It was Socrates who, by all accounts, was the father of philosophy, so we might do well to illuminate his purposes, his method of teaching, and how this process that we have since called the Socratic method improves the mind, which is why it is still so important for anyone living in a democracy to understand and use.
But in order to truly understand Socrates, it is essential to understand the social and political context into which he was born and in which he found himself challenged to do his best – even if that meant giving his life for the truth he stood for.
So allow me to provide a relatively brief introduction to the story of Socrates life, which cannot, I think, be well understood apart from the life of Pericles who dedicated his life to it, and the others who lived in this enchanted age.
It was the so-called golden age of Greece, at the very height of its glory -- a time when many still aspired to the highest of their potentials, and the ideal of talking things out reasonably was held dear by men and women of honor and justice.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are those we remember as the fathers of philosophy, but they themselves gave credit to many others for their wisdom, including women, slaves, foreigners, children, their ancestors, and the sages of the east, from whom they themselves learned. These philosophers used their newfound freedom of speech to search for truth, rather than to persuade with deceit, as many of their contemporaries employed.
The dialogues they undertook during those days gave birth to our science, education, politics, economy, art, theatre, and medicine—many of which have gone awry in our time, making this is a tale well worth remembering. Indeed, t> AAATTThere is arguably nothing we need more these > days than the kind of moral pep talk for which Socrates was so > well known.
Still, for reasons that become apparent only in the telling, Socrates’ story is, arguably, the best kept secret of all time, told only, if at all these days, by those who have an interest in keeping it quiet. Why? No doubt because Socrates would be the first to teach the young to question authority – not only to keep them honest, but because this question and answer process was understood to fix understanding in the mind. And sadly, even those who call themselves Socratic scholars do not wish to have their expertise questioned these days. Which helps explain why Socrates is, at once, the greatest and most misunderstood thinker the world has ever known, and why his qualifies as the greatest story never told.
As it turned out, with the birth of democracy came freedom of speech, and with this came the rise of what we might call bullshit. To this point, before around 450 B.C.E., ones’ parents or ‘society’ had been the teachers of traditional wisdom and values (nomos), and the young learned, as they had in primal or folk cultures, as one generation passed the collected wisdom of the past down to the next around the fire on a daily basis. But a revolution of sorts had occurred in Athenian education when, due in part to a multicultural infusion into the city, nomos had come to appear merely relative to how and where one was raised. And so, with the new ways, the old ways of teaching faced widespread skepticism, and new ways of teaching seemed to come from all directions.
A class of professional teachers, called sophists, had grown out of this uncertainty, and while their teachings were suspected by many (including Socrates, though for reasons other than most) to subvert the fabric of society, their popularity grew as they taught the oligarchs, the cities wealthy elite, ways to win their cases in court – even if only by empty words that could dumbfound any opponent, precisely because they made little or no sense, based as they were on mere fallacies, meant only to confuse. The sophists, for their part, mix well with the oligarchs, who themselves cling heartily to nomos – if only because tradition preserves their privilege.
Socrates worry about the sophists way of teaching was not because of the loss of tradition, per se (injustice, for example, has a very long tradition that certainly ought to be lost), but rather because the sophists ways of teaching focused on mere rhetoric, empty words, and bad reasoning – a skill of baffling with bullshit that not only plays on people's insecurities, ignorance, fears, and emotions – but ruins the character of those who used it, for it is a powerful tool of deceit and manipulation.
It’s easy to overlook the power of empty rhetoric to persuade the many (demos) that untruth is true, and to underestimate the damage that was and is still done to truth and democracy by this popular means of deceit. But this is what the sophist teachers of Socrates’ day, and our own, are so good at, that is, manipulating opinions and spinning logic so influence public opinion.
In many respects, they were the early predecessors of today’s masters of advertising and public relations…as poison to democracy today as when empty rhetoric brought down the first democracy. For the jury system and the voice of the people it represented is what was and is unique about democracy. The fact that one could make a case to influence public opinion before large assemblies (which consisted of as much of the population as showed up on any given day), is a large part of what made free speech and democracy valuable. This legal system is what made it participatory, and in theory, just. And this decision-making process was far superior to the notion of justice that had preceded it. (As the story from Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Oresteia tell it, it was the goddess Athena who brought the Greeks this jury system to resolve conflicts that might otherwise degenerate into eye-for-an-eye blood feuds).
Democracy was based on the idea that when people put their heads together to make decisions, they are more likely to come to better decisions than any given individual leader would. Until then, such decisions had been made by one, or a few, powerful and often purely self-interested men (yes, men, for even in democratic Athens, women were not considered citizens, though ‘free women’, that is, unmarried women, like Pericles’ lifelong companion, Aspasia, often had great influence as teachers).
But while the jury system was a vast improvement over the rule of sometimes tyrannical kings, it was nonetheless vulnerable to the power of empty rhetoric that played on the emotions of the assembly and persuaded them by way of fallacy and bad reasoning to act, often even against their own interests. Then, as now, many elected officials both acquired and wielded their power by means of empty rhetoric to play those who don’t know better than to simply vote their gut feelings, which can be very easy to manipulate with fallacies.
If this isn’t sounding familiar yet, then the reader is not paying attention to American politics these days. Suffice it to say that the sophists and oligarchs worked well together to manipulate the rest, based on what amounted to the power of BS.
So Socrates took it as his challenge to help educate the many to use their minds well enough so as not to be so easily manipulated by untruths of the few. This included all those who were unable to afford the sophists high fees, so were for the most part defenseless against the wiles of empty words and twisted logic. One might hope this would still be the purpose of education in democracy today, but given that we don’t get an hour’s education in good reasoning skills through the entirety of our education, this is sadly not the case.
All the more reason that we need the thinking skills Socrates tried to help us develop – for reason is an innate human ability, but like any muscle, needs exercise to grow strong. Without skills in good reasoning, words can as easily lead to evil as to good. So it behooves us to understand the so-called Socratic method better than we do or have for 2400 years now, at least if we hope to save our democracy from the fate that befell the first democracy in Athena’s enchanted city.
And it may be that this is the same reasons why a man could be remembered as ‘the father of western Philosophy,’ and yet remain cloaked in such mystery – like so much buried and reburied treasure. It is at least partly because most students make it all the way to college having learned nothing about Socrates,– except, that is, what they > could glean from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?.
Unfortunately, another reason has to do with the intellectual demand of ancient > literature, which was written for an under-stimulated audience - something that those of us who grew up in an attention deficient age are clearly not! The consequent being that many settle for taking the word of their teachers about many things, including what Socrates and Plato had to say, insuring students only a surface understanding of what must be considered more deeply, not the least of which, what Socrates tried to teach us.
Indeed, Plato’s dialogues (one of only two surviving sources of the historical Socrates) are very possibly the most difficult works in the western tradition, in large part because Plato, like Socrates, deliberately does not say exactly what he is thinking, leaving us to surmise the meaning for ourselves. We might guess this is because his outspoken mentor has recently been put to death for saying too much, but Plato insists that the reason goes much deeper than this, and it is one that primal peoples would understand better than we do today.
In his Seventh Epistle, Plato explains that he has never put his deepest thought into words because written words cannot answer for themselves, and without the dialogic process that is necessary to dialectic understanding, they cannot take a reader all the way to understanding. For that, we must do our own internal work, tethering on truth to all the others.
As Zen scholar Alan Watts puts it, words are useful between people who already share an understanding of the experience, but words alone cannot teach one who does not, in a certain sense, already know. As we’ve said, words are like pointing tools, and while a finger can point at the moon, it would be a great error to confuse the finger with the moon.
Only once we begin to look inward do those words on the page begin to make sense. As Alan Watts put it, “words are useful for communicating between people who have shared the experience.” As Zen masters have said, “While a finger may be used to point at the moon, let us not confuse the finger with the moon.”(Suzuki) Words themselves do not embody meaning enough to actually teach a deep understanding. For that we need what Socrates calls “an inner criteria.”
Physicist David Bohm put it this way: “Whatever we say is words,” but “what we want to talk about is generally not words.”[1]
What is necessary to see it is, “To know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis… Self–knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.”(Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p.xx.)
Therefore, knowing the words is not the same as understanding the meaning of those words. So the consequent of saying too much in one’s writing, Plato knew, is that people who don’t truly understand will simply memorize the words, call them their own, and thus pretend understanding they have not actually achieved. Those who consider this to be the full extent of learning are sure to use such words to ends that are not good – as wolves might use sheep’s clothing.
This is arguably the same reason that Aristotle’s ethics (these days called ‘virtue ethics’) would have us worry that ‘codes’ or ‘rules’ of ethics that allow people to simply fake being a good person, essentially going through the motions of doing the right thing, without ever having to think through or understand what the right thing to do actually is. Because, as the others sages also held, rules and codes and principles are just general rules of thumb that need to be applied to particular circumstances. So a truly virtuous person will be continuously and deliberately thinking through what the right thing to do is in any given circumstance.
Gnosis is, as Plato (who coined the term) explains, that understanding which is beyond words. And it is in this light that Plato says, the written word can be “the first step in forgetting,”[2] if we rely too heavily upon it. As we’ve said, while words can be useful tools, the revelation of truth was understood to be purely experiential, an inner phenomena or “rushing progression of understanding” that can be beyond words altogether, as is, in a certain sense, love. Far from a mere spectacle to be read or watched from outside-looking-in, philosophy in this sense - like music, dance, and poetry - was understood as something meant to be experienced from within.
Words alone cannot ‘teach’ this kind of understanding to anyone who hasn’t learned it first hand, but they can go a long way toward illuminating the meaning of this experience between people who have this first hand knowledge, i.e. gnosis. And might also make those who do not curious enough to reach for this higher experience.
Unfortunately, as we know, we don’t get much initiation in our culture, nor is our learning process sensitive to student readiness. This process involves a sort of ‘purging’ or rethinking what we thought we knew, reevaluating what matters.
As Zen masters would say, ‘A finger is used to point at the moon, but let us not confuse the finger with the moon.” Words are pointing tools, but what they point at when they talk of truth is an inner experience that cannot be seen by the uninitiated, and can be ‘known’ only directly, prior to words, and then only by what the ancients called the ‘initiated’, which is to say, those who have made themselves ready. Anyone who goes through this purification process by which it is achieved may understand it, but it cannot be put into words for someone who has not earned the experience. Enlightenment is reserved for the worthy.
As we’ve said, we can understand why, in the so-called mystery religions, that were still popular in Socrates day, “Dionysus…did not ask his followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly.”(Ehrenreich?, p.256)
Which is why the Eleusian mysteries, a folk religion that most 5th century BC Athenians still participated in, were practiced continuously for over two thousand years without anyone ever revealing the secret (although some playwrights hinted at it in ways that almost got them prosecuted). Part of the taboo was a sort of honor code, to be sure – (similar to that against giving away the ending of a movie to someone who has not yet seen it). But it was also a recognition on the part of the initiated that the experience simply cannot be put into words – because the path to true understanding is experiential. Knowing the words is not the same as understanding the way, the tao.
On the other hand, Plato also admits that the written word, done well, can also function as a tool of recollection, recovery, and revival. Which is why Plato spent the rest of his life after his Socrates, was put to death carefully navigating the ancient taboo against writing, so that we might get a glimpse of the insights that were common to so many ancient cultures. And many ancient insights found the pinnacle of eloquent expression in his work.
Plato’s Socratic Dialogues are very difficult to read for just this reason, because they are not meant to pass on knowledge, but to spur the self-navigated discovery of it. Lucky for us, no matter how we might ignore, forget or malign the truth, it waits as long as necessary for those who would remember it, who will ask the hard questions of themselves, along with Socrates and his friends, and will remember what they’ve known in their soul all along.
Of all the ancient writings, perhaps Plato’s are the most difficult, and deliberately so, because a virtuous person does not want or need to be given direct answers, but rather, prefers to be provoked to think for themselves. For this reason, Plato’s dialogues do not give us direct answers, but rather challenge us to go through the process of reasoning that leads us to sound conclusions of our own. As one reads, one must be thinking, what do I think about the questions they are discussing and the myriad issues that arise in this process of searching for the truth together? This process of dialectic is how we come to understand the truth and the actual meaning of words (that is, logos) in all its oral, written, and experiential forms.
Is it any wonder then, given the dearth of dialogue in our modern schools, and the reluctance to offer challenging reading, that young people make it all the way > to college learning virtually nothing about Socrates, philosophy, or good reasoning?
Still, it’s > become abundantly clear by way of many hundreds of hours of > teaching these remarkable dialogues that, once > inspired by this ancient idealist to undertake these inquires for themselves, young and old alike cannot help but take > deliberate aim at their better selves> .
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Socrates never wrote a word in his life. We come to know this notorious colonizer of dreams, only from the Dialogues of Plato (32-34 of them, depending on how you count), as well as those of Xenophon (about 4 or 5).
If we were to read all of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, we might meet him first as a young man, assisting his mother to midwife a birth, or perhaps visiting the Oracle of Delphi, or talking with the sophists who passed through Athens in their travels. But as most people initially read the dialogue called Plato’s Apology, we tend to meet Socrates first as a seventy-year-old father of toddlers, on trial for his life and presenting his own defense against charges of corrupting the youth of Athens by teaching them to question the gods of the state — charges brought against him by right-wing defenders of traditional piety (some of whom are Plato's closest relatives).
Socrates begins his unapologetic defense by appeal to the jury - 'You be the judge,' he implores them. He's not much of a speaker, he says humbly, as he begins his astonishing oration, recounting the legendary mission that brought him to this destiny.
He had been challenged to the life of inquiry, he explains, by the Sacred Oracle at Delphi who had declared him at a very young age to be the wisest man in Greece. In fact, Socrates of all people knew how truly little he actually knew—which is to say, how very much he had to learn. And so, in an attempt to find someone wiser than himself, he'd set out asking questions, especially of those who had cultivated a reputation for knowledge.
Socrates never wrote a word himself nor took a single drachma for his trade, though he spent his entire life engaging the greatest minds of his day in a startlingly lucid discussion that encompasses the most profound questions humans in all times and places face. What is Justice? Wisdom? Courage? Temperance? Virtue? Happiness? Friendship? Love? By the seeds of such poignant questions, Socrates implanted himself in the hearts and memories of those who would follow him throughout his life – rulers and slaves, men and women, young and old, citizens and foreigners (a cast of characters so familiar that one can almost put contemporary names to them).
Despite his quirky weirdness, and by way of his penetrating wit, Socrates proves to all who will listen that philosophy is indeed a power for the good. With his unwavering faith in human nature and his endearing way of treating everyone with equal respect, Socrates teaches good teaching, good politics, and even good medicine, by example—which is to say, by simple friendship. He shows by the way he lives that self-knowledge is self-mastery — and able to master himself, he feels no need to master others.
Through these conversations, we see how the light of reason sparked a fire in Plato and his friends that gave the age her golden glow. Encouraging the youth and the elders of his city alike to question what they casually assume and attend to the injustice they too comfortably ignore, Socrates uncovers their conceits and deceits in a way that is most amusing to the listener, and yet likely to leave the most lasting best impression upon the person himself — a gentle method that was both humbling and empowering to the young men who grow up listening at his feet.
Plato was one of those young men, who had, we learn at length, descended from great wealth and power. Indeed, he had been expected to take his place in the upper echelon of Athenian politics—before being challenged by a higher purpose by his esteemed friend and teacher, Socrates.
We see through Plato’s dialogues that, even in keeping with his humble way of teaching, Socrates did not hesitate to humiliate arrogance wherever he found it. And he found it practically everywhere (as, no doubt, he would today). Enlightened by humility itself, Socrates endeavors to find the wise, but inadvertently discovers the ignorant—and in the process, comes to be thought of as a stinging gadfly to the lazy horse that is Athens. Yet he never fails to credit wisdom wherever he finds it—and the refreshing twist is that this unassuming old philosopher, turns out to be especially fond of citing Eastern visionaries, slaves, women and children—from whom he claims to have learned the most.
Hardly the heartless intellectual he is so often misconstrued to be, Socrates examines himself for the sake of his listeners. He takes his partners in discussion by the conscience and compels them to look into their own eyes. And in the process, he teaches them and us to judge ourselves, rather than others—to conceive of what is possible and take aim to actualize what is still and always our higher human potential.
And what develops is truly a love story, in the deepest sense of the word, for Socrates is committed to the good of each individual as an end in their own right, with the consequent that, by the end of the story, nearly everyone is, in a meaningful sense, ‘in love’ with the old philosopher - even, and perhaps most especially, those who author his death.
We see through these talks the depth of Socrates' personal and untiring devotion to his many friends. Among them are Crito, his boyhood and lifelong companion; Phaedo, once prince of Ellis, made a slave to his Spartan captors, and ultimately freed by Pericles; Aspasia, mistress of the brothel and lifelong companion to Pericles, Athens most esteemed general, to whom Socrates introduced her. Socrates is also mentor to several of Plato's closest relatives, including his older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, his cousin, Charmides, and to his chagrin, Plato’s blood-thirsty uncle, Critias. And then there was Alcibiades, ward of Pericles, and a lifelong source of worry for Socrates.
Pericles and Socrates had shared many teachers when they were young, including Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, and Damon - all of whom held both young men in high esteem. It was clear from the start that Pericles, son of Xanthippus, who had died in the battle of Marathon, had all the tools of greatness, and yet all he really seemed to want was to be an artist, a writer, an actor, and to produce plays that would retell history the way it actually happened - rather than as the oligarchs would have it be told. Pericles’ mother was Agariste, who had come from a fabled family. Her uncle was the so-called father of democracy, Cleisthenes, and her honorable son understood the responsibility that came with this legacy.
Socrates, for his part, was never sure what to make of this well-educated, ambitious and sweet voiced son of a military hero. Pericles was somewhat older than Socrates, and though he seldom engaged him in dialogue, he did seem to listen closely to Socrates’ discussions with others and even sometimes to hang on his every word. Neither was competitive, and yet both seemed challenged by the others’ intelligence.
As it turned out, however, the artistic life was not to be an option for either the daughter of an oligarch or the son of a war hero. Pericles, who had all the talents required of a statesman, found he had little choice but to go into politics when his city called him to lead. Following the dictum, ‘Of those to whom much is given, much is required,’ Pericles stepped up to the responsibility he was born into.
Whereas Socrates, the son of a stone-mason, was much freer in this regard to follow the lead of his own inner voice and the calling of the sacred Oracle.
And yet all spent their days in the Agora whenever possible, talking and listening with anyone else who happened to be there. And together, their complementary brilliance had all the city in awe, for each in their own right seemed capable of drawing out the brilliance in others.
When Pericles and Socrates are both called out to battle, the city of Athens begins a swift decline in their absence. And upon their return, they find that the social and political conditions to which they have returned are in turmoil. The fifth century BC has seen a fervent return to democracy, albeit in name only, but society as a whole is in a period of transition, flux, and insecurity, and clings for safety to convention. There is considerable fear of intellectualism, and playwrights and orators play to this fear.
Socrates takes up the challenge of uplifting the democratic soul to its higher potentials. For the difference in good and bad men, he knew, is not whether they want what is good for them—for all do. It is rather how well they understand what that is!
For his part, Socrates agonizes over the ubiquitous exploitation and corruption of the young. For the same oligarchs who are willing to pay the sophists large sums to be told what they want to hear (such as how to win favor in the law courts and generally increase their wealth by bending the public ear), also use these tricks in seducing the young. And when young Alcibiades is seduced while still a boy by the powerful politician, Anytus, Socrates sets out on a mission to save the young men of Athens, though Alcibiades himself is practically a lost cause.
The sophists who pander to the wealthy by teaching them to use words as weapons and tools of power, rather than as instruments of understanding, find the minds of the young boys most easy to play in this way. By subtly manipulating the appearance of what is real, true, good, and right, sophisticated rhetoricians are able to spin the minds of even careful listeners, and so the most trusting of young minds are particularly vulnerable to their wiles.
So while these powers-that-be are able to stir up public insecurity, hate, and confusion by the mere suggestion of impropriety and scandal, they are also masters of the skill of making the truly scandalous seem perfectly acceptable, for they lived in an environment - not unlike our own - where empty rhetoric and ‘double-speak’ had become the order of the day.
So you will hear in Plato’s dialogues discussions in which Socrates and his friends assert the fine line between healthy and unhealthy relationships, that being the difference in caring for the beloved as an end in themselves, as opposed to caring for the beloved as merely a means to the lovers own pleasures.
This is a distinction we would all do well to observe, for what matters, they argue, is not the gender of who we love, but how well we truly love them. It is exploitive sexuality (whether homo- or hetero-) that is recognized to be immoral. Indeed, for all their talking about sexuality, the topic of ‘homosexuality’ (which might seem most controversial to some modern frames of reference) is never much of an issue for the Greeks – indeed, they do not even have a word to distinguish same-sex from opposite-sex relationships.
And so it became clear that what was corroding values in Athens were the conceits and deceits of these wolves in sheep's clothing - the powerful few who lust after, prey upon, and corrupt the young of Athens with words, pleasure, power, and material wealth, rather than treating them as true teachers ought. By their purposeful use of empty rhetoric, they were able to fan the flames of appetite and ambition in young minds, enraging their lusts, bigotry, and greed, catching them up in partisan bickering, all of which ensured that democracy would be poisoned from within.
But, receiving their education in the sophist sense discussed earlier, the young were being turned away from the good of the psyche altogether. For when the young are educated by way of words used in less than their true senses (e.g. love as desire, friendship as mutual exploitation, intelligence as merely calculation), and when they learn to argue only to win, rather than to reach a better understanding, they become cynical about both ideas and people, and can suffer lifelong cynicism, what Socrates calls misology and misanthropy.[3]
Socrates scolds those sophists who fight over ideas “like puppies fight over meat,” and in the process, turn young minds off to thinking and thoughtful communication altogether. Being mistakenly educated about philosophy serves to “make them hate the whole business when they get older."[4] In this way, empty rhetoric is unlikely to better anyone.[5] He himself would have been turned off altogether, Socrates says, if he had not had "so deep a passion" as to adhere him to philosophy all his life.[6]
The only antidote to this, Socrates knew, was philosophy – that is, encouraging the better use of the mind in the young, so that they would be less vulnerable to the seductions of those who would exploit them. And this would require a better understanding of the proper function of words and the better use of reason.
It may seem a small difference, but as they say in the east, the flight of an arrow shows that what is far depends on what is near. Analogously, Socrates knew that children are sensitively dependent upon their initial conditions, and the adults they grow into will always bear the mark of their early miseducation. Mistaking the physically beautiful for the truly beautiful, the material for the whole of reality, they are also likely to mistake the mere appearance of justice, knowledge, power, and wealth for the real thing. Errors in education about such fundamental matters, made early, can ultimately thwart human potential all together - not only in this life, Socrates feared, but in the next.
Pericles developed a work program designed to bring the idle energy, skills, and imagination of the many unemployed together into great public construction projects - which would ultimately give rise to all the great monuments for which Athens is remembered to this day. All of this irks the oligarchs for many reasons, of course, for besides diminishing the army of unemployed needed to do the work of providing for the leisured upper class, it brakes the illusion of their dependence that is needed for the oligoi (few) to maintain control over the demos (many).
For Pericles’ work program provided opportunities for the people to earn their own way by doing something they love, thereby freeing them from their dependence on the whimsical benevolence of the wealthy - and making their labor immortal in the process. No one would remember Sparta when both cities are gone, Pericles assured them, but thanks to these grand monuments, the whole world would remember Athena’s democracy for all time.
At the grand opening of the Parthenon in 436 BC, Athens could see visibly the zenith and unity of the life she had reached—her statesmanship, art, science, literature, philosophy, and morals—all woven into one many-colored fabric by the hands and imagination of her free and equal citizens.
History credits Pericles with developing a unique and original vision of healthy democracy and the good citizen. It was a vision of a free people who could achieve their highest goals and capabilities as members of a free community, in which the people find and give their best work to their city, take turns governing and being governed, and make all the most important decisions in common.[Kagan, p.258]
By contrast with the oligarchic and Spartan authoritarianism, the Periclean vision of democracy valued intelligence and talent, and was not embarrassed to reward both with public honor.[Kagan, p.258] Pericles understood that the only legitimate power is in education, and the only form of control that such a democracy needs is the kind that great intelligence wields.[Kagan, p.189] And whereas the tyrant, the Spartan, and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and armed guards – in a well-functioning democracy, it is the laws that guard both the citizen and the constitution of the state.[Aeschines, Against Timarchus 4-5][Kagan, p.270]
Indeed, Pericles controlled no army, not even a police force. He depended entirely on the continued and freely expressed support of the Athenian people. His only office was that of general, held for 30 years, even though subject to yearly elections, public inspection of his accounts, and constantly open to recall and public trial.
Perhaps the most striking proof of Pericles' greatness lay in his ability to explain how the interests of the city and its citizens depended on each other for fulfillment.[Kagan, p.141] For "to win the necessary devotion, the city -- or rather its leaders, poets, and teachers – must show that its demands are compatible with the needs of the citizen, and even better, that the city is needed to achieve his own goals."[Kagan, p.141]
Under his influence, Athenians embraced this democratic vision, and as a consequent, did not think of the customs and laws that govern them as a conspiracy by which the rich and propertied rule over the exploited masses.[Kagan, p.270] Instead – right or wrong – they believe that respect for and obedience to the law are the fundamental safeguard of the weak and poor against the rich and powerful, and that popular government, which alone can ensure freedom, dignity, and self-respect to the ordinary man, depends on uncoerced adherence to the law.[Kagan, p.270] "We use the law for honoring the good and punishing the evil," Pericles said, “rather than as the tip of the whip.”[Lysias, Funeral Oration 17-19][Kagan, p.270]
Democracy alone, he convinced them, respects the dignity and autonomy of every individual, and its survival requires that each individual sees his own well-being as inextricably interconnected to that of the community as a whole.[Kagan, p.274] Faith in such an ideal is hard to muster in societies that have become cynical about politics thanks to unscrupulous leaders – but Pericles was devoted to democracy from the start because he saw its capacity to bring out the greatness in each and every citizen. And he was uniquely able to uplift his people's faith in this ideal.[Kagan, p.64]
However, to succeed, democracy needs "leadership of a high order", "leaders with the talents to persuade their impatient citizens of a vision of the future, one that is powerful enough to sustain them through bad times as well as good, and compelling enough to inspire the sometimes difficult sacrifices that will be required of them in the growth of a just society.[Kagan, p.274]
In light of all this, even though Socrates never publically praised Pericles, it is worth wondering if his conception of the ‘philosopher king’ had Pericles in mind, for he clearly distinguish leaders who had the interest of the people from those wolves in sheep’s’ clothing who better characterize most politicians of his day.
True to his promise, all the great monuments of ancient Greece, including the Parthenon, the most awesome of all, were completed within the reign of Pericles’ thirty-year administration. It was a feat of divine proportion, and the people of Athena’s city were lifted to their highest potentials by the inspiring grandeur of their creation.
And though the oligarchs all attended the grand opening of the Parthenon, it made them furious to see Pericles policies succeed. Indeed, Pericles finds himself constantly at struggle with the conservative right wing, the oligoi (meaning 'the few'), both within his own government as well as with those who rule over Sparta - the other Greek superpower, which directly rivals Athens.
The Spartans zealots (ephors) are especially threatened by this intelligent form of government called democracy, and appalled by the free speech that Pericles’ champions.
And while the Spartans, the oligarchs, and the most corruptible democrats never let up in their attempts to coerce him to serve their interests, Pericles keeps himself busy with the work of the people, engaging them in ongoing dialogue, espousing the cause of the poor wholeheartedly in public declarations, and excelling all speakers in this regard.
When the oligarchs embarked upon a campaign to make it possible for debt to be turned into slavery, Pericles opposed them at every turn (though he himself had been tricked into signing the law that made this possible). And unable to influence or bribe him, the oligarchs pulled out all the stops to stir up the population in worry about the ‘tyranny’ of his administration. Pericles' preeminence as a speaker was made to seem suspect, as if strong leadership were incommensurate with democracy. In curious contradistinction to this, Pericles’ having his ear to the general will of the public was touted by his political enemies as evidence of his having no will of his own, and thus, no leadership capabilities. And when their attempts to paint Pericles as a mere puppet of popularity prove ineffective, they attacked his work program as misuse of public funds. They started smear campaigns against his friends, and accuse him of sexual indiscretion of every kind, including an affair with his own sons’ wife. Though nothing could be further from the truth (his daughter-in-law had come to him for council and out of trust, as women often did), the public was by this time thoroughly confused by the sheer number of accusations brought against their leader, unable to believe that at least some of them were not true. It was ironic indeed that the harder the oligarchs tried to prove Pericles to be bad, the more they actually succeeded in proving his goodness.
Meanwhile, all this Athenian renown has worked up the insecurity of the Spartans, and there is a growing foreboding of war. The Spartan step up efforts to terrorize the Attic countryside, destroy Athenian crops and food storages, and threaten trade routes which are essential to Athenian survival. It is a technique designed to goad the Athenians into fighting - which is the one thing at which the Spartans excel. But Pericles recognizes the trap, for both cities are connected by an alliance of the rich and powerful who take their own side against the demos ('the many') of both cities alike, and want nothing more than to destroy democracy by any means possible. For democracy, more than any external enemy, threatens the privilege and property rights of the few – even those who are themselves the Athenian elite. While it helps keep order to call one’s city democratic, and to play along with elections and juries, to a point, it seems best of all, to the oligarchs, if a city can pass as democratic in name, without actually having to follow popular and participatory rule in practice.
Pericles was famous for his ability to communicate a calming caution, but he is only barely able to dissuade the youthful hotheads from going prematurely into battle, saying -- "If you will not listen to me, you would do well to wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time." And when many good citizens who would not wait end up dead, these words ring loud in the memory of the city, and bring Pericles great repute.
And in what turns out to be a fateful move, Pericles brings those who live outside the walls of Athens within the city for protection - unwittingly setting up conditions favorable to plague in the process.
And when the oligarchies of all cities, even his own, resist arbitration, Pericles understands that it is not a war between cities that threaten them, but a war of the rich and powerful few against the many poor to whom democracy would give voice and power. At which point he knew that it would take longer than his short life to undo the damage that had been done to the young democracy by the right wing’s efforts to turn the demos against democracy itself.
Still, while it may have been in their class interest that the oligarchs behaved, Pericles knew that they did not represent the whole class, for not all those who are rich are unjustly so. And he himself one exception among many.
Meanwhile, feeling war swooping down upon Athens and observing the growing signs of plague in the overcrowded city, Pericles resolves to do the only thing left to do. Thus, after thirty years of peace, the Athenians are flung into the Peloponnesian War - a campaign that would last twenty-seven years and would keep the city too preoccupied ever after to realize her full potentials again. And though Pericles himself is stricken with plague by now, he is said to have fought best of all.
Before long, Pericles' own sons come down with plague, his sister dies from it, as do many of his advisors, one by one. And at the funeral of his last 'legitimate' son, Pericles breaks down and cries for the loss of his city. The people of Athens, ashamed and filled with sympathy, are so moved that they forgive the elder Pericles for his tragic humanness.
Pericles, like all humans, could only do his best, which was, after all, never perfect. He made up for what he could not do by doing what he could. And to the best of his ability, Pericles kept an ideal of participatory democracy before the eyes of his people, knowing they could not hit a target they did not aim at!
Pericles died soon thereafter, but not before all the great monuments had been completed in the course of his administration, all while the public treasury had steadily increased, and the people themselves had been fed and well kept.
Though the plague had carried off a full quarter of her population, Athens herself has survived and ultimately prospered. And when it was discovered that in all his years at the pinnacle of power, Pericles had not increased his own estate by a single drachma, his true character came to light, and his loss was swiftly appreciated – for another like him was nowhere to be found. Athens had only wolves left to protect her, but who would protect her from these wolves?
Pericles would be remembered as having achieved the balance of courage and temperance in his rule that Socrates so idealized – a goal that is seldom achieved in any human life, least of all one given to politics. And without a shepherd, the sheep come to be ruled by the wolves, and it is not long before all dissident voices come to be eaten alive. Socrates knew it was just a matter of time before they came for him.
By this time, the so-called democracy has been long since poisoned by the rhetoric of those who would profit by her demise, and bears little resemblance to the real thing. Under the influence of the oligarchs, who corrupt the people's respect for the minority voice by breaking down the decorum of listening in assembly, public deliberation degenerates into partisan argument, and we see why democracy is vulnerable to manipulation. When the loudest and most solicitous voice can carry the day, participatory democracy is perverted into mere 'representative' - which it hardly ever is - and people then must face the problem of who to trust, having little choice but to believe the best liar. And what is left is democracy in name only.
And so we see what happens when reason fails and lies assert themselves as truth, for when honesty, self-knowledge, and dialogue - all essential to a healthy democracy - are lost, Athens quickly declines into a series of bloody massacres, including the brief 'Tyranny of the Thirty Oligarchs', in which Plato's uncle Critias is the prime mover. The oligarchs caution Socrates to desist from asking questions, or else - at which point Socrates seizes the opportunity to step it up, and inquires of Plato’s bloodthirsty uncle Critias, the worst of them all, ‘What is happiness made of, after all?’ and ‘What good is a tyrant, to himself, or to the state?’
This discussion (which comes down to us as ‘The Republic’ and other dialogues of the so-called middle period) spanned the reaches of human knowledge – in may ways, further advanced then than now. And in it, they sort what is from what could be, holding up the authoritarian pretext that passes for an ideal state to ask, ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ And in the process they discern the difference between the mere appearance of democracy and the real thing - a lesson we need desperately to remember in our time!
Soon thereafter, Socrates defies the wrath of the oligarchs by denying their order for him to assist in putting his friends to death, refusing to be made complicit in this or any tyranny.
Socrates did his best, but human power, like human knowledge, is limited, and he was soon arrested. Satisfied that while his best was not perfect, it was his best, all the same, and in doing it, he achieved his own personal excellence – a healthier ideal than perfection, after all, and one that made him worthy of the honor he earned, and the title of ‘father of philosophy.’
And with this, we return to the courtroom, where Socrates concludes his provocative defense. Among his closing arguments are his famous claims that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and being afraid of death is just another way of pretending to know what we cannot possibly in this human life. For all we know, death might be the greatest good, for no harm can come to a good person! And at least they won’t put you to death there for asking questions!
And if you will do justice by me, he tellingly entreats them, please make sure to behave toward my sons just as I have behaved toward yours.
In the end, the corrupt democracy of Athens was—like our own—confused by the deceits, conceits, and violence of its age. And in 399 BC, the assembly voted to put Socrates to death for the crime of honoring the worthy by teaching the young to think for themselves - though they called it ‘corrupting the youth and questioning the official gods’. (And the irony should not escape us that it was Anytus, youthful seducer and jealous lover of Alcibiades, who loved Socrates, who brought the charges against Socrates of ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’.
For his part, Socrates only purpose was "to give the young a respite, lest they become disheartened by the cynicism of their age"—hope for which we have more need today than ever. Whether or not he succeeded remains to be seen, for as he made clear in his defense – you can more easily kill the dreamer than the dream.
And so it was that the old philosopher was finally silenced by this so-called democracy for being a threat to the powers-that-be, all because he taught their sons, daughters, and importantly, their young lovers, to question their authority too intelligently (undoubtedly the same reason his voice is still obscured today),
Only time would tell if these mournful seeds would grow into something good. For many have been put to death throughout history to encourage, and even compel, this deliberate forgetting and active ignorance of truth. But thanks to Plato, Socrates was not forgotten, Plato dedicated his life to recalling Socrates’ voice for future generations to remember. Aware of the power of words for both good and evil, he resolved to take on the task of recalling for the future the astonishing events he has witnessed and the powerful lessons he had learned. And after and during a long life of trying to promote Socrates philosopher king ideal (a mission that got him kidnapped and enslaved more than once, and is worthy of it’s own film), Plato went on to found, in the garden of Hacademus, a school they would call his 'Academy'. And here Aristotle—arguably the most influential thinker of all time—would study for nearly twenty years (but that’s another story).
It was here at Plato’s Academy that Plato himself would undertake (against the will of his oligarchic family) what would become a lifelong mission of recalling the dialogues of Socrates for the world—which might actually be ready for them someday. One can only hope that day is soon, because we are unlikely to get another chance! For even then, it took 2000 years, rivers of blood, and the discovery of a new world, before democracy would find fertile soil again.
The Ancient Athenians learned the hard way that democracy, like everything else that is alive, is always changing - always either getting better or getting worse, either toward justice or away from it. Democracy is more than a form of government, it is a way of life based on the golden rule. If polity were understood better, we’d see that even in a system of representative democracy, we each and all have a part to play – especially when we do our part to teach the young well about how to participate at whatever level they work.
The critical variable for healthy democracy (as Aristotle later argues) is not how many rule, but how well each rules himself - which is to say, how justly. For democracy is as open to corruption as any other form of government, if it forgets to properly deliberate. True ideals are always easy to lose sight of, for what comes to light in our dialogue can disappear in our silence…especially when what is called ideal aims only at a low standard (such as they discuss in the form of the guardian state, that appears ideal on the surface, but doesn’t prevent injustice from arising in action).
As we’ve seen, Plato himself shows up in these dialogues only rarely, most pointedly when Socrates turns to him in court that fateful day and suggests that perhaps Plato would be the one who will remember all this for posterity. It would seem that, despite his relatives admonishment that he had turned away from political power, Plato understood and lived for a truer power, the kind that would have us still learning from his writing all these many centuries later.
Plato was only one of many students who grew up listening at Socrates’ feet. Under the influence of his teaching, many of his students would go on after his execution to change the world in ways no single generation ever had or perhaps would again. No less than twenty-nine of the young men of Athens undertook writing dialogues to commemorate Socrates’ teachings after his death. Only Plato’s survive in their entirety, as far as we know. Xenophon too wrote memoirs that give us another eye on some of Plato’s account.
Plato’s Academy would carry on continuously for nine full centuries, becoming the longest lasting educational establishment the world has ever known. But all along the sad and supreme irony remains that 'academics' so often become, like their ancient sophist counterparts, seduced by the political power of rhetoric as a tool of class interests, wealth, and privilege, rendering democracy virtually incapable of the intelligent deliberation that the ancients knew to be essential to justice. For all the effort that hard working teachers put in, it’s possible that we’ve all learned by a teaching model that has mislead our best intentions. For to deliberately teach what one generation of one culture has deemed appropriate opens the door to all kinds of inadvertent censorship, in that it assumes any single generation knows best what truth is – an error made too many times in the past, to the detriment of all generations that came after.
It remains true that anything that can be understood in one inspired moment lives on and waits to be recalled in yet another. And because of this, corrupt human nature is only a problem until we remember those Socratic potentials that human beings still and always have within. For we may forget, malign, and ignore it, but the good thing about the truth is that it stays true—and the challenge to humanity is to remember! And these ideals can be remembered with or without the help of an inspired voice – and Socrates is certainly this - the ultimate coach giving the supreme pep talk to the human race.
This ideal of dialectic education can be understood to be essential to healthy democracy. This is why Socrates emphasizes doing one’s part, minding one’s business, which perhaps sounds, to us, to connote keeping out of politics, but understood properly, it’s more likely to represent seeing all our actions as political, that is, an exercise of power. This meant doing well in all that is one’s proper sphere of response-ability. Any and every person was understood to have a moral obligation to do what they had the ability to do – not merely to appear good, but to actually be good. And that challenge is different for all – for every hero must follow a different path to the same end of personal excellence. Being inextricably interconnected with others, those who fail to live up to their best let down more than themselves. So it is everyone’s obligation to find the good that can be learned from all the challenges one faces in their journey. Learn from them, and pass it on. That’s what you are good for.
What we these days call the Socratic method was originally understood as a way of treating one another with due respect and good will, for the purpose of bringing out the good in one another. Sadly, thanks to the game of telephone that has become education, Socrates way of teaching is seldom remembered for its true worth. For it was not merely a way of teaching, but something more like the golden rule of healthy communication. It is the way of talking to one another that habituates sincere and thoughtful reasoning and encourages the democratic character by encouraging equal respect and mutual understanding. Understood in this healthy form, the Socratic method is simply the art of healthy eye-to-eye relationships, in which both are understood to be teachers, just as both are students. And done well, it had and still has the power to heal human relationships dialogically. As Socrates admits in the end, ‘Love is the only thing I ever claim to know anything about.’
The dialectic ideal of education would have us get out of the way of the process of discovery…let learning follow the lead of intrinsically generated questions. Education as the search for truth encourages other teaching qualities than follow the leader that tends to be our habit. Think for yourself, and learn from the best is closer to the Socratic ideal of education as the mutual search for truth.
Though Socrates' demise is held by generations since to have been the death of the Golden Age, it was also the birth of Western Culture—for whatever that's been or may yet be worth.
And so we are left wondering if we are indeed engaged in true democracy? Or have we misunderstood the ideal so much that we have missed the mark entirely? The ancients would have us remember that the ideal of democracy is actualized in how we live, how we talk to one another, how we contribute our work to the whole.
It’s not difficult to see why the story of the decline of the world’s first > democracy should ring hauntingly familiar to us. > And while this is exactly the reason we need this story told and retold, again and again, it is also > the reason it’s unlikely to get its due in the American film > industry (to which the concept of a ‘writing ethic’ is apparently > completely foreign). So while my screenwriting effort ultimately grew into an unrealizable 1500 page manuscript (twenty-five hours of film, as screenplay > formatting goes), I resolved that, after so many years of authenticating this > story, I cannot possibly bring myself to simply ‘sell it’ and > watch all my careful research and meticulous referencing go > out the window for the sake of the bottom line. I owe that much to > Socrates. So, if I want to see that> thatthat film done well, I’m going to have to either > find filmmakers whose hearts and motivations are beyond profit > and politics, or produce it myself. Meanwhile, my research has become fodder for many other good things, such as this this book.
Which is why, Mill says:
Indeed, “no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except in so far as he has either had forced upon him by others or gone through of himself the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. (p.52-55) For this reason, “I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute for [this learning method] – some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's consciousness as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion…”(p.52-55)
“That, therefore, which, when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult to create how worse than absurd it is to forego when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves."[pp.52-55, "On Liberty"]
“But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. …“[T]he modern mind owes far more to [this dialectic method of learning] than it is generally willing to admit, and the present modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. A person who derives all his instruction from teachers and books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; . . . and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers and a low general average intellect in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation.”(p.52-55)
[1] Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat (p.8)
[2] (Plato, Seventh Epistle, p.*)
[3] (Plato, Pheado n.d.)
[4] (Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
[5] (Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
[6] (Plato’s Theaetetus169c) (Plato, Theaetetus n.d.)
But in order to truly understand Socrates, it is essential to understand the social and political context into which he was born and in which he found himself challenged to do his best – even if that meant giving his life for the truth he stood for.
So allow me to provide a relatively brief introduction to the story of Socrates life, which cannot, I think, be well understood apart from the life of Pericles who dedicated his life to it, and the others who lived in this enchanted age.
It was the so-called golden age of Greece, at the very height of its glory -- a time when many still aspired to the highest of their potentials, and the ideal of talking things out reasonably was held dear by men and women of honor and justice.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are those we remember as the fathers of philosophy, but they themselves gave credit to many others for their wisdom, including women, slaves, foreigners, children, their ancestors, and the sages of the east, from whom they themselves learned. These philosophers used their newfound freedom of speech to search for truth, rather than to persuade with deceit, as many of their contemporaries employed.
The dialogues they undertook during those days gave birth to our science, education, politics, economy, art, theatre, and medicine—many of which have gone awry in our time, making this is a tale well worth remembering. Indeed, t> AAATTThere is arguably nothing we need more these > days than the kind of moral pep talk for which Socrates was so > well known.
Still, for reasons that become apparent only in the telling, Socrates’ story is, arguably, the best kept secret of all time, told only, if at all these days, by those who have an interest in keeping it quiet. Why? No doubt because Socrates would be the first to teach the young to question authority – not only to keep them honest, but because this question and answer process was understood to fix understanding in the mind. And sadly, even those who call themselves Socratic scholars do not wish to have their expertise questioned these days. Which helps explain why Socrates is, at once, the greatest and most misunderstood thinker the world has ever known, and why his qualifies as the greatest story never told.
As it turned out, with the birth of democracy came freedom of speech, and with this came the rise of what we might call bullshit. To this point, before around 450 B.C.E., ones’ parents or ‘society’ had been the teachers of traditional wisdom and values (nomos), and the young learned, as they had in primal or folk cultures, as one generation passed the collected wisdom of the past down to the next around the fire on a daily basis. But a revolution of sorts had occurred in Athenian education when, due in part to a multicultural infusion into the city, nomos had come to appear merely relative to how and where one was raised. And so, with the new ways, the old ways of teaching faced widespread skepticism, and new ways of teaching seemed to come from all directions.
A class of professional teachers, called sophists, had grown out of this uncertainty, and while their teachings were suspected by many (including Socrates, though for reasons other than most) to subvert the fabric of society, their popularity grew as they taught the oligarchs, the cities wealthy elite, ways to win their cases in court – even if only by empty words that could dumbfound any opponent, precisely because they made little or no sense, based as they were on mere fallacies, meant only to confuse. The sophists, for their part, mix well with the oligarchs, who themselves cling heartily to nomos – if only because tradition preserves their privilege.
Socrates worry about the sophists way of teaching was not because of the loss of tradition, per se (injustice, for example, has a very long tradition that certainly ought to be lost), but rather because the sophists ways of teaching focused on mere rhetoric, empty words, and bad reasoning – a skill of baffling with bullshit that not only plays on people's insecurities, ignorance, fears, and emotions – but ruins the character of those who used it, for it is a powerful tool of deceit and manipulation.
It’s easy to overlook the power of empty rhetoric to persuade the many (demos) that untruth is true, and to underestimate the damage that was and is still done to truth and democracy by this popular means of deceit. But this is what the sophist teachers of Socrates’ day, and our own, are so good at, that is, manipulating opinions and spinning logic so influence public opinion.
In many respects, they were the early predecessors of today’s masters of advertising and public relations…as poison to democracy today as when empty rhetoric brought down the first democracy. For the jury system and the voice of the people it represented is what was and is unique about democracy. The fact that one could make a case to influence public opinion before large assemblies (which consisted of as much of the population as showed up on any given day), is a large part of what made free speech and democracy valuable. This legal system is what made it participatory, and in theory, just. And this decision-making process was far superior to the notion of justice that had preceded it. (As the story from Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Oresteia tell it, it was the goddess Athena who brought the Greeks this jury system to resolve conflicts that might otherwise degenerate into eye-for-an-eye blood feuds).
Democracy was based on the idea that when people put their heads together to make decisions, they are more likely to come to better decisions than any given individual leader would. Until then, such decisions had been made by one, or a few, powerful and often purely self-interested men (yes, men, for even in democratic Athens, women were not considered citizens, though ‘free women’, that is, unmarried women, like Pericles’ lifelong companion, Aspasia, often had great influence as teachers).
But while the jury system was a vast improvement over the rule of sometimes tyrannical kings, it was nonetheless vulnerable to the power of empty rhetoric that played on the emotions of the assembly and persuaded them by way of fallacy and bad reasoning to act, often even against their own interests. Then, as now, many elected officials both acquired and wielded their power by means of empty rhetoric to play those who don’t know better than to simply vote their gut feelings, which can be very easy to manipulate with fallacies.
If this isn’t sounding familiar yet, then the reader is not paying attention to American politics these days. Suffice it to say that the sophists and oligarchs worked well together to manipulate the rest, based on what amounted to the power of BS.
So Socrates took it as his challenge to help educate the many to use their minds well enough so as not to be so easily manipulated by untruths of the few. This included all those who were unable to afford the sophists high fees, so were for the most part defenseless against the wiles of empty words and twisted logic. One might hope this would still be the purpose of education in democracy today, but given that we don’t get an hour’s education in good reasoning skills through the entirety of our education, this is sadly not the case.
All the more reason that we need the thinking skills Socrates tried to help us develop – for reason is an innate human ability, but like any muscle, needs exercise to grow strong. Without skills in good reasoning, words can as easily lead to evil as to good. So it behooves us to understand the so-called Socratic method better than we do or have for 2400 years now, at least if we hope to save our democracy from the fate that befell the first democracy in Athena’s enchanted city.
And it may be that this is the same reasons why a man could be remembered as ‘the father of western Philosophy,’ and yet remain cloaked in such mystery – like so much buried and reburied treasure. It is at least partly because most students make it all the way to college having learned nothing about Socrates,– except, that is, what they > could glean from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?.
Unfortunately, another reason has to do with the intellectual demand of ancient > literature, which was written for an under-stimulated audience - something that those of us who grew up in an attention deficient age are clearly not! The consequent being that many settle for taking the word of their teachers about many things, including what Socrates and Plato had to say, insuring students only a surface understanding of what must be considered more deeply, not the least of which, what Socrates tried to teach us.
Indeed, Plato’s dialogues (one of only two surviving sources of the historical Socrates) are very possibly the most difficult works in the western tradition, in large part because Plato, like Socrates, deliberately does not say exactly what he is thinking, leaving us to surmise the meaning for ourselves. We might guess this is because his outspoken mentor has recently been put to death for saying too much, but Plato insists that the reason goes much deeper than this, and it is one that primal peoples would understand better than we do today.
In his Seventh Epistle, Plato explains that he has never put his deepest thought into words because written words cannot answer for themselves, and without the dialogic process that is necessary to dialectic understanding, they cannot take a reader all the way to understanding. For that, we must do our own internal work, tethering on truth to all the others.
As Zen scholar Alan Watts puts it, words are useful between people who already share an understanding of the experience, but words alone cannot teach one who does not, in a certain sense, already know. As we’ve said, words are like pointing tools, and while a finger can point at the moon, it would be a great error to confuse the finger with the moon.
Only once we begin to look inward do those words on the page begin to make sense. As Alan Watts put it, “words are useful for communicating between people who have shared the experience.” As Zen masters have said, “While a finger may be used to point at the moon, let us not confuse the finger with the moon.”(Suzuki) Words themselves do not embody meaning enough to actually teach a deep understanding. For that we need what Socrates calls “an inner criteria.”
Physicist David Bohm put it this way: “Whatever we say is words,” but “what we want to talk about is generally not words.”[1]
What is necessary to see it is, “To know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis… Self–knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.”(Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p.xx.)
Therefore, knowing the words is not the same as understanding the meaning of those words. So the consequent of saying too much in one’s writing, Plato knew, is that people who don’t truly understand will simply memorize the words, call them their own, and thus pretend understanding they have not actually achieved. Those who consider this to be the full extent of learning are sure to use such words to ends that are not good – as wolves might use sheep’s clothing.
This is arguably the same reason that Aristotle’s ethics (these days called ‘virtue ethics’) would have us worry that ‘codes’ or ‘rules’ of ethics that allow people to simply fake being a good person, essentially going through the motions of doing the right thing, without ever having to think through or understand what the right thing to do actually is. Because, as the others sages also held, rules and codes and principles are just general rules of thumb that need to be applied to particular circumstances. So a truly virtuous person will be continuously and deliberately thinking through what the right thing to do is in any given circumstance.
Gnosis is, as Plato (who coined the term) explains, that understanding which is beyond words. And it is in this light that Plato says, the written word can be “the first step in forgetting,”[2] if we rely too heavily upon it. As we’ve said, while words can be useful tools, the revelation of truth was understood to be purely experiential, an inner phenomena or “rushing progression of understanding” that can be beyond words altogether, as is, in a certain sense, love. Far from a mere spectacle to be read or watched from outside-looking-in, philosophy in this sense - like music, dance, and poetry - was understood as something meant to be experienced from within.
Words alone cannot ‘teach’ this kind of understanding to anyone who hasn’t learned it first hand, but they can go a long way toward illuminating the meaning of this experience between people who have this first hand knowledge, i.e. gnosis. And might also make those who do not curious enough to reach for this higher experience.
Unfortunately, as we know, we don’t get much initiation in our culture, nor is our learning process sensitive to student readiness. This process involves a sort of ‘purging’ or rethinking what we thought we knew, reevaluating what matters.
As Zen masters would say, ‘A finger is used to point at the moon, but let us not confuse the finger with the moon.” Words are pointing tools, but what they point at when they talk of truth is an inner experience that cannot be seen by the uninitiated, and can be ‘known’ only directly, prior to words, and then only by what the ancients called the ‘initiated’, which is to say, those who have made themselves ready. Anyone who goes through this purification process by which it is achieved may understand it, but it cannot be put into words for someone who has not earned the experience. Enlightenment is reserved for the worthy.
As we’ve said, we can understand why, in the so-called mystery religions, that were still popular in Socrates day, “Dionysus…did not ask his followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly.”(Ehrenreich?, p.256)
Which is why the Eleusian mysteries, a folk religion that most 5th century BC Athenians still participated in, were practiced continuously for over two thousand years without anyone ever revealing the secret (although some playwrights hinted at it in ways that almost got them prosecuted). Part of the taboo was a sort of honor code, to be sure – (similar to that against giving away the ending of a movie to someone who has not yet seen it). But it was also a recognition on the part of the initiated that the experience simply cannot be put into words – because the path to true understanding is experiential. Knowing the words is not the same as understanding the way, the tao.
On the other hand, Plato also admits that the written word, done well, can also function as a tool of recollection, recovery, and revival. Which is why Plato spent the rest of his life after his Socrates, was put to death carefully navigating the ancient taboo against writing, so that we might get a glimpse of the insights that were common to so many ancient cultures. And many ancient insights found the pinnacle of eloquent expression in his work.
Plato’s Socratic Dialogues are very difficult to read for just this reason, because they are not meant to pass on knowledge, but to spur the self-navigated discovery of it. Lucky for us, no matter how we might ignore, forget or malign the truth, it waits as long as necessary for those who would remember it, who will ask the hard questions of themselves, along with Socrates and his friends, and will remember what they’ve known in their soul all along.
Of all the ancient writings, perhaps Plato’s are the most difficult, and deliberately so, because a virtuous person does not want or need to be given direct answers, but rather, prefers to be provoked to think for themselves. For this reason, Plato’s dialogues do not give us direct answers, but rather challenge us to go through the process of reasoning that leads us to sound conclusions of our own. As one reads, one must be thinking, what do I think about the questions they are discussing and the myriad issues that arise in this process of searching for the truth together? This process of dialectic is how we come to understand the truth and the actual meaning of words (that is, logos) in all its oral, written, and experiential forms.
Is it any wonder then, given the dearth of dialogue in our modern schools, and the reluctance to offer challenging reading, that young people make it all the way > to college learning virtually nothing about Socrates, philosophy, or good reasoning?
Still, it’s > become abundantly clear by way of many hundreds of hours of > teaching these remarkable dialogues that, once > inspired by this ancient idealist to undertake these inquires for themselves, young and old alike cannot help but take > deliberate aim at their better selves> .
*
Socrates never wrote a word in his life. We come to know this notorious colonizer of dreams, only from the Dialogues of Plato (32-34 of them, depending on how you count), as well as those of Xenophon (about 4 or 5).
If we were to read all of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, we might meet him first as a young man, assisting his mother to midwife a birth, or perhaps visiting the Oracle of Delphi, or talking with the sophists who passed through Athens in their travels. But as most people initially read the dialogue called Plato’s Apology, we tend to meet Socrates first as a seventy-year-old father of toddlers, on trial for his life and presenting his own defense against charges of corrupting the youth of Athens by teaching them to question the gods of the state — charges brought against him by right-wing defenders of traditional piety (some of whom are Plato's closest relatives).
Socrates begins his unapologetic defense by appeal to the jury - 'You be the judge,' he implores them. He's not much of a speaker, he says humbly, as he begins his astonishing oration, recounting the legendary mission that brought him to this destiny.
He had been challenged to the life of inquiry, he explains, by the Sacred Oracle at Delphi who had declared him at a very young age to be the wisest man in Greece. In fact, Socrates of all people knew how truly little he actually knew—which is to say, how very much he had to learn. And so, in an attempt to find someone wiser than himself, he'd set out asking questions, especially of those who had cultivated a reputation for knowledge.
Socrates never wrote a word himself nor took a single drachma for his trade, though he spent his entire life engaging the greatest minds of his day in a startlingly lucid discussion that encompasses the most profound questions humans in all times and places face. What is Justice? Wisdom? Courage? Temperance? Virtue? Happiness? Friendship? Love? By the seeds of such poignant questions, Socrates implanted himself in the hearts and memories of those who would follow him throughout his life – rulers and slaves, men and women, young and old, citizens and foreigners (a cast of characters so familiar that one can almost put contemporary names to them).
Despite his quirky weirdness, and by way of his penetrating wit, Socrates proves to all who will listen that philosophy is indeed a power for the good. With his unwavering faith in human nature and his endearing way of treating everyone with equal respect, Socrates teaches good teaching, good politics, and even good medicine, by example—which is to say, by simple friendship. He shows by the way he lives that self-knowledge is self-mastery — and able to master himself, he feels no need to master others.
Through these conversations, we see how the light of reason sparked a fire in Plato and his friends that gave the age her golden glow. Encouraging the youth and the elders of his city alike to question what they casually assume and attend to the injustice they too comfortably ignore, Socrates uncovers their conceits and deceits in a way that is most amusing to the listener, and yet likely to leave the most lasting best impression upon the person himself — a gentle method that was both humbling and empowering to the young men who grow up listening at his feet.
Plato was one of those young men, who had, we learn at length, descended from great wealth and power. Indeed, he had been expected to take his place in the upper echelon of Athenian politics—before being challenged by a higher purpose by his esteemed friend and teacher, Socrates.
We see through Plato’s dialogues that, even in keeping with his humble way of teaching, Socrates did not hesitate to humiliate arrogance wherever he found it. And he found it practically everywhere (as, no doubt, he would today). Enlightened by humility itself, Socrates endeavors to find the wise, but inadvertently discovers the ignorant—and in the process, comes to be thought of as a stinging gadfly to the lazy horse that is Athens. Yet he never fails to credit wisdom wherever he finds it—and the refreshing twist is that this unassuming old philosopher, turns out to be especially fond of citing Eastern visionaries, slaves, women and children—from whom he claims to have learned the most.
Hardly the heartless intellectual he is so often misconstrued to be, Socrates examines himself for the sake of his listeners. He takes his partners in discussion by the conscience and compels them to look into their own eyes. And in the process, he teaches them and us to judge ourselves, rather than others—to conceive of what is possible and take aim to actualize what is still and always our higher human potential.
And what develops is truly a love story, in the deepest sense of the word, for Socrates is committed to the good of each individual as an end in their own right, with the consequent that, by the end of the story, nearly everyone is, in a meaningful sense, ‘in love’ with the old philosopher - even, and perhaps most especially, those who author his death.
We see through these talks the depth of Socrates' personal and untiring devotion to his many friends. Among them are Crito, his boyhood and lifelong companion; Phaedo, once prince of Ellis, made a slave to his Spartan captors, and ultimately freed by Pericles; Aspasia, mistress of the brothel and lifelong companion to Pericles, Athens most esteemed general, to whom Socrates introduced her. Socrates is also mentor to several of Plato's closest relatives, including his older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, his cousin, Charmides, and to his chagrin, Plato’s blood-thirsty uncle, Critias. And then there was Alcibiades, ward of Pericles, and a lifelong source of worry for Socrates.
Pericles and Socrates had shared many teachers when they were young, including Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, and Damon - all of whom held both young men in high esteem. It was clear from the start that Pericles, son of Xanthippus, who had died in the battle of Marathon, had all the tools of greatness, and yet all he really seemed to want was to be an artist, a writer, an actor, and to produce plays that would retell history the way it actually happened - rather than as the oligarchs would have it be told. Pericles’ mother was Agariste, who had come from a fabled family. Her uncle was the so-called father of democracy, Cleisthenes, and her honorable son understood the responsibility that came with this legacy.
Socrates, for his part, was never sure what to make of this well-educated, ambitious and sweet voiced son of a military hero. Pericles was somewhat older than Socrates, and though he seldom engaged him in dialogue, he did seem to listen closely to Socrates’ discussions with others and even sometimes to hang on his every word. Neither was competitive, and yet both seemed challenged by the others’ intelligence.
As it turned out, however, the artistic life was not to be an option for either the daughter of an oligarch or the son of a war hero. Pericles, who had all the talents required of a statesman, found he had little choice but to go into politics when his city called him to lead. Following the dictum, ‘Of those to whom much is given, much is required,’ Pericles stepped up to the responsibility he was born into.
Whereas Socrates, the son of a stone-mason, was much freer in this regard to follow the lead of his own inner voice and the calling of the sacred Oracle.
And yet all spent their days in the Agora whenever possible, talking and listening with anyone else who happened to be there. And together, their complementary brilliance had all the city in awe, for each in their own right seemed capable of drawing out the brilliance in others.
When Pericles and Socrates are both called out to battle, the city of Athens begins a swift decline in their absence. And upon their return, they find that the social and political conditions to which they have returned are in turmoil. The fifth century BC has seen a fervent return to democracy, albeit in name only, but society as a whole is in a period of transition, flux, and insecurity, and clings for safety to convention. There is considerable fear of intellectualism, and playwrights and orators play to this fear.
Socrates takes up the challenge of uplifting the democratic soul to its higher potentials. For the difference in good and bad men, he knew, is not whether they want what is good for them—for all do. It is rather how well they understand what that is!
For his part, Socrates agonizes over the ubiquitous exploitation and corruption of the young. For the same oligarchs who are willing to pay the sophists large sums to be told what they want to hear (such as how to win favor in the law courts and generally increase their wealth by bending the public ear), also use these tricks in seducing the young. And when young Alcibiades is seduced while still a boy by the powerful politician, Anytus, Socrates sets out on a mission to save the young men of Athens, though Alcibiades himself is practically a lost cause.
The sophists who pander to the wealthy by teaching them to use words as weapons and tools of power, rather than as instruments of understanding, find the minds of the young boys most easy to play in this way. By subtly manipulating the appearance of what is real, true, good, and right, sophisticated rhetoricians are able to spin the minds of even careful listeners, and so the most trusting of young minds are particularly vulnerable to their wiles.
So while these powers-that-be are able to stir up public insecurity, hate, and confusion by the mere suggestion of impropriety and scandal, they are also masters of the skill of making the truly scandalous seem perfectly acceptable, for they lived in an environment - not unlike our own - where empty rhetoric and ‘double-speak’ had become the order of the day.
So you will hear in Plato’s dialogues discussions in which Socrates and his friends assert the fine line between healthy and unhealthy relationships, that being the difference in caring for the beloved as an end in themselves, as opposed to caring for the beloved as merely a means to the lovers own pleasures.
This is a distinction we would all do well to observe, for what matters, they argue, is not the gender of who we love, but how well we truly love them. It is exploitive sexuality (whether homo- or hetero-) that is recognized to be immoral. Indeed, for all their talking about sexuality, the topic of ‘homosexuality’ (which might seem most controversial to some modern frames of reference) is never much of an issue for the Greeks – indeed, they do not even have a word to distinguish same-sex from opposite-sex relationships.
And so it became clear that what was corroding values in Athens were the conceits and deceits of these wolves in sheep's clothing - the powerful few who lust after, prey upon, and corrupt the young of Athens with words, pleasure, power, and material wealth, rather than treating them as true teachers ought. By their purposeful use of empty rhetoric, they were able to fan the flames of appetite and ambition in young minds, enraging their lusts, bigotry, and greed, catching them up in partisan bickering, all of which ensured that democracy would be poisoned from within.
But, receiving their education in the sophist sense discussed earlier, the young were being turned away from the good of the psyche altogether. For when the young are educated by way of words used in less than their true senses (e.g. love as desire, friendship as mutual exploitation, intelligence as merely calculation), and when they learn to argue only to win, rather than to reach a better understanding, they become cynical about both ideas and people, and can suffer lifelong cynicism, what Socrates calls misology and misanthropy.[3]
Socrates scolds those sophists who fight over ideas “like puppies fight over meat,” and in the process, turn young minds off to thinking and thoughtful communication altogether. Being mistakenly educated about philosophy serves to “make them hate the whole business when they get older."[4] In this way, empty rhetoric is unlikely to better anyone.[5] He himself would have been turned off altogether, Socrates says, if he had not had "so deep a passion" as to adhere him to philosophy all his life.[6]
The only antidote to this, Socrates knew, was philosophy – that is, encouraging the better use of the mind in the young, so that they would be less vulnerable to the seductions of those who would exploit them. And this would require a better understanding of the proper function of words and the better use of reason.
It may seem a small difference, but as they say in the east, the flight of an arrow shows that what is far depends on what is near. Analogously, Socrates knew that children are sensitively dependent upon their initial conditions, and the adults they grow into will always bear the mark of their early miseducation. Mistaking the physically beautiful for the truly beautiful, the material for the whole of reality, they are also likely to mistake the mere appearance of justice, knowledge, power, and wealth for the real thing. Errors in education about such fundamental matters, made early, can ultimately thwart human potential all together - not only in this life, Socrates feared, but in the next.
Pericles developed a work program designed to bring the idle energy, skills, and imagination of the many unemployed together into great public construction projects - which would ultimately give rise to all the great monuments for which Athens is remembered to this day. All of this irks the oligarchs for many reasons, of course, for besides diminishing the army of unemployed needed to do the work of providing for the leisured upper class, it brakes the illusion of their dependence that is needed for the oligoi (few) to maintain control over the demos (many).
For Pericles’ work program provided opportunities for the people to earn their own way by doing something they love, thereby freeing them from their dependence on the whimsical benevolence of the wealthy - and making their labor immortal in the process. No one would remember Sparta when both cities are gone, Pericles assured them, but thanks to these grand monuments, the whole world would remember Athena’s democracy for all time.
At the grand opening of the Parthenon in 436 BC, Athens could see visibly the zenith and unity of the life she had reached—her statesmanship, art, science, literature, philosophy, and morals—all woven into one many-colored fabric by the hands and imagination of her free and equal citizens.
History credits Pericles with developing a unique and original vision of healthy democracy and the good citizen. It was a vision of a free people who could achieve their highest goals and capabilities as members of a free community, in which the people find and give their best work to their city, take turns governing and being governed, and make all the most important decisions in common.[Kagan, p.258]
By contrast with the oligarchic and Spartan authoritarianism, the Periclean vision of democracy valued intelligence and talent, and was not embarrassed to reward both with public honor.[Kagan, p.258] Pericles understood that the only legitimate power is in education, and the only form of control that such a democracy needs is the kind that great intelligence wields.[Kagan, p.189] And whereas the tyrant, the Spartan, and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and armed guards – in a well-functioning democracy, it is the laws that guard both the citizen and the constitution of the state.[Aeschines, Against Timarchus 4-5][Kagan, p.270]
Indeed, Pericles controlled no army, not even a police force. He depended entirely on the continued and freely expressed support of the Athenian people. His only office was that of general, held for 30 years, even though subject to yearly elections, public inspection of his accounts, and constantly open to recall and public trial.
Perhaps the most striking proof of Pericles' greatness lay in his ability to explain how the interests of the city and its citizens depended on each other for fulfillment.[Kagan, p.141] For "to win the necessary devotion, the city -- or rather its leaders, poets, and teachers – must show that its demands are compatible with the needs of the citizen, and even better, that the city is needed to achieve his own goals."[Kagan, p.141]
Under his influence, Athenians embraced this democratic vision, and as a consequent, did not think of the customs and laws that govern them as a conspiracy by which the rich and propertied rule over the exploited masses.[Kagan, p.270] Instead – right or wrong – they believe that respect for and obedience to the law are the fundamental safeguard of the weak and poor against the rich and powerful, and that popular government, which alone can ensure freedom, dignity, and self-respect to the ordinary man, depends on uncoerced adherence to the law.[Kagan, p.270] "We use the law for honoring the good and punishing the evil," Pericles said, “rather than as the tip of the whip.”[Lysias, Funeral Oration 17-19][Kagan, p.270]
Democracy alone, he convinced them, respects the dignity and autonomy of every individual, and its survival requires that each individual sees his own well-being as inextricably interconnected to that of the community as a whole.[Kagan, p.274] Faith in such an ideal is hard to muster in societies that have become cynical about politics thanks to unscrupulous leaders – but Pericles was devoted to democracy from the start because he saw its capacity to bring out the greatness in each and every citizen. And he was uniquely able to uplift his people's faith in this ideal.[Kagan, p.64]
However, to succeed, democracy needs "leadership of a high order", "leaders with the talents to persuade their impatient citizens of a vision of the future, one that is powerful enough to sustain them through bad times as well as good, and compelling enough to inspire the sometimes difficult sacrifices that will be required of them in the growth of a just society.[Kagan, p.274]
In light of all this, even though Socrates never publically praised Pericles, it is worth wondering if his conception of the ‘philosopher king’ had Pericles in mind, for he clearly distinguish leaders who had the interest of the people from those wolves in sheep’s’ clothing who better characterize most politicians of his day.
True to his promise, all the great monuments of ancient Greece, including the Parthenon, the most awesome of all, were completed within the reign of Pericles’ thirty-year administration. It was a feat of divine proportion, and the people of Athena’s city were lifted to their highest potentials by the inspiring grandeur of their creation.
And though the oligarchs all attended the grand opening of the Parthenon, it made them furious to see Pericles policies succeed. Indeed, Pericles finds himself constantly at struggle with the conservative right wing, the oligoi (meaning 'the few'), both within his own government as well as with those who rule over Sparta - the other Greek superpower, which directly rivals Athens.
The Spartans zealots (ephors) are especially threatened by this intelligent form of government called democracy, and appalled by the free speech that Pericles’ champions.
And while the Spartans, the oligarchs, and the most corruptible democrats never let up in their attempts to coerce him to serve their interests, Pericles keeps himself busy with the work of the people, engaging them in ongoing dialogue, espousing the cause of the poor wholeheartedly in public declarations, and excelling all speakers in this regard.
When the oligarchs embarked upon a campaign to make it possible for debt to be turned into slavery, Pericles opposed them at every turn (though he himself had been tricked into signing the law that made this possible). And unable to influence or bribe him, the oligarchs pulled out all the stops to stir up the population in worry about the ‘tyranny’ of his administration. Pericles' preeminence as a speaker was made to seem suspect, as if strong leadership were incommensurate with democracy. In curious contradistinction to this, Pericles’ having his ear to the general will of the public was touted by his political enemies as evidence of his having no will of his own, and thus, no leadership capabilities. And when their attempts to paint Pericles as a mere puppet of popularity prove ineffective, they attacked his work program as misuse of public funds. They started smear campaigns against his friends, and accuse him of sexual indiscretion of every kind, including an affair with his own sons’ wife. Though nothing could be further from the truth (his daughter-in-law had come to him for council and out of trust, as women often did), the public was by this time thoroughly confused by the sheer number of accusations brought against their leader, unable to believe that at least some of them were not true. It was ironic indeed that the harder the oligarchs tried to prove Pericles to be bad, the more they actually succeeded in proving his goodness.
Meanwhile, all this Athenian renown has worked up the insecurity of the Spartans, and there is a growing foreboding of war. The Spartan step up efforts to terrorize the Attic countryside, destroy Athenian crops and food storages, and threaten trade routes which are essential to Athenian survival. It is a technique designed to goad the Athenians into fighting - which is the one thing at which the Spartans excel. But Pericles recognizes the trap, for both cities are connected by an alliance of the rich and powerful who take their own side against the demos ('the many') of both cities alike, and want nothing more than to destroy democracy by any means possible. For democracy, more than any external enemy, threatens the privilege and property rights of the few – even those who are themselves the Athenian elite. While it helps keep order to call one’s city democratic, and to play along with elections and juries, to a point, it seems best of all, to the oligarchs, if a city can pass as democratic in name, without actually having to follow popular and participatory rule in practice.
Pericles was famous for his ability to communicate a calming caution, but he is only barely able to dissuade the youthful hotheads from going prematurely into battle, saying -- "If you will not listen to me, you would do well to wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time." And when many good citizens who would not wait end up dead, these words ring loud in the memory of the city, and bring Pericles great repute.
And in what turns out to be a fateful move, Pericles brings those who live outside the walls of Athens within the city for protection - unwittingly setting up conditions favorable to plague in the process.
And when the oligarchies of all cities, even his own, resist arbitration, Pericles understands that it is not a war between cities that threaten them, but a war of the rich and powerful few against the many poor to whom democracy would give voice and power. At which point he knew that it would take longer than his short life to undo the damage that had been done to the young democracy by the right wing’s efforts to turn the demos against democracy itself.
Still, while it may have been in their class interest that the oligarchs behaved, Pericles knew that they did not represent the whole class, for not all those who are rich are unjustly so. And he himself one exception among many.
Meanwhile, feeling war swooping down upon Athens and observing the growing signs of plague in the overcrowded city, Pericles resolves to do the only thing left to do. Thus, after thirty years of peace, the Athenians are flung into the Peloponnesian War - a campaign that would last twenty-seven years and would keep the city too preoccupied ever after to realize her full potentials again. And though Pericles himself is stricken with plague by now, he is said to have fought best of all.
Before long, Pericles' own sons come down with plague, his sister dies from it, as do many of his advisors, one by one. And at the funeral of his last 'legitimate' son, Pericles breaks down and cries for the loss of his city. The people of Athens, ashamed and filled with sympathy, are so moved that they forgive the elder Pericles for his tragic humanness.
Pericles, like all humans, could only do his best, which was, after all, never perfect. He made up for what he could not do by doing what he could. And to the best of his ability, Pericles kept an ideal of participatory democracy before the eyes of his people, knowing they could not hit a target they did not aim at!
Pericles died soon thereafter, but not before all the great monuments had been completed in the course of his administration, all while the public treasury had steadily increased, and the people themselves had been fed and well kept.
Though the plague had carried off a full quarter of her population, Athens herself has survived and ultimately prospered. And when it was discovered that in all his years at the pinnacle of power, Pericles had not increased his own estate by a single drachma, his true character came to light, and his loss was swiftly appreciated – for another like him was nowhere to be found. Athens had only wolves left to protect her, but who would protect her from these wolves?
Pericles would be remembered as having achieved the balance of courage and temperance in his rule that Socrates so idealized – a goal that is seldom achieved in any human life, least of all one given to politics. And without a shepherd, the sheep come to be ruled by the wolves, and it is not long before all dissident voices come to be eaten alive. Socrates knew it was just a matter of time before they came for him.
By this time, the so-called democracy has been long since poisoned by the rhetoric of those who would profit by her demise, and bears little resemblance to the real thing. Under the influence of the oligarchs, who corrupt the people's respect for the minority voice by breaking down the decorum of listening in assembly, public deliberation degenerates into partisan argument, and we see why democracy is vulnerable to manipulation. When the loudest and most solicitous voice can carry the day, participatory democracy is perverted into mere 'representative' - which it hardly ever is - and people then must face the problem of who to trust, having little choice but to believe the best liar. And what is left is democracy in name only.
And so we see what happens when reason fails and lies assert themselves as truth, for when honesty, self-knowledge, and dialogue - all essential to a healthy democracy - are lost, Athens quickly declines into a series of bloody massacres, including the brief 'Tyranny of the Thirty Oligarchs', in which Plato's uncle Critias is the prime mover. The oligarchs caution Socrates to desist from asking questions, or else - at which point Socrates seizes the opportunity to step it up, and inquires of Plato’s bloodthirsty uncle Critias, the worst of them all, ‘What is happiness made of, after all?’ and ‘What good is a tyrant, to himself, or to the state?’
This discussion (which comes down to us as ‘The Republic’ and other dialogues of the so-called middle period) spanned the reaches of human knowledge – in may ways, further advanced then than now. And in it, they sort what is from what could be, holding up the authoritarian pretext that passes for an ideal state to ask, ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ And in the process they discern the difference between the mere appearance of democracy and the real thing - a lesson we need desperately to remember in our time!
Soon thereafter, Socrates defies the wrath of the oligarchs by denying their order for him to assist in putting his friends to death, refusing to be made complicit in this or any tyranny.
Socrates did his best, but human power, like human knowledge, is limited, and he was soon arrested. Satisfied that while his best was not perfect, it was his best, all the same, and in doing it, he achieved his own personal excellence – a healthier ideal than perfection, after all, and one that made him worthy of the honor he earned, and the title of ‘father of philosophy.’
And with this, we return to the courtroom, where Socrates concludes his provocative defense. Among his closing arguments are his famous claims that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and being afraid of death is just another way of pretending to know what we cannot possibly in this human life. For all we know, death might be the greatest good, for no harm can come to a good person! And at least they won’t put you to death there for asking questions!
And if you will do justice by me, he tellingly entreats them, please make sure to behave toward my sons just as I have behaved toward yours.
In the end, the corrupt democracy of Athens was—like our own—confused by the deceits, conceits, and violence of its age. And in 399 BC, the assembly voted to put Socrates to death for the crime of honoring the worthy by teaching the young to think for themselves - though they called it ‘corrupting the youth and questioning the official gods’. (And the irony should not escape us that it was Anytus, youthful seducer and jealous lover of Alcibiades, who loved Socrates, who brought the charges against Socrates of ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’.
For his part, Socrates only purpose was "to give the young a respite, lest they become disheartened by the cynicism of their age"—hope for which we have more need today than ever. Whether or not he succeeded remains to be seen, for as he made clear in his defense – you can more easily kill the dreamer than the dream.
And so it was that the old philosopher was finally silenced by this so-called democracy for being a threat to the powers-that-be, all because he taught their sons, daughters, and importantly, their young lovers, to question their authority too intelligently (undoubtedly the same reason his voice is still obscured today),
Only time would tell if these mournful seeds would grow into something good. For many have been put to death throughout history to encourage, and even compel, this deliberate forgetting and active ignorance of truth. But thanks to Plato, Socrates was not forgotten, Plato dedicated his life to recalling Socrates’ voice for future generations to remember. Aware of the power of words for both good and evil, he resolved to take on the task of recalling for the future the astonishing events he has witnessed and the powerful lessons he had learned. And after and during a long life of trying to promote Socrates philosopher king ideal (a mission that got him kidnapped and enslaved more than once, and is worthy of it’s own film), Plato went on to found, in the garden of Hacademus, a school they would call his 'Academy'. And here Aristotle—arguably the most influential thinker of all time—would study for nearly twenty years (but that’s another story).
It was here at Plato’s Academy that Plato himself would undertake (against the will of his oligarchic family) what would become a lifelong mission of recalling the dialogues of Socrates for the world—which might actually be ready for them someday. One can only hope that day is soon, because we are unlikely to get another chance! For even then, it took 2000 years, rivers of blood, and the discovery of a new world, before democracy would find fertile soil again.
The Ancient Athenians learned the hard way that democracy, like everything else that is alive, is always changing - always either getting better or getting worse, either toward justice or away from it. Democracy is more than a form of government, it is a way of life based on the golden rule. If polity were understood better, we’d see that even in a system of representative democracy, we each and all have a part to play – especially when we do our part to teach the young well about how to participate at whatever level they work.
The critical variable for healthy democracy (as Aristotle later argues) is not how many rule, but how well each rules himself - which is to say, how justly. For democracy is as open to corruption as any other form of government, if it forgets to properly deliberate. True ideals are always easy to lose sight of, for what comes to light in our dialogue can disappear in our silence…especially when what is called ideal aims only at a low standard (such as they discuss in the form of the guardian state, that appears ideal on the surface, but doesn’t prevent injustice from arising in action).
As we’ve seen, Plato himself shows up in these dialogues only rarely, most pointedly when Socrates turns to him in court that fateful day and suggests that perhaps Plato would be the one who will remember all this for posterity. It would seem that, despite his relatives admonishment that he had turned away from political power, Plato understood and lived for a truer power, the kind that would have us still learning from his writing all these many centuries later.
Plato was only one of many students who grew up listening at Socrates’ feet. Under the influence of his teaching, many of his students would go on after his execution to change the world in ways no single generation ever had or perhaps would again. No less than twenty-nine of the young men of Athens undertook writing dialogues to commemorate Socrates’ teachings after his death. Only Plato’s survive in their entirety, as far as we know. Xenophon too wrote memoirs that give us another eye on some of Plato’s account.
Plato’s Academy would carry on continuously for nine full centuries, becoming the longest lasting educational establishment the world has ever known. But all along the sad and supreme irony remains that 'academics' so often become, like their ancient sophist counterparts, seduced by the political power of rhetoric as a tool of class interests, wealth, and privilege, rendering democracy virtually incapable of the intelligent deliberation that the ancients knew to be essential to justice. For all the effort that hard working teachers put in, it’s possible that we’ve all learned by a teaching model that has mislead our best intentions. For to deliberately teach what one generation of one culture has deemed appropriate opens the door to all kinds of inadvertent censorship, in that it assumes any single generation knows best what truth is – an error made too many times in the past, to the detriment of all generations that came after.
It remains true that anything that can be understood in one inspired moment lives on and waits to be recalled in yet another. And because of this, corrupt human nature is only a problem until we remember those Socratic potentials that human beings still and always have within. For we may forget, malign, and ignore it, but the good thing about the truth is that it stays true—and the challenge to humanity is to remember! And these ideals can be remembered with or without the help of an inspired voice – and Socrates is certainly this - the ultimate coach giving the supreme pep talk to the human race.
This ideal of dialectic education can be understood to be essential to healthy democracy. This is why Socrates emphasizes doing one’s part, minding one’s business, which perhaps sounds, to us, to connote keeping out of politics, but understood properly, it’s more likely to represent seeing all our actions as political, that is, an exercise of power. This meant doing well in all that is one’s proper sphere of response-ability. Any and every person was understood to have a moral obligation to do what they had the ability to do – not merely to appear good, but to actually be good. And that challenge is different for all – for every hero must follow a different path to the same end of personal excellence. Being inextricably interconnected with others, those who fail to live up to their best let down more than themselves. So it is everyone’s obligation to find the good that can be learned from all the challenges one faces in their journey. Learn from them, and pass it on. That’s what you are good for.
What we these days call the Socratic method was originally understood as a way of treating one another with due respect and good will, for the purpose of bringing out the good in one another. Sadly, thanks to the game of telephone that has become education, Socrates way of teaching is seldom remembered for its true worth. For it was not merely a way of teaching, but something more like the golden rule of healthy communication. It is the way of talking to one another that habituates sincere and thoughtful reasoning and encourages the democratic character by encouraging equal respect and mutual understanding. Understood in this healthy form, the Socratic method is simply the art of healthy eye-to-eye relationships, in which both are understood to be teachers, just as both are students. And done well, it had and still has the power to heal human relationships dialogically. As Socrates admits in the end, ‘Love is the only thing I ever claim to know anything about.’
The dialectic ideal of education would have us get out of the way of the process of discovery…let learning follow the lead of intrinsically generated questions. Education as the search for truth encourages other teaching qualities than follow the leader that tends to be our habit. Think for yourself, and learn from the best is closer to the Socratic ideal of education as the mutual search for truth.
Though Socrates' demise is held by generations since to have been the death of the Golden Age, it was also the birth of Western Culture—for whatever that's been or may yet be worth.
And so we are left wondering if we are indeed engaged in true democracy? Or have we misunderstood the ideal so much that we have missed the mark entirely? The ancients would have us remember that the ideal of democracy is actualized in how we live, how we talk to one another, how we contribute our work to the whole.
It’s not difficult to see why the story of the decline of the world’s first > democracy should ring hauntingly familiar to us. > And while this is exactly the reason we need this story told and retold, again and again, it is also > the reason it’s unlikely to get its due in the American film > industry (to which the concept of a ‘writing ethic’ is apparently > completely foreign). So while my screenwriting effort ultimately grew into an unrealizable 1500 page manuscript (twenty-five hours of film, as screenplay > formatting goes), I resolved that, after so many years of authenticating this > story, I cannot possibly bring myself to simply ‘sell it’ and > watch all my careful research and meticulous referencing go > out the window for the sake of the bottom line. I owe that much to > Socrates. So, if I want to see that> thatthat film done well, I’m going to have to either > find filmmakers whose hearts and motivations are beyond profit > and politics, or produce it myself. Meanwhile, my research has become fodder for many other good things, such as this this book.
Which is why, Mill says:
Indeed, “no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except in so far as he has either had forced upon him by others or gone through of himself the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. (p.52-55) For this reason, “I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute for [this learning method] – some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's consciousness as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion…”(p.52-55)
“That, therefore, which, when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult to create how worse than absurd it is to forego when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves."[pp.52-55, "On Liberty"]
“But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. …“[T]he modern mind owes far more to [this dialectic method of learning] than it is generally willing to admit, and the present modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. A person who derives all his instruction from teachers and books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; . . . and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers and a low general average intellect in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation.”(p.52-55)
[1] Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat (p.8)
[2] (Plato, Seventh Epistle, p.*)
[3] (Plato, Pheado n.d.)
[4] (Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
[5] (Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
[6] (Plato’s Theaetetus169c) (Plato, Theaetetus n.d.)