Abstract

To speak of Socrates’ pre-Socratism is puzzling. It suggests that there was a time at which Socrates was not Socrates. That is not entirely misleading. There was something special about Socrates, special enough so that Nietzsche, for one, thought it appropriate to name a problem after him. Plato and Nietzsche agree that there was something uncommon about Socrates; yet in this very uncommonness was revealed something fundamental about what it means to be human. Still, out of the mouth of Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedo we learn that there was a time at which Socrates was not special. His pre-Socratism refers to that time, a time which we may call Socrates’ "first sailing," a time when he inquired into the causes of the coming to be, perishing, and being of each thing. Obviously this way of inquiry can be first only from the perspective of Socrates’ famous "second sailing." It is this second sailing which makes Socrates special. For that reason it has been legitimately the object of more attention than the first sailing. Truth has a greater claim on us than error, even Socrates’ error. Nevertheless, the need for a second sailing can become clear only as a result of an awareness of the deficiencies of the first. If we are to understand specialness we must understand its origins in commonness. With that in mind it is to the deficiencies of Socrates’ first sailing that I would now like to turn.