Founders - #252 Socrates

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

What I learned from reading Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----[0:54] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. — Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm. (Founders #249)[1:20] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226)Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)[2:07] It’s fascinating how great entrepreneurs would arrive at similar conclusions even though they lived at different times in history, they lived in different parts of the world, and they worked in different industries.[3:43] It was Confucius's view that education was the key to everything.[4:57] Socrates was in no doubt that education was the surest road to happiness.[7:05] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus (Founders #232)[8:43] It is immoral to play at earning one's living. —Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie (Founders #199)[9:40] Socrates was never a bore—far from it.[11:12] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. —Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)[11:25] No discomfort seemed to dismay him.[12:36] A healthy body is the greatest of blessings.[14:50] Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. —Winston Churchill[15:18] An incredible paragraph: It was Pericles' gift to transmute Athenian optimism into a spirit of constructive energy and practical dynamism that swept through this city like a controlled whirlwind. Pericles believed that Athenians were capable of turning their brains and hands to anything of which human ingenuity was capable-running a city and an empire, soldiering, naval warfare, founding a colony, drama, sculpture, painting, music, law, philosophy, poetry, oratory, education, science and do it better than anyone else.[16:26] Robber barons like Henry Flagler (Founders #247) and Rockefeller (#248) believed you could be a master of fate too.[18:41] Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251)[21:20] His deepest instinct was to interrogate. The dynamic impulse within him was to ask and then use the answer to frame another question.[22:27] I don’t want to skip over how important that sentence is: He made the people he questioned feel important.[22:39] Mary Kay would teach her salespeople that everyone goes through life with an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading, “make me feel important.” —Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20)[25:18] He was extremely interested in how things were done by experts. Craftsmanship fascinated him. He accumulated a good deal of information concerning products and processes.[27:48] There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. —Steve Jobs[28:21] He wants to show that on almost any topic the received opinion is nearly always faulty and often wholly wrong. Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious. The truth is very rarely obvious.[29:39] Be suspicious of the obvious.[29:47] What is particularly liberating about Socrates is his hostility to the very idea of there being a right answer.[30:21] This denial of independent thought by individuals was exactly the kind of mentality he spent his life in resisting.[39:10] Intense competition generated artistic and cerebral innovation on a scale never before seen in history, but also envy, spite, personal jealousies, and vendettas.[42:14] We have to accept that Socrates was a curious mixture of genuine humility and obstinate pride.[44:42] Socrates in prison, about to die for the right to express his opinions, is an image of philosophy for all time.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Socrates was the first person to demonstrate that life is open to philosophy at all times, in every part, among all kinds of people, and in every experience and activity. Often hailed as the founder of philosophy, Socrates taught, and indeed strove to embody, his credo that how each of us chooses to live and die has great meaning. He influenced the way in which we think about moral choices as well as the way we make them in our daily lives. In this brilliant biography, renowned historian Paul Johnson offers a fresh and fascinating portrait of a charismatic man whose ideas still shape our decision-making, our ethics, and our ideas about the body and the soul. That was from the back cover of the book that I want to talk to you about today,

which is Socrates, A Man of Our Times, and it was written by Paul Johnson. I wanted to read this book now because a few episodes ago on episode 249, there was a quote from Steve Jobs that I thought was interesting, and he said, I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. And I thought reading a biography of Socrates and then talking to you about it would help put context for you and I into what that statement by Steve Jobs meant. And then when I went to search for a biography of Socrates made sense. In the last year, I discovered the author Paul Johnson. I've read now three. This is the fourth biography of

his that I've read. So back on 225, episode 225, I read his Winston Churchill biography, which was absolutely fantastic. On 226, I read his book called Heroes from Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle. And then on episode 240, I read his biography of Mozart. And one of the things I like about Paul Johnson is he writes these 200 page biographies on a bunch of historical figures. I think he's got like 10 or 12 of them. And reading these shorter books is a great way to get some ideas from historical figures into your brain quickly. And then if you want, like it's a good introduction, say, hey, I found that person interesting. Let me go find maybe a deeper, more in-depth in biography. So

I want to start at the very beginning on the very first page. And he's going to talk about something that's very fascinating because this is what I feel is a main theme of founders. And what I've discovered, and I try to always point out to you, is that it was fascinating how great entrepreneurs would arrive at similar conclusions, even though they lived at different times in history, they lived in different parts of the world, and they worked in different industries. Paul starts this book comparing that Socrates thought similarly to Confucius and Ezra. Let me just jump into it. He says, there's always a spirit of the times, even in deep antiquity. Strong and almost identical impulses drove forward the elites and societies

separated by unabridged chasms of space. So that strong and almost identical impulses is what I've noticed across a lot of these biographies as well. We cannot explain these coordinations because he's saying they didn't know each other, they were not aware of each other's existence, even if they write a similar thoughts. But this is the punchline here. But we can profitably study them. Two and a half millennia ago, in three advanced areas where literacy existed, but was still in its infancy, three outstanding individuals echoed one another in insisting that the distinction between their civilizations and the surrounding barbarism must be reinforced by systematic moral education.

And that is what Paul noticed, and that's what he's going to explain over the next several pages. The fact that Confucius, Ezra, Socrates, they thought that if you change, it was possible to remove ignorance and improve your life through education. So it says, That is exactly what Socrates does, but he does it later in life. It was Confucius's view that education was the key to everything. I think Socrates would agree with that as well. A person should be so deep in study, Confucius believed, that he forgets to eat, so full of joy in learning that he ignores all practical worries and so busy acquiring knowledge

he does not notice old age coming on. Then after Confucius, he brings up the Hebrew priest and scribe Ezra, talks a little bit about that, but then he really ties together that they were all around at similar times. So it says when Ezra began his mission, his dedication to education, Socrates was 12, and Socrates had been born in Athens nine years after Confucius died. And then I want to skip ahead to when he explains why this is important. Like, why are you starting the first, why are you spending the first few pages of a

biography of Socrates talking about this? And he says, to all three men, education involved learning, all that was most valuable in their societies. But beyond knowledge, education was a process whereby virtue or the ability to lead a good life was acquired. And the reason I underline that part is because to me that is exactly the point of educating yourself, of constantly learning, is I'm just trying to figure out how to lead a good life. That is the education and learning is the means to that end. Socrates was in no doubt that education was the surest road to happiness. He was the first person we know of who pondered deeply on what makes humans happy and how such a blessing can be acquired. And then he's going to talk about, like,

why would you want to read a biography of Socrates? Paul's an unabashed fan. And you notice that when you read some of his books. He was an unabashed fan of Churchill, and it shows through in his writing. Same thing is very apparent in the book that I'm holding in my hand. Such a man is well worth knowing,

and for 2,500 years, the learned and the intellectually enterprising in all countries have sought to know him. I like that he chose those words, sought to know him, because over the next several pages, he's going to go into, I think, one of the most important things to understand if this is your first introduction to Socrates. it's the Socratic problem. It's why you can read an entire biography of him and at the end not really know who he was. So the Socratic problem is essentially like, it's extremely difficult to try to reconstruct an accurate historical image of Socrates because all of, first of all, Socrates didn't write anything down, and there's everything that survived through history. They're all the accounts of him as a person were variable and a lot of times contradictory.

And so he says the more one penetrates from the superficial to the essence of the man, the more difficult it becomes. Socrates wrote nothing down. And so a lot of what we know about him came from two of his pupils. Two remarkable men attached themselves to him and sought to immortalize him in words. Xenophon and Plato. And as much as the author likes Socrates, I think if you read between the lines, he dislikes Plato. Plato was not only a genius, but one of a particular kind. He was an academic. The very first academic, in fact. For after Socrates' death, he founded this place, he calls it a study place, which we would think of as a think tank, And it was called the Academy from which the profession takes its name. It was the earliest university and its prize alumnus who came to Plato's classes when he was 17 was Aristotle.

So he connects Socrates to he he connects it for us. So if you think about this, like, yeah, it goes from Socrates to Plato, Plato to Aristotle. You and I have discussed Aristotle because all the way back on episode 232, I read a biography of Alexander the Great. And Aristotle was actually Alexander the Great's private tutor. And then he goes on quite a bit about what he's like listing all the problems, trying to separate truth from fiction. When at the core, the big problem was that books were actually copied by hand. This is thousands of years before the invention of the printing press. And so he says all these factors and many other slovenly habits increased a large number of textual errors inevitable in hand copying books.

And as the manuscript chain stretched over centuries, an incorrupt text became an impossibility. But to Paul's opinion, he's like, you can't let that stop you from actually studying worthy people. And he feels Socrates is definitely worthy of Socrates is definitely worthy of our time. He says, nonetheless, Socrates himself is known to us as a man and a thinker, as a real living and enjoyable human being. Let us meet him. And so he gives us an overview of what Greek society was at this time. He talks a lot about the Olympics. But really, there's just a sentence before I get into like a brief introduction of Socrates that I thought was very fascinating, because at the same time of reading this book, I happened to reread my past highlights from Coco Chanel's biography. And there's a sentence in here that made me think of Coco Chanel. It's talking about like, why do the Spartans, were the Spartans dominating the

Olympics? And so it says, in these times, Sparta was the first city to train its athletes professionally. And just as it took its warfare with deadly seriousness, they usually emerged the overall victor. So he's saying they usually won both the because they were so serious about their profession in both professional sports and warfare. They usually won both of those contests. For whatever reason, when I got to that sentence, I thought of one of my favorite quotes from Coco Chanel. And she said, it is immoral to play at one's living. And if you listen to my Coco Chanel podcast, I've done two, or if you've read any biographies of her, you know that she was obsessed. She loved what she did, but she took it deadly serious.

And way before she had worldwide global success, she would say stuff like, hey, I'm not here to play. I'm here to build an empire. And I think the Spartans would have agreed with her. So here's a brief overview of Socrates. His father gave him a good education. He was, they say, about middle class. He's going to kind of renounce that later on, be famous for walking around, doesn't bathe, has no shoes, very little clothing, doesn't have any money. But says his father gave him a good education, had him education, had an emphasis on physical fitness at the gymnasium. He dedicated his life to reading, writing, athletics, music. Tradition says he went into his father's trade as a stone carver, but there's a little bit of, not a little bit, there's a lot of ambiguity about that.

Here's his personality. Socrates was never a bore. He was far from it, in fact. Socrates disliked allowing his emotions to show in his face. Four centuries later, Cicero, who seems to have known a lot about him, said that to show fears or emotions on your face was undignified. And so Cicero would repeat to his followers, always keep the same expression, like Socrates. Socrates was a soldier and an admirable one. He was not a pacifist. As a citizen of Athens, which he loved, okay, so that's something that is repeated maybe, no exaggeration, like 30 times in the book. He had a deep love for his city of Athens. It's going to, later on when he, like he's sentenced to death and he refuses to flee, even though he had a very easy path to flee. Part of that, it was because even though he disagreed

with the justice system in Athens, he thought it was he had to obey it because of his love for the city. And he said, if I had to go in exile, if I'm not living in Athens, I'd rather die anyway. So so as a citizen of Athens, which he loved, Socrates felt it a duty to fight her battles. And so there's many examples where he served as a soldier. This is this one's happening in 432 B.C. And it says Socrates fought in the painful Athenian retreat from a city that I cannot pronounce. It was deep winter and bitterly cold. Socrates showed remarkable endurance and courage, all the more admirable because at the time he was 46 years old. When I got to that part, the note I left myself is one of my favorite mantras in the history of entrepreneurship comes from the founder of Four Seasons. Excellence is the capacity to take pain.

Socrates thought it was important for the human condition to endure discomfort and to basically have complete control over your physical body. So a few pages later, goes back into his high pain tolerance, and just his unique perspective on how to live life. I got a bunch of highlights on these next few pages. No discomfort or shortage of food or drink seemed to dismay him. Socrates' indifference to physical well-being, clothing, food, drink, warmth, and shelter, everything except human company, which he always relished and needed, was a characteristic throughout his life. He decided early in life to

be a teacher, or as he would have put it, an examiner of men. And that such was to be his occupation, but not his profession. So what is the difference? He's not going to accept money for it. He would take no pay. Hence, one of his objects was to reduce his needs to an absolute minimum. So he'd go into like the public square where everybody's selling things. He would observe the shop displays. And he would say to friends and people around him, look at how many things I can do without. Various sayings survive in different forms. And it's all about indifference to the desires of your physical body is the way I would say this.

Various sayings survive in different forms. Some men live to eat, I eat to live. Hunger is the best appetizer. I only drink when I am thirsty. Those kind of things. He kept fit in the stadium and the gymnasium and he would say a healthy body is the greatest of blessings. He was a frequent dancer.

That's fantastic. Saying it is good for me. He did not disdain drinking in company, but he was never seen drunk. When asked what makes a young man virtuous, he would reply, avoiding excess in anything. And then the overview of Socrates continues for another few pages. Same thing, I leave the note, I've left this note over and over again. It's the most common note as I'm reading this book. It was just one word, unbothered. And this is an example of that. Sometimes he was mocked. Asked why he didn't resent such treatment, he replied, if a donkey kicks you, do you take legal action against him? A few pages later, same idea. Socrates was imperturbable. He

exuded serenity. There were many things he deplored, but nothing left him depressed. If he was angry, he would never show it. His opinions were often unusual and even revolutionary, and that is actually going to lead to his death, unfortunately. And then before he goes into what Socrates actually believed and more on his philosophy, Paul spends an entire section of the book building this historical context for the society and the time in which Socrates lived. If you get the book, this is part three, you can actually skip over most of it. The vast majority of my highlights are going to come after this section. I do have a few quotes I want to read to you. And some of this is actually good writing. This is actually one of the best quotes you can ever find because he's going to tie in the leader of Athens at this time, Pericles, to Churchill. And so Paul says, it was Socrates' good fortune that he came to maturity when Athens was reaching its splendid

but lonely apogee. And so the definition of the word apogee was actually taught to me by a friend a few years ago. He was talking about the fact that it's the point in the orbit of the moon in which it's furthest from Earth. But what Paul means in this context, it's the highest point in the development of something. It's a climax or a culmination. And so he's saying that it's reaching its apogee at the time that Socrates is alive. He says that these are rare moments in history. And so he compares what's happening in Athens at this point in history to the 1940s in Britain.

And to me, before I read the quote that he's about to that he wrote in the book right now, this is one of the best, in my opinion, one of the best quotes that you can actually find. And Churchill said, let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and its empire lasts for thousands of years, men will still say this was their finest hour. And to me, what makes that statement so remarkable is because what Churchill is really saying is like, listen, we're not, we're not enduring this for today. We're not enduring this for next month. We're not going through this great struggle for next year. We're doing this for history. And then you got to get ready for an absolutely incredible paragraph. And this is where he's going to describe what was Pericles' philosophy, what was his mindset. It was Pericles' gift to transmute Athenian optimism into a spirit of constructive energy and practical daemonism that swept through the city like a controlled whirlwind.

Pericles believed that Athenians were capable of turning their brains and hands to anything of which human ingenuity was capable. Running a city in an empire, soldiering, naval warfare, founding a colony, drama, sculpture, painting, music, law, philosophy, poetry, oratory, education, science. And they could do it better than anyone else. That is just fantastic writing and a fantastic idea behind the words, if you think about it. The underlining theme of Pericles' speech were that human beings were not the helpless victims of fate, but masters of their own destiny. I'm glad I'm reading this book in the sequence in which I am, because if you think about what you and I've just studied back on episode 247, Henry Flagler, Rockefeller's partner, and back on 248 with the biography of Rockefeller, and really a ton of examples throughout a lot of the biographies that you and I have gone over, but especially in the

robber baron era, they just had a different fundamental belief than I see present in modern society, and that was that you can be master of your fate too. You can change the world around you. You can change the law. You can build a business. You can change the trajectory of history. An absolute different level of ambition. A few pages later, he goes back to this idea. Pericles, in proclaiming this grandiose vision, was not alone. He was the leader of a cluster of stars, gifted men of all kinds, united by their high opinion of human capacity. And to me, that is just an endorsement of why you and I must read biographies of great people, because you see this.

It's inspiring. It's comforting. It fires you up. They are gifted men and women of all kinds, united by their high opinion of human capacity. Here's a little bit more description of the society that Socrates lived in before we get to the plague. And then we get into the plague, I should say, not the play, the plague. And then more on just the way he thought it was really what I'm going after, like why I want to study him. I was like, why? And I have a couple examples of what I would guess that Steve Jobs got out of studying him. So it says, at the time, Athens was a mobile society, upward and sideways,

so much so that a young slave called Pison worked hard and intelligently at the bank where he ran errands and won his freedom, won his freedom and later parlayed his way into getting citizenship from the assembly or possibly bought it, most likely bought it if we know anything about human nature, right? And then he wind up ending, he ended up as the richest man in Greece. In Socrates' time, a champion wrestler became a well-known philosopher. Playwrights and historians became generals and generals historians. Poets became statesmen and politicians wrote plays.

An architect might found a colony and a man who made lamps might rule that city. You know what? I just had an idea that spawned to my mind. If you listen to the episode I just did on the partnership between Ben Franklin and George Washington, think about what you and I know of Ben Franklin and how unlimited he was at what he thought he could do and how he would apply his almost universal genius to whatever, to building a company, to starting a country, to creating a new area of science. Let me read that again and let's think about Franklin as almost like a metaphor for what's happening at this point in history in Athenian society. Playwrights and historians became generals and generals historians. Poets became statesmen and politicians wrote plays. An architect might

found a colony and a man who made lamps might rule the city. So unfortunately Pericles is going to die in this plague about a year after it kills a lot of his family. In 430 BC, Athens was afflicted by the worst plague in her history. Thousands died. Pericles' own family was devastated. The plague broke the morale of Athens. The reason I'm bringing this up is not really for the history lesson, but it's the surprising way in which Socrates acted during the plague. Socrates survived the plague, something his

friends noted with surprise. While many Athenians fled the city or kept to their houses, Socrates continued his usual practice of walking the streets and talking to all, regardless of possible contagion. The fact that he escaped was taken as a tribute to his generally healthy life and exercises. By now, he was 40, a middle-aged man and becoming in his own way, an Athenian celebrity. It is time for us to turn to his work and in particular, his idiosyncratic methods of practicing philosophy. And so at almost 40, Socrates realizes what his life's mission is. This is what he's going to practice for the next 30 years until he dies. The onset and ravages of the plague, the death of Pericles and the decline of his regime,

the prosecution of his leading followers and the general malaise in Athens had a personal effect on Socrates. They forced him to ponder seriously his function in life. That is just universal human experience. Wondering why I'm here, what should I be doing with my life? He had always been a thinker and enjoyed talking and debating with fellow Athenians, but he never had a job. Now he began to feel he had a mission. And so when I get to this part, I actually thought of two things that I heard Jeff Bezos say. One, he says that you don't get to choose your passions, your passion choose you, right? And then he would give advice to younger people. This is, you know, older Jeff Bezos when he's already wildly

successful. And he's like, listen, you could have a job, or you could have a career, or you could have a calling, and that you should try to keep searching until you find your calling. And so at this point in Socrates' life, he has found his calling. He was the great question master. That's a very interesting description of Socrates. His deepest instinct was to interrogate. The dynamic impulse within him, the dynamic impulse within him. That's how you know you have a calling, right? The dynamic impulse within him was to ask and then use the answer to the question to frame another question. So that's also known today as the Socratic method, which you're probably already familiar with.

The investigation of the internal world of man was something he could do and wanted to do. He had always been accustomed to walk the streets of Athens to study the activities of people. And so Paul's description of what Socrates did as an activity and who he was as a person, some of this just made me laugh. This was one of them. All of these people, so he's walking around the streets of Athens studying people, and he says all of these people had tongues in their heads, and he gradually discovered that they were happy to use them. So he asked them questions, and they answered. There is abundant testimony that Socrates had charm. He got on with people of all kinds and classes. He joked. He smiled. He never got angry, and he was polite. He made the people he questioned and cross-questioned feel important, and he seemed to find their answers valuable.

I don't want to skip over how important that sentence is. He made the people he questioned feel important. That made me think when I got to that section, I read Danny Meyer's autobiography. It's fantastic. It's called Setting the Table, the Transforming Power of Hospitality and Business, way a long time ago. It's probably like Founders 20 or 25, somewhere back there. But he said something in that book that he applied to his business. I want to take what he said and this idea that Socrates did in his work, because that's an idea that we can use in our work. And what Danny realized, he studied Mary Kay, the fantastic female entrepreneur and founder of a cosmetics empire.

And so Danny Meyer said that Mary Kay would teach her salespeople that everyone goes through important lesson for entrepreneurs to understand the value of making your customer feel valued and important. Once Socrates found that he could do this, his reason told him that it was his work in life and an inner voice confirmed this. So before I continue that paragraph, my interpretation of this, like he thinks this is God talking to him. Really, I consider like your intuition, whatever you want to call it doesn't matter. But to me, that inner voice that what I call intuition, like tells you about your calling. And so it's telling Socrates about his calling as well. An inner voice confirmed this. People said you seem to have a gift for talking to people, Socrates, and getting their opinions.

You ought to do you ought to go in for public life and stand for political office. But his inner voice said no. It never, and this is what Socrates realized, that your inner voice never tells you what to do, but it was emphatic, he said, in telling him what not to do. And in case I forget, this also comes into play later on when he's sentenced to death. Because you have to understand the time in history, and specifically in Athens, he gets accused of corrupting the youth and impiety. And so piety to them at their time meant that you have to respect all the

Greek gods, right? They're polytheistic, and the dead and your ancestors, right? And the reason this was so important that everybody had to adhere to this is like they believed that there was one impious person, which is what Socrates was accused of being, because he said he had a direct connection. Like he heard the voice of God, singular God, you know, monotheistic. If there was one impious person in their city, they believe this was extremely dangerous because that might bring the wrath of all the gods on the city. So that'll come up later on. But just in case I forget to bring up that point, let's go back to what he's doing, what he feels his life, his life's work is. He's just always this was really fascinating to me. Like he was asking questions because I find this interesting, too, about how people did their work. And so he was extremely interested in how things were done by experts.

Craftsmanship fascinated him. He accumulated a good deal of information concerning products and processes. By knowledge, so the author makes the point, he's like, well, this collection of information that Socrates is doing every day, we would call this knowledge. But Socrates would not,

because he had a different definition. And really, a fundamental understanding of Socrates is that he just doubted that he knew that much. And if he's clearly, like you can read between what he's saying, like if I don't know that much, humans just in general are capable of not knowing that much. And he always talks about like there's a ton of, like if you go and read a bunch of quotes from Socrates, like it talks about like true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing. The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing. He talks about like, listen, there's two kinds of people. There's wise people who know they're fools and then the fools who think they are wise. And so we get a little insight into why he would say stuff like that over and over again. By knowledge, he meant wisdom or insight. And he always disclaimed

possessing any. He seems to have felt he knew nothing about the things that really mattered. Others had no more wisdom than he, but they would not admit it, he believed. And so a few pages later, it goes into how he practiced philosophy was different than how other people practice philosophy. And the second part of this is where I really started thinking about like, okay, this kind of reminds me of what Steve Jobs would get out of studying Socrates and how you can apply it to actually designing of your product and your company. Two fundamentally distinct kind of philosophers.

The first tells you what to think. The second, how to think. Socrates belongs to that second group emphatically. He was interested in people and keenly anxious to discover how people think and whether they can be encouraged to think more clearly and usefully. So I haven't even got to the really the part of double underlined about Steve Jobs, but that is, you know, I've done what 13 podcasts on Steve. I've read, I don't even know, thousands of pages, every single book that I can possibly find about the guy.

And what's interesting is like the more you get to know him, the more interesting he becomes. But the reason like main takeaway from him is just like, I don't think I've ever read about anybody else that had the Steve Jobs clarity of thought is the one trait if I can only choose one trait from Steve that's the one I want to possess he just thinks so much more clearly than I do it's just it's it's it's actually amazing how clear his thinking is and I think that is why also why his the products he made were so popular and adored because that that you need the clarity of thought before it goes into like the the vast amount of work that you have to do he always says like there's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between the idea and the finished product and you can almost

think about like trying to clarify your own thought it's like there's a vast majority of amount of work that most people don't do which i think socrates would agree with between having an idea and actually getting that thought and your thinking as clear as possible. So let's go back to that. He would encourage people to think clearly and usefully. His methods in cross-questioning his subjects demonstrate time and again what he's up to. He wants to show that on almost any topic, this is what made me think of Steve Jobs, the received opinion is nearly always faulty and often wholly wrong. He asks a simple question, gets the usual answer,

and then proceeds to show, using further questions springing from a vast repertoire of occupations, history, both human and natural, and literature, that the usual answer not only fails to fit all the contingencies implicit in the question, but also contradicts analytical reason at its highest, at its highest, or even common sense at its lowest. And this is the part I double-aligned and made me think of Steve Jobs' application

of the way Socrates thought to how he built products. Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious. The truth is very rarely obvious. And if you think about the whole of Steve Jobs' career, almost every single, I would say almost every single product he made was always counter to what else was going on. So when I got to this section, I really sat here for a little bit and thought, it's like, okay, Socrates is always suspicious of the obvious. The truth is very rarely obvious. In my mind's eye, I could see Steve Jobs thinking of the two. it's like okay socrates is always suspicious of the obvious the truth is very rarely obvious in my mind's eye i could see steve jobs thinking of the two it's like i'm looking at

the landscape of computers of the personal computer and i'm going to do something drastically different with the apple 2 i'm looking at the landscape of phones i'm going to do something drastically different with the iphone and i think a way to compress that idea down to like a maximum that you and i can carry with us is just be suspicious of the obvious. Couple pages later, another part that made me think of Steve Jobs. What is particularly liberating about Socrates and is just as relevant today as in the 5th century of BC is his hostility not just to the right answer, but as to the very idea of there being a right answer. He would have been particularly opposed to our modern system that is used in every kind of bureaucratic form-filling and increasingly in examination papers at all levels of the education system

of asking people not to give their answers to a question, but to examine various answers and pick the right one. And this double underlined part is the most Steve Jobs part of all this. This denial of independent thought by individuals was exactly the kind of mentality he spent his life resisting. So now we go back to Socrates and what it was like interacting with him. When the great economist John Maynard Keynes was asked what made a successful capitalist. He replied, animal spirits mainly. So think about that. Really, the way I think about animal spirits is like you're just you're naturally exuberant. He was talking about the economists terms like he was describing how

people arrive at financial decisions in times of economic stress or uncertainty. But think about Socrates as being naturally exuberant. And he says this observation applies to Socrates, too. decisions in like times of economic stress or uncertainty but think about like he socrates is being naturally exuberant and he says uh this observation applies to socrates too there was about him a vigor of mind a power or cheerfulness vivacity and liveliness some vital power or energy seemed to flow into and out of him he had a zest for life and life and a desire to convey it by revving up the minds of those with whom he came into contact. His zest could become formidable. One of his friends compared him to an electric ray whose bite introduced a sense of numb helplessness. So what does that mean? Socrates did not exactly bite in an argument. He rarely, if ever, snapped. His practice of philosophy could be defined as

reflection on propositions emerging from unreflective thought. So again, Steve Jobs is the exact opposite of that, right? He's done the work necessary to make his thinking extremely clear. Socrates' point is that most people don't do it, and Socrates goes later on and says they're incapable of doing it. Reflection on propositions emerging from unreflective thought. It is worth repeating that his saying, a life without examination is not worth living. By his examinations, or cross-examinations,

excuse me, but his examinations or cross-examinations were courteous and even gentle. So this goes back to what he thought his mission was and what he believed. What he saw was ways in which he could help individual men and women to become better morally. This was the mission God had given him in life, as he truly and passionately believed. He spent much of his time pondering the good life

and how to attain it, for he believed, and it was the core of his belief, that only by striving to lead good lives did humans attain a degree of contentment in their existence. He had a simple view of the body and the soul and their relationship. The body was the active, physical, earthly aspect of a person and was mortal, and that's why he would try to constantly deny what the body desired. The soul was the spiritual aspect and was immortal. The body was greedy for pleasure and material satisfactions. The body was selfish, and if it wasn't kept under control, it could become a seat of vice.

The soul was the intellectual and moral side of a person, which had a natural propensity to do right and to prove itself. And so Socrates believed that the most important occupation of a human being was to subdue their bodily instincts and to train themselves to respond to the teachings of the soul. This training took the form of recognizing, understanding, and learning about virtues and applying this knowledge to the everyday situations of life. And so if you believed at your core what Socrates believed kind of like you know i don't want to live a life where i'm barefoot walking in the streets i smell i'm not drinking like there's

not like you know he's trying to he's trying to eat as little as possible drink as little as possible he doesn't want any physical possessions doesn't want he only essentially just wants human like uh he just wants the the relationships and connections with other humans. And any need outside of that is just kept to an absolute minimum because he's trying to deny what the body wants. You can almost think of it like he thought of it as starving the body and feeding the spirit. Seems to be his approach to the way he lived his life. And then a few pages later, we get a deeper understanding of the way he looked at things. And before I read this to you, I'll just read the note i left myself like understanding what people believe is pivotal to understanding why they do what they do there's a lot of things that socrates did that's confusing

if without confusing to me until i really understood like oh this is the way he thought i also think that he was you know i think history has demonstrated that this is just not correct. And Paul, even though he's a fantastic fan or advocate of Socrates, is going to say something similar here. Socrates took an optimistic view of human nature. He believed that the great majority of people wish to do well and that wrongdoing was usually the result of ignorance or false teaching. Once a person knew the truth, his instinct was to do what is right. Again, this is what Socrates believed, right? Hence, knowledge led directly to virtue, in Socrates' view. This underlined the importance of education, especially the kind revealed by his examination technique,

which was designed to show the individual that he possessed far less knowledge than he thought he did, and thus encourage him to acquire more. So that's what he believed. This is the application of that belief and why I feel it's pretty obvious that it conflicts with human nature. Socrates says that a just man is one who does good by his friends, but also does good to those who have harmed him, thereby seeking to convert an enemy into a friend. His theme always being to return evil with good. This led Socrates to repudiate absolutely one of the deepest rooted maxims of Greek behavior, both by individuals and the states, which is the law of retaliation. Socrates set his face against the entire theory and practice of retaliation. And so a few pages later, this is where Paul summarizes all this for us. Socrates is saying, in effect, if something you do wrongs somebody else, it is so bad in and of itself and so bad for you that nothing of good which it achieves can compensate for that evil.

It may win a victory or even a war, it may bring you everything you value, joy, comfort, security, and a long life, and it may arouse the approval of those you love, your family and your friends. It may be necessary, as you think, for their self-preservation and your own, but it is wrong, then you must not do it. If it is wrong, then you must not do it. So he's talking about retaliation. Even if it would win the whole world, you must not do it. Your life itself would not be worth living if you can preserve it only by wronging others. Which also explains why,

even though he believed what happened to him was unjust, he refused to try to escape or to avoid Athenian justice. This is the punchline. And this is what I mean about disbelief being in conflict with human nature and justice. This is the punchline. And this is what I mean about disbelief being in conflict with human nature and history. This is a hard doctrine. And it is not surprising that the world in the last two and a half millennia has often found it too hard to follow, even while accepting it in principle. And so they give an example of like the time, like how society believed, right, in relation to revenge or retaliation and how Socrates believed. And so what I'm about to read to you, like, keep in mind, like this is the this is the time of Socrates.

And I want to include this this part because it really demonstrates how different his thinking was compared to the majority. And this decision, which I'm about to read to you, is eventually going to be reversed. And it's believed that Socrates played a role in that reversal. And so the assembly of Athens is gathering. They have to decide what to do about this little city on this island that had rebelled against Athens. And so it says the decision was taken by the democratic assembly of a constitutional state after full debate. That's important because you have all these people. They're debating and they vote on this. And this is what they decide to do. A proposal was passed ordering the commander of the army to go to the island, right, to execute without trial all adult males in the city and then sell into slavery all the women and children.

This notion of extermination or genocide clearly pleased the majority. So again, there was a massive debate. People voted on it and said, yes, that's not it. And the reason Socrates was instrumental in trying to overturn this is like they made the point, hey, the people that chose to rebel against Athens, this was like a small group, like an oligarchy. You're punishing everybody for the actions that they did not, like not only did they not take, but they probably didn't want to do anyways.

And I think that's a great illustration. It's like, wait, he's living in a society where like they have a debate. They're like, yeah, let's kill every single male in the society and then sell their women and children to slavery. And I think that background

is helpful in understanding like, well, why are they going to sentence this guy who seems not to want to harm anybody, constantly just wants to explore the inner mind of humans? Like, why are they going to end up killing him? And it's because he engaged in contrarian thinking in a society that was not receptive to that. It's extremely dangerous. Athens was the most successful of the Greek city-states in wealth, art, and ideas. It was the cultural capital of the civilized world. But of its success it was a hazardous place intense competition generated artistic and cerebral innovation on a scale never before seen in history but also envy spite personal jealousies and vendettas the citizens of athens were notoriously volatile critical of

their leaders and all prominent persons, easily swayed and vengeful towards those who angered them by what they conceived as arrogance or pretension. So there's all this chaos going on at the time. One of his former pupils, Critias, was, he's part of like the power collective. I think there's like 30 people that were in power and he's going to wind up getting executed four years after this happens socrates that is but this is like setting the foundation and people use this against him in his in his trial so chrisius uh was trying to get he wants well let me just read this uh they're doing like these mass executions all this crazy stuff is happening once the executions began he denounced them publicly. Socrates denounced them publicly as unjust and unlawful. He was

then summoned before the 30, which is like the ruling people at this time, and told to cease conversing with the young man immediately. He refused and was dismissed by Critias with threats. Remember, this is his formal pupil. Critias might have had Socrates executed, but his tactic was to get Socrates involved in the acts of the regime and to share its moral responsibilities. Socrates was instructed with four other citizens to seize a wealthy man, this guy named Leon, confiscate his property, and then kill him. Four other people obeyed, and Leon was in fact murdered.

And now they're saying there was no reason to kill him in the first place. Socrates refused to have any part in this atrocity and he simply went home. He expected to be arrested there and executed in turn. And so he waits around for an execution that never happens. But they use this in this trial because at the time in the society, anybody could bring charges against anybody else. And so in the trial, they use the fact that, hey, you didn't kill the guy, but you didn't warn him either. So now the author does a great job of like, this is just a combination of beliefs that is going to eventually lead to his death. His love of Athens was boundless and the value he attached to the privilege of being free

to walk its streets and talk and argue with its people was the spring of his life and all of its motions. He could not be without it and therefore never considered exile. Athens to Socrates was life. Socrates then accepted his trial as a perfectly valid expression of Athenian law and democracy. Many expected him to disappear before it could take place and go abroad as many other people did, but to him that was unthinkable. He did not make any preparations for the trial. He consulted nobody learned in the law and engaged no one to speak for him. We have to accept that Socrates was him. So the author is even trying to explain like this is

doesn't from our perspective, this is like insanity. Right. And so he's trying to explain like why would somebody do this? And so this is just a fantastic sentence that I think does so. We have to accept that Socrates was a curious mixture of genuine humility and obstinate pride. He believed he had a mission from God to examine and improve people. No power on earth, no threat to take away his freedom or his life would deflect him from pursuing that God-ordained purpose. And so they talk about like the witch hunt that was going on at the time, the scapegoating that is very prevalent in all of human history. And what led to the scapegoating of Socrates was just his like death and guilt. Guilt by association leads to death by association. So two of his

pupils, the people I was just talking about, Criscius, and then another one of his former pupils, Alcibiades, they're dead now. They were overthrown and killed. They were the most hated people. And so they're like, well, we can't punish them because they're dead. Let's go find the next nearest scapegoat. However, when all said about the inadequacies of Socrates' defense,

what probably led to the guilty verdict had nothing to do with it. The damning points were two names, Critias and Alcibiades. Both were hated figures. They were two of the most hated names in Athens, but they were both dead, and nothing further could be done by Athenians to avenge themselves upon them. And so this idea of scapegoating is just something that's prevalent in human history. Hence the decision to attack Socrates. Socrates had taken no part in the events perpetrated by his two former pupils. But what he had done, or so it was widely believed, was to teach both of

them and introduce them to impious and immoral ideas and sowing the seeds of wickedness that eventually produced the evil fruit of treason and mass murder. This was the line of thinking that led directly to the prosecution of Socrates. And so he is found guilty. They decide death is the appropriate, his peers, I guess, is what you would consider it. They decided death was the appropriate punishment. He was put into the city jail and fettered at night to prevent escape. This indignity inflected of on an old man of 70 years old who had served Athens honorably in her wars and was in no sense a threat to the public peace strikes us as cruel. But these were cruel times. And this is just great writing. Socrates in prison, about to die for

the right to express his opinions, is an image of philosophy for all time. And so as he's in jail, awaiting his execution, they have interesting rules where like during the day, essentially unlimited amount of visitors. His closest friend, who's also very wealthy, is trying to convince Socrates to flee. And this is why Socrates refused to do so. And just more great writing. Socrates had been born, had been brought up and had lived all of 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 of 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. He thought his And so Socrates said, no, I'm going to stand and I'm going to die for what I believe in. 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. He embraced death not as a punishment, but as a reward. It culminated, crowned, beautified, and made numerous his entire life.

He passed away with a smile. And that is where I'll leave it. the full story. Get the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I would say out of the four books that I read of Paul Johnson's, I would actually rank them in this order. I would say Winston Churchill, Heroes, Mozart, and then this one in case you're deciding if you want like a quick biography to read. That's the order I would put them in. But this is a great starting point if you want to study Socrates. And again, the link down below, if you buy it using that, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. The very best way to support the podcast is to give a gift subscription to a friend, family member, or

colleague. That link is also below and also available at founderspodcast.com. That is 252 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.