The trances of Socrates

[Alexander]

An interesting dialogue I had on Socrates I thought I would share. You can see Voltimand is not a mystic so has never looked at it in this light, but the evidence is there and fascinating.

Alexander wrote:

I read that Socrates supposedly went into trances like a mystic. Where can I learn more about the “mystical” side of this thinker?

Voltimand wrote:

If all you want is something to read on the episodes of Socrates' "trances," check out Alex Long's Conversation and Self-Sufficiency in Plato.

But you'll quickly find that Socrates did not go into trances. He had moments where he would just stand and think.

Firstly, we are talking about Plato's character, Socrates. It is not clear whether the historical person Socrates ever did this. And these episodes are basically explicable as times when Socrates is engaged in conversation --- with himself. Socrates spends most of his day talking to people about the virtues, etc., and now he is continuing to do that, but he is speaking with himself, not with others. This makes sense because Plato explains thinking as a kind of internal conversation: "Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?" (Sophist).

These "trances" are nothing more than Socrates engaging in this practice at awkward and inopportune times.

Consider two episodes in the Symposium:

With these words, they set out. But as they were walking, Socrates began to think about something, lost himself in thought, and kept lagging behind. Whenever Aristodemus stopped to wait for him, Socrates would urge him to go on ahead. When he arrived at Agathon’s he found the gate wide open, and that, Aristodemus said, caused him to find himself in a very embarrassing situation: a household slave saw him the moment he arrived and took him immediately to the dining room, where the guests were already lying down on their couches, and dinner was about to be served. As soon as Agathon saw him, he called:

“Welcome, Aristodemus! What perfect timing! You’re just in time for dinner! I hope you’re not here for any other reason—if you are, forget it. I looked all over for you yesterday, so I could invite you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. But where is Socrates? How come you didn’t bring him along?”

So I turned around (Aristodemus said), and Socrates was nowhere to be seen. And I said that it was actually Socrates who had brought me along as his guest.

“I’m delighted he did,” Agathon replied. “But where is he?"

“He was directly behind me, but I have no idea where he is now.”

“Go look for Socrates,” Agathon ordered a slave, “and bring him in. Aristodemus,” he added, “you can share Eryximachus’ couch.”

A slave brought water, and Aristodemus washed himself before he lay down. Then another slave entered and said: “Socrates is here, but he’s gone off to the neighbor’s porch. He’s standing there and won’t come in even though I called him several times.”

“How strange,” Agathon replied. “Go back and bring him in. Don’t leave him there.”

But Aristodemus stopped him. “No, no,” he said. “Leave him alone. It’s one of his habits: every now and then he just goes off like that and stands motionless, wherever he happens to be. I’m sure he’ll come in very soon, so don’t disturb him; let him be.”

“Well, all right, if you really think so,” Agathon said.

And at the battle of Potidaea in the late 430s BC, according to the character Alcibiades in the Symposium:

One day, at dawn, he started thinking about some problem or other; he just stood outside, trying to figure it out. He couldn’t resolve it, but he wouldn’t give up. He simply stood there, glued to the same spot. By midday, many soldiers had seen him, and, quite mystified, they told everyone that Socrates had been standing there all day, thinking about something. He was still there when evening came, and after dinner some Ionians moved their bedding outside, where it was cooler and more comfortable (all this took place in the summer), but mainly in order to watch if Socrates was going to stay out there all night. And so he did; he stood on the very same spot until dawn! He only left next morning, when the sun came out, and he made his prayers to the new day.

As you can see, there's nothing particularly mystical about this: he's intensely thinking through some problem. These are not trances so much as socially off-putting, weirdly intense episodes of problem-solving. These episodes are best understood in light of Plato's view of thinking as a kind of conversation, which is Socrates' preferred method of philosophizing: conversation. The fact that Socrates is willing to ignore all social mores in order to think about some puzzle reveals much about what the character values above all else.

This is part of an overall agenda in the Symposium to push the picture of Socrates as someone who ignores his external environment for the sake of attending to the internal:

Add to this his amazing resistance to the cold—and, let me tell you, the winter there is something awful. Once, I remember, it was frightfully cold; no one so much as stuck his nose outside. If we absolutely had to leave our tent, we wrapped ourselves in anything we could lay our hands on and tied extra pieces of felt or sheepskin over our boots. Well, Socrates went out in that weather wearing nothing but this same old light cloak, and even in bare feet he made better progress on the ice than the other soldiers did in their boots. You should have seen the looks they gave him; they thought he was only doing it to spite them.

There are some perhaps-mystical elements to Plato's dialogues, especially in the description of the attainment of the highest good. You can find this sort of thing particularly in the Symposium. But what we don't find are mystical trances.

Basil wrote:

Excellent answer, I vaguely remembered that the whole lost in thought thing he used to. It in interesting as while Socrates was not mystic, the poster is not entirely off point as at my understanding the neo Platonists would take on a lot of mystical type practices in spite of the lack of mysticism in platonic/socratic works.

Voltimand wrote:

Yes, some more later Platonists more than others. I don’t want to deny mysticism in the dialogues but I do want to be clear that Socrates didn’t engage in mystical trances.

Alexander wrote:

Very good response, and thanks.

It looks like our references to it make about two or three in total. And, they are all from second-hand: so each time we have the witness's interpretation of what they saw Socrates doing.

They all interpret he was engaged in some sort of cognitive exercise... but when I read the passages they do fascinate me. As, would the witnesses be familiar with meditation or ecstasy? (I have been a scholar of mysticism for 15 years.) It is very unlikely they would interpret his behavior along those lines.

I find this one the most interesting:

Immersed in some problem at dawn, he stood in the same spot considering it; and when he found it a tough one, he would not give it up but stood there trying. The time drew on to midday, and (1) the men began to notice him, and said to one another in wonder: ‘Socrates has been standing there in a study ever since dawn!’ The end of it was that in the evening some of the Ionians after they had supped— this time it was summer— (2) brought out their mattresses and rugs and took their sleep in the cool; thus they waited to see if he would go on standing all night too. He (3) stood till dawn came and the sun rose; then walked away, after offering a prayer to the Sun.

We cannot verify for certain, so we would need to make an inference from the information given. But, here I find three pieces of information fascinating. (1) The fact they are astonished suggests he wasn't just thinking. As, who would be in a state of wonder seeing someone simply thinking deeply? (2) The fact they literally rolled their rugs out to watch him suggests whatever he was doing was an eccentric sight to witness. And (3) the fact he remained in this strange state for such an extended time, that it lasted till morning when he "woke up" from it.
I'm also interested in the Greek word used- synennoísas- "joining nous to nous." Nous can refer to intellect or mind itself (not necessarily thought), which could imply a meditation-like focus being applied.

I am indeed thinking of the mystical interpretation of Platonism, as the other poster pointed out. It is certainly a speculation we have to make, but I am fascinated there is evidence Socrates experienced a state of consciousness that wouldn't be very different from that described by, for example, Teresa of Avila.

Voltimand wrote:

I'm also interested in the Greek word used- synennoísas- "joining nous to nous." Nous can refer to intellect or mind itself (not necessarily thought), which could imply a meditation-like focus being applied.

Ya, the vocabulary of these sorts of passages is fascinating. The Greek word sunousia often appears in this context (including earlier in the Symposium): literally, it's being-with; e.g., the thinker tries to be with the object of his thought, etc. It also means 'intercourse' (both in the sexual sense -- including in Plato's Symposium -- but also in the concrete sense of being in someone's company, conversing with them, etc.).

I don't disagree that there is a "meditation-like focus" being applied here, but I struggle with applying such a loaded term as 'meditation'. If we mean just the trivial and banal sense of 'meditate' (e.g., "In this article, I will meditate on the problem of..."), then, sure. But the sort of meditation that gets described in the Buddhist Pali Canon (e.g., in "The Greater Discourse on Mindfulness")? No -- that just doesn't belong to classical Greece.

We do find something that could be described as meditation by the time we enter in late antiquity.

For instance, here is Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus, describing Plotinus achieving a brief union with the One:

And they say that he did not sleep, kept his soul pure, and was always striving for the divine which he loved with his whole soul, and that he did everything to transform himself, to ‘flee the bitter waves’ of this life ‘where blood sustains’. So it is that this divine ‘daemon’ of a man ascended in his thought to the first, transcendent god many times, travelling the roads described by Plato in the Symposium; and to him appeared that god who has neither shape nor form, who has his seat above Intellect and every intelligible thing. (I, Porphyry, now 67 years old, once drew near this god and was unified with him.) Anyway, ‘the goal appeared near’ Plotinus: his aim or goal was to be unified and to be present to the god that is set over all things. This goal, an indescribable state of perfection, he achieved some four times while I was with him (section 23).

Later Platonists read this sort of thing back into Plato, who, undoubtedly, does occasionally describe philosophers as engaging in semi-mystical practices. (The only really solid, uncontroversial instance of this is the description of the philosopher coming to know the Forms in the Symposium, which is likened to an experience in a mystery cult. But this has to be balanced against other non-mystical descriptions of the same experience, such as this cognitive condition being produced by a long training in mathematics in the Republic. However, we must not deny that the Symposium's description exists. Even still, there is no meditation, etc.) But what Plato says is often distorted by late-ancient doctrines. For instance, people like Plotinus, Porphyry, etc., believed that it was impossible to describe in language the One. This is part of why they think that experiences of this are mystical -- and they attribute the same belief to Plato. Except that the attribution is false. Plato often spoke about the One and (in)famously delivered lectures on it. What he refuses to do is write about it. The lack of writing on the One gives us the false picture that the late-ancient mystical approach to the One could plausibly be found in Plato, too. But when we read more about Plato's attitude towards the One, we realize that what we're doing is just projecting backwards later categories.

Socrates is up to something very weird when he just stands there and thinks. I do suggest that you read Long's book, which I mentioned at the start of my original answer. Nobody tackles these questions related to Socrates' weird instances of standing and thinking better than him. If you're interested in mysticism in the Platonic tradition, I strongly suggest Dillon and Gerson's anthology Neoplatonism: Introductory Readings, paying special attention to the readings from Iamblichus.

[Jhanananda]

Thank you, Alexander, for posting this interesting discussion from a forum on Greek philosophy.  The fact that Socrates stood for hours to over night un-moving in the same spot we really should accept that he was in a trance, which is a term that applies to the 8 stages of religious experience (samadhi) which is our discussion here.  I am familiar with these books of Plato, and are reasons why I have accepted that Socrates was most probably a mystic.