The Philosopher And The Oracle

Socrates, Oedipus, Abraham, Agnes Callard

As some of my readers know, I’m a huge Agnes Callard fan. I couldn’t be happier that I got to talk to her for two hours about Socrates. You can listen to our conversation here.

One thing Agnes pointed out is the difference between Socrates and Oedipus. Both hear oracles, but Socrates questions the oracle and Oedipus takes it unquestioningly at face value. Socrates goes around seeking to disprove the oracle, but finds that he cannot. Oedipus tries to change his life to avoid the oracle’s promise, but in so doing ends up fulfilling it.

You might think that Socrates is impious for questioning the oracle, but he’s actually the opposite—for he knows the oracle is true and seeks to find out why. In the process of searching, he discovers that his original interpretation of the oracle was wrong. Oedipus is the impious one since he takes his interpretation of the oracle as the last word.

The notion that you can be pious by questioning and arrogant or impious by deferring to an oracle seems important not just for the development of Western thought, but also in Judaism. In the figure of Abraham, we are presented with many different character traits. Sometimes Abraham defers—he willingly walks up a mountain prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac. But sometimes he argues with God, as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Socratic ideal suggests a virtue in questioning the voice of God akin to Abraham’s bargaining with God for the people of Sodom. It also suggests that listening to one’s mistaken understanding of God is not piety, but arrogance. In short, submission only works as a religious value if you first have certainty that it is God to whom you are submitting. Otherwise, submission is just idolatry posing as piety.

It’s difficult to figure out the line between when to argue and when to defer. This is both a philosophical problem and a religious one. We can’t say that submission is always right and we can’t say that diffidence is always right.

I generally agree with the polemicists who say that in our “me-me-me” age many people just do whatever they want with no sense of constraint, no sense of obligation, no sense of self-transcendence. But I’m also not convinced that simply following one’s religious convictions or customs is an antidote to this problem. Sometimes, deferring proves to be just as egocentric as resisting.

The oracle may give us something to search for, but the quest for self-knowledge doesn’t end with the oracle. Only on the basis of self-knowledge can we live well, and yet, because we don’t have self-knowledge already we can’t but err. I take solace in the Socratic idea that we are not required to find truth, only to reject falsehood. I take solace in the fact that Socrates does not deny the reality of the oracular, but instead raises a different challenge: assuming the oracle is right, so what?