Tag: Apology

Plato’s Defense of the Humanities

Posted on by Scott Samuelson

by Scott Samuelson

Billy and Benny McGuire, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s heaviest twins. For a while, they worked as professional wrestlers.

I was a freshman in college when I first read Plato’s Apology, his version of the event that probably made the biggest mark on him: his city’s trial and condemnation of Socrates.

I recall how a fellow student in Humanities 101 was skeptical of the claim in the Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living. He asked about the worth of the lives of the world’s two heaviest twins, the ones pictured on Honda motorcycles in the Guinness Book of World Records (an image emblazoned on all our minds). Regardless of if they led examined lives, he asked, didn’t they seem to be living well, zooming around the country together?

We ended up debating if philosophy is just one way of having a good life, or if it’s a necessary ingredient in all lives. I don’t remember where I landed (in fact, I’m still making up my mind), but I vividly remember thinking that all of us have bottomlessly deep lives, and that all human lives are worth examining, especially those of the two brothers on their Hondas.

I went on to major in philosophy and eventually to teach philosophy in a wide variety of venues—not just liberal arts colleges, universities, and community colleges, but houses of worship, bars, prisons, and even online. I’ve often had occasion to assign the Apology and debate the merits of the examined life.

In my experience, readers of the dialogue are inevitably struck by how Socrates doesn’t seem to care about winning his case. So, what’s he really up to? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about in light of higher education’s current predicament, where the academic humanities are fighting for their existence against powerful economic, cultural, and political forces. What should I as a defender of the humanities be doing? What can I learn from Socrates at his trial?

Having just reread the Apology, this time for the Catherine Project with a group of especially sharp readers, I’ve drawn nine lessons from how Socrates, in a far more perilous situation than our current one, presents and defends the humanities. Read more »

Monday, September 18, 2023

High Holy Devilry

Posted on by Barbara Fischkin

by Barbara Fischkin

Is this one of Barbara Fischkin's ancestors, watching her wildflowers?

As the Jewish New Year 5784 unfolds, the late newspaperman Jimmy Breslin comes to mind. Jimmy was a great guy, an awful guy, and a Catholic guy. Channeling him now might be tantamount to sacrilege. Or, maybe not. My immediate ancestors, whose memory I honor this week, loved sacrilege. I imagine their beloved ghosts hovering over me in my unruly but spiritual garden of wildflowers and reminding me that they read Jimmy religiously, pun intended.

Fortunately, none of these relatives, many of them targets of anti-Semitism, were alive when Breslin was briefly suspended from his newspaper for unleashing a barrage of Asian slurs. Yes, that was the awful Jimmy. He apologized. During his long writing life he also published a trove of stories railing against injustice. Included among these were his December lists of  “people I am not talking to next year,” a journalistic winter wind. A bit childish but also fun and laden with messages. Embedded in these lists were cris de coer against inhumanity, selfishness—and snobbery. Jimmy Breslin had no patience for elitism and, in one offering, depicted his ejection from the elegant 21 Club for, it seems, the mere crime of looking like a schlump.

In the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are asked to apologize to those they wronged during the past year. This week, like Breslin, I will also apologize. But first—and also in Breslinesque mode—I present a list of people to whom I will not be speaking this Jewish new year. I wish I could present this as original, but it has been done before—including by a reporter for the Jerusalem Post. We writers like to copy one another and a select number of us love to copy Jimmy, in particular. Read more »

Monday, December 30, 2020

Was Socrates Anti-Democratic?

Posted on by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

When people talk about Socrates, they typically refer to the leading character in Plato’s dialogues. This is because little is known about the historical Socrates beyond the fact that he wandered barefoot around Athens asking questions, an activity that got him executed for religious invention and corrupting the youth in 399 BCE. The relation between the historical figure and the Platonic character is debatable. In any case, Plato’s Socrates is most commonly read as a staunch anti-democrat. However, once one distinguishes between being opposed to democracy from theorizing the ways democratic society can fail, the relationship between Socrates and democracy grows more complicated.

The depiction of Socrates as an anti-democrat draws largely from the scathing critique he launches in Plato’s masterpiece, The Republic. There, Socrates famously characterizes democracy as the rule of the unwise, corrupt mob. Like children loose in a candy store, the democratic herd pursues pleasure only, rewarding sweet-talkers and flatterers with the power of political office, who in turn exploit politics for their own gratification. The result is injustice. Accordingly, Socrates says, democracy ultimately dissolves into tyranny — a population of citizens dominated by their basest desires, and an opportunistic ruler that manipulates them for personal gain.

Socrates’ critique of democracy is formidable. Notice, however, that Socrates is laying out a vulnerability inherent within democratic politics that no advocate of democracy can afford to ignore. In fact, the tradition of democratic theory is largely focused on identifying ways in which this vulnerability can be mitigated. And popular discussions today about disinformation, corruption, and incivility tend to concede much of Socrates’ case. The point is that giving voice to a standing weakness of democracy does not by itself make one an anti-democrat. One might argue that a crucial part of democratic advocacy is to engage in criticism of extant democratic practice.

Yet in The Republic, Socrates also lays out a vision of the perfect city, the kallipolis, and it is decidedly undemocratic. Kallipolis is an absolute kingship where philosophers rule over a strictly stratified society in which everything is exactingly regulated, from education, production, and conquest to art, diet, sex, and parenting. According to the standard line, that Socrates proposes the kallipolis as the paradigm of justice entails that he is an anti-democrat. Read more »