In Our Time - Socrates

Episode Date: September 27, 2007

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek philosopher Socrates, acknowledged as one of the founders of Western philosophy. Born in 469 BC into the golden age of the city of Athens, he has profoundly influenced philosophy ever since. In fact, his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as pre-Socratic.In person Socrates was deliberately irritating, he was funny and he was rude; he didn’t like democracy very much and spent quite a lot of time in shoe shops. He claimed he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians but has left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down. With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University; David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University; Paul Millett, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, of all the names in ancient philosophy, Socrates is the most intriguing. Born in 469 BC, into the golden age of the city of Athens,

his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as priest. Socratic. In person, Socrates seems to be deliberately irritating. He was funny and he was rude. He didn't like democracy and spent a lot of time in the marketplace, accosting citizens with questions such as, what is

courage or virtue or knowledge. He claimed he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians, but he's left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down. Plato, his pupil, wrote about and for him, and in doing so, provided the pillar of Western philosophy. With me to discuss

the elusive and mercurial Socrates, are David Sedley, Lawrence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University, Angie Hobbes, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University, and Paul Millett, senior lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. Angie Hobbs, as I mentioned, Socrates didn't write anything down. Why didn't he write anything down? Well, that's what we're here to discuss. I think a clue comes from a dialogue written by Plato,

a later dialogue called the Fidorus. Plato, of course, knew Socrates as well. And in the Fiedrus, they discuss the dangers of the art of writing because books can't, you can't really discuss with a book, it can't answer you back, it can't really deal with your questions. So we know that Socrates thought that the ideal way to do philosophy was to have a one-to-one conversation and take your interlocutor with you and you agreed on points together.

However, of course, a lot of his followers were extremely keen that his legacy should continue in some way. So they wrote a lot down for him and wrote dialogues with Socrates as one of the major characters. It shows a commendable indifference to posterity, doesn't it? Well, it does, but I think maybe he knew that Plato and Xenophon and other of his followers were going to write things down. So maybe he wasn't quite as indifferent as we might think.

So he thought that once he was written down, there was no doing with it. It wasn't malleable. It wasn't plastic. It was set in the sort of stone that no idea should be set in. Possibly, and possibly this is why a lot of his followers chose to write

in these fictional dialogue forms. Maybe the idea is that reading a dialogue, we become characters in the dialogue ourselves, almost. So we're part of the conversation. What do we know about him? Well, we know from some of his followers who knew him well,

who did write, particularly Plato, the philosopher, and Xenophon, who was a retired military commander who had known Socrates well in his youth. And these are our two main sources from the lifetime of Socrates. And all the sources agree, and there are many others, that Socrates was compelling, he was charismatic, he was self-controlled, he was self-contained, he was provocative and above all he was utterly unique. He absolutely nobody else like him. They all say that. Now then things get interesting because though they all agree on those points,

there are also some significant differences, particularly between Plato's and Xenophon's portrayals. Precise contemporaries almost those two, aren't they? Yeah, well they're young. Yes, indeed, indeed. Now, for Plato's Socrates is more ironic, teasing, more elusive, more provocative. Whereas Xenophon's is more conventional, he's more didactic, he's more approachable, he's chatier.

He could have, of course, have been both. He could have been both. Yes, it could be that the historical Socrates was even more complex than even Plato's portrayal and was very adept at projecting different aspects of himself to different people. Or it could be that each author saw what they wanted to see in Socrates and focused on their own. particular concerns, which of course would have been facilitated by the fact that the historical Socrates was so elusive. However, it does seem to me that

because we know that many of the brightest people in Athens of Socrates Day was so fascinated by him, it seems to me that Plato's portrait would probably be closer to the truth because it's Plato Socrates who would have exerted the greater magnetism, I feel.

And also, I think Plato would have had the philosophical gifts to appreciate Socrates, perhaps a little more than Xenophon. Thank you. So he was iconic in his own lifetime. David Sedley, what is the fact that he didn't write anything down? I want to pursue this a bit because I'm sure it'll intrigue our listeners, intrigues everybody. Tell us about his attitude to philosophy. I mean, if we can go a bit further into that. Yes, well, one can add another reason as to why he didn't write anything down. It was conventional in his day to write a book setting out the wizard. that you had discovered, Socrates claimed that he didn't know anything, he didn't have any understanding. He was still working on it, and therefore he wasn't really in a position to write a book. And his activity, his philosophical activity was essentially an oral, interpersonal, interactive one. His method has come to be known as the Elencus, which means cross-examination or interrogation or quizzing. And Plato regarded him as the founder of

dialectic, which is really the science of working towards truth through question and answer. So what Socrates would do, typically, he would buttonhole somebody for a conversation in streets in Athens. He really is supposed to have done this. Oh, yes. He found Niagara that he wandered around but-naling people. Absolutely.

What do you think of virtue as you're on the way to, anyway, I'm not going to be true. Get into a casual conversation and then it would turn out that the person he was talking to had pretensions to understanding some important concept, probably some moral value. And then Socrates will say, well, he would put himself in the weaker position using his characteristic irony. Well, I don't understand this, but perhaps you could help me to understand it since you know

so much more. Then he would ask the person to define the concept, but Socrates would say, but just a minute, don't you also think so and so? If so, isn't that in conflict with your definition? Or doesn't the definition have the following internal consistences, inconsistencies? And that would lead to the interlocutor withdrawing the definition, maybe coming up with a better one, that's the way progress could occur.

Socrates's own explanation of how this came about is a story he tells a friend of his called Chirophon, went to the Delphic Oracle and said, is there anybody wiser than Socrates? And the oracle said no. Socrates, when he heard this, was absolutely baffled, so he claims, because he said, well, I don't understand anything.

So how could there be nobody wiser than me? And he set out to test what the oracle meant by going around questioning people who really did have pretensions to understanding. And every time he questioned them, it turned out that their pretensions were actually based on some kind of misapprehension. So he said, actually, it turned out the Oracle was right. I am the wisest of all people, or at least I'm a paradigm of what it is to be a wise human being, because real human wisdom consists in nothing more than recognizing the limits of your own understanding, and that's contrasted with divine wisdom. He was on this mission to educate the people of Athens,

wasn't it? It was very in his own lifetime, in his own day, the people of his own city. That was what he said he was out to do, and that's what he pursued. And you mentioned definitions, and the priority of definitions seems to be something that is attributed to Socrates

as having, not invented, but certainly established as a commanding place in philosophy. Can you just develop that a little, please? Indeed. Aristotle, in fact, tells us that in his view, the importance of definitions as one of Socrates' two contributions to the development of philosophical method. It is a methodological point.

Socrates takes the view that the most fundamental question you could ask about anything is what it is. If you don't even know what the thing is, you couldn't possibly answer any further questions about that. For instance, courage is one example. So let me take, courage is a good one, but let's just take the examples of the question

that Socrates gets engaged in. Does justice benefit the person who possesses it or another one, is virtue teachable? Now, what Socrates says when those questions come up is, well, obviously I couldn't answer the question whether virtue is until we first of all know what virtue is, because, for example, if virtue

is some kind of knowledge, then there's a good case for saying it's teachable. If it's something other than knowledge, then there's a very good case for saying it's not teachable. So you always come back to the primary question, what is the thing before you can actually move on to any of those other questions.

Thank you. Paul Millett, I mentioned two or three times the Agarra or marketplace in Athens. Can you tell us we're in 5th century Athens, we're talking about the Golden Age, it's a miraculous time in thought. Can you tell us about this marketplace and why it was so important for

Socrates? Indeed, yes, well still there today in the centre of Athens, there is this area of about 20 acres or so. You can walk through it in 10 minutes, which is the Agarra. You called it in your introduction of the marketplace. It certainly was that.

It was much more than that, though. It was the focal point of public life in the city. So we have there the admin centre, the public buildings. It's a node of activity for religion, shrines. There's the temple of Hephaest, still there, the northern end of the Agarra. It's also a centre for justice. The law courts, many of them are there, including the court where Socrates himself was tried.

We'll talk about that perhaps a bit later on. but it's also where citizens gather together to interact in an intense kind of way. They'll go there to talk, argue, gossip, get the news, get hired as casual labourers, find out the time from a water clock there, and of course do all their shopping as well. So wouldn't be unusual somebody to approach somebody else and ask them, Socrates wouldn't be the only person going around. He isn't a lone figure in the Agar asking his questions. there are lots of places where people would gather and have discussions like this.

We hear of Socrates, for example, at the banker's tables looking for people to talk to, and finding them as well. And also Socrates visiting various shops where people would gather as a matter of habit to meet and talk. And then the various stowers or porticos colonnades around the agarra where people would gather and chat and discuss. So he's not the only person doing this. And I think just one point I would make also is that it's not just citizens. The aga is full of all sorts of different people, non-citizens, slaves as well, and women too, non-citizen women, and also women from poorer families who would have to go out to work. We think of this, there's such a glow around the 5th century, BC Athens,

that we think of philosophers being at the centre of it, everyone walking around in stately washed togas and so on, and the philosophers being, as it were, the unacknowledge kings of the... Agarro, was it like that? No, I'm sure not. This idea of people wafting around in sort of, you know, bed sheets around marble pillars, I'm sure the agro was a noisy, vibrant,

lively, smelly, dirty kind of place. But what's, is it possible from the evidence that you have to give us some idea of the status and place of philosophers at that time? Were they a small, cult elite, more or less ignored by most people, or where were they? I think there's one good piece of evidence

that Socrates's and other philosophers were in the public eye. I'm thinking of this famous play by Ristophonies, comedy called The Clouds, where Socrates is a main figure and is caricatured in that comedy. That's when Socrates was quite a young man, doesn't it? Yes, he would have been, what, in his 40s, I think? Comparative, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and it's not just... So he's sent up by the greatest comic writer of the day in a way that was understood by the massive audience which went to those... And that's not just a one-off, because there are other comedians who all... so we know brought Socrates into their plays. David Sedley, all the thinkers who went before Socrates, there were many, were collectively referred to as pre-Socratic.

What were the pre-Socratics doing? I mean, I know they were doing lots of differences, but on the whole, because I want to get to the point in the next question, where was the breakaway, what is the great significant structure? Just one more bit of context. What were they doing? They were asking the big questions about the nature of reality, the structure of the universe. Many of them were experts on astronomy, for example,

because they thought that you couldn't possibly understand how the cosmos works unless you started with the laws underlying the heavens. So they were enormously diverse, a rather brilliant collection of thinkers, all extremely independent. And really they, to many, to Heideg, for example, and to Popper, they mark in some ways the high point of Greek thought. Angie Hobbes, so we come to Socrates. What was radical and new about him?

They have a very magnificent elliptical way, there may even want to say about prescred, but we need. What did he bring that made him such a significant figure to significant figures like Plato and then to Plato to Aristotle and so forth to the present day? What was new? Okay, well, I think Cicero puts it really well

in his Tusculin disputations. He says that Socrates was the first, to bring philosophy down from the heavens and into the towns and into people's homes. Socrates, his passion is for ethics. He starts off with what he believes is the fundamental question of life. How should life be lived? That's the question he asks again and again. And the answer he gives, which he assumes, perhaps wrongly that everybody would assent to,

is that life should be lived flourishingly, that it's flourishing or more, less accurately happiness is what we all want. Now, his next move is a much more controversial one because he then says that the flourishing life is, in fact, the virtuous life, which, of course, not all people would assent to. Various characters in Plato do not assent to that. Now, the reason Socrates gives for saying this,

or one of the reasons, is that he thinks that the soul is far more precious than the body or than external goods. Indeed, that nothing else, neither an external such as, wealth or even physical health can do you any good unless you exercise it virtuously. So your soul is absolutely all important. Therefore, the virtuous life must be the flourishing life if you act viciously towards. Flourishing, can you just keep redefining that?

I mean, it has a completely different meaning nowadays. So just bring us back up to speed on that. Absolutely, yeah. The Greek word is eudaimeneer, which means being blessed with a good dimone. And there is an element of subjective happiness and feeling good in it, but it's also a more objective concept. and the one that we would have today. It's connected perhaps with sort of actualising your potential as a human being, with being a successful human being. So if you act viciously, if you hurt other people, you are in fact hurting yourself.

It's completely entwined with virtue, isn't it? For Socrates it is. For Socrates it is. This is his big move. He wants to say, we all agree that we want happiness, the flourishing life. And what I'm telling you is that you're not going to get the flourishing life. unless you live virtuously, because otherwise you're going to be harming yourself

more than the people you hurt, because you will harm your own soul. You can only hurt other people's bodies or their possessions. Only the agent can harm his or her own soul. That was his sort of, that was the controversial claim. That was a radical claim. David, would you have to come in on? Yes, in fact, what Andrew is talking about there brings on to one of Socrates's most distinctive doctrines.

he didn't have many doctrines. In fact, that was one of the puzzles about him. He asked questions, but it wasn't always clear what he thought himself. But one doctrine that he's very emphatic about is that it's never in any circumstances right to harm another person. You should not return wrong for wrong. You should not return harm for harm. This rejection of retaliation, he makes it quite clear, is a rejection of a whole moral tradition. So this is radical in a time in when we think that.

the way to behave was to kill your enemies and the way to succeed was to massacre those who stood in your way? Exactly, and there's an obvious parallel to the sermon on the Mount. The rejection of Old Testament retributive morality in favour of turning the other cheek is a very strong parallel in Socrates standing against an existing tradition. Paul. Paul Miller.

Am I not right that, in fact, Xenophon Socrates does speak in favour of retaliation? So that's correct. But Plato, the evidence comes from Plato, And there are often discrepancies like this. Xenophon's portrayal of Socrates is very much more as a conventional moralist. And it's hard not to think that Xenophon portrayed Socrates to some extent in his own image, Xenophon being himself rather conservative thinker.

The evidence in Plato is so striking the way that Socrates just for once says this is actually my position, my circle and I have always agreed on it sets us apart from the many, makes it I think pretty clear that this was actually a historical fact. So not just Plato projecting himself back onto this. Not at all, no. Can we rummage around a bit more with this idea of radical, which is, I don't know whether it's a useful word for that time, but I want to just establish now what was so distinctive and so influential.

So can you put your two pennies in, Paul Miller? That is a tricky one. I think Angios put it right, exactly right. It's a different way of looking at things philosophically. this idea of bringing philosophy into the streets. I must confess, David, I find the Pesocratics pretty incomprehensible. I think Socrates did too. That was one of his points, actually.

He said that all this talk about what makes the heavens move and the underlying structure of the world, he didn't understand it. It was completely unprovable. And anyway, he said it was a diversion from the questions that actually matter to us, which is how are we to lead our lives. So these are issues that he could discuss

with ordinary people on the streets. Yes, well, I mean, Socrates has only just begun his radical quest when he says that the happy life, the flourishing life is the virtuous life, because he charges on from there, because now we have to ask ourselves what he thinks virtue is. And this is where he really branches off, because his answer is that virtue is knowledge. It is, in some sense, which will come on to in a moment,

knowledge of the human good. And as we've seen, that if you don't have knowledge of the human, human good, then no other apparent goods that you possess, such as health or wealth, can do you any good. Now, then he says, well, in fact, each individual virtue, such as temperance or justice or courage, is in fact united as one as knowledge of the human good. And there's a very keen philosophical debate that still goes on about exactly what Socrates means by this thesis of the unity of virtue. Does he simply mean that all the individual virtues are interdependent? You can't have one without them all.

Or does he mean something stronger that all the virtues, all the individual virtues are in fact one thing, this one thing that's knowledge? Now, of course, the counter of that, if virtue is knowledge, then we get to possibly his most radical claim of all, which is that vice is ignorance. It is simply ignorance. And he says that no one does wrong,

willingly, which I think will still surprise some of our listeners, and the weakness of the will is impossible. There can be no such thing as a conflict of desires. All you need to do is find out what the best thing for you as a human being is, and then if you know what

that is, you couldn't fail to do it. What is the best thing for you as a human being you think is to go and kill a lot of people? Then that shows that you've not understood, Socrates would say, how precious your soul is to you. He's not actually anti-weigh. war in play. So he thinks...

He had a... He goes... He does. He fights at Delium and Potter dea and so on. But you don't do it for revenge. That's the point. That's right. That's right. Socrates insistence that if you knew enough, you would always do the right thing in itself sounds terribly implausible. There's so many obvious counter examples to it of knowing

you shouldn't smoke the cigarette, but you give in weakness of will prevails. But I think the reason why Socrates had such a powerful case was that the way he lived his own life seemed to prove it true. Socrates was quite extraordinary for his own power of mind over matter. There were legendary tales of his courage, his fortitude going barefoot in winter, putting up with all kinds of dangers, his total calm in the face of his impending death.

It really seemed to people that Socrates had a level of understanding which did enable him always to do the right thing without any kind of conflict from his emotions. Paul, can we get a bit more context here? The 5th century BC talked about it and mentioned it's a golden age but towards the end of it, it was a very turbulent it was very turbulent for the Athenian democracy of the Pelopesian Wars the Great War with Sparta, the crushing of the Athenian fleet and Sicily and the plague that came to Athens and so on and so forth.

Can you just give us a bit, flesh that out a bit and then say how, as it were, made itself effective, made itself known inside the Athens that we're talking about. If you say a golden age, a rather a tarnished golden age, the last 30 years of the 5th century, as you say this great war with Sparta, which dragged on and on, plague, battle losses. Then when the war is completely lost,

then the Spartans imposed on Athens this brutal junta of 30 pro-Spartan oligogs, the so-called 30 tyrants, who ruled over Athens for a year or so. And then by a remarkable series of events, democracy was restored in 403, and then four years later, Socrates is brought to trial. And I find it hard to believe that those awful events the Athenian suffered from didn't have some impact

on what happened in the court. In the sense that he was very anti-democratic and therefore could seem to be pro-oligarchic and therefore who could seem to be pro the 30 tyrants and therefore when the democracy came back he wasn't with the movement. We've talked about the differences between Plato's and Xenophon Socrates.

In fact, one of the furies, I think, where they do converge or even agree, is over Socrates dislike, if not of democracy itself, certain key aspects of Athens democracy, public pay for poor people to hold office and selection of people to hold office by drawing lots, both Plato and Zenophon,

I make quite clear that this did not meet with Socrates' approval. And because politics in Athens was very much polarised, oligarchs and Democrats, if you weren't obviously for one group, then you must be for the other. This is interesting how much he was deeply mixed up in, and it was deeply mixed up in war, he was deeply mixed up in politics,

he was deeply mixed in philosophy, he was around all those. thing. But let's move to the trial. Let me talk about his influence matter. David Sedley, shortly after the end of this war and the resumption at the end of the 5th century, democracy in Athens, he

was put on trial. Do we know precisely why? Well, we know what the charges were. They were corrupting the young and denying the gods of the city while introducing new gods. Those were the official

charges. Corrupting the young has often been to been taken to mean, as it were, encouraging homosexuality? Not really, no, because homosexuality was actually a normal relationship in the kind of male society that Socrates moved in. It's actually, the idea was rather that by questioning basic moral values, he had actually undermined the moral fibre of the young. As I understand it, charges were brought against people. people by individuals. So therefore, this could be an act of personal revenge.

Yes. Well, Socrates says in Plato's reconstruction of his defence speech that he's made a huge number of enemies, and you can absolutely see why in the pages of Plato where lots of people loathed him because of the way he undermined their public standing. By the way, he questioned them in front of their peers and their juniors. Because he actually demonstrated ignorance time after time after time in these dialogue. Their ignorance. Their ignorance, that's exactly right. it's completely understandable that the three individuals who brought the charges should have done so out of personal motivation.

Do you know anything more, Paul Minut, about these people? Well, we know about one of them, one of the three accuses, a man called Anaitis, who was active as a democratic politician and had been in exile when the tyrants were in control in Athens. We also know that around the time of the trial of Socrates, there were a number of other political trials held where people who had been on the oligarchic side at the time for the tyrants

well life was made rather difficult for them, shall we say, being brought to trial. And I think I would see Socrates' trial as part of that sequence of trials. Angie Hobbes, we have this trial then. The court is in one end of the Agra, isn't it? And there's still, you can see the benches now, as I'm. Well, that is one.

Let's leave that aside. That's what I read somewhere, but that doesn't matter. The 501 of the citizens of Athens are the jury. It lasts for one day. The lawyers have, at the most an hour, each is measured by the waterclocks. I think we could reintroduce into this country with great effect. And how did Socrates acquit himself, Angie Hobbes, at that trial? Well, again, it depends which source you put your faith in. If you go with Plato's apology, he does give...

magnificent, some might say, rather high-handed defence of philosophy and his life in Athens. He refuses to beg, he refuses to supplicate or ask for pity. He says, in fact, I think I have served Athens so well, you should be paying me money, you know, rewarding me for what I have done. He absolutely will not grovel, which of course would have got some people's backs up. So I think he'd Well Some of his friends thought he'd decided that he'd lived

You know he was 70 He didn't want to sink into decrepitude And he wasn't too upset at the thought of dying now And certainly he ends the speech that Plato puts into his mouth Very magnificently he says at the end So I go to die and you to live And which of us goes to the better lot Only God can know

very moving but also you can see a certain imperiousness about it which might have rather annoyed some of the jurors and he didn't put in accountably when they said you will be put he was lying you will be sentenced to death

he could have said why not send me into volatile exile he could have put in account of that no he didn't he could have done Paul will know more about the factual details here than me yes it was a kind of trial where the two opposing

parties put forward proposals for punishment. And Socrates' first punishment was, as Angie said, being maintained at public expense the rest of his life, which was for Olympic heroes and the like. And then he offered a very modest fine, but he did not propose exile. According to Plato,

in Xenophon's account, he refuses, I think, to make any proposal at all. Which account, David said, did you come down on the side of these accounts? I mean, do you think there's one coherent, trustworthy account, or are we forever stuck with... Socratic literature was burgeoning in the early 4th century BC

and it was basically it was a branch of fiction but these people were writing as apologists for Socrates So extracting the historical facts about the trial Is probably a hopeless task What we really have to say is we live, for better or worse We live with Plato's account Because Plato's account is the one that carries conviction He was there

He was there 25 years old or something like that That's right And he actually, one of the only occasions when Plato mentions himself in his work is when Socrates mentions his presence at the trial in his defence speech. So because Plato has fixed the later tradition about Socrates, we tend to go with it. But do we really know that that was right? No, we don't. Angie and then, Paul. Well, I actually want to, yeah, a question for Paul,

because there's a tradition from antiquity, which you'll know more about than me, that Socrates said nothing at his trial. Isn't there this, you know, that he just said there was silence, and it was Plato and Xenophon who desperately tried to put into his mouth the words they felt he should or would have said. Yes, indeed. And, of course, the discrepancies between Xenophon and Plato about whether he had supporting speakers as well who spoke on his behalf. But if I might just speak very quickly the point about the site of the trial, I think is interesting. There are these stone benches at one end of the Agarra.

There were, we think five originally could seat 500 people. It could be where the trial took place, just. If so, it's right in the public domain. The jurors sat there looking out over all the noise and bustle, the arguing, the bargaining, behind them on the hill there, there were the bronze founders' workshops. You know, this is justice, as it were, in the community. And the jurors would be thinking all the time, my decision will affect all that's going on around me here.

I mean, silencing court was not a concept the Athenians would have understood. should. Shall we just briefly refer to the actual death and then move on to the influence? David Sedley could utilize through the actual death of Socrates? He refused he's curious that he wasn't crucified because people were then. That would have been an option. He was lucky he got hemlock instead. And the description in Plato

is a very calm Socrates, is drinking the hemlock. All his friends fall about weeping, but he's completely calm throughout and the effect of the hemlock as Plato describes it is gradual paralysis from the feet up. There has been some modern dispute about whether this is actually medically correct or not and it turns out it all depends which variety of hemlock was used and there is a variety which would have produced those effects. So they could have been right after all. Let's try to discuss his influence. So do you want to get a quick word? Yes, because it does seem to me from Plato's feeder where we get this.

account of Socrates' death, that you also get a more unattractive side of Socrates coming in here. There's a chilliness, it seems to me. He banishes even his wife from his death scene and all the other women folk, because they were weeping and wailing and he wanted everything calm,

and I would say, sort of male. Why don't we stick with calm just as once? Well, it is significant that all the women are banished from the prison cell. There's no doubt that one of the many things that we will find I don't think he was a good husband.

He was not. I don't think he particularly good husband. There's no reason to think he was untypical of his male coat. And he sort of says, well, I'm going to die, but that's okay, because, you know, I'll find, if there is an afterlife, I'll find people there to sort of discuss with everything. My friends are replaceable, is basically what he says. And I find that rather chilling.

Paul, you're nodding. Do you find a chilling too? Yes, yes, I do. Indeed. I just say, if I make to go back to the point, by hemlock, I think even the sort of nice, kind poison sounds pretty horrible that you die through suffocation. I find it hard to believe it would have been quite as calm as Plato suggests. It's true, but Socrates was notable for his ability, his control over his own body.

For example, he could drink gallons of alcohol and remain sober. I think this is of a Plato tells, of course, in the symposium. Part of the same portrayal. There's no reason why Plato, I mean, we keep saying so Plato tells us, Plato was writing to people who had known Socrates. This is en passant, but there's not much reason to him to lie. And if you ought lie, I wouldn't somebody say, look, you're telling on truth, because I knew him as well. And he didn't drink at all. I mean, so I think you have to sort of begin to believe some of the stuff like this.

Yes, yes, no. I mean, look, my analogy here is Thucydides, who is an earlier contemporary of Plato, a historian. And Plato, sorry, Thucydides, can invent speeches which he puts in people's mouths. Now, if historian can do that. I have no problem with a philosopher doing the same sort of thing. Yeah, speeches is one thing, but the things that he did and that people would know about it, they would know that Socrates was a soldier, they would know that he went in the eye ground, they might know that he could drink a lot or did drink or whatever,

they would know that he went around barefoot in winter, so I think, anyway, there you go. Can we talk David Sedley about, and begin to talk about his influence, first of all on the classical world, the influence of Socrates' philosophy through the dialogues of Plato. And Plato wrote dialogues to imitate the style in which Socrates had conducted his philosophy, as I understand it. Exactly, yes. I think that Socrates' philosophical influence, well, first of all, it was ubiquitous, but it was different on Plato from his influence on other thinkers. Plato clearly takes the view that Socrates represents stage one of the process of enlightenment. Socrates had to come first before Plato in order to clear away all the misconceptions and all the pretensions to knowledge which were actually ill-founded. Then that left a vacuum that Plato, with his own philosophy, was able to go on to.

fill. But for other thinkers, and there were many, many philosophers who call themselves Socratic's and claimed to be followers of Socrates, particularly in the 4th century BC, but carrying on to the Stoics from 300 BC onwards. For them, Socrates had already, must have already achieved full enlightenment, because that was the only way of explaining why he led the perfect philosophical life. And therefore, the project for all these Socratic philosophers in his wake was to find out what it was that Socrates understood that enabled him to live that life. And then there were competing views about it. The usual view was one that comes back to something that Angie talked about, which is that either the one good or the only important good

is wisdom. If you know enough, then not only does nothing else matter, what happens to your body or possessions, doesn't matter, but also you will always do the right thing. So that was a recurrent theme in schools that call themselves Socratic and became, indeed, one of the main basis of stoicism. But there were many other views about what the secret of Socrates' life had been, that other philosophical schools developed. And just to give you one example, from the third century BC onwards,

the school founded by Plato, the academy, became a sceptical school. It was devoted to showing that knowledge claims can never be firmly established. All philosophical questions must admit of two opposed points of view. They can never be closed down. That they regarded as being the real message of Socrates. Socrates was the person who showed you you can never rest content with the beliefs you currently hold. Every question must be constantly reopened and re-examined. So that was, in their view, that was the message of Socrates,

and that was what made Socrates life and exemplary life. Do you see, Angie Hobbes, do you see the influence of Socrates through Plato? We're now beginning to talk about Plato more than Socrates. beaming right through philosophy and Western thought and setting the pattern for Western thought, not in philosophy but in other areas of knowledge, until a couple of thousand years. Absolutely.

I mean, there's masses more we could say about Plato, who does also move on from Somersocrates his views and complicates the psychology and the theory of action and so on. Yes, if we take, for instance, in the Renaissance for Monten, the skeptical humanist Monten, Socrates was a hero. And Montaigne, paraphrasing the quote from Cicero that we looked at earlier about Socrates, bringing philosophy down from the heavens and into people's homes.

Monten says that Socrates has done humanity a great favour because he's shown how we can try to work out how to live the good life for ourselves, without relying on gods or religion or tradition. We can have a bash at this ourselves. And Montaigne is hugely impressive. by that. And then, oh yes, you've got Hegel in the, in his history. For him, he sees Socrates as making this huge turn again from cosmology and physics into ethics. Of course, Socrates is a hero of Keogar's concept of irony, which is subtitled in reference to Socrates. But for me, the most interesting character is Nietzsche, because Nietzsche's, he's overt saying, he's a

hugely hostile to Socrates, right from the very early birth of tragedy, which I think is 1872, right up to Twilight of the Idols, which he writes a year or two before he allegedly goes mad. And for Nietzsche, Socrates, is this chilly, life-denying rationalist who is anti-tragedy, he's anti-music, he's anti the instincts, he's anti all the things that Nietzsche thinks affirms life. However, Nietzsche always admits that Socrates holds a fascination And of course he shows how fascinated he is By the fact he keeps returning to him And what Nietzsche and Socrates share

is turning philosophy into a personal life quest Paul, do you think that Socrates is more as important As an icon as he is as a thinker The man who pursued philosophy all his life He did it without gain, he did it and nothing else And this was, and he did for the moment, for the present With people he met and could talk to Yes, but I'm speaking as a, as a philosophy.

historian when I agree with that, yes. I think so large as our sort of hinterland of ignorance about Socrates that he can be appropriated for all sorts of purposes. David Sernard. Yes, now I think that that's right. Everybody

can recreate Socrates in their own image, or to suit their own agenda. But it does seem to me that although Socrates, there are many ways in which he is uniquely inspiring and influential in history of philosophy, But I think the most important single thing is that he is the person who put on the map the idea that philosophy needn't just be an academic discipline.

It can actually be about how you lead your life. In fact, Socrates, perhaps his most inspiring saying on this is recorded by Plato is that spending, taking time out every day to discuss questions of basic values, the ones that shape your life, is the best thing you can do to improve your own life. And as he puts it, the unexamined life is not worth living. Angie Holmes, would you think there's any conflict between Socrates as an icon which overtakes Socrates as a philosophical influence? As an icon, he can be a bit dangerous. I think he absolutely stands up as a philosopher in his own right. We don't need to make... What do you think is a bit dangerous as an icon?

Because people can make him into such a perfect human being that, in a sense, he loses his influence. And we stop thinking that we could... really learn anything from him for ourselves. And I think that would be to do him a great disservice. He uses very simple non-jargon language. He uses very simple metaphors. He wants us every day

to think, how can I best live my life? What sort of person should I be? And as David said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, thank you for examining Socrates' life. Sorry, very obvious. So we thank you very much, Angie Hobbes, David Sedley, and Paul Millett.

We'll be back next week with the subject of antimatter and why its absence from the universe is baffling physicists but thanks very much for listening. Good morning. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy

at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4.