Trial and Death of Socrates
What is its historical significance?
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Lecture outline
• From Religion to Philosophy
• Kinds of love: (Plato’s Symposium)
– 1) Plato’s universal love
– 2) Aristophanes’ Soulmate love
– 3) Alcibiades’ egotistical love
• Allegory of the Cave: wealth and virtue
• Historical Justification of Socrates
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From Religion to Philosophy
• Socrates: Is something good because the gods
command it,
– E.g., is it wrong to kill innocent people only
because the gods say so?
• or do the gods command it because it is good
in itself? (Plato’s, Euthyphro)
– The gods say so because it really is wrong,
independently of what anyone says
– We too should think like the gods: as “lovers of
wisdom” or philosophers
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Socrates’ “crime”
• Socrates/Plato replace focus on religious
authority with philosophy:
– people can think for themselves about what is
good
– as the gods themselves must also do
• There is something higher than the gods:
– Truth, the Good, Beauty,
– and their unity: their Oneness
• Is this “impiety” to the gods? Atheism?
• Alleged crime of Socrates: “he denies the gods
and corrupts the youth”
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Turn to philosophy
• Philosophy: know (think for) yourself
• Reflects freedom of iron-age people
– Homer’s religion of anthropomorphic polytheism
reflects bronze age, aristocratic society
– Aristocrats rule peasants as gods rule humans
• In iron age this has to change
– Common people feel their own power
• With trade (reinforced by alphabet) thinking
must become independent and rational
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The old religion persists
• 1) Dominance of Homeric religion
– from the Bronze Age
• 2) Reinforced by the poets
– Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
– Sophocles’ Antigone
• 3) Reinforced by city-state patriotism
– Reject Athena = rejecting Athens
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Reform, not replace old religion
• 4) Socrates (Plato) puts old religion on new
basis of rational philosophy
– Criticizes the poets for their anthropomorphic
view of the gods
– Plato’s gods are higher spirits in touch with Truth,
Goodness, Beauty: we should imitate this
• 5) > Socrates is condemned to death
– Recall failure Akhenaton's reforms
– Greece, like Egypt, fails to become a world power
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Who taught whom?
• ? > Socrates > Plato > Aristotle > Stoics
(Epictetus) >
• What gender were they?
• Who taught Socrates?
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1) Who was Socrates’ teacher?
• Socrates: Diotema of Mantineia, a woman
wise in this and in many other kinds of
knowledge, who in the days of old, when the
Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming
of the plague, delayed the disease ten years.
She was my instructress in the art of love . . .
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Diotema’s Philosophy 101
• Diotema: “For he who would proceed aright in
this matter should begin in youth to visit
beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by
his instructor aright, to love one such form
only -- out of that he should create fair
thoughts;
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Upper division philosophy
• [210b] “and soon he will of himself perceive
that the beauty of one form is akin to the
beauty of another; and then if beauty of form
in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he
be not to recognize that the beauty in every
form is one and the same!
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How to overcome violence of love
• “And when he perceives this he will abate his
violent love of the one, which he will despise
and deem a small thing, and will become a
lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage
he will consider that the beauty of the mind is
more honourable than the beauty of the
outward form....
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Love of the laws
• “So that if a virtuous soul have but a little
comeliness, he will be content to love and
tend him, and will search out and bring to the
birth thoughts which may improve the young,
until he is compelled to contemplate and see
the beauty of institutions and laws, and to
understand that the beauty of them all is of
one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle;
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The sea of beauty
• “and after laws and institutions he will go on
to the sciences, that he may see their beauty,
being not like a servant in love with the
beauty of one youth or man or institution,
himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but
drawing towards and contemplating the vast
sea of beauty, he will create many fair and
noble thoughts and notions in boundless love
of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and
waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed
to him of a single science, which is the science
of beauty everywhere. . . .
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Not growing, not decaying
• “He who has been instructed thus far in the
things of love, and who has learned to see the
beautiful in due order and succession, when
he comes toward the end will suddenly
perceive a nature of wondrous beauty . . . -- a
nature which in the first place is everlasting,
not growing and decaying, or waxing and
waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view
and foul in another,
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Absolute Beauty
• “… but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and
everlasting, which without diminution and
without increase, or any change, is imparted
to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of
all other things.
• He who from these ascending under the
influence of true love, begins to perceive that
beauty, is not far from the end.
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The ladder of love
• “And the true order of going, or being led by
another, to the things of love, is to begin from
the beauties of earth and mount upwards for
the sake of that other beauty, using these as
steps only, and from one going on to two, and
from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms
to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair
notions, until from fair notions he arrives at
the notion of absolute beauty, and at last
knows what the essence of beauty is.”
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Aphrodite plays her games
• Recall Aphrodite’s power in Antigone: Beauty
in one person, “violent”
– She against whom none may battle,
– the goddess Aphrodite, plays her games.
• This power is overcome by philosophical love
– the love of Beauty everywhere
• Rising up to Absolute Beauty (Good, True)
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The gods and “God”
• Recall: Is it good because the gods command it?
– What does Aphrodite command?
– Love X!
• Diotema:
– 1) love someone beautiful
• This is the starting point; it’s a mistake to think it is the end.
– 2) Love Beauty everywhere
• The gods too must love Absolute Beauty, Truth
and Good,
– which are One (“God”)
• => Philosophical monotheism
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Real Slavery and Real Freedom
• > Discovery of the Beautiful, Good, True
stemming from the Absolute One
– The gods too love the Beautiful, follow the Good,
see the Unity of all being
• Beauty, truth, goodness are everywhere as
expressions of the absolute source: the One
– Recalls animism: divine is in the world
– Plato’s Absolute is manifest in the world: it casts
its shadow on the world
• Enslavement: taking these shadows for their
Source (=>Aphrodite’s games)
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Darwin’s dilemma
• Recall Darwin’s dilemma:
– How explain the beauty of the peacock’s tail?
– How does this promote survival?
•
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The answer is love of beauty
• “At the time, Darwin's theory on female
choice in animals, and birds in particular, was
revolutionary, and he spent pages justifying a
bird's appreciation of beauty and the quality
of "love" that must be felt between a pair
bonding for life.”
• Diotema/Plato: Absolute beauty in itself
– is reflected in the beauty of the world
– and of other people
2) Aristophanes: Soulmate Love
• “And when one of them [192c] meets with his
other half, the actual half of himself . . . the
pair are lost in an amazement of love and
friendship and intimacy, and will not be out of
the other's sight, as I may say, even for a
moment: these are the people who pass their
whole lives together; yet they could not
explain what they desire of one another.
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• “For the intense yearning which each of them
has towards the other does not appear to be
the desire of lover's intercourse, but of
something else which the soul of either
evidently desires and cannot tell, [192d] and
of which she has only a dark and doubtful
presentiment. . . .
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• “[h]uman nature was originally one and we
were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of
the whole is called love. There was a time, I
say, when we were one, but now because of
the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed
us . . . .
• [Compare: Gilgamesh, the Bible: on the Fall,
the Flood]
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• “Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that
we may avoid evil, [193b] and obtain the
good, of which Love is to us the lord and
minister; and let no one oppose [Love]-- he is
the enemy of the gods who opposes [Love].
For if we are friends of the God and at peace
with him we shall find our own true loves,
which rarely happens in this world at present.
...
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• “I believe that if our loves were perfectly
accomplished, and each one returning to his
primeval nature had his original true love,
then our race would be happy. And if this
would be best of all, the best in the next
degree and under present circumstances must
be the nearest approach to such a union;
[193d] and that will be the attainment of a
congenial love.
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• “Wherefore, if we would praise him who has
given to us the benefit, we must praise the
god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both
leading us in this life back to our own nature,
and giving us high hopes for the future, for he
promises that if we are pious, he will restore
us to our original state, and heal us and make
us happy and blessed.”
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Aristophanes on the God of Love
• Accepts anthropomorphic polytheism
(conventional belief)
• But focus is on humanity
– We are responsible for our own suffering by
separating ourselves from the gods
– who then, as punishment, separate us from one
another
– (Recall: expulsion from the Garden of Eden)
• The true divinity, our salvation, is Love
– found within our own experience through
independent human thought (philosophy)
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3) Context of Socrates’ Trial and
Death
• Athens is defeated by Sparta (404 BCE)
• Who is to blame? Scapegoat needed
• Conspicuous traitor: Alcibiades, a student of
Socrates
– Alcibiades: beautiful, rich young man
– Betrays Athens to Sparta, to the Persians
• Conclusion: Socrates is guilty of “corrupting
the youth.” (Trial of Socrates in 399 BCE)
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Alcibiades’ Speech
• “I have heard Pericles and other great orators,
and I thought that they spoke well, but I never
had any similar feeling; my soul was not
stirred by them, nor was I angry at the
thought of my own slavish state. But this
Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass,
[216a] that I have felt as if I could hardly
endure the life which I am leading . . .
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• “and I am conscious that if I did not shut my
ears against him, and fly as from the voice of
the siren, my fate would be like that of others,
-- he would transfix me, and I should grow old
sitting at his feet.
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• “For he makes me confess that I ought not to
live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own
soul, and busying myself with the concerns of
the Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and
tear myself away from him. [216b] And he is
the only person who ever made me ashamed,
which you might think not to be in my nature,
and there is no one else who does the same.
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• “For I know that I cannot answer him or say
that I ought not to do as he bids, but when I
leave his presence the love of popularity gets
the better of me. And therefore I run away
and fly from him, [216c] and when I see him I
am ashamed of what I have confessed to him.
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Desire to kill Socrates
• “Many a time have I wished that he were
dead, and yet I know that I should be much
more sorry than glad, if he were to die: so that
I am at my wit's end.”
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Alcibiades’ failure
• Focus on material world
– Wealth, popularity, pleasure, a beautiful body
– Puts the body first
• These are shadows of the true Reality
– =Beauty, Truth, Good in itself
– =true Love of Philosophy (Philos-Sophos: Love of
Wisdom)
– Put the Soul first!
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Sophocles’ solution?
• Alcibiades’ false love
– – like the violent love that blinds us
– as in Sophocles’ description of Aphrodite
– playing her games,
– causing destruction
• But what is Sophocles’ solution?
– Don’t fall in love!
• Philosophical love saves us from this
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Allegory of the Cave
• Ordinary “knowledge” – sensuous, opinionated
– Focus on wealth, pleasure, particular beauty
– But this is not where truth exists.
• Recall: the problem raised by trade:
– X amount of corn = Y amount of wine = $20
– What is the source of value?
• The value of these things is beyond the sensuous
appearances of them
– But is accessible to thought
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Ascending and descending
• Ascent of knowledge to true reality
– The value that equates the two different objects is
not on the surface, but on another level
– > the Beautiful, the Good, the True, the One
• Having discovered the truth, the Beautiful, the
Good
– The philosopher returns to the cave to teach
others
– And they kill him
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Who frees the prisoner?
• “And now look again, and see what will
naturally follow if the prisoners are released
and disabused of their error. At first, when any
of them is liberated and compelled suddenly
to stand up and turn his neck round and walk
and look toward the light, he will suffer sharp
pains …”
• Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
• Morpheus: You've never used them before.
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Relation of Virtue to Wealth
• The command of the Oracle at Delphi
• And I think that no better piece of fortune has ever
befallen you in Athens than my service to God. For I
spend my whole life in going about and persuading
you all to give your first and chiefest care to the
perfection of your souls, and not till you have done
that to think of your bodies, or your wealth; and
telling you that virtue does not come from wealth,
but that wealth, and every other good thing which
men have, whether in public, or in private, comes
from virtue. (Plato’s Apology)
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Historical Truth of Socrates’
Argument
• Why did Athens lose the war?
– Internal division of society into rich and poor continues
– Sparta: the base of the rich slave-holding aristocracy
– Rich, slave-owners in Athens betray the city to Sparta
• Socrates’ analysis:
– These rich Athenians such as Alcibiades puts wealth first
(the body),
– rather than virtue (the soul)
• > City is divided, falls
• > Socrates is the true patriot
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