Once upon a time, there was a man accused of a heinous crime. In fact, the crime was so shocking and serious, that, if he were convicted, the man could receive the death penalty.
The accused lived in a free and democratic society where all citizens had the vote. Furthermore, the chief prosecutor who tried the man was an elected official.
When it came time, the accused man was brought before a court, where he was judged by a jury of his peers. The prosecutor brought forth evidence, and the accused man was given the right to defend himself in open court.
After all the arguments were presented, the jury debated for several hours and then voted to impose the death penalty. A short while later, the accused man was dead - executed by the state.
In short, every legal procedure was followed, and the proceedings occurred in an open and transparent fashion, taking place in a democratic society operating by the rule of law.
And yet… the whole affair was utter bullshit from start to finish.
Indeed, this man’s trial may have been the single biggest farce in the entirety of Western civilization.
Introducing Socrates
There are certainly days when I think that the 1989 film Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was the most sagacious movie ever to come out of Hollywood.
Socrates is one of those figures whom everyone has heard of, but very few people take the time to read, which is a shame, as he is unlike any other Western philosopher who ever lived.
It takes a truly dedicated mind to crack open a tome by Immanuel Kant or Soren Kierkegaard and parse sentences such as these:
In a way, this is entirely correct, but, in the first place, the immediacy of spirit has its immediate expression in language, and, in the second place, if a change occurs in it through the intervention of thought, it still remains essentially the same simply because it is a qualification of spirit.
Most sensible people, after expending considerable brainpower to penetrate these types of texts, have little appetite for more, and so Socrates is often left behind on the shelf.
But if you actually go and read some of the dialogues of Socrates (as recreated/invented by his student, Plato), you’ll be in for a major surprise as they are laid out exactly like a modern Hollywood script.
Skipping all the dense thickets of “let’s observe what we can observe about our observations” that every other Western philosopher in history has indulged in, Socrates’ dialogues are clear and simple, using ordinary words, that even a 12-year-old child could follow along.
A Series of Footnotes
Frankly, if Socrates didn’t already possess a legendary status in Western philosophy, and you tried to introduce him to any modern student or professor of philosophy, they would laugh you out of the room for being silly and childish.
And yet, as Alfred North Whitehead once said:
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato [Socrates]. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them”.
Indeed, a charitable view on the history of Western philosophy would be that lots of really, really smart men (and a handful of women) have spent tens of thousands of hours trying to codify the wisdom expressed by the words one plain-speaking man - Socrates.
Today, simply invoking the name “Socrates” is bound to win you acclaim and respect. But what has been forgotten is just how ungrateful Socrates’ peers were, and just how close humanity came to losing his “wealth of ideas.”
Ostraka
Consider this:
Socrates was convicted of the crime of asebeia, which is often translated as “impiety” in English. In short, Socrates was found guilty of mocking the state gods.
But where are those state gods now? Is there even a single human being left on this planet who truly believes that Zeus and Hera are up there on Mount Olympus?
Socrates was also convicted of “corrupting the youths” of Athens because his ideas and questions were considered “dangerous.”
Furthermore, Socrates was regularly mocked by intellectuals and the “smart set” of society in Athens during his lifetime. At one point, the most popular playwright in the country lampooned Socrates, equivalent to a blockbuster Hollywood film being made solely to laugh at someone for thinking differently than the rest of society.
And after Socrates was dead, the Greek society that he came from preserved none of Plato’s or Xenophon’s writings about Socrates (or indeed, any of the other ancient texts of genius), and all of them were ultimately destroyed or written over.
The only reason why anyone can read Socrates today is because the (Islamic) Abbasid caliphate in the Middle East, at great expense, collected and preserved many of the ancient scripts written in Greek and then translated them into Arabic.
Socrates was only then re-discovered once Christian European societies began embracing the texts preserved and collected by Muslims, and there was a gap of about a thousand years between when the last pagan man in Greece read any works of Plato and the first Christian man in Greece read an Arabic-translated-back-into-Greek one.
Summing It Up
The wisest man in all of Western history was mocked during his lifetime by everyone of importance and influence.
Socrates was then executed for failing to believe in gods that literally no one still believes exist.
That same society ended up throwing in the trash not only all the wisdom of Socrates but 99% of all the other texts produced by their greatest thinkers.
And yet, the trial of Socrates took place purely “by the book” in a democratic society governed by the rule of law.
Today, the names of the men who killed Socrates are forgotten, but the wisdom of Socrates lives on.
Of course, now it’s easy to judge the men who killed Socrates because nobody alive today is on their side or believes as they did.
But what if there is a Socrates among us today? What would he or she look like?
Might he or she be mocking the state gods?
Might he or she be accused of corrupting the children with his/her “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories”?
Might he or she be dismissed and ridiculed by intellectual elites and the mainstream media?
Would his or her voice be actively suppressed and censored by the government and those in positions of power?
Would the state want to kill him or her, and use fully legal procedures to do so?
I think you know the answer.
Just remember: it’s easy to celebrate Socrates, the man who died in 399 BC.
But it takes a special kind of courage to celebrate the Socrates who live amongst us, today.
Great piece!
I absolutely love the ending —
“But it takes a special kind of courage to celebrate the Socrates who live amongst us, today.” — such a powerful point.