Natalie M Chavez
April 8th 2015
Intro to Philosophy
Extra Credit with Exam 1
S00826610
Video: Philosophy A Guide To Happiness – Socrates on Self-Confidence
With Alain De Button.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVA8jX9KQcE
Alain De Button says that we might well wonder whether the ancient Greek civilization still has
anything to say to us today. He says that just as we get an odd glimpse of the old buildings we can
catch a hint of the ideas ancient Greeks have given us. Almost 2500 years ago the philosopher,
Socrates, was born in Athens, says De Button. “Socrates has come symbolize one of philosophies
inspiring gifts to the rest of us – the idea that thinking more logically about our lives might help
us to be more certain about ourselves; more independent; less conformist; less hamstrung about
what people think.” Socrates had a dream that Philosophy might set us free. De Button says he,
De Button, went to Athens to find out how a man, who famously died for his beliefs might give us
the confidence to stand up for our own beliefs. De Button says that of all philosophers Socrates is
perhaps the greatest. Socrates says that we should find confidence in our own beliefs and not be
too swayed by the opinions of others, per De Button.
De Button compares us (humans), to sheep. We may not have wool on our backs or emit baaing
sounds, but we have often have an urge of following our fellow creatures passively; And have a
horror of breaking away from the group. De Button asks, why do we follow sheepishly behind
other people? Particularly, important, other people? He says it’s largely because we imagine they
must know what they are talking about and so we trot along behind them like sheep.
De Button speaks with Andrew Miller, who was a loyal employee of the company British Biotech
in Oxford, where he was Director of Clinical Research. Andrew had worked for the company since
1998. He thought that he might be right and the 11 members of the board were wrong, in regard to
his employers being overly optimistic toward the drug they were selling, and that the shareholders
were not getting an accurate picture. De Button says that Miller was forced to confront an
agonizing question. “Could it be possible that he was right while all 11 members of the Biotech
Board were against him?” Miller says it was a very frustrating and preoccupying situation and that
his mind was starting to play tricks on him and he started doubting his sanity to a certain extent.
Andrew says that previous experience in democracy – majority rules – tends to have a certain
amount of ‘right’ on its side. Miller says that he would sit in his office clutching his temples and
thinking, have I got this wrong? Am I misinterpreting these things?” He also says that science and
technology can be thought of as complicated and confusing, but for him it is his only work and he
understands it well. He says why do I think this and these 11 guys on the board think differently?
De Button asks about the pressure to conform in a company like British Biotech. Miller says that
in all companies there a pressures to conform to; there are different cultures in all companies;
people we like and are working with; all we want to do is appease them; they are our bosses, and
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we are wanting to help them, we are wanting to work with them. We want to be friends with them
says Miller.
De Button says that the first reason it is hard to feel confident in Millers situation is that we tend
to accept that people in authority must be right. “The European community has said this beef is
utterly safe”. This is the assumption that Socrates wanted us to challenge. By urging us to think
logically about the nonsense they offer and come up with, rather than being struck dumb, by their
aura of importance and air of suave certainty.
The narrator points out that in deciding when to follow prominent people, and when to disagree
with them Socrates had one huge advantage over us, because he could always talk to them in
person. Athens in his day had a population of just 150,000 and all the citizens when to Agra (the
market) and main meeting place of Athens. If we would have visited in 5th Century B.C., we would
have been likely to see amongst the bustle of the city, a rather curious, ugly figure; for most of his
adult life, Socrates got up at dawn and came to spend the day amongst the shopkeepers and
merchants who had their stores there. It was not only local people that went to the market, says De
Button; it was also the most important people in Athenian society; so that they could meet at any
point in the day. There were great military generals, opinion formers, great statesmen important
rhetoricians, the aristocrats; they could all be found at the market, says De Button. What Socrates
did, rather than just idly chatting to people; he would go up to important people and ask them great
questions on life; he basically asked them to explain why they were living the kind of life they
were leading. From these conversations, Socrates found that there were surprising inadequacies in
their understanding; in the way of life they were leading. And that wealthy people could not really
explain why they had money and others did not. Military Generals could not explain why they
fought battles in a certain way. De Button says that we can take away a fascinating lesson, which
is if you have the luck or at least the courage to go up to a bunch of important people and question
the way that they are leading their lives, we might be able to find surprising inadequacies of which
their very confident demeanor give absolutely no indication.
The narrator says, that the second reason we may hesitate to challenge other people is that we all
know in our calmer moments, how easy it is to make trouble for the ‘wrong’ reasons; because we
are felling pig-headed or blunt-minded. Socrates was a non-conformist and he made trouble for
Athenians, but he was not motivated by an arrogant wish that everyone should do things his way.
Nor by the kind of willful eccentricity we might think of when we hear that he went around
barefoot and never washed his cloak. What makes his non-conformity valuable is that it was
motivated by the desire to find the truth and challenge lazy assumptions, rather than the wish to
make trouble.
De Button continues; this is what Socrates would do. He walked down the main streets in the
marketplace of Athens and would go up to people and ask them large questions about the meaning
of life, which is in a way very fascinating thing to do and also a very irritating thing to do if you
asked people to expend their beliefs tend to react with aggression. De Button then tries Socrates
experience in the marketplace to see what type of reaction he will get from people. “Excuse me?
He says to a young woman in the marketplace. “What do you think Justice is? She replies “that’s
a little hard to say”…she pauses and thinks for a moment. “I guess just making sure that everyone
gets what is right and fair”. He continues to another random stranger…”Excuse me, can I just ask
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you a question? What do you think Justice is?” The woman did not speak English, so he asked his
question in French. The narrator continues…Going up to people and asking them to explain their
beliefs is pretty scary if you are at all shy like me. People look at you strangely, they imagine that
if you asked them to explain why their living in a certain way, that you know the answer and are
in some way claiming a position of superiority over them. Says De Button: the French who are
supposed to be the most philosophical nation are scoring very low on our Socratic test here.
Socrates had no such inhibitions, says the narrator; he preferred to be thought a bit over intense
and weird, than allow his fellow citizens to continue to mottle along ‘un-thinkingly’. He wanted
all of us to scrutinize what we believed. Even on our way to the shops. De Button again
approaching a stranger on the street: “Excuse me sir. What do you think a good life is?”. “No”
replied the stranger. He did not want to answer De Button’s question. The narrator continues. As
you can probably imagine, Socrates annoyed a lot of Athenians in this way. But at the heart of his
approach is an extremely egalitarian idea. That everyone has the duty to reflect on their life and
that we are all surprisingly capable of doing so. De Button to another stranger. “What do you need
in order to be happy?” The stranger replies, “We need to have fun, we need to have people that
love and care about you and people to love and care for”.
We are not often expected to explain why we live the way we do. Socrates asked us to overcome
our laziness to work out what we really think and stand by it once we have. De Button to another
stranger: “What do you think is self-control?” Stranger replies, “Being able to say what you mean
at exactly the right time, and get your message across”.
Philosophy, in Socrates hands, is an invitation open to us all, to intelligent non-conformity.
Socrates does not just give us the confidence to challenge prevailing ideologies, beliefs, traditions.
He also offers us a way to develop beliefs of our own; which can help us to strike out from the
crowd. And the way to do so is to put them through a rigorous test which he devised. If our opinions
can survive Socrates’ test then they will truly be worth standing up for.
The reason there are a lot of isocracies ideas out there in the world, is that many people imagine
that you can come up with a good idea without thinking too hard about it, says De Button. Socrates
thought this was crazy and to bring out the insanity of his position, compared thinking to potting.
And no one would imagine that you could make a good pot without at least following some pretty
rigorous steps. And yet many people imagine that we can come up with a good ethical idea, such
as an idea to live your life, without having to think too hard about it. Socrates went further in his
analogy. He actually came up with a distinct method, a Socratic method of thought. He identified
five distinct steps which anyone who wants to come up with a good thought would have to follow,
in order to do so. And these thoughts can roughly be summarized as follows. First, look around
you for statements that many people would describe as plain common sense. For example, that the
best jobs are those which are most highly paid. Or that happiness comes from being married.
Second, try and find an exception to this. Could you ever be married and yet unhappy? Or could
you ever be in a very well-paid job, but yet miserable? Third, if the exception to this statement is
found, it must mean that your statement is false or at least imprecise. And in this case we find that
there is an imprecision. Fourth, put at nuance the initial statement to take the exception into
account. So in our example, realize that it is possible to be quit unhappy in a highly paid job if it
is completely creatively unfulfilling or to be quit miserable in a marriage if you have married the
wrong person. Lastly, you continue this process for as long as possible or you keep trying to find
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exceptions to your common sense statement. And Socrates said the truth, in so far as anyone is
ever able to reach the truth, lies in the statement which it seems impossible to disprove.
If we test our opinions in this way, Socrates believed we will be able to construct a trustworthy
and water tight thoughts, in just the same way a skilled potter makes trustworthy and watertight
pots. The point of Socrates, method is that it makes us far less passive; less inclined to follow the
other sheep. If other people disagree we do not just have to say limply or petulantly, “well I think
I am right, but I cannot tell you why”. We will be able to demonstrate logically why we believe
things and if others ignore the logic then our position will not have to unnerve us so badly.
Most of us imagine that we cannot be philosophers because we have not studied philosophy, says
De Button. We have not read enough. We have not gone to school long enough. We have not done
a university degree and I think what I find extremely inspiring in Socrates, is that everyone can
think. And not just everyone can think, but everyone has a responsibility to think. As he famously
put it, “The Unexamined Life is not Worth Living”. Socrates made the idea of the unexamined life
seem far from forbidding.
Socrates suggests that we have an interesting philosophical conversation anywhere. Even on a
street corner. Philosophy needn’t just happen behind the walls of a university or in a school room.
Socrates used to talk to an extraordinary range of people and liked to demonstrate to them that they
were all able to arrive at well throughout opinions. It is an inspiring idea; however in our modern
and democratic society where focus groups and opinion pollsters rule. Socrates would have
thought that we tend to listen to opinions whether they are well thought-out or not.
Although Socrates believed that we are all, in theory, capable of living and examined life he knew
that in practice most of us do not; and this meant that he could not accept that every opinion was
really worth listening to any more than every pot was equally capable of holding water. Strange as
it may sound to modern ears; and even though he lived in a very cradle of democracy Socrates had
the gravest reservations about democracy because he refused to accept that just because the
majority supported an opinion that made it right. And he would have thought it atrocious that
people in positions of power might be guided by focus groups.
De Button says that the most important decisions in Athens were taken according to the will of the
majority. Once a month the whole citizen body would be asked to gather at the foot of the acropolis
and talk about all the issues facing Athens. And we find exactly the same approach going on today
in modern government and business. Polling organizations gather groups of people and ask them
what they think and then important decisions are taken according the will of the majority. I think
Socrates would have disagreed violently with the focus group (that was being carried on in the
background) while De Button was talking. He would have objected not only to the décor, says De
Button, but also to the whole approach that the will of the majority should decide an issue. In
Socrates’ eyes, what matters is whether an argument is logical and reasonable; that is the way we
should make decisions. Not according to the will of the majority.
The narrator continues. “Believing that the majority can be wrong and being sure when you are
right still does not make it easy to hold the minority opinion. Particularly when your livelihood is
at stake. So what gave Andrew Miller the confidence to stand up against his employers? Even
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though it was to lead him into a bitter battle with the media and the law courts? Miller says, “You
can only see the world with your own eyes. You can try to understand what other people are
thinking. But sometimes you can’t. There are definitely times when someone has some strong
views that are quite different from yours. That you respect the basis for them (the views); but that’s
different from being wrong. I think we can accommodate a lot of different views but from my
point of view, if I do see things that are wrong, I do find it very frustrating.” De Button asks Miller,
“Socrates died for his beliefs. How far were you prepared to go for yours?” Miller answers, “Well!
I think there’s a big difference, with (Socrates) being and individual and having a family. And
once I was put into the media wall and into litigation, I was aware that I was at war. But I had my
children at my feet and my wife at my shoulder. And I really had no choice. And I started to realize
that the only way out was forwards. We had to sort of fight our way out. Together, litigation, it
could have destroyed me. It was never going to kill me, but it would have destroyed me. And it
wasn’t a question of being prepared to go that far just how far I’d finished caring. But
fundamentally we forgot sort of my own self-worth and I did think when I looked in the mirror in
the morning when I shaved, I think I’ve actually called into my conscience. I’m in a mercy
situation.”
De Button continues. “Andrew feels that he has been vindicated by the out of court settlement he
received from his employers. Socrates was not so fortunate. The one fact that people tend to
remember about Socrates is that he faced a trail and that he was condemned to death. This has
remained a very potent image, so that if you walk around the streets of Athens today, you can still
see the scene represented all over the place. And that’s because it has become an immensely
powerful symbol of someone standing up courageously and intelligently, against the will of the
majority. “
The charge against Socrates, was of having corrupted the youth of Athens and failing to respect
the gods the city worshipped. The potential penalty was death.
One March morning Socrates was asked to show up at the courthouse in Athens and Socrates was
facing a jury of probably 500 Athenian citizens. And what we do know is that the atmosphere
inside the courtroom was readily hostile towards Socrates from the very beginning. I was
suspicious of this man; many of them had been questioned by him before and they were not on his
side. So Socrates was really facing the possibility that he would die and yet he didn’t lose his nerve.
And Socrates said, “If I was allowed to have more time to make my case to you dear Athenians,
I’m sure I can convince you of the justice of my cause, but I can’t.” And he accepted this very
fatalistically. When the final vote came to be taken, the majority of the jury decided that he was
guilty and that he should be sent to death.
Socrates was lead off from the courtroom to the prison just a few yards away. His wife Xanthippe
came to visit him, but she broke down so hysterically, that she had to be led away. Many of his
friends also in tears. Even the prison warder, who had seen many go to their deaths, offered his
apologies. And said that of all the people that had ever come through the jail, Socrates was the
noblest, the most generous and the wisest. And a few minutes later, the executioner came through
the door with a cup of hemlock. Socrates was given the cup and asked to drink.
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De Button continues: And after a few moments his legs began to feel heavy. Slowly the paralysis
caused by the cline, the paralyzing agent in hemlock, started working through his body, and within
a few minutes his whole body was paralyzed. And his friend Fido, reached forward and shut his
eyes.
Narrator continues: In Athens today, there is little of the glory that was ancient Greece and that
has inspired the world ever since. And yet the ideas of Socrates live on. He was once asked where
he came from. And he replied, “Not from Athens, but from the world”. And he remains in many
ways, the global philosopher. Born in Athens, but speaking his message to the whole of humanity.
Of course, very few of us will be called upon to die for our beliefs. But Socrates makes us see that
we all have the capacity and indeed the duty to stop following opinions passively and instead to
develop beliefs we can truly have confidence in. Though we are reluctant to see it, all of us can
make the transition from being a sheep to being a thinking person. “That is, a philosopher.”
-------------I loved the way the little boy that was walking with his Father looked back at De Button as if there
were something wrong with De Button.
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