; Christ is betrayed by his own disciple ; Buddha’s Judas Iss-care-iot is called De-va-datta.
· There are points in the death-story of Buddha that remind the reader now of Socrates, now of Christ.
Chroust examines the Socratic dialogues written by Xenophon, considered to be the other chief example of positive propaganda other than the dialogues of Plato. I say propaganda because, indeed, Chroust argues that both Plato and Xenophon do not recount the historical Socrates, but an embellished version, which appealed to Socrates’ followers and their own politics.
I found my initial doubt of a truthful recounting of Socrates supported by Chroust’s statement that, “the characterization of the person of Socrates in its strongly apologetic flavor, [and] strikes us as being fictitious... One cannot escape the impression, therefore, that this characterization here relies on some model or "legend" that had already become an established literary tradition” (Chroust 67)
He also asserts that “Plato‘s recounting is further from hard facts than others because of 'artistic temperament and talents and self-revelatory individualism'”.
Daniel Graham’s position in the article “Socrates and Plato” that, “Scholars almost universally recognize the Socrates of the middle dialogues as a mouthpiece for Plato” is similar to Chroust’s assertion that the historical Socrates was the actual successor of Anti-phon as the leader of the aristocratic-oligarchic faction, and that the philosophic Socrates was a fabrication of Plato, Xenophon, and others (Graham 141) (Chroust 191-223).
Graham also points out that, “’One candidate for a cri-ter-ion of sorts has been the distinction, recently championed by Vlastos, between Socratic and Platonic doctrines.’ Plato's complex meta-physics and e-pist-em-ology contrast sharply with the views reported for Socrates and exemplified in the early dialogues. These views change radically from the early to the middle dialogues, and hence it is reasonable to suppose that what is new in the middle dialogues is Platonic and what is old is Socratic” (151-52).
Neal Wood states in his article, “Socrates as Political Partisan,” that, “Far from being a detached, disinterested, and transcendent seeker after truth, Socrates appears to have been a political partisan.”
The original Socrates was probably an Athenian political figure changed into a philosophical and literary legend by those who wrote after his death.
Neal Wood explores many possible interpretations of Socrates:
· Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey [describe] Socrates as the founder of political philosophy and the ver-i-ta-ble fount of political wisdom.
· A.E. Taylor… sees in his life and teaching the basis of the European moral tradition.
· Richard Crossman and Karl Popper… [judge] that he was a democratic man of the people who was betrayed by Plato.
· Alban D. Winspear and Tom Silverberg [theorize] that he was a traitor to his proletarian origins and early democratic principles who became the toady of the aristocratic/oli-gar-kic party in Athens.
Gooch claims that, “Political partisanship in a broad sense would seem to be the necessary stimulus and condition for meaningful philosophic inquiry. The two are complementary rather than incompatible.”
It would seem that in order to objectively analyze the Socratic dialogues, one must do as Socrates did, and question everything.
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