What are your thoughts on the following conversation between Hermes and Socrates
HERMES: Most Athenians would indeed call those virtues. But how many really believe it? How many are willing to criticize a god by the standards of reason and justice?
SOCRATES: [Ponders.] All who are just, I suppose. For how can anyone be just if he follows a god of whose moral rightness he is not persuaded? And how is it possible to be persuaded of someone’s moral rightness without first forming a view about which qualities are morally right?
HERMES: Your associates out there on the lawn — are they unjust?
SOCRATES: No.
HERMES: And are they aware of the connections you have just described between reason, morality and the reluctance to defer to gods?
SOCRATES: Perhaps not sufficiently aware — yet.
HERMES: So it is not true that every just person knows these things.
SOCRATES: Agreed. Perhaps it is only every wise person.
HERMES: Everyone who is at least as wise as you, then. Who else is in that exalted category?
SOCRATES: Is there some high purpose in your continuing to mock me, wise Apollo, by asking me the same question that we asked you today? It seems to me that your joke is wearing thin.
HERMES: Have you, Socrates, never mocked anyone?
SOCRATES: [with dignity] If, on occasion, I make fun of someone, it is because I hope he will help me to seek a truth that neither he nor I yet knows. I do not mock from on high, as you do. I want only to goad my fellow mortal into helping me look beyond that which is easy to see.
HERMES: But what in the world is easy to see? What things are the easiest to see, Socrates?
SOCRATES: [Shrugs.] Those that are before our eyes.
HERMES: And what is before your eyes at this moment?
SOCRATES: You are.
HERMES: Are you sure?
SOCRATES: Are you going to start asking me how I can be sure of whatever I say? And then, whatever reason I give, are you going to ask how I can be sure of that?
HERMES: No. Do you think I have come here to play hackneyed debating tricks?
SOCRATES: Very well: obviously I can’t be sure of anything. But I don’t want to be. I can think of nothing more boring -no offence meant, wise Apollo — than to attain the state of being perfectly secure in one’s beliefs, which some people seem to yearn for. I see no use for it — other than to provide a semblance of an argument when one doesn’t have a real one. Fortunately that mental state has nothing to do with what I do yearn for, which is to discover the truth of how the world is, and why — and, even more, of how it should be.
HERMES: Congratulations, Socrates, on your epistemological wisdom. The knowledge that you seek — objective knowledge — is hard to come by, but attainable. That mental state that you do not seek — justified belief — is sought by many people, especially priests and philosophers. But, in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation to other beliefs, and even then only fallibly. So the quest for their justification can lead only to an infinite regress — each step of which would itself be subject to error.
SOCRATES: Again, I know this.
HERMES: Indeed. And, as you have rightly remarked, it doesn’t count as a ‘revelation’ if I tell you what you already know. Yet — notice that that remark is precisely what people who seek justified belief do not agree with.
SOCRATES: What? I’m sorry, but that was too convoluted a comment for my allegedly wise mind to comprehend. Please explain what I am to notice about those people who seek ‘justified belief’.
HERMES: Merely this. Suppose they just happen to be aware of the explanation of something. You and I would say that they know it. But to them, no matter how good an explanation it is, and no matter how true and important and useful it may be, they still do not consider it to be knowledge. It is only if a god then comes along and reassures them that it is true (or if they imagine such a god or other authority) that they count it as knowledge. So, to them it does count as a revelation if the authority tells them what they are already fully aware of.
SOCRATES: I see that. And I see that they are foolish, because, for all they know, the ‘authority’ [gestures at HERMES] may be toying with them. Or trying to teach them some important lesson. Or they may be misunderstanding the authority. Or they may be mistaken in their belief that it is an authority —
HERMES: Yes. So the thing they call ‘knowledge’, namely justified belief, is a chimera. It is unattainable to humans except in the form of self-deception; it is unnecessary for any good purpose; and it is undesired by the wisest among mortals.
HERMES: Most Athenians would indeed call those virtues. But how many really believe it? How many are willing to criticize a god by the standards of reason and justice?
SOCRATES: [Ponders.] All who are just, I suppose. For how can anyone be just if he follows a god of whose moral rightness he is not persuaded? And how is it possible to be persuaded of someone’s moral rightness without first forming a view about which qualities are morally right?
HERMES: Your associates out there on the lawn — are they unjust?
SOCRATES: No.
HERMES: And are they aware of the connections you have just described between reason, morality and the reluctance to defer to gods?
SOCRATES: Perhaps not sufficiently aware — yet.
HERMES: So it is not true that every just person knows these things.
SOCRATES: Agreed. Perhaps it is only every wise person.
HERMES: Everyone who is at least as wise as you, then. Who else is in that exalted category?
SOCRATES: Is there some high purpose in your continuing to mock me, wise Apollo, by asking me the same question that we asked you today? It seems to me that your joke is wearing thin.
HERMES: Have you, Socrates, never mocked anyone?
SOCRATES: [with dignity] If, on occasion, I make fun of someone, it is because I hope he will help me to seek a truth that neither he nor I yet knows. I do not mock from on high, as you do. I want only to goad my fellow mortal into helping me look beyond that which is easy to see.
HERMES: But what in the world is easy to see? What things are the easiest to see, Socrates?
SOCRATES: [Shrugs.] Those that are before our eyes.
HERMES: And what is before your eyes at this moment?
SOCRATES: You are.
HERMES: Are you sure?
SOCRATES: Are you going to start asking me how I can be sure of whatever I say? And then, whatever reason I give, are you going to ask how I can be sure of that?
HERMES: No. Do you think I have come here to play hackneyed debating tricks?
SOCRATES: Very well: obviously I can’t be sure of anything. But I don’t want to be. I can think of nothing more boring -no offence meant, wise Apollo — than to attain the state of being perfectly secure in one’s beliefs, which some people seem to yearn for. I see no use for it — other than to provide a semblance of an argument when one doesn’t have a real one. Fortunately that mental state has nothing to do with what I do yearn for, which is to discover the truth of how the world is, and why — and, even more, of how it should be.
HERMES: Congratulations, Socrates, on your epistemological wisdom. The knowledge that you seek — objective knowledge — is hard to come by, but attainable. That mental state that you do not seek — justified belief — is sought by many people, especially priests and philosophers. But, in truth, beliefs cannot be justified, except in relation to other beliefs, and even then only fallibly. So the quest for their justification can lead only to an infinite regress — each step of which would itself be subject to error.
SOCRATES: Again, I know this.
HERMES: Indeed. And, as you have rightly remarked, it doesn’t count as a ‘revelation’ if I tell you what you already know. Yet — notice that that remark is precisely what people who seek justified belief do not agree with.
SOCRATES: What? I’m sorry, but that was too convoluted a comment for my allegedly wise mind to comprehend. Please explain what I am to notice about those people who seek ‘justified belief’.
HERMES: Merely this. Suppose they just happen to be aware of the explanation of something. You and I would say that they know it. But to them, no matter how good an explanation it is, and no matter how true and important and useful it may be, they still do not consider it to be knowledge. It is only if a god then comes along and reassures them that it is true (or if they imagine such a god or other authority) that they count it as knowledge. So, to them it does count as a revelation if the authority tells them what they are already fully aware of.
SOCRATES: I see that. And I see that they are foolish, because, for all they know, the ‘authority’ [gestures at HERMES] may be toying with them. Or trying to teach them some important lesson. Or they may be misunderstanding the authority. Or they may be mistaken in their belief that it is an authority —
HERMES: Yes. So the thing they call ‘knowledge’, namely justified belief, is a chimera. It is unattainable to humans except in the form of self-deception; it is unnecessary for any good purpose; and it is undesired by the wisest among mortals.
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