also the possibility of a shared life of the mind that had been implied by mid-eighteenth-century depictions of Socrates'
death.
TALK, TRAGEDY, TOTALITARIANISM: THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES IN MODERN TIMES
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) - the great historian of the French Revolution and one of the most influential writers of the Victorian age - was unimpressed by the death of Socrates. When asked whether he admired the conversa- tion of his last hours, he commented damningly, 'Well, in such a case, I should have made no discourse; should have wished to be left alone, to profound reflections.' Carlyle, who recommended the 'worship of silence', condemned Socrates for talking too much - a complaint that would recur throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In modern times, Socrates' death has generally been seen in two main ways: as the conflict of the individual with the state and as the downfall of rational, talkative man. Through meditating on the death of Socrates, modern writers and thinkers wrestled with their own doubts about civic diso- bedience, the power or limits of human reason and moder- nity itself. Socrates' death was seen as an iconic moment in the formation of modernity. Many of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century - including Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche - looked back to this moment as
16. Antonio Canova made a series of reliefs of scenes from the life of Socrates, including Socrates' rescue of Alcibiades, his dismissal of his family from the prison and the moment when Crito closes the master's eyes; the set has been called 'a secular stations of the Cross'. In this relief from 1794, Socrates, holding his hand to heaven, defends himself before the Athenian jury; his three accusers stand to his right.
the beginning of modern ethical and political thought, and sometimes as the beginning of modernity itself.
Socrates' talkativeness identified him as a modern person: like us, he talked too much. Because his main expertise lay not with the sword, but with the tongue, he was a hero for our times.
But Socrates' chatter came under new suspicion in the nineteenth century, because he was no longer valued as a representative of intellectual friendship. Socrates now seemed to be talking, ineffectually, to himself. The Enlightenment emphasis on Socrates' death as an image of shared mental life disappeared at the time of the French Revolution. Thereafter, Socrates was presented not in dialogue with his friends, but in conflict - set against his judges or his city, or struggling (and failing) to control his most unruly students.
The calm, philosophical death of an old man, surrounded by his devoted followers, was out of keeping with Romantic cultural ideals. Felix Auvray's version of the theme, probably painted around 1800, shows the dying Socrates as a clean- shaven young man, expiring in a lonely garret, in the manner of Chatterton or Keats.
When Socrates is shown with his pupils, he is no longer the successful patriarch. J. B. Regnault's painting Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure (exhibited 1791) shows Alcibiades lurching drunkenly in the arms of Pleasure, while Socrates grabs his other arm. The topic was a popular one in nineteenth-century art, while Socrates' socia- ble, sublime death fell from favour among visual artists. In Regnault's painting the scowling philosopher holds up his left arm to heaven, in a mirror image of the pose of David's dying Socrates, while with his right, he grabs at Alcibiades, trying to lead the sybarite away from the brothel to higher things.
The image is a meditation on the French Revolution: the hedonistic aristocrat is dragged from his palace by a rough, poorly dressed revolutionary. But it seems likely that the mission of this old red cap will fail. Socrates cannot teach Alcibiades self-control unless he wants to learn. The conflict can be resolved only by violence and death.
Antonio Canova's relief of Socrates facing his judges (1794) is ostensibly very different: the figures are relatively static, and the white marble contrasts with Regnault's colourful canvas. But in both these images from the 1790^ Socrates is shown not with his friends and followers, but with his oppo- nents. He faces the hostile jury alone. Moreover, Canova's relief does not suggest any kind of connection or conversa- tion. Socrates does not meet the eyes of either jury or viewer; instead, he looks upwards, perhaps seeking his own divine guidance.
Despite the vast number of images of the dying Socrates in the eighteenth century, there had been (to my knowledge) no earlier depiction of Socrates on trial. Canova's focus of the solitary Socrates, facing the judgment of his fellow- Athenians, foreshadows the major concerns of modern read- ings. From this moment onwards, Socrates was always on trial. The Socratic point of view - reason, science, irony or 'subjective' morality - always opposes some other value (such as pleasure or traditional morality). His death was tragic not because it was unjust, but because two different and equally valid models of justice came into conflict.
Modern philosophical accounts of the death of Socrates begin with G. W. F. Hegel's series of Lectures on the History of Philosophy, given during the years 1805 to 1830. Hegel argues that Athens was right to condemn Socrates and Socrates was also right to resist Athens: these two sides inevitably, and tragically, clashed. For Hegel, Socrates represents the begin- ning of modern ethical philosophy and modern theories of the self, in that he introduced a new style of ethics (Moralitat) that depends on an individual's subjective judgement. This new style necessarily conflicted with traditional morality based on social conventions (Sittlichkeit).
Hegel presents the death of Socrates as a turning point in world history, because it marks a significant shift in human attitudes towards ethics. After Socrates, it was no longer possible simply to act by the wisdom handed down from one generation to another, such as the idea that sons should honour their fathers. The Athenian jury destroyed Socrates; but Socrates even more thoroughly destroyed the Athenian culture in which he had been born, because he introduced the notion that everyone must decide what to do for them- selves.
Hegel saw Socratic individualism as neither entirely good nor entirely bad, but as an inevitable development in the process of history. His treatment of Socrates is bound up both with his theory of history and his theory of tragedy. Socrates is, like Antigone, a paradigmatic tragic figure. Hegel challenges the conventional view that this death is tragic because Socrates died unjustly. Rather, he says, 'Innocent suffering would only be sad and not tragic.' The death of Socrates is genuinely tragic because the Athenian decision to kill him was as valid, in moral terms, as his own resist- ance to Athenian conventions: 'Two opposed rights come into collision, and one destroys the other.' This is, for Hegel, the essence of tragedy.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was always haunted by the figure of the dying Socrates. His first book was a dissertation on Socrates that took him over ten years to complete: The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates (1841). This work partly echoed Hegel's ideas, but Kierkegaard resisted his claim that Athens was justified in killing Socrates. Kierkegaard's meditation on the trial and death of Socrates allowed him to come up with a new account of ethics. He argued that Hegel was wrong to invoke collective moral- ity. For Kierkegaard, all morality was subjective. He also condemned Hegel for neglecting Socrates' divine mission. Inspired by Socrates' daimonion, Kierkegaard argued that morality is inseparable from spirituality.