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find the truth for ourselves". The early Socrates was a “street philosopher",
a moralist questioning single persons, not his city-state in
an Assembly: “The Socrates of the middle dialogues, by contrast, is
a metaphysician, not a moralist. Whereas the early Socrates was a
'street philosopher' questioning everyone because their happiness
depended upon arriving at moral knowledge, this one — the creation
of a Plato who has discovered mathematics — is an elitist who
thinks wisdom can attain mathematical certainty but only for those
capable of mathematics". 32 Yet, the moralist street philosopher could
have done politics and address questions to the Athenian people en
masse. Plato's teacher may have had “a populist conception of
philosophy", whereas “Plato is an elitist", 33 but he did not direct it
to historically significant for the city-state of Athens issues (see the
two occasions of Syracuse and Mytilene). These are “the words and
deeds" of this historical Socrates. Moreover, it was the Socratic
“atopia: his strangeness or, literally, his out-of-placeness" that distracted
the philosopher from public affairs. Such a politically orientated
moral blank stands as the reasonable outcome of a historical
Socrates “in many ways alienated from his own time and place".
As a matter of fact, the Platonic Socrates seems to be more
practical than his historical counterpart. Plato's fiction has virtues
(courage, sophrosyne, piety) and lives his life with these. He displays
his moral behaviour. The historical Socrates, on the other
hand, engages in the elenctic soul-saving, questioning single person's
moral data. His moral conduct is not the core of his philosophical
struggle as his elenchus is. The historical Socrates' philosophical
attitude towards “how to live a life" is related to “what is…"
questions. Plato's Socratic portrait encompasses “to live a life",
where the “know how" of the historical one becomes a background
of living a virtuous life. Hence, there is a chance that it is the Platonic
Socrates we should expect to demonstrate his virtues to his
beloved city-state, and not only to question personally and to a
face-to-face contact the citizens as the historical one did. The fact
that Plato's creation did not follow this path consists of Vlastos'
moral blank of Socrates. The 20 th century Greek philosopher had indeed
such an expectation from his philosophical hero.
The Socratic moral blank, predominant in Vlastos' “most just"
discussion of Socrates, is principally generated due to Vlastos' “philosophical
historiography". 34 The Greek philosopher of the Diaspora
104
32 W. Mathie, ibid., p. 197.
33 R. Kraut, ibid., p. 355.
34 See G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, p. 106.