But another possibility was to see Socrates as an anti- metaphysician, an ordinary man whose greatest heroism lay in the revelation of his own commonplace ugliness. The idea of dying may be brave, but wanting to live, and admit- ting it, is even braver. The concept of Socrates as a man of the people whose wisdom and courage are both of a simple, common-sensical kind, has been popular in twentieth- century responses to the myth.
A sharp little story called 'Socrates Wounded' by the great German dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), written during his exile from Germany in the war years, focuses on Socrates in the Battle of Delium. Brecht's Socrates is a fat little cobbler who is rightly renowned for both cleverness and bravery - but bravery 'of a special kind'. When the battle begins, Socrates is clever enough to try to run away, rather than be trampled by Persian infantry. But other people are convinced, in the scrum of the battle, that he has really acted like a hero. Socrates is the Falstaff of Athens. Once he gets home, he is faced with a dilemma. Should he admit that he does not really deserve the laurel for bravery? Finally he tells Alcibiades and Xanthippe the truth. Xanthippe bursts out laughing, while Alcibiades says that he wishes he had brought his wreath to give to Socrates. 'You can take my word for it, I think you're brave enough. I don't know anybody who in this situation would have told the story you've just told.' Brecht suggests that the courage to tell the truth, when not compelled to do so and at the risk of embarrassment and shame, is more deeply admirable than the courage to run at an enemy in battle; the latter seems phoney and foolhardy.
Opponents of metaphysics may, like Brecht, discover or invent a non-metaphysical Socrates. Alternatively, common sense may lead one to reject the whole story of Socrates' death. A very funny piece by Woody Allen (from his collec- tion Side Effects, New York, Random House, 1981) evokes what would have happened at the time of Socrates' death, if Allen put himself 'in this great philosopher's sandals'. Allen's Socrates spouts some of the usual stuff about the immortal- ity of the soul and the 'principles of truth and free enquiry'. But he is, of course, far too neurotic and cowardly to want to die, or even to suffer any inconvenience. His friend Agathon protests, 'But this is your chance to die for truth!'. Allen-as- Socrates replies, 'Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for truth. On the other hand I have a lunch date in Sparta next week and I'd hate to miss it.' Agathon is shocked: 'Is our wisest philosopher a coward?' he asks. The Woody Allen Socrates answers, 'I'm not a coward and I'm not a hero. I'm some- where in the middle'. Allen's dialogue returns to the old problems of whether Socrates was ordinary or extraordinary, and whether he was really able to 'bring down philosophy from heaven to earth'. It suggests that a Socratic death could never happen, in the real modern Manhattan world of eggs and smoked salmon bagels. Philosophy is just an academic subject, not a mode of life and death - in contrast to what Seneca, Montaigne, or Voltaire might have hoped. Agathon protests, 'But you have proved many times that the soul is immortal!' Allen's Socrates replies, 'And it is! On paper. See, that's the thing about philosphy - it's not all that functional once you get out of class.'
Another solution for those suspicious of abstractions and metaphysics is to concentrate on other characters in Socrates' story, setting rational male philosophy against feminine intuition. Xanthippe by the Viennese writer Fritz Mauthner (1884; translated as Mrs Socrates by Jacob Hartmann, 1926), is a surprisingly successful novelistic account of the effect of Socrates' life and death on his wife. Mauthner's Xanthippe is an honest, intelligent but uneducated lame peasant woman who suspects, quite rightly, that her husband's phi- losophy will get him into trouble. Socrates cannot restrain himself from delivering a lecture in which he acknowledges his doubts about the mythological gods of the city, and his fate is sealed. Socrates himself does not seem particularly upset about dying; his last words, according to Mauthner, are, 'Recovery at last! If the gods exist, I should like to thank them for my recovery!'
But for Xanthippe, things do not look so rosy. Left a single parent with a young child (Lamprocles), she settles as a country village farmer and makes a life for herself and her son. But she refuses to allow her boy to learn to read or to daydream. She has retained her husband's philosophical works, but eventually burns them after Plato and Xenophon try to buy them from her. Pure metaphysics, 'pure sunlight', is fatal, she believes. Socrates chose perfection of the work, not perfection of the life. His calm, philosophical death con- demns Xanthippe and her child to a life of poverty and strug- gle. Whereas Socrates died for his own belief in reason, she dies trying to rescue her fellow peasants from an accidental fire in a granary. Xanthippe's death is the more admirable of the two.
The German artist Franz Caucig (1762-1828) painted a Death of Socrates which echoes the themes of Mauthner's novel. In this painting, Socrates lies on a wooden, straw- filled prison pallet, his eyes half-closed. A jug and cup stand on the bedside table; apparently he has already taken his dose. The male disciples and the executioner are shadowy figures in the background; the scene is focused on domestic tragedy. Xanthippe bends over her husband's prone body and clasps one of his hands; with the other, this stubborn old philosopher is still gesturing upwards, still trying to make some metaphysical point. Xanthippe wears a blue, Madonna- like robe, and a sturdy, tearful toddler boy is clinging to her neck. The child, whose face is at almost the exact centre of the canvas, is the real focus of our attention; his orphaning is the most important effect of the father's wilful death.
A similar story, but in a comic mode, is told by Roger
Scruton's Xanthippic Dialogues (1998), which offers a witty critique of Plato's version of Socrates. The women who were (in Plato's account) excluded from the Socratic circle, and from Plato's Academy, are now able to offer devastat- ing rebuttals of these male philosophers. Scruton reminds us that Plato's Socratic dialogues are not the whole truth, either about Socrates or about the world.
the problem of modern socrates
The dying Socrates proved particularly problematic for phi- losophers and theorists in the last decades of the twentieth century, because Socrates has so often been seen as a hero of reason - and reason itself has become a dubious value. In some cases, the death of Socrates has to be reimagined not as a demonstration of the power of reason, but as a final revela- tion of the impossibility of total rationality and total control over mysteries such as death. One striking modern paint- ing of the death of Socrates, by the German artist Johannes Grutzke, corrects David's controlled, triumphant death. It shows a man who looks crazed and convulsed, dying less with calm control than in the frenzy of a mad dog. The paint- ing illustrates the impossibility of approaching death rea- sonably.
Postmodernist or poststructuralist critiques of traditional western notions of reason and logic may end up condemn- ing the calm, classical image of the dying Socrates as the source of all our rationalist, 'logocentric' ills. The French the- orist Jacques Derrida's famous essay Plato's Pharmacy (1972) studies the multiple meanings of the Greek word pharmakon: drug, cure, poison, talisman, medicine, magic. Plato uses phar- makon as an image of writing. Derrida uses a close reading of the ambiguities of this word to conduct a wholesale critique of 'western metaphysics', beginning with Plato.