Plato's dialogue, the Apology - Introduction to Philosophy

Oh today we're starting with the apology and you probably looked at your reading lists so you see that we have quite a few works by Plato and you know if you if you think about your your Western Civ classes or history classes whatever it is that you've had previous to this you know where Plato fits in he's in ancient Greece and why are we reading him first well he's one of the first philosophers all right Aristotle is going to come after him Epictetus and that the curious will come later and so on down the line and you can place them in a succession and that's one way to make a sense of these things and I will be posting some things like timelines for you in in the next couple of weeks to help you figure that out but why are we beginning with this particular dialogue some of this I'm going to you know want some some response from you some of this I'm just going to sort of file through so I don't assume that anybody here knows that much about Plato or platonic dialogues or how they're organized or anything like that right this is a basic introductory class so I shouldn't have I shouldn't presume anything along those lines but you can relate this to to other things that you have studied chronologically it makes sense to look at this dialogue first chronologically music in order what else know somebody else a time Chronos is is Greek for time so a chronology is sort of a structured order to things like a schedule in this case we're looking at the you know why pick on this particular point in time you know Socrates and Plato I'm not sure if all of you know this they were not the first philosophers philosophy had been going on in Greece for quite a while not necessarily on the Greek mainland but other parts of Italy to speak in the world so why aren't we starting at those guys other than the fact that this is an intro class and we only have you know 15 weeks and we have to pack these in yeah yeah that's that's a good way to think about I mean major in a sense they'll get to the other people that we would look at they're called pre-socratics Socrates is so important that we look at everything before him as as pre-socratic free Socrates sort of the way in you know reckoning BC and AD right Socrates sent a sort of point or you know in ancient Rome they would they would count from the founding of the Roman Empire they were important but there was something different about them there was something lacking that Socrates and Plato brought to the fore Socrates gets credited for as they say bringing philosophy down to earth we're gonna see a contrast in this dialogue between Socrates as the person who's very concerned with with human matters and the kind of wisdom that's possible for human beings and if you were to read some of these pre-socratic philosophers like st. Parmenides or Heraclitus they were concerned with much broader metaphysical topics they wanted to know what things were made of fundamentally not just you know this desk is made out of wood or my body is made on flash or a certain elements they wanted to know what was the basic building blocks of things what would explain change would explain the passing of time those sorts of things but they weren't very systematic they didn't leave a lot behind and they spent a lot of time you might say that their head of the clouds as a matter of fact one one of them pathologists actually got made fun of because he used to do so much sky gazing he he fell them too I think it was either a ditch or well now that he got his revenge because all that sky gazing to predict something well we're a long to predict what do you think one of the something came up well I mean I mean the sun's gonna come right but if you're if you're paying close attention to the seasons you might be able to predict weather's gonna be and he did and he figured out when it was gonna be a really good olive harvest and he bought up all the presses he established a monopoly and then he made a fortune so it just goes to show you some of that stuff could be useful Socrates is not concerned with this or a thing he's concerned with yeah sure he's concerned with more human issues who's wise what is wisdom when you see in this dialogue about what is justice what is courage what's the right kind of way to live those are things you don't have to know much about chemistry or you know cosmology the nature of the universe in order to think about right people think about these things all the time and you guys get into arguments guaranteed every single one of you has been in some argument with somebody about how you want to behave or how you want to live so Socrates is bringing philosophy down to earth Plato then Plato becomes very concerned with what we call metaphysics which is you know the sort of study of what's ultimately real what's what's most existent or true or underlying everything else and he does something new as well first of all he writes things down Socrates never wrote anything down so everything that we've got from Socrates and Plato is not coming from Socrates actually writing stuff and then plate up taking it it's from from you know Plato either hearing it from somebody or he was there or he made some of it up using Socrates is a character in some cases but Plato does something different he works things out systemically so if you if you read only this dialog you're not going to see that but if you read more in more of Plato you get to see the the scheme come together you start to see things applying to each other parts fitting into each other that's what it means to be systematic he also looked at these earlier thinkers these pre-socratics and he sometimes said well I think they were perfectly right about this but partly wrong about this he was being critical and to be critical in philosophy doesn't mean just to be mean or you know to cut people down or things like that it means to look at things very closely and to try to figure out where is somebody actually correct where is somebody in to correct it's very rare that somebody's entirely correct that the position that they have is unassailable there's usually something wrong it's very rare to find somebody who's totally you know absolutely wrong - there's usually some truth in what they're saying so that's what Plato did with his predecessors the other thing that he did that was that was new is he worked philosophy through Donald walks how many of you started going ahead and reading the credo so far what do you notice that's different between this piece and the credo it's all done this one we call it a dialogue but it's not really a dialogue ISM there there's a portion of it that's of dialogue where Socrates is cross-examining one of his accusers but for the most precious psychology is giving a speech and you can kind of see sometimes a lot recce humor counts well I talked to so-and-so and I said this and he said this but it's not the actual dialogue taking place with the credo Socrates is where he's in jail he's in his prison cell because the apology things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped or maybe they did and he's talking with credo I mean he's also talking with another character do you remember okay that it's going to be quite interesting when it when it does take place but it's all dialogue for the most part Plato's words are dialogues like that they're like a play all of you you remember back in literature classes you've got some Shakespeare or you read someone be able to read this or that with most plays can you tell what the author thought about things we're not think about Shakespeare for example yeah just from sometimes the way they express a little write about a particular issue is through it just sort of a sort of okay yeah and so that would be in part your child right you somebody's mocking somebody else somebody's praising somebody else what if you've got several different characters and some of them are praising a person and the others are saying this person's a terrible you know horrible murderer liar pick whatever you want how do you tell what the author thinks that yeah oh you don't know how do you how do you figure that maybe sometimes the the author doesn't want shoots into exactly what they or they want you to think about both sides they those dialogues you can usually figure who's going to be the guy that is representing Plato Socrates right but Plato is is pretty fair he'll put good arguments in other people's mouths because he wants you to think about them he wants his readers to try to see if there if there are is something there Socrates doesn't always win there are a few dialogues where he but writing dialogues that was something new in philosophy in a quota we don't actually have these dialogues but some of the other people that you're going to read from what we know from ancient authors berestov wrote dialogues to apparently we don't have any of them unfortunately because they're supposed to have been very good that the curious is supposed to written dialogues this is this Claude on is a way to try to teach people yeah it's part of what we model in in class that's why it's important he have the participation the back so far you guys are just you know raising single points or asking questions but I encourage you to just begun to engage in dialogue what else is it good to start with this one well it can be kind of useful because it's easier than some of the Plato's other texts again because it doesn't have a lot of different voices its Socrates pretty much all the way through it's a pretty easy to grasp situation and not in the sense that any of you are hopefully doing hopefully none of you are going to be in such a situation on trial for your life right but it's an easy enough situation for you to make sense of somebody is accused of committing a crime they're defending themselves they're explaining their actions they're explaining why people are prejudiced against them so that's one that's easy to get it also contains a couple good arguments and couple bad arguments so it's it's a nice training ground for you for instance later on we're gonna look at those arguments about death some of the arguments Socrates makes aren't very good arguments at all and and we'll walk through that in in the class it could be because of things that are left out it could be because of you know verbal sleight of hand and you can ask yourself why does that happen the other the other reason why we start with this is it's a really good dialogue for introducing it to who's this guy Socrates why is he important he was just a Athenian living back in the fourth fifth century why should we care about him what did what did he do well you know we can learn a little bit about his stance how philosophy in some ways comes out of what Socrates is doing Plato catches the fever or philosophy from this guy Socrates and it wasn't because Socrates was good-looking or you know anything like that if you have any have you ever seen any images of Socrates oh I'll put some kind of face with you to that why well the always just seems like a really old man you're understanding that I think he's odd yeah he's really he's really is that hideous but he's ugly but there was something very very attractive about his personality you know often we say you know hi you know this person is not good-looking with the other nice personality that was a case of Socrates why would people so attracted to that's part of what we we need to think about why do people want to have him around he becomes kind of a hero and the apology is one of the points the credo also the apology was one of the points where he is entering into history as kind of a hero or a model for example and I'll just give you a few examples of some people that were gonna look at over the course of the semester and also one who were not and how Socrates affected them you know Plato of course is very impressed by Socrates and Plato they was a rich very good-looking strong plant Pato is actually coming from Sun his original name it means broad you know he was a big brawny guy and he had all the advantages in life so what did he do he gave him up and running around with this old man and then spread his his ideas here and there so Plato is one of the people whose influence is fine but Socrates left some other people behind another one's another one of his followers his name was antistick and antis Tania's found as a school called the cynic school you know when we're talking about cynicism we use the word in a slightly different way than they did back in the Greek times but the cynics were devoted to trying to live a life of virtue and truth and stripping away everything that was false from their lives a life of non-attachment a life you know being honest with yourself and being honest with others intestine he's got this from Socrates and that goes on eventually influences another school that we're going to study during this this class called the Stoics one of the people who's influenced by the Stoics who becomes over a major stoic philosophers Epictetus who are going to read and Epictetus considered socrates to be sort of a model for what the ideal philosopher ought to be like what the ideal life later on you know fast-forwarding socrates is one of those people that Christian thinkers worried about why do you think they've worried about it and he's long dead right by the time the christianity shows up on the scene why would they be concerned other than you know he's an interesting guy to read there were some things along those lines as a matter of fact well set some of Socrates Plato's philosophy if you read it in a certain way it leads to Gnosticism right but Plato is also called the divine playdough by a lot of Catholic and Orthodox theologians because they took so much of this philosophy wasn't there the end of it there or you just comb her hair what could you be concerned about and if somebody who's long dead let's say let's say you you adopt you know sort of like Christian perspectives on the afterlife I'll give you some of them some gang so let's say we accept the Christian notion of heaven hell unless you and your near there eternally where do you think Hitler is anybody think he doesn't have anyone want you know if you had a place of that would you place it on that anybody think he's probably know probably a good chance of that now nobody actually minds Hitler being in hell do you know what about Socrates let's say you're a medieval Christian thinker you're working to say within the Catholic Church you know Eastern Orthodox Church and you're you're studying Plato and you think to yourself wow you know this guy said a lot of things that sounded an awful lot like st. Paul what he seems have been a really good guy it's a shame he's in hell this is what we called the problem of the virtuous pagans what would God do with and this is you know not an issue we're actually to explore in the class I just want to bring it up to you something that people talked about would have been you know what about people who didn't know the you know the Christian religion didn't have an opportunity to but they lived really good lives you know supremely good God saying sorry you missed you missed your chance that's open philosophical and theological questions so Socrates took up you know a lot of thought that way he was sort of the example of the virtuous pagan for Kierkegaard who were going to read at the very end of the semester he saw Socrates as what he call the teacher the model of of the teacher and if you ever hear your professors talking about well how do I teach I teach - socratic the Socratic method what are they doing they're modeling themselves Bluff of Socrates who at least you know as far as Plato seems to think thought that the truth was within all of us and it just required some some cultivation some asking questions some challenging people to get them to be able to bring it forth if they had it within them Nietzsche on the other hand who we're not gonna unfortunately get to read this semester he thought Socrates was actually a terrible guy with Socrates and this Greek play like playwright Euripides philosophy and culture and all that just went to help and it's been going downhill ever since Socrates was an emblem of everything that was was wrong because of his method because of what he he did so we're gonna see this in the apology that we're looking at today so let's actually look at the apology what are the official charges what's he up to things yeah baby isn't right corrupting the youth exactly so taking the young people of the society and making them worse right these are the official charges that he's facing who's bringing them these these young men who are fairly ambitious they're kind of you know up-and-coming mover and shaker types mellitus anteus and a few others and why do they bring these charges well it's about time somebody did something about this Socrates guy and the sort of things that he's bringing about especially with you and these two are kind of connected together aren't they because if your society is a fairly religious society then messing around with the religion and teaching things that go that's gonna be corrupting the you know this woman and if you're corrupting the youth you're kind of getting them ready for their doing against societal norms going against things that we ought to to all believe so he gets mellitus to actually say something I don't know if you guys caught that when you're looking at the actual dialogue portion there's kind of a question what is what does it mean atheism and you notice that what do we what are we usually we say yeah yeah no belief in God or anything divine and that's what Ana latest eventually says I think you don't believe in any gods you think that the moon is just a rock so on what else is a possibility what else the Socrates maybe believes in gods but yeah baby people means yeah maybe he believes in the wrong gods maybe he doesn't believe in the gods of that culture of that city maybe he's teaching something that goes against the religious orthodoxy but he gets the latest to say no no I mean you you don't believe in anything Socrates as a matter of fact you're teaching what is corrupting the youth opposed to it let's dialogue will be the opposite of corrupting yeah although it doesn't necessarily have to be about the gods correct if I if I corrupt you I could corrupt you in a lot of different ways maybe I you know if I structure my philosophy class so all of you come in here you know with a strong religious faith and you leave here believing in nothing or on the other hand maybe you come in here believing in nothing and I get you to believe in some some weird cult all right I'd be corrupting you that would be in terms of religion but there's other ways I could corrupt you two aren't there you know get you all the start smoking not not so many in your generation isn't my generation when I was in college believe it or not this is gonna sound bizarre you guys I was a smoker and the after class would end we would light up in the classroom and we were dashing our you know soda cans and if you wanted to have a talk with the professor you just come up and the professor probably be smoking too and you know you couldn't smoke well class was in session and then they passed a law that said you can't smoke in public buildings and we never realized just how bad we smokers had made it for the non-smokers and just how much his there was in our main classroom building because you could tell the difference after just a couple of days and then you know within a year we realized our behavior been really crazy lighting up all the time and the generation before mine the professor's used to smoke while they would teach yeah when was that particular smoking walk past then well that was in Wisconsin and that was in 1992 I think different states passed different different laws at different times I I was in college from 92 94 so it was like right in the middle of mine but but yeah they used to actually have ashtrays in classrooms for the professor's because you know David so nowadays we see smoking is a terrible terrible place right it's not only healthy they get you to believe it's healthy interrupted you not only unhealthy but you know it makes you stink and it makes you kind of a degenerate to do and you know you've probably all been exposed to this this sort of thing so if I get you to all become smokers I'm corrupting you aren't I so I that could be instead of corrupting with youth what you're doing they should be teaching improving what I mean there's a lot of different things that that we could improve this isn't the sort of class that's going to improve your financial position there are classes that you could take here I think that probably would finance right what what would you be improving by hanging out with which you think is good and what how you knew things how you live your life I guess that's a good answer anything what do you think is good so beliefs about good and bad right and wrong perhaps even about the noble or them shameful or something like that and I'm going to say the actions behavior and how you live your life how do you live your life okay yeah so we have Socrates is corrupting the youth he is making the rest of us more it's not a man at all smoking it's a matter of like killing people or stealing or lying about people or causing discord that's what corrupting the youth would it would actually be what is what do we know that he actually does with the youth from the text what what is what is this characterization there's some of them he doesn't like like malade it's Molina's it's a young man but Molina's doesn't like socrates either one of these young men do like Socrates yeah yes and then what happens that that way it's off isn't that bad right there's providing an audience although you know providing an audience would be a problem because it turns out the people who are being questioned don't like it a little bit further don't they what do you remember if you see somebody doing something well then you hang out with them while they're doing that you're gonna start we're gonna start doing it and now Socrates is a bit more gentle at least according to himself right then these young men and it makes sense doesn't it young young people I mean you're all young people I remember what it was like to be young I was real hothead I get people's faces about things argue with them and shout and don't they ever get a fight over philosophy my dad did not not over Socrates or Plato or anything like that he actually got in a fight and I was gone so far was good or not he was holding that he ever was not there was good this is a more common belief that well the young men they they're pretty aggressive they go after people a lot more aggressively than Socrates does Socrates is doing it because what why is he doing it so he can learn so we can learn he wants to to know so the young men have maybe that motive but they also have some other yeah you know he doesn't say that in the dialogue but that's probably a good supposition because these are these are young men who look up to Socrates and so how do you you know prove your worth you try to show it you can do the same sort of thing but that's an interesting conjecture what does anyone remember what Socrates actually says why they do around questioning people now sort of freelancing because they like it because it's fun because it's entertaining you know to take people who think they know and tear them down maybe the people who do know because they're you know if they're not quick enough on their feet to defend themselves against an argument these young men you know and tear them down think about I've got sort of a comparison here think about comedy what is it who is most comedy gentle in your experience anybody who ever going to a comedy club only a few you should go it it's I don't actually like going because I don't like conflict that much people will get in conflict at comedy clubs and it'll happen a couple different ways sometimes the comic will start you know picking on people in the audience that's one sure way to get a laugh some comics actually like you know their whole show is like that other comic comics will get heckled from the crowd because the crowd will say things to them and they'll start saying things back and forth or you know comics will do what they'll make fun of other people that aren't in the room it's it's actually pretty rare that you find comedy that isn't at the expense of somebody now the ancient Greece especially in Athens they had comedy and there are comedies haven't you ever read any three comedies like Aristophanes works I hope that you do your college career we tend to think of these ancient Greeks as if you know whether they were a lot earlier than us so they they don't know anything about perversion or you know bloodiness or you know rude behavior or anything like that read one of Aristophanes place you'll see that anything goes no-holds-barred and they have special time to do this it was during certain festivals they didn't do it all the time during Greek comedies during these these plays they would actually have a portion of the play where they'd all wear masks at the time because they're all familiar with those those masks you know tragedy masks and the comic mess they would take him off and then he'd come out into the audience and they would say hey you you voted for that measure last month that was really stupid here's why and by the way your wife blah blah blah blah blah that's the way Greek comedy was people put up with that because it was within certain limits now imagine you've got this guy Socrates he's doing something kind of funny and kind of entertaining and he's got all these followers who are going around and imitating him but they're doing so in such a way as to maybe get away from the spirit of what Socrates was about and they're deriving a lot of enjoyment from it surprising he didn't get himself killed earlier if that was the case isn't it in a society where that's how you do settlements so these are the the old the new charges with the old charges let's get invited yeah and the entire thing is is like atheism it's not treating divine things rightly there's some other charges that that Socrates actually brings up word for word he says some people say that he's a wise man who speculated about the heaven above and searched into the earth beneath so he's he's wise and into nature and that could be in pious because you know a lot of people thought that natural phenomena were the work of the gods or actually manifestations of the gods as a matter of fact one of the dialogues that we were going to look at but we're not gonna have time to the Euthyphro is all about piety and impiety piety is the proper attitude towards the gods or toward divine things the impiety is the wrong attitude towards what else they also say that he makes the worse we should probably put it in here for Memphis here how many of you feel that you're terrible an argument that you can't convince people of anything okay how many of you would say great ass like your honor debate team or you know you'll get in arguments with people just because you like you know doing that and you know you're very competent what about the rest of your all more or less in the middle you've all countered people who can take a bad argument and make it sound good right you may have been bested by them at one time Connor let's do this but people also do it in politics that do it and debating about things they do the personal relationships sometimes people get talked into doing things yeah it seems like a good thing at the time because somebody convinces them right that's making the worst argument or the worst cause look better and there was a whole class of people who did this professionally in Socrates time called the Sophists or the rhetorician so they're saying that he's one of those what else he also said well they say I'm a teacher which is but then he keeps money for teaching no why would that be a bad thing I'm getting paid okay of course I have to live them Socrates didn't yet he was more or less tgd anything worthwhile it's all fake what he's saying yeah if you were this is this applies to your university education you guys are actually paying pretty good money for the education that you're gonna compare to people going out of state school right it's a private school you want to be getting something back so if you get some professor who doesn't give you a syllabus and just breezes in and talks about some stuff and then you know dad's writing a paper and then walks out you're probably going to feel cheated in aren't you yeah if you get to the end of the semester and you don't have and you put in your work and you put in your time and you don't have anything where you can say this is definitely what I learned in this class and here's what I'm going to take to the next class again he'll feel cheated somebody took your money and they didn't they didn't give you something in return well that was a big problem at the time the Sophists were teaching and taking money so these are the other charges and who's making these these charges against them well just about everybody any he points to you know the comic playwright who made fun of them actually his friend Aristophanes but well well just about everybody who's Socrates has crossed they're saying these things for the younger kids the ones who are bringing the charges they believe this stuff and why are people going to vote against him because they believe this stuff too but what's the real motive for them what's their real animus against Socrates what did he do that was wrong in their eyes one of the core points about yeah yeah and it's interesting you said why is enough first now you know nothing right and then there's sort of a play in there if you read the dialogue through several times you'll see he kind of fluctuates between not knowing anything these people don't know anything at all and well some of them know something but not enough and then he claims that he does know something by not knowing something which is a little what we call paradoxical how do people feel when you take with what they claim about themselves you show that it's wrong yeah so if I if I think that I'm a great singer and you listen to me and I sound terrible you say you know and you are not a good singer I think you should just stick to doing the philosophy bit now if my egos involved I'll get angry at all my feelings I'll be insulted what happens when we get angry this isn't actually talked about in the dialogue but think about your own experience you guys let everything go if any of you've ever been shown up like that somebody made you made you look bad something that you felt yourself to be good in you'd be angered with them or hurt if you hold on to that what does it turn into yeah the garage and the garage is a form of hatred hatred is stronger than anger hatred is more elastic like Aristotle says the angry person wants the other person to suffer the person who hates wants them not to even exist they want off the man and this is what these people want with Socrates because he's standing in the way of their their identity they were feeling about this you know the same thing could happen with studying philosophy I hope that over the course of the semester someone beliefs that you have about yourself will get called into question and maybe change or maybe hold on to it if they're good beliefs and you call them into question they'll stand up to it right but you won't know unless you actually do question them you examine them living what Socrates called the examined life so who does he go around you actually before we talk about that let's let's look at this this narrative where does he where does not Socrates go where does this friend go that starts this whole chain of events in this narrative the Oracle right so this involves religion and you notice Socrates isn't really any ideas Disney because he believes that the the God at Delphi Apollo actually is giving him something that he has to think about it's something he has to do he actually says the God can't lie because it would be against the God's nature so he doesn't leaving gods and he does believe some things that seem to be pretty on track about about the gods so a counter front is kind of what we'd call smartass so he goes and he asked the Oracle at Delphi about this Socrates guy is there anyone wiser than him says no and he comes back they tell Socrates I guess what guess what I found out you're the wisest guy in Greece and Socrates says well I think that doesn't make any sense and there you actually see an argument don't you let's reconstruct that article so nobody what does Socrates then start how does the chain of reasoning go from there the Oracle said nobody is wise but I'm not wise so maybe the guy that's wrong right but the guy can't lie so there must be something going on here how could anybody you know it doesn't think that they're wise be wise well how is Socrates wise how does it turn out what is his wisdom consistent it's kind of against paradoxical it's it's a thought where it almost seems to contradict itself yes yeah so we're going to directions with us Socrates is wise he is really wise because know what about the other people who Socrates guys should be wiser than me right they claim to be wise I don't claim to be wise yeah and we just say they're deluded about their own wisdom so they're worse off right they send people who believe that were worse off Socrates is actually he's not actually attaining any great wisdom but at least he knows what his limitations are these other people don't and now let's think about who are these these people it may be very hard for you to relate to these these groups of people at the start who are the people who're the classes and people that he goes to yeah politicians yeah yeah that's the last week you ready and sometimes I miss conference I do and then if you catch it a little bit later on he'll actually slip in a fourth group which is the rhetorician so this when he's talking what he was talking about who's he actually bringing the indictment against him and why they're doing whose behalf now politicians we know who they are right every four years every two years we elect some of them local politicians these are the people who make things happen within society imagine now a state that's very small think about say Rhode Island instead of like the state of New York which is pretty vast Rhode Island's pretty small I think it's only got three counties in each one of those counties you know it's sort of like a city state almost and then the larger municipality when you've got a state that small you could know a lot about the people who you're electing New York it's a bit harder isn't it yeah the huge state yeah New York City just you know dominates everything because it's got so many people the politicians we can't even wrap our heads around what does he mean by artisans what do you think he means there is that so tradespeople perhaps me so for instance in our day plumbers electricians iron workers would be artisans it's perhaps of an unfortunate word choice for the translation because it makes me think of like people out there painting and doing things like that they would actually be closer to the poet's reparations have any of you ever been a rhetorician you have actually read at least met somebody to study rhetoric all of you in high school English teachers right one of the things you can specialize in English is what we call rhetoric and Composition retcons and what they study are how to use language persuasive that's what rhetoric is now think about in our society who would use this language persuade persuasively besides people in politics they they of course do right you have some people who do with speech that's what the reparations did back then but we have a lot more of this in our society ancient Greeks there we're else do you find rhetoric being used every single day okay boy yeah the business world especially in in finance advertising yeah I was gonna say I was looking for marketing but advertising is even broader bring this housing yeah so the business like sales yes sales would also be actually sales to be somewhat more like the classic reparations because they tend to be working more directly with language with crowds but marketing advertising all of that fits into radishes they're trying to use language to persuade people as a matter of fact every time you see one of those public service yeah it doesn't always have to be a product it can just be you know or you know don't drink and drive if they're if they're sculpting in such a way as to not really give you an argument we're just appeal to to your emotions they're they're effectively doing rhetoric I mean some of those ads are pretty great I like the ones where they they open up the car although you know the liquor pours out you know I find myself wanting that you know to know which kind of link here it's going to be now this game's beer this guy's wine this guy it's clearly you know some sort of whiskey they're great hands but all they really are is is rhetoric this leaves us with the talking one the Greeks had poets we have moments right where did weird poets hang out coffee shops right new poetry slams maybe they published in literary magazines what are poets like we stay with joke back when I was in college one thing a poet hates the most is another for weird poets like in our society we have a lot of them do we Greeks don't actually mean the same thing that polished yes somebody hit on the corner scribbling versus I've done it I raise your right silence actually I still do that's not what they don't even know what was Greek poetry like what did what did that mean have any of you read The Odyssey or the Iliad didn't read like a poem yeah yeah it rhyme but it doesn't in Greek it actually doesn't rhyme it'sit's the metre movie in English we use and Ryan it's called The Odyssey the Iliad the Amen those are all examples of epic Beowulf is an epic that's a kind of poetry I think Germanic languages actually is what's called stop or stress reliable the Nibelungen we eat if you've read that you know the story these Germans fighting each other that's an epic we have a lot of epics don't we so how are we like our epics we can read some of them how do we really get movies yeah if you want it to be truly epic it's got to be at least two hours miniseries they had other kinds of poetry as well what we call lyrical poetry which is you know sort of expressive of the individual condition well state plays we watch plays we watch more plays than the Greeks did you watch our plays on television they're just you know filmed and edited they're not so much live dramatic performances which tend to be kind of highbrow right the stuff that forms our popular culture is what would count as poetry so this is this class of poets is much broader than what we think what about our whole music industry do you know any people who perhaps guide their lives a little bit too much by songs by a particular artists think about love songs and the message is that so many of them have and what the effects would be if you actually followed some of the the advice or put yourself in the narrative of some of those love songs some of them might turn out ok a lot of them would turn out pretty terrible you know I'm gonna stay with you forever even though you cheat on me treating you wrong I still love you is that healthy that wise I don't think so I hope none of you do now Socrates is going to these people so they have different roles in our society but these classes are still there and what happens he goes first the politicians they claim to know they claim to be wise what are they wise about what does politics really about if you're kind of jaded you might say it making money we're putting people under your thumb crushing how do you manage society yeah there's a lot of different ways you could go with that and people always have different ideas about it so politicians are the ones who say hey look I've got the best ideas you should vote for me let me do what I think we ought to do or enact my policies and you know they think it's peaches or they give policy statements they're making claims to wisdom they're making claims not only this is the best thing to do at the time what do they base their here's what the good is for human beings here's the better way to live and Socrates goes and he asks them to you know clarify what it is that they're saying and turns out that at least in ancient Athens but I'll let you think about whether this is the case of our society or not maybe we don't have to extrapolate what Socrates did there there he doesn't find anybody who satisfies him and he actually says you know there were a lot of inferior people people who didn't have positions of power who seem to know an awful lot more than these politicians that don't this is where that that issue about is the wisdom absolutely not their word is there's some degree of wisdom that's where that comes in he says there were some inferior people who seemed wiser so if you're saying they're wiser they must have some degree of wisdom what about the poet's they're not quite in the same case as the politicians he treats the politicians pretty properly they don't know anything so the poet's know anything they don't know they don't know about the most important thing which is what they're generating you ask them to explain what are you talking about here as well I don't know you know and Socrates says well you know they're divinely inspired it just comes to that and I can't really give you could ask yourself is that true in our society whether are their state musicians who write songs and you ask them what is this song really about if they can't explain it let's see some of you said they were divinely inspired yeah but then Socrates was charged as me yeah so well the church doesn't doesn't hold up very well yeah yeah I mean that there's all these points throughout the whole thing where mellitus must have just been like you know wincing and wishing he hadn't charged in with a theism here's gonna hope that the other charge would would stick the poets don't know about their own production what they do know about about something so the craftsman good he said that the poets knew how to play please the people they didn't know what they were talking about but they knew saying yeah then the trades people are a little bit different they do know something an electrician does know about electricity where to put the condom because if they screw it up what happens they don't stay on electrician for very long do they the Potter actually knows how to make pottery where did they go wrong [Music] they found the same errands of poets what was that like they you're on the right track they claim to know more than they really did yeah so because somebody is a really good electrician who knows how society got to be right because the signing is pretty much like an electrical box you know or if they're a Potter you know your your love life isn't going well well it's like this pot that I threw all the time sometimes you just got to take the the you know ruin stuff and throw it back in the kiln because of human you know human being in a relationship is just like a pot you see the problem there people go by what they do no I think they can extend that to everything else especially the most important things in life so they actually did have some wisdom didn't they it was let's skip ahead a little bit and look at these things about death now wisdom is going to be one of the key themes throughout this this semester knowledge wisdom who has it what does it consist in we mean by death is another important thing I think I may set this to the ethics class not to you guys this is a very morbid thought but it's you know it's true if you think about it I mean they actually look around the room and all your fellow students now every one of those people one of three things is gonna happen in relation to you you're gonna die before they do they're gonna die before you do or you're gonna die at the same time because the mortality rate is a hundred percent and death is one of those things that hopefully all of you are very far I'm closer because I'm you know twenty years further on than you guys are death is one of those things that we want to know about a lot of people talking yeah near-death experiences and what's the other side like Socrates have some discussions about that doesn't mean there's two things I'd like you to take away from this thinking left out one of them is Socrates gives you some arguments why dying isn't gonna be a bad thing well look at those in a minute he also says he doesn't mind dying in part because it's not really doing him any harm or great harm what would be worse than dying for Socrates what's a fate worse than death as we sometimes yeah sort of indirectly because what is that going to require of him that stopped him doing philosophy okay now that's these are both on the right track he's talked about in terms of this is unrighteousness which is another way of translating injustice being over doing wrong things to be a doer abroad is worse than dying now that's kind of strange thought isn't it so it depth of be an unspeakable game game if it's no consciousness whatsoever what's what's does anything strike you as kind of odd about the the game for who if you have a consciousness are you gaining anything are you enjoying anything there's really no you to to benefit so that's kind of a bad I mean you somebody could have responded to side what does he really think this is this is what he actually does think that death is a journey to another place and now here again is where the not so much living with your conscious but it is kind of tied to honor the honor that other people give you the afterlife according to Socrates is going to be either a good place or a bad place more or less depending on what you bring to it so if you're a bad person you're going to show up in a place where you know you can't trick people any more into supporting you or thinking you're a good person you can't fool yourself any more you're going to be confronted with people who actually know what justice is these wise judges and they're going to you know send you to a bad place or to a good place and if you get sent to a good place he says if the pilgrim arrives in the world well if indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below he's delivered from the professors of justice in this world these these people and finds the true judges that pilgrimage will be worth worth making what is he going to get to do there I will be able to continue my search into true or false knowledge he has in this world so as a man I will find out who really is wise if these people here don't really possess wisdom maybe once he gets down to the afterworld the afterlife he will encounter those who truly do have wisdom and he says what infinite delight there would be in conversing with them and asking them questions we're in that world they don't put a man to death with us now so I'm going to leave you with this image of Socrates down there fathering all the people in Hades drink down and not letting them go what we're going to pick up with next week is credo and credo begins in the prison cell the day before Socrates is supposed to be executed then this one he's very outspoken right the city you know I'm the gadfly I get to poke the city and make it jump when I need to in the credo he was gonna say he has to obey the laws even though the laws are going to put him to death so think about that as here's your reading through it and have a good week

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

Views: 51,239

Keywords: Intro to Philosophy, Plato, Apology, Justice, Wisdom, Socrates, Marist, Sadler, Apology (Plato), Introduction, Intro, Philosophy, Ancient, Accusers, Poets, Rhetors, Politicians, Craftsmen, Comedy, Aristophanes, Meletus, Trial, Death, Life, commitment, death penalty, speech, class, college, university, lecture, (Philosopher), Right, Wrong, Good, Evil, Wise, Student, afterlife, Greek, Athens, Athenian, Gadfly, young men, corruption, duty, teaching, sophist

Id: orVFra9rPYo

Length: 66min 20sec (3980 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2011