5. The Life and Times of Socrates

today is the day that I want to deal with Socrates I only want to deal with him today we are going to move on tomorrow and start a discussion of Plato which is why I want to kind of hurry up and get going here because time is somewhat limited you may have noticed from the reading that Socrates is describing two sets of accusers one set he calls ancient and then the other set we can call come the current accusers of course the ones that have resulted in the fact that Socrates is being tried in Athens before a jury of 250 men who are adjudicating his case what was the crime that was part of the accusation of the ancient accusers what's going on with the ancient accusers mr. Dupre go ahead that's right he was making the worse appear better there's a there's a quote that you're probably caught I think it's on the second page there and have it right in front of me anything else go ahead Ben okay he was teaching it to other people he was influencing the community that's right anything else on that go ahead yes searches under the earth and in heaven so Socrates has been controversial for a long time what's the date of his execution what year are we in right now in terms of his trial and execution it is the Year 399 that should be emblazoned in your memory banks 399 the recent history of Athens has involved what great events or conflicts what's gone on in the last hundred years or so just keep banging away on this till you recite it in your sleep what happened let's let's go back to the years let's say 500 down to about the year 480 what's going on in Athens Sydney that's the Persian Wars who wins the Persian Perce Avery who wins the Persian Wars please my son who won the Persian Wars greatest David and Goliath event in history besides the biblical David the Greeks thank you yes it was the Greeks and the Greeks of course were very proud of themselves because they had just chased off the biggest empire in the history of the world this little pipsqueak bunch in Greece had chased those people right out of the region and they were proud of themselves and that launched you know first of all the Delian League but also a whole period that's usually called the Golden Age in which the Greeks are really celebrating their greatness the Athenians particularly in the form of their kind of democratic ideas and institutions under the great Athenian leader whose name is it was the great say it say it boldly errantly now stand up and say it absolutely correct and wonderful so he's the guy and Socrates is a player in Athens during that period Socrates is a significant personality in Athens during that time but what happens is that the Athenians and the Greek world in general general after a while be beginning since to beat up on themselves and so we have this second set of wars down here called the Peloponnesian War so we have this Golden Age sandwiched between two eras of warfare the Peloponnesian wars were really a philosophical battle between Sparta which stood for hard-core oligarchy and Athens which stood more for democracy you remember from last year our studies of civics Aristotle taught us there's basically two forms of government right Oleg our key democracy and that's the great conflict over those two forms of government that are fought during this 30 years or so known as the peloton Wars yes so the Peloponnesian wars are gonna start in about the year 430 and go down to 404 and that leaves good the Greek world totally changed here everything was wonderful we're building the Parthenon you know you've seen all that stuff now at the end of the Peloponnesian wars everybody's like a bloody stump I mean it's just we beat ourselves to a pulp and the whole meaning of what it is to be Greek and what it is to be even human has been you know put on the table well the Spartans who won the Peloponnesian conflict put in place in Athens for about four years the so called rule of the thirty they imposed oligarchy in democratic Athens it didn't work and finally after about four years these oleg arts go home and leave athens back in its democratic systems and the first thing that democratic people do in athens as they turn their guns on those who were viewed as sympathetic to oligarchy sympathetic to sparta and socrates is one of those people so he's brought up on criminal charges but that there's charges and then there's the real charges you see the facial charges well he's corrupting the young he's you know teaching us to worship other gods the real political concern about Socrates was he seemed to be hostile to democracy he was hostile to those Athenian you know concerns that were attempting to defend Athens from her enemies so he comes to trial at 399 and that's really what's going on so that's why Socrates for his back to these prior accusers and there's one particular guy he mentions in that connection by name who is one of those most famous accusers of him and the guy's name is kaylee do you know not Meletis that's one of his current accusers this a guy that comes from way back an earlier time you know he does mention Anaximander if that's your clothes but it's not that one it is not no one would mentioned yet it is Sydney exactly sometimes you amaze me Aristophanes Aristophanes who is a poet and he writes of the play a poetic comedy play in the year 423 and it's entitled Sydney did you catch the title anybody catch the title of it it's entitled Laura clouds notice Socrates is referring to Aristophanes play written in 423 which is right in the middle of the one of the hottest times of the Peloponnesian wars what's going on in air in the play the clouds it'll read the clouds before it's kind of a fun read actually you know what's going on what is that's right and it's no accident this this play was intended to be a mockery of Socrates himself and so the guy in the play who's named Socrates is referring to the Socrates we all know and love and the entire purpose of the play was to poke fun at him and the theory of the play was that Socrates is a guy who just floats around in the clouds he's just kind of this weirdo and in the play he's the head of a group called the thinker II and all they do is think and at the end of the play the thinker he gets burned down you see so it's like a happy ending the destruction of the thinker II because and this is the important point Aristophanes is a poet and that means he stands in conflict with a new tradition in Athens called philosophy it's poetry versus philosophy that's what's going on when I say Greek poetry who do you think of Josiah who's the greatest Greek poet Homer and if you were to read Homer Stephen what kinds of people are heroic in Homer and what else what's what's the kind of the of the D great you like that I assumed you were granite yes but what else what's that what's the heroic kind of image in the Iliad not C and Homer Fridays what does he look like I mean you give it examples Hector no you didn't mention Hector but Odysseus what are they all like what are the great heroes of you know homers yeah what do they like what are these guys like one walked in the room here what would it be like muscles what else maybe swords they're warriors right these guys are warriors you wanna you want to settle a dispute with one of these guys you don't sit down and talk about it you don't have a conversation you have a dialogue you see you go out in the battlefield and you swing stuff at each other til one of you is dead and that determines who got the right answer you know who's who's got you know the right position and the in the conflict is settled on the battlefield that's the poetic tradition in Greece and that's what they were trying spire in Athens during the Peloponnesian wars they were trying to inspire in these people a kind of Homeric heroism let's go out and sock it to the bad guys and and prove you know the we're the better warriors and so on right in the middle of that comes a guy named Socrates who says hey how about let's just talk how about let's just figure out the real meanings of words how about was just what reason guide us instead of being warriors and celebrating that poetic tradition let's be philosophers and celebrate kind of rational tradition and Socrates was viewed as an enemy of the state for doing that he was like someone engaged in sedition he was undermining the warrior spirit and was viewed as a friend of Sparta because he was demoralizing the troops you see how that works that's what's going on and people who did that Aristophanes writes this play Aristophanes is a poet he's in the tradition of Homer and he thinks yet pipng Socrates is a goofball he makes the weak or an argument strong he turns things on their head he floats in the clouds what an idiot get rid of this guy you know that's kind of the force of the play and Socrates has been dealing with that down through the years that's been part of the the assault on him and that's what he refers to here but the question is and this is really the point of this reading you just had this is Socrates on trial in democratic Athens but it's also democratic Athens on trial before the tribunal of philosophy that's what's going on that's how that's how Plato is presenting this it's a pretty fair record probably of what happened but it's it's tweaked just so that it puts Athens on trial and Socrates is the judge and he is evaluating this city and this my friends is the proper beginning of philosophy we've talked about the pre-socratics Talese Anaximander and all these guys and they're all important but all of them tended to be more or less natural scientists that was their kind of view you know their their interest now along comes Socrates and he's really trotting out for the first time philosophy as such they say you know this is the way we should do life we shouldn't we shouldn't settle disputes by throwing spears at each other we should sit down and talk through to the right answer and reasonable Minds should be able to do that well he's challenging of course that whole poetic tradition and as it turns out Athens is not prepared to go there yet and they wind up executing Socrates but interestingly Socrates becomes the martyr you know that actually then justifies that whole new beginning of a new way of life in Athens sometimes it takes a martyr to do that time someone has to die for people to come to their senses and realize something so anyway that's kind of the way he's viewed there's two great values at stake in terms of the apology one is the method of teaching how should we educate the young is at least one of the themes that kind of bouncing around in this and the other is to what virtues should we be educating people so how should we teach and to what end should we be teaching if you are going to be educated in the world envisioned by Homer Christa what does an education look like if you are educated in homers world then what does an education look like that looks a lot like PE that's right what what particular sorts of fun things are we doing in PE if you're in homers were fighting that's right we are learning the art of that Sparta we're learning the art of war and all this you know in Sparta that's what little kids learn from the time they were seven years old they got seven years with mommy then they were turned over to a master who would whip them beat them kicked them you know cause them pain and train them to be warriors trained them to be impervious to pain and it was a hard life in Sparta but they produced the greatest warrior class in the world well Athens was doing a little bit of that themselves and along comes Socrates and says you know that's not what education should look like education should look like something that focuses on the mind and on reason rather than on the body and just being able to beat the pulp out of my neighbor should be a little different things so the nature of Education changes and the virtues change you know the virtues Matthew if you live in homers world or what one of the great virtues of a Homeric hero honor power stuff like that what else it's good honor power those are great answers what else what's other virtues of Homer's he rubs your head glory exactly how much do you see Socrates worrying about glory how much is he out there just wanting to get glory you see and in his great claim to glory is he knows nothing and he actually knows that he knows nothing you think you'd ever hear Achilles say that or Hector say that you know this is you see how different it is this is the great collision of the ancient world and this is really where philosophy begins to get traction because for Socrates the great virtues are reason reason them you know reasoning through thinking critically analyzing the words that are being used to see if those words comport with reality to see if there's contradiction or absurdity in the case that I'm making and to have the humility to recognize it and if I've got a bad argument to abandon it you see this is the difference is huge and this is really and I think personally I don't know I think it's rather Christian I mean Socrates is not a Christian to my knowledge you look 400 years before Christ so that makes it difficult to be a Christian but there is something appealing isn't there about that from a Christian point of view not that Christians can't be warriors I'm not doing it don't get me wrong here but that the Christians first impulse when he's in a disagreement with someone is not the punch their lights out you know you become a Christian or I'm gonna break your face wait a minute you know maybe there's a better way to do evangelism we Christians kind of like to think that we can reason jesus says or God says through you know Isaiah come let us reason together says the Lord so that's been somewhat appealing I think in Christian history all right having said that what I'd like to do is just sort of distill if I can what I think or at least maybe three fundamental what themes I guess in Socrates Socrates is not he doesn't give us an elaborate philosophy he's sort of the beginning of it he's the wellspring of it but most of what we fact all that we know about Socrates is from Plato and we're gonna move to Plato tomorrow but I'd like to at least give you three little kind of what themes that we can cling to the respect to Socrates first of them interestingly I'll just be simply the meaning of words he liked to challenge the Sophists of Athens who liked to use words for their persuasive effect this is the mark of a demagogue someone that likes to use words not because of their actual means but because of their effect their emotional effect you know they're psychologically affected Hitler was brilliant using words not because under analysis the words were true or reasonable but because they tended to pull Jew stuff and you see those videos of Hitler just like a whack-job guy on his Harris flying I mean saying what to say he's saying things like it is our destiny you know and we are the greatest and you know I just say these things that you think well wait a minute now let's let's look at this actually but nobody wanted to look at it they just wanted to sort of get excited about the the words without considering them and Socrates would hear that kind of thing in Athens and say no wait a minute let's let's you're talking about destiny like what is that word justice what does that mean if you like to parse words take them apart find the truth in them find the fluff in them and that got mental trouble but it was one of the things that very well Plato likes to use that as the basis for all of these dialogues that he reports to us about is the second a little theme in Socrates that you want to hang on to is the priority of the soul over the body soul over body which is more important in Homer Alisha where would you find the emphasized in Haller the body you know your musculature your stature for Socrates Socrates by the way is notoriously remembered as a guy who was basically pretty ugly at least the best pictures of him don't show him is kind of like this real handsome you know Tom Cruise kind of guy he's saying well I don't know who is it now see we date myself again right I used talking about Robert Redford but that's so far back there you guys have Robert Redford man anyway Brad Pitt is he still on the list no he's off the list Avery where would you put our culture today I that's a great question where do you think your culture today would put the emphasis on the virtues of the soul integrity virtue truthfulness purity or the body good looks image swap where do you think the over the emphasis yeah I think I think you know any any culture where one of the most common messages of the media is image is everything you know I'd say that probably is a little bit more of a that could be debated but that'd be off the top of my head and I thought all right third simply the true nature of virtue true virtue Socrates is concerned about what is really good and good does not necessarily mean you win on the battlefield it comports to some sort of ultimate and eternal idea of the good so as I say Socrates to our knowledge never wrote anything we have no document that comes from pen of Socrates everything we know about him is from Plato and Socrates invariably is the hero of Plato's dialogues as long as we Socrates versus somebody you know and the further you get into Plato the further you get from the original Socrates but he also stands in Plato's mind is the great kind of champion of this philosophic approach to things and so we'll start Plato tomorrow yes I am yeah there's you know there's virtually no doubt that he existed in the minds of the vast majority of I mean it would be almost unthinkable to think well there never was really as Socrates we have references to him from others than Plato but Plato gives us by probably 99% of what we know of Socrates we know from Plato but you at least see hints of him in others certainly in you know facilities who gives us a history of the race to fear of the Peloponnesian wars others who come later casually refer to Socrates never in any great detail that it just seems pretty likely it's the same kind of problem you have with Jesus of Nazareth he never wrote a word except some words on sand that one hears with the you know the John 8 situation we don't have any documents from Jesus we have all kinds of documents written by others who were with him and the consensus is that really wasn't Jesus of Nazareth there really wasn't we as Christians take that as a matter of faith but even in a skeptical world that is in Christian it's more or less pretty much taken you know for granted there was somebody back there it's kind of the same way with Socrates there's just too much too much evidence to think the guy was completely concocted so I that would be I think the view general yeah there's no record of him where having written anything he may have written something maybe he wrote a check you know in a grocery store something like that there's no reference to him having written anything to my knowledge and all Plato's writings there's no reference to that his activity was to go around Athens asking hard questions to people who purported to have the answers he liked to embarrass politicians in public and that got him on their bad list you know pretty rapidly so he wasn't a writer he wasn't he was a he was a true philosopher he was out doing the work of philosophy which is always conversation not just writing good questions you

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Socrates Apology Plato Bruce Gore

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Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2015