By HOWARD DENSON
If we view our history as a cosmic pane of glass, we find that most of us skate over the surface on hovercrafts or at least on pads of butter. At most, we may leave a brief smear, after which the luster returns to the glass. However, some individuals glide over the pane with skates tipped with diamonds, leaving scratches that last for millennia to certify that they existed and mattered.
One who left his mark was Socrates, who died unjustly almost 2,400 years ago. As someone should do regularly, the late I. F. Stone re-examined the controversy that led to Socrates' death in The Trial of Socrates.
If the readers expect total revisionism from Stone, in reversing the generally accepted notions concerning Socrates, then they will be disappointed: for example, Stone argues that the verdict was unjust, but he does claim that Socrates used a line of defense that, in effect, goaded the large Athenian jury into condemning him.
As others have done, Stone traced the animosity to Socrates to several factors: prominent students who turned out badly (Alcibiades and the tyrant Critias), impiety and the feeling that Socrates denied the existence of the gods, sacrilegious acts allegedly by Alcibiades and his drunken friends, Socrates' admiration for Sparta and dislike of democracy, and "three earthquakes" or civil disruptions that stunned the Athenian sensibility and led such good citizens as Anytus to seek Socrates' death.
En route to framing his usually sound argument, Stone ignored or de-emphasized several factors, while faulting Socrates in a couple of inappropriate areas.
Like Jesus and
Epictetus, Socrates himself wrote nothing that has survived, so we only
know of him through Plato and, to a lesser degree, Xenophon (the general
and historian) and Aristophanes (a playwright friend who lampooned Socrates).
When Socrates speaks in Plato, are we actually hearing Socrates or is he
the convenient (and politically safe) mouthpiece for Plato himself?
We don't always know.
While Stone admits that we don't have records pertaining to key factors in Socrates' life and trial (e.g., the complete argument against him), nonetheless, he analyzes existing documents for clues.
Years ago, my Greek literature instructor swelled with indignation as he recounted the defects of the Athenian jury. The professor, being a fine actor, recited with feeling, Socrates' "apology" or defense. It is a noble speech, one appealing more to reason than Stone allows.
However, as I agreed that the jurors had been unjust, I wondered then if some things were being overlooked:
First, was Socrates actually as eloquent at his trial? How much of what he said was what Plato and other friends wished he had said, if, say, the old man had not been so feeble? (Xenophon's account of the trial features a Socrates who was not so fine-tongued, but we still end up relying on Plato's more convincing account.)
Second, I wondered if the Athenians realized that, in one respect, they were doing a great service to Socrates by putting him to death?
Stone also referred to Socrates' "death wish," but he seems to miss the mark in giving an understanding of it. Consider this: All Greeks knew of the precept that "you should count no man happy until he has lived his entire life."
Solon the Wise
instructed the hard-headed, money-oriented Croesus about this principle,
although it took fire and the stake to make Croesus realize that, though
he had been prosperous and powerful, the potential reversals of life had
caught up with him.
Similarly, in
Oedipus Rex, the most fortunate of men was Oedipus . . . until his world
began to unravel as he discovered who had killed his father.
To old lovers of wisdom, death was not to be feared. Socrates at the age of seventy was not far from dying anyway. But since many vigorous and healthy seventy-year-olds today would not take a cavalier attitude about an exeunt stage left into oblivion, we may wonder about the state of Socrates' health. Since Socrates did point out that he would be declining in strength and vitality, should greater significance have been placed on his age and health?
His friends (and even his enemies) gave Socrates every opportunity to go into exile or to escape to other cities. As Stone discusses in a disapproving section that focused on the selfishness of the philosopher, Socrates did not choose to escape, because he argued that Athens had never promised not to take his life and that there was nothing to fear in death.
On the other hand, exile in those days had its advantages, besides giving the would-be condemned man a chance to avoid immediate death: Several Greeks "became themselves" when they were run out of their home cities. For example, Herodotus (though not exiled) travelled, took notes about fascinating people and events, and became the "father of history." Thucydides, after a military failure beyond his control, was given time to travel and write of the Peloponnesian war, thanks to his ostracism.
However, other Greeks faced exile or mere travel with less success. The exiled Alcibiades, wearing only a sword, was eventually interrupted in mid-dalliance with another man's wife and assassinated. The playwright Aeschylus, according to the legend, had left Athens and was taking bows after the performance of one of his plays in Sicily when a critical eagle, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his noggin and caused this most serious of tragedians to lose life's shell game in an undignified pratfall.
If a major principle demanded defense, should Socrates have fled Athens at age seventy, only to run the risk of dying ignominiously at age seventy-one or seventy-two? (Under Pericles, Anaxagoras had fled an Athenian death penalty, to live only a year or two later to the age of seventy-three.)
Another factor: What do you do when you find you have become yourself? The youth wants to become a fire fighter, cow puncher, astronaut, doctor, private eye, and this and that, too. After forays into a few fields, the adult may eventually find that he or she is Somebody and that he or she stands and exists for Something.
Socrates had become the gadfly and mid-wife of Athens. As a Tory gadfly (that is, as a critic who stays within the system), Socrates had survived for years. A gadfly runs into trouble either when his own criticisms become revolutionary or excessive or when the system itself becomes paranoid and unstable. Stone's references to the social "earthquakes" remind us that Athens was suffering its version of a "red scare" or "Salem witchtrials." In politics, since perception is reality, the apparent reality was that Socrates was a dangerous man, as dangerous as America's mild socialist Eugene V. Debs, who was imprisoned during World War I.
Socrates had lived for philosophy and, by not fleeing, he crowned his life by dying for philosophy (in a relatively painless manner, too). Since Socrates established the principle that philosophers will die for truth, he took some of the pressure off of other thinkers. Plato left Athens for safer ground, only to return for a successful forty-year career in his home city. And, when Aristotle fled Athens decades later as an old man, he said he would not want Athens to offend twice against philosophy.
When Socrates faced the 500-man jury, he used an argument that, according to Stone, was deliberately designed to antagonize the jurors. Socrates missed a not-guilty verdict by about sixty votes and received a death penalty based on about an eighty-vote margin.
Stone does not explore an interesting area of Athenian life: bribery and corruption of jurors. At one time, Plato's Socrates commented on his surprise at the closeness of the verdict, suggesting to us that Socrates and his friends had tried to do a head-count of the philosopher's support in the polis and on the jury. One suspects that the relatively poor Socrates knew that bribes alone would be sufficient to sway the jury against him.
We do not like to contemplate bribery and corruption in the glory that was the golden age of Greece, but such corruption was there. A vindictive civil administration, swayed by a burning desire to punish its political enemies, turned the mobocrats against the "unpolitical" Socrates.
Stone makes much of Socrates' alleged uninvolvement in the affairs of Athens; Socrates himself claimed he was not involved. To the Athenians, an idiot was someone who did not involve himself in the life of his city; to update the term for the high tech age, the idiot was a know-nothing who cared only for the boob tube, ESPN1 and 2, the six pack, and occasionally a lawn mower. This lack of involvement suggested to Stone that Socrates had an icy indifference to the major issues of his city-state. I suspect Socratic irony is operating in this area.
However, Socrates engaged everyone in Athens in discussions of what is truth, beauty, and justice; though professing ignorance himself, he showed no fear as he explored the most sensitive of issues. When he was called upon to serve the polis as soldier or juror, he did so bravely. He was so much a part of Athens that he became a dramatic figure in the plays of Aristophanes. This is hardly what an idiot does.
Stone notes the extensive criticism of democracy by Socrates, who preferred the rule of experts or aristocrats. In Socrates' defense, however, it should be stated that only by separating himself from political ambition could he function effectively as Athens' gadfly. If he were continually seeking office for himself, his questioning would have been suspect. Moreover, as a social and philosophical critic, he was reacting to the defects of the corrupted democratic system in power. We forget that Socrates argued for rule by the experts and not just by an elite social class. We aggrandize the Greeks when we elevate their "democracy" higher than it merits.
The Greeks held up the ideal of moderation in all things, but, as Will Cuppy pointed out, "The Greeks did nothing to excess, unless they were crazy about it." They were crazy about a lot of things. Harry Truman said men are corrupted by three things: money, power, or women. The Greeks were no exception, with Alcibiades touching all three bases, plus the fourth corruptor, mind-altering substances (alcohol or drugs). Socrates, however, was not the slave of any of these corrupting influences, although the perception may have suggested another reality for those who felt the polis should be run differently.
In simple self-interest, the aristocrat, the merchant, the laborer differed in their concept of how the polis should be run; mixed in with that difference was an amazing fickleness, which would strike out at the just and the unjust.
Their fickleness is demonstrated by the experience of Aristides the Just, a fine, honest public servant whose personal excellence offended hoi polloi who were less exalted. Eventually, during the process of ostracism (when the names of candidates for exile were to be scratched on pot shards used as ballots, one unlettered citizen was having difficulty. An unrecognized Aristides came by and helped the man to write the name "Aristides the Just" on a shard. When doing so, Aristides asked the citizen why he wanted to exile Aristides. The citizen said, "I just get tired of always hearing him referred to as Aristides the Just."
This cumulative fickleness, along with natural misunderstandings about Socrates' teaching, combined with reigns of terror and acts of "corrupted" youth, to set the stage for Socrates' trial. As Stone says, Socrates' association with Alcibiades and the murderous Critias did him no good. Both had been his students, and Socrates forked lightning for their crimes.
Stone does not fully explore the mischievous effects of the Socratic technique as it was probably misused by many youths in Athens. The Sophists instructed students to be like good debaters or attorneys: to learn how to win arguments almost at any intellectual cost. While Socrates used some of the same techniques, he used ironical questions to probe deeply into all aspects of life, including what constitutes truth or justice. Stone felt many Athenians objected to "[t]he sneer barely below the surface of [Socrates'] irony."
Socrates infuriated his fellow citizens, or "victims," in his critics' views, by not having answers to his own questions. As Socrates guided the questions and refined the responses, he frequently did have responses to his inquiries. He clearly did stand for something, although his claim that he was not wise and that he was ignorant helped to undercut the basic fact that he was a Tory gadfly who stood for the positive.
His questioning technique, when in the hands of an adolescent (whom Leo Rosten defines as someone in a state of omniscience and obnoxiousness), can infuriate a victim, especially a pompous one. After all, unrelenting, inexorable questioning is aggressive; it differs from the exchange between parent and inquisitive child or teacher and student. Mixed with these questions designed only to show "oneupmanship," many Athenians endured insults to their lineage or family background.
Stone accused Socrates of "bad mouthing" the family background of key civic leaders. Despite Socrates' gossipy awareness of people's occupations and status, this accusation simply won't wash. Socrates' adolescent imitators undoubtedly insulted the nouveaux riches; however, Socrates lived simply and did not strive to impress. The insult, "Yah mudda wears army shoes," does not anger a would-be victim if the speaker's own mum at Fort Dix has chevrons on her olive-drab sleeves.
To Stone, Socrates' admiration of Sparta demonstrated his lack of faith in democratic Athens, even though Sparta was decidedly hostile to philosophers. However, some of these remarks are based on Plato's later writing (years after Socrates' death), after the Athenian democrats had a poor batting average and many errors per game. Most Greeks intellectually admired the simplicity of the Spartan life (while fearing domination by the Spartan jarheads), but this romanticism for the simple life did not mean that Socrates or other Athenians were going to try to build a Sparta in Athens.
Stone faults Socrates for not showing himself a "more outspoken critic of the regime" when called before Critias and Charicles of the Thirty. However, when the reader keeps in mind that the dictatorship of the Thirty had already executed an alarming number of Athenians, Socrates' bravery during the questioning is more than admirable. In a time when a Galileo or a lesser person would have meekly said "yes, sir, yes, sir" to whatever was demanded, the eternally questioning Socrates forced even these tyrants to define their terms.
Stone dislikes the way that Socrates, particularly at the time of his death, practically ignores his wife Xanthippe and their children, noting that "Nietzsche . . . once described the logic of Socrates as 'icy.'" (Nietzsche, that bundle of Teutonic neuroses, only proved that philosophers who ponder in glass libraries shouldn't throw tomes.) Socrates comes across as self-absorbed and neglectful.
However, Plato (who began as a dramatist) was focusing on Socrates and his frame of mind at the end, not emphasizing the family; therefore, we simply do not know the extent to which Socrates had tended to his family. In addition, those who are other-worldly have made many remarks that demonstrate "iciness": e.g., Jesus' remarks about letting the dead bury the dead and several of his statements to Mary.
At times, Stone suffers from what I called the "Peoria Syndrome": viewing Socrates as a citizen of a contemporary city who is politically obligated to protest energetically certain social ills, such as the treatment of the poor and slaves. However, apparently all Greeks accepted slavery, and only the works of Euripides have survived to give us any complaint about the treatment of slaves. As the Nazarene said later, the Greeks also believed that the poor you will have always.
However, even Stone has been caught up in the metaphor of Socrates' life. Whatever Socrates' earthly life was (or was not), he was a rare individual who became a symbol--or even a poem--to the generations. Socrates has been interpreted century after century as a stalwart defender of truth, and, even when his motives and actions, like those of Lincoln, are analyzed and explicated, the triumph only becomes sharper.©