Socrates as a Religious Figure Within a Christian Framework: Socratic Irony and the Quest for Truth in Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Urs von Balthasar

Abstract

Instead of examining Socrates and his philosophy within the realm of philosophy, this study engages with the works of two theologians—Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Urs von Balthasar—to explore the person of Socrates and his philosophical concerns. The article approaches this exploration through conceptual pairs: for example, Socratic irony is analysed in terms of whether it is a serious or unserious matter. Further, the study investigates whether Socrates’s death was a tragic event or meaningless regarding each theological framework. Then the study turns to the notion of salvation history, probing whether Socrates’s death is a prefiguration of Christ’s death, or whether it fails to have any symbolic or historical relation.

Introducing Socrates

Throughout the intellectual history of the Western world, few figures have achieved the legendary stature of Socrates. Renowned not only for his philosophical contributions, but also for his enduring influence, he is considered by thinkers such as G.W.F. Hegel and F.D.E. Schleiermacher to be a pivotal figure in Greek antiquity. These philosophers credit him with initiating a paradigm shift in the very practice of philosophy, distinguishing him so profoundly from his predecessors that they collectively label earlier thinkers as “pre-socratic.” ¹

Even though Socrates himself left no written accounts of his philosophy or his conception of truth, contemporary research into Socratic thought demonstrates that his life and approach transcend the portrayals found in Plato’s dialogues. While Plato’s works remain our primary source of information about Socrates, they do not encompass the full depth of his influence or intellectual legacy. It is clear that Socrates, both as an individual and as a philosopher, represents far more than a mere conduit for Platonic ideas. ² Instead, he stands as a foundational figure whose methods and ideals continue to resonate as a cornerstone of philosophical inquiry.

By reconstructing his philosophical outline, Socrates appears as a genuine philosopher, whereas his philosophy even goes beyond the boundaries of a simple intellectual matter. Certainly, Socratic philosophy does have a spiritual quality for Socrates. Also recent scholarship has been able to illustrate Socrates as a religious figure since the modern distinction between the realms of profane and sacred does not apply. ³ Relying on his daimonion’s guidance, Socrates’s stance on living and his quest for truth may appear as deeply religious above all else. ⁴ In his critique of common morality and mythical belief, Socrates provoked his dialogue partners to reconsider their religious and moral assumptions. However, his philosophical and religious praxis deemed the Athenian public opinion to be highly subversive to democracy. In the end, Socrates had to endure his death sentence, charged with impiety (asebeia). This charge stems from three elements: Socrates did not acknowledge the state deities, promoted his daimonion as a new deity, and, thereby, corrupted local youths. ⁵

Interestingly, Socrates shares the same fate as the early Christian martyrs in the time of Roman persecution: they were also charged with asebeia, due to their refusal to offer sacrifices to the Roman deities and apotheosed emperors. ⁶ Even more striking, Christian apologists, especially Justin Martyr, rely on Socrates as a role model and an implicit forerunner to Christian martyrdom. ⁷ They see him as a public defender of truth against public impiety. Further, in his suffering as innocent and righteous, Socrates was under the divine inspiration of the Logos who later became human as Jesus Christ. ⁸

Undeniably, for the apologists of early Christianity, Socrates serves as a role model and even holds a special place in their depiction of salvation history, due to his inspiration by the divine Logos. Thus, Justin Martyr can even present Socrates as a parallel figure to Saint Paul, preaching in Athens at the Areopagus about the unknown God. ⁹ Going beyond the age of late antiquity, we can raise the question of whether Socrates holds a similar place with more recent theologians, serving as a role model and being under divine inspiration. For that matter, we turn to two theologians closely related to Socrates, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Furthermore, we refer to Kierkegaard and Balthasar to exemplify Protestant and Catholic perspectives respectively.

The Image of Socrates in Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard enters the academic stage with his theological dissertation Om Begrebet Ironi: Med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates (The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates) which is also an impressive overture to his subsequent work. ¹⁰ Instead of being simply a debut, Erich Przywara emphasises that in this work Kierkegaard sketched all the themes that will define his later philosophy. ¹¹ In particular, Kierkegaard’s perspective on Socrates and his own understanding of irony emerges here.

The Appearance of Subjectivity

In an ambiguous agreement with Hegel, ¹² Kierkegaard acknowledges that in Socrates a new stage in intellectual history comes into play: due to Socrates’s ongoing activity of calling general assumptions and the current state of things into question, he lets subjectivity emerge in world history and, thereby, alienates his conversation partners from the given social environment. ¹³ Yet, Kierkegaard highlights that Socrates’s point of view is entirely self-centred; and, his state of subjectivity is nothing more than an initial starting point, for it is completely entangled in inwardness and constantly fails to find any existential stability. Putting it bluntly, Socrates’s subjectivity does not lead to a judgment, an opinion, or even a genuine position. His inquiries and his irony detach him and his fellow Athenians from the immediate, pre-reflective morality (Sittlichkeit). This is why, for Kierkegaard, Socrates designates the end of classical Greek antiquity; however, this entirely negative detachment from common morality happens solely through Socrates. ¹⁴

In Kierkegaard’s reading, Socrates does not reach the state of being self-conscious or even a preliminary stage of spirit (Geist) in Hegel’s understanding, because he detaches himself from any immediacy (reality, morality, meaning, purpose, etc.) through irony; and yet, he does not find his way back to himself. ¹⁵ Socrates’s daimonion detaches him from any immediacy and frees him negatively through irony, but does not let him return to himself, grasp concepts, or even attain any knowledge: “The daimon is not Socrates himself, nor his opinion, nor his conviction, but it is something unconscious; Socrates is impelled.” ¹⁶ Kierkegaard would vehemently refrain from seeing Socrates’s daimonion as a form of religious attachment, or even a form of divine inspiration. Further, we find in Kierkegaard’s reading of Socrates’s irony the same stance of detachment. In his stance on irony, he experiences freedom insofar as the general conditions of state, society, morality, and knowledge no longer apply. Consequently, Socrates is existentially unbound. This purely negative freedom, however, leads equally to existential isolation. In the end, Kierkegaard concludes that Socrates floats completely above reality. ¹⁷

Socrates and Society

For Kierkegaard, Socrates’s arrival on the stage of history appears in profound dialectics: on the one hand, subjectivity emerges for the first time and provides negative freedom from traditional ties and the sophists’ deceptions. He helps his conversation partners with subjective detachment and the possibility of existential reorientation. ¹⁸ On the other hand, this detachment happens foremost through irony as mere negative freedom. In consequence, there is no longer a guideline of orientation and Socrates cannot offer a substitute for the outdated concepts because values and concepts are suspended in their validity and can no longer offer any orientation. ¹⁹ In other words, Socrates throws his dialogue partners into the abyss of existential uncertainty. Instead of praising the enabling of existential freedom, Kierkegaard criticises Socrates and his philosophical midwifery for his complete lack of responsibility, while Socrates sees his philosophical praxis as a contribution to Athenian society. ²⁰ In stark contrast, Kierkegaard regards Socrates’s involvement in social or public matters completely differently. To his students and dialogue partners, Socrates does not show any liability. ²¹ Although his activity has a certain benefit for society as he educates to criticise the sophists and their rhetorical tricks, his education is purely negative and entails detachment or even alienation. Thus, Kierkegaard sees Socrates as a seducer without friendship, responsibility, or other attachment. ²² “Thus his relation to his pupils was certainly stimulating, but by no means personal in the positive sense. What stood in the way here was once again his irony.” ²³

From this foundation, Kierkegaard comes to criticise Hegel’s depiction of Socrates. ²⁴ For Hegel, Socrates was the person to encourage a mature position of morality because, through his questioning, he turned the matter of a good life into an existential task for his fellow Athenians. Hence, Socratic irony was far from pure negativity and destructive detachment; instead, Hegel sees the scope of his irony only take place within a limited and controlled framework. ²⁵

In opposition to Hegel, Kierkegaard’s assessment of Socrates’s person and method is different: everything in Socrates is purely negative because nothing has validity for him. Besides his negative freedom and detachment (from morality, traditions, sophistical deceptions, etc.), Socrates’s stance stems from pure irony in an unbound and uncontrolled form. He lives in “infinite negativity” ²⁶ and conducts his life in pure irony. ²⁷ Instead of pursuing a constructive approach, his ironic activity entails destruction and annihilation within the social realm. ²⁸

In consequence, Socrates’s form of life results in “absolute dissimilarity” ²⁹ between him and Christ; although this remark consists of a single footnote and is hardly developed. Socrates’s negativity bears no relation to Christ and, therein, stands in discontinuity and non-relation. Yet, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard acknowledges that Socrates’s ignorance does entail an orientation toward truth insofar as it bears an analogy to faith, without ever arriving at faith as such. ³⁰ Further, Socrates lets subjectivity emerge and presents it at its highest degree within Greek paganism, in the possibly closest relation to truth—and yet, Socrates could not succeed in arriving at truth. ³¹ This analogical non-relation to truth lets Socrates appear in ambivalence, without any means to control, or anchor his free-floating existence. However, in absolute distinction from Socrates, Kierkegaard states that Christ reveals the fullness of God and his revelation is a singular event in history. Instead of Christ pushing people into purely negative freedom, the Christian community is aware of its salvific status by being members of the body of Christ; they know, and can embrace their positive relation to each other and Christ. ³² They are equipped with positive freedom.

Regarding the Socratic passion and mission, it is unclear whether its stance of critique and calling into question can pass for being somewhat religious, in contrast to Kierkegaard’s existential stages of the aesthetics and the ethical, according to Brian Söderquist. ³³ Söderquist elaborates further on the Socratic concern for the self; it does not entail a dialogic relationship with the divine, nor does it recognise the validity of the absolute. ³⁴ Thus, regarding Kierkegaard’s depiction, it is reasonable to infer that Socrates’s fate does not stand in a figurative continuity to the death of Christ and cannot be an integral part of salvation history. ³⁵ Even regarding Socrates’s critique, it seems too far a stretch to depict Socrates’s voice in the public sphere as prophetic, in analogy to the Old Testament’s prophets. While prophets were under divine influence to promote God’s vision of a fulfilling life, Kierkegaard cannot state the same about Socrates’s approach. ³⁶

The danger of Socratic irony

If the danger of philosophy appears only as a theoretical danger, Kierkegaard sees the given danger in Socrates differently. In its negative detachment, Socratic irony cancels the existing bonds and the validity of previous concepts, traditions, self-understandings, and even self-evident facts. Through participation in Socrates’s enterprise, a person loses grip on reality and is likely to float above the common state of things. Kierkegaard sees the looming loss of reality not only as an eminent threat to fellow Athenians but as also already in effect for Socrates himself. Due to his profound entanglement in pure negativity (without any validity of values, conceptions, or ideals), ³⁷ the very conceptions of life and death no longer have any meaning for him. Ideas (such as the good, justice, life, and death) have become liminal conceptions that are beyond his grasp and understanding. ³⁸ Hence, he cannot assume the imminent consequences of his death sentence. Kierkegaard states that death is meaningless to him because both the conception and meaning of death are void. This cluelessness about death, which must not be equated with a lack of fear of death, also prevents him from displaying Socrates as a tragic figure. In the end, Socrates cannot understand his condemnation as punishment. His condemnation appears as an empty gesture. ³⁹

Due to Kierkegaard’s anthropology, Socrates’s stance on life and death cannot count as a paradigm of being human since he lacks the prime feature of human existence: Socrates knows no despair. To emphasise the tragic nature of human life, Kierkegaard stresses the (moral) incapacity and the lack of intellectual certainty in humanity. Thus, he considers human existence as tragic because a dark power overshadows humanity as a whole, without any agency to conquer it. ⁴⁰ In Graeco-Roman antiquity, this power goes by fatum or in the Jewish-Christian tradition by sin. ⁴¹ The individual’s relationship to his or her incapacity surfaces in anxiety; it is not fear of something particular; instead, it is indefinite in content and has nothingness as its object. ⁴² While despair is a common condition of being human, each person’s relation to despair is subjective and distinguishes a person as a subject for Kierkegaard. In his Christian framework, a subject’s deliverance from the tragic entrapment takes place through the leap of faith, freeing one from the bondage of sin in each subject’s relationship with Christ. ⁴³ However, in order to experience anxiety and despair, self-consciousness is an indispensable necessity. Through conscious self-relation, each person, as a subject, knows about him or herself, and his or her existential state. ⁴⁴ Yet, this very absence of self-relation leads to the impossibility of despair in Socrates. ⁴⁵ Thus, Socrates, in his loss of reality and absolute subjective detachment, lacks the decisive foundation to be a tragic figure at all.

Kierkegaard’s own duplicity

It is hard to discern whether Kierkegaard sees Socrates as a role model regarding piety and religiosity since Socrates is an ironist who overstretches his approach of negative liberation for Athenian society. Treating his “Concept of Irony” at face value, Socrates appears as less than inane since his negativity does not stop at an appropriate level; this negativity is instead all-consuming. Yet, Socrates engages in a divine mission of untying his fellow Athenians from the bonds of state religion and pre-reflexive morality (Sittlichkeit). ⁴⁶

Kierkegaard admits that the charge of impiety against Socrates was just, due to his rejection of the common piety of Athenian state religion and his unrestricted critique of the established order. Yet, this deviation of the common piety must not be equated with atheism as such: “To say, therefore, that Socrates did not accept the gods accepted by the state does not mean that he was an atheist.” ⁴⁷ Thus, Socrates is more than a negative ironist who questions the established order; in fact, Socrates is in his midwifery an enabler for fellow Athenians to become a self.

Indirectly, Socrates becomes a prime example of what every good Christian ought to do. By helping other persons embrace who they are and what they should become, these good Christians become, so to speak, Socratic Christians due to a Christian midwifery of their own. ⁴⁸ This parallel may not appear as strikingly obvious since the passage does not elaborate on the matter extensively. Further, on this parallel, Kierkegaard states quite early in a footnote that Jesus Christ is truth himself, as well as the way, and therein transparent; while Socrates was just a mere voice calling, without any transparency or visibility, resulting in an analogy with contradicting elements. ⁴⁹ However, given the fact that every faithful person must go through a process of intellectual cleansing, irony is the way to truth. ⁵⁰ Hence, there is an analogy between Socrates and Christ at work; however, Kierkegaard does not elaborate on their relation regarding salvation history or any prophetic dimension.

Returning to the implicit task of Christian midwifery, his depiction makes further sense if we keep in mind that Kierkegaard engages in his Concept of Irony in critique of contemporary philosophy and the common culture in their understanding and use of irony, just as Socrates engages in critique against the sophists and the established order of the state religion of Athens. The contemporary ironists esteem irony on its own, and mistake its status as a means with its goal. For the contemporary ironists, no specific religion has any greater value; for them, all religions have the same legitimacy and are thus interchangeable. ⁵¹ However, in his reckoning of irony as a means, and not as an end in itself, Kierkegaard states that neither the ironic nor the poetic stance can attain reconciliation with reality. Only the religious stance is able to do so.

Kierkegaard’s remarks on Christianity and Christian faith are rather limited in his first work; however, he does not drop the topic of irony in his later works and explains further about his own Socratic mission and his ironical enterprise. ⁵² Using masquerade, feigning, and pseudonymity, he attempts to free his contemporaries from false assumptions and to deceive them into a believing existence. ⁵³ For Kierkegaard, pseudonymity and feigning hold a strategic value: direct communication cannot lead to an existential decision by a different person; for this matter, the form of indirect communication is key. ⁵⁴

Yet, irony remains ambiguous. Therefore, using irony does not necessarily lead to unseriousness. Irony tends to stay vague, and, often, a definitive interpretation of its intention is unlikely to be deciphered. This holds true for Socratic irony itself; although, Kierkegaard adheres to this matter in only one footnote:

Suppose that someone had been present at one of Socrates’ ironic conversations; suppose that he later gives a report of it to someone but leaves out the irony and says: God knows whether talk like that is irony or earnestness—then he is satirizing himself. But the presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that. ⁵⁵

Therefore, this ambiguity of irony allows no definitive answer on how to understand Kierkegaard’s discrepancy between his Christian writing and his existence. For he sees only an inauthentic connection between his person and his pseudonymous writings. ⁵⁶ Kierkegaard was aware of this discrepancy by living a life that did not hold up to his Christian ideals. In the end, he had never claimed to be a proper Christian. Generally, he could not fulfil the ideal of living faithfully, which he presents to his contemporaries as a standard. Rather, his ambiguous attitude may present his existence as a process of becoming a Christian, which remains incomplete. ⁵⁷

The Socrates Image in Hans Urs von Balthasar

To understand Socrates’s characterisation within Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological framework, we need to elaborate on the larger context of the dramatics in salvation history. Only within this framework, can Balthasar render his depiction of the continuity from Socrates to Christ intelligible. In this regard, Socrates is not only an analogous prophet; his tragic death contains an implicit reference to Christ’s crucifixion. Therefore, it is advisable to look first at his dramatic understanding of salvation history to explain the significance of tragedy in its course.

Balthasar’s view of history

Surprisingly, Balthasar never expounds his methodical approach to illustrate a theological understanding of universal history; we can only indirectly reconstruct his general depiction of salvation history and its theological foundation. In opposition to his otherwise sense for details and elaboration on scholarly matters, it comes as a given that salvation history takes a dramatic course. Therefore, Karen Kilby warns that Balthasar’s insights into the dramatic framework of being and his theology are in danger of adopting a God perspective. ⁵⁸ Basically, Balthasar’s perspective sees the entire course of history in a dramatic framing and orientation. ⁵⁹ In this logic and framework, intellectual discussion and reflection cannot be humanity’s first steps in the world theatre; ⁶⁰ before all intellectual work, humanity is deeply entangled in God’s historical action (as drama), and in a subsequent step which calls for action in return. ⁶¹

From a human point of view, it is difficult to see the full picture of God’s plan; his self-presentation appears only in fragments. ⁶² Yet, in bearing resemblance to a theological artist, Balthasar provides an approach that assembles these fragments into a somewhat complete picture: ⁶³ In this, Balthasar states that God’s love is the axiomatic foundation to his historical actions and connects the fragments into a comprehensible picture. Because of his love, God reveals himself and binds himself to the creaturely sphere in solidarity. In other words, by his loving self-revelation, He offers the framework for merging the fragments into a picture of encompassing dramatic love. ⁶⁴

This divine love that presents itself on the world stage, however, is far from being kitsch or sentimentally superficial. Instead, via the inner-Trinitarian kenosis (i.e., God-father’s release of his son into the absolute distance), a profound rift runs through the divine love that incorporates and bridges the inner abyss. In consequence, this abyss equally marks creation because creation itself stems from divine love, and shares in analogy its dramatic features. Therefore, the glory of the world is not identical to pure beauty; instead, the world’s glory features dark undertones, and the glorious redemption of the world will likewise share the abyss of divine love. ⁶⁵ In its glorious effigy, God’s self-revelation excels in fractures, fault lines, and shallows, and it will pass this dramatic, yet complex glory unto creation in its redeemed state. ⁶⁶

Without any immediacy, God’s glory appears in creaturely mediation (according to analogia entis). Yet, this analogy does not remain on a symbolical level for creation; by stemming from the divine love, creation needs to align with God’s love and assimilate his sacrificial stance. ⁶⁷ For God’s love finds the ultimate dramatic expression in Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, so that history and the whole realm of creation aim at Christ; therein, his fate is the pinnacle of all economy of salvation. ⁶⁸ Hence, Balthasar affirms that human completion can only happen in likeness to and in alignment with Jesus Christ, because He is the archetype and goal, alpha and omega, of creation. ⁶⁹ Also, this means that the dramatic likeness of creation to Christ cannot bypass the inner-Trinitarian abyss: ⁷⁰ The kenosis, brokenness, the dialectics of glory between beauty and terror, also determine human life. ⁷¹

From the dramatic to the tragic

In his dramatic vision of salvation history, Balthasar draws an encompassing picture of reality that reaches from the depths of the inner-Trinitarian mystery, through the creation out of love, to the eschatological consummation by divine love. Yet, this dramatic narrative appears in extremely dark colours as soon as the necessity of Christ’s suffering and loneliness comes into play. ⁷² Also, the necessity of suffering and loneliness does not only concern Christ himself, but both are equally inescapable for the completion of human existence. ⁷³

For that matter, Karen Kilby raises the question concerning the necessity of God’s suffering because it does not stem from the inner-Trinitarian kenosis; God’s suffering is more or less secondary to the inner-Trinitarian dynamics. In other words, God’s self-sacrifice, suffering, and self-abandonment are, in a sense, ontologised by Balthasar, lifted into eternity, and labeled as good and divine. This reinterpretation of necessary suffering leads Kilby to the legitimate question of whether Christianity can count as “Good News” at all in Balthasar’s depiction. ⁷⁴

In recourse to the necessity of Christ’s suffering, it begs the question whether the dramatic movement can count as the actual narrative of Christianity. ⁷⁵ Instead, it makes more sense to illustrate tragedy as the underlying essence of the Christian narrative, as indicated by Balthasar himself:

Jesus Christ is the heir of all the tragedy of the world, that of the Greeks as well as that of the Jews, that of the so-called unbelievers as well as that of the so-called believers. And he enters upon this inheritance, not merely through a victorious act of surpassing them, something that would (so to speak) overcome the tragedy of men through a more untragic tragedy of the Son of God, but first of all by entering within the form of suffering of all of humanity and sharing in this suffering, as it has been revealed to us in the ultimate contradictoriness both of Greek existence and of Jewish existence. ⁷⁶

Balthasar pays profound attention to the very conditions of humanity, marked by sinful entrapment, fragility, and moral consciousness. And, in Christ’s incarnation and death, he embraces these conditions and engages in loving solidarity with humanity. Therefore, Christ is not only the dramatic pinnacle of salvation history; in him, all tragedy culminates: he is the heir, the archetype, and the apotheosis of all tragedy. ⁷⁷

Because of Balthasar’s universal vision of salvation history, he does not limit the Christian narrative only to the biblical scope. Further, he takes equally Greek antiquity into account, which is not exempt from God’s glory, but is entangled in the divine sphere. In Balthasar’s view, Greek ancient culture paid constant attention to the presence of the divine. ⁷⁸ Yet, in Greek antiquity, the realm of creation stands in constant tension, for the tragic overshadows all human life. Thus, this dialect tension is on display as far as ancient Greek perception sees human suffering under the radiance of divine glory. In consequence, salvation history includes, in Balthasar’s depiction, also ancient Greek and its sense of tragedy.

Yet, there is no direct and explicit connection between the monotheistic narrative of the Bible and ancient Greek tragedy. Instead, ancient Greek tragedy has an analogous sacramental quality that hints in its depiction of human suffering and divine redemption towards Christ. However, in Christ, tragic suffering and divine redemption come full circle. ⁷⁹ Thus, ancient Greek tragedy provides an insightful analysis of human existence and displays these insights artfully in the tragic plays. Human existence is tragic in the actual sense because dark, opaque guilt determines human life under the surface. Instead of enjoying real freedom, human existence is under the condition of guilt. It is not possible to lay bare the actual cause for this entanglement. Instead, Balthasar goes the other way and illustrates that tragic art reveals a dark causality that looms over humanity. ⁸⁰ In Original Sin, Christian theology was able to provide an analogous concept to the dark tragic guilt. Both see human life suffering moral incapacity and, yet, still in demand of ethical behavior. In this regard, ancient Greek and Judaeo-Christian worldviews developed parallel ideas in close proximity to each other. ⁸¹

From Socrates to Christ

For Balthasar, Socrates is a borderline figure in a unique position, not only within Greek antiquity but the entire salvation history. Before Socrates and at the time of the great tragedians, reality was completely enclosed by the divine sphere; there was no distinct separation between human reality and the divine because both realms were in inextricable tension with each other. Yet, post-Socratic philosophers de-dramatise human existence by their use of reason. In their acts of reasoning, they leave the realm of contingency and leap into the sphere of pure transcendence. Also, they separate the individual person from the human collective which is bound to tragic fate. ⁸² Balthasar sees this philosophical reasoning as a gesture of (inappropriate) empowerment, resulting in a detachment and disconnection from the divine. Further, he describes this human rupture in such a way that the dialogic structure of being (between the divine and human sphere) decays and collapses into a monologue, thereby alienating human beings from the divine. Instead of perceiving and embracing divine glory, philosophy obtains a supposed sovereignty over tragic fate and the divine. ⁸³ According to Balthasar, this alienation already starts from Heraclitus and Parmenides as a grim rebellion of reason; yet, in Socrates and early Plato, philosophical reasoning finds an ironic and still earnest form that takes place as a hiatus within this line of decay. ⁸⁴

In Balthasar’s depiction of intellectual history, Socrates marks the transition between the time of tragedy and the time of philosophy’s abstraction. ⁸⁵ For Socrates, philosophy and philosophical inquiries are not separated from the sphere of the divine and the absolute. Instead, philosophy aims at the divine and ought to take place as an existential participation in it. In Balthasar’s reading of Socrates, philosophy can never be purely theoretical with mere virtual meaning. ⁸⁶ Socrates’s unique position stems from the fact that he lets existential subjectivity emerge. This subjective stance is on display in his conception of truth, to which a person is consequently required to engage in existential alignment and commitment. ⁸⁷ Instead of alignment with myth in its drama and tragedy, as in early Greek times, Socrates shapes his existence into a work of art and holds truth as his exclusive point of reference. ⁸⁸ Balthasar even goes so far as to describe Socrates’s advocacy of truth as advocacy of God’s cause. ⁸⁹ Thus

the philosopher places himself on the side of god: he remains true to the absolute truth and rectitude (δίκαιον) of the right constitution of life and the state, even though available imitations, through lack of faith in the truth, fall short of it; even though the one true form is set apart from all others, “as god is set apart from men.” He occupies himself with “becoming like God, so far as this is possible, by becoming righteous and holy with wisdom.” Between this life and that which wills earthly power and pleasure there is “no common ground of discussion.” It may be that each soul has an inherent instinct to strive (ἀπομαντεύομαι) for what is truly good but that of itself accomplishes nothing: everything lies in the decision between the service of truth and self-seeking. The truth is unconditional and “never to be refuted”; but if it is the good, then it and nothing else is also the source of blessing, of the happiness of men, for the individual as well as for the community. Thus, Socrates can say that through his service of God, that is, his witness to the truth, the greatest possible good accrues to the state. ⁹⁰

Nevertheless, Balthasar sees Socrates as an ambiguous figure. On the one hand, Socrates points to truth and is a guide to it; in his existence, he becomes a distinct sacramental display of truth. On the other hand, Socrates is barred from an explicit “Christian form” because he lacks the encounter with Christ as truth himself, given that Socrates is living prior to the incarnation and God’s self-revelation. ⁹¹ In that regard, Balthasar explicitly joins Hamann’s understanding of Socrates and at the same time distances himself from Kierkegaard: Socrates does not, as in Kierkegaard’s account, stand before the truth in complete ignorance of and distance from it; but, according to Balthasar’s reading of Hamann, Socrates in his aesthetic stance is completely transparent to truth and, thus, counts for Balthasar as a “Christian humourist” without his own knowledge of it. ⁹² Further, following Hamann, Balthasar indicates that Socrates’s conscious awareness of his lack of knowledge is a dark and obscure form of faith that stems from true aisthesis as a stance of faith, able to recognise and take seriously God’s glory. In other words, Socrates lives in an aesthetic awareness of God; this aesthetic openness is why his aesthetic experience of transcendence can count as faith. ⁹³ Further, for Hamann (and with Balthasar’s implicit agreement), there is an analogous relationship between Socrates and Paul: Paul’s explicit awareness of the mystery of God has a counterpart in Socrates. In Socrates, a dark and implicit understanding of the mystery of God is at work through the divine spirit. This understanding sets this interpretation of Socrates apart from Kierkegaard’s interpretation. Therein lies

the profound difference between the Socrates of Hamann and of Kierkegaard; the ignorance of Hamann’s Socrates is in a hidden way what Paul’s was openly, and his genius or daimon may very well have had something of the holy pneuma about it, for he bore a reverential love for this genius, and his foolishness may have been a form of the holy, evangelical foolishness. [. . .] The analogous breadth of Hamann’s understanding of “belief” [. . .] is capable of interpreting Socrates not only as a likeness but as a medium of Christ. That Hamann, the true Christian, undertakes to do this shows that a relationship such as this to him who is absolutely unique can be meant only as a work of the Holy Spirit of Christ himself, who chooses his vessels as he will. ⁹⁴

His special relationship to the divine and to truth distinguishes him. This is why his aesthetical openness cannot simply fall into the category of natural religion. Instead, his stance of openness counts for Balthasar as genuine faith. Therefore, his irony, criticism, and truth-telling are not possible without divine inspiration, marking Socrates out as an analogous prophet. ⁹⁵ Yet, his criticism and irony are far from being flippant features of his person; Socrates is in no way a comic or unreliable figure of fun. His relationship to truth stems from love, without the urge to ever possess or control it: Thus, truth is a matter of deep seriousness and playful obedience. ⁹⁶ Within his social and societal embeddedness, Socrates invests his existence for truth and wants his conversation partners to join the search for truth as an existential matter. ⁹⁷ Finally, his obedience and love for truth become deadly serious: Socrates dies for truth. In that regard, Balthasar views Socrates as an analogous disciple of Christ. In fact, Socrates does not want to have sovereignty over truth; instead, he sacrifices his life for it out of love. ⁹⁸

Regarding his obedience to truth, and his martyrdom for truth, these aspects place Socrates in a related, yet qualitatively distinct, line to Christ. ⁹⁹ This relation to Christ impels Balthasar to place Socrates within the dramatic horizon of salvation history. Thus, Socrates dies as a faithful martyr for divine truth. Instead of alignment to the poets’ tragedy, and letting a work of art speak for the tragedy of being, his life itself becomes tragic. In other words, he lets tragedy shape his existence into a work of art:

In fact Plato, who began as a poet and to the end deeply loved the poets, broke with them because, for him, tragedy had been carried over from the stage into reality. Socrates, whom he moreover endowed with all the burlesque wit of comedy, who has translated the dialogue of the theatre into his existential dialogue and “always wanders about helplessly subject to a demonic fate,” for he has both speech and reply within himself—this Socrates died as a witness to the truth and thereby created a tragedy which overshadowed in its everyday reality all earlier examples [. . .]. He philosophises on the knife-edge between life and death, as indeed it is characteristic of any êros that is ready to die for its offspring. He lives as one who is ready to die for the truth and therefore will not fail to be “one of the few, not to say the only one,” who will be put to death for it. ¹⁰⁰

Balthasar does not depict Socrates’s death as rebellious. Instead, he lives in a profoundly just manner since his life is aligned with justice as such. His resolute suffering for justice places him in a unique and tragic relationship within salvation history: In a bold statement, Balthasar illustrates that the symbolic surplus of the cup of hemlock stays incomprehensible without the cross: ¹⁰¹

The connection between philosophy’s first martyr and Golgotha is uncanny; it is also very Western because the “perfectly just man” even in the extremest form of the hypothesis is not unwordly in an oriental fashion but lives in the midst of the polis and therefore, by his own choice, is set forth defiantly as a call to decision.

The question as to how far Plato’s picture of Socrates is idealized plays no role here, only the fact that the philosophical act consists, in the dying decision which springs from his absolute dedication to the truth. Socrates himself was concerned only with conferring what he regarded as the greatest benefit on each individual with whom he had to do; he had repeatedly argued that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong [. . .]. ¹⁰²

In Balthasar’s depiction, Socrates’s death is far from a terrible catastrophe. Due to Socrates’s aesthetic openness to divine glory and his obedience to truth, his death appears to him almost as a blessing because it entails his ascent from the earthly Hades into the realm of truth and glory for which the Socratic eros longs. In a peculiar interpretation, Balthasar goes even further in his illustration of Socrates’s death: Socrates’s willingness to die for truth displays an enormous stance of hope which must be supported by divine help. For Balthasar, Socrates is a prime figure of devout piety. He dies happily in his longing for truth because he can leave the earthly containment behind. ¹⁰³

In order to illustrate Socrates’s death in that manner, the Christian framework is absolutely necessary; otherwise, we are left only with a weak analogy between Socrates and Jesus Christ. Balthasar adheres to this necessity to make sense of history as such; without the Christian narrative of salvation history, human history would be nothing but incoherent fragments of the past. Due to Christ’s revelation, a new and encompassing understanding of life, creation, and reality is accessible; in Christ appears “the fulfilment of a fragmented understanding of the universe.” ¹⁰⁴

Finally, tragedy, as the overarching framework of being, illuminates Christ’s redemptive works in their dramatic form. In this tragic narrative, Christ not only functions, but is in person the true deus ex machina: Due to humanity’s sinful entrapment, humanity is unable to obtain redemption from within human existence, as Socrates’s fate shows. ¹⁰⁵ Rather, humanity is in dire need of the God who breaks into the earthly sphere from the outside and redeems humanity through the true sacrificial lamb. Thus, Christ becomes the archetype and culmination of tragedy:

Balthasar’s intention is to hold that Christ always exceeds and redefines tragedy. Whatever insight, distance or suffering found in great tragedy is always circumscribed and fulfilled by Christ’s ever greater tragedy. He attempts to remain deeply Christological, for Christ always defines true tragedy, and not vice versa; Christ is the final, true tragic figure of Greek and Hebrew tragedy, whose nature and destiny they foreshadowed. ¹⁰⁶

Without the Christological framework of salvation history, we can infer, according to Balthasar’s tenets, Socrates’s quest for truth must ultimately fail. Also, his death would be stripped of any meaning and utterly futile, without the outlook of eschatological completion.

Conclusion

Kierkegaard and Balthasar share that the person, philosophy, and death of Socrates are not insignificant in their relation to both Jesus Christ and Christianity. However, they differ fundamentally in their respective approach and assessment.

Kierkegaard uses an abstract approach by elaborating on the theory of irony regarding Socrates. In this, Kierkegaard pays no attention to salvation history; his focus is on irony, and thus Socratic irony becomes a means to review contemporary conceptions of irony. Kierkegaard’s remarks on the relation between Socrates, Jesus Christ, and Christianity are scarce. Yet, they are not toned down; their pointedness makes them even more telling.

Balthasar takes a different approach to illustrating the value of Socrates for Christian theology. Balthasar’s focus is on salvation history and its dramatic quality. By painting a broad picture of God’s entanglement in world history, he sees also grace at work outside the biblical horizon. Balthasar uses Socrates’s quest for truth, his service to society, and innocent martyrdom to relate him in a symbolic way to the life and death of Jesus Christ. For Balthasar, Socrates’s fate is only intelligible within the framework of salvation history. Outside this framework, the innocent martyrdom of Socrates stays obscure. This is also because Balthasar does not develop any abstract conception, similar to Kierkegaard, which could stand on its own.

Yet, both agree that in Socrates subjectivity entered the world stage for the first time and, thus, a caesura in intellectual history takes place. ¹⁰⁷ Regarding the consequences of this subjectivity for Socrates himself and for Greek society, their respective assessments differ diametrically. This difference is most tangible with regard to truth and Socratic irony: Kierkegaard depicts Socrates as a person caught in pure negativity and, thus, existentially isolated. He may be able to free himself from sophistical deceptions and supposed certainties through ironic criticism. ¹⁰⁸ Kierkegaard uses Socrates to show that unrestricted irony results in a loss of reality, wherein the concepts of the good, truth, and beauty, as well as the value of life itself, become void and no longer hold any existential value. The question of truth is obsolete for Socrates according to Kierkegaard’s reading. ¹⁰⁹ Socrates’s irony is full of unseriousness for Kierkegaard because it does not refer to any matter of existential value. ¹¹⁰ This assessment applies to the use of irony in regard to Kierkegaard’s contemporary ironists. For this reason, Kierkegaard cannot see any continuity or analogy between Socrates and Christ; Socrates’s relationship to reality and truth is marked by pure negativity, while Christ is the fullness of truth, and his relationship to the world is of pure positivity. ¹¹¹ Therefore, Kierkegaard concludes that there is nothing tragic to be found in Socrates’s death. ¹¹² In sum, the stance of irony does not lead to any reconciliation; this is only possible through a religious stance (in the Christian sense) for Kierkegaard. However, this evaluation of irony by Kierkegaard might be taken with a pinch of salt, since he seems to use Socrates as a means to cover his critique of contemporary irony and common piety.

Balthasar takes the person of Socrates and his position within salvation history in the opposite direction. It is precisely his obedience to truth that displays Socrates as an exceedingly serious person. For him, truth is not a vain, detached, or merely virtual matter, but it holds the utmost relevance with regard to his own conduct of life. ¹¹³ Moreover, Socrates’s gaze is not turned inward, nor is it characterised by isolation. According to Balthasar, Socrates’s aesthetic stance has a steady eye for divine glory; his aesthetic experience of transcendence, along with his conscious ignorance, shows a dark and hidden, or even implicit form of faith. ¹¹⁴

In consequence, for Balthasar, Socrates’s death is deeply tragic and, at the same time, collapses into divine glory because Socrates, in joyful anticipation of death, wants to rise from the earthly darkness to behold the divine. ¹¹⁵ Thus, Socrates’s criticism and obedience to truth present him as an analogous prophet and render him a disciple of Christ. ¹¹⁶ This engagement in truth, the framing of his life by divine glory, and martyrdom place Socrates in clear continuity with Christ: the cup of hemlock prefigures the cross, and Athens is not far from Golgotha. ¹¹⁷ Instead of chiding Socrates’s irony as unserious and a means of losing reality, Balthasar presents Socratic irony as qualified by divine inspiration. Socrates criticises untruth and, thus, becomes an analogous prophet. ¹¹⁸ Therefore, his irony is not an unserious matter, but a playful means of prophetic criticism that can invoke truth in public without stripping it of its divinity. ¹¹⁹

In conclusion, Kierkegaard depicts Socrates as a teasing provocateur who introduces subjectivity onto the world stage, yet simultaneously renders reality shallow. In contrast, Balthasar sees Socrates as an exemplar of faithful obedience to truth. Through his critique and martyrdom, Socrates appears as an ironic prophet and a precursor to Jesus’s disciples.