ABSTRACT
In Plato’s texts, and especially in the Apology, the Platonic Socrates refers to a daimonion, or daimonion sēmeion (demonic sign) that makes itself apparent whenever Socrates is about to go wrong in some matter. It appears only to contradict Socrates in some course of action on which he is about to embark. In this chapter, I present the characterization of the daimonion as Socrates’ “divine sign” (θεοῦ σημεῖον), or equivalently, his “demonic sign” (δαιμονίονσημεῖον). Socrates’ daimonion is explicitly good, and serves as a prophetic monitor that interferes only when Socrates is about to go wrong; he infers, as well, that its not interfering is a sign that what he is doing is right. I argue that the Socrates’ daimonion is not a divine spirit in its own right, i.e., the Greek daimōn. Daimonion is used in an adjectival or diminutive sense, describing Socrates’ sign; it is a human reflection of a divinity, the divine in the human, the culmination of Socrates’ participation in the reasoning (logismos) of the divine. As a “demonic man”, Socrates maintains a relation to the divine, having become habituated to the same reasoning.
