But this vision of Socrates as a martyr for free speech is very different from the ways in which he has been viewed in earlier ages. My task in this book is a kind of archaeology in the history of ideas. I hope to show where the modern vision of Socrates came from, and how it differs from other stories which have been told about him. I do so on the understand- ing that the presence of multiple voices, including dissent- ing ones, including the voices of the dead, can only make our whole intellectual community stronger. If gadflies are to be beneficial, we must be able to feel real pain at their bite.
I will argue that even Socrates' admirers - including Plato himself - have almost always articulated doubts, distance and irritation as well as love for their dead master. The dying Socrates is multi-faceted in a way unparalleled by almost any other character, either fictional or real. He was a new kind of hero, one who died not by the sword or the spear, but by poison, without violence or pain. His death embod- ies a series of paradoxes. It is a secular martyrdom, repre- senting both reason and scepticism, both individualism and civic loyalty. This new story about how a hero should die was provocative to the ancient Greeks, and should continue to challenge and puzzle us today.
When I contemplate this death, I find myself torn between enormous admiration and an equally overwhelming sense of rage.
I revere Socrates as a man who spoke truth to power, who was fearless of his reputation, who believed in a life devoted to the search for truth and who championed the idea that virtue is integral to happiness. In a world where prejudices seem to be taking ever firmer and firmer root, I respect Socrates as a man who left no traditional idea unchal- lenged, and felt that asking intelligent questions is valuable in itself, regardless of what conclusions one draws - if any. I believe strongly in the importance of Socrates as a reminder that the majority is not always right and that truth matters more than popular opinion. I am inspired by Socrates as an example of how the life of the mind can be playful, yet not frivolous.
But then doubts, resentment and annoyance begin to set in. Socrates' self-examination - at least as depicted by Plato - was conducted by questioning other people. Having been told by an oracle that he was the wisest of men, he tested those around him who seemed to be wisest - and discov- ered that they were even less wise than himself, because he was at least conscious of his own ignorance. Socrates seems to stand one step outside his own investigations. His own beliefs are never called into serious question.
I find Socrates' family life - or lack of it - particularly dif- ficult to admire. It is hard to respect a man who neglected his wife and sons in order to spend his time drinking and chatting with his friends about the definitions of common words. When Socrates chose to risk death by the practice of his philosophy, and when he chose to submit to the death sentence, he was condemning his wife and young children to a life of poverty and social humiliation. From this per- spective, his willingness to die starts to seem not brave but irresponsible.
Socrates died for truth, perhaps. But he also died in obedience to his own personal religious deity. He died for faith, even superstition. I am suspicious of the Socrates who believed in an invisible spirit - a daimonion - that whispered in his head.
Socrates' false modesty - in Greek, his 'irony' or eironeia - may be the most annoying thing about him. He was - it often seems - both arrogant and dishonest. I am infuriated by the Socrates who pretended it was all free discussion but always had an unstated goal - to prove the other person wrong.
I wonder whether it is really admirable to die so calmly, so painlessly and, above all, so talkatively. One of the deepest niggling anxieties about the death of Socrates, which runs through the tradition from the time of antiquity, is that he was always too clever by half.
My mixed responses to the death of Socrates reveal my own preoccupations. As a teacher, academic, would-be intel- lectual and aspirant to a good life, I am interested in whether I can take Socrates as a model. I wonder whether I should, like Socrates, put the quest for the truth before everything else - including my family, my material well-being and the wishes of my community.
I sometimes wonder whether Socrates was even a good teacher. The question hangs on whether the central goal of education in the humanities is to prompt students to examine their own lives, or whether we have a responsibility to teach students some specific things - skills, facts, a canon or curriculum. Socrates claimed that he never taught any- thing, because he did not know anything of any value. But if a student asks for factual information, it is unhelpful to say, with Socrates, 'What do you think?' I suspect that a weak version of the Socratic method has become all too common in university classrooms.
I sometimes feel that Nietzsche was right when he blamed the decadent dying Socrates for the later decline of western civilisation. We still live in the shadow of what Nietzsche called Socrates' 'naive rationalism'. Perhaps Socrates has held sway over our culture for far too long.
You, the readers of this book, will bring your own special interests to the contemplation of its subject. I hope it will help you to understand the death of Socrates as a historical event that happened a long time ago. But I also hope it will show you how this event has been recycled, reinterpreted and re-evaluated by generation after generation. You too must find your own vision of Socrates.
the hemlock cup
Some scholars - such as Alexander Nehemas - have claimed that the death of Socrates took on cultural importance only in the eighteenth century, when it became an image of the enlightened person's struggle against intolerance. Others - most notably the Italian scholar Mario Montuori - have claimed that, up until the eighteenth century, the dying Socrates was always viewed sympathetically: he was 'the just man wrongly killed'. Only the development of academic historical method - it is claimed - allowed scholars to recog- nise that the Athenians might have had good reason to want him dead.
In this book, I will argue against both these positions. There have always been people who thought Socrates hardly died soon enough; and Socrates' death, for good or ill, has played an essential role in the stories told about him.
Plato makes the hemlock central to Socrates' character and philosophy. He describes Socrates as a man who can control even the ending of his own life, who understands his death even before it happens.
Ever since Plato, the hemlock has represented Socrates. Writing at the end of the fourth century ad, John Chrysostom alluded to Socrates without feeling the need to name him. 'People will say that among the pagans also, there have been many who despised death. Such as who? The man who drank the hemlock?' Socrates does not need to be mentioned by name, any more than we need to name 'the man on the Cross'.
Many other Athenian prisoners must also have been exe- cuted by this means. But the hemlock is so important in the story of Socrates that it has become his symbol, his identify- ing mark.
We have descriptions of Socrates' life, death and philos- ophy from two pupils: Plato and Xenophon. Both present Socrates' death as not merely the end but the culmination of his life. Socrates said, according to Xenophon, 'I have spent my whole life preparing to defend myself.' In Plato's Phaedo Socrates claims that, 'Those who pursue philosophy prop- erly study nothing except dying and being dead. And if this is true, it would be strange to desire only this one's whole life long, but then complain when that very thing which they longed for and practised for so long has finally arrived.' Socrates claims that he was born to die, in precisely this way.