Was Socrates Greek?

Question

1. Greeks are citizens of Greece.
2. Greece rejected Socrates.
3. Socrates was not a Greek.

Does that syllogism work?

Answer 1

First of all this is not a syllogism. Syllogisms have terms with logical connections. 'Rejected' and 'citizen' are not terms with logical connections. The U.S. has in its history rejected traitors, imprisoning them and depriving them of the vote, and then tried them for execution exactly because they are citizens. We clearly do not consider foreign nationals traitors to our country, just enemies -- and once we have taken them prisoner as POWs we cannot execute them.

Other nations (Chile?) near us have rejected their governments and exiled them, depriving them of citizenship. So there is no clear, logical connection between these two statements.

So we need a context to interpret the connections that is not logical and outside the realm of syllogism. We can't find one.

There were no citizens of Greece at the time. So no, it makes no sense. Greece, like Germany, and post-Roman Italy, was not a single nation until after the culture already had a long shared history. (This has led German philosophers like Hegel and Nietzsche to link and contrast the psychological foundations of the Greek, German, and renaissance Italian cultures.)

Socrates was a citizen of Athens, one of the few Greek states that had citizens at all. The rest were run by Tyrants, and therefore had subjects.

Also, Socrates was not exiled or ostracized, he was sentenced to death and followed through on the sentence instead of taking on a different nationality. He insisted on not requesting exile, despite that he could have counter-plead for that punishment, and would probably have gotten it. And he insisted on not escaping, even though some of his students seem to have arranged a way for him to do exactly that, and offered him the option. So he was Athenian to the end.

Answer 2

Greeks are citizens of Greece.

It's possible to be both Greek and not yet a citizen of Greece. A first generation Greek immigrant into Ireland, say, could still justifiably call himself Greek without being a Greek national. He's merely recognising his birth-right. You could, alternatively say

Greek citizens are citizens of Greece

This, of course, is a tautology - so how can it be wrong? Well, you go on to write:

Greece rejected Socrates

Except of course, Greece was not constituted as Greece, then. Greece, is a modern nation-state; whereas then, there were city-states and alliances of such - compare with now, alliances of states such as the EU, or a federation of states, such as the USA. Thus, Greece could not have rejected Socrates, as there was no such place as Greece then (in the sense of having established political rights, and thus, making it possible to be a citizen there-of).

Moreover, the history is wrong - whereas Socrates was sentenced to death; Athens repented of its deed after he was executed. So, one could hardly call that 'rejection' per se. If anything, Socrates is now, more synonymous and emblematic of Greece than any other Greek figure one could care to name.

Socrates was not a Greek

This is true. But not by the chain of so-called deductive logic that you have outlined.

Answer 3

The answer is Yes and No.

Socrates lived between the years, 470 BC/BCE-399 BC/BCE, in the city of Athens. Apparently, he rarely, if ever, left the city and was, in contemporary sounding terms, a true "local". Socrates' mother tongue was the Greek language-(though we have no written works from Socrates himself). And when he was was around 25 years old, The Parthenon was completed.

It is very, very unlikely that Socrates interacted with non-Greeks during his lifetime. There may have been the occasional Illyrian, Thracian, Scythian or Dacian slave who Socrates may have encountered when visiting the residence of a wealthy student's family-(i.e. Plato's family. Plato, was the son of a wealthy Athenian Shipping Magnate and it is very likely that his Father had slaves from one of the above mentioned Balkan ethnicities). However, on a day to day basis, Socrates, from childhood, until his execution, almost exclusively interacted with his Greco-Athenian compatriots.

There is no anthropological or genealogical evidence-(to the best of our knowledge), that Socrates was ethnically, non-Greek. If Socrates was not of an ethnically Greek background, it is very, very likely that Plato would have at least mentioned it within his many Dialogues-(he never did). No other Historians during or since Socrates' time, has ever suggested or stated-(with any level of seriousness and provability), that Socrates, was of a non-Hellenic background.

But, of course Socrates, was THE Philosopher's Philosopher and once famously said-(rather cynically, though quite profound in its universality), that he was:

"Neither an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world."-(the quote is somewhat paraphrased).

In other words, while Socrates, was very much, a Greek, in culturally and genealogically prosaic terms, Socrates also, was far more aware and attuned to the Universal nature of humankind and how cultural, as well as genealogical particularities, are, ultimately, of parenthetical significance and are also, largely inconsequential. Socrates' being-(at least when sentimentally portrayed by Plato), was someone who had the power and gift of transcendentalism; the ability to transcend mundane, as well as petty particularities and a simultaneous ability to deeply examine one's "self" and "life" itself. It is the sublime aspect of Socrates' character and intellectual being that, yes, makes him a figure who transcended Hellenism and in doing so, helped to pioneer the concept of a Worldly and Universal identity.