In historical scholarship, the Socratic problem (also called Socratic question)A Rubel, M Vickers, Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens: Religion and Politics During the Peloponnesian War, Routledge, 2014, p. 147. concerns attempts at reconstructing a historical and philosophical image of Socrates based on the variable, and sometimes contradictory, nature of the existing sources on his life. Scholars rely upon extant sources, such as those of contemporaries like Aristophanes or disciples of Socrates like Plato and Xenophon, for knowing anything about Socrates. However, these sources contain contradictory details of his life, words, and beliefs when taken together. This complicates the attempts at reconstructing the beliefs and philosophical views held by the historical Socrates. It has become apparent to scholarship that this problem is seemingly impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable.Prior, W. J., "The Socratic Problem" in Benson, H. H. (ed.), A Companion to Plato (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 25–35. Early proposed solutions to the matter still pose significant problems today.
Socrates was the main character in most of Plato's dialogues and was a genuine historical figure. It is widely understood that in later dialogues, Plato used the character Socrates to give voice to views which belonged to the former. Besides Plato, three other important sources exist for the study of Socrates: Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Xenophon. Since no writings by Socrates himself survive to the modern era, his actual views must be discerned from the sometimes contradictory reports of these four sources. The main sources for the historical Socrates are the Sokratikoi logoi, or Socratic dialogues, which are reports of conversations apparently involving Socrates.J Ambury. Socrates (469–399 B.C.E.) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Retrieved 2015-04-19] Most information is found in the works of Plato and Xenophon.catalogue of Harvard University Press – Xenophon Volume IV [Retrieved 2015-3-26]
There are also four sources extant in fragmentary states: Aeschines of Sphettus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, and Phaedo of Elis.CH Kahn – Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (p. 1) Cambridge University Press, 4 Jun 1998 (reprint) [Retrieved 2015-04-19] In addition, there are two satirical commentaries on Socrates. One is Aristophanes's play The Clouds, which humorously attacks Socrates.Aristophanes, W.C. Green - commentary on The Clouds (p.6) Catena classicorum Rivingtons, 1868 [Retrieved 2015-04-20] The other is two fragments from the Silloi by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius, (a translation of one fragment reads "But from them the sculptor, blatherer on the lawful, turned away. Spellbinder of the Greeks, who made them precise in language. Sneerer trained by rhetoricians, sub-Attic ironist." Cf. source for a discussion of this quote. satirizing dogmatic philosophers.
Xenophon
There are four works of Xenophon that deal with Socrates. They are Apology of Socrates to the Jurors (which apparently reports the defence given by Socrates in court), (connection to Oxyrynchus was found in here p.33) Memorabilia (which is a defence of Socrates and so-called Socratic dialogues), Oeconomicus (which concerns Socrates' encounter with Ischomachus and Critobulus), and Symposium (which recounts an evening at a dinner party to which Socrates was an attendee).M MacLaren - Xenophon. Banquet; Apologie de Socrate by Francois Ollier The American Journal of Philology Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 212-214 (Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press in JSTOR) [Retrieved 2015-04-20]E Buzzetti - Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus (p.7) Palgrave Macmillan, 21 May 2014 [Retrieved 2015-04-17]
Plato
Socrates—who is often credited with turning Western philosophy in a more ethical and political direction and who was put to death by the democracy of Athens in May 399 BC—was Plato's mentor. Plato, like some of his contemporaries, wrote dialogues about his teacher. Much of what is known about Socrates comes from Plato's writings; however, it is widely believed that very few, if any, of Plato's dialogues can be verbatim accounts of conversations between them or unmediated representations of Socrates' thought. Many of the dialogues seem to use Socrates as a device for Plato's thought, and inconsistencies occasionally crop up between Plato and the other accounts of Socrates; for instance, Plato has Socrates denying that he would ever accept money for teaching, while Xenophon's Symposium clearly has Socrates stating that students pay him to teach wisdom and that this is what he does for a living.
Stylometric analysis of Plato's work has led some scholars to classify dialogues as falling approximately into three groups, Early, Middle and Late. On the assumption that there is an evolution of philosophical thought in Plato's dialogues from his early years to his middle and later years,Krämer (1990) ascribes this view to Eduard Zeller (Hans Joachim Krämer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics, SUNY Press, 1990, pp. 93–4). the most common modern view is that Plato's dialogues contain a development of thought from closer to that of Socrates' to a doctrine more distinctly Plato's own.Penner, T. "Socrates and the early dialogues" in Kraut, R. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 121. See also Irwin, T. H., "The Platonic Corpus" in Fine, G. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Plato (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 77–85. However, the question of exactly what aspects of Plato's dialogues are representative of Socrates and what are not, is debated. Although the view that Plato's dialogues are developmental in their doctrines (with regard to the historical Socrates or not) is standard, the view is not without objectors who propose a unitarian view or other alternative interpretations of the chronology of the corpus.Rowe, C. "Interpreting Plato" in Benson, H. H. (ed.), A Companion to Plato (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 13–24. One notable example is Charles Kahn who argued that Plato had created his works not in a gradual way, but as a unified philosophical vision, whereby he uses Socratic dialogues, a non-historical genre, to flesh out his views. The time that Plato began to write his works and the date of composition of his last work are unknown and, adding to the complexity, even ancient sources do not know the order of the works or dialogues.
Aristotle
Aristotle did not know Socrates directly; most of what he knew about him came from Plato and other sources. Therefore, Aristotle's views on Socrates focus primarily on Socrates’ philosophical method and dialogues. (Britannica) According to Aristotle, Socrates’ main aim was to examine the definition and essence of every concept. Socrates, through discussion and the method of question and answer, helped people recognize their own ignorance. Aristotle refers to this method as an inductive inquiry approach.According to Aristotle ... Aristotle also highlights the difference between Socrates and Plato. In his view, Socrates sought to clarify concepts in practical and everyday dialogues, whereas Plato connected concepts more systematically to an ideal world of forms. Therefore, Aristotle notes that Socrates developed a more inquisitive and definitional philosophical method. Aristotle states that Socrates did not defend the idea of forms existing separately, which is a view attributed to Plato. For Socrates, the focus was on finding the correct definition of each concept and showing people their own ignorance. Aristotle's assessment presents Socrates as a bridging figure in the development of philosophical methodology. Socrates’ method aimed not at directly transmitting knowledge but at encouraging learning through questioning and discussion. In summary, Aristotle interprets Socrates through his definitions and dialogue method, distinguishing him from Plato and viewing him as an early representative of philosophical methodology. These views are not directly from Socrates himself but are based on information transmitted through Plato and other sources.
Others
Aeschines Two relevant works pertain to periods in Socrates' life, of which Aeschines could not have had any personal first-hand experiential knowledge. However, substantial amounts are extant of his works Alcibiades and Aspasia.C.H. Kahn - Aeschines on Socratic Eros in PA. Vander Waerdt - The Socratic Movement Cornell University Press, 1 Jan 1994 [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
Antisthenes Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, and was known to accompany him.J Piering - Antisthenes Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy[Retrieved 2015-04-20]
Issues relating to dates of the sources
Aristophanes (c. 450–386 BCE) was alive during the early years of Socrates. One source shows Plato and Xenophon were about 45 years younger than Socrates and states that when Aristophanes wrote Clouds in 423 BC, both Plato and Xenophon were infants. other sources show Plato as something in the range of 42–43 years younger, while Xenophon is thought to be 40 years younger. During the conversations with Socrates in Xenophon's Symposium, scholarly calculations place Xenophon as an infant of only a few years old.Danzig, Gabriel. 2003. "Apologizing for Socrates: Plato and Xenophon on Socrates' Behavior in Court." Transactions of the American Philological Association. Vol. 133, No. 2, pp. 286.
Issues resulting from translation Apart from the existing identified issue of conflicting elements present in accounts and writings, there is the additional inherent concern of the veracity of transfer of meaning by translation from classic Greek to contemporary language, whether that be Greek, English or any other.
History of the problem Efforts have been made by writers for centuries to address the problem. According to one scholar (Patzer) the number of works with any significance in this issue, prior to the nineteenth century, are few indeed.J Bussanich, ND Smith - The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates (please see - Note 14 & 16) A&C Black, 3 Jan 2013 [Retrieved 2015-04-17] G.E. Lessing caused a flurry of interest in the problem in 1768. A methodology for analysis was posited, by study of Platonic sources, in 1820 with Socher. A break of scholarly impasse in respect to understanding, resulted from Campbell making a stylometric analysis in 1867.
An essay written by Friedrich Schleiermacher in 1815 ("The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher"), published 1818 (English translation 1833) is considered the most significant and influential toward developing an understanding of the problem.M Trapp - Introduction: Questions of Socrates [Retrieved 3 May 2015] (p.xvi)
Throughout the 20th century, two strains of interpretation arose: the literary contextualists, who tended to interpret Socratic dialogues based on literary criticism, and the analysts, who focus much more heavily on the actual arguments contained within the different texts.
Early in the 21st century, most of the scholars concerned have settled to agreement instead of argument about the nature of the significance of ancient textual sources in relation to this problem.
Manuscript tradition A fragment of Plato's Republic (588b-589b) was found in Codex VI, of the Nag Hammadi discoveries of 1945.SJ Patterson, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, JM. Robinson - The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age (p.1) Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 15 Jun 2010 [Retrieved 2015-04-20] (primary source for Nag Hammadi was this)GW Bromiley - The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (p.474) Wm. B. Eerdmans 1986 Publishing [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
Plato primary edition