Hermogenes (philosopher)

Hermogenes was a student of the Greek philosopher Socrates (* 469 BC; † 399 BC) in Athens and a half-brother of the millionaire Callias III. (* around 450 BC; † 371 BC). His exact life dates are not known. The common father of Callias and Hermogenes was Hipponikos, who was considered the richest man in Greece at that time. He seems to have bequeathed all of his fortune to Callias, because Hermogenes was considered poor. Presumably he came out of an illegitimate relationship with his father.

Because of his oppressive penniless, Hermogenes was sometimes dependent on charitable donations. Socrates helped his friend - as Xenophon reports in his "Memories of Socrates" (II 10.1 ff.) - u. a. by arranging for him the friendship of the wealthy Diodorus, who had numerous servants and who found it easy to support Hermogenes with a small sum of money, for which he received a friend who was always helpful in Hermogenes.

Philosophical Beliefs

Like his teacher Socrates, Hermogenes did not write his own writings, but only expressed his philosophical convictions in conversations with other people.

In Xenophon's "banquet", Hermogenes appears as a companion and member of Socrates' closest circle of friends, which also included Antisthenes , Critobulus, the son of Criton , and Charmides , the son of Glaukon , an uncle of Plato as well as Kebes , Simmias and Apollodorus. In his lecture, Hermogenes introduces himself philosophically as a theistic thinker who represents a fundamentally optimistic and value-rational worldview. According to Hermogenes, there is a close connection between morality and success in action, since the gods reward the pious and the good and punish the immoral.

Hermogenes ascribes three characteristics to the gods above all: omniscience, omnipotence and a (fundamentally) benevolent provision for the righteous person who turns to them. In the theistic worldview of Hermogenes, all people ("Greeks and barbarians") are not only convinced of the existence of the gods, but above all of their omniscience. In his imagination there is a certain fixed course of the world which is known in advance to the omniscient gods. For him there arises from the omniscience of the gods the reason why all people rightly endeavor to research the future through fortune tellers who address the gods in order to find out “what one should do what not”. Since the gods do not communicate with humans directly, but rather through (ambiguous) sayings, dreams or signs hidden in the flight of birds, oracles , dream interpretation and bird's eye view were of great importance to Hermogenes.

In addition to omniscience, Hermogenes ascribes omnipotence to the gods and the ability "to do us good and bad". From the point of view of Hermogenes, the behavior of the gods towards humans is therefore thoroughly ambivalent. However, in relation to himself, he accepts kind care from the gods.

When the guests of the symposium described themselves, Hermogenes portrays himself as a pious and righteous person who firmly believes in the benevolent care of the gods. For him, “these omniscient and omnipotent gods are so much my friends that nothing escapes their constant concern for me, not by day, nor by night, not where I want to go nor what I am planning. And in their foresight how everything will turn out, they mean to me what to do and what not to do through the messengers they send, sayings, dreams, birds. If I listen to them I never regret it; But I've already been punished for disobedience. "

Socrates, who also listened to his inner voice, which he interpreted as messages from a demonion, agreed with his pupil Hermogenes and declared his representation to be "very believable". When asked what kind of behavior Hermogenes succeeded in gaining friendship with the gods, what kind of service he had to provide for divine help, Hermogenes replied very pragmatically: “I speak to their praise (it costs nothing); what they give, I always give them back; I guard my tongue as best I can, and wherever I call you as a witness, I will not say anything wrong. "

Founder of conventionalist semantics

Hermogenes also seems to have been interested in linguistic and semantic questions. In any case, Plato shows him in his dialogue Kratylos , which deals with the relationship between the meaning of the words and the wording, as a conversation partner of Socrates and Kratylos. Hermogenes advocates the opposite thesis to Kratylos, who assumes a natural, objective connection between word meaning and wording, which assumes that word meaning and wording are only related to one another through a convention among the speakers of the language.

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• Plato: Complete Works. Volume II. Dialogue Kratylos . Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1957, p. 153ff.
• Xenophon: Memories of Socrates ( Memorabilia ). Ph. Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2005.
• Xenophon: The banquet . Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 1957, p. 36f.