The Ancients: Socrates

so good evening ladies and gentlemen tonight the ancient Socrates and this will start the trilogy of the great founders of the Western philosophical tradition Socrates Plato Aristotle will be the next three lectures so that'll be hopefully entertaining and interesting and enlightening now people always ask you know who's the greatest philosopher and I again I just think that's one of those tough questions I don't know if there is a great philosopher there's so many different ways to be great there's no limit on this there can be many equally wonderful powerful influential philosophers ah but if you ask me who is the most radical philosopher who's ever lived and I would argue who can ever be he may be the most radical philosopher who can ever be the answer is Socrates and and that's what I want to explore tonight how is this possible that he is just so critical and outside the bounds of what had come before and understand that you have to do let's let's go back to look at some of the things we've been talking about so far there's always wonderful mythology beautiful imagery deep thinking but it shares a couple of things in common first for most of human history up to this point and we're talking about one of the dates there 400 BC - ish you know the Golden Age of Athens up until this point here's how human history went big sweaty guy with spear stabs lots of people until they decide let him run the show so he gets you organized sets up some system and you do it he says he doesn't jab you with a spear if you don't like this if you don't like his system here are your options grab spear spear him if you successfully spear him then you set yourself up make everybody else tell you follow what you do you set up new systems of thought new religions new laws until somebody comes along and Spears you and so it goes this is the great cycle of history if you read something like the shot and Maul Federer do see what you get is just a history of one king followed by another king followed by another king of good Kings blessed by the gods Noble wonderful life is good then you have bad Kings who killed the good Kings and take over they have demons on their side than the gods good organized go yet you know that just goes on and on look at Confucius Confucius his problem is that he kept trying to serve all these Nobles who would have nothing to do with him he had this system on the system said look if you're going to be a really great aristocrat a Duke a king and Emperor do this system everybody follows the system life is good for everybody they don't follow the system you jab them with a spear when my favorite moments in history in the Chinese Empire they came up with paper money and how do you get people to take paper money when they've always dealt in hard currency before the answer you write on it if you don't take this money we will kill you it's it's what it said it had a death threat on it right it was take the money or die that was this is official currency right I just think that encapsulates the whole system and this is but this was true if we look at look at the Iliad loved the Iliad Greek world now it's switching you know go wherever you want the Iliad wonderful story but it's a bunch of big guys jabbing each other with Spears for hundreds of pages why well someone stole someone's wife and that pissed people off and so we got together and then they fought against each other sometimes they fought against the Trojans sometimes the Trojan I mean it was just a big mess of hairy guys putting spears into each other and whoever speared the most the fastest and the bestest well he was the king that's the nature of being the king now he had a few people who were had some wisdom like Nestor was famously wise but he's also famously old so it but if you're young clearly the thing you do is you get strong you get some friends and you take what you want and then you keep it this is the this is the process and this does not change and in a world where you have 50 or more this all over the world by the way not just the ancient Greek world or the ancient Mediterranean or Persian world but all over the world if you look at the ancient world huge swath of the population were slaves 50 60 70 % of the population just straight slaves so you don't count anyway and then of the remaining say 25 percent who aren't either slaves or the quillon of slaves peasants of some sort indentured servants half of those will be women which is to say sub slaves right I mean there's just no status whatsoever so now you have about twelve percent of the population which is to say male non slaves of those male non slaves then did you sort that down pretty quickly and you get a couple of people two three percent if you're in an Oleg Archy maybe a little more if you're an aristocracy almost nobody if you're in a tyranny and that's what the ancient world argued about you would be an Oleg Archy an aristocracy or a tyranny one five or twenty right there's how many rulers you get and how they divvy up power and they kill each other and we killed and it just goes on and on and on you believed what they told you to believe and you did what they told you to do because if you did not submit you died very simple very straightforward the only alternative to not submitting was rebelling and rebelling but simply will kill them before they kill us and so this happened all the time civil wars external Wars coup d'etat family dynastic wars famously if you took the throne the first thing you did is kill all your brothers because they're a threat to you they could take that I mean it's think what a vicious vicious world this is and then one day you get Socrates and you could understand Socrates in two simple phrases never submit never have faith never do it under any circumstances never submit never have faith he went to his death literally voluntarily because he would not submit and he would not announce that he had faith in anything and so they had to kill him in a democracy because that you cannot have and so when you read the Socratic dialogues of Plato and we'll talk about the fact that he didn't write anything himself they're crazy they have all of this deep philosophical introspection he talks about ontology epistemology and ethics mostly ethics crucially ethics but it's all geared towards this war crucial philosophical outlook influenced everything that he did and said and everything that was written about him but all the people who survived him it is his key influence and as far as I can tell he's the first significant historical figure who made his stand on that ground and then survives I mean other people may have done it and just gotten crushed and we never heard from them but somehow Socrates was such a phenomenal individual that his legacy despite the fact that he never wrote anything down survived that's what we have to understand about him so he was he was unique the legacy of Socrates by the way is it's called the Socratic problem because he never wrote anything down we have to sort from what people did write about him sort of try and come up with what the truth is but what everybody who wrote about him Aristophanes Xena fawn and Plato their writings survived they were all contemporaries with Socrates they knew him Aristophanes the same generation Plato and Xenophon the next generation but they all knew whom worked with him Aristophanes was probably a friend of Socrates friend - frenemy maybe was that one stupendously ugly now this matters because in Greek society the rule was beautiful goodness beautiful nobility you wanted to be beautiful and Noble and good this was your goal this was the goal of life and he had this pug nose bulging eyes they said he could look around corners without you know I had all these things that they make always were making fun of him and and he made fun of himself by the way and one of the one of the dialogues of Xena fond Xena fond symposium by the way which is different from Plato's symposium he has a bet with one of the guys who was just famously beautiful to see which one of them is the most beautiful and the prizes they'll let all the serving boys and girls vote in a secret ballot and whoever wins deserving boys and girls will kiss that person so Socrates gives a speech the other guy gives a speech and of course it's unanimous for the other guy which everybody knew was going to until there's much laughter and uh priority and they all kissed the handsome guy nobody kisses Socrates right so it's a big joke he played on himself than he does better later but you know so he knew he was ugly everybody says he was ugly and in a society that was premise on physical beauty as a significant portion of your importance this was this was a challenge in theory he didn't wash very often not a big bay there didn't wear shoes apparently had a very funny walk and so an outlandish figure also apparently completely impervious to cold or heat notably brave on the battlefield you guys have to remember that he was a war hero everybody knew he wasn't war who he had fought not just fought but he had fought with distinction so all of the generals and the people who mattered knew had seen him I mean these are when battles are pretty comprehensible and they said you know that Socrates fact he was so sort of long-suffering and indifferent to his surroundings and the cold and the heat and the danger that the other soldiers were kind of afraid own soldiers were kind of scared of him also be a tease that later an important general then a young member of the Calvary says Socrates saved his life in a retreat everybody else ran away but Socrates say he's defended him made sure he got out alive you know so he was this powerful weird but then finally gripping everybody agrees on this whether you liked him or loathed him whether you thought he was hilarious or brilliant you couldn't do without him you know he was just this amazingly charismatic engaging figure and he would go around in Athens generally in the marketplace and question everybody slaves women men merchants and this is a time of merchants her looked very much down upon Aristotle has nothing good to say about merchants you know he thinks they're just sort of parasites but there is Socrates talking to them you what he just wants to talk to everybody question everybody ask everybody always questioning always asking so you have this weird strange figure wandering around Athens dirty ugly no shoes and yet all the cream of the crop of Athenian society is influenced by them they might hate him they might love him but they know he's there and they had to try and come to grips with him and that's what the record is perfectly clear on after that it gets a little murkier but doesn't get that much mercury and and one of the things he did and this is important so if you flip over your sheet there on three passages the short ones I'm going to read those um the first one is from the Lysias and Socrates says if neither those who love or are loved either the like nor the unlike nor the good nor those who belong to us nor any of the others of all suppositions not one of them is the object of friendship I no longer know what to say this is the conclusion of the licious which is a debate and theory about friendship what is friendship this is the conclusion of it I don't know what to say then to go to look at the Laxus this is on courage and this is Socrates famously courageous talking to a general another guy both two generals actually famously courageous if not uh I'm sorry uh and that is in contradiction with our present views mis'ess that appears to be a case socrates then this yes we have not discovered which courage is nice yes it seems not into dialogue kept a whole Socratic dialogue what's friendship don't know next one what's courage don't know next one this is from Charmides this is on so frozen now this is a a Greek ethical principle that we no longer have we have no equivalent word for it and it meant a combination of self-knowledge self-control correct action and sort of temperance all rolled together well we have nothing like it and so it's hard to know to translate it but it was this the Greek ethic it was like one of the three or four most important ideas to them Socrates you see the incredi incredible I was quite right in deprecating myself but now I have been utterly defeated and it failed to discover what that is to which the lawgiver gave the name of temperance or wisdom end of Charmides there's three crucial Socratic dialogues on three of the most important ethos in Greek culture friendship courage and so frosty temperance wisdom self-knowledge they all have the same conclusion damned if I know now this is a very strange approach to knowledge he does this over and over what what could it be this no how about that now what about this no argue argue debate debate debate and sometimes these are very tedious debates by the way because he does some of the most you know ridiculous hair splittings of definitions and you're like who's falling for that you can think of like five arguments in a minute to counter that the other people go well I can't think of any outcome okay so fine yeah I think it's got a roll with it at times but the fundamental principle here is here's our three ethos and we can't really come up with a good definition of what they are what does that mean what does that tell us about theoretically the most important idea is in our culture um and again this is consistent in his teaching we're so used to people giving us answers that it it's odd when you encounter somebody who only wants to give you questions now if you believe that students or people are like pitchers you have knowledge and you pour it into them and then they're filled with knowledge then you do not do this this is the wrong way to do this ah if you believe that knowledge cannot be translated that way cannot be poured from one person to another it can only be discovered by the individual this is what you do you don't provide knowledge you take away wrong thought well this can't be it this can't be it this can't be it well what is it I don't know go knock yourselves out this is what he says over and over and over I don't know why don't you go think about that it's perfectly clear by the sometimes particularly malicious which is it's sort of a performance of this he's just sort of floridly performing his ignorance to show that another character is ignorant and it's a bit these are all very dramatic by these they're all little plays the central Socratic dialogues but he's really trying to drive a point home where does knowledge come from and it be free for Socrates there is no important really important piece of knowledge that you can find outside of yourself it has to come from you somebody can't tell it to you you have to experience it discover it for yourself make it happen for yourself if you don't then you don't really have it you don't grasp it you don't conceptualize it now the problem here is is it means that there is no strict rule how do you find out the truth Socrates suggests some ways but he doesn't know what is the truth you're supposed to find Socrates knows what he would like you to find but for instance in these three dialogues he does not mention it he says no first thing to do is strip away wrong conceptions understand that you're confused and then go search I can't search for you it's sort of the it's people who hire people to ghostwrite books for them right is it it's just always the strangest concept and then they say well I wrote a book and it's like well I'm not sure that's the same now Socrates is pretty sure he's got some wisdom but he's equally sure that to have wisdom you have to go get it yourself now this is not that crazy sounding to us because we had the Enlightenment and a lot of other cultural developments in several thousand years since Socrates in the ancient world this was crazy talk well they put him to death we know the truth we know what's right we tell it to students we tell it to people all the time they fill in bubbles on worksheets that correspond to the truth we grade them appropriately if they fill in the wrong bubbles we grade them down we know what's right and we know how to pass that knowledge on or perhaps not Socrates would say that no we don't Socrates would say anything you pass on that way is simply indoctrination and that indoctrination simply produces slaves and the whole point of what he's trying to do is for you to not be a slave do not be a servant and to not be a slave and to not be a servant you have to discover your own truth which requires you to have no faith he's very clear on this and that goes further though okay so he says are I used to paying with these people well how are we supposed to find out our truths if you're not going to tell us Socrates and directly and indirectly he says look one reason that's good but it's insufficient reason is end you will never find wisdom just with reason you need reason and you need divine inspiration that is where you get true knowledge from now again that sounds sort of okay a little reason we know what that is maybe a little divine inspiration okay maybe I know what that is but here's the trick who gets to talk to the gods how many Jesuses are there one why no more Jesus's God can't make more babies no God could trip vent viagra or something if he needed to right I mean now it is it is that has that's the end there was one divinity had it done no more to the point where even the notion of the second coming is Jesus comes back there can be no new Jesus's how many Muhammad's are there one no more Muhammad's you can't have them it's done divine revelation is over you have a Bible you do not get to write a Bible it's done the Word of God is down Socrates says no the divine inspiration needs to come from you it has to be your divine inspiration combined with your reason and your experience of the world that creates wisdom this again this is it just truly radical because if everybody has access to divine inspiration and we'll now we're in trouble if everybody's supposed to use their reason their experience and their divine inspirations to understand and create the wisdom of the world well that's not very good for making slaves it turns out very poor for making slaves actually because it puts the burden on you to discover for yourself and then manifest it in the world and out of all this he derives his theory if you want his key theory here which his knowledge is the best good because he argued that no one knowingly does wrong that's a very dubious claim by the way like I said I always liked the idea of ice cream right you go I should not eat any more ice cream hips so fact though I have never eaten too much ice cream in my life right or we go well maybe just a little more now my knowing brain says I know this is probably not the best and it'll probably make me feel wonky here very shortly if I eat any more ice cream but then the other part of my brain which is my alligator brain says no let's eat some more so knowing doesn't always but for Socrates know if you really knew and you really understood he says you would never do wrong that goodness and the pursuit of goodness through knowledge and wisdom is an indent to itself and that is what makes life worth living but I can't tell you what that knowledge is I can't tell you what that good is you have to discover it for yourself hence going around and constantly badgering people like great generals who are very proud of their courage and getting them to admit they have no idea what courage is so people either enjoy this or they think you're dangerous because you embarrassed them now I looked this up by the way in the last what over like 16 presidents going back to or 16 administration's going back pretty much until you get to Roosevelt the second Roosevelt our presidents averaged about one ish maybe press conference a month on their own probably actually less than that sometimes they do appearances with other people ambassadors visiting dignitaries they almost never do press conferences on their own when they do do them they only allow one question per person they're very short and they often only answer one or two questions CEOs of major corporations never expose themselves to public questioning in fact no leader of virtually any major institution that I can find ever wants to be questioned publicly and carefully this is what lawyers are for they take care of that for you because it can become embarrassing but this is what Socrates did he kept getting nobles or the children of nobles or generals or Democratic leaders or the Friends of the Democratic leaders and he kept embarrassing them he kept getting them to admit that they didn't know what was right they didn't know what was courageous they didn't know what was surprising they didn't know what was beautiful and slowly over time he built up a huge amount of ill-will not surprisingly because he kept making them admit that they were ignorant and the point is not just to make them MIT that they don't know is to try to get them to stop trying to tell everybody else how it is look if you don't know that's fine but then stop telling everybody else if you're a general you want your soldiers to be courageous but you don't know what it is well stop badgering everybody else about being courageous let them figure out what it means to be close for themselves you see how radical this is how unhelpful it is and the point of all this and here's the two long quotes one one medium-length one is from the symposium by the way a brief comment suppose iam is a long hilarious wonderful discussion about arrows and desire and what are the points that Socrates makes in this and the state in other places and other people do as well oh you want to do good that's not enough you have to desire to do good a large part of wisdom large part of inspiration is literally erotic desire you have to want you have to love the truth you have to love knowledge you have to want to become wise if you're going to do this it can't be crammed on you no one can poke you into doing it it has to be that sort of internal eros that drives you towards the beautiful towards the truth towards the wise towards the noble and without that love basically you're just as you're not going to do it it's not going to happen and so it's all this erotic Sand homosexuality and and you know just all mixed together and in trying to work this out but that is a big part of it is the love of knowledge the love of wisdom the love of beauty that leaves you to the love of wisdom so we've pretty much decided we're not going to do that you can listen to a lot of people talk about education and learning and they almost never talk about erotic s-- you just try it out if you don't believe me try to read some education stuff there's there's a I would say a stunning lack of eroticism that would make it at least interesting occasionally but this is actually passe Gnaeus but he's speaking pretty much in agreement with the crowd on the other hand in Ionia and many other countries under oriental for oriental here read tyrannical or barbarian they just mean all the lousy non Greek people who don't know what the hell is going on rule the very same thing is held to be disgraceful indeed the oriental oriental thinks ill not only of love but also of both philosophy and sport on account of the despotism under which he lives for I suppose it doesn't does not suit the rulers of their subjects to indulge in high thinking or in staunch friendships and fellowship which love more than anything else's likely to beget and those who seize power here in Athens learn the same lesson from bitter experience for it was the might of heuristic ons love and harmonious friendship that brought their rain to an end thus wherever the law and accent is wrong to yield to the lover you may be sure that the fall lives of the legislature that is to say it is due to the oppression of the rulers and the civility of their subjects what do you need to do to repress a people to rule them to control them control who they love and how they're allowed to express their love because if I love my friends how I might do something sort of untoward this is the great thing we always say if all your friends jumped off a bridge would you the answer is yes of course you would if you have any loving soul at all absolutely you would and they were perfectly aware that love can mislead us but if you've never done anything daft for the love of your friends and your ABBA knighted small horrible person right there's something great in doing something foolish with those you love and respect your friends right isn't that isn't that part of the great joy of it part of you says no this is wrong but a better part of us I think says yes well whatever better to go wrong in a big hearted way with those that I care about than to be a small right terrible person see is this not true and hence we all have thrown ourselves off of bridges with our friends as it should be but this makes us unruly hence the if all your friends jumped off of a bridge would you it sounds so reasonable that's why reason is not enough you need reason with the arrow of the divine inspiration reason without love is just sterile Socrates Plato Aristotle they all recognize this particularly Socrates it you have to have that element philosophy obviously you're thinking your thoughts if you want to control people you have to control what they think this is more obvious to us and then sport or gymnastics this is in two ways one the the groups that they Greek aristocrats and Freeman exercised together all the time so they were like sporting clubs and so they were sort of political units they didn't they're not they weren't functionally political but it's just because all of these people would gather together and enjoy each other's company that it was a type of union that scared the state and then the other side is a notion of physical health we must control the body the body must be regulated we do not want you to be too healthy or get too much exercise or be too bounded and full of energy because that's disruptive and scary and dangerous so the tyrant must control those things must control your mind must control your body and must control your heart who you love so all these rules and attempts to control who loves who what are the rules for this all it you know distort control Regt how much exercise are we supposed to get you know that elementary school kids get something like two twenty minute exercise breaks today this is an outrage oh they won't sit still well no there are 11 years old the sun is shining outside they should not sit still they should be up with their friends jumping off of bridges right this is what you're supposed to do but now we will discipline their bodies until they learn to sit still or will cram them with drugs so they'll be calm and not be problematic they won't be a threat to our institutions and as crazy as it sounds I'm not making this up you can look this up there's a movement afoot to try and prevent children in in public schools all over the United States Europe UK from having best friends because they say it disrupts its disruptive some kids feel cut out you know they feel isolated other that we should all be Sami friends right and what this makes perfect it is disrupt if it is painful you do feel cut out you do feel hurt when your friends turn on you or when you have no friends or when your best friend turns out to be not your best friend and that's somebody else's best friend groups of girls seem to be particularly good at this sport where they just turn on each other randomly and as I can never tell anyway it's very odd but yeah it can be painful and challenging and difficult and yet so very human to have a best friend or two really close friends as a shield to the rest of the world that buoys you up isolate you makes you powerful makes you stronger because you have some support some people you can count on people who believe in you oh we can't have that it's it's just this continual threat and and this is what Socrates is on about now let's look at this longer quote and I quoted at length just because it's so great and why you should read the Socratic dialogues and this is from the pepitas which is a bit tedious I must say this is sort of the part of the best section of the 15s I mean some of these dialects that they do go on a bit but you're just remember you're kind of panning for gold as it were you do a little panning and then you'll there's a lot of gold in there there really is so Socrates says so they've been chatting for a while and they get completely off track and and the guy he's talking to says wow we're really off tracked socrates yeah sorry about that he says no that's fine we're free men we can let our thoughts go where they will we're not ruled by necessity but by our minds and our desires and then Socrates responds yes yes yes blah blah blah but the lawyer is always in a hurry not important here lawyers being translate these are the people who are in the law courts the sophist they argue but these are the powerful rich important people so this is this is the the most important and powerful people in the in the site the lawyer is always in a hurry there is the water of the CLEP Citra driving him on sort of a water clock think of it that way and not allowing him to expatiate at will there is his adversary standing over him enforcing his rights the indictment which in their phraseology has termed the affidavit is recited at the time and from this he must not deviate he is a servant and is continually disputing about a fellow servant before his master who is seated and has the cause in his hands the trial is never about some indifferent matter but always concerns himself and often the races for his life the consequence has been that he has been become keen and shrewd he has learned how to flatter his master inward and indulge him indeed but his soul is small and unrighteous his condition which has been that of a slave from his youth upwards has deprived him of growth and uprightness and independence dangers and fears which were too much for him his truth and honesty came upon him in early years when the tenderness of youth was unequal to them and he has been driven into crooked ways from the first best practice deception and retaliation and has become stunted and warped and so he has passed out of youth in the manhood having no soundness in him and is now as he thinks a master in wisdom such is the lawyer Theodorus will you have the companion picture of the philosopher who is our Brotherhood or shall we return to the argument the man in the world the educated man the successful the man the man who's been making money arguing courts the statesman the politician the leader stunted unrighteous a slave a servant of another master never speaking for himself never speaking his mind cunning but broken and shriveled and small not taking the time to discover his own greatness to nurture it to train it to grow it but always on the clock to somebody else's time reading from an affidavit that somebody else has written for a master that is not himself this is the antithesis of everything he thinks you should be doing someone who knows the truth don't know the truth someone who's marking time on the clock things to do well where's your freedom if you're a free man and you're not free to inquire in your own soul about what do you think is good and right and true what the hell uses freedom anyway this is what it's for Socrates says he says this over and over this is just a particularly beautiful passage are are we pulling our greatness from within us allowing it to flourish or are we stunting and bending and forcing ourselves in the nooks and crannies as the world is given to us how much do we submit when do we submit and why I think in a potentially imperfect world I will posit that the world is potentially imperfect a certain amount of submission and bending and cricketing of ourselves is probably inevitable but when and where and how much and why I think we almost never ask ourselves this why am i submitting do I have to bend who says where is that written who came up with that did I write that I don't remember writing that I remember coming up with that idea and if I didn't come up with it why do I believe it why would I submit to it whose system is this anyway again it's why I love about educational institutions because they always blame the children for whatever goes wrong and I think that's fascinating because I'm almost certain they didn't invent the system because I bet if you gave the kids a chance just take any random collection of first graders and let them design the system you'll probably be a lot better nothing else would be a lot more fun for the kids but ah no I came up with this system nobody knows it just is we just pass it down this is how it is this is how it has been this is how it will be and if it changes it changes in ways we don't control we don't know and we just accept we submit we relent we give in all right why when how much and if you're not gonna submit what won't you submit for why why won't you submit where do you draw the lines and so it's this double play that he comes back to again and again it's important to know that Socrates says it's not that I know that I'm ignorant Socrates says I know what I don't know and that is the beginning of wisdom is to know those things that I really don't know things like why do I put up with it you've must have asked yourself this at least once about something where you go well why do I put up with this anyway and then the thought just seems to go boof right and it just goes away and we put up with it we don't seem to get it just and then it comes back again later thoughts haven't I had this thought before about why do I put up with this anyway and then goes poof right in this end there's a stream of busyness and important things and phones and whatever interrupts us and that goes away again well Socrates doesn't want it to go away and wants you to say okay why really ask yourself that when do you say no enough is enough and so he sets out this unbelievably difficult model of human behavior by the way this is really brutal knowledge has to come from you your experience your reflections your thought and your divine inspiration your access to the great spirits of the beyond exactly what his religious believes are sketchy it's clear that he believed in divine inspiration so you believe in some sort of divinity but what it was it's not so clear and this would all be so much I think interesting and valuable and informative and insightful material if it didn't come from somebody who just lived this right until he died this important thing to know about Socrates eventually he was put on trial for one corrupting the youth of Athens and to define the gods of Athens and what's interesting about this is he's absolutely guilty on both counts he knew it they knew it but they couldn't pin it on him they couldn't say well you're making him think for themselves Socrates because that sounds bad right and so they bring saket his enemies have built up over the years over the years over there's now a 70 years old he's been around for a long time and finally they bring him to trial and what this is this is 500 jurors and you're supposed to go in of course and defend yourself vigorously I have been wronged you know yes I may be I've made mistakes but understand I'm an old man and times change and to Socrates is having none of this he says look I know you're ignorant this is by the way this is always a good way to start with people who are trying you potentially to death I know you've been misled by other people and I know you think bad things about me but you shouldn't oughta believe that what you've heard about me is wrong and he gives this sort of vague defense of himself but he never flatters in fact he mostly just criticizes the jury criticizes the people who brought them there says they forgot their past they don't understand the president present don't understand the nature of justice basically that but that's ok because he understands they're ignorant people so it's not that shocking you know and it's a really not a very good defense at all and so they vote whether or not to put him to death and it's close and it's close enough that it's pretty clear that if he had gone in and just really sort of gnashed his teeth and wept and apologized and you know said you know my friends will vouch for me that I'm a good guy and you know I've been misunderstood misquoted in the press and you know oh please don't please don't please be kind to me probably would have gone off but no they vote that he's guilty so round two of this trial is to say okay now what's the punishment and he says right so you found me guilty fair enough here's the deal so I've been working for Athens to educate you guys for most of my life so all my punishment for the work I've done should be you can build a temple to me and pay me for the rest of my life a pension and maybe a statue would be nice too this was not really what they had in mind and then some of his friends rush over to him and say how about a fine and he says okay okay okay my friends here have said they'll vall pay this nominal fine they would have paid much more by the we had perfectly wealthy friends who would have paid a fabulous amount of money to keep him from suffering any sort of punishment well he pisses him off so much that the punishment they vote is death and more people voted to put him to death and voted that he was guilty [Music] that is impressive yes not an apologist our Socrates because what he wanted to say is look no if I thought what I was doing was wrong I would be the first person to stand up here in front of all of you and say I was doing wrong but I do not think that I think what I was doing was correct that I was helping I have been your benefactor and as your benefactor you should appreciate me and not put me on trial so you all can basically kiss my ass is what he said and this offended them and so they said we're gonna put you to death and he said great that's fine perfectly okay with that but understand you are hurting yourselves more than you're hurting me I'm totally fine because I'm doing what's right and to do the good is the purpose that I live for and that you should live for and those of you he says who voted not to put me to death don't feel bad it's not your fault but take this as a learning experience he uses his own death as like an educational experience for them today reflect and ponder on this but you think you're gonna put me to death and that's gonna be the end of it he says oh no no no no you're wrong this is just the beginning and in that he was right because what he does is he pries open by his example he says not only can I do this you can all do this even if it means putting to death it's being put to death it's still the best thing to do and so they put him in prison quote unquote it's a very loose kind of jail all his friends and his wives and everybody are visiting him everybody you know is that the guards clearly fall in love with them they think he's wonderful and there's this delay they can't put him to death right away because there's sort of a sacred mission going on and so there's rules about that and so he's over there on the edge of Athens and all you have to do by the way is leave the confines of Athens what's he's outside the city limits they have their writ does not carry and so all he has to do is like get up and walk you know 50 yards and he's free and he's got all the wealthy Nobles who have land outside of town or like come live with me you're famous I'm rich we will take care of it he's like no no I'm good totally happy they want to put me to death that's fine that's the right they can do that it's not gonna do them any good and it's not gonna do me any harm and they can't harm me I'm outside of their reach because I'm doing what I think is right and as long as I do what I think is right and I've reflected on it and I've considered it and I've pondered it and I've talked to my friends about it and he says if you can convince me that what I'm doing is wrong then all of you know go ahead but nobody seems to be able to argue that so I'm gonna continue on my way I'm not harming anybody and they're not harming me so there you go and he opens up this new space in the world did not exist before he does not try to crush or hurt or control or damage anybody and he does not allow anybody else to do that to him he neither wants to conquer nor be conquer this is like I said you could read find me another example I'd appreciate it email it to me I cannot find one before him I don't want to repress anybody I don't want to pick up a big spear and stab somebody and sit on the throne and go haha you must do what I said and if you put a throne and say how he must do everybody said to Socrates II just say no I'm not going to and so it's this it's new in the world he's not big he's not beautiful he's not rich but he becomes significant becomes important just don't have faith in me in fact he says have no faith have faith in yourself believe in you find your truth with your reason and your divine inspiration and like I said it go go through the history the world now that closes down almost immediately not too long after this the you know Alexander the Great and the Macedonians come and stomp Athens out of existence take their democracy and there are freeways and sort of eliminate them and slave not slave them but repress them rule them aristocracy is back all this democracy tough has gone away Alexander is in charge he's the new ruler everybody does what he says he conquers perjuries does all that and then that breaks up and then we get Roman it right all this stuff ah that this model survives and you see it all over the place you know whatever 2,000 years later Voltaire comes along and tries to stay says I'm not an aristocrat I'm great I'm famous but I'm not wealthy yet he could become wealthy later I don't want to conquer anybody but I do want to be Voltaire Beethoven has exactly the same struggle is he a servant is he supposed to tug his forelock and bow and scrape to these aircrafts because they're in charge and that's what we've always done Beethoven says no absolutely not I am Beethoven I have the divine spark Beethoven is my favorite example of this because in one of his letters he says God and I are both great creators that's a very Socratic moment Beethoven was deeply religious and he thought God was pretty good at stuff probably not as good as creating music as Beethoven was but is this very personal divine director where's my inspiration comes from God and I do good stuff with it better they you know that this very direct idea I bow to nobody I'm Beethoven I'm Voltaire I'm me I don't want to crush people I don't make myself great by crushing people the history of that's perfectly clear and I don't make myself great by being a slave who has a lot of money and serves those who are great so in the beautiful example of this is is if you look at the Christian Church Christian Church takes over why because it aligns itself with the Roman Empire because it becomes an imperial religion so once it takes power what does it do begin to torturing and killing the heretics first day new curtains in the office cross over there let's kill us among people we don't like wrong kinds of Christians not the pagans who cares about that no we want to kill the heretics so then there's just ongoing room multi thousand year civil religious war pick kicks off because my faith is right and your faith is wrong and I'm gonna torture you until you see the love of God right and this is the you know this is just this is the process this unbroken stream of attempting to bend people until they meal and this produces a couple of kinds of people zealots always love the zealot who gets burnt to death because they say under no circumstances say you're a Muslim or will cut your head off I'll never say that so they cut their head off most people go I'm a Muslim I'm a Christian how about Karma's are asking wherever you want me to say so you don't cut my head off I'm totally cool with it but notice what a weird sort of corruption this is false piety artificial scraping Oh we'll just play along it was Larry's when I first taught and in California I had to sign her or this is some sort of a stijl thing I don't know if they still have it but I had to sign this form that said I was not a spy of a foreign power I could not teach at the University if I were a spy of the foreign power I thought what a bizarre form has anybody gone ah damn I can't teach this because it would be wrong as a spy of a foreign power to fill out a form and that they would hold that against me in court when they found the thermonuclear bomb in my car I don't know what this would mean but notice how bizarre and corrupting this is it either forces perfectly random and innocent people to fill out absurd forms which is a very tiny form of bowing and submitting but yet there it is death by a thousand cuts or you're a spy and you're already corrupted you're playing a double game anyway you're living a lie the East Germans perfected this by the way perhaps the greatest most oppressive society ever estimates are that we're up to 30% of the German population was actively involved as spies if they suspected you were the kind of person who might turn into somebody who'd be an enemy of the state they would arrange for you to marry a spy so like you're 20 years old you're a woman at school you stay a little philosophy you get some ideas the state gets worried about you your friends turn you in because their friends and quotes so they get a spy employed by the East German secret service handsome man you like him attractive you get married you have some kids and they turned you in and you go to jail twenty-five thirty years later happened right that little deaths little cuts little spies just turning everybody against everybody right submit have faith believe in big ways and in small ways but then again what if you don't want to submit and what if you don't want to dominate anybody else this this is this is the thing there's a great passage in Melville where somebody kiks kiks him there call me Ishmael Ishmael the mean the narrator's voice and he says oh I don't mind cuz I've been kicked by that guy he was kicked by the first mate the first mate was kicked by the captain the captain was kicked by his wife his wife was kicked in the womb by their son it's a great circle of kicking it's a beautiful passage cuz that's the idea the people above us pick us we kick the people below us we pass it along it goes in a big circle Socrates says no I don't know how to kick anybody I'm not going to tell you the truth I'm not going to force the truth on you I want to try and make you it's impossible encourage you to think for yourself on your own in your own way with your own divinity your own divine inspiration it's a bizarro concept completely antithetical to the sort of hierarchical organized world and yet it's part of our inheritance and it just crops up over and over again we don't call be a free thinker be a rebel by the way we all have plans for this right if you're middle-aged man you want to be a rebel you go get a motorcycle and the leather jacket right because we have a plan for rebellion you wouldn't want to rebel in a way that's not already planned because that would be weird and you'd have to figure it out for yourself and we're not going to do that I mean it's just it's bizarre to say that that is true but it's this is true right I mean I'm not making that up it's it's shocking but there it is and and so we have this double inheritance we have the entire history of the raise hierarchical repressive above you repress you you repress those below you and then we have the occasional character like Socrates who tries to open up this space where you can be great without having a spear and jabbing somebody or having a bunch of people bowing at your feet this is why you can have something like a great painter or a great musician great writer beautiful gardener magnificent architecture incredible dancer see those people aren't trying to crush anybody and they don't want to be crushed so what space is there for them this is the space it's a new space this is the first time we see it and Socrates brings it to us but it is it is vexing and challenging and difficult because again it runs so counter it's perfectly clear why they put him to death because this is a threat it's dangerous and they felt him to be such because he wasn't controllable obviously they couldn't win against him um and so if you go through and read Socrates keep this in mind because if you look at something again like the Phaedrus or the symposium you're perhaps the most famous dialogue in philosophical history it's bizarre because they're talking about love and gods and eros and there's like six different sets of gods I mean it's not one set of gods they got lots of different gods Socrates it was a commonly accused of making up all kinds of gods which he did you always always blame Diadema who was a sort of a sorceress or a female religious figure that he probably invented but I should mention Socrates was for his time pretty damn Pro women and he said lots of nice things about women why do women to be educated it's probably why Plato let women into the Academy by the way the Academy when Plato ran it allowed women to attend after Plato not so much but that was an important bit so that was one of his inheritances from Socrates and so when you read this you'll get it I mean it's easy to get lost and not to know but just keep going keep because you'll get these passages that are perfectly clear where he says what are we seeking what do we want what would you be striving for and you'll have love and beauty and friendship and then they'll it'll all be a big nothing but that's the idea they're not there to tell you which of these things is right they're there to argue about which is right and for you to go all you know Pass Aeneas crook you know calculus he makes a good critic law it's a nice argument kritis right there I like Posse Gnaeus that's a good point you're making Agathon well he found by the way was a tragic poet and you're like wow so he's making good points also notably handsome you know so that's that's you know they're all these different love triangles and stuff going on but it's all within the circle of hey let's really and I mean really spend some time pondering and looking for those things that resonate with us that strike our inner chord to draw from us our truth and then when we think we have a little bit of that go try it out on somebody does this make sense am i is this sensible does that seem right can you think of an example kimdax now to believe your own lies it's a make your own truth and then see what people say about it and see if it seems reasonable and then go on until you come to a better one yeah so this is what you wanted to take if you can take anything to Socrates and reading the Platonic dialogues of Socrates it is this weird and new and completely radical concept which is to say never submit and never have faith thank you Socrates

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 80,401

Rating: 4.7965517 out of 5

Keywords: Wes Cecil, Socrates, Humane Arts, Philosophy, Lecture

Id: c6OtjYz3WY8

Length: 62min 5sec (3725 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018