Socrates is Wrong: Inequality, Education & Athenian Democracy.

one refreshing thing about being 41
years old is that more and more the people I speak to are a little bit more mature themselves and even if they're not they feel some kind of pressure they feel they feel they have to live up to the expectation of being that little bit more mature when they talk to me so when I was younger if I read any philosopher whatsoever people would throw it in my face like with the assumption that I have some kind of diehard uncritical fan of this philosopher and I agree with everything they say so I would be reading the philosophy of Arthur Chopin our people be like yeah well Schopenhauer says be better if we weren't even born at all if we just didn't live well you think about that with your [ __ ] show why you read that book man like this is this is Canada we're talking these are these are white english-speaking Canadians members of the of the culture that I have dubbed the who do you think you are don't you know who I think I am mentality that's the mentality who do you think you are don't you know who I think I am this even extended to when I was reading the Quran the Quran being the religious text that the Muslim faith is based on these Lama face but like the fact that I'm reading this book doesn't mean I agree with it guy his I mean whatever the philosopher is I totally hate Immanuel Kant but you know actually read a manual conic you can't criticize them I mean and you know who can really know anything about the European tradition of philosophy without reading names like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle I am NOT an uncritical fan of any of these others but I start by giving credit to you guys in my audience and those of you take the time to talk to me on patreon or by email or what-have-you mmm in the last couple years people have really not treated me that way I can't remember a single person writing to me with the assumption that like I'm an uncritical fan of Socrates let alone play-doh not one I've never had that backhand approach now and I think it probably is because I'm 41 years old that's probably obviously back when I was a skull Buddhism there were a lot of misconceptions and mysteries of what do you really represent what are you really what is it you sympathize with within this velocity okay but this video we're talking about a really important example of an issue where I utterly utterly disagree with Socrates and I even sort of despise him and it's an issue that I think cuts down to the most fundamental question of what democracy is and what democracy should be and that has to do with our belief in education human equality and human inequality so I'm just gonna discuss one text briefly and I'm just gonna chitchat with my girlfriend about that's to be a home there is a text I think people don't pay enough attention to these days called first Alcubierre DS the name al-kabir DS is pronounced six different ways in modern english you may know him as LC PID is there's something about that all right first I'll get be at is at one point Socrates says to occupy at ease trying to motivate him to be a better politician to be a better leader in a democracy Athens is a democracy says to him you must be aware of who your true competition is your true competition are just the other Democratic leaders here in Athens who want to be important intellectual people your real competition is the king of Persia this dictator the area is now Iran Greece and Persia have been at war on and off for the whole lifetime of Socrates and long thereafter long before him on there I suppose and I'll keep the ADIZ actually gives a quite intelligent answer on that point and he says basically look I understand what you're saying here but to be perfectly honest with you I think of the the king of Persia I think of the Emperor Persia as a normal person just like you and I think of a normal human being and Socrates says back this really tells you something about the elitism in the whole philosophy of Socrates and the whole philosophy of Plato Socrates says back to them no no you mustn't say that you mustn't think that think of the educate that the emperor of persia said and then lists off all these fantastic claims about how since the day he was born the king of persia has learned horse riding from the greatest warrior in all of the persian empire how the greatest mathematician has taught him math how there's this series of like you know genius-level intellect s-- who've been recruited from across the vast empire of millions of people of persia to teach and tutor this young person to be the best king possible to be the best intellectual possible and best leader possible and then he turns to alchemy at ease and he says you you were supposed to be raised by Pericles Pericles was not his biological father but the great political Pericles had a kind of special role in his education upbringing often he was like his Godfather or godparents not worth the Gerson deals so you you know who was supposed to be responsible for your education was Pericles and all Pericles did was give you an old second-hand slave a slave who was too old to work in the fields a slave who's too old to be worth any money was handed over to be your tutor and look how you turned out and already in this conversation they've established that actually I'll keep you at ease agrees with Socrates in sympathy I'll keep you at ease feels that he's had a poor education that he hasn't learned what he needs to know to move ahead now and be a great leader in this democracy okay so already you have to feel the profound elitism here and it's not an elitism based on money it's not just based on the assumption that the rich are superior to the poor it's not an elitism based on ethnic difference I mean quite the contrary here is a Greek who's willing to regard a Persian as in no way inferior to them on the basis of race it's not based on ancestry or breeding it's based on education in a sense in the same way we still understand education today but this is Socrates living in a society where there was no formal system of education whatsoever unless you count military training they did have a formal system of military training and it was from the military tradition that Socrates and Aristotle also got the inspiration that their whole society could be improved if they had standardized education for everyone or at least standardized education for everyone who would appreciate it perhaps all right now there's just one brief quote I typed out here I want to read verbatim okay where Socrates says to occupy a day's joking oh no my friend I am quite wrong and I think that you ought rather to turn your attention to MIDI Asst the Quail reader and others like him who manage our politics in whom as the women would remark you may still see the slaves cut of hair cropping out in their minds as well as on their Pete's and they come with their barbarous lingo to flatter us and not to rule us so this is Socrates insulting medias the quail breeder so this is medieval II a farmer a farmer who breeds quails Socrates just thinks it's grotesque and laughable that it's a joking matter that a farmer that a quail breeder would have a leading role in Athenian politics how dairy and he still has the same haircut as a slave he still has the same mentality as a slave it's obvious and intentional and untranslatable play on words the point is that in the past he had the same haircut as a slave and it still shows in his way of thinking all right Socrates is an elitist he does think that a quail breeder that a farmer like this should have no place in politics and I would just note the politics by Aristotle so the title of the book is just politics by Arizona many elements of that book are using paradox and humor and irony it's very hard to tell when Aristotle is really being sincere with us and when he's being a bit provocative and joking around or when he's kind of setting up a sort of suggestive confusion for his reader so then later on he can tell you what he really thinks you know even professors do they do that say well this is a very complicated issue there were many sides to the story blah blah blah blah and then later on they say and and here's here's the solution here's why you should trust my perspective on the he does a lot of this kind of thing a lot of baffle gab to be perfect honest but one thing he says again and again is he just feels there's no place for common tradesman in politics in the democracy it comes up in different in different contexts Socrates himself was a common tradesman he was a stonecutter he was a stone merchant some people like to claim that he was a sculptor if you even study the text there isn't really evidence for that he might have been involved in the sculpting business a little bit but it seems that for the most part he measured and cut and sold stone that he wasn't he wasn't an artist per se but he was in the stone the stone cutting business the stone retailing business I'm gonna tell you he was a lowly tradesman right and and Aristotle was a medic medic means you're like a third class citizen and in Athens he can't anyway he's completely barred these are people who themselves are not in any way members of the Athenian elite now admittedly Aristotle back in his hometown he was a little bit of an elite figure his father was a medical doctor who got along with the ruling family way up north but that's that's kind of another story in Athens he had quite a lolis that is actually Aristotle did okay and yet we have this totally unblocking unrepentant elitism that you know okay I don't just find it despicable I don't just find it immoral I don't used to I actually think it's it's incorrect I think it's wrong in a totally pragmatic sense what do you mean MIDI it's the quail breeder is a bad political leader stola this day if you're a quail breeder if you're a quail farmer who promises the right set of policies and you're motivated do you say hey if you elect me I'm gonna get rid of corruption in politics I'm gonna reform the way voting works here's the list of what I'm gonna do so elect me and I'm gonna get it done damn straight great then the quail breeder is the right man for the job right so Melissa Melissa here my girlfriend off-camera you've also read through cities through cities history of the Peloponnesian War some of the politicians they were lowly right they were lowly figures isn't it Cleon who's this kind of despised military leader who's you know come up from the lower classes he's not he's not as erudite and aristocratic as some others but he's a somewhat brutal you know military leader who is to say that his opinion doesn't count why should he be a a political leader - yeah a sense that I got is that how you spoke was more important than what your position was prior to being in politics so Mihir this I haven't read this work but you know to hear Socrates saying this right okay they were quite harsh to people who couldn't be eloquent and express themselves and you know in very slight differences of accent word were despised so you know the difference between an Athenian accent and a bay ocean accent this is the British pronunciation of Bayeux Shevin like the next suburb north from Athens there it let alone the difference between an athenian accent and a spartan accent or something completely despised for this yeah this is true yeah what I got from Thucydides was mostly the speeches of these different leaders and how they impacted the citizens who were following them or you you believe that cuz I mean even this one quotation that medias the quail breeder you know he used to have the haircut of a slave and then we still has the mentality of asleep you you really think a well-spoken poor person a well-spoken quail or trades person or what have you or even Socrates himself you really think like did this attitude to me it's I mean it's not as bad as racism it's not that it's just born into you but the idea is if you don't have the correct education then you can't you you can't or you shouldn't participate in politics yeah yeah I wish I had something to say that would disagree with what you were saying but I mean I I think I tend to agree with you and as a problem in American politics that most of the politicians are elite and you know have this usually they are wealthy from wealthy families and have been able to receive education that people in the lower class haven't but part of this so melissa is from the same culture as I am she's from Detroit I'm from Toronto worlds away worlds away other side of the river or whatever but look um you know I don't believe in our culture that the elite education is a good education I don't think it makes you a better person now now I meet people from other cultures particularly people from India and Pakistan who still do really believe that education makes you a better person not a hundred percent but commonly in that culture right well if you asked me let's look at the education Donald Trump had right let's look at the education Barack Obama had I don't think it helped him at all do you know Law School is an incredibly boring dehumanizing process I just don't believe I don't believe law school makes you a better political leader like I completely am willing to believe that there could be a highly motivated quail breeder there could be a quail farmer a lowly person who gets into politics and says hey look I'm not corrupt this is what do I want to accomplish I mean most most of politics is about things that don't require like depth of scientific knowledge or something right it requires personal integrity commitments that you reach out to the public and communicate your message they believe in you you say okay elect me and now I'm gonna get this done I like I would there's an underlying assumption here that I would have to have faith in what that education really is what it means how it transforms your character or something and and within my own society you know I don't okay so that's true so Jimmy Carter the president of States was a peanut farmer but I don't know what education you have what do you think do you think Jimmy Carter so I'm going to look up your Jimmy Carter alma mater Jimmy Carter University now I'm gonna get a university named after Jimmy Carter or something right there we go where to Jimmy Carter go to college yep so he did he went to Georgia Tech Georgia Southwestern and Georgia Tech so I I do not know oh here we go bachelor science and then joined the Navy where he served in the submarine Corps all right especially given the fact that you recorded a video recently about if you are to be involved in vegan politics that you want to be able you know right after that yeah I mean who do you want to be in power he just criticized me in a really subtle way if you didn't catch a guy no no it's I just think it's actually you know something that goes without saying in American politics and the people who get into power or are from wealthy families that are able they're able to afford this education that you say you know question the value of does this really make you a better leader just because you've been able to jump through the hoops that's what I think even the information you learn is it really relevant yeah you learn something going through law school or going to business school at Donald Trump you learn nothing you learn nothing I just don't think it's relevant to the soul of democracy in that way yeah I've sorry I'm trying not to get too off-topic but I have kind of reflected recently on my education growing up and that I think you really can succeed in American education system if you're able to jump through all the hoops if you're able to study all the study guides and do all the test prep you know you can do a test prep course and get a high score on the SAT and learn nothing I think that's where this is going and remain completely vacuous and ignorant exactly just you know you can succeed in classes and and and get the high grade point average that you get your own aiming toward but you might not learn much and certainly with political leaders I don't know if you can say that and so much of politics is based on money in America how much money you can raise who you know the connections that you have not necessarily about the education you receive so yeah I mean it's just a really interesting so the next step of this discussion it's been mentioned very briefly in a different YouTube video before so what is the actual philosophy education that Socrates has this remains fairly unknown it's it is actually read know clearly enough in the dialogues and and note I am choosing here to attribute this to Socrates not to Plato I do think this is Socrates his own approach the next step he takes even within this one dog dialogue first lqp at ease and it's the same in the gorgeous and so on and so forth as he says well but you know what education is really about is not the knowledge of facts it's not just the ability to do math it's not any particular craft like guiding a boat or painting a picture or you know know there's this ultimate knowledge he believes in which is knowledge of self which is self-knowledge which he presents in this very frankly religious you know way he relates this to the Oracle at Delphi and Greek religion and he attributes these various kind of mystical and transformative powers to true knowledge of self knowing your limits knowing your own ignorance and that that is ultimately the point of all his discussion about what's the true meaning of piety what's the true meaning of justice it's not just to force people to admit that they don't know what justice is it's to get them to recognize this this idea of knowledge itself now this also explains the completely reckless megalomania or egomania I should say of Socrates okay so it's clear in first lqp at ease and I think it's even more extreme in gorgeous which is a different dialogue written by Plato Socrates considers himself the greatest political leader in Athens that he is the true master of what democracy in politics and leading societies all about I think you'd find that a little bit more implicitly a little bit more toned-down even in Plato's Republic and in many other sources there's this sense that he is really the greatest man in Athens and this bizarre sense and in both dialogues both first of all be at ease and gorgeous he openly reviled and insults Pericles as inferior to him as a leader in this way right now of course they're two very different contexts but this is completely surreal to me this is really laughable so again this is an example of where I really disagree with and I really scorn Socrates in as much as we know him I think this would be just as ridiculous as if I claimed to be a greater political leader than Richard Nixon or oh sorry the British leader during World War two a Winston Churchill right so Winston Churchill is good example well you have this massive towering figure who made tremendous decisions with tremendous long-term implications Pericles was this leader during a time of war and he transformed the whole fate of the city now look let's keep it all the way real do I think I am ethically a better person than Richard Nixon yes I do I actually do I actually do you know I've studied when I do I think I'm Attica Lee a better person than Winston Churchill as a matter of fact I do and actually in both cases one very simple factor is alcoholism actually both of those men alcohol was a much bigger part of their story than anyone now wants to admit it was um yeah this is both a symptom of what was wrong with these guys epically and it's also part of the problem in their judgments in me so I could very easily say I might have made better decisions but what we're questioning here is not hypothetically if you were the Emperor whether or not you would make better decision than bro this is Socrates who is a humble stonemason a humble craftsman and stone carver with really no political power and no political authority who never made any decisions that affected anyone hate claiming present-tense that he is right then there that he is really the better or the best political leader and half that he's the one to teach he's the one to teach alchemy at ease how to be a great political leader and that he's the true master of the science and philosophy of politics whereas someone like Pericles to him is just a joke is just contemptible is just awful and someone like medius the quail breeder is just Oh so there is a really deep egomania he really thinks he's superior to these other people and I know so III the question of what year precisely Plato wrote each of these dialogues is unknown to me I think it is a rubes game I think it I think we can never really know exactly when they're written in what order there are some questions we can't answer but these texts alright the political reared me the political career of alka be at ease is a total disaster it very much leads to Socrates himself being put on trial and executed and in his defense even in plato's version he very briefly says well you can't blame me for what i'll keep you at easter well oh yes they can Socrates you were this guy's tutor and his benefactor you were very obviously the puppet master pulling the strings you were much more than just his teacher and indeed even this one dialog first I'll go be a tease immortalizes that this philosophical relationship between Socrates and a young ambitious military and political leader he was both he was both a military leader and a polluter and by the way he had just come back from the Olympic Games where he made himself famous you know he became a kind of rock star he became a name everyone knew and was talking about he was already somewhat infamous in his youth but LGB ideas came back from the Olympic Games ready to go into politics as someone you know famous and in this way he was also considered staggeringly beautiful in a culture that was obsessively homosexual and pet her astok so in this context also his beauty and his voice and his athletics and these things set him up for a career and Socrates was the the eminence grise he was the grey bearded old man standing behind that powerful figure and Alka be at ease political career was a total total disaster it was a disaster for him it was a disaster for Athens it was a disaster for Sparta because he switched sides several times he was betrayed his outside in the war it is really a mystifying and we have a lot of detailed evidence about happened throughout his whole career right up right up to his death we were all left astounded at how terrible you know this pupil of Socrates was and look let's just briefly include Plato in the equation so Plato's the one writing these dialogues that are partly historical and partly fictional and reflect Plato's bias and Plato's intention what what happened with Plato's career right also I'll just a long story short it was it was a failure he obviously tried to court power and influence and and get clients basically the dictators or tyrants or kings of various smaller states within the Greek realm not within not within Athens and politically his ambitions all came to nothing and also what are considered his mature writings the writings he wrote when he got older and older were laughable and terrible and awful so really Plato's book the laws is what's been talking here it's unreadable terrible and Aristotle laughs at it openly and the historical evidence is everyone laughed at it openly it wasn't successful it didn't create the new paradigm to replace Socrates let alone to replace great legislators like so long and Drago and so on so you know so Plato's political career in a very different way is a failure also obviously his approach was shall we say less muscular than the political approach of ivali be at ease okay severe I think this video is long enough so I think I want it there I think all of us need to reflect on the extent to which our evaluation of human nature and democracy itself implicitly is based on ideas of inequality linked to education the idea that you know only a certain type of person can evaluate the budget for medical research and decide if the government should spend more or less only a certain kind of person can sit down and think how much money should go into solar power and gas power make those hard decisions and the military and the health care system so on and so forth but we live in a period of time when everyone knows Donald Trump has none of those qualifications I mean so look another another sorry this is it's a digression but it's actually really meaningful one Socrates as written by Plato completely laughs at with scorn another philosopher named Hippias he's ridiculed in multiple dialogues okay hippy is's philosophy the philosophy of Hippias is that a man a gentleman ought to cultivate himself to be a master in many different fields I guess ideally in all fields right so he says he's not just a philosopher he's also learned to wrestle and he formerly competed in wrestling at the Olympic Games each garment he wears he made himself so he learned to weave and so he didn't just make the cloth he made the belt and he did the stitching and he writes his own poetry he has this list I think he can play six musical instruments or something he's mastered each of the arts that define the society he knows each of the arts in each of the sciences that's the philosophy pious in the and this is ridiculed by Socrates we don't know if that's the philosophy of Socrates of the philosophy Plato or both honestly I would guess both I would guess it's the philosophy of Socrates as imperfectly reported but because that is consistent with the idea of Education that Socrates has his idea is that fundamentally and profoundly education is not about any manual skill about any particular kind of technical knowledge it's about this groovy transcendental idea he has about self-knowledge linked to the Delphic or at oracle blah blah blah he has his own kind of slightly transcendental slightly magical view of what the ultimate purpose of education is he also only values his own philosophical style of dialogue so like oh well hippy s you think you're so great because you've mastered all these Arts and Sciences and crafts and you're a wrestling champion you're physically strong you're physically fit you're mentally if you know those yeah but if I have a dialogue with you about what is the true meaning of the word justice you can't win that debate so I mean again in this context I kind of despise Socrates he comes off as really shallow and self-serving and insincere but here's my point in this context Hippias the philosophy is that one ought to be a master kind of under many under many isn't that more what we're expecting of our political leaders in this day and age are we expecting something like Donald Trump or Barack Obama to really appreciate the plight of the poor to really appreciate how the health care system works to really appreciate what needs to be done to improve the railroad system and the electricity system and and aren't we perhaps asking for something impossible but even so that kind of background that kind of compendium of society you do not get out of a degree in business you do not get out of a degree in law you don't get out of any of the the educational credentials that currently we look to our political leaders staff