How to be good according to Socrates

Temperance as the foundation of virtue and friendship

Bust of Xenophon, Museum at Aphrodisias, modern western Turkey, photo by the Author.

Most of us, I assume, want to be good people and make good friends. But how do we go about doing both? It turns out that Socrates had some advice to give on these matters, as explained by Xenophon in his book, Memorabilia.

Xenophon was an Athenian general as well as a friend and discipline of Socrates, and he wrote a number of books about the Athenian sage, which together constitute the second largest source of contemporary accounts about Socrates, other than those of Plato.

Xenophon’s Socrates is less of a sophisticated philosopher than Plato’s counterpart, but he is in a sense more immediately recognizable as a live human being, Xenophon’s friend rather than Plato’s mouthpiece. The Memorabilia, in particular, is a historically crucial work because it is the one that inspired Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, to turn to philosophy as a way of life.

The dialogue that interests us appears in Memorabilia 2.6, and I’m using the excellent translation by Amy L. Bonnette, Cornell University Press, 2001. The exchange features Socrates and Critobulus, the son of the businessman Crito of Alopece. Critobulus appears in several books by both Xenophon (other than in memorabilia, also in Oeconomicus and Symposium) and Plato (in Apology, Phaedo). His father, Crito, has a Platonic dialogue named after himself, and he was present at Socrates’s death.

Socrates begins the conversation:

“‘Tell me, Critobulus,’ he said, ‘if we should need a good friend, how would we attempt to conduct our investigation? Should we seek first for one who is the ruler of his appetite as well as of his love of drink, lust, sleep, and laziness? For one overpowered by these couldn’t do what he should either for himself or for a friend.’

‘No, by Zeus, he surely couldn’t,’ he said.” (Memorabilia, 2.6.1)

Socrates here seems to imply that temperance is a primary virtue, without which one cannot be a good person, and therefore a good friend. He continues in the same fashion, asking Critobulus whether someone who is not self-sufficient, always wanting something, being unable to pay it back, and yet who hates it when he doesn’t get it could be a good friend. Or perhaps someone who is wealthy and yet wants to become ever more rich, always obsessed with increasing his wealth? No, answers Critobulus, certainly not.

“‘But, Socrates, what sort shall we attempt to make our friend?’

‘Someone, I think, who, as opposed to these, would be continent in the bodily pleasures and, while easy to live with and easy to bargain with, would happen also to be happy not to be deficient in the good treatment of those who do him good deeds, so that he is good to those who deal with him.’” (Memorabilia, 2.6.5)

Again, temperance comes across as a key character trait, which assures both self-sufficiency and lack of greed.

Double bust of Xenophon (right) and Socrates (left), Museum at Aphrodisias, modern western Turkey, photo by the Author.

Socrates then explains that if we are looking for a good sculptor, we don’t listen to people who make speeches about sculpting, we look for the statues they have made in the past. So with potential friends: don’t listen to what one says, but rather pay attention to how one acts toward his current friends.

Fine, but how does one go about actually becoming a friend of such a worthy individual? By acting in the same fashion, explains Socrates, behaving himself in the same ways for which he admires his prospective friend.

At one point Socrates asks Critobulus whether he thinks that wicked people can acquire good friends. They quickly agree that this is not possible, because the wicked are unreliable. Indeed, Critobulus goes so far as to observe that he has seen not just individuals, but entire cities who loudly proclaim their own virtues and yet are constantly at war with each other—unreliability is a defect at both the individual and the societal levels.

The thing is, continues Socrates, human nature is complex. On the one hand, people have inducements to acquire friends, because they need one another. On the other hand, however, there are also inducements to hostility, since people value the same things and therefore compete for them.