Socrates: A Man for Our Times (15 page)

Socrates had always felt bound to fulfill his mission. It was his duty to God, as well as his delight and the meaning of his entire existence. Somehow, that mission had come in conflict with the law—as perceived by some—and he had been prosecuted. He had failed in his defense to resolve this conflict and clear up what must be a misunderstanding. So he had been sentenced to death. It was better to die over and over again than to neglect duty, which was obviously and incontrovertibly wrong. Obedience to God came before any law, however righteous. But that was not to defy law, merely to accept the consequences, even death, of obeying a higher law. That led to the second point. Socrates had been born, had been brought up and had lived all his life under Athenian law. He had chosen to do so, over and over again. He regarded Athens as the best place on earth to live, and it had always provided him with the perfect setting for his mission in life. He loved its people, with all their faults, its streets and their trades, its public places. Its government was always imperfect, often grievously remiss, and sometimes monstrous. But it was his city, which he had fought for, and to which he belonged inextricably. Everyone, even or especially philosophers, had to accept the rule of law of the place where they lived. In his case, this rule had come into conflict with his higher calling. The result was a sentence of death. He thought his conviction was mistaken and his sentence unjust. But to seek to evade it by bribery and corruption would be an even greater wrong, an unarguable and incontrovertible injustice that he could never perpetrate. If, as he believed, he was the victim of injustice, how could this be put right by committing an even greater injustice, greater in that he knew it to be unjust? The governing principle of his life was that a wrong could never justify a further wrong in response. Far better to submit to injustice, in the hope and confident expectation that, in time, men and women would come to see it so, and cherish his memory for his fortitude in accepting it.

The
Crito
dialogue concerns the rule of law and its paramountcy. The final dialogue,
Phaedo
, named after one of Socrates’ closest followers, who was with him in his last hours, concerns death and the immortal soul. It is Plato’s finest work and calls forth all the resources of Socrates’ sinuous intellect and the subtlety and beauty of the ancient Greek language. It begins soon after dawn, with the exit of Xanthippe and her child-in-arms, Socrates’ third son, who had both evidently spent the night in the prison. His mother apart, Plato was not much interested in women as persons (as opposed to ideas), and therefore we are not told about Xanthippe’s thoughts on Socrates’ predicament or any advice she gave him. He evidently loved her, to which the young child bore witness, and she him. His leaving her undefended and unprovided for was part of the price he paid for abiding by his principles. But then, as he doubtless consoled himself, he had many devoted friends, some of whose means were ample. It is fruitless to speculate. Socrates is released from his night irons, and as he stirs back into life, muscles wearied by the shackles, he reflects upon how closely the pleasure of release is related, indeed caused by the pain of restriction, an instance of the eternal opposites that punctuate and furnish our lives, giving them movement and variety and richness.

The men—they are a group of close followers and admirers, some from abroad—then get down to the final matters that dominate Socrates’ last hours: death and what follows, or rather the death and disappearance of the body and the survival of the soul in a place prepared for it. It is Socrates’ great merit as a philosopher that he always concentrates on what matters most to us. Of course it is interesting to know what set the universe in motion, if anything did, and what follows from Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and whether there is such a thing as antimatter, and other objects of speculation and experimental inquiry. These or similar questions interested the Greeks in 399 B.C. as they interest us today. But what really mattered then and matters now is the one inescapable fact of human existence: death, and what follows it. Despite all the efforts of doctors and scientists, psychologists, poets, painters, musicians, and other imaginative creators of genius, death remains as great a mystery to us now as it did to Socrates’ contemporaries 2,500 years ago. In knowledge of death we have not advanced one centimeter in all that time. Our perception of life to come, if there is any, is no more vivid. If anything, cloudier. But thanks to Socrates—and to Plato for recording him—we have at least learned, if we choose, to approach death and an unknown future with decorum, courage, and honor.

Socrates told those listening to him that the true philosopher has no fear of death or desire to resist it, because he is willing to die as an affirmation of the principles by which he has striven to live. The philosopher, by whom he meant all those anxious to live and do wisely, knows that after death, the soul of the just man will be in the care of a god who values justice above all things and therefore will ensure that the still living soul of the dead man will be comforted and made secure. Death, then, is not to be feared but to be welcomed as the natural end to our life on earth and the beginning of something infinitely more glorious.

There follows an argumentative justification of Socrates’ firm belief that the soul is indeed immortal and survives when the body rots away. This passage is spoiled by Plato’s irritating insistence on dragging into it and foisting on a reluctant (we assume) Socrates his theory of forms. But this is a detail that does not matter, for Socrates’ confidence in the survival of the soul and in the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual richness that awaits the souls of the just is so calm, serene, pure, and magisterial as to carry all before it. Socrates does not necessarily remove all doubts in the mind of the skeptic about the soul’s immortality and the afterlife. What he does do, however, is convince us of his own belief in both and of the steadfastness with which he approaches his own departure into the unknown.

The supreme lesson of Socrates’ life, it seems to me, is that doing justice according to the best of your knowledge gives you a degree of courage that no inbred or trained valor could possibly equal. If there was one particular virtue Socrates possessed, it was courage, shown in all kinds of circumstances, from the battlefield to the courtroom, and now in his last hours under sentence of death. Thanks to his incisive arguments in favor of the immortal soul and the life waiting for it after the body eparted—arguments that expressed his own total inner conviction—Socrates’ own spirits rose and rose during his last hours, until by the time death was imminent, they overflowed in a great, steady, copious fountain of optimism and expectation. He embraced death not as a punishment but as a reward. It culminated, crowned, beatified, and made luminous his entire life.

As dusk fell, the discussion came to its natural end, and the jailer arrived to announce that Socrates must now take poison. It was an axiom of the Athenian democracy that the laws, being freely voted, must be freely complied with by citizens, even and especially the punishment of death, which must be administered by the person condemned, who was required to swallow poison. This was composed of hemlock, though Plato does not explicitly say so, and it may have been a mixture more certain to produce death quickly, surely, and painlessly than a simple distillation of the noxious plant. The jailer could not help but tell those present that Socrates was the noblest, the gentlest, and the bravest man he had ever had in his custody, and his obvious distress at the work he had to do was, perhaps, the most striking tribute to the lovable nature of the seer, to anyone fortunate enough to know him well.

Before taking the poison, Socrates had a bath and again said good-bye to his children and the women of his family: “He talked to them in Crito’s presence,” says Plato, “and gave them directions about his last wishes.” Then he rejoined his friends, and later a man came in with the poison in a cup. Socrates said, “Well, my friend, you are accustomed to these things—what do I do?” “Just drink it, Sir, and then walk about until you feel your legs becoming heavy. Then lie down, and the poison will do its work.” He handed the cup to Socrates, who received it cheerfully, without any trembling or change of color or expression. He asked if he might perform a libation (an offering to the gods), but the man said the cup contained only enough for its purpose. “Well,” said Socrates, “I can still pray that my departure from this world will be beneficent. So I do pray, and I hope my prayer will be granted.” With these words he drank the cup, in one long swallow, quite calmly, and with no sign of repugnance.

At this point, his friends, who had been anxious to show self-restraint, began to weep. Crito, to compose himself, left the room. Apollodorus, already weeping, erupted in a spasm of convulsive tears, which set everyone else going, and brought a rebuke from Socrates himself: “What a way for men to behave! I sent away my womenfolk to prevent this kind of scene. I planned to die in a reverent silence, and now your tears are forcing me to joke! Pray, be calm, and brave.” So it was, over two millennia later, when W. E. Gladstone, the great Liberal statesman, announced to his fourth and last cabinet, in 1894, that he was resigning as prime minister and ending his political career of over sixty years. There were tears on all sides, and Gladstone, dry-eyed and sardonic, called it “my blubbering cabinet.” Socrates made no reference to “my blubbering death scene.” Instead, he walked about for a while, until he said, “I shall lie down. My legs are heavy.” He lay on his back, as the poison bearer recommended. The man then examined his feet and legs, then pinched one foot hard and asked if he felt it. Socrates said no. The man then pinched his legs and moved to the center of his body, finding all cold and numb. He told those watching, “When the numbness reaches his heart, Socrates will be no more.”

Suddenly, however, the old man drew back the covers he had placed over his face and said clearly, “Crito, we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius. Do so, and don’t forget.” These were his last words. Some early Christian writers used to cite them as evidence of Socrates’ incorrigible paganism: thinking of a childish sacrifice to the god of healing on his deathbed. In fact it was more a sign of Socrates’ love of joking and irony. He was anxious to thank God for a safe transit from fretful life into easeful death, and “a cock for Asclepius” was his droll way of putting it. So he passed away with a smile.

VII

Socrates and Philosophy Personified

I
n terms of his influence, Socrates was the most important of all philosophers. He supplied some of the basic apparatus of the human mind, especially in the way men and women approach moral choices and make them, and in the consequences that flow from them in this world and the next.

Socrates did not exactly abolish the fantastic polytheism of ancient Greek paganism, with its humanlike gods and goddesses and its godlike heroes apotheosized into deities and all their fictionalized and poetic feuds, favoritism, magic, miracles, and interventions. This pantheon was fading fast even in his lifetime, and Socrates, always tender toward the superstitions of others, did not assault it frontally. What he did was to concentrate on making more substantial the presence of an overriding divine force, a God who permeated all things and ordained the universe. This dramatic simplification made it possible for him to construct a system of ethics that was direct, plausible, workable, and satisfying.

Socrates did this by drawing an absolute distinction between the body and the soul. The body was the source of desires, appetites, gratifications, and glory. It represented the animal nature of man, his physical being and his ambitions and pleasures, both legitimate and harmful. Without this body, humans were nothing and could do nothing; they needed the body to be significant, creative, and purposeful. The body was a problem and burden, however, because of the sheer power of its desires and the destruction involved in gratifying them. But the body was balanced by the soul, which represented the principle of virtue and wisdom; the two were intimately connected and in some respects indistinguishable. The body was the outward form; the soul was the inward personality of the human being. The more the appetites of the body were controlled and restrained, the more the soul prospered and flourished, and the personality of the human became benevolent, useful, and at ease with himself and the world. The body pursued pleasure, hoping to find happiness. But happiness was to be found, in this life, only by allowing the soul to direct the body in the path of virtue and wisdom. The body came to an end with death, and rotted away, taking its problems and appetites away too. The soul survived, and if guided in this life by virtue and wisdom, found itself prepared to be united with God and with other well-nurtured souls in an immortal existence of content.

The permeation of Greek thought by Socrates’ notions of life and death, body and soul, which operated through the writings of Plato and Aristotle and others, and which became increasingly perceptible within two or three generations of his departure, was hugely assisted by the story of his trial and self-execution and his superb composure on the threshold of eternity. Socrates became not only the archetypal philosopher and source of ethical wisdom, but the living paradigm of a good man and the perfect example of how the body-soul relationship ought to operate.