Doug Al-Maini, St. Francis Xavier University
In the Apology, Socrates declares three times to the jury that he does not take payment for his activities. In all of these cases, he clearly means he does not receive any money. Understanding his reasons for refusing monetary payment will help explain what Socrates seems to think are acceptable returns to him: that he should be fed in the Prytaneum (36d) and that his friends may pay a fine of thirty minas (38b) on his behalf. One wonders if, strictly speaking, all these claims are coherent: how does being provided meals at public expense not qualify as payment? Does the money his friends offer have no relation to a possible debt they owe him? Releasing any tension between these various claims is important in its own right, but also helps pave the way to understanding a general theory of exchange that underlies them.
Three possible responses to this tension will be canvassed here: first, that in fact Socrates does receive a material payment for his work, albeit a payment with some peculiar restrictions placed on it. Here Socrates points out important differences between the various crafts, such as which crafts appropriately charge fees and which do not. This difference does not impose restrictions on a monetary return for his services per se, but it does sharply limit the conditions for such a return, and it appears that these conditions are met by the offer on the part of his associates to pay a fine on his behalf. Second, that taking a regular wage for his work would force him into a category mistake concerning his profession. In the Gorgias at 521d Socrates claims to be a politician, and his conception of what politicians may receive for their service is quite severe. Socrates is generally against private wages for rulers and prefers their receiving communal upkeep; rulers are allowed to receive the minimum material benefits necessary to perform their public function, reassuring the community of being motivated by public goods as opposed to private interests. Socrates’ impecunious lifestyle is thus a requirement of his chosen profession, and his request to be fed at the Prytaneum is of a piece with these concerns. Third and most broadly, Socrates seems to think that material goods and money in particular are simply inappropriate exchange items for the goods he provides. Socrates conceives of true politicians as actually benefitting the community. But money and other material benefits are of notoriously indifferent value: in themselves they seem to have little, if any, worth. Instead, they are the sort of things that can be used for either good or bad purposes, and an exchange between inherent and instrumental goods is incommensurate. Socrates seems to believe that the appropriate response to being made more virtuous by true politicians is to honour, revere, and show gratitude to them, something his associates go on to do by inventing the genre of the Socratic dialogue.