THE PHILOSOPHER ON TRIAL (3)
I was standing, in my comic nightmare of Plato's Apology, before the Faculty Senate, giving my “defense speech” against an Administration that sought to eliminate philosophy from the University. What kind of knowledge do you claim to possess, I was asked before a hostile audience, and if you can’t prove you have some or teach an art or practical skill—why should you be a "basic study" in higher education? My department, my profession, my job and livelihood were at stake, and I was not persuasive. I woke up in a sweat, vaguely troubled by the sense that I might be defending something more like what Socrates might call sophistry, a claim to wisdom but in fact no more than logic-chopping, versatility with ethical theories, a “critical perspective”—that taught you what? Some of my philosophical colleagues might blurt out: that all these other so-called arts and sciences don’t know who they are, spread a lot of intellectual jam out there, call it expertise and get good money. But wasn’t that foolish or arrogant or both?
If the Euthyphro spurs us to ask: what is pious? reverent? godly? righteous? religious? the Apology of Socrates spurs us to ask: what is philosophy and who defines it? The Euthphro puts faith on trial in the court of public reason. The Apology puts philosophy on trial in the court of ancient law. Both are condemned, though by different norms. Socrates’ old accusers knew philosophy to be an attitude of mind that found nothing sacred, a proud capacity to ‘spin’ born of sophistic shamelessness, a word-monger’s eagerness for students to pay and look up to them--mere critics biting productive hands, the intellectual worm in the societal apple. The suspicious dislike of my colleagues in the arts, sciences and professional schools for me and my ilk has its counterpart in the more Republican part of the republic for all of us academic types, but even they have a special dislike for those of us who, they judge, doubting ourselves want to teach their children to doubt what everyone knows is right and wrong, good and bad, worthwhile and just a waste of time.
How differently the philosopher’s mission seems, if we see his incessant questions, dividing and uniting, as divinely or naively inspired, rather than as a kind of arrogant defiance of the god whose truth and oracle he would “refute.” But then, by his or by his now deceased student Chairophon’s story, Socrates “is wisest of all.” How differently his logic seems, whether we see in it the longing search for the ‘beings’ that are or self-knowledge, rather than the relentless negating of everything his interlocutors’ believe in. The righteous and godly Euthyphro has his counterpart in the righteous and law-enforcing Meletus, and there is something pleasing or entertaining in Socrates’ devastating refutations of them, and in the thought that we too are not self-deceived. And yet, might not they, like others entangled in Socrates' webs, have come to know themselves better, had they not reached for the sword to cut their way out?
And what are we now to make of this way of life that he says he (a new Achilles) chose because he thought it best? Of his seeking to persuade the Athenians to care more for truth and the virtue of their souls than wealth or fame or honor? Does he ‘transcend’ his ignorance concerning the most important things? Does he slip illicitly, somewhere past midway in his apologia, from agnostic to gnostic wisdom, from merely examining to philosophizing? What are we to make of the rule of reason, and his dictum the good man can't be harmed? The Stoic school would anchor their art of living on this Socratic difference between moral and non-moral goods, absolute and relative value, personal integrity and worldly gain. Can the Socrates who in serving examines the god also rest his case to the people on this? And if so, does it matter--perhaps make all the difference--that Plato's Socrates acts on what he professes?
I asked my students, at the end of our discussion of the Euthyphro, to write for the next class on whether a religious person could live an examined life. The skepsis that belongs to the philosopher’s “care for the self” might seem to rule that out. What faith could survive a methodology that in principle excludes a final step? The Socratic ship sails on a sea of uncertainty, open to where the winds of life and reason take it, a journey of movement, not anchored rest. But if we are persuaded by the “whole truth” Socrates claims to tell in his defense speech, we begin to wonder if this is not his form of piety, his faith, his truth (cf. Nietzsche’s Gay Science #344). And again: does not this truth include his practice?
Like Socrates, I did not take the path of faith, but of skepsis, examination as a critical mode of my "care for the self," my "art of living." My world is mortal, bounded by things wholly, not partially transcendent. I am like the post-medieval inquirer who pulls back the fair tapestry of unexamined faith, and sees a limitless less beautiful universe beyond. But must I not still, like Socrates and many of his students, aspire to a life that imitates ‘reason’ or ‘being’--albeit occluded from the gods--within a world of change? Can someone who is not in this way ‘religious’ live an examined life?
If the Euthyphro spurs us to ask: what is pious? reverent? godly? righteous? religious? the Apology of Socrates spurs us to ask: what is philosophy and who defines it? The Euthphro puts faith on trial in the court of public reason. The Apology puts philosophy on trial in the court of ancient law. Both are condemned, though by different norms. Socrates’ old accusers knew philosophy to be an attitude of mind that found nothing sacred, a proud capacity to ‘spin’ born of sophistic shamelessness, a word-monger’s eagerness for students to pay and look up to them--mere critics biting productive hands, the intellectual worm in the societal apple. The suspicious dislike of my colleagues in the arts, sciences and professional schools for me and my ilk has its counterpart in the more Republican part of the republic for all of us academic types, but even they have a special dislike for those of us who, they judge, doubting ourselves want to teach their children to doubt what everyone knows is right and wrong, good and bad, worthwhile and just a waste of time.
How differently the philosopher’s mission seems, if we see his incessant questions, dividing and uniting, as divinely or naively inspired, rather than as a kind of arrogant defiance of the god whose truth and oracle he would “refute.” But then, by his or by his now deceased student Chairophon’s story, Socrates “is wisest of all.” How differently his logic seems, whether we see in it the longing search for the ‘beings’ that are or self-knowledge, rather than the relentless negating of everything his interlocutors’ believe in. The righteous and godly Euthyphro has his counterpart in the righteous and law-enforcing Meletus, and there is something pleasing or entertaining in Socrates’ devastating refutations of them, and in the thought that we too are not self-deceived. And yet, might not they, like others entangled in Socrates' webs, have come to know themselves better, had they not reached for the sword to cut their way out?
And what are we now to make of this way of life that he says he (a new Achilles) chose because he thought it best? Of his seeking to persuade the Athenians to care more for truth and the virtue of their souls than wealth or fame or honor? Does he ‘transcend’ his ignorance concerning the most important things? Does he slip illicitly, somewhere past midway in his apologia, from agnostic to gnostic wisdom, from merely examining to philosophizing? What are we to make of the rule of reason, and his dictum the good man can't be harmed? The Stoic school would anchor their art of living on this Socratic difference between moral and non-moral goods, absolute and relative value, personal integrity and worldly gain. Can the Socrates who in serving examines the god also rest his case to the people on this? And if so, does it matter--perhaps make all the difference--that Plato's Socrates acts on what he professes?
I asked my students, at the end of our discussion of the Euthyphro, to write for the next class on whether a religious person could live an examined life. The skepsis that belongs to the philosopher’s “care for the self” might seem to rule that out. What faith could survive a methodology that in principle excludes a final step? The Socratic ship sails on a sea of uncertainty, open to where the winds of life and reason take it, a journey of movement, not anchored rest. But if we are persuaded by the “whole truth” Socrates claims to tell in his defense speech, we begin to wonder if this is not his form of piety, his faith, his truth (cf. Nietzsche’s Gay Science #344). And again: does not this truth include his practice?
Like Socrates, I did not take the path of faith, but of skepsis, examination as a critical mode of my "care for the self," my "art of living." My world is mortal, bounded by things wholly, not partially transcendent. I am like the post-medieval inquirer who pulls back the fair tapestry of unexamined faith, and sees a limitless less beautiful universe beyond. But must I not still, like Socrates and many of his students, aspire to a life that imitates ‘reason’ or ‘being’--albeit occluded from the gods--within a world of change? Can someone who is not in this way ‘religious’ live an examined life?
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