Philosophy and Storytelling: Socratic Theology vs. Hesiodic Theology on the Basis of Rationality

The Greek word “theologia” is a compound of “theos”, which is God, and “logos”, which is discourse. The word is said to be used first by Plato in The Republic, but Tom Griffith in his translation refers to the term as “to talk about Gods”.  The importance of Gods is obvious in both Hesiod’s and Plato’s texts and the talks about Gods repetitiously partake, but there is a slight difference between Hesiod’s discourse and Socrates’s. To be able to decide whether Socrates is rational and Hesiod is irrational or vice versa, these two different attitudes towards Gods should be examined.

            To make a rational analysis on the two different theologies and their rationality, it is meaningful to define rationality first. The etymological root of the word “rational” is the Latin word “ratio”, which means “reason”. Therefore, a rational theology should be a reasoned discourse about the Gods. What is meant by reasoned discourse is that contradiction should be removed from the line of argument. In this context, my claim is that Hesiod’s text includes inconsistencies concerning the understanding and application of goodness.

Works and Days is a text in which Hesiod tells the stories of Gods to show his brother Perses the good way of living, and gives him advices to go that way. By telling the myths about Prometheus, Pandora and the five Ages of Man, he gives a description of Gods to whom he attaches human emotions. The Gods in Hesiod’s text are more or less like human beings in their relations to each other and mortals. They expect to be honored by the sacrifices of the mortals, get angry by their disrespectful actions and take revenge by punishing them. The distinction between mortals and immortals is based on a power relation. The Gods, who have the power to create as well as destroy, are superior to the human kind in that respect. This reduced power relation between mortals and immortals results in a utilitarian understanding of goodness and justice. Hesiod advices Perses in the lines 279-285, to be just in order to be nourished by the Gods:

But to man he has given Justice and she proves to be far the best;

for if a man, of his knowledge, wills to speak justly, to him

Loud-Voiced Zeus grants prosperity;

but to him who will lie by witnesses, swearing falsely,

consciously, and injuring Justice shall fall to sin past cure,

his generation after him is left weaker;

but the generation of the just-swearing man remains better then before.

The leitmotif of Hesiod’s words above is that justice brings humans prosperity and unjust behavior will be punished by Zeus. Distant from understanding the true nature of goodness, Hesiod’s reasoning in the just behavior is materialistic gain or the fear of the God. To me, this approach to justice is contradictory to the concept of being just, because justice can only be applied for the sake of justice not for the sake of any other materialistic concerns, or it would not be a just behavior.

            Another contradiction in Hesiod’s theology is that although he claims the ones who live their lives truthfully and care for justice and goodness in their actions will be rewarded by the Gods, one cannot be sure about their destiny because it is all up to Zeus’s will. After making a long list of things to do to have a good life according to Zeus’s will, Hesiod informs Perses that Zeus’s will is unstable:

But sometimes the mind of Zeus, aegis-bearing, is one way

and sometimes another; for mortal men it is hard to fathom.

Is it possible to lead a just life according to the God’s will, which is a part of its unstable nature? How did Hesiod have the access to that detailed knowledge about the Gods’ existence? There seems to be no answers to and even place for this sort of questions in Hesiod’s text. Hence, the appearance of Gods in Hesiod’s text is ambiguous and his theology is inconsistent according to the above arguments. The underlying reason for that inconsistency is that Hesiod’s discourse on the Gods is formed on the basis that Zeus is the outer authority to whom mortals should obey and make sacrifices. In a way, human actions are in the control of Zeus, which means that he may be held responsible for both the good and bad in human actions. At this point, what Hesiod does is to draw the territory of the human actions according to an outer authority and come up with conclusions in this context, without questioning the reasons for that kind of actions.

            On the contrary, in Republic Socrates, follows a path in his discourse on Gods starting from the individuals’ actions and their consequences. By applying dialectics, he questions the nature of justice and just behavior. He emphasizes the importance of knowledge and wisdom, which are the greatest virtues of the soul, in order to be able to apply justice. For a deeper understanding of the soul he uses the allegory of the ideal city. In his argument a greater emphasis is put on the education of the guardians of the city through which the argument is then carried on the level of self-discipline. The main point in Socratic theology is that individuals are held responsible for their own actions, and if there is to be a control mechanism for their actions, this mechanism will be set through the education of the soul and the body to create a balance for all the elements in the soul. He places Gods in his allegory as the role model for the ultimate goodness. Goodness is the only characteristic that he attaches to the existence of Gods. This ideal form of the good then becomes his reason in explaining the importance of self-discipline and education as he derives in Book 2 that “Since god is good, he could not be responsible for everything. Some of the things that happen to men are his responsibility, but most are not; after all, we have many fewer good things than bad things in our lives. We have no reason to hold anyone else responsible for the good things, whereas for the bad things we should look for some other cause, and not blame god.”At this point, his arguments complete a circle, he starts with the need of proper education to have a better understanding of the true nature of things and then this understanding again leads to the importance of proper education of the soul and body to handle the consequences of being. Although it is sometimes hard to fully follow his reasoning, what I look for, in my quest for rationality in his theology, is the absence of contradiction and I can claim that there is an apparent consistency in his arguments. 

            To conclude, Socrates and Hesiod were different in the methods they used to develop their arguments, the method of the former is philosophizing on the human existence, and the latter is storytelling on the existence of the Gods. According to the Latin writer Varro, the discourse on the Gods can be distinguished into three categories; mythical (concerning the myths of the Greek gods), rational (philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology) and civil (concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance). It will not be wrong to claim that Hesiodic theology is more coherent with the mythical discourse and Socratic theology with the rational discourse.