I found I.F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates an intriguing and informative book. Yet I don’t know what to make of the fact that Stone’s interpretation of Socrates and his teachings is 180 degrees opposite every other opinion on Socrates that I’ve ever heard.
As one of the classic Greek philosophers and the teacher of Plato, Socrates is regarded by most as one of the lights of the world. C.S. Lewis among others quotes him frequently. Yet Stone paints him as at best a crank and at worst as a philosophical brother to Marx and Nietzsche; who had nothing but contempt for democracy, and whose doctrines if ever married to political power (as in Plato’s Republic) would have resulted in an inhuman society.
Has Stone misrepresented Socrates? Or would Marx and Nietzsche be similarly revered if their names hadn’t been blackened by the deeds of regimes that claimed them as inspiration?
Socrates didn’t leave any writings. What is left of Socrates is Plato speaking as if he were Socrates. What that, what does I. F. Stone say specifically?
Yeah to get to Socrates is really hard, you have to go through Plato, but Plato isnt the only person that Socrates taught or that wrote about Socrates. Other lesser known students of Socrates wrote dialogues and these can be cross-referenced with Plato’s work. Also, the general attitude and lifestyle of Socrates (open-minded, drills hard with questions) can be understood without having to cross-reference anyway. In short its challenging, but not hopeless, to understand something about Socrates through his student’s writings.
Socrates himself wasnt pro-anything really. He was, from my understanding, willing to question anything. Including democracy. His goal was to really find the truly moral way of living life, which he thought was out there, if he didnt find it eventually. So he would question the pro-Democrotites with the same furvor as the totalitarianists. He did, however, serve in the Athenian military, for what its worth. However, military service might have been mandatory at the time (I dont know). That might have been while Athens was controlled by the likes of Alciabiades, but alas Im not 100% on my timeline. Something to keep in mind: Socrates and all his fellow philosophers at the time were all independently wealthy, and could afford to sit around and question everything. Like the celebritys of today maybe, except more intelligent and business like. Even if it ran at odds with the establishment. Later, during hellenistic age, this would change as state funded intstitutions and patronage funded the intellectual world through such entities as the library of alexandria.
I don’t have a copy handy and in any event I would have to quote much of the book verbatim to fully get his message across (read it, it’s a great book!). But I’ll summerize as briefly as I can.
Stone wondered how it was possible that democratic Athens put a renowned philosopher to death simply for speaking his mind. Stone went back to the original Greek sources that are all we know of Socrates and his life and teachings, and came up with the following scenerio:
Socrates was a lifelong critic of democracy. He felt that democracy was simply the sheep trying to herd themselves, and that a perfect government would be led by “philosopher kings”, who would impose their wisdom on the populace. For many years Socrates was tolerated as a sort of ivory tower radical, annoying but harmless. But the political climate soured after a dictatorial junta siezed power and the democratic counter-revolution was much less tolerant of his views. Brought to trial accused of advocating the overthrow of democracy he engaged in a fit of self-righteous martyrdom, deliberately baiting the judges at his trial and managing to get the death sentence when ordinarily he would have gotten off with exile.
In short, Stone portrays Socrates as the prototype of the liberal/radical crank: forever denigrating the very society that made it possible for him to promote his views, and promoting an antidemocratic ideology.
The problem with scorates is that he never wrote anything down.
Several of his students wrote “socratic dialogs” (Plato and Xenaphon for starters), where they argue their case in the form of a dialog with socrates as their mouthpeice.
From various sources (Socrates is mentione in several plays, was well known and eccentric character)
Socrates was a questioner, a critic, “question everything” was he attitude.
Socrates wasnt a big fan of democracy, but did particpate was appionted by lot to run the assembly one day and ruled that a motin to try a group of generals collectively was unconsititonal (which it was) the assembly meet the next day and tried them collectively. He also served as a citazen hopilite. He served his country and obeyed the law.
Plato his pupil and repsonsible for most of the impression we have of socrates but a wrong one.
Plato wrote a book called “the republic” about a idealizsed sociity where writing a book like “the republic” would be punishable by death. Plato was definitely a totalariam.
recommend “Picture This” by Joseph heller (novel) as an way of looking at plato/socrates.
It looks to me like Stone is getting Socrates and Plato mixed up. Socrates was trying to find out what must not be true. Plato had his own idea of society that was, at its heart, very totalitarian (and Sparta is probably the most effective totalitarian society ever).
Back in college, I had a good friend who was a philosophy/government double major (and very hard-core - he is now a professor of poly-sci). A guaranteed way to get a rise out of him was to say, “Plato was a Commie.”
Well, put me up as not agreeing with Stone either, although Socrates was quite probably not a very considerate debator.
Looking at ancient philosophers through the lens of our modern life and judging them is infair in the extreme. I’m surprised at how much of what they thought about life even makes sense to us now, let alone has applicability.
Probably the fairest assessment, IMHO, would be that Socrates was regarded in his day as a brilliant man with some odd fascinations. Kind of like Isaac Asimov and his robots today.
I think that at heart Socrates must have been a “moral thinker.” This is reflected in his last words - * “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt.” *
This was a joke. Asclepius was the god of medicine. You were supposed to make an offering to Asclepius if you were cured of something. Socrates, of course, was about to die.
John Ralston Saul makes a brilliant argument in his Doubter’s Companion that Plato misrepresents Socrates:
[ul]
[li] “…whatever the flaws of a democracy, Socrates would not have been permitted to teach anyone in a dictatorship. Had Socrates been a Spartan, he would have been executed at the beginning of his career.” Socrates was too careful and consistent a thinker not to have realized this.[/li][li]Socrates’ rudeness to the jury at his trial wasn’t a sign of his “contempt for the people,” it was just his personality and his usual method. “Socrates wasn’t just rude to the jury and to the citizenry. He was rude to everyone.”[/li][/ul]
Saul argues is that Plato and Socrates actually represent opposite approaches to society – one democratic, the other totalitarian.
Interesting interpretion, I hadn’t heard that one before. Of course, as others have mentioned, it’s pretty hard to tell where Socrates ends and Plato starts.
You could say the same about any pro-Marxist professor at a comtemporary university. Socrates was of course “against” dictatorship - but he was rather fuzzy on just how his philosopher kings would attain and keep real power. When asked what would keep them from abusing their authority, Socrates replied essentially that by definition they wouldn’t, since they’d be so good and wise! Heck, even National Socialism sounded good as a theory. My question still remains: does Stone misrepresent Socrates, or have centuries of scholars overlooked just how flawed he was for the sake of his ideas?
**
Still, to read Stone’s version, you come away with the impression that Socrates is to Marx like Plato is to Lenin- the idealist who proposes an ideology vs. the pragmatist who states just what measures are needed to impose it.
Granted, this whole GD is possibly unanswerable because we have no record of Socrates writing directly. It’s a little as if all we knew about Karl Marx was what V.I. Lenin said he’d said. Even people who totally disagree with their tenets usually concede that Marx and Nietzsche were brilliant, provokative thinkers. So maybe the “classic” view of Socrates vs. Stone’s take are two views of the same complex person? I take it that no one out there is simply saying “Stone’s full of it”.
