The Philosopher

"No, you don't get it."

"Yes, I do. You just think what you're saying makes sense."

"That's because it does."

"In your twisted brain, perhaps. Let me go over it again..."

(3rd person running over) "Hey guys! What's up?"

"I'm just trying to point out that our dear friend here is retarded."

"And I'm trying to prove our companion is incompetent."

"Oh, well if that's the goal, let me go get Socrates! He's just around the corner, and he'll prove you're both morons!"

(Both) "Oh, hell..."

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When I read a book the way I pick a subject for writing is, basically, whatever sticks in my mind. Some particular feature/tendency/theory catches my attention and I start trying to follow it. It becomes a bigger and bigger focus and eventually the locus of my reading efforts. In this way I read over a dozen Platonic dialogues with no real central interest in Plato, but rather in that infamous man who inspired Plato to start writing in the first place. I am, of course, talking about Socrates.

As far as is known Plato spent little time with the man who would be the focus of his philosophy for almost his entire life. He is mentioned only a couple of times in the dialogues he wrote, and never does he say so much as a word in them. Instead he seems to be one of many followers of the man who simply loved to watch him work. "[Y]oung men of the richer classes, who have not much to do, come about me of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often imitate me, and proceed to examine others . . . ." (Apology 23c) One probably enjoyed it in the way children always enjoy seeing their superiors made fun of: the youth would see Socrates going about with nothing particular to do, walking up to men of power and making them embarrassed and flailing about just through a simple argument. The rebellious "Why? Why?" of kids became a tool that adults couldn't walk away from, since Socrates had the most amazing power to make these people with answers look like fools for holding them, and then leaving them with nothing to fall back on, be it authority or experience, for Socrates would even challenge that.

What did Socrates do? He says that he is looking for a wise man with the lamp of Diogenes before the time of Diogenes. According to his own account, he spent his own youth looking "to know the causes of things, and why a thing is and is created or destroyed appeared to me to be a lofty profession." (Phaedo 96a) Like any youth, he knew the way the world basically worked. Also like any youth, he was wrong. The difference was that he came to realize this. "I would be far from thinking . . . that I knew the cause of any of them, by heaven I would . . . Nor am I any longer satisfied that I understand the reason why one or anything else is either generated or destroyed or is at all, but I have in my mind some confused notion of a new method, and can never admit the other." (Phaedo 97a-b) From this ignorance he advanced into a new one with a reading of the Pre-Socratic Anaxagoras, only to be again disappointed. His disappointment with philosophers, however, was not disappointment with philosophy:

I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul . . . So in my own case, I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried to apprehend them by the help of the senses. And I thought that I had better have recourse to reasoning and seek the truth of things there. (Phaedo, 100d-e)

For Socrates knowledge was always the first thing one valued. "I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul." (Apology 30a) What Socrates sought was truth, and he sought it in a place where truth was perhaps the least valued thing there was. Not to say that people were opposed to truth, but the time and place were the democratic period of Athens. What was good was determined by the voices of the many. The laws were passed by everyone, and this was something that seemed to frighten Socrates. "The enemy against whom Plato (through Socrates - I will note here that what I am discussing is technically Plato's character of Socrates, which will be explained in more detail in the end) really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of the greater part of his life and writings, was not Sophistry, either in the ancient or the modern sense of the term, but Commonplace." (John Stuart Mill, Edinburgh Review April 1866) What Mill calls Commonplace in Athens bears a striking similarity to Commonplace now in America. "The men of his day (like those of ours - Mill's note) thought that they knew what Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honourable and Shameful, were . . . ." But what are they? Have you asked a person lately what is evil? The terms are nothing more than literal commonplace: people use them as though they know exactly what they mean, when they simply do not. They use words as others use them and consider that knowledge, or at least that's the assumption here. We will have to modify Mill's statement a bit, however, for we cannot leave the infamous Sophists completely off the hook. What they represent is the ultimate conclusion of a lack of real truth. With skills in sophistry "the truth" becomes nothing more than a commodity. Convince the group and you become canon. How one convinces the group of truth requires no connection to truth itself, but only the ability to mystify and clarify where appropriate. Eventually one learns to treat the group like a dog, allowing it to feed off of its own feeling of self-satisfaction. Thus truth becomes that which is stated loudest and with the greatest fanfare.

Socrates would have none of that. A fact is a fact is a fact. We must not simply use words to mean whatever we decide they mean. But if not, then what is the alternative? It is here that we arrive at the Forms (or Ideas). What is Justice? "Justice is when a man gives people what they deserve." Is that all? "Justice is the will of the stronger." How does that mesh with our idea of fairness, for doesn't Justice involve fairness? Truth is permanent. It is also eternal. Furthermore, it sets us free. For Socrates there is no doubt that the best way of life is that of the philosopher. "[T]he unexamined life is not worth living . . . ." (Apology 38a) It is not worth living. A life in ignorance is a failed life. Thus the quest for knowledge is the only quest that matters, for with understanding of the truth comes understanding of ourselves and our purpose. What better knowledge could there be?

Into the picture comes the oracle. Whether it actually happened or it was one of Socrates' many myths is difficult to say. It was not necessary; the value Socrates attached to truth would not allow him to sit idly by as he saw men basking in their own ignorance. And so he would talk to men, and here we see the man Socrates: You, Euthyphro/Ion/Protagoras, you are a master of piety/Homer/virtue, why don't you tell me about it? Did Socrates believe these men were actually wise before he started interrogating them? Perhaps at first. The oracle at Delphi said that Socrates was the wisest of all men. This would certainly seem strange to a man who was habitually doubting every knew knowledge system presented to him. "What sense does that make, that I, who know nothing, am the wisest of all men?" And so he talks to a few of the real "wise men" in order to see how he can be wise. He presents his doubts to them in the way that he challenges himself: how can I take these claims and make them universal? For if they are not universal, they cannot be truths. Thus Socrates seeks the ground for the knowledge of these men, and finds that, in fact, the "knowledge" they profess is nothing more than the ability to give ready answer. Find this enough and one will start to doubt anyone who claims knowledge. And if they are all like this, well, then the skeptic at heart does indeed seem to be wiser after all. "I may not know much, but at least I don't take the false to be the true." This again is why the Sophists are such terrible enemies in Athens. For they can convince two different people that the same question has two different answers, and both will leave thinking those contradictory answers are true. To give someone the power to do this to people for gain is the worst of all crimes if knowledge is the goal.

And so one must set the course of men straight to the best of one's ability. Now again we return to the image of Socrates, at this later point aiming perhaps not as much for his own enlightenment (as he was developing his own quite original theories about that) but to make people aware of when they were wrong. It's the right thing to do, after all. It's also a good way to piss a lot of people off. The irony is that the charges laid against Socrates, those of disbelieving in the gods of the state and of corrupting the youth, sound like charges that should be laid against the Sophists if anything. The explanation is simple, however: the Sophists were flatterers, and Socrates is the last human being ever who could be a real flatterer. "I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than live speaking in yours." (Apology 38e - in my opinion one of the best statements of the free mind ever written) The Sophists would be perfectly willing to get out of a crime through Sophistry, and the court would have been perfectly willing to accept it - supplication was a standard part of the court procedure. But for Socrates it was dishonest to flatter one's benefactors, and he would not. He would rather die trying to win the men of Athens over to the side of good than escape a false crime and flee to teach elsewhere.

Ultimately it may have been his choice that has allowed his fame and greatness to be recalled even today. For upon his fearless death people saw the fall of a great man. Those who knew him talked like him and talked about him, and many, such as Xenophon, started to record the life, times, and (most importantly) the conversations of the great philosopher Socrates. Meanwhile a still young poet-turned-philosopher named Plato was sitting alone, contemplating his fate. He did not attend the death of Socrates, supposedly because he was sick. But perhaps it was a sickness of the soul, that of one who sees in his mentor a light and a path, who would follow him unto the ends of the earth and beyond, only to see that which is greatest fall to the very evil he spent his life triumphing against. Against this sickness Plato raged in all his literary and philosophic power, which was not insignificant. His own beliefs about life and the world, influenced supremely by Socrates, gained the voice of their benefactor once again in the dialogues which would define history. As Plato become more and more his own philosopher his methods began to diverge, and in the end Socrates himself finally disappeared, leaving only Plato's unknown figures, but the imprint and the method of the philosopher Socrates still lived through his writings, and the world would not sin again against the wisest of Athenians.

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Next up is an abridgment of Moses Maimonides' The Guide of the Perplexed, an important work in Medieval philosophy, Jewish philosophy, and the philosophy of religion, and a work that stands as a monument in the attempt to create a rational understanding of religion through reason. For now I leave you with Socrates on why, in the end, a man need not fear the foolishness of others:

But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the majority must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion.

I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they would also be able to do the greatest good - and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish . . . . (Crito 44d)