Socrates vs. the Sophists on Ethics

[Music] foreign [Music] talk is on Socrates versus the sophists I entitled my history of philosophy Socrates children because Socrates is the father of philosophy Socrates is the first great philosopher the first to clearly know when a point was proved to be true and when it was not the first person to consciously practice the art of logic in the Quest for wisdom which by the very definition and literal meaning of the word is what philosophy is supposed to be logic and wisdom Clarity and profundity Socrates was the first to combine them Socrates is the archetype and Touchstone for all subsequent philosophers every one of the many schools of philosophy in the ancient world claimed to be the true Disciples of Socrates except for the materialist and atheist epicureans just as each of the 30 000 different Christian denominations today claim to be the true Disciples of Christ if there had been no Socrates there would be no Plato and without Plato no Aristotle and Aristotle laid the foundations not only for almost all subsequent philosophy but also for most of the Sciences which gradually split off from philosophy like children leaving home to set up a new family and the rest of the history of Western philosophy flows from these three Socrates Plato and Aristotle the history of Western philosophy can be usefully oversimplified by a geographical image think of Two Rivers arising from a swamp flowing separately for about 500 years then blending into a single River for the next 1500 years separating again for another 500 years and then ending in another swamp the two rivers are philosophy and religion reason and faith centering on Socrates and Jesus the two most influential human beings who ever lived both Rivers emerge from the swamp of pagan mythology and polytheism Socratic reason and judeo-christian Faith were not just two new teachings new thoughts but to fundamentally new ways of thinking one in Israel the other in Greece both distinguish themselves from and criticize the teachings of the myths that surrounded them but also from the Mythic imaginative intuitive dreamlike subjective way of thinking that produced the myths both Hebrew faith and Greek reason opposed not only the teachings of the polytheistic myths but also its mode of thinking its epistemology faith for the Hebrews meant not Mythic dreams or mystical experiences but a public revelation of the one true God in two new forms miraculous and providential historical events and the moral writings of the prophets both of these two objects of Faith were objective and public exoteric instead of esoteric one needed no special talents to understand the visible works of God in history some of which were miraculous and all of which were providential or to understand the moral writings in the law and the prophets the object of the other new kind of thinking from Athens was also not imaginatively invented myths but reason that is defining terms clearly and proving controversial conclusions logically two things that had simply not been done before Socrates in any conscious or consistent way both of these two new ways of thinking were objective and realistic in that they were public and Democratic not private and esoteric neither of these two new ways of thinking Hebrew Faith or Greek reason could marry the myths that would be like a man Marrying an animal if they could marry each other that would be like a man marrying a woman and that's what they did and that's what produced Christian culture or Christendom which is not primarily a political order but a spiritual order and that is the culture that is now dying in Europe and North America though it is continuing to grow everywhere else in the world to go back to our geographical image the mingling of these two rivers happened in the Roman world which was the only time the Western world was unified in a single Republic and later an Empire it was like the marriage between two missionaries philosophical missionaries of the socratic reason and religious missionaries of the Jewish god who had become incarnate in Christ the claims of both missionaries were Universal and not just for one race or Nation truths revealed by reason were Universal truths and the law is revealed by God were universal laws the name for that marriage was Christian culture or Christendom it was a stormy marriage but a fruitful one especially in its two giants Augustine and Aquinas the two most brilliant Christian Minds who ever lived and it lasted for 1500 years until the reformation and the Renaissance began to pull it apart in a kind of divorce on the one side the Protestant Reformation wanted to divorce religion from Greek rationalism and Roman legalism and on the other hand the humanistic and scientific Renaissance wanted to divorce science and art from religious faith and Dogma although they destroyed the medieval marriage and thus created the so-called modern world both were nostalgic backward-looking movements the Reformation wanted to restore the simple gospel and free it from its marriage to Greek reason and Roman law to free the Divine from its marriage to the human whereas the Renaissance wanted to free the human from its marriage to the Divine and restore the glory that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome both the reformation and the Renaissance began as relatively modest reforming and purifying movements but they soon became increasingly rebellious and independent and eventually became the two post-christian cultures of on the one hand the scientific and humanistic rationalism of the early 18th century enlightenment and on the other hand numerous protests against that in the name of a subjective Romanticism or irrationalism especially in the 19th century and this has left us with our present split culture and split personalities typified by C.S Lewis's complaint in his autobiography that quote the two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast on the one side a many islanded sea of poetry and myth on the other side a glib and shallow rationalism nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary nearly all that I believe to be real I thought grim and meaningless for faith has collapsed into feeling and reason into computing which were only two ghosts of their former robust and vibrant medieval selves and two ghosts cannot marry that is my x-ray of the skeletal structure of the modern mind and what is the so-called post-modern mind that now surrounds us well there is no consensus in fact there's an increasing Division and distrust the only thing common to all post-modernisms is the laws of faith in modernism that is the adequacy of either objective reason or subjective feeling it is as structuralist a swamp as the Swamp of Mythology that both biblical faith and classical reason emerged from see the ongoing importance of Socrates for our present world look at Kierkegaard and Nietzsche the two founders of modern existentialism which is the only really interesting School of modern philosophy these two are as opposite as any two philosophers can be in what they value Kierkegaard said that his whole extremely diverse philosophical output is about only one thing what it is to exist as a Christian aniti called Christianity the synthesis of all errors the most total and loathsome falsehood in human history yet for both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche all of Western Civilization circles around Socrates and Jesus like planets orbiting a double star they are character guard's two greatest heroes anichi's two greatest villains Nietzsche is profoundly right to see Socrates worship of Truth as religious it is his Lord it is god without a face that's why Nishi hates in fear Socrates almost as much as he hates in Fierce Christ he called himself the Antichrist he could equally have called himself the anti-zocrates obviously Socrates and Jesus are profoundly different but they're also profoundly similar two profoundly different people can be more profoundly similar than any two shallowly different people can be for the deeper you go down into the canyon the closer you get to the single River that is at the bottom Socrates was very different from Jesus he was not virgin born was not predicted by prophets performed no miracles did not claim to be divine was not crucified did not resurrect and did not promise to return to judge the world at the end of time Jesus did yet they are strikingly similar in a number of ways first of all they were similar to each other and they're very different from all others who ever lived C.S Lewis says somewhere that there are three people whom it will be impossible to mistake for any others when you meet them in heaven Jesus Zachary's and Samuel Johnson wrong because G.K Chesterton is the new Samuel Johnson but two out of three ain't bad a second similarity is that both Socrates and Jesus were monotheists that was a universal cultural requirement in Israel and a unique counter-cultural achievement in Greece Socrates always speak seriously when he speaks of the god in the center but never when he speaks of the Gods in the plural in fact soccerise was martyred because he could not honestly profess publicly that he believed in any of the Gods of the state Socrates was the only person that Athens the world's first democracy ever executed for religious reasons like the Rome of the Caesars Greece was very tolerant to all religions except the three examples of monotheism in the ancient world Jews Christians and Socrates so a third similarity is that both Socrates and Jesus were martyred for their so-called impiety their religious non-conformity Socrates for being too monotheistic Jesus for apparently not being monotheistic enough in an Exquisite irony both were executed for impiety even though both were by far the most Pious persons in their culture a fourth similarity is that both were Saints if the definition of a saint is simply one whose whole life is devoted to obeying God's will that was the ultimate reason they both accepted martyrdom both were led by and obedient to the Holy Spirit Zachary spoke of a spirit a diamond a Divine voice that spoke to him it was literally the only thing he never questioned even when it gave no reasons and forbade him to do what others in his culture saw as honorable for instance to enter politics here's a fifth similarity both Socrates and Jesus endured mistrials and both were executed for religious offenses that were draped in the disguise of political offenses although most men were apolitical similarity both never published a word Jesus only writing was in the sand and Socrates wrote only poetry the last night of his life to exalt the God of Light Apollo and to festoon esop's fables the most childlike of All Greek writings the sands of time have blown these writings away as surely as it blew away the words Jesus literally wrote In The Sand Socrates would never get tenure at a typical American University no research no Publications as to what Jesus would meet as his fate in a typical American Church well read dostoevsky's Fable of the grand Inquisitor deeper and more mysterious similarity is that both were remarkably humble yet both made outrageous astonishing claims this is obviously true for Jesus but how is it true for Socrates well in his apology Socrates was so honest that after he was declared guilty of the crimes of not believing in the gods of a state and corrupting the youth by teaching them to question as he had questioned he had to propose a counter penalty that he thought he deserved rather than either death or exile and he proposed as his counterclaim to be honored by the state by free room and board in the town hall because he was his greatest benefactor no one else in history comes even close to either Jesus or Socrates in the contrast between the enormity of their claims and the humility of their personalities an eighth similarity both were hated by both the political right and the political left of the time the traditionalists and the progressives which in the case of Socrates was the establishment on the one hand and the sophists on the other hand more about them in a minute and in the case of Jesus it was the dogmatic and legalistic Pharisees on the one hand who added to the Jewish law and the prophets and the skeptical Sadducees on the other hand who deleted much of it Jesus was also hated both by the herodian collaborators with Rome and by the Zealot revolutionary Rebels both Socrates and Jesus fit the description Chesterton gives of Jesus by this analogy he says imagine someone described by some as far too fat others as far too skinny some as ridiculously tall by others as ridiculously short either he is a very strange shape or he is exactly the right shape and nobody else is similarity number nine both were enemies of moral relativism which was taught in One Way by the sophists and in another way by the Pharisees who actually fulfilled all the fears of jesuitical Casualty that Protestant critics specialize in by not demanding perfection in the heart only in the hands in correct Behavior similarity number 10. both defended Traditional Values but in an untraditional way both were truer than their culture was to the culture's own Origins and Foundations and yet both seemed radically new and threatening to those who thought they were defending the culture against them similarity number 11. Socrates taught by a systematic questioning the famous Socratic method and so did Jesus the rabbinic method of teaching is the closest thing to the Socratic method that we find anywhere in the ancient world the classic Jewish joke for me is this one why does a rabbi always answer a question with another question and the answer is why shouldn't a rabbi answer a question with another question eh that's only a funny description of what Jesus habitually did even as a boy when his parents lost him for three days they found him in the temple doing what asking and answering questions to the rabbis like the rabbinic method of the assumptions of the Socratic method are the opposite of the assumptions of the sophists first that truth is the end the goal it is an intrinsic and absolute value that we must have a respect for truth and an honest intention when we argue that truth is objective and Universal and third that it is knowable by ordinary human beings uni using ordinary human reason especially by defining our terms clearly and arguing logically similarity number 12. both taught paradoxes for Jesus to save yourself is to Lose Yourself and to give yourself away is the only way to save yourself God turns us upside down exalting the humble and humbling the exalted why because we fall in human beings all Begin by being upside down nose to the Earthly grindstone and heals kicking up in Rebellion against the heavens so that when God turns us right side up we feel upside down since when we were upside down we felt right side up let's look at this more closely sakuris famously taught four paradoxes first that no evil can ever happen to a good man either in this world or in the next for evil does not just happen like thunderstorms it is chosen and embraced by our mind and will second that man is not a body that happens to have a soul but a soul that happens to have a body that's his answer to the delphic oracle's great riddle know thyself the Greek word for soul psyche meant ghost before Socrates it was the less real aspect of yourself a kind of pale copy of the real you but for Socrates the real self was your psyche your invisible self Your Mind and Spirit it was a body that was the ghost-like copy of the Soul not vice versa Soul was heavier than the body not thinner and lighter it was Immortal Socrates third Paradox is that knowledge is a kind of virtue and virtue a kind of knowledge that the origin of all evil is ignorance that to truly know the good is to do it and the fourth Paradox is that learning is really remembering that beneath the conscious mind of every individual and temporal person lies the power to know the Eternal and universal truth these four paradoxes that Socrates taught sound at first quite contrary to Christ's teachings yet all four can be interpreted in a profoundly Christian way the first that no evil can happen to a good man is almost Saint Paul's point when he says that all things work together for good for those who love God sin does not just happen as suffering does but suffering is not evil because it gives us the opportunity to be more wise more humble and more courageous suffering is usually not a punishment for sin it is therapy for sin an opportunity for sanctity even death is not evil because if we are wise and good it ushers us into heaven the second Paradox that the essence of the self is the soul is Jesus point when he says what does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul that is I think the most practical sentence ever spoken in the essence of Economics the science of profit and loss yes Socrates was wrong by discounting the body but he got the soul right and that's even more important than getting the body right the third Paradox that evil is ignorance and that to truly know the good is to necessarily love the good is true at least with two qualifications it's true of the most important kind of knowledge what Newman calls real assent as distinct from merely notional ascent and there is also true of the most important kind of objects of knowledge that is values rather than mere facts Jesus himself defines our ultimate good this way this is eternal life to know you the only true God and it will certainly be true of our knowledge of God in heaven the beatific vision which will eliminate all sin and even all temptation because it will eliminate all Darkness all ignorance if we truly knew God and His goodness now with the full real assent that we will have in heaven we will not be able to sin because we would see both sin and virtue as they truly are sin is misery and virtuous Joy not vice versa the fourth Paradox that learning is remembering and that truth is innate can be applied to innate moral knowledge by conscience and perhaps also to our subconscious memory of Eden why else do we feel that this world is not enough if we don't subconsciously remember being in a better one an unfollen one Pascal says compare two poor men one is a deposed King the other was born poor which one is going to be dissatisfied with ordinary life what does the deposed King's dissatisfaction prove that he remembers a throne and which of those two are we what origin do we unconsciously remember did we fall from Eden or did we rise from the primordial slime pools one last similarity between Socrates and Jesus and I think this is number 13 is their appearance Zachary's resembled nothing more than a squashed frog it was one of the ugliest men who ever lived and Jesus at least in his passion was described by Isaiah in these worlds he had no beauty that we should desire him he was one from whom men hide their faces on the cross Jesus began to quote Psalm 22 which Begins by God my God why hast Thou forsaken me and goes on to say I am a worm and no man I have just enumerated no less than 13 striking similarities between Socrates and Jesus I think that is no accident I think it justifies erasmus's prayer Saint Socrates pray for us now we need to look at Socrates enemies this office because today their progeny dominates our culture both in formal education from preschool to postgraduate research and informal education in our popular media hell has a severely limited imagination its errors keep recycling while Heaven's inventions Jesus and his Saints and his church are the only truly new things in the world Jesus says to his church in the last chapter of the Bible behold I make all things new well we need to First Look at the softest origin in Athenian culture and then their essential teachings about the relativity of both truth and goodness and then the ultimate source of that teaching which is to make man not God the measure of all things and finally to look at some contemporary versions of their teaching which is still very much alive just as Socrates is and just as the war between Socrates and the sophists is in fact it is at the heart of our culture War these three forces Socrates the sophists and their War are perennial and therefore contemporary the sophists were a group of itinerant teachers of rhetoric or the art of persuasion persuasion for them was not by means of honest and objective logical argument like Socrates but by clever tricks concealed fallacies and emotional Appeals this they called wisdom and call themselves sophists or wise men in contrast Socrates called himself not a sophist but a philosophist a philosopher or a lover of wisdom since possession of wisdom he said belonged to God Alone this office quickly became quite rich and famous because their services were in great demand in Athens which had invented two great institutions democracy and trial by jury in both institutions persuasion was necessary for victory and this office were very canny canny enough to realize that most people are persuaded more by cleverness than by wisdom more by appearance than by truth and more by emotion than by Logic if you were sued and brought to court you could lose your fortune or your business if you argued less effectively than your opponent no matter how good or true your case was correlatively you could win big even if your case was rationally and morally weak if you could only argue like a sophist so the sophists sold their so-called wisdom for a fee they were intellectual prostitutes one of this office advertisements was we can make the weakest argument the strongest this office where successful practitioners of the world's oldest profession advertising which was invented by the devil in the Garden of Eden if you don't see the parallels and relevance to our contemporary culture here I welcome you back from your nice long vacation on some other planet Socrates answer to this office was not to offer more powerful and successful techniques of persuasion but the moral appeal to prioritize truth and Justice over power and success to rank right over might a lesson he himself was spectacularly unsuccessful in teaching to this office but very successful in teaching to generations of philosophers after his death first of all through His Brilliant disciple Plato who remembered and wrote down Socrates dialogues with this office for posterity these dialogues of Plato constitute I think the very best introduction to philosophy ever written like Jesus and Buddha Socrates wrote no books Plato was the Socrates then what Matthew Mark Luke John and Paul were to Jesus teaching of this office was epistemological and moral relativism and subjectivism both truth and moral goodness especially Justice the foundation of moral virtue were to them not objective or absolute but only subjective opinion and personal preference they taught only diversity and tolerance and inclusion and non-judgmentalism of course that spineless spiritual spaghetti is so silly that you never hear that anymore in today's culture right right the assumptions of sakuri's method were the opposite from the assumptions of the sophists first that truth not power or fame or wealth is the end the intrinsic value second that truth is objective and Universal the same for everyone third that it is knowable by ordinary human reason and fourth that the two most important operations of Reason in discovering truth are clearly understanding and defining the meaning of our terms and arguing logically and consistently was the first to systematically practice both inductive and deductive reasoning especially the syllogism the safest use of reason was neither inductive nor deductive but seductive masking fallacies and appealing to ignorance and confusion and emotion what a student would call a snow job or a con job and they were very successful at it gorgeous one of the most famous sophists summarized his epistemology or theory of knowledge in three denials of the three fundamental meanings of logos the profoundest and most multifaceted word in the Greek language logos means first of all true being intelligible being what really is the nature of things and that was always the object of soccer's dialogues second logos means reason or intelligence or understanding the ability to know true being and third it means language or words or the ability to communicate that knowledge of that being so logos means true being true knowledge and true speaking and gorgios explicitly denies all three meanings of logos first he says that there is no such thing as objective truth or meaning or intelligibility or the nature of things second he says even if there were it could not be known third he says even if it were known it could not be communicated in words thus the three fundamental distinctions of Socrates are all denied first the distinction of real being from unreal being the distinction between objective truth about being from Mere subjective opinion the distinction of being from seeming second the distinction between honest thinking and dishonest thinking the distinction between reasoning and rationalizing between really understanding and only seeming to understand and third there's sanction between true speech and deceptive speech between really persuading and only seeming to persuade for gorgeous there is no true being true knowing or true speaking first of all truth is reduced to opinion objective reality reduced to subjective appearance being to becoming second reason is reduced to rationalization of desires as in Freud and finally words are reduced to weapons as in Mao Zedong the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world who wrote truth comes out of the barrel of a gun in other words words are not labels they are Dynamite sticks in other people's minds and those who have the matches to light them win the world that is essentially the philosophy of what is today called deconstructionism this epistemological relativism entails a moral relativism if all truth is relative then this is especially true of moral truth literally might makes right Justice is only the mask painted on the face of Power by the winners of the culture wars for both Nietzsche and the deconstructionists today who are his disciples and for this office in Socrates day the will to power is the first cause of everything in human life not the will to truth who is the other most famous sophist summarized the metaphysical basis for this relativism of Truth and goodness by his principle that man is the measure of all things of the goodness of whatever is good and of the evil of whatever is evil in other words the measure of all truth is not God but man not something above man to which our mind submits but our own will the measure of Truth is not even the universal objective nature of man as in an ethic of natural law but merely the will and desire of each individual or each group that has the power Socrates replied to this relativism that God not man is the measure of all things including man God is not made in man's image man is made in God's image even the thin slice of God that Socrates Knew by reason was enough to refute this office's idolatry so ultimately this philosophical issue is a theological issue and it is the central issue of the spiritual war that divides our current culture the most radical and complete form of sophism in contemporary philosophy is deconstructionism which is also the most popular and fashionable philosophy in our humanities departments which is I'm convinced the deepest reason why those departments are dying deconstructionism explicitly says like gorgeous that there is no logos logocentrism is its favorite enemy one might summarize deconstructionism as logophobia and since Christ is the logos this is christophobia according to deconstructionism there is no so-called real world distinct from the word or text and there are no real meta-narratives or big pictures or World Views based on universal truths such as Justice or human nature or natural moral law and natural rights deconstructionism claims that words are not copies of realities they are weapons of warfare and what is the War about for most of them only three things race class and gender all other issues are camouflages for those three as in Nietzsche what seems to be the will of Truth is always a camouflage and rationalization of the will to power to quote the title of the very effective Nazi propaganda film it's the Triumph of the will although deconstructionists almost always identify with the radical lift they also agree with the radical right Hitler and Stalin are not really very different venetians are winning the culture War today the most famous office of modern times was Hitler Nietzsche's insane disciple he lost his war on the battlefield but he is increasingly winning that war on the battlefield of ideas that is what they're talking though called Soft totalitarianism it is increasingly Conquering the educational establishment and therefore the coming Generations throughout the Western world and that is the deepest reason why despite its Superior technological strength it is spiritually too weak and inferior to win against the hard totalitarianism of either the new Marxism the Chinese communism or the new fascism of the Islamic cultures that hate it and this is clear from our drippy and Droopy exits from Vietnam and Afghanistan the first two Wars we ever lost they will probably not be the last as Wars are won first of all in the mind and the spirit do I think we are doomed no can we reverse the curse and win the present culture of War yes if we will if so how I suggest we begin with Socrates I suggest we say echoing Erasmus Saint Socrates pray for us foreign [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Word on Fire Institute

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Keywords: peter kreeft, dr. peter kreeft, dr. kreeft, philosophy, dr. kreeft on philosphy, dr. kreeft and philosophy, word on fire, word on fire catholic ministries, word on fire institute, bishop barron, bishop robert barron, bishop barron's word on fire, socrates, sophists, socrates children, philosophy lecture, christian philosophy, catholic philosophy, introduction to philosophy, intro to philosophy, philosophy crash course, sophist, socrates philosophy, sophist philosophy

Id: bPb1x3cHLNY

Length: 37min 6sec (2226 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023