The Arabic Socrates: the place of al-Kind’s report in the tradition

One of the points of continuity between the Greek and Arabic philosophical traditions is what we may call ‘wisdom literature’: collections of aphorisms and anecdotes attributed to famous philosophers, intended to impart a moral lesson to their readers. The extent to which this tradition was intertwined with and influential on mainstream Arabic philosophy is often underestimated, to judge from the relative paucity of work on the topic. The most important resource remains Dimitri Gutas’ seminal 1975 study of an Arabic gnomological collection that includes reports about Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.1 Though Gutas’ lead has not been widely followed, we are in an unusually good position to judge the place of Socrates in the Arabic tradition. This is thanks to Ilai Alon, who has collected and translated reports about Socrates in two studies published in the 1990’s.2 The task to be undertaken here is more modest, and is facilitated by the work of Gutas and Alon: the study of one particular, early report on Socrates. The text in question is quite short and is transmitted with the heading ‘what al-Kind reported from the sayings of Socrates’, hereafter referred to as SS for ‘Socratic Sayings’.3 Al-Kind is of course a well-known figure in the history of Arabic philosophy in his own right, and famous for overseeing the translation of

various crucial works of Greek philosophy into Arabic.4 He is associated most closely with the Aristotelian tradition, although Neoplatonic works also had a strong impact on his thought and he was intensely interested in the Greek science and mathematics that came down to him from Euclid, Ptolemy and others. He also had an abiding interest in Socrates, about whom he wrote no fewer than five works.5 He drew on these Socratic works in other writings: most prominently, he quotes two sayings from SS in a work of philosophical consolation entitled On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows. The sayings in SS seem also to have helped inspire al-Kind to formulate his own moralizing aphorisms, on which more at the end of this paper. As a result of these resonances some scholars have claimed that al-Kind’s ethics are fundamentally ‘Socratic’, or at least based closely on what al-Kind took Socrates to have taught on the subject of ethics.6 This provides part of the motivation for the present paper, which attempts to do two things: first, to show how SS relates to Hellenistic appropriations of Socrates, especially Cynic and Stoic, and second, to indicate briefly how al-Kind used the image of Socrates he inherited when he wrote his own ethical works. The conclusions reached below are also of some interest, I hope, for the general history of the Arabic gnomological tradition. This is because alKind’s collection SS represents one of the two earliest reports about Socrates in Arabic. The other appears in Nawdir al-falsifa (The Anecdotes of the Philosophers) by the great translator unayn b. Isq, an almost exact contemporary of al-Kind’s (they both died in the early 870’s). Despite some overlap the unayn and Kind collections on Socrates seem to be based mostly on different Greek sources. It is characteristic of al-Kind’s collection, as well as the later Arabic wisdom literature based on him and his source, to conflate Socrates with the figure of Diogenes the Cynic. Presumably this was already a feature of al-Kind’s unknown Greek Vorlage. Because SS is so early, it can give us an almost unique insight into the early Arabic image of Socrates. This image is the forerunner, and in some cases a direct source, of later Socratic collections beginning in the tenth century. These include especially material on Socrates in the famous iwn al-h.ikma (Treasury of Wisdom), which emanates from the circle of the tenth century philosopher alSijistn (d. ca. 390/1000); in al-Sa‘da wa-’l-is‘d (On Happiness and its Creation in Human Life), which is from the same period and usually taken to

be by al-‘mir (d.381/992); in works by al-Sijistn’s associate al-Tawd (d. 414/1023); and somewhat later in for example Mukhtr al-h.ikam wa-ma h. sin al-kalim (The Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings) of al-Mubashshar b. Ftik (d. end of the 11th century).7 The first thing liable to strike modern-day readers of SS is the unfamiliarity of the Socrates it presents. There are a few allusions to details of the biography of the historical Socrates: that he did not write books (1), that he was married (8), and that he was executed (10). But otherwise the characteristics of the Socrates of Plato and Xenophon have vanished. Especially striking are two absences: first, al-Kind’s Socrates does not use elenchus, and in fact hardly asks questions of any kind. Usually he simply makes pithy, often biting remarks, like this one:

When this Socrates does get into a conversation, it is usually him doing the answering while someone else asks questions (as in sayings 6, 9, and 10). A second omission is Socrates’ famous profession of ignorance. This may be explained as follows. As we will see SS is largely a patchwork of Hellenistic aphorisms and doctrines: the relevant Hellenistic traditions are Stoicism, Cynicism, and Platonism, but not Scepticism. Since the Sceptics were the only Hellenistic school that was at all interested in Socratic ignorance,8 it is unsurprising that this characteristic feature of Socrates makes no appearance in the text.9 This leads us to a second striking feature of SS: its aforementioned conflation of Socrates with Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynic

tradition.10 This conflation appears in saying 6, which puts into Socrates’ mouth Diogenes’ famous reply to Alexander, here a generic king:

It also shows up in another saying:

Even though this particular anecdote is not found ascribed to Diogenes in extant Greek sources, it depends upon the attribution to Socrates of Diogenes’ practice of living in an empty wine jar.11 What Gutas has called the ‘Cynic coloring’ of the Arabic Socrates12 is also evident in SS in the literary form of the reports. One of the most characteristic features of the Cynic school is the penchant of Diogenes and his follower Crates for social critique by way of aphorisms or insults, often delivered to passersby. We have already seen the reproach addressed to the well-dressed woman in SS 25. Other examples are sayings 2 and 34:

The fact that Socrates is portrayed as indifferent to poverty may also make us think of the Cynics. But the view that material comforts are irrelevant to happiness is a commonplace of Hellenistic philosophy in general. The Cynics would have accepted this, but so would the Stoics, and so in fact would the Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues. All three accepted what might be called the ‘sufficiency thesis’: that all that is needed for happiness is the possession of virtue or, what here amounts to the same thing, the possession of wisdom. Al-Kind’s Socrates also embraces the sufficiency thesis:

The continued attachment of the sufficiency thesis to the name of Socrates is significant, given that Cynics and Stoics alike took this thesis to be one of the main justifications for their claim to be distinctively ‘Socratic’ schools. As we will see this thesis is also central to al-Kind’s own ethics, and constitutes the major Socratic influence on his thought. Although the sufficiency thesis was the common intellectual property of several Hellenistic schools, it does provide a contrast between the Socrates of SS and the Peripatetics. For the latter notoriously rejected the idea that, to cite the famous slogan, the virtuous man is happy even on the rack. But if the ethical viewpoint of SS is not Aristotelian, does it owe more to the Stoics or the Cynics? To help us answer this question it will be useful to distinguish between two forms of the sufficiency thesis: the strong version and the weak version. The strong version holds that there are no goods of any kind other than virtue. The weak version holds that, although virtue is by itself sufficient for happiness, nevertheless there are rational grounds to choose one thing over another even when what is chosen is irrelevant to virtue. On the weak version, it may for example be rational to choose wealth over poverty, on the basis that wealth is preferable, even if wealth is not more constitutive of or conducive to virtue than poverty.13 But a proponent of the weak sufficiency thesis would still affirm that one may be happy without being wealthy. The Cynics, to the extent that they addressed themselves to this more refined problem, seem to have held to the strong version of the sufficiency thesis. This is consistent with their ‘dropout’ attitude towards society. If virtue is the only good, and if one can be virtuous without participating in society, there is no reason to follow societal norms; one might as well live in a wine jar, have sex in public, and so on. Of course the fact that the Cynics flouted convention does not prove that they held the strong version of the sufficiency thesis. They may have done so merely to point out the lack of virtue and hypocrisy they saw in the social conventions of their time. But certainly, if we focus on supposed material goods, such as wealth, beauty, pleasant food and drink within moderation, and the like, the Cynics went out of their way to spurn such things, apparently because they were not part

of virtue and therefore not good in any sense. The Stoics, on the other hand, regarded at least some of these things as ‘preferables’ or ‘choiceworthy things (proêgmena)’ without being required for happiness, while poverty, death, and the like were taken to be worth avoiding, though not harmful to virtue or happiness.14 In light of this distinction SS again seems to be more Cynic than Stoic. Sometimes the text is content merely to reject the need for material goods, for example in saying 5 where Socrates disparages an interlocutor for putting value on sartorial appearance. But often, al-Kind’s Socrates suggests that material pleasures and wealth are to be actively avoided, because they bring misery and suffering:

In a similar vein he asserts that ‘scant resource keeps the wise man safe from vices, but leads the ignorant man to them’ (28; cf. also 14, 18, 29). He even says that the virtuous man finds the pleasures of fine dining and clothes not merely indifferent, but ‘repulsive’ (6). We can complicate this essentially Cynic interpretation of SS by turning to the presentation of Socrates’ attitude towards death. Like Socrates as portrayed by Plato and Xenophon, the Socrates of SS is convinced that death is no harm to the wise man (8, 12, 15, 21). Again, this is a doctrine with which Cynics and Stoics could agree: it is easy to imagine Zeno or Diogenes saying with al-Kind’s Socrates that ‘life is more excellent than death, if the flight from death to life is proper. But if the flight to life is ruinous, then death is more excellent than life’ (7). But the philosophical reasons that underlie this lack of concern about death are, significantly, neither Cynic nor Stoic. Rather, in what seems finally an echo of Plato’s portrayal of Socrates, SS reports that he said to one of disciples: ‘take death lightly, that you may not die; for in dying your souls become immortal’ (18). This saying is part of a tendency in SS to support what look like Cynic or Stoic philosophical attitudes with arguments and doctrines that are of a piece with the Islamicized Platonism found in many of al-Kind’s other works. Consider, for instance:

This is not the only reference to a Creator God in SS. One of the most striking sayings, very far from the unmetaphysical tone of the others, is outright Neoplatonic:

This is of course the hierarchy of principles from Plotinus’ cosmology, with God or the One as the principle that originates intellect, which in turn produces soul, which produces the physical world. The use of the four principles God – Intellect – Soul – Nature is particularly interesting for the inclusion of Nature as a separate hypostasis. The addition of Nature to the usual Plotinian scheme of God, Intellect and Soul is based on a very specific passage in the Enneads, which was preserved in the Arabic version of that work. On the basis of this passage, al-Kind repeats the same fourfold hierarchy of principles in his work On the Definitions and Descriptions of Things.15 The inclusion of Nature also appears in the prologue to the Arabic version of Plotinus, which al-Kind himself most likely wrote.16 The mention of Nature in the hierarchy in SS may well mark the saying in question as an inclusion by al-Kind himself, rather than the repetition of his Greek source.17 The very first saying also underscores the Platonism of this Socrates, as he defends his unwillingness to write a book by disparaging the ephemeral animal skins on which he would have to write, and by contrasting these to the ‘living and immortal substances’ that are the source of intellect. This opposition of the transient to the eternal also appears in saying 6, while saying 11 depicts Socrates chastizing a disciple and instructing him to turn his attention to the ‘inner form’ rather than the outer beauty of the lovely female philosopher Hipparchia.18 Two sayings adjacent to one another in SS (13, 14) make the equally Platonic point that mathematics is indispensable in the soul’s journey to purity. Particularly relevant is 14: ‘the polish of the soul is [geometry] and its rust is acceptance of animal pleasures’. This is reminiscent of a passage from what is perhaps al-Kind’s most Platonic work, his Discourse on the Soul, which, drawing again on the Arabic translation of

Plotinus, makes use of an extended analogy between the soul and a mirror that is polished by knowledge and rusted by vice.19 All of this suggests that in SS the sufficiency thesis follows from the claim that it is the eternal, immaterial realm of the Platonists that is worthwhile, rather than the things of the sensible world. Virtue, or wisdom, is the path to these eternal realities and their Creator, and their attainment suffices for happiness. The argument commits al-Kind’s Socrates to the strong sufficiency thesis, insofar as the world of eternal realities is the only thing worth striving after. Unfortunately SS does not argue explicitly for this latter point, nor could such an argument be developed at length in SS given the aphoristic nature of the work. Socrates simply states that material goods are a source of sorrow, without explaining why. But in al-Kind’s treatise On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows,20 we do find arguments intended to show precisely that it is unreasonable to place any value on material goods. As we will see these arguments take their inspiration from both the Stoic and Platonic traditions. The original editors of the treatise, Richard Walzer and Helmut Ritter, argued in 1938 that the treatise is little more than a translation of the lost Peri Alupias of Themistius, but this suggestion has found little or no support since then. Rather, like most of the items in the Kindian corpus, the work seems to be a pastiche drawn from numerous sources augmented by a good deal of original material by al-Kind himself. This was indicated by Max Pohlenz, who in a review of Ritter and Walzer’s edition pointed out that an allegorical section of On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, comparing our earthly life to a sojourn of travellers who have disembarked from their ship, is in fact an elaborated version of an identical allegory found in the Enchiridion of Epictetus.21 This borrowing is not the only Stoic element of the treatise. Also Stoic, and in fact not unlike numerous passages to be found in Epictetus,22 is alKind’s argument that happiness can only be attained by pursuing what is natural:

Here we have some indication of why material goods are valueless: insofar as they are ephemeral, they bring sorrow when they are lost, just as much as they bring happiness when they are acquired. Elsewhere in On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, al-Kind quotes one of the sayings from SS in the process of making this line of thought more explicit. Using the dilemmatic style of argument he favours throughout his works, al-Kind says that it is contradictory to suppose that happiness is having material possessions, and sadness is losing them. For, if it is their loss that makes us sad, the only way to avoid sadness is not to have anything that can be lost. But then the only way we can avoid sadness is by giving up happiness, an absurd contradiction (IX.1-8). It is this point, al-Kind says, that Socrates was trying to make when he said ‘I own nothing whose loss would make me sad’ (IX.12-13, with parallel at SS 4). The combination of Stoic and Cynic themes associated with the figure of Socrates in SS also characterizes the other mention of Socrates in On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows. After quoting the anecdote in which Socrates says that, even if his wine-jar should break, the place where it is would not (IX.28-29, again with a parallel at SS 4), al-Kind remarks: ‘what the philosopher said is true, because everything that is destroyed is replaced. Therefore we say that the Creator (al-khliq) of all things, great be His praise, created nothing unfit by nature, but only what is sufficient’ (IX.29X.2). Here the Cynic ‘Socrates of the jar’ is seen to make a Stoic point, namely that nature, as the expression of divine providence, is a sufficient resource for human happiness. Despite the strongly Stoic image of Socrates we find in these passages, On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows shows its Platonic inspiration when al-Kind specifies what is worth pursuing. He depends upon the familiar contrast between the material world (the value of which is criticized from a Stoic point of view, as we’ve seen) and an eternal, immaterial world, which we can appreciate only through the means of our intellect:

This accords not only with the flavor of al-Kind’s other main ethical treatise, the aforementioned Discourse on the Soul (which also mentions prominently the ‘world of the intellect’, at 275.12 and 278.9), but also with the basis we have found for the sufficiency thesis in SS. Admittedly, there is in addition to the Stoic and Platonic elements one passage that suggests that al-Kind’s ethics may be to some extent Aristotelian. Again arguing from the idea that sadness is not necessitated by nature, he writes:

This is an important passage for showing that there was some survival of Aristotelian ethics in al-Kind’s circle, but it should not mislead us into thinking that al-Kind’s ethical viewpoint is fundamentally Aristotelian. Elsewhere in the work he makes no use of the notion of virtue as a habit, and in fact this notion seems to be the only aspect of Aristotle’s mature ethics to have reached al-Kind.24 Thus On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, like SS, defends a strong version of the sufficiency thesis, and does so by giving a Platonic twist to the

vulnerability argument: the desire for sensible things leads us into misery because those things pass away (see also II.1-3, for example), and only immaterial objects are truly choiceworthy, because of their permanence and stability. We can see that al-Kind is fairly consistent on this point by turning to a final text: al-Kind’s own aphorisms, which are preserved in Muntakhab iwn al-ikma.25 These aphorisms have much the same flavour as the sayings reported of Socrates in SS, for example the following (compare to SS 2 and 34):

But the sayings relayed by al-Sijistn have more than stylistic features in common with SS. They also assert some of the same ethical views we have seen in both On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows and SS. Again, his dependence on the Peripatetic tradition is slight: the identification of virtue as a habit (31: sunna, 57: khulq) remains al-Kind’s only significant allusion to Aristotelian themes. Instead, many of al-Kind’s sayings have a distinct Stoic cast to them. He cautions us not to fear what is inevitable (54), and, in a manner reminiscent of Epictetus, compares the lover of external goods to a slave (14, 16). Whereas the sensible things men desire inevitably bring suffering (34, 38, 45-46, 103), as argued in On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, the possession of virtue leads to satisfaction or contentment (40-1, 43-4: qan‘a). This latter concept seems to be tantamount to the Hellenistic notion of ataraxia, or lack of disturbance, since it is opposed to anxiety or uneasiness (44: jaza‘; cf. the wordplay of 55, where anxiety, hamm, is said to be worse than poison, samm). Again, al-Kind seems to accept a strong version of the sufficiency thesis: nowhere in the sayings does he accept that external goods have any intrinsic value.26 Instead, he stresses that true ‘wealth’ is virtue, while vice is true poverty (21, 36, 68, 75). In truth these sayings rarely ascend above the level of trite moralizing, but when they do they are consistent with the ethical outlook of SS, and in fact they were probably inspired by the tradition of wisdom literature that SS represents. It must be admitted that these ethical works do not show al-Kind at his most incisive and original, philosophically speaking. Their importance for

our present purposes lies rather in the fact that they stand at the beginning of the Arabic reception of Socrates. As our analysis of SS shows, Hellenistic appropriations of Socrates determined the way he was seen in the Arabic tradition. Al-Kind’s acceptance of these appropriations in SS itself is not surprising, as he is doubtless doing little more than to repeat a translated Greek source. But it is significant that in more original works like On the Means of Dispelling Sorrows, he still accepts the image of Socrates set down in SS. His use of Socrates is, in fact, the first appearance of this Socratic image in the Arabic tradition outside of gnomological literature. His fidelity to the image is all the more striking when one considers that al-Kind had at least some access, likely indirect, to Plato’s portrayal of Socrates. Despite this the Platonic Socrates is of only marginal importance in al-Kind’s extant corpus. This just goes to show how dominant the Stoic and Cynic interpretation was for early Arabic ideas about Socrates. On the other hand, as we have seen alKind was not content simply to report pious bits of lore about Socrates by way of making him a saint of Greek virtue. He integrated what he took to be the teachings of Socrates into his own ethics, and here the Neoplatonism of the late Greek world, rather than any direct inheritance from Plato, was a major influence. Here we are of course rather distant, in every sense, from the historical Socrates. But al-Kind is not exceptional in this regard: if anything emerges from the history of interpretations of Socrates, it is the impossibility of extricating the historical Socrates from the Socrates who is presented in the literary tradition. Appendix: translation of al -Kind’s report on the sayings of Socrates.