Plato—The Gadfly’s Role

Giambettino Cignaroli, The Death of Socrates (ca. 1750)

θεοῦ δόσιν ὑμῖν ἐμοῦ καταψηφισάμενοι. ἐὰν γάρ με ἀποκτείνητε, οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἄλλον τοιοῦτον εὑρήσετε, ἀτεχνῶς—εἰ καὶ γελοιότερον εἰπεῖν—προσκείμενον τῇ πόλει ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ὥσπερ ἵππῳ μεγάλῳ μὲν καὶ γενναίῳ, ὑπὸ μεγέθους δὲ νωθεστέρῳ καὶ δεομένῳ ἐγείρεσθαι ὑπὸ μύωπός τινος, οἷον δή μοι δοκεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἐμὲ τῇ πόλει προστεθηκέναι τοιοῦτόν τινα, ὃς ὑμᾶς ἐγείρων καὶ πείθων καὶ ὀνειδίζων ἕνα ἕκαστον οὐδὲν παύομαι τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην πανταχοῦ προσκαθίζων. τοιοῦτος οὖν ἄλλος οὐ ῥᾳδίως ὑμῖν γενήσεται, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἀλλ᾽ ἐὰν ἐμοὶ πείθησθε, φείσεσθέ μου: ὑμεῖς δ᾽ ἴσως τάχ᾽ ἂν ἀχθόμενοι, ὥσπερ οἱ νυστάζοντες ἐγειρόμενοι, κρούσαντες ἄν με, πειθόμενοι Ἀνύτῳ, ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἀποκτείναιτε, εἶτα τὸν λοιπὸν βίον καθεύδοντες διατελοῖτε ἄν, εἰ μή τινα ἄλλον ὁ θεὸς ὑμῖν ἐπιπέμψειεν κηδόμενος ὑμῶν.

For if you put me to death, you will not easily find another, who, to use a rather absurd figure, attaches himself to the city as a gadfly to a horse, which, though large and well bred, is sluggish on account of his size and needs to be aroused by stinging. I think God fastened me upon the city in some such capacity, and I go about arousing, and urging and reproaching each one of you, constantly alighting upon you everywhere the whole day long. Such another is not likely to come to you, gentlemen; but if you take my advice, you will spare me. But you, perhaps, might be angry, like people awakened from a nap, and might slap me, as Anytus advises, and easily kill me; then you would pass the rest of your lives in slumber, unless God, in his care for you, should send someone else to sting you.

–Plato, Apology, 30e-31a (H.N. Fowler transl.)

In his final self-defense, Plato’s Socrates says that like a gadfly who attaches himself to a horse to sting it, so he attaches himself to the young minds of his polis. In another dialogue, Meno, Socrates is compared to a stingray who strikes his target, numbing it. Both of these passages are puzzling at first reading, but his meaning is plain enough. The stinging may indeed leave its target bewildered, feeling helpless and ignorant, but Socrates wants to provoke: he craves a response, a sign of life, a contradiction, proof of intellectual activity. The essence of the Socratic method, so much beloved by law professors, lies in this–an education that consists of rote learning produces docile products that may serve the interests of the state but are not likely to seek to make society any better than they found it. An education that trains the mind to question, to think critically, also has the potential to advance society, transforming it into something better. Plato’s Socrates challenges his students to describe what they have observed, to expose what they “know,” and to examine the premises of their knowledge. He is conscious of and respects, within limits, tradition, the law, religion, and morals. As a gesture of submission to the state, he accepts the sentence of death rather than go into exile to save his own life. Yet critical engagement with the state and all the myths upon which it is constructed lies at the core of his teaching.

In essence, Plato’s Socrates is not engaged in filling the heads of his students with facts. He wants to teach them how to learn for themselves, through the critical acquisition of knowledge, and in the process he wants to create constructive citizens and potential leaders. Today, his message is as vibrant as ever. When Martha Nussbaum writes, in her book Not for Profit, that “cultivated capacities for critical thinking and reflection are crucial in keeping democracies alive and wide awake,” she does little more than interpret this Socratic idea for a modern audience. What is a democracy without actively engaged citizens who think independently about the issues of the day, offer criticism of their government when criticism is warranted, and support when it is necessary?

Listen to the Romance from Dmitri Shostakovich’s music for The Gadfly (1955) in a performance by Piers Lane and Tamsin Little: