Socrates (469-399 BC)



Lecture Week2

Socrates On How To Be Happy

In chapter one of The Consolations Of Philosophy, Alain de Botton waxes lyrical about the death of Socrates (469-399 BC). It was a noble death, by most people’s standards, and it has been the subject of a variety of famous paintings. Socrates was condemned to death by the citizens of Athens in 399 BC on a trumped up charge of corrupting the youth. In the paintings, typically Socrates is depicted surrounding by a group of friends in a prison cell about to drink a cup of hemlock, a deadly poison. Execution at that time in Athens required the prisoner to execute himself in such a way. The friends are usually depicted as woebegone and distraught, while Socrates sits calmly and nobly in the midst of them, lifting the poisoned chalice to his lips, and exhibiting his legendary equanimity or peace of mind. According to Plato in the book, The Crito, Socrates was still philosophising and still happy right to the very end.

The (unjust) charge against Socrates had been laid by some wealthy aristocrats. Perhaps he had shown them up in public places, for he had this habit of going around the streets of Athens philosophising with and questioning all sorts of people, often people of standing in the community, who claimed to have some kind of knowledge. Socrates wanted to find out if they really had this knowledge or not. By a process of philosophical questioning, now called ‘Socratic dialogue’, he was usually able to reveal that they did not have this knowledge by showing that they made various unwarranted assumptions in their discourse and that they tended to take as certain and proven what was not certain and not proven.

So perhaps these wealthy aristocrats had been shown up in this way, publicly embarrassed and they had a grudge against Socrates. Many others in the jury may also have had this grudge against him, in addition to which, it is said that they were heavily bribed by the wealthy aristocrats to vote in their favour.

According to Plato’s account of the trial in his report to the Athenians called The Apology, Socrates had been given an opportunity to escape the death sentence if he would only recant his ways and give up philosophising in the streets. He refused.

He told the jury in reply, “So long as I draw breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practising philosophy, and exhorting you, and elucidating the truth, for everyone that I meet…And so, gentlemen, whether you acquit me or not, you know that I am not going to alter my conduct, not even if I have to die a hundred deaths.” (de Botton pg 4) And so, refusing to recant, Socrates was led off to an Athenian jail where the legendary death scene took place.

So it was that Socrates went down in history for dying a martyr’s death and facing up to the unpopularity and injustice with great courage and composure. It might be useful to compare Socrates and Jesus at this point. Both were martyrs unjustly condemned for their respective causes, Jesus for his God-centred beliefs, Socrates for philosophy-centred beliefs. The life and the death of each became a source of inspiration for later generations of followers who sought to imitate, in some sense, their way of life and practice their teachings. And both really lived their teachings: the teachings were not a merely academic exercise but something to be committed to and even die for if need be. Both exhibited, then, a great passion: either a great love of God or a great love of Sophia (wisdom).

In addition: it is perhaps remarkable that neither of these famous teachers actually wrote anything down, as far as we know. What we know of them we know from other sources, from the reports of others: in the case of Jesus, the reports that claim to be written by some of the disciplines, and in the case of Socrates, reports of other writers of the period, such as Aristophanes and Xenophon, and, of course, most notably, Socrates’ most famous student, Plato.

According to the reports, neither Jesus nor Socrates appears to have actively sought martyrdom - nor on the other hand, did they strongly strive against it, as by, for example, arguing in their own defence in a way likely to win approval and popularity, or by seeking to escape. On the contrary, both walked boldly into the situation aware of what was likely to happen. Jesus did not pander to the conventional beliefs and attitudes of Pontius Pilate and Socrates did not pander to the conventional beliefs and attitudes of the Athenian jury.

There is this difference, though: Jesus was, apparently, relatively young – thirtysomething probably – while Socrates was much older – around seventy. It has been suggested that Socrates, being old anyway, may have felt that his martyrdom for his ideal of philosophy was a more useful way to die than to die merely of old age and natural causes. For his death in this dramatic way would make a statement about philosophy and would serve the cause for generations to come.

There is second difference: Jesus presumably approached Jerusalem in the conviction that there is a God and an after life, and that his death would not be the end of his eternal or divine life. He would have his reward in heaven. The same applies to Christian martyrs in general – and indeed many religious fanatics who choose to die in the name of a cause.

Socrates, on the other hand, as we will see, did not have a definite belief in life after death. So it could perhaps be argued that Socrates was doing what he did, not for any expected reward later, but solely from his belief in virtue now, his personal integrity, and his philosophical ideals - in which case, you might say his motives were purer in the sense that there is not a notion of reward driving his actions.

A kind of power seems to be exhibited by Socrates in the legendary death scene. He sits and philosophises with mastery and composure while his friends around him are weeping. His wife, Xanthippe, has had to be escorted from the prison cell as she lost it altogether. Offers are made to bribe the guards and help Socrates escape into exile, but he refuses. He declares that, although the jury has unjustly condemned him, nevertheless, he has been a loyal supporter of the Athenian democracy all his life and he is not about to go against it now. Thus he stands by his convictions and his personal integrity. He stands fast while those around him are collapsing, and drinks the hemlock.

What seems to strike de Botton, is the contrast between his own anxious desires to conform to majority opinions and standard conventions and so win and keep the approval of others, and Socrates’ great courage and capacity not to pander to the current society and general opinion. He did not care about being popular.

According to Plato in The Apology, he does not seem to have been motivated by a desire to gain the approval of even the jury that might condemn him to death; and according to Plato in The Crito, he does not seem to have been willing to bow to the opinions of even his closest friends, including Plato, when they thought he should escape. Socrates goes his own way.

de Botton, on the other hand, feels that he himself does not go his own way often enough to live or speak the truth as he sees it. And, of course, he is inviting us to see ourselves reflected in his humble self-portrait.

Most of us, he is suggesting, are rather feeble in this regard. We crave popularity and approval and, quite unlike Socrates, we make our sense of wellbeing or happiness largely depend on it. Why it that? Is it that we are, as Nietzsche would say, merely ‘herd animals’ by biological inheritance that instinctively crave communal comfort and security above all? Or is this desire for approval and to be in agreement with others something conditioned into us by our society and upbringing? Or is it a bit of both?

Or perhaps it is that we have not yet learned to question the general opinion deeply enough? If we begin to cross-examine and question it, in the way Socrates did, we might come to realise, like him, that the opinions of others actually have very little substance or foundation. And if or when we realise this, we might then be able to feel much freer in relation to those opinions. In that case, might we be able to develop a more secure source of freedom and happiness from within ourselves that is not so vulnerable to the opinions of others and not so dependent upon them?

The issue will turn largely on the question of knowledge: Is there any knowledge? Do human beings have sure and certain and true knowledge? If people do have real knowledge, then their opinions are not merely opinions, but actual truths. If that is so, then their opinions are well-founded, well-substantiated, authoritative, assured, etc., and so they should be highly regarded as such and we would do well to value what they say – and perhaps to feel insecure if our views are different.

So if we believe that other people have some real knowledge, such that their opinions are not merely opinions but actual truths, we will feel bound to give these opinions great weight and importance in our lives. It will not only be that we like the social comfort of being in agreement with others around us, but we will feel we ought to agree with them – for, after all, knowledge and truth are compelling.

If we think this way, we will not be able to rise above or easily dismiss the opinions of others, at least as long as we believe that those opinions are well-founded or substantial and authoritative. Those opinions, in short, will have a certain power over us, a certain fascination, and we will feel bound and constrained by this power. We will feel we must defer to it.

That is part of the reason why it is often said: “knowledge is power”. Those who have, or appear to have, true knowledge, tend to have a great deal of prestige in society. People tend to submit to those they think have knowledge. They seem to have special authority. Therefore, we feel we must listen to them and take on board what they say. Notice how you defer to the opinions of your Dentist, Lawyer or Accountant – usually without question.

With this kind of attitude, we are easily influenced and moulded by others. This begins in childhood. Parents appear to have knowledge and authority, and so we defer to them and take their opinions very seriously. The same goes for our teachers, and even for friends and relatives. And so we grow up constantly listening to the opinions of others and seeking their approval.

Most people never grow out of this. They remain in this respect somewhat like children. They conform to the customs and conventions of their culture and rarely question it deeply. And so it is that children born and brought up in Hindu cultures tend automatically to become Hindus, and those in Muslim cultures tend to become followers of Islam, and those in scientific humanist cultures tend to adopt scientific and humanist ideals, and so on. We take on the culture around us believing it to be superior in knowledge and values.

Now, if or when we come, at a later stage, to philosophy and someone like Socrates, we find that all this is challenged. Instead of this rather childlike immaturity of automatically submitting to the opinions and established views of those around us - as if those opinions and views were substantial and significant and not just merely opinions - we are invited to inquire and critically examine everything anew.

Question everything! Question all authority! We are invited to exercise and develop our own critical and creative reason in this manner*.

This is basically what Socrates was trying to teach, at any rate, according to Plato’s account in The Apology.

The result of this critical turn of mind when applied to the reputable in Athens is that Socrates finds no one who can convince him that they have real knowledge. They do however seem convinced that they do – but their conviction and thus wisdom is false. Socrates takes this observation of the famous claim that he is the wisest man in Athens – for he at least knows one thing. “ .. I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of but he thinks he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate, it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.”

This is Socrates in a nutshell. He does not make any claim to knowledge and therein his wisdom lies. For when we inquire and question knowledge claims deeply enough it seems we discover that they are all unwarranted – at least in so far as they are not based on certainties but assumptions.

Suppose this to be so, that there is no real knowledge and wisdom lies in this realisation. It would follow that it would be wise to realise that other people’s opinions, even if they happen to be the established social view, the popular view, or the custom in a culture, are not knowledge, nor do they constitute the truth. They are not that well-founded or substantiated or warranted or authoritative: they are, in short, merely opinions.

These opinions may simply be the product of a certain type of contingent social conditioning that could have been otherwise a slanted or biased view of things, a narrow-minded prejudice – a mere presumption masquerading as sure knowledge and solid truth. For example, the movie The Life of Brian depicts a multitude of religious sects, out of which one emerged as the “Truth” but this emergence could have been more to do with the politics of the day and little to do with the actual truth value of the claims being made.

If so, then there is really no need to take other people’s opinions so seriously at all. We do not need to give them such weight or importance. They have no intrinsic or sacred authority over us. We do not need to submit or defer to them. We can take or leave them.

Hence, it will be that the true philosopher, the wise person, such as Socrates, who has the wisdom to see that there is no true knowledge as such, also has the wisdom to see that people’s opinions are merely opinions – and nothing more. Consequently, he or she will not be much troubled by other people’s opinions, nor will he or she feel any particular need to be in agreement with others, nor seek to have their approval or be popular.

In effect, then, with Socratic wisdom one becomes more self-empowered in relation to people’s approval and people’s opinions. So, for example, suppose some folk come to your door and say you will be doomed to hellfire unless you convert to their brand of religion. Well, you can just look upon all that with a certain air of amusement and dismiss it lightly as ‘merely their opinion’. It is not anything you need to take on board for yourself.

Similarly, then, supposing some people say to you that you are a failure, or an idiot, or that you will amount to nothing, or that you can’t do anything right, or that you are a bad person, or that you are a sinner, or that you are evil, or that you are inferior, or that you are amiss, or that you are imperfect as you are - in such or similar ways. Well, then, we can look on all that with a certain air of amusement too and simply dismiss it lightly as merely somebody’s opinion. One does not have to buy into it.

Once we realise that people’s opinions are merely opinions, they need not affect us in the same way. And if they try to set themselves up as having true knowledge and being an authority over us, such that we are supposed to start taking their opinions seriously as truths, then all we need do is “do a Socrates on them”. That is, we can turn it around and ask them to explain their special knowledge and the foundations for it. Fairly soon it will be obvious that they have no ultimate foundations for their opinions, and that their opinions are merely opinions – assumptions, prejudices, perspectives, etc – and not real solid truth at all.

As a German philosopher, called Max Stirner, once said, “Nothing is sacred but by my bending the knee.” What he meant by this is that no position, worldview, standpoint, or opinion, is inviolable, that is, un-challengeable, untouchable. If that is so, then we can challenge them all. And if that is so, then we can be self-empowered in relation to them all. And if that is so, we can be as “okay as we are” - if we please. And if that is so, life can be as “okay as it is” - if we please. And if that is so, then we can be as happy with life as we please. And thus wisdom leads directly to this kind of inner happiness. As we saw last week, such virtuosity (arête) in critical and creative reasoning – also called wisdom (Sophia) – goes hand in hand with an internal source of happiness or wellbeing (also called eudemonia).

We can now appreciate more why Socrates was a threat to the prevailing powers. Should there come an individual into our society today prepared to publicly undermine Politicians, Doctors in general those in authority – they would run a severe risk of being silenced. And there is a certain danger in his teachings too – for culturally conventional assumptions – to be happy you need to study, have a good job, a good house come under critical scrutiny.

Death

You might think that Socrates will lose his philosophising if he is dead. But Socrates has an answer to that too. He begins by saying (pg 60 Apology): “For let me tell you, gentlemen, that to be afraid of death is only another form of thinking…that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a man; but people dread it as though they were certain that it is an evil.” Thus, Socrates does not claim to know what happens after death: rather he shows instead that we have no grounds whatsoever for claiming to know that death is a bad thing. Dismissing the idea that death is a bad thing and something to dread, we can then face it with composure – as he goes on to show in his own case.

Moreover, as he also says (pg 75) if death is terminal, mere oblivion, then Socrates will lose his philosophising, but this will hardly be a problem since he won’t be conscious to know that he has lost it. Consequently, he does not fear oblivion, but likens it to a deep dreamless sleep: an acceptable, perhaps even an attractive, prospect.

In this way, then, Socrates indicates how we can be happy even in the face of death. People’s common opinions about death are not based on any knowledge and truth. If we are at all “wise” we will realise this. So we will understand that we do not have to buy into them as if they were based on knowledge and truth. Rather, we will see them as merely opinions and be able to treat them as such.

Exercising wisdom, then, we can be happy, because nothing that befalls us will be considered bad or a cause or reason for unhappiness. Hence it cannot essentially harm us as long as we are philosophising, that is, exercising our species virtue of critical and creative reasoning (Sophia) in an excellent way (arête). We become in effect impervious to harm (from without) and happy from within (eudemonia). If so, then we can also be somewhat more like Socrates in standing up for ourselves even in the face of social disapproval, unpopularity, or injustice and so called calamity. In other words, we can develop his kind of courage and virtue.

Notes

* This is basically what Socrates was trying to teach, at any rate, according to Plato’s account in The Apology. So let us look more closely at it.

The Apology, the account of what Socrates said at his trial, can be found translated by Huge Tredennick, in the book called The Last Days Of Socrates. On page 49 Socrates addresses the jury and talks as follows: “You know Chaerephon, of course. He was a friend of mine from boyhood…And you know what he was like; how enthusiastic he was over anything that he had once undertaken. Well, one day he actually went to Delphi and asked this question of the god…whether there was anyone wiser than myself. The priestess replied that there was no one. As Chaerephon is dead, the evidence for my statement will be supplied by his brother, who is here in court…When I heard the oracle’s answer, I said to myself ‘What does the god mean? Why does he not use plain language? I am only too conscious that I have no claim to wisdom, great or small; so what can he mean by asserting that I am the wisest man in the world?…After puzzling about it for some time, I set myself at last with considerable reluctance to check the truth of it in the following way. I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that here if anywhere I should succeed in disproving the oracle and pointing out to my divine authority, “You said that I was the wisest of men, but here is a man who is wiser than I am.”

Well, I gave a thorough examination to this person – I need not mention his name, but it was one of our politicians I was studying when I had this experience – and in conversation with him I formed the impression that, although in many people’s opinion, especially in his own, he appeared to wise, in fact he was not. Then when I began to try to show him that he only thought he was wise and was not really so, my efforts were resented both by him and by many of the other people present. However, I reflected as I walked away, “Well, I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate, it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.”

What Socrates says about public approval and about death are examples of a general pattern he exhibits, summed up in his bold statement at the end of his speech where he says: “Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death.” (pg 76) By “good man” he means the person who has the good, that is, the philosopher (who has Sophia, eudemonia) and this person cannot be harmed because, being sufficiently wise, he or she will realise that we do not have any true knowledge of what a proper so-called “calamity” in life is (cf., pg 62). And not knowing this, one will not pretend to oneself, or to anyone else, that one “knows what one does not know”. Rather, the wise person will see that any common idea of what a so-called “calamity” is – such as a loss, an accident, an injury, ill health, exile, imprisonment, etc - is merely an opinion, just as the view that death is a calamity is merely an opinion. Such opinions lack a basis in true knowledge and one need not buy into them as such, as they are not well founded. They are only prejudices. Thus, for all we know, whatever happens to us in life could always be for the best – for example, if it is what God wills and God is good, or for some other reason we do not know about. Consequently, it is foolish to think you know that such-and-such that befalls you is a “bad” thing, when you do not actually know what a “bad” thing is. Therefore, we need not make ourselves unhappy by brooding on this so-called bad thing as a bad thing when it may not be a bad thing after all. It may be a boon in disguise.

Socrates says in The Apology that the wealthy aristocrats who have brought the charges against him cannot actually “harm” him as such - even if they do succeed in convincing the jury. They can have him executed certainly, but they cannot harm him essentially, that is, in the sense of taking away from him his own inner wellbeing, virtue, happiness, or eudemonia. They “would not have the power”, as he says (pg 62). They could only harm Socrates if they could rob him of his capacity to philosophise. But even if he was alone in a prison cell he could still philosophise - if only to himself and the rats. And thus he puts forward bold statements, such as that the good man cannot be harmed and that the worse man cannot get the better of the better man. For as long as he remains Socrates and has his rational faculties, he will continue to philosophise and, in this respect at least, he is invulnerable.

Summary

1. Socrates was driven by the question “how should I live” or “what is the good life” - but not in a material sense.

2. His method starts with the critical examination of the beliefs of others - in particular those with some sort of moral reputation, or like the Sophists, those who claim to have knowledge. (Though he does not spare his own beliefs from inspection).

3. In short, he finds that others cannot help him - in that they do not know or cannot articulate what it is their reputation is based upon (for example, those in Law cannot provide an adequate definition of “Justice”).

4. He then turns to the idea that how he should live involves a life of critical self-reflection - the unexamined life is not worth living. To know you are living well in an ethical sense requires questioning the goals and values you take seriously.

5. His method suggests constant critical reflection on what is given is what gives life meaning- and so meaning is found in critical autonomy - that is, not given by authority/tradition etc. It involves coming to know thyself.

6. Socrates stresses the role of reason in establishing general principles - but what also emerges is that reason cannot establish what is true only what is false - so we cannot know anything for sure as reason can undermine any so-called certainties. This is one of the reasons why one should constantly hold their values up to scrutiny. So there is the sense of the constant search here while also knowing that you are unlikely to find the answer.

7. Socrates concludes that there is a certain wisdom in accepting that one really doesn’t know anything. Humility becomes one of his greatest virtues.

Thus, according to the Ancient Greeks there are at least three good reasons for studying philosophy and pursuing wisdom:

1) to actualise our species potential for optimum critical and creative intelligence (Sophia);

2) to actualise our potential for inner happiness and good spirits (eudemonia);

3) to actualise our potential for virtue (arête).

This was the great ideal, the possibility - seen to work so well in the case of Socrates - that inspired generations of philosophers in antiquity.

Some useful readings:

Alain de Botton, The Consolations Of Philosophy, Penguin, 2001, Chapter 1.

Plato, The Last Days Of Socrates, Penguin: Chapters: The Apology and The Crito.

Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World, Phoenix World, London, 1995: Ch. on Socrates.

Frederick Copleston, History Of Philosophy, Vol. 1 - Chapter On Socrates., Burns & Oates, 1946.

Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? Harvard Uni. Press, 2002. Chapter 3

Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy Of Desire, Princeton Uni. Press, 1994: Chapter 8 on the sceptical tradition (which goes back to Socrates).

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