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La cité de dieu

CHAPITRE III.

DE LA PHILOSOPHIE DE SOCRATE.

Socrate est le premier qui ait ramené toute la philosophie à la réforme et à la discipline des mœurs¹ car avant lui les philosophes s’appliquaient par-dessus tout à la physique, c’est-à-dire à l’étude des phénomènes de la nature. Est-ce le dégoût de ces recherches obscures et incertaines qui le conduisit à tourner son esprit vers une étude plus accessible, plus assurée, et qui est même nécessaire au bonheur de la vie, ce grand objet de tous les efforts et de toutes les veilles des philosophes? Ou bien, comme le supposent des interprètes encore plus favorables, Socrate voulait-il arracher les âmes aux passions impures de la terre, en les excitant à s’élever aux choses divines? c’est une question qu’il me semble impossible d’éclaircir complétement. Il voyait les philosophes tout occupés de découvrir les causes premières, et, persuadé qu’elles dépendent de la volonté d’un Dieu supérieur et unique, il pensa que les âmes purifiées peuvent seules les saisir; c’est pourquoi il voulait que le premier soin du philosophe fût de purifier son âme par de bonnes moeurs, afin que l’esprit, affranchi des passions qui le courbent vers la terre, s’élevât par sa vigueur native vers les choses éternelles, et pût contempler avec la pure intelligence cette lumière spirituelle et immuable où les causes de toutes les natures créées ont un être stable et vivant². Il est constant qu’il poursuivit et châtia, avec une verve de dialectique merveilleuse et une politesse pleine de sel, la sottise de ces ignorants qui prétendent savoir quelque chose; confessant, quant à lui, son ignorance, ou dissimulant sa science, même sur ces questions morales où il paraissait avoir appliqué toute la force de son esprit. De là ces inimitiés et ces accusations calomnieuses qui le firent condamner à mort. Mais cette même Athènes, qui l’avait publiquement déclaré criminel, le réhabilita depuis par un deuil public, et l’indignation du peuple alla si loin contre ses accusateurs, que l’un d’eux fut mis en pièces par la multitude, et l’autre obligé de se résoudre à un exil volontaire et perpétuel, pour éviter le même traitement³. Egalement admirable par sa vie et par sa mort, Socrate laissa un grand nombre de sectateurs qui, s’appliquant à l’envi aux questions de morale, disputèrent sur le souverain bien, sans lequel l’homme ne peut être homme. Et comme l’opinion de Socrate ne se montrait pas très-clairement au milieu de ces discussions contradictoires, où il agite, soutient et renverse tous les systèmes, chaque disciple y prit ce qui lui convenait et résolut à sa façon la question, de la fin suprême, par où ils entendent ce qu’il faut posséder pour être heureux. Ainsi se formèrent, parmi les socratiques, plusieurs systèmes sur le souverain bien, avec une opposition si incroyable entre ces disciples d’un même maître, que les uns mirent le souverain bien dans la volupté, comme Aristippe, les autres dans la vertu, comme Antisthène, et d’autres dans d’autres fins, qu’il serait trop long de rapporter.

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The City of God

Chapter 3.--Of the Socratic Philosophy.

Socrates is said to have been the first who directed the entire effort of philosophy to the correction and regulation of manners, all who went before him having expended their greatest efforts in the investigation of physical, that is, natural phenomena. However, it seems to me that it cannot be certainly discovered whether Socrates did this because he was wearied of obscure and uncertain things, and so wished to direct his mind to the discovery of something manifest and certain, which was necessary in order to the obtaining of a blessed life,--that one great object toward which the labor, vigilance, and industry of all philosophers seem to have been directed,--or whether (as some yet more favorable to him suppose) he did it because he was unwilling that minds defiled with earthly desires should essay to raise themselves upward to divine things. For he saw that the causes of things were sought for by them,--which causes he believed to be ultimately reducible to nothing else than the will of the one true and supreme God,--and on this account he thought they could only be comprehended by a purified mind; and therefore that all diligence ought to be given to the purification of the life by good morals, in order that the mind, delivered from the depressing weight of lusts, might raise itself upward by its native vigor to eternal things, and might, with purified understanding, contemplate that nature which is incorporeal and unchangeable light, where live the causes of all created natures. It is evident, however, that he hunted out and pursued, with a wonderful pleasantness of style and argument, and with a most pointed and insinuating urbanity, the foolishness of ignorant men, who thought that they knew this or that,--sometimes confessing his own ignorance, and sometimes dissimulating his knowledge, even in those very moral questions to which he seems to have directed the whole force of his mind. And hence there arose hostility against him, which ended in his being calumniously impeached, and condemned to death. Afterwards, however, that very city of the Athenians, which had publicly condemned him, did publicly bewail him,--the popular indignation having turned with such vehemence on his accusers, that one of them perished by the violence of the multitude, whilst the other only escaped a like punishment by voluntary and perpetual exile.

Illustrious, therefore, both in his life and in his death, Socrates left very many disciples of his philosophy, who vied with one another in desire for proficiency in handling those moral questions which concern the chief good (summum bonum), the possession of which can make a man blessed; and because, in the disputations of Socrates, where he raises all manner of questions, makes assertions, and then demolishes them, it did not evidently appear what he held to be the chief good, every one took from these disputations what pleased him best, and every one placed the final good ¹ in whatever it appeared to himself to consist. Now, that which is called the final good is that at which, when one has arrived, he is blessed. But so diverse were the opinions held by those followers of Socrates concerning this final good, that (a thing scarcely to be credited with respect to the followers of one master) some placed the chief good in pleasure, as Aristippus, others in virtue, as Antisthenes. Indeed, it were tedious to recount the various opinions of various disciples.