Socrates Must Die: the political history behind Socmas.

the trial and execution of socrates took
place in the context of a wave of reprisal killings people were being killed to get even for atrocities committed by the short-lived government of the 30 tyrants was socrates complicit were his students and colleagues complicit in our century socrates has become a powerful cultural symbol but what exactly does he symbolize you could say that in france napoleon bonaparte is a powerful symbol you could say that in the united states of america george washington is a powerful symbol but if you ask people why what meaning does this symbol have why is this so important to people who can tell you with any certainty with any self-confidence what the philosophy of napoleon bonaparte was or why it still matters to this day who can speak at any length or any depth about what george washington means to them personally or even politically in the simplest sense of the term people live with a cartoonish notion of who socrates was who plato was or why they ever mattered if these cartoonish notions were true they wouldn't matter at all socrates was a political dissident socrates was a religious dissident and it got him killed and that is why his story still matters very few people and very few university professors treat this subject with the seriousness it deserves in our generation people seem to care very little what the historical significance of napoleon was what his philosophy was of what is political significance was we treat him as a malleable symbol of greatness as a sort of anonymized faceless all-purpose placeholder for the great man whether we're using him as a pawn in presenting french nationalism or perhaps presenting the clash between modernity and medieval traditionalism it's a very strange recklessness we have in looking back at history and taking bits and pieces of it and liberally reinterpreting it and applying it however seems convenient for our own political interests at this moment in time and then isn't there an interesting change in tone when we look at a phenomenon like jordan peterson's very loose very liberal reinterpretation of the historical significance of adolf hitler suddenly we become uncomfortable suddenly we start to insist that the facts of history must matter that deceased historical figures are not merely play things to be deployed in any way that might be politically convenient for us today there can be no doubt the single greatest source of influence and the single greatest source of bias in the reinterpretation and retelling of the myth of socrates has been the christian bible has been the mythological figure of jesus christ if you've had the misfortune of studying philosophy at a western university in all likelihood your professors did not consciously think that they were going to misinterpret or misrepresent socrates so that his story resembled that of jesus as much as possible but very much the framing and presentation of the story of his trial his death his execution it is presented as one of martyrdom martyrdom to a philosophy yes martyrdom to a very different conception of god there's tremendous emphasis placed on this notion that socrates was faultless and blameless not as an intellectual dissident not as a religious dissident not as someone who was part of a political conspiracy to transform the society he was a part of but instead he is represented as a sacrificial lamb the trial and execution of socrates took place in the context of a wave of reprisal killings people were being killed to get even for atrocities committed by the short-lived government of the 30 tyrants at that time in athens people were going to court trying to sue one another trying to get money from one another and trying to kill each other over the question of who was complicit in the government of the 30 tyrants was socrates complicit were his students and colleagues complicit an author named lysius provides compelling primary source evidence of court cases of this kind i am saying primary source because these are not later reflections on the court cases these are actually speeches that were written by lysius to be presented in court these documents or these affidavits i could say show people trying to defend themselves against the accusation that they were complicit in the rule of the thirty tyrants and they also show the opposite they show allegations and denunciations being made connecting people to the 30 tyrants socrates was not the only man being forced to drink hemlock in athens people were being persecuted people were being questioned people were being cross-examined about what side they had been on in the tumultuous period of athens reverting from democracy to aristocracy and then fighting a bitter civil war to re-establish democracy thereafter if you take a moment to pause and read the text on screen here and indeed the slide just before that i've shown you you will get a sense of just how intense and just how passionate these courtroom battles were people wanted one way or another to get even and as you will learn in this brief video the people they were trying to get even with were precisely socrates and his students my point here is not to portray socrates as a revolutionary certainly he was not a revolutionary leader in the sense that george washington was he was also not a revolutionary leader in the sense that robespierre was or napoleon bonaparte was no but it is completely ridiculous to think of socrates as a christ-like figure what would anyone say about jesus christ if his disciples had participated in a coup d'etat if they had come into power and destroyed democracy by colluding with a foreign army in the same way that the students of socrates were able to effectively collude with the spartans to take over the government of athens this is not some minor footnote in the history of philosophy and it is certainly not a minor footnote in the political history of athens it is a momentous tremendous event that implicates socrates plato xenophon all of the famous names on this list in the 50 years leading up to the death of socrates there can be no doubt that the single most powerful most influential and important political figure was pericles in the text that we have socrates was an incredibly harsh critic of pericles and yet simultaneously he was the closest companion of alcabiatis and alcibiades was adopted by pericles legally speaking he was raised by pericles as his son he was groomed to be a major political leader and indeed he would go on to become a major political leader he was prepared to be a major military leader and in the 25 years or so of combat with sparta alcabiatis would indeed be a tremendously important military leader as well however at this time in just the last few years leading up to the death of socrates alcabiatis had become intensely hated and in the records that we have of court cases preserved by lysius we can see that the name and reputation of alcabiatis is being used to dam and condemn people to be a close associate of alcabiatis would be enough to get you killed in the period of reprisals following after the short-lived tyranny of the thirty now the relationship between socrates and democracy is complicated the relationship between al qaeda's and democracy is complicated but at this time politically it was not perceived as complicated we have here a quotation from a court case concerning the son of alcabiatis a son who had the same first name and you can see that in court it is being stated that if any of you gentlemen of the jury if any of you resent the government of the thirty tyrants you should blame this man because his father was the cause of all this now i would not say to you anything so simplistic as to claim that alcabiatis personally was responsible for the government of the thirty tyrants but this is the way it was perceived this was a time at which having your name closely associated with alcabiatis could politically entail your ruin it could even entail your trial and death now tell me who was more closely associated with alcabiatis than socrates the elephant in the room here is pedophilia the elephant in the room here is what we call pederasty in ancient athens it is very clear from a notorious text written by plato called plato's symposium that socrates and alcabiatis were commonly perceived to be gay lovers to have a homosexual relationship and this was around the time when al-qaeda's was 20 years of age allegedly that text although about the first half of it might as well be a manifesto for pedophiles the conclusion where we actually hear the perspective of alka biatis himself and of socrates himself it specifies that they had what we would now call a platonic relationship that in fact they were not gay lovers but they lived in a culture that was accepting of this peculiar kind of age-gap relationship to such an extent that the close relationship socrates and alcubiadis had was perceived as what we might now call a gay marriage the name of alcubiadis has not remained famous in the same way that the name of plato has down to this day he is however a somewhat romanticized figure at least amongst people with phds because he was the student of the philosophy of socrates who went on to have a spectacular military career a spectacular political career even if it was a career that was largely disastrous and ended with spectacular failure the next two names on this list have been utterly forgotten kritius and theramenis at that time these would have been the most famous the most infamous the most notorious people in athens because they had been disciples of socrates and they went on to become the founders of and the leaders of the government of 30 tyrants at first criteus and theriminis shared the same views and were personal friends but when criteus acting as one who had himself been exiled by the democracy began to show this lust for putting people to death theramenis opposed him there is no sense he said in putting a man to death simply because he has been honored by the democracy and when he has done the aristocracy no harm at all at this stage criteus was still on friendly terms of ceremonies it is he said quite impossible for those who want to gain power to avoid getting rid of those people who are most likely to form an opposition to it and it is pure simplicity on your part if you think that just because we are 30 and not one we have to keep a less close watch on the government than is done by an absolute dictator so more and more people were put to death and put to death unjustly these names may not be famous now but if you had been alive at that time if you had been a citizen of athens who participated in the trial and execution of socrates these names would have seemed very famous indeed criteus and theriminis were disciples of socrates they were close friends with both socrates and plato and they had colluded with an enemy army they had colluded with the army of sparta to carry out a coup d'etat to create a new system of government in which the two of them sat at the top the two of them were the most powerful dictators or the most powerful demagogues the two of them killed others and then after they had a falling out they turned against each other and critias killed thereminis quote when the attendants came forward and were dragging him off therimenes bore his bad fortune with a noble spirit since indeed he had no little acquaintance with philosophy in company with socrates the multitude however in general mourned the ill fortune of thereminis but had not the courage to come to his aid since a strong armed guard stood around him now socrates the philosopher and two of his intimates ran forward and endeavored to hinder the attendance but theramenis entreated them to do nothing of the kind he appreciated he said their friendship and bravery but as for himself it would be the greatest grief if he should be the cause of the death of those who were so intimately associated with him socrates and his helpers since they had no aid from anyone else and saw the intransigence of those in authority increasing made no move then those who had received their orders dragged ceremonies from the altar and hustled him through the center of the marketplace to his execution and the populace terror stricken at the arms of the garrison the garrison of spartan soldiers i might add were filled with pity for the unfortunate man and shed tears not only over his fate but also over their own slavery for all the common sort when they saw a man of such virtuous ceremonies treated with such contumely had concluded that they in their weakness would be sacrificed without a thought the most basic problem with this passage politically is that it has socrates and his followers in the same room with ceremonies and criteus this is very much depicting socrates plato and his followers his followers including the two men who were dictators at this time ceremonies and criticism it's depicting them as all being on the same side and inside this government that so soon became hated for its corruption and brutality this regime that was torn down by a pro-democratic revolution a pro-democratic revolution that socrates plato etc were all on the wrong side of plato goes on living for a long time after socrates and most of the other names in that list so naturally he had to create some kind of deeply dishonest justification for what his role in this notorious dictatorship was nevertheless even in clearing his name he implicates himself he implicates socrates and he further illustrates for us the context within which as i say socrates must die quote the existing constitution democracy being generally condemned a revolution took place and there were appointed rulers with full powers over public affairs as a whole some of these were relatives and acquaintances of mine they at once invited me to share in their doings as something to which i had a claim the effect on me was not surprising in the case of a young man i considered that they would of course so manage the state as to bring men out of a bad way of life into a good one so i watched them very closely to see what they would do and seeing as i did that in quite a short time they made the former government democracy seemed by comparison something as precious as gold dot dot dot close quote the problem with this passage politically is that plato is admitting to you that he and his friends and relatives were indeed members of the dictatorship of the 30 from the start that he himself was indeed part of this pro-aristocratic anti-democratic conspiracy plato is a profoundly biased source plato is trying to save his own skin plato is trying in some ways to protect the reputation of socrates in retrospect xenophon is a profoundly biased source he is engaged in the glorification of socrates and to some extent he's trying to rationalize politically what sparta did he was in the strange position of being an athenian who switched sides and started fighting for sparta it is only in those primary source texts preserved by lysius that we get a sense of just how nasty the political circumstances really were and the depth of hatred that was directed towards socrates himself and his followers in athens at that time and we get a sense of the extent to which that hatred was well earned it was deserved plato wasn't just defending his reputation for no reason at all both thereminis and criteus were disciples of socrates and keep in mind the name of criteus even appears in the dialogues of plato that were written to glorify socrates although the short quotation i read you from xenophon a minute ago makes it seem as if theramentes had the most pious of intentions in carrying out this coup d'etat making himself a dictator and destroying democracy whereas kritius was really the bad guy if you take a moment to read this quotation from a court case from lysius you will instead have the sense that there are many should not be glorified for having been killed by the system of government he created himself he should instead be blamed for his collusion with the spartans his conspiracy with an enemy army to bring about the creation of that terrible new form of government in the first place a form of government that again plato and socrates were both involved in they were both implicated in but plato at least later admitted was an absolutely terrible system of government a government so bad that looking back at it now it makes democracy seem better by comparison when we evaluate socrates and his disciples as political leaders in their political context how many of these men were pro-spartan or how many of them appeared to be how many of these men were pro-oligarchy or how many of them appeared to be and conversely how many of them can be simply and unironically said to be pro-democracy how many of them were fighting against oligarchy against elitism against the aristocracy taking their stand with the common people who wanted democracy and wanted to kick the spartans out there seems to be a very loosely organized conspiracy of professors and people with phds that prevents these questions from ever being asked some of you may be shocked or you may pretend to be shocked and my assertion that we have to evaluate socrates as a political leader and we have to evaluate his students as political leaders some of you may be burdened with this misconception that socrates only went around preaching personal virtue private morality that he wasn't a political dissident at all that he wasn't a religious dissonant at all that he wasn't trying to change the society he was a part of and that he wasn't trying to take over the government well if you feel that way it probably reflects the selected readings you were assigned from within the extant corpus of texts i would direct you to two very large very long very boring attacks written by plato himself the gorgius and first alcabiatis here we see very clearly that socrates does think of himself as a politician that he does think of himself as a statesman that he does think of himself as a dissident political leader and that he says directly to al qaeda's the adopted son of pericles that he socrates is now the only true political leader athens has and that in effect alchemiadi should follow him alcubia should take on his philosophy as part and parcel of his own peculiar path to power it is very clear in the gorgeous and first alcabiatis that socrates wasn't just friends with the conspirators who happened to take over the leadership of the government he had his own political agenda i said before that he could be condemned to death just for being in the room when some of those decisions were made by the government of the 30 tyrants well if you're willing to read these texts with open eyes and an open mind and an open heart i think you'll inevitably come to the conclusion that he was in that room for a reason socrates was not just a passive observer of politics in his times he was an active participant although the figures who wrote the history or at least some of them like xenophon and plato were trying to rescue his reputation from the disaster that was the government of the thirty tyrants a government created by and ruled by two of socrates's own students a government that both socrates and plato participated in even if they would later come to regret it and to try to portray themselves as instead the friends of democracy a game that was played by alcabiatis again and again until frankly he had used up all of his credibility and had become hated by both his allies and his enemies alike i do not celebrate christmas starting in the winter of 2018 i created this alternative holiday called sock mess because fundamentally i felt embarrassed to involve my own daughter in the celebration of christmas in the recitation again and again of what i fundamentally think is a meaningless if not pernicious story about this mythological figure jesus christ however you will have figured out by now if you've been watching this video from beginning to end i do not really look up to socrates as my personal hero i certainly do not regard him as a christ-like idealized mythological figure nor am i interested in creating a new mythology to glorify him i think we live in a culture where so many of the stories we recite as we put our children to bed or as they sit in front of the television are frankly meaningless not this one the story of socrates it's meaningful there's so much we can learn from it there's so many different angles from which it can be analyzed and there's something really worth explaining really worth reflecting on there for the next generation even if you conclude that socrates is more of a villain than he is a hero if any of you in the audience today want to influence the future of your parliamentary democracy the best method you've got at your disposal is probably to start recording youtube videos or perhaps writing letters to the editor that will be published in the local newspaper for men like socrates and his closest followers including al qaeda's including chris taking over the leadership of the government was a very real option and in the case of alcubiatis and in the case of criteus they didn't just talk about doing it for a short time they did it just as thucydides had warned the people of athens thought of themselves as living in a democracy but in fact they lived in a city that was at any one time ruled by just one man by its most preeminent citizen by whatever demagogue was best able to move the crowd socrates was a man of his times he did not transcend them he lived in a society that genuinely had direct democracy and we don't and it's that contrast that makes all of these things so important for us to reflect on now as we evaluate what the future of modern western parliamentary democracy should be who was going to be the next pericles quite possibly algae biatis quite possibly socrates himself they lived in a society where any well-spoken well-educated man could stand up at the penins could stand up in the public forum and quite rapidly find himself in a position of real political power and real military power however he did so at every stage at the risk of his own life in this video i've repeatedly quoted for you legal texts written by lysius there's one text i didn't quote that gives a tremendously bleak and realistic look at political conditions in athens at that time when it reflects ladies and gentlemen of the jury it was all gentlemen i confess gentlemen of the jury we've just lived through a period of time where everybody had changed sides two three four times we've known people who used to support the democracy but then as soon as their own interest was at stake as soon as it was their own family or they had some way to profit they started supporting the aristocracy we've known other people who had an earlier phase were part of a pro-aristocratic coup d'etat and then later they fought and died heroically in a pro-democratic revolution the whole city of athens knew what it was like to live through a period of tumult of chaos of death of war yes but also of tremendous opportunity this kind of opportunity frankly corrupted socrates it corrupted plato it corrupted xenophon alcabiatis chris and the rest and it corrupted them in a way that they were not even fully aware of themselves they were corrupted by the very real possibility of holding in their own hands political power and we all of us in this audience right now we've lived our whole lives without ever knowing that kind of temptation instead we live with the depressing acceptance of the fact that whatever we may say whatever we may write really will never make a difference in the world whereas in that society with direct democracy whatever they might stand up and say could have real consequences of life and death for themselves and others i'm gonna ask you to take a moment and share the link to this video with someone else who could stand to learn something from it because before a few weeks ago i had never heard of deodoris i had never heard of lysius i had never heard of the seventh epistle of plato the primary sources are kind of hidden in plain sight we live in a culture where people who have university education are more ignorant about these things than those who lack it because we mostly learn about socrates we mostly learn about plato through the university reader a selection of short passages that makes you feel that you've read plato makes you feel that you know plato when you haven't read the gorgeous you haven't read the first documentaries you haven't read any of the sources we've quoted in this video you've become familiar with a few block quotations from the republic a few carefully selected extracts of text that knowingly or unknowingly serve the professor's political agenda and this is the alternative we can take socrates back from academia we can present our children with something more meaningful than christmas more meaningful than batman and x-men and supermen but something more meaningful than what we encountered at elite levels of education ourselves [Music] maybe we can we can practice