Socrates: The Good Life
Socrates is generally considered the first major philosopher of Western civilization.
Before him there lived about a dozen other Greek thinkers, the so-called Pre-Socratics,
who also produced significant work from about 600 BCE on. But little of that
work has come down to us. Socrates is the first Western philosopher about who
a good deal is known. He was a widely discussed figure among the Greeks of his
day, and he has remained an icon of wisdom in the history of Western thought.
It is primarily through him that the West has gotten the idea of what philosophy
is, and what it may be like to live a philosophical life. Socrates, one might
say, gave us a philosophical definition of the good life.
Socrates was born in 470, and he died in 399. His entire life he lived in Athens.
During that time he experienced both the "Golden Age" of his native
city, as well as Athens’ disastrous defeat at the end of the long and
ruinous Peloponnesian War. The city's "Golden Age" was inaugurated
by the Greeks’ spectacular victory over two invading Persian armies in
490 and 480. Athens emerged from that victory not only as one of the most important
commercial centers of the Mediterranean world, but also as the leader of a military
alliance that quickly transformed the city into a dominant naval power. By controlling
the funds of the alliance, Athens managed to channel a significant portion of
the annual contributions of her allies into a lavish building program that turned
the city into a place of architectural and cultural splendor. Under the supervision
of the famed sculptor Phidias, the Parthenon and other monumental structures
were erected on the Acropolis. And around the agora--the market place
and civic center of the city--numerous temples, court structures, halls, shrines
and statues formed an environment that functioned as the visual and administrative
center of a thriving imperial metropolis.
Not far from the agora, the Odeon and the Theatre of Dionysus provided
spaces for elaborate musical and theatrical productions. Twice a year such playwrights
as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes competed for prizes with splendid
performances for thousands of spectators. During official festivities countless
visitors from all around the Mediterranean Sea came to admire the wonders of
Athenian culture.
The Acropolis of Athens
During most of the 5th century Athens was a democracy. While the leadership
of the city tended to be from the propertied classes, even an eminent aristocrat
like Pericles had to be democratically elected to public office by the people’s
Assembly, the main legislative body in which all male citizens could vote. In
addition, most court cases were decided by large juries of ordinary citizens.
That made effective public speaking and forensic debating skills highly important
for anyone who wanted to succeed in any area of public life. As a consequence
numerous teachers of public speaking and forensic debating—known as the
sophists--were attracted to Athens from all parts of Greece; the growing wealth
of the city could afford handsome fees for their tutorial services.
The presence of many sophists in the city was a primary reason for the transformation
of Athens into the main center of Greek intellectual life. Sophists did not
only educate the sons of the upper classes, they also absorbed and debated the
works of Greek--and probably foreign--thinkers among themselves, thus creating
an atmosphere of broad-minded intellectual exchange that laid the groundwork
for a cosmopolitan civilization. While many smaller cities and outlying regions
produced outstanding thinkers and artists, it was primarily in Athens that the
various minds would meet and publish their work. Through cross-fertilization
and competition within the context of a thriving and powerful metropolis, these
minds developed their talents and productions to the high degrees of excellence
by which classical Athens established itself as the first major center of Western
civilization.
The boisterous mood of Athens' "Golden Age" was manifest in the often
quoted praise of the city delivered by Pericles in 431. Pericles was a powerful
speaker and skillful politician. During the public funeral of the first casualties
of the Peloponnesian War the popular leader of the city flattered his fellow-citizens
by assuring them that they were the best, and that Athens was vastly superior
to any other commonwealth in sight. Thus he declared, among other things:
Our constitution does not copy the laws of other states: we are a model
for others, not their imitators. The city's government favors the many rather
than the few, that's why it is called a democracy. Our laws provide equal justice
for all. Success in public life depends on ability and merit, not on social
origin and class. Nor does poverty impede anyone’s advancement…
We are the school of all Greeks. I doubt that the rest of the world can produce
a type of man that is as versatile, resourceful, and self-reliant as the Athenian.
And that this is not just ceremonious bragging, but a plain fact, is proven
by the power of the state based on such traits. For Athens alone among all cities
is found, when tested, to be greater than her reputation. (1)
Pericles
It was because of the Peloponnesian War that the "Golden Age" came
to an end. The war lasted from 431 to 404. Its basic cause was the imperial
arrogance with which Athens treated not only her own allies, but also other
Greek city states that were not under Athenian control. Some of her allies wanted
to secede from the alliance, for example, because they did not wish to pay for
the splendor of the domineering city with their annual contributions for defense.
Athens prevented such secessions by military force and economic sanctions, thus
reducing many member states to virtual colonies. Athens also added further "allies"
to her empire, whether these newcomers assented to such incorporation into the
empire or not. In time more and more independent cities became afraid that they,
too, would eventually be conquered and annexed. As a precaution they formed
their own federation, and they made Sparta with its feared army their military
leader. For a time the explicitly anti-democratic city of Sparta became thus,
paradoxically, the widely acknowledged champion of Greek liberty.
Many Greeks had no desire to engage in a major war. Even in Athens many were
weary of such a prospect. Peace negotiations with Sparta took place. But Pericles,
bent on making Athens the uncontested leader of the Greek world, repeatedly
provoked hostilities and armed conflict. He was not only a competent administrator
and general, but also a wily manipulator of public opinion; he knew how to nurture
among ordinary citizens the kind of patriotism that assumed that everything
Athenian was always better than anything else. A majority of Athenian voters
was willing to follow Pericles wherever his ambition would lead them. The empire,
after all, provided them with large amounts of tribute money, colonies, land
for settlements in overseas regions, and with the emotional satisfaction of
dominating the lives of other people. Given their powerful navy and their abundant
resources, Athenians had plausible reasons for thinking that they could subdue
Sparta and her allies in a short time, and thus crown their past achievements
by making themselves the manifest hegemon of Hellas.
The war proved to be a disaster not only for Athens, but for most Greeks. It
lasted much longer than anyone expected. It decimated the population, caused
vicious civil strife, wiped out whole cities, ruined much industry and commerce,
brutalized Greek life, and in the long run subjected most of Greece to the power
of foreign empires and rulers. The enterprise that Pericles conceived as the
ultimate consummation of Athenian and Greek glory turned out to be a protracted
exercise in self-destruction. Politically Greece never fully recovered from
the events between 431 and 404. The only Athenian achievement that survived
the war intact was Greek intellectual culture. Together with Greek as the international
language of educated people it established itself as a dominant life-shaping
force in the Mediterranean world for centuries to come.
The brilliant achievements of Athenian and Greek culture did little to check
the brutalities of armed conflict. Numerous atrocities were committed during
the Peloponnesian War. One incident became especially notorious: the conquest
and annihilation of the small island city of Melos. The incident became well
known because the Athenian general and historian Thucydides reported it in his
history of the war—in conjunction with the sort of arrogant thinking that
Athenian diplomats displayed when they tried to talk the citizens of Melos into
an uncontested surrender. Mention of the incident is helpful, as it shows how
dark the shadow was that the war cast on the city that had produced the cultural
splendor of the "Golden Age."
Until 415 Melos had been neutral, posing a threat neither to Athens nor Sparta.
In that year, before also assaulting the much more powerful city of Syracuse
in Sicily, Athens demanded that the small island become part of her empire and
war effort. The Meliens pleaded to be left alone; they had no desire to fight
on either side. The Athenians threatened to attack them unless the Meliens agreed
to their demand. During a last parley the Athenian ambassadors offered the following
piece of cynical reasoning:
We on our part will not use fancy phrases stating, for example, that we
have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we are
moving against you now because of injuries you have inflicted on us--highfalutin'
talk that nobody would believe anyway. And we ask you on your part not to imagine
that you will move us by saying that you, though once a colony of Sparta, have
not joined Sparta in the war, or that you have never done us any harm. Instead
we suggest that you should try to get what it is actually possible for you to
get, taking into consideration what we both really think. For you know just
as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people,
the standard of justice depends on the power to coerce, and that
the strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak accept what they
are forced to accept. (2)
When the Meliens still decided to resist, Athens starved them into unconditional
surrender within a few months. The Athenian Assembly then voted to put all Melien
men, down to the age of fourteen, to death, and to sell the women and children
into slavery to offset the cost of the military operation. After the mass execution
the territory of the island was annexed and handed over to 500 Athenian settlers.
(It was in response to the Melos incident that Euripides wrote the anti-war
play The Women of Troy, a highly emotional pageant of misery that shows
captured women as they are carted off, together with other war booty, as chattel
or sex slaves. Euripides, although an ardent patriot at the beginning of the
war, eventually became so disgusted with Athens that toward the end of his life
he exiled himself from his native city.)
This, then, the splendor of the "Golden Age" as well as the brutality
of the Peloponnesian War, was the social and cultural context within which Socrates
lived his life. It is important to keep this context in mind because it explains
to a large extent the nature of the philosopher's work. As will be seen, Socrates
did not identify with the culture of his day. It would be a serious misunderstanding
to think that Socrates was anything like “a representative of his culture.”
His whole life and thinking expresses, in fact, a profound rejection of the
dark as well as the seemingly bright sides of classical Greece. To
understand Socrates the philosopher is to understand how much he stood against
the very essence of the culture of his age. Socrates was a deliberate
outsider among his fellow-Athenians and fellow-Greeks, an intellectual stranger,
and his critical distance to the culture and society that surrounded him is
a significant part of what defines him as a philosopher. This should become
clear by taking a closer look at some of the outstanding traits of his life
and thought.
Unlike many of his well-to-do and aristocratic friends and disciples, Socrates
was of middle-class origin. His father was a stonecutter or sculptor, and his
mother a midwife. He may have inherited a modest estate, which allowed him to
pursue his true calling--philosophical inquiry. By dedicating his life to the
intensive pursuit of wisdom, however, he eventually neglected the economic side
of his life to such a degree that he became rather poor. That fact did not bother
him personally, but it may have made life less than comfortable for his wife
Xanthippe, who had to run their household and raise their three sons. Then as
later, people differed with regard to the amount of material goods that are
necessary for a good life. Xanthippe may have had her own ideas about the matter,
and there may have been marital tensions because of that.
Many authors of Antiquity loved to describe Xanthippe as the proverbial nag
who had no sympathy for her husband's high-minded calling. According to Socrates’
student Xenophon, the philosopher was once asked how he could stand the often
foul temper of Xanthippe. The philosopher's reply was:
Men who want to become expert horsemen will not acquire the most docile
horses, but the spirited ones. They believe that if they can handle these they
will be able to handle any horse. I take a similar approach. I want to be able
to deal with all human beings. I have Xanthippe to deal with. Getting along
with her insures me that I will get along with the rest of humankind. (3)
Like all male citizens of Athens, Socrates had to serve in the army, and he
fought in several battles of the Peloponnesian War. Although he never aspired
to any elevated rank, he seems to have distinguished himself through courage
and endurance under adverse conditions. In 406 he held a minor office in the
democratic administration of the city when it was his allotted turn. Otherwise
Socrates deliberately stayed out of the politics of the city, the area in which
most ambitious Athenians tried to distinguish themselves. The contribution that
he wished to make to the life of Athens was of a different kind. The fame (or
notoriety) that he enjoyed among his fellow-citizens was based entirely on his
philosophical work.
What, then, was this work? Considering that Socrates never wrote any books,
what exactly did he do? He regularly went either to the agora, or to
one of the gymnasiums outside the city walls, to meet his friends and to discuss
certain fundamental questions with them. Often bystanders and chance visitors
became involved in the discussions as well. Socrates' typical procedure was
to raise such questions as "What is justice?", "What is beauty?",
"What is knowledge?", "What is friendship?", "What
is virtue?" and so forth, and to invite others to submit answers for scrutiny.
People, usually confident of their presumed knowledge, would submit answers,
and Socrates would pick the answers apart, showing in detail why the offered
definitions were not sufficient. New and improved definitions would be offered,
and Socrates would demolish them in turn. After perhaps several hours of this
sort of dialogue, everybody, including Socrates, had to admit that they did
not really know what justice or beauty or knowledge are--that they were plainly
ignorant of something that they thought they had known.
To no one's surprise, such an admission of ignorance did not please everyone
who had to make it, particularly when it had to be made in the midst of a gleefully
grinning audience. While Socrates found many friends and admirers among those
who could appreciate an intelligent discussion, he also made a good many enemies
among those whose egos got bruised in the process. Some expressed their anger
abusively during the discussions; others bore grudges for years to come. In
the long run Socrates was to pay a dear price for challenging people's assumptions
and pretenses in the way he did.
While for a number of participants these discussions were not much more than
an intellectual sport, or at best an opportunity to hone their forensic debating
skills, for Socrates himself and his closer friends such philosophical inquiries
were of existential importance. Socrates was committed with utmost seriousness
to defining the true essentials of life, and thereby to discover his own true
self. Friends like Plato (who became a professional philosopher himself) and
Xenophon (who chose to become a soldier of fortune and popular writer) were
dedicated to him and his inquiries because they wanted to learn what it is to
live a truly good life. They were young men who found themselves at the beginning
of their careers, who were not content with simply following the guidelines
of the older generation or the Athenian mainstream, and who looked for an inner
and philosophical foundation for their conduct. For them philosophy was the
way to consciously define their existence, and Socrates was the teacher who
provided them with a philosophical model of honest inquiry and impeccable conduct.
By searching for true justice, true
beauty, or true friendship, Socrates inevitably called into question
what was widely believed to be justice, beauty, friendship, and so
forth. Socrates could not be a philosopher without casting serious doubt on
traditional wisdom and on what was then common sense. With every question he
raised he had to shake deeply held convictions. He had to cast doubt on the
authority of fathers, the viability of tradition, the soundness of popular beliefs,
the veracity of religious myths, the wisdom of established authorities, and
the validity of long-standing conventions. As a consequence many Athenians
considered him a dangerous subversive who made it his business to undermine
the very foundations of their state. Noticing the keen interest and devotion
with which many of Athens' young men followed their challenging teacher, some
of the elders started to talk about Socrates' philosophical discussions as a
"corruption of the minds of the young."
All this took place within the context of a broad cultural transition that had
become inevitable at a time when Athens transformed itself from a second-rate
city into a dominant naval power and center of international trade. Athens exported
large amounts of wine, olives, and pottery to all parts of the known world,
and she was dependent for the survival of her growing population on the wheat
and other products from such distant places as Sicily, Egypt, and the Black
Sea. Her warships patrolled the international sea lanes to keep them safe for
commerce. As a result Athenian sailors and merchants became increasingly familiar
with and used to cultures and customs different from their own, while resident
aliens from all over the Mediterranean region introduced exotic cults and foreign
outlooks to the burgeoning city of their choice. It is, furthermore, likely
that the growing slave population also made significant contributions to the
internationalization of Athenian society. The basic fact is that within a few
decades Athens had changed from a community of narrowly defined local traditions
to a metropolis of multicultural cosmopolitanism.
In conjunction with these social and cultural developments, the sophists (most
of whom did not hail from Athens) had made it a regular feature of their teachings
to point out the great variety of human cultures and the apparent relativity
of all moral values, systems, and feelings. Some of the sophists had, in fact,
drawn rather nihilistic conclusions from their relativistic views. Some of them
taught that there was no such thing as right and wrong, or that right was whatever
the most powerful individuals or groups would declare to be right. (The Athenian
presentation during the Melos negotiations quoted above is an example of how
the might-is-right doctrine was actually used by Athenian officials.)
Such teachings and the actual erosion of traditional Athenian values through
the growing internationalization of Athenian life unnerved many of the more
conservative citizens. In spite of the general open-mindedness and tolerance
that characterized Athenian society, a number of Athenians grew quite hostile
toward the sophists and their non-traditional teachings. Some sophists and philosophers
were, in fact, expelled from the city, and their books publicly burned.
Although Socrates was by no means a sophist (he did not teach for money, and
many of his discussions are energetic efforts to combat the relativism and nihilism
of notorious sophists), the general public tended to throw him in with the lot.
In 423 the playwright Aristophanes produced his comedy "The Clouds"
in which Socrates was lampooned as an unscrupulous sophist as well as a crazy,
godless scientist. The play reinforced all the stereotypes that ordinary people
had of sophists, philosophers, and intellectuals in general. When at the end
of the play outraged citizens set fire to the "Thinkery" of Socrates
and his associates, it was presumably with great satisfaction that the audience
heard the arsonists’ passionate condemnation of the philosopher: "Ah
you … you badmouthed the gods! You studied the surface of the moon! Let’s
get' em, guys! Let’s beat' m down! They had it coming, those bastards,
what with their blasphemies and impious insults …” (4)
While "The Clouds" is, of course, a farce, produced primarily to make
people laugh, the arsonists’ murderous fury nevertheless gave expression
to a deep-seated hostility that many Athenians felt toward the man who taught
their sons to ask critical questions about their values and way of life. There
is little doubt that by making his caricature of Socrates the hate-target of
his play, Aristophanes helped a great deal in preparing the philosopher's later
fate.
It seems to have been typical for the historical Socrates to not have come up
with any final answers to the questions that he raised in his various discussions.
(There are, to be sure, answers to some of his questions in the Socratic dialogues
that Plato and Xenophon wrote down. But most scholars think that these answers
were provided by the students, rather than by Socrates himself.) For
Socrates the questioning was always more important than the answers. His primary
task was not to teach any specific doctrines, but to make people think.
Invoking the profession of his mother, Socrates compared himself to a midwife
who helps to deliver the ideas of other people, not his own. As far
as his own knowledge was concerned, Socrates never tired of proclaiming his
own ignorance.
One of Socrates' friends once asked the oracle at Delphi: Who is the wisest
man in Greece? The alleged answer was: Socrates. When Socrates was told about
this he was puzzled. Thinking the matter over, he still insisted that he was
as ignorant as everybody else. The only way in which he thought he may be wiser
than other people was by knowing that he was ignorant, while most people thought
they were not. "I know that I do not know" is
a center piece of Socrates’ wisdom.
One may wonder about the point of Socrates' philosophical inquiries if they
do not result in any final answers. It has, in fact, become common to dismiss
philosophy altogether on the ground that philosophers seem to squabble endlessly
about ideas that forever evade confirmation or refutation. Even if it were true,
however, that no answers are ever possible to Socrates' philosophical questions,
the activity of questioning assumptions and critically analyzing possible answers
is by no means a waste of time. Seeing that certain answers to questions are
invalid, for example, can be an important insight, even if valid answers should
not be available. And besides, becoming adept in critical inquiry cannot but
help a person to refine his or her general understanding of things.
What was ultimately most important about Socrates' inquiries
was, indeed, the unceasing practice and habit of being critical and thoughtful--of
not being blind to one's own unfounded convictions and presuppositions.
Thoughtfulness and critical self-awareness as a way of life is what Socrates
stands for. That is why he adopted “Know thyself” as the main maxim
for his life, and why his best known pronouncement is "the
unexamined life is not worth living." Life, according to him, is
not something that is just to be lived--lived by following blindly and headlong
primal instincts, popular convictions, or time-honored customs. The
good life is a life that questions and thinks about things; it is a life of
contemplation, self-examination, and open-minded wondering. The good life is
thus an inner life—the life of an inquiring and ever expanding mind.
In light of such a conception of human existence it is
no wonder that Socrates did not think much of the life that most of his contemporaries
lived. "The glory that was Athens" looked rather dubious to him, and
the headlong eagerness and unquestioning self-confidence with which most of
his countrymen pursued material wealth and military glory struck him as seriously
misguided. The splendor that Athens and the rest of Greece represented to him
was to a large extent a false life. That becomes clear when one looks at what
he thought about such widespread preoccupations as money, social standing, and
sex.
As a major commercial metropolis, Athens's main business was business, and her
thriving port at the Piraeus offered numerous investors the opportunity to engage
in profitable enterprises. To become wealthy and to live a luxurious social
life was a respectable goal for any young man of some means. During the 5th
century weapons manufacturers, mine operators, bankers, import-export merchants,
and all sorts of domestic traders had become as rich and influential in Athens'
social hierarchy as the traditional landed aristocracy, and to most inhabitants
the ever expanding commerce of the city seemed a bright future.
To the chagrin of prominent businessmen, Socrates openly rejected all this.
In his eyes the business life was not much of a life. Repeatedly he described
the total investment of a man's passions and time in commerce as unworthy of
a true gentleman and lover of wisdom. Socrates advocated a simple life, a life
of only minimal production and consumption--a life of voluntary poverty, as
it would be called today. According to him material production and consumption
could not possibly be a serious end in itself, but at best a mere means to achieve
something of greater importance and value. Thus he advised the son of the influential
politician Anytus not to take over the family's business, a tannery, but to
devote his life to philosophical studies instead—a piece of advice that
was to cost him.
In accordance with his disdain for Athens’ general commercialism, Socrates
made it a point to not charge for his teaching. Most sophists demanded considerable
fees for consultations, tutorials, courses, or even for having their brains
picked in informal conversations. In time some of them became successful investors
as well, and thus able to amass fortunes. In such an environment most sophists
found it natural to compete eagerly for students who could pay for an education,
and they did not look kindly on a man who shared his knowledge for free. Antiphon,
a particularly enterprising sophist, came to Socrates one day with the intention
of luring students away from him. In front of these potential customers he said:
Socrates, I assume that the purpose of philosophy is to increase a person's
happiness. What you get out of the love of wisdom, however, is quite different.
The life you live would drive even a slave to abandon his master. Your food
and drink is poor fare. Your cloak is not only shabby, but is never changed
summer or winter. And you don’t even wear a tunic. You refuse to take
money, the very getting of which is a pleasure, and the possession of which
makes a man independent and happy. Now, isn’t it true that teachers try
to be a model for their students? If that is the case, however, you are an outright
instructor of unhappiness. (5)
Socrates, of course, did not think that happiness is a result of affluence and
material consumption. A rich and active mind is happier by far than a consumer
of opulent foods and fine clothing. “My belief is that to have no wants
is divine, and to have as few as possible is next to divine,” he tells
Antiphon during the above confrontation
The idea of voluntary simplicity, which became one of the enduring legacies
of Socrates' teachings, had an important political dimension as well. In Book
II of Plato's Republic Socrates leaves no doubt that in his mind a
healthy state is a minimal state--a state of economic minimalism. Thus
he tells his friend Glaucon, who sees no reason why people should not indulge
in materialism and luxuries:
In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the state is the one
which I have described earlier [a society in which only the basic needs of all
members are satisfied]. But if you wish to take a look at a society at fever
heat, I have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be satisfied with
the simpler way of life. They will be for adding sofas, and tables, and other
furniture; also dainties and perfumes, and incense, and call girls, and cakes,
all these not of one sort, but of all varieties. We must go beyond the necessities
of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes. The
arts of the decorator and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion, and
gold and ivory and all sorts of material must be procured. .... And with that
we must enlarge our borders, for the original healthy state is no longer sufficient.
(6)
A wealthy state, in Socrates’ estimate, is not a healthy state. The state
that exists to secure a luxurious life for its citizens is bound to end up fighting
for limited resources, and to engage in expansionist politics and war. Inequality
and injustices are sure to follow. The final result (so Socrates implies) would
be a state like Athens and her troublesome empire: feared and hated by ever
more people, always required to maintain a large military force to preserve
order and security, incessantly preoccupied with accumulating ever more wealth,
and by no means insured against eventual defeat and disaster. An Athens dedicated
to opulence and imperial expansion was, in Socrates’ eyes, a betrayal
of the city’s better nature, and a sad waste of her human and cultural
potential.
About Athenian politics Socrates was as disdainful as he was about the world
of rampant commerce. It is in connection with politics that Socrates' untiring
polemics against rhetoric and sophistry become most cutting. His contempt for
the kind of manipulation and mass deception that pervade much of political discourse
is well expressed at the beginning of Plato's dialogue Menexenus. Concerning
the customary patriotic speeches at the graves of the war dead (like the one
delivered by Pericles in 431) Socrates sarcastically remarks:
O Menexenus, death in battle is certainly in many ways a noble thing. The
dead man gets a fine and costly funeral, although he may have been poor, and
an elaborate speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago prepared
what he has to say, although he who is praised may not have been good for much.
The speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done—that
is the beauty of them—and they steal away our souls with their embellished
words. In every conceivable form they praise the city, and they praise those
who died in war, and all our ancestors who went before us, and they praise ourselves
also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and
I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and
all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer
man than I was before. (7)
Decorous patriotic speeches tend to falsify reality by giving those who listen
to them an inflated sense of self-worth, according to Socrates. By conceiving
himself as part of a powerful and glorious collective, every individual listener
feels to be more than he really is. Weak and poorly developed individuals in
particular can hide their deficiencies behind the façade of some majestic
social body. If they are insignificant as individuals, as parts of the great
city of Athens they can feel proud and good about themselves. Thus they run
with the herd, giving up what would really make them strong—individual
self-reliance and inner independence. They are swayed by the emotions incited
by manipulative speakers, and they become the willing tools in the hands of
ambitious politicians. They embark on the sort of vainglorious campaigns that
produced the disasters of the Peloponnesian War.
There was a third major aspect of Greek life that Socrates subverted in his
teachings: the classical cult of physical beauty and the various values connected
with it. Due to their frequent wars and the need for well-trained citizen armies,
most Greek males cultivated a habit of physical fitness and power, particularly
during their younger years. Organized sports, such as the Olympic Games, were
a direct result of this preoccupation. Public interest in outstanding athletes
was great; victors in Olympic competitions were not only handsomely paid, but
often also maintained at public expense. The statues of athletes frequently
adorned temple areas or agoras. To the wonderment of Persians and other
foreigners, athletic exercises and competitions were conducted in the nude,
and nudity in the visual arts was the rule rather than the exception. Artists
usually used well-shaped athletes as models for their depictions of the gods
(while using good-looking call girls for their images of goddesses). Physical
beauty, together with erotic passion (elegantly expressed in a rich poetry),
was very much at the heart of classical Greek culture.
Socrates undermined all this by his insistent emphasis of the mind and inner
life. The general and enthusiastic cultivation of beautiful appearances struck
him as superficial, and the often obsessive dedication to sexual pursuits seemed
to him a sort of primitivism that a well-educated person would outgrow as quickly
as possible. For Socrates a person's true self was not in the flesh and its
passions, but in the intellect and its intangible pursuits. Even the feelings
of love were not to be directed toward other persons in their physical individuality,
but rather toward the love of ideas. The raw power of
sexual energy, in other words, was to be transformed and sublimated into the
activities of the mind.
Socrates was well aware of how far his own physical appearance deviated from
the ideal of classical Greek beauty. Socrates' stocky build, protruding eyes,
pot belly, and snub nose contrasted sharply with the model of beauty that was
cultivated and perfected in the celebrated sculptures of the "Golden Age."
Socrates was amused by that discrepancy, not saddened. His friend Plato pointed
out that it was exactly Socrates’ physical unattractiveness that
highlighted his real beauty, the beauty of his mind. Socrates was still attractive,
according to his students, but it was a new kind of attractiveness, an attractiveness
that manifested itself in brilliant argumentation and penetrating thoughts.
Socrates’ teaching concerning the relative unimportance of the body constitutes
a revaluation that was to influence Greek culture profoundly. It was, indeed,
to shape Western culture in general. It inspired Plato to divide all of reality
into two radically separated realms, the world of the senses and the world of
ideas, and to declare the latter to be the only important one. Plato’s
radical dualism, in turn, was to bring about the metaphysics of Christian theology,
the metaphysics that generally devalued the world here and now, and that declared
eternal life to be a matter of a non-physical transcendence. It was under the
guidance of Christian theologians that, hundreds of years after Socrates, the
sculptures of classical Greece were smashed or mutilated as sinful frivolities
or dangerous expressions of a false attachment to the body and the physical
world.
Socrates on Trial
Socrates' distance from the practical political life of Athens, as well as his
inner remoteness from the way of life of his fellow-citizens, gives us a measure
of his principled individualism. His entire life and work has come to stand
for a sharp contrast between individual and society, and for the individual's
independence from any kind of social pressure. For all his individualism, however,
Socrates was not an anti-social thinker; solitary egotism was neither his style
nor his message. During his entire life he was not only fond of socializing
and cultivating warm friendships, but he also showed himself to be a most conscientious
and law-abiding citizen. Significantly, his philosophizing was not carried out
in brooding isolation, like that of later Western philosophers, but in lively
dialogues with friends and opponents. His basic form of communication still
belonged to the oral tradition, not to that of the silently written word. As
for most ancient Greeks, being social for him was not an incidental choice,
but an essential part of human nature. In spite of his dissent from the ways
and norms of the majority, Socrates understood himself to be a political being.
How, then, did he reconcile these two basic conceptions of himself--Socrates
the independent individualist, and Socrates the conscientious member of his
community?
The answer lies in his conception of himself as a "gadfly." In his
own words:
It is literally true, even if it sounds funny, that God has specially appointed
me to this city as though the city were a large thoroughbred horse that because
of its size is inclined to be lazy and in need of stimulation by some stinging
fly. It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office
of such a fly. (7)
It was precisely because of his individualism and independence of mind, in other
words, that Socrates could be useful to his community. By his very withdrawal
from the immediate social consensus, including any ongoing political disputes,
Socrates was able to provide his crucial social service. By keeping his distance
from ordinary life and taking a step back from everything other people were
involved in, he was able to expose those underlying assumptions that usually
remained hidden to most of his contemporaries. Questioning underlying assumptions
was, according to Socrates, what would save a society from blindness and self-destructive
complacency. The stings of a critical mind are what keeps
a culture alive and in motion. No society that is too pleased with itself will
remain strong and healthy for long. Not self-congratulatory speechwriters
and flattering politicians, but society's probing skeptics and possibly disturbing
critics are its most valuable friends.
Stimulating outsiders like Socrates have, of course, rarely been welcomed by
the societies who benefited from their stimulation. While they are active and
alive, challenging gadflies are more often than not brushed off, maligned, despised,
or hunted down and destroyed. It is usually after they are gone that they are
canonized as heroes and recognized as classics. The situation in Athens was
no exception. While Athenians of the 5th century often (and not without some
justification) liked to boast about the liberty that prevailed within her walls,
quite a few disseminators of new ideas nevertheless had to worry about being
put on trial for their thoughts. Around 450 Socrates’ teacher Anaxagoras
had to defend himself in court against the charge of offending religious beliefs.
His major offense was his theory that the sun is a "red-hot stone,"
and the moon "just matter.” Anaxagoras did not believe that sun and
moon are the person-like deities that most Athenians thought them to be. The
court, swayed by religious conservatives, condemned Anaxagoras to death. It
was only because Anaxagoras' close connection to the liberal group around Pericles
that the philosopher could escape the city and his execution.
Ten years earlier the sophist Protagoras of Abdera, famous for his dictum "man
is the measure of all things," had said at a get-together in the house
of Euripides that he was unable to determine whether there are gods or not.
For this admission to agnosticism the Athenians put him on trial, and subsequently
banned him from their city. According to some reports, all his books were publicly
burned. For all its liberality, Athens could be a dangerous place for people
who published unpopular ideas.
In 399 Socrates was summoned to defend himself in court against the charges
of "corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in gods of his
own invention, instead of the gods recognized by the state." (8) It is
possible that the charges were trumped up for political and personal reasons.
Anytus, whose son had been advised by Socrates to give up business in favor
of philosophy, was the main accuser. Socrates, because of his close personal
relationships with upper class Athenians, was also suspected of having been
too sympathetic to the oligarchs who had launched a coup d'état
just a few years earlier. Nevertheless, the charges concerning impiety were
a serious matter in 5th and 4th century Athens, and Socrates was on trial for
his life. The case was to be decided by the usual jury of 501 citizens. The
rules allowed the accusers to state their case, and the defendant to defend
himself in one speech. A verdict had to be reached within one day. There was
no appeal.
Plato was present during the trial. His Apology, written a few years
later, is presumably based on the speech that Socrates gave in his own defense.
"Apology" is the Greek word for "defense." While Socrates
defended himself against the charges, he was by no means apologetic about his
basic role as the gad fly of Athens:
Men of Athens, I love and respect you, but I will obey God rather than you.
And while I have life and strength in me, I will never abstain from the practice
and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet and telling him in
my way: 'You, my friend--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of
Athens--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor
and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest
improvement of the soul, something that you never consider or heed at all?'
And if the person with whom I am discussing says: 'Sure, but I do care,’
then I do not let him go right away, but rather interrogate and examine and
cross-examine him. And if I think he has no virtue in him, but only says he
has, I reproach him by saying that he undervalues what is best, and overvalues
what is worth less.... For I don't do anything except go around persuading you
all, old and young, not to take thought for your social standing or your properties,
but first and chiefly to care about the great improvements of the soul. I tell
you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and
every other good, public and private. This is my teaching, and if this is the
doctrine that corrupts the youth, I am indeed a mischievous person. But if anyone
says that this is not my teaching, then he is lying. Thus, men of Athens, do
or do not as Anytus demands, and either acquit me or not. But whichever you
choose, understand that I will never alter my ways--even if I have to die more
than once…(9)
Socrates' speech caused angry uproars among the jurors. After he rested his
defense, the jury convicted him of the charges by a vote of 280 to 221. The
defiant tone of his statements contributed much to his condemnation. In the
following deliberation about his punishment Socrates made things worse for himself.
Athenian law provided that a convicted defendant could propose an alternative
punishment to that proposed by the prosecution. It was then up to the jury to
decide which punishment to impose. Socrates, instead of suggesting something
like exile, something the jury might have accepted, proposed that he be maintained
at public expense in recognition of his service as the city's inconvenient critic.
As a result the incensed jurors condemned him to death--this time by a vote
of 361 to 140.
Socrates spent a month in jail before he was made to drink the fatal cup of
hemlock. Influential friends offered to rescue him by way of a jailbreak. Socrates
refused the offer. He argued that a righteous person has to respect the law,
even if convicted unjustly. He calmly drank the poison, and thus died at the
hands of a democracy that proved too weak to endure the critical inquiries of
one of her most remarkable minds.
Notes
(From: Jorn K. Bramann: Educating Rita and Other Philosophical Movies)
"Citizen Kane"
"A Heart in Winter"
Philosophical Films: A Special Topics Course
Philosophical Forum