Lecture on Plato’s Euthyphro and Apology by Mark Pursley



Lecture on Plato’s Euthyphro and Apology by Mark PursleyOne of the most fascinating things about the works of Plato is that they are mostly written in dialogue form. A couple of friends getting together to talk about philosophy. The dialogues seldom offer a definitive answer to the issue under investigation. Philosophy is often like that, ruling out bad answers and clarifying the question, but not always able to find a resolution. Sometimes though, Plato is trying to lead us somewhere, so we must analyze his texts carefully and look for hints. Ultimately, he wants us to discover for ourselves the best way of resolving the dispute.Many of Plato’s dialogues focus on defining a particular virtue. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all defend a virtue approach to ethical theory. Plato really stresses the importance of being able to define the virtue under discussion. Socrates observes that many people profess to have expert knowledge of what it means to be a good person, but on examination, turn out to know very little.The Euthyphro examines the virtue of piety. This is a word that is not used a lot these days. No graduation speeches this year urged graduates to improve their piety as they pursue their dreams. (I can’t prove that, but pretty sure). Plato has a special interest in this virtue because his mentor, Socrates, perhaps the most fascinating character in ancient Greece, was convicted and executed for the crime of impiety. I argue that Plato attempts to vindicate Socrates in the dialogue. He shows that the religious establishment of Athens, who hated Socrates’ constant questioning of their beliefs, had no knowledge of what piety actually consists in. Real knowledge of the nature of piety reveals that Socrates, who claims to be a servant of the gods, exhibited true piety. To show this, Plato has to provide a devastating critique of the religious assumptions of his peers. But he does it in a subtle way, so as not to be awarded the same fate as Socrates. All of Plato’s dialogues have a setting. In the Euthyphro, the setting is the courthouse. Socrates is there waiting for his trial to start when he runs in to Euthyphro. Euthyphro is there bringing charges against his own father. Understandably, Socrates is surprised to hear that, so Euthyphro explains what happened. Here is my paraphrase. After a hard day of working on the ranch, a group of slaves is sitting around the fire, having a few beers, and talking about the good old days before they got enslaved. As it happens, somebody looked at someone wrong and a fight broke out between two drunk slaves. Unfortunately, one slave hit the other a little to hard and killed him. Euthyphro’s father instructed the workers to tie up the slave murderer and push him into a ditch to sober up, with the intention of reporting the incident to the authorities the following day.Well, the next day, everyone was busy doing their chores. In the early afternoon, someone remembered the guy in the ditch. When they went to check on him, they discovered that he too, was dead. The wounds suffered during the fight were enough to lead to his death. So, Euthyphro determined that his father was responsible for that slave’s death, and went to court to bring charges against Dad. A philosophy instructor at Valley College, my friend Zach Knorr, thinks Euthyphro is sort of heroic, standing up for a slave at a time when slavery seemed natural. However, Euthyphro’s motives are not so noble:He tells Socrates that his duty is to prosecute if the killer acted unjustly, even if it is a relative. The pollution is the same if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him by bringing him to justice. This is a self-righteous man who is primarily concerned about his own ritual purity, not a man who stands against the injustice of slavery!His family members are angry with him, saying that “it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder.” But Euthyphro is confident that their ideas of piety are wrong, and his view is right. Definitions of PietySince Socrates is about to stand trial on the charge of impiety, he asks Euthyphro to instruct him concerning the virtue of piety. As a self-proclaimed expert on the matter; Euthyphro is happy to oblige. As was his custom. Socrates asks Euthyphro to provide a definition.Definition 1: I say that the pious is to do what I’m doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or anything else, whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else; not to prosecute is impious. What I find interesting is how Euthyphro goes on to defend his definition:I can quote the law as a great proof that this is so. I have already said to others that such actions are right, not to favor the ungodly, whoever they are. These people themselves believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, yet they agree that he bound his father because he unjustly swallowed his sons, and that he in turn castrated his father for similar reasons. But they are angry with me because I am prosecuting my father…. They contradict themselves in what they say about the gods and about me.The move Euthyphro makes here is not uncommon. People often use passages from sacred books to defend their actions or beliefs. Socrates observes that his own trial is the result of his skepticism about these sacred stories. The story Euthyphro references here concerns the god Kronos and his wife Rhea. Fearing that one of his children would usurp his throne, Kronos adopted the practice of swallowing his children as soon as they were born. However, when Zeus was born, Rhea wrapped a rock in a baby blanket and told Kronos it was the new baby. To get revenge, Zeus later crawled back into his mother’s womb with his knife. When Kronos penetrated Rhea, Zeus was waiting to cut off his divine member. Socrates comments: “I find it hard to accept things like that being said about the gods…do you really believe these things are true?” He continues: “Do you believe there really is war among the gods and terrible enmities and battles?” Euthyphro absolutely believes these stories.Moral Blind spots in Sacred ScriptureI think Plato is making an important point here. Ancient stories about the gods contain moral blind spots. They describe the gods as doing actions that later generations find immoral. When I read the account, I try to imagine what Socrates would think about some of the stories in the Bible. Suppose we could go back in time and bring Socrates to the current day (as happened in the movie, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). What are some Bible stories where the author says God did something that Socrates might object to? I suspect he would not approve of God’s decision to wipe out all of humanity with a flood. Sure, the people were bad, but what about the little children? What had they done? Commanding Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice might also seem problematic. It was only a test, but imagine the psychological impact of almost being executed by your own Dad on your 12th birthday? What Plato is showing us is that we cannot use ancient scriptures to determine our views on contemporary moral controversies. Since these books contain moral blind spots and moral hallucinations they must be consulted with caution. Here are a few more examples. Exodus 21.7 tells us: If a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do.These days, we would say, don’t sell your daughter, and don’t buy someone else’s daughter. That is human trafficking and one of the worst evils plaguing the human race at present. Exodus 21.17 commands the following: And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. That is a bit harsh, don’t you think? We understand that Moses had to run a tight ship, but some times kids might have good reason to be angry at a parent. The book of Exodus also tells about a time Moses got mad. He went up the mountain to get the ten commandments, and when he came down, he finds the Israelites already violating the first two commandments by worshipping a golden image of Baal. Exodus 32: 27-28 describes the punishment Moses ordered: And he said unto them, Thus saith the?Lord?God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.28?And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.We understand Moses’ anger, but these days we value religious tolerance.Some contemporary Christians have argued that gay marriage should not be allowed because Leviticus 18.22 condemns a man lying with a man as with a woman as an abomination. I wonder what they think about Leviticus 19.19? Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.I’ve never seen a contemporary Cristian protesting at Macys over the sale of blended garments; no protest signs read: Ban the blends! Lev, 19:19!(By the way, for an informative perspective on the meaning of Exodus 18.22 see: when a man lies with a man as a woman explainedIn Leviticus 20:15 we read: ‘If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.Personally, I don’t have a huge issue with the execution of animal rapists; but killing the animal too seems unfair. That sheep needs therapy.The sixth book of the Bile, the book of Joshua, is morally problematic. The Jews were promised the land of Canaan, but there were already people living there.?So, Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.?(Joshua 10:40) The instructions were to kill every man, woman, and child (even the pets had to go). Today we call this genocide. In contemporary warfare an attempt is made to protect the lives of non-combatants. The wise Solomon tells us in Proverbs 13.24 Whoever spares the rod, hates their children. But these days, child development experts don’t find it wise to hit kids with rods. Ephesians 5.22 states: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. The Southern Baptist Convention quotes this verse in their statement on family values saying, it may not be politically correct but it is Biblically correct. I wonder, then, why they do not also include Ephesians 6.5? Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as you would Christ.If the author was wrong about the duties of a slave, couldn’t he also be wrong about the role of the wife? (For more examples see: The Sins of Scripture, by John Shelby Spong and The Unholy in Holy Scripture, by Gerd Ludeman).The point of these examples is not to pick on the Bible. I actually love the Bible and began college as a declared Bible major at Biola College. But we can’t pretend that the human race has not learned many important moral lessons over the centuries that Biblical authors could not have known, We abolished slavery, we are fighting for gender equity and gay rights, and still working to root out racism and promote human rights all over the world. Ancient texts provide wisdom, but they also reflect beliefs that are no longer viable.However, that is not the problem with definition 1. The problem is that it offers only an example of pious behavior, it does not provide a universal formula that could be applied to every case of pious action. If you asked me to define what a college is and I said “it is one of those things like USC, UCLA, and LAMC,” you would say those are examples, but they don’t give the essence of what it is to be a college. For that we would need to say something like, an institution of higher learning. Definitions of Piety continueEuthyphro accepts the criticism and tries again.Definition 2: Piety is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them. This is the right sort of definition, but there is also a problem with it. Euthyphro has already agreed that the Greek gods have hatred and go to war with one another. These indicates that they don’t see eye to divine eye about ethical issues. S just as two humans might disagree about the moral permissibility of abortion or capital punishment, two gods could also disagree. Kronos and Zeus might agree that, when certain conditions are met, it is okay to castrate one’s father, but Hera and Rhea might consider such an act reprehensible, to be avoided at all costs. If father-castration is dear to Zeus but not dear to Hera, then the action would be both pious and impious at the same time, if definition 2 were correct. When a definition results in a contradiction, it is time to either abandon that definition or to look for a way of revising it. Euthyphro is convinced that all the gods would agree that his own prosecution of his father is a morally correct action. Socrates makes this request: Come, try to show me a clear sign that all the gods definitely believe this action to be right. If you can give me adequate proof of this, I shall never cease to extol your wisdom. Euthyphro concedes that this will be “no light task,” and is not able to do it.Here I think Plato is raising an important problem. I call it the problem of religious epistemology. Many people in this world claim to know what God thinks about abortion, assisted suicide, gay marriage, what the best religions is, and many other topics. But how can they prove what God really thinks? The traditional way, to quote some verse from the Bible, has already been undermined by the previous point about moral blind spots in ancient texts. So, what is the correct method for gaining knowledge of God’s opinions? I have not seen a good answer to that question. If you have, be sure to let me know what it is!Socrates decides to grant Euthyphro’s claim for the sake of argument. Suppose all the gods agree, then we could revise our definition as follows:Definition 3: What all the gods hate is impious, and what all the gods love is pious.Socrates then asks a question that has become rather famous. It has become known as the Euthyphro dilemma. Here is the question: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? At first, Euthyphro doesn’t understand the question. It is a question about the relationship between God and morality. Consider a popular sin like adultery. We can distinguish two ways of thinking about the relationship between God and the wrongness of adultery. Adultery is wrong because God said, “thou shalt not commit adultery.”God said, “thou shalt not commit adultery,” because adultery is wrong. This is a dilemma because whatever way you go, there are problems. Way 1 is sometimes called “the divine command theory.” This approach, favored by many Protestant theologians, assumes that God’s calling something “good” is what makes that thing good. This appears to make morality arbitrary. There is nothing distinctively good about good actions aside from the fact that God declares them good. If he had chosen to say, “thou shalt commit adultery,” it would be good to do it and lots of people could quit feeling guilty. But, you say, God would never call a bad action “good” because his nature is good. But this already assumes some other standard by which God’s nature is being judged. If “God is good” just means “God approves of himself,” it is not a very interesting claim. If you go with way 2, as Socrates and Euthyphro conclude we must, then you seem to have posited this other thing, morality, as an independent standard by which even the acts of God must be judged. That makes some theologians nervous, as if there is a competition for which Reality is most Ultimate, God or the Moral Law?If way 2 is the correct path, then definition 3 has a problem. If things are Pious or not based on some other standard than universal consent among the gods, then we can’t infer the essence of Piety itself by simply observing universal consent among gods (even if we could solve the religious epistemology problem). If we could show that in fact all the gods approved of Euthyphro’s action, that would be some evidence in favor of his contention that prosecuting his father in this case is pious. But it would do absolutely nothing towards illuminating the essence of piety. A list of people who like something, say Blues music, would tell us nothing about the essence of Blues music, just that Bod Dylan, Tito Jackson, Eric Clapton and many others enjoy that type of music. Definition three gave us an attribute of piety, the gods happen to like it, but we are no closer to knowing its essence.At this point, the once confident Euthyphro is at a complete loss. But Socrates, I have no way of telling you what I have in mind, for whatever proposition we put forward goes around and refuses to stay put where we establish it.In the study of Plato’s dialogues, the point Euthyphro has just reached is called aporia, or puzzlement. It is usually after reaching this point in the dialogue that be begin to see positive theory emerge. Plato thought that before you can teach somebody something, you must first help them understand that they do not already know the answer.Socrates then makes a helpful suggestion: I think you are making unnecessary difficulties… See whether you think all that is pious is of necessity just. After a short discussion, they agree that the class of all pious actions is a subset of the class of all just actions, so that all pious actions are also just actions, but no all just actions are pious. For Plato, justice is more like our word morality. The just person is the morally good person who treats everyone as they deserve to be treated, fairly and appropriately. So, now we are making progress. We know that pious actions are a type of morally good, or just, actions. We just need to discover what distinguishes pious actions from other morally good actions. Socrates asks Euthyphro to tell him “what part of the just the pious is.” Euthyphro’s response is definition 4.Definition 4: I think, Socrates, that the godly and pious is the part of justice that is concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of men is the remaining part of justice. Socrates responds by saying: You seem to me to put that very well…. I think that is sincere. We have certain moral obligations to the gods, and other moral obligations to our fellow humans. But Socrates says he needs a bit more information. I do not know yet what you mean by care, for you do not mean the care of the gods in the same sense as the care of other things….At first, Euthyphro thinks he does mean “care” in the ordinary sense. Socrates points out that when we care for a horse, we do things for the horse, liking providing food, water, and medical care, that make the horse better off than it was before we cared for it. He then asks: Is piety then, which is care of the gods, also to benefit the gods and make some one of the gods better? To which Euthyphro replies: By Zeus no! The Greek religion was fairly crude (their gods were more superhuman than supernatural) but not quite that crude. The earliest religion to leave a written record was the Sumerians. In Sumerian mythology, if humans forget to make a sacrifice, the gods get hungry. But for the Greeks, the welfare of the gods is not contingent on human actions. So, Socrates asks what kind of care of the gods would piety be? The kind of care, Socrates, that slaves take of their masters. Socrates seems to agree: I understand. It is likely to be a kind of service to the gods. Socrates then goes on to provide some analogies to elucidate the notion of service. If one serves the doctor, one helps the doctor achieve his goal of bringing health to the patient. If one serves the shipbuilder, one helps him achieve the goal of building a ship. So, he then asks:Tell me then, my good sir, to the achievement of what aim does service to the gods tend? What is that excellent aim that the gods achieve, using us as their servants? Euthyphro’s response is hopelessly vague: Many fine things, Socrates. Socrates points out that generals also do many fine things but their main goal is victory in war. Farmers also do many things but their main goal is producing food from the earth. So, he asks: Well then, how would you sum up the many fine things the gods achieve?I think this is a pretty important question. Many people have felt the desire to devote their lives to serving God. But have they thought very carefully about the answer to this question? My friends at the Hare Krishna Temple believe God wants us to chant his name. They spend hours every day reciting the mantra. But, suppose that is not God’s goal? I have other friends who follow the Jehovah’s Witness religion. They may think serving God means standing in front of 7-11 with an Awake magazine. Others join convents and monasteries and devote their lives to prayer and meditation. When I was a student at Biola college I was required to have a Christian Service assignment each semester. One year I did my Christian Service with an organization called Campus Crusade for Christ. We thought serving God meant evangelization. So, we would drive to a local community college with a supply of religious tracts explaining how to ask Jesus into your heart. It never occurred to me to ask; how do we know that this is the goal God is trying to achieve? Euthyphro’s response is definition 5.Definition 5: If a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those are pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public affairs of state.Socrates is disappointed with this answer: You could tell me in far fewer words the sum of what I asked, Euthyphro, but you are not keen to teach me, that is clear. You were on the point of doing so, but you turned away. If you had given that answer, I should now have acquired from you sufficient knowledge of the nature of piety.Here Plato gives us a big hint for interpreting the dialogue. To find the essence of piety, all we have to determine is the goal that God is trying to accomplish with His human servants.I believe we find the answer to that question in the Apology as Socrates describes his mission as his “service of the gods.” But for now, Socrates attacks Euthyphro’s final attempt at a definition of piety. Euthyphro agrees with Socrates summary that piety is “knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray.” Socrates points out that sacrifice is giving the gods a gift, and prayer is asking for something in return. This makes religion into “a sort of trading skill between gods and men.” They have blessings to bestow and we have desires we want fulfilled. There is a problem with this view of religion. If we are giving a gift to the gods, it needs to be something that brings them a benefit. There is no point in giving someone a gift that they don’t want or need. Traditional religious sacrifices include animals and crops. But what benefit is God supposed to get from a dead animal? The gods give us wonderful things, life, health, and a beautiful world; and what do they get, a dead chicken? This view of religion makes no sense. This was the understanding of religion in the pre-axial age. Plato is one of the sages of the axial age, when a new understanding of religion was evolving. In early Hebrew religion, God wanted sacrifices. In Leviticus 3.5 we read: Then Aaron’s sons?are to burn it on the altar?on top of the burnt offering?that is lying on the burning wood;?it is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the?Lord. The early Hebrews think of God as enjoying the smell of barbeque. But things change during the axial age, the prophets have a different view of things. The prophet Amos sums up the transition well in chapter 5:I hate, I despise your feasts!I cannot stand the stench of your solemn assemblies.22Even though you offer Me burnt offerings and grain offerings,I will not accept them;for your peace offerings of fattened cattleI will have no regard.23Take away from Me the noise of your songs!I will not listen to the music of your harps.24But let justice roll on like a river,and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. What God wants is not dead animals on the altar but morally good conduct.The prophet Isaiah puts it like this: Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.The old “trading skill” conception bred hypocrisy. People could do whatever they wanted and then buy God off with a sacrifice.When Jesus came on the scene this controversy between the priests (who administered the sacrifices) and the prophets, (who emphasized the importance of moral conduct over religious sacrifice), was still around. And Jesus clearly sided with the prophets. Matthew 9:13: Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’?Here, Matthew has Jesus citing the prophet Hosea: For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6,6) Jesus says a true prophet is not identified by their performance of ritual or for the correctness of their beliefs, you can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. (Matthew 7.16)I see Plato as making a similar improvement in Greek religion. He is abandoning the old paradigm of ritualistic religion, what I call, prayer and sacrifice piety; and replacing it with a new paradigm. Ethical religion, moral fruit piety, sees God as offering humans the opportunity to perfect (or at least improve their moral conduct. So, the pious person is the one who helps people become morally better and who leads a morally virtuous life. Using the Apology to Interpret the EuthyphroTo defend this interpretation, we turn now to the Apology, which is Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates. As we see Socrates describe his mission, notice how often he refers to it as “his service to the gods.” Here we get an account of the aim that is achieved by the gods using humans as their servants, the moral improvement of human kind.The Greek word apologia means defense. Socrates is not saying he is sorry, he is defending himself against the charges brought by his accusers. Since Plato wrote the account shortly after the trial and makes it clear that he was there, most scholars believe Plato’s account is a pretty accurate summary of what Socrates actually said. He begins by reviewing the charges against him: Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities. He is also guilty of corrupting the youth. The penalty demanded is death. Before addressing the charges of these new accusers, Socrates point out what his critics in the past said of him: Socrates is guilty of needless curiosity and meddling interference, inquiring into things beneath earth and in the sky, making the weaker argument stronger, and teaching others to do the same. He begins his defense by explaining how this prejudice against him arose. He recounts how his old friend Chairephon once visited the Oracle at Delphi and asked it if anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the Oracle said “no.” Socrates, on hearing this report, said: I asked myself: Whatever does the god mean? What is his riddle? I am very conscious that I am not wise at all; what then does he mean by saying that I am the wisest?To solve the riddle, he set out to find a wiser man. He approached a well-known politician who had a reputation for wisdom and began questioning him. He says: my experience was something like this: I thought he appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise but that he was not. As a result, he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. So, I withdrew and thought to myself: I am wiser than this man: it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. He approached a few more politicians and got the same result. In spite of the fact that his investigations in search of a wiser man were making him unpopular he felt compelled to proceed: I thought that I must attach the greatest importance to the god’s oracle, so I must go to all those who had any reputation for knowledge to examine its meaning- I experienced something like this: in my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient…. After the politicians, he went to the poets. Poets in ancient Greece were like priests; they were the ones who received messages from the gods. It was the poets Hesiod and Homer who recounted the stories of the gods, the sacred literature of Greek religion. Socrates found that the poets had little understanding of their own work. They might be inspired, but they didn’t have knowledge. And yet, because of their poetry writing skills “they thought themselves very wise men in other respects, which they were not.”Last of all, he reports, he went to the craftsmen. Unlike the politicians and the poet/priests, the craftsman actually possessed useful skills. But, he says, they had the same fault as the poets, “each of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other most important pursuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had.”As a result of these investigations, Socrates formed an interpretation of the oracles meaning: in fact the god is wise and that his oracular response meant that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man, Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if he said: “This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.” So even now I continue this investigation as the god bade me- and I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then, if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise…. I live in great poverty because of my service to the god.I put in bold those phrases indicating his claim to be serving the gods. It is quite an unusual way of thinking about serving God. For Socrates, the biggest obstacle to moral improvement is intellectual arrogance. So, the true servant of God is not the preacher who confidently pounds the pulpit, pretending to speak for God, but the troublesome skeptic who constantly reminds us that we know a lot less than we think we do. The Socratic profession of ignorance is not an end in itself. Realizing that you really don’t know much is a necessary first step on the path of becoming a decent person, of acquiring a virtuous character. So, the negative, or therapeutic part of the Socratic Mission is essential, but only in so far as it is followed by moral inquiry leading to improved character. The positive part of the mission is expressed in the following passage. Here Socrates is considering a hypothetical offer from the jury. Suppose they offered to spare his life on the condition that he end his investigations, what would his response be?I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you in my usual way to point out to any one of you I happen to meet: Good sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth or the best possible state of your soul. And if someone doesn’t measure up, I shall reproach him because he attaches little importance to the most important things and greater importance to inferior things…. Be sure this is what the god orders me to do, and I think there is no greater blessing for the city than my service to the god. For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul. Socrates understands that it is easy for people to get their values warped. To mistakenly believe that the pursuit of money and fame is what life is all about. In 1938 Harvard began a study of human happiness than spanned 80 years. One of the researchers involved in the study points out that, when they ask Harvard Freshmen what they think will bring them happiness in life, the response is always “money and success.” But the study, which followed a group of Harvard men and another group of poor Irish men from Boston found that this assumption was false. Money and fame had no significant impact on happiness and satisfaction in their lives. Instead, it was their relationships with family and friends. I think close relationships are greatly enhanced by good character. Self-centered egoists tend not to have great relationships. Harvard Happiness StudySocrates describes his mission with a memorable metaphor. I was attached to this city by the god- though it seems a ridiculous thing to say- as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long….Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of Socrates. He used this metaphor to describe the role of protestors in the civil rights movement. In his famous defense of breaking unjust laws as a form of protest in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, king says:Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.Socrates provides a nice summary of his role in section 38a: It is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for man. ................
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