For
my philosophy electives I’ve started the year, as any good teacher should, by
dragging out and dusting off Plato. I’ve not bothered to read him since I was
in college, five years ago this September. At that time I was taking Ancient
Greek Philosophy, which was rather silly since I’d already taken some rather
advanced courses, and read most of Plato and much of Aristotle on my own.
In
previous years I’ve had my students read two selections of Plato, it’s true.
They’ve tackled part of the Meno, which is tricky, and the Apology, which details Socrates' trial, and is
not.
So
I started the semester with the Euthyphro, which asks what is pious and what is
just. The Apology I’ve now done in full, and the concept of being a martyr for
truth has been established in the classroom.
My
ethics were carefully manipulated in my high school experience. Here’s a list
of books we read for Western Civ, taught not coincidentally by the fellow who
also taught Philosophy:
Apology
(Plato) – About dying for the sake of the truth
Julius
Caesar (William Shakespeare) – About killing for what you believe is right
Barabbas
(Par Lagerkvist) – About Barabbas’ struggle to do right after being freed in place
of Jesus
Becket
(Jean Anouilh) – About the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket standing up for his beliefs
St.
Joan (George Bernard Shaw) – About Joan of Arc’s quest to do what is right for
country
Galileo
(Berthold Brecht) – About Galileo’s choice not to die for what he believed in
A
Man for All Seasons (Robert Bolt) – About Sir Thomas More’s execution for what
is right
THERE’S
A PATTERN.
And
now I’m passing it on to a new generation. It’s a very dangerous, and scary, belief.
As the Apostle Rufus said: “I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change
an idea. Changing a belief is trickier…People die for it. People kill for it.”
The willingness to die for something must be a belief. As Socrates himself affirms, we have no idea what to expect for the life
hereafter, if anything. Brutus understood it. Henry II understood it. But
Meletus, the young man whom history would despise for his precedent, did not
understand. He only believed that his indictment of Socrates was right.
This
makes Meletus, now on my third pass of the Apology, a very interesting character. We only see
him in glimpses, and he is clearly an ignorant and brash young man. He tries Socrates
for things he didn’t do. But he thought it worthwhile to take the time to
condemn a seventy year-old man. Did he think he was doing right, or did he believe
it? Either way there must have been a powerful conviction to choose such a
course of action.
As
Paul Tillich begins his powerful book on the subject, “Faith is the state of
being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s
ultimate concern.” He goes on to distinguish between faith and belief, the
latter of which is simply holding an unsubstantiated claim as true. Fifty-five
years later I’ve not seen anyone write a better set of definitions. Experience after death is the realm of belief for most. We can't substantiate it. For some it is their ultimate concern, the ancient Egyptians are a nice example, but this is not the typical case. Meletus' desire to see Socrates put to death - what drives this, then?
Meletus
could not know the repercussions of his suit, or even its outcome. That his actions
were right must have been a belief. This reframes the Apology’s trial in
a new light: It is not the grandstanding of Socrates to show how he is right,
and will sacrifice himself for truth. It is a clash of beliefs; one that truth
knows no boundaries, the other that the well-being of the many outweighs the
invective of a societal gadfly.
Plato’s
dialogues are often laughed off as simplistic intro stuff. A hook to get people
interested in philosophy, and then, once the secrets of the upper castes are
learned, rejected and despised. Yet the struggles between Meletus’ and Socrates’
views is no different, in essence, than whether or not you think Bradley Manning
should be tried for leaking uncomfortable state secrets.
When
in high school I began saving my written works. An essay I wrote for Western
Civ, eleven years ago as a young Sophomore, compares Jesus and Socrates, asking
which is more courageous. I reached the following conclusion at the time:
“If
Jesus was actually just the historical Jesus and not a divine entity, then
Jesus may indeed be the more courageous, to be killed by his followers. But
wasn’t Socrates killed by the people he was trying to teach as well? What is
the difference between the two? Socrates, however, had a message that was never
heard before and attempted to let the people he taught figure out the deeper
meaning for themselves. Jesus’ message was radical and told them what to do. If
both are mortal and both achieved the same tasks and suffered equally and had
similar personalities; it is my belief that both were equally courageous.”
It’s
a cop-out. I don’t think I got a great grade. Suggesting crucifixion is the
same as the convulsions and vomiting from drinking hemlock…not an apt
comparison. But it shows where my mind was at the time, that I thought Socrates
to be essentially an equal of Jesus.
That’s
a heavy worldview to pass on to kids. For years I’ve wanted to teach
philosophy. I thought starting with Plato would warm me up, and be easy – a prejudice
of my initiation into the philosophic upper echelons. I knew the students would go through
a weighty experience. I never realized how much of the weight is placed on the
teacher for introducing such ideas and beliefs to young minds, even if it's just Plato.
