Plato, Apology | Why Socrates Does Not Fear Death | Philosophy Core Concepts

hi this is dr. Gregory Sadler I'm a professor of philosophy and the president and founder of an educational consulting company called reason IO where we put philosophy into practice I've studied and taught philosophy for over 20 years and I find that many people run into difficulties reading classic philosophical texts sometimes it's the way things are said or how the text is structured but the concepts themselves are not always that complicated and that's where I come in to help students and lifelong learners I've been producing longer lecture videos and posting them to youtube many viewers say they find them useful what you're currently watching is part of a new series of shorter videos each of them focused on one core concept from an important philosophical text I hope you find it useful as well Plato has Socrates speak at many points in different dialogues about the nature of life and death and how we should understand them how we should evaluate them what weight we want to give considerations of danger for your life and death when it comes to moral decision-making figuring out the larger structure of our life all those sorts of big-picture questions and in the apology he has Socrates talked at several points about why it is that that he's not afraid to die and this makes great sense because he's on trial for his life actually some of that is not the best approach rhetorically unless his unless he already sort of knows that they're probably going to convict him and he wants to make some points because he does say in a few points you know you guys in the audience you might actually bring your kids out and have them cry and trying to sway the the jury's opinions I'm not going to do that kind of thing because I'm not actually afraid of death you guys who are afraid of death there's something wrong with your thinking about this that's not going to win over anybody but it does make some really important points now you notice that I've got here there are some things that we know are bad and so Socrates is going to talk about that when we're doing moral decision-making or when we're talking about matters of life and death we need to know how much weight to give each consideration and so some things we actually Socrates says some things we actually do have knowledge about when it comes to moral matters I know that in parts of this dialogue it kind of sounds as if he's wise because he knows that he doesn't know anything but he does say I do know some things and those things tend to be these moral matters that he'll repeat over and over again the other thing that goes into this is according to Socrates you know the s-- really perhaps according to Plato we don't really know what death is whether it's a good thing or a bad thing you could say that you know Socrates is is sort of preaching to the audience that he's got at the time because he does in fact in other dialogues talk about you know life after death life before death so presumably he actually does endorse one of these options but when he's talking to the members of the jury particularly after they've convicted him and the people who convicted him have left and the other people who voted for him are still there and are pretty upset he brings out these considerations so this comes up early on though he says one reason why we shouldn't be afraid of death one reason why I'm not afraid of death is because that would be pretending to have wisdom that I don't actually have now you can say that the the human body has a sort of natural fear of pain of destruction of sickness violence and therefore of death but we don't know whether the body's impulses the body's sort of unconscious or instinctual evaluations are actually on track and if part of what it means to be a human being is to be able to decide for oneself to think things through for once then if we don't really know what death is strictly speaking if we were being completely rational we can't say yeah it's something to be feared the Socrates doesn't know that it is something to be feared and this is really what we need to give greater weight to are these things over here and you notice I've got two different classes of things so one of the points that he makes is he says I don't know if death is a bad thing I do know that this is a bad thing for me to do bad things and you know for example when I was stationed as a soldier in the Athenian army defending a city at this battle or that battle I knew that it was right for me to stay at my post and to fight and to take you know the chance of getting killed I knew that it would be wrong for me to throw away my shield and take off for home it's wrong to lie it's wrong to deceive people it's wrong to you know commit violence against them it's wrong to damage people in such ways that you make them worse off morally Socrates does quite a few things that he thinks are right and things that are wrong and doing philosophy he says look this this lifestyle that I have is actually a obligation that I've got on me that is a divine mission I've got a you know discussion about that on another core concept and it's also a benefit to you guys the Athenians I'm actually a great benefactor to you by by doing this because I'm calling your attention to what really matters your souls this is what I was supposed to be doing I would be doing wrong if I were to say just to save my life I'm gonna stop doing that I would be abandoning my post and I know that that's wrong so that therefore that has to have greater weight we could say the same thing if he was put in a situation where if he thought that lying was just you know simply wrong where he's being compelled to lie or or lose his life Socrates could buy this same sort of argument or same sort of logic say I don't know whether it's a bad thing to lose my life I do know that it's a bad thing a very bad thing to lie so I'm gonna accept losing my life now there are other penalties that are possible so this is the second thing here there are other penalties that are possible for him that he could have actually accepted or suggested he does actually in the end suggest a fine after of course telling them really you know what I do deserve is free room and board from the Athenian people the rest of my life but he's kind of joking around with that exile why would exile be a bad thing isn't it the opportunity to travel well you know Socrates says look I'm an old man my roots are here in this community if they're not willing to let me do philosophy here in Athens they're probably not going to be too keen on me doing it in in Sparta or colophon or thieves or pick wherever else you want so I'm not going to be able to do what I need to do you notice there's sort of a connection between those things prison he says that's not the way I want to live the rest of my life prison is indeed an evil and I would like to be able to come and go and do the sorts of things that I've been doing for the last you know decades in in the city of Athens that would definitely be a bad thing paying a fine he says well you know that's basically the same thing as prison anyway because I don't have any money so if you want me to pay a fine I'm not going to be able to to pay it and I'll have to sit in prison until I die if somebody comes up with the ransom so these are things that he says are worth avoiding even at the cost of death because we know that these are bad things let's now turn to this issue of well what is death we don't know whether it's a good or bad thing unless we actually know what death is and Socrates at this point is saying we don't know under what death is but he is willing to speculate a bit so he says look it could be one of two things and the first one is actually two things by itself in a way if you sort of parse it out but he doesn't really believe that one anyway he's just preferring that to the jury saying if you buy this sort of idea about death and you know don't grieve for me maybe it's annihilation maybe it's the total cessation of one's life maybe there's nothing of oneself after one dies maybe the body is all there is this is very much along the lines of the view of the Epicureans who are going to come a little bit later and you know there's many other people who've made similar arguments if that's the case if death is just annihilated then there's no you who is being harmed or for whom it's a bad thing when the death actually happens it's kind of a non-event it's a all the events of your life coming to an end and and no longer existing or it could be he talks about it may imagine the best night's sleep that you ever had totally restful you didn't wake up didn't even dream anything made it's just like that for all eternity and there there's still be something existing but it's in this this essentially comatose state and never does anything never thinks anything it's not really that far away from annihilation but it is something different from it he says the same thing holds for that you know if that's the case then you know anything to be concerned about afterwards right nobody's gonna wake you up you're not going to have indigestion in the middle of the night you're not gonna have a bad dream that you know you get caught in and can't get out of so in that case death would actually be a good thing or at least not a bad thing that he says maybe it's a change of place now here a lot more could be said about the relationship of Plato's views of the after life in relation to sort of the mishmash of traditional Greek conceptions of the afterlife that we get in the poets and plays and you know Greek religion as it was practiced but they did have a conception of the afterlife as a place where judgment would take place and the fate of a person would be you know decided according to some sort of criteria and you might go to a good place you might go to a bad place it really depends on which poet you're reading if it's Homer of course better to be a poor labourer alive than to be the king of the dead is what achilles says down in Hades to Odysseus what he goes down there so that's not quite so so nice but the way that Socrates frames it is let's say the traditional Greek religion is actually on track and remember he's addressing a jury that that isn't all plate nests so they don't all believe in this you know endless you know migration of souls only you know ceasing when you finally get off the thing through being purified the way that it talks about the fate of later on instead they think of it as going somewhere being judged and now he says I'll die here and these are bad judges who are actually judging me but they're I'm gonna have true judges I'm gonna get vindicated I'm going to be judged by my toes and Redman thoughts and you know maybe the gods who knows these are these legendary incorruptible judges in the underworld even more interesting he says you know what there's one thing that they won't be able to do in the afterlife that they can do here and that's to kill me to shut me up because I'll get to go you know I did this entire life that I've been here I've been you know asking what is virtue who actually has virtue who's got wisdom I've been cross-examining people now I'll get to do it with the dead so if homers down there instead of asking you know Homer scholars or raps ODEs what did Homer mean by this or thinking about it by myself I can go up to the guy and he asked it myself and and you know I could get get a hold of them and not let go until he has fully answered all of my questions if I want to know about Achilles well he'll be down there too I can go and and chat with him you get this image of Socrates buttonholing people and just being kind of a general pest in the underworld for he's he's dead who preceded him and probably all the ones that would come afterwards - oh you're here maybe you're wise lobby talk with you well that's the way that he presents it and if that's the case then death is actually a good thing if you're a good person if you're a bad person then you know these incorruptible judges you may have gotten by by bribing judges in this life or you know finding some evidence on that and blackmailing them but you're not going to do that with these guys and the other Dead probably aren't going to like you if you're kind of a schmuck maybe you're in the other dead who are bad people won't like you either here we're getting very speculative in any case Socrates is saying death is not a bad thing first time we don't know whether it's a good thing or bad thing and that second if we start making assumptions about it it starts to look like it's a good thing third we know that there are some bad things that are worth taking into consideration that we want to avoid rather than trying to avoid death

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

Views: 57,944

Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Student, College, University, Sadler, Apology, Plato (Author), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Socrates, Apology (Book), Death, Life, Morality, Trial, Afterlife, Greek Religion, Gods, Fear, Right, Wrong, Knowledge, Sleep, Judgement, Truth, Athens (City/Town/Village), Ancient Philosophy (Field Of Study), Core Concept

Id: PRI2ZMhxovI

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 10 2014