Socrates in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern

 Socrates in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern

The unexamined life is not worth living

 

Socrates was declared the “Wisest man „by the oracle of Delphi.

And that raises a question, which I did not find explained anywhere:

Why did they still kill him, in spite of such a serious, respectable pronouncement, coming from a sacred “being”??

To me, it feels like the court accused Socrates of contempt, while at the same time, disrespecting the oracle and his judgment. Being in other words guilty of the same charge they threw on Socrates.

Most people are in awe at Socrates, but there are some who consider that his “philosophy” was just plain common sense- constituted of sensible pronouncements on various issues.

There is another issue that I had not known until I have read the excellent book of Strathern. We have only two main sources to use in trying to understand Socrates better.

The most important seems to be Plato, for the other Xenophon, presents a lame Socrates. Some tend to believe Xenophon, saying that he was too dumb to have the imagination to create and present an “unreal „Socrates.

Bertrand Russell is of the opinion that “Xenophon was stupid. Some people do not grasp what intelligent men say and so translate that into something dull, which they can understand”…it is something along these lines…I do not have the exact quote.

Then there is the issue of how much Plato said the exact truth about Socrates and how much is literary creation.

Strahern has an interesting point of view on the legacy of Socrates, which, although extraordinary, does have a rather dark aspect. Socrates had insisted upon using reason and analysis for the matters of the mind, not of the body. The body and its needs and wants, had been seen as a drag on the spirit.

Using logic and analysis only for the “higher things „turned out to have disastrous effects.

The plague was brought into Europe by assailants who threw dead, infected bodies over the walls of sieged Genovese fortresses in the East. Although they could see that this was a highly contagious, horrifying disease, the thinkers of the age could not apply logic to simpler, meaner aspects of life and so millions of people died, one could say for stupid reasons.

Socrates did not write anything.

One reason he gave, refers to his attitude when he heard he was named “the wisest man”-

-          How come? I know nothing!

-          And this was the exact reason given for not writing:

-          What should I write, when I know nothing?

Then there is an Egyptian tale that Socrates is supposed to have invoked:

-          An Egyptian God was talking to a king from the North of Egypt

-          Look, I have invented mathematics, geometry and the alphabet

-          The alphabet?

-          Yes, so people can write and understand better, use it so that things will be remembered

-          It will have the opposite effect- instead of using their own, Internal resources to memorize, they will resort to External means and thus lose their own, Internal abilities

Although an ugly man, Socrates inspired the love of Alcibiades and this is where Strathern proves witty and funny, yet again. He challenges the eyesight of Alcibiades and then tells the story of how Alcibiades invites Socrates, tries to wrestle and then get the philosopher drunk so that he could sleep with him.

Socrates was never drunk and at parties he would stay up until morning.

I am a bit confused about the homosexuality of that age. I mean, even today, we have about 10- maybe 20% of men who are “gay”- a name which used to mean cheerful.

But in ancient Greece it was not a small minority, on the contrary. And I still cannot understand how.

Perhaps only if we refer to that clever perception:

-          “first we make our habits and then our habits make us”

Socrates has become a kind of a role model for me at the age of twenty, when I first read about him. Funny that it turns out that my business partner and the best friend I have got (although we frequently quarrel and dispute- which is to say that we are not such “good „friends- but the best there is) is called …Socrates. In an interesting proof of how different we are, I call him Socrates, a name I obviously like, but he prefers to be called …Dan, which is what everybody else calls him, except for…me.