Socrates Wore a Robe, but he was NOT a Buddhist Monk.
15 April 2019 [link youtube]
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Youtube Automatic Transcription
we've had a whole bunch of videos lately
with Socrates here sitting in the background but this video is actually about the philosophy of Socrates now I know some of you might prefer some of you might prefer the videos where I'm just talking about facts in a very dry and detached manner but I think it would be a disservice to this video and would make everything I'm explaining seem a lot more abstract a lot more difficult to relate to if I didn't give a little bit of autobiographical context or what this means in my own life how I've ended up approaching philosophy from ancient Athens again and again and why it matters to me what philosophy means and why it matters is really easiest to explain an approach through contrasting opposites what a philosophy is trying to refute what it's trying to debunk can be understood right away what problem it's trying to solve or what positive role is trying to play in your life may be a lot more difficult to get a handle on now in my own life I made a decision maybe was a disastrous decision when I was the wrong man not to learn Latin and not to learn Greek and that was in large part because of my family my upbringing and how I perceived myself in the social order within Canada I thought of Latin and Greek as things that rich people learned and rich people studied and that I didn't have access to and I was wrong I mean it seemed makes sense when you think about where I came from and who my parents were my father grew up in a steel manufacturing town he became a communist extremist his mother was a single mom who worked in the steel factory and his whole story arc was escaping from the fate of being a steel worker like most of his other male relatives whom he knew and and so on and so forth he had lumpin and proletariat attitudes his whole life he never stopped regarding cloth napkins with a certain kind of religious awe you could sit him down and a restaurant he'd pay for a five-star restaurant or five course meal or whatever and he'd never touch the cloth napkin he would be afraid to get a cloth napkin dirty in his own home in a restaurant if he'd never left him this you know working-class everyone don't don't touch the cloth napkin so who so this was transmitted to me with a kind of rational fear of learning Greek and Latin but it's a fear that was completely false and the other feeling I had really reflected the way libraries used to work which was that I would I would walk through the shelves of the library and look at physical books on the shelf and I had the feeling I had the impression that all of the research about ancient Greek philosophy especially about a mainstream famous name like Socrates that everything had already been done that everything there was to know and everything was to research was already known just in the last couple of days I was using Google Scholar and looking through what's available and you know peer reviewed academic research going back 300 years I mean it's it's not just recent publications you get now when you search digital archives and on several different questions I was searching for in English admittedly I wasn't looking at what's published in Russian or French but in the English language it's mind-blowing to me that so much of the work has never been done or has only been done in a slapdash inadequate crappy way by some really intellectually feeble eccentric who clearly did a very bad job really fundamental questions about mainstream ancient Greek philosophy famous names famous names like Socrates Aristotle and Plato I didn't perceive that field of studies as being at a nascent or incomplete stage or being a field of studies I could make some kind of really positive contribution to starting off in Toronto Canada that no Mises those things and I was wrong now by contrast Buddhism presented to me the philosophy of poverty philosophy that embraced poverty that was about poverty it was uplifting but in contrast to this perception had that the philosophy of Athens and Rome was attached to privileged wealth and you know obviously people from a certain kind of background within England the United Kingdom but even within places like Italy and Greece that exist today those people had a kind of special access to this tradition and some kind of imaginary British aristocrat it never occurred to me that I could just with hard work and talent you know master Latin or master ancient Greek and knock it out of the park and do original research and and write things that matter and make youtube videos that matter view change look that never occurred to me in that framework but then when you shift the Britta's 'm and I was looking at Buddhism in the war-torn ashes of Cambodia Laos you know this is especially the form boards maybe even then sri lanka sri lanka with a civil war still ongoing you know and this is a philosophy of poverty and anyone can get in and make a positive contribution and you walk past that shelf and it seems like nothing has been done before there are these huge caps in this culture there's so much to do and on most of these things only one translator had ever done only once gone that's okay so this can be my ancient Greek this can be my Latin this can be where I where I make my difference and for a few years it was surgery for another video and as I said we have made many other videos about I had a friend who got a PhD in ancient Hebrew studies and he said several things that really shocked me it's right on this topic but one of the phrases used again again was when we were discussing particular issues in the scholarship of ancient Hebrew he simply said to me ancient Hebrew is not well understood it came up a different context he was like no no there are many passages there are many artifacts many things that you that are not well stood where we don't know what the text means where people are winging it or making things up we don't really know what that word means we don't know why that verb is in that form in that context whatever it is like like he was really indicating to me in these discussions we had the scholarship has not been done this is not well understood they really need people to go back and look at many scripts few of them and again so you can imagine with this kind of background that time I was I was very actively working on on ancient Buddhist manuscripts and stone inscriptions and stuff that I was shocked that the core of the judeo-christian world that right in the middle of this area of what seemed to me the most oversaturated most highly funded field of ancient philosophy historical research telling me that stuff is on a achievement I can borrow his phrase here and say it is it is really true in 2019 the philosophy of Socrates is not well understood I think the main impression that guides educators all levels whether it's in the university in high school NATO is actually just that Socrates is a man in a rope even a man who walks barefoot in the snow that's another anecdote about Socrates he's a barefoot man robe and people think of him as a Buddhist monk for that reason I mean maybe some people in Catholic culture still think of him as something like a Catholic monk and maybe some people think of him like this sort of mythified fictional version of Mahatma Gandhi the reality of who Gandhi was so quite another quite another story too and people do not think of Socrates as a sort of angry crotchety old man who tells people to be ready to go to war all the time to keep up their military training to have many sons to have sons with beautiful women as the mothers by the way so that there'll be good citizens for the future someone whose idea of of civic virtue civic duty isn't just jury duty and isn't just you know playing his role in government when he when he wins the election by a lot which he did but is actually being ready for military service all the time someone who really lived through a period of constant war in some ways you know this is not the whole of the philosophy of Socrates but understand who he was in his own culture and also what what he means for us now already the military side of what he's teaching the overtly macho life of perpetual readiness this is not a Buddhist monastic ideal of readiness this is not a life of introspection and prayer his his philosophy a great deal of his philosophy this is part of why he's seen as the founding philosopher of the ancient cynics has to do with toughness in the most crude physical sense now just the rest early what is toughness they were somewhat burdened by the pseudoscience of their times there so the early cynics and Socrates himself in Anniston A's you know they did have the idea that for instance not eating when you felt hungry made you tough well you know maybe in some abstract psychological sense you feel strong they thought that being cold and enduring the cold and this kind of thing makes you tough there's an idea in Plato also that you know you become taller by being lean when you grow up that going through puberty clean result you being tall whereas being fat will keep you short so yeah they were burdened by some scientific misconceptions I'm not saying that his guide for how to be a tough guy would work today but you know there's this huge effort made to clear the name of Socrates in the context of nine public guilt over the fact that he was murdered I used the term murderer loosely here he was brought to trial judged and condemned to death and then executed and Athens seemingly five minutes later thought that this was a terrible crime against philosophy and was the wrong thing to do a name you guys may not know is antis Phineas in large part the tough-guy philosophy of Socrates continues on in an undiluted form in the philosophy of medicine ease the help the question nobody really wants to deal with this is about sincere having now been reading about this stuff for more than 20 years of my life I've never seen anyone who really is willing to deal with the extent to which the philosophy of Socrates is honestly and accurately presented by Plato now a mission so the tough guy side of it as I say continues natus thinnies simply by temperament Plato does not seem to be all that interested in that however how would we characterize the philosophy of Plato broadly speaking and thematically speak so antis thinnies is interested in toughening you up a kind of life of Perpetual military readiness sleep with beautiful women and have beautiful children with them to make the city more virtuous and so for the future it's not all there is to it but there's a lot of emphasis there on strength and that the only real joy in life the real happiness comes from virtue and it's a very quote unquote manly tough-guy notion of virtue and this more or less films a whole major movement in greco-roman philosophy that continues for centuries and centuries thereafter okay so and again this is nothing like Buddhism this is more like you know some crap again this is some crazy old man who tells you to you know in American politics tells you to always carry your gun with you and always be ready for the Russians to in fate or something and again the times Socrates lived through they had to be ready all the time for all of their surrounding nations to invade not just the Spartans they were invading and being invaded by all these three people and launching off on new on new expeditions there were there were real social reasons a component story okay so Plato Plato is absolutely obsessed with the idea that philosophers ought to take over government so people praised this they talk about the core unquote philosopher-king this is this is like you know what the relationship of Satanism to Christianity is less of a contrast than the relationship between platonic philosophy and what ISM Buddhism is about these men in robes who were announced the world as they know we're gonna have nothing to do with politics we don't know Plato everything about his philosophy it's all about taking over the state through often through dishonest means through various imaginations that philosophers can and should for example pervert one of the most crucial notions of democracy they have that it's it's acceptable for philosophers to take over government and manipulate lotteries of deciding things through random lot that just to placate the people to make them think they have democracy and equality you have the appearance of a lottery and then actually secretly corrupted so this is and this is in Plato this is one of most fundamental virtues of democracy as it in the Athens people why because they know better because Plato thinks he's one of the wives people who ought to be deciding this Plato believes in quite a totalitarian system of government where he's going to decide everything including whom you reproduce with who should have children with who for the eugenic improvement of humanity Plato wants the total militarization of society and want society being ruled by these quote-unquote Guardians who are a superior special class of hyper-vigilant hyper military muscle men want to say who also have studied philosophy as he defines it and there's a lot of common ground between Plato and the idealized representation of Sparta and this is at a time when Sparta is the enemy of Athens not their friend not their ally he's looking across and he's seeing this hyper military organized the top-down authoritarian society and saying hey me too no in academia what you always get is this attitude you see this even with because you see this with the representation of Socrates and Plato and you see this even with the representation of Socrates and Xenophon this is even in the introduction to our additions in other ways like oh no no no um Plato just takes the name of Socrates and then presents his own philosophy through the most and there's no connection there's no sense in which the fact that in Plato it's it's telling you Socrates says X there's no sense in which that represents the historical surgeons of Plato just took the liberty of using Socrates a man he knew face to face in to some extent worshipped as his teacher just use them as a hand puppet to represent a philosophy that is in many ways totally contradictory to to what Socrates actually preached isn't it much more disturbing and much more difficult for us to imagine the extent to which these various pupils the direct students of Socrates like Plato Vinay destinies really are in broad thumb attic terms accurately representing the teaching of of Socrates well who else were among the influential students of Socrates have mention this before the single most important in terms of both understanding who Socrates really was and understanding why he's been misrepresented in history the way he has is alkie be at ease now the standard english pronunciation is Alcibiades I'm gonna choose to be a slightly more Greek in my pronunciation I know this is not remotely the way modern Greeks method and I've been referred to as alchemy at ease now alky be at ease was young and handsome and he was the star pupil of Socrates alkie be at ease was absolutely mono maniacally fixated on taking over leadership of government just like Plato these are two of Socrates as pupils who have this incumbent who feel that they're better educated they want better education for everyone's true as a positive part of of Socrates flaws but you see that throughout his pupils and there wasn't running okay but they're the people who've received this superior education they have this higher level of philosophical education and now lqb Oddie's wants to take over the leadership of athens and it's in the midst of this long ongoing war and alkie be at ease also this is ultimately why he's put on trial and changes his whole political you know direction he also seems to have scornful contempt for the petit superstitions of the he doesn't believe in the same religion he doesn't have the same kind of religiosity that Athenians expected one other so I talked about that more in an earlier video where I talked about the extent to which Socrates really was guilty of what he was accused of and I think we have a very very good source for that which again most academics don't want to take seriously in the comedy written about surgeries with a satire written about Socrates it's a satire titled the clouds by Aristophanes and again it's a satire if someone makes a satire about George Bush or Donald Trump it's not funny if it has no connection to reality and even the title the clouds is pointing out socrates was a guy who was going out and in an iconic light and iconoclastic way he was challenging the superstitious and religious these are people he was teaching a religious philosophy that no there wasn't a magical man in the sky called Zeus who controlled the clouds and the rain and lightning there were these principles of natural physics we today say philosophy of nature or something but for them it was physics that they taught and he says well he believes in this one God that stands behind the phenomena of nature but it's a completely abstract God it's not a God with a face like Zeus or with a name the comedian goes too far say it is ultimately just a vortex like chaos so one digression leads to another here the ancient Greek concept of chaos is more like our concept of things emerging from chaos it's a kind of creative chaos so again the use of the word vortex is not that bad here it's not it's not chaos in a more absolute or abstract sense that they're thinking of but that ultimately the clouds move in the sky the churning of the clouds of the sky is a chaos is a chaotic vortex that ultimately all the principles of nature and the creation of the world and the churning of the tides in the ocean reflect this principle of nature this is not a God in the same sense that Zuza you can interpret this as atheism you can interpret it as monotheism guess who else preaches this completely consistently with Aristotle sorry perfect completely consistent with Socrates antis thinnies and it's the the guy mentioned earlier who was on this macho tough and yourself up continues that side of of the philosophy of Socrates and then we have this comedian ridiculing Socrates but again are we just willing to accept this satire this critique this criticism in some ways is accurately conveying to you a problem with Socrates laws a problem from the common public perception of it this is I'm very very challenging um so in this context of someone who has already been publicly criticized and scorned for being an affront to common morality to the religion of the the common man in Athens Socrates has this star pupil who's young and handsome and in Athens they care a lot about being handsome at this time in this culture that really matters to politics and he's received the philosophical learning of Socrates and there are all these rumors about him that he's participating in these dark rituals that show his scorn and contempt for the common man's mysteries the common religion and how does he propel his political career forward he goes to the Olympics and at the Olympics he arrives the team of seven charioteers seven different chariots he enters into the Olympics and he wins he doesn't just take first place I think he takes first place second place and fourth place in this prestigious race at the Olympus and nobody had ever shown up with so many horses so he's the handsome young man who became you know like a rock star he became famous at the Olympics apparently he's also a great Horseman or great at riding horses and he's done this and we have his we have his lectures we have his speech recorded by Thucydides he openly admits he did this both to propel and the greatness of Athens as a kind of propaganda for Athens in the middle of the war and also to propel himself he says openly yes he wants to be a military leader and a political leader in the democracy he's putting so forth now at what point do we stop dismissing evidence of what the teaching of Socrates was so we have these huge incredibly boring books from Plato we said oh no no no no that's just evidence of the philosophy of Plato not the philosophy of Socrates really so so why doesn't Aristotle say that when he criticizes Plato Aristotle is basically one generation later Aristotle knew Plato that Aristotle didn't really know Socrates there's a passage of time ago there is a younger half generation removed whatever we don't so we got really nasty really tough criticism of Plato from from Aristotle he really scorns Plato's intellectual legacy and I think rightly so I think he's basically correct and what he what he says he's gonna split up mm-hmm he doesn't say well you know the problem with Plato is that he totally misrepresented Socrates no wouldn't that be tempting wouldn't that be important him to say and all conversely I would not imagine that Plato is very accurately and very slavish Lee continuing the philosophy of Socrates I do think Plato as philosophers know right but in this broad thematic sense that Socrates was someone who wasn't just interested in lecturing on the nature of virtue and justice but that he was really interested in talking about philosophers meaning people who had been trained by him taking over leadership of government and he was interested in Plato doing it he was interested in elke VI he's doing he was interested in his own pupils playing a more direct civic role in Athens just ask why not I mean this is not an enormous democracy like the United States of America where you'd say well come on you have a few pupils at your university in Virginia why do you think you are going to get elected to the Senate no in fact I think there are professors of political science in Virginia who are training their students to be elected to the Senate but this is a town this is not even a city by modern standards they don't have millions of twins of people you run a school it's a school for philosophy it's a school for politics to some extent to someone you want a school in this town you're teaching these virtues you're teaching what it is to be a man you're teaching what is to be a leader and you want your pupils to be elected someone's going to be elected in Athens and it's in the middle of this terrible war where if the wrong people are leaders if Cleon becomes a leader it has consequences if one leader or another comes to prominence it has real consequences for us all and again he's not a Buddhist monk he's not a peacenik he's not anti-war he's not about withdrawing from public life there's no reason to doubt that in broad brushstrokes no I don't think I don't think Socrates shared plato's fantasies about a specific utopia but in broad-brush jokes that Socrates wanted his students to play the kind of aggressive political role that Plato played that a generation later Aristotle played and that alka be a tease played and so I'll keep you a tease here's his star pupil rise in top now after Socrates is dead and during the trial of Socrates oh no no no everyone has to say oh well you know um you know I'll keep yachties he was really he was really doing his own thing he wasn't um he wasn't falling philosophy I'm sorry really really and Plato too huh gee it's see it seems like nobody represents the the continuation of the philosophy have started again Xenophon oh no no Xenophon he's just completely making up his own philosophy and he's just using the name sorry really so all of his pupils just decided to radically depart from his Lawson we can't we can't by the comparative study of his pupils you know pick out a really strong continuum of at least ematic and political interests that show a very clear direction that's that's what I think and I think I'll keep you at ease and thinking exactly the shame of alka Betty's in the shock is the algae be at ease was Socrates a star pupil they slept in the same tent during the war they went up and observed the troops he trained Alka be at ease to be a warrior to be a military leader to be a political leader they walked in we know this is when al-kuwaiti's was too young to be to be a general and a leader they they went and visited the battlefields of all this recorded and there are um there were actually disputes about whether or not Socrates was in love with I'll give you a tease because this is Athens and everyone everyone wants to make up homosexual romances about every historical figure you're mean about this this period a lot of things about Socrates his story seemed that it seemed indicate that he was on the heterosexual side of the equation but regardless what does al-kabir DS do he transforms his social status by participating in the Olympic Games and the by the way these were incredibly politically tense Olympic Angels a unique Olympic Games it's it's a weird historical parallel to the period when the Soviet Union the United States we're both trying to exclude each other from the Olympic Games the Spartan side and the Athenian side and different proxies they were trying to exclude each other there is this question of who would be allowed to participate and who would be allowed to participate in sports who bless it was this intensely political example of the Olympic Games in the midst of this huge war that time was like a world war for them the known world was at war and they were trying to get together and put aside their differences having Olympic Games at home we're not gonna let you participate in this ceremony at this temple so he catapults himself to being a major military leader it's sometimes translated that he's a general sometimes they he's an admiral because this war involves a lot of boats at the head of a navy of over 100 galleys at the most crucial part of the war but I just mentioned very briefly the rumors about his impiety about him him following these newfangled philosophical ideas and not adhering to the gods of his ancestors they follow after him you can read the rest of the story if you want to I'm not gonna get into details he is ultimately dragged down and his public reputation is destroyed because of his connection I would say to the philosophy of Socrates to the philosophy of the man who was ridiculed ridiculed in a comedy for saying that lightning is not created by Zeus it's created by the clouds and the clouds are not controlled by a God in the sense of Zeus they aren't gods themselves that they follow the principles of nature the principles of physics they would use the word physics vortex chaos is that our and we have this philosophy continuing through his students some of the students were more interested in one part the legacy someone another so as I say my conclusion for this video when I look back at my own life Here I am at 40 years old and I am still astonished still to this day I'm astonished at the extent to which simply the philosophy of Socrates for better and for worse I'm by no means I am NOT an uncritical fan of Socrates is not well understood Socrates wears a robe he is not therefore an exponent of peace or an exponent of Buddhism or any kind of you know philosophy like Buddhism it's not about celibacy it's not about non-violence it's not about withdrawing from public and political discourse and the fact that he wears a robe and comes from Athens we've taken him as a symbol of democracy people say that about Plato also and if I were teaching a university course on Plato verson I'd have to say to people for first thing look guys Plato was the world's worst enemy of democracy he's not just a critic he Plato is a key democracy and you know it's it's a real question to what extent was Socrates not just a critic of democracy but even anti-democracy did Socrates believe like Plato or did he come to believe with the passage of time that the rule of the majority was less important than the rule of the why is the rule of the competent the rule of philosophers or the rule of at least educated people just as in our own time you know you need a driver's license to drive a car but you don't need a you don't need a voting license to vote you don't need an education and politics all of these guys lived through the tragedy of watching illiterate stupid ignorant people be led by their passions and make terrible decisions terrible decisions in both peace and war that bankrupted the country led to enormous numbers of deaths led to people being enslaved led to the empire expanding and expanding too much and then collapsing these guys lives live then it led to also the collapse of democracy and democracy being replaced now oligarchy and above all else that same impetuous stupid element of democracy as they saw it have ins led to the trial and execution of Socrates himself it led to the bizarre trial and condemnation of alka be at ease his star pupil who was rising up quickly to be a great leader of men and and they tried him in his absence they tried him in of sting he was not in court to plead his own sight they waited from the leave town and then had this trial accusing him of of impiety they lived through all of this and were left with an intellectual legacy where we mostly know when understand Athens through its harshest critics but we can understand Athens the advantages and virtues of its democracy precisely because we know it through its critics not through people who are just praising it and I'm amazed that a 2019 it seems to me that people are still reluctant to accept and learn about Socrates through his critics even though it's called comedy I really think if you take a detached look at the clouds by Aristophanes this this critique this vilification of Socrates you're gonna get a much much more honest insight into both why Socrates became famous and why he became hated and on the contrary if you read whether from Plato or from zeniff on the apology for Socrates the explanation from afterwards you have to read these things as being 180 degrees opposite of the truth in some cases every mention of alka be at ease oh no no no all of Socrates is students were very humble and never tried to take over the government and you know Alka be at ease you know he one bad egg and you know I tried to give him a good education but he just didn't fall you know this is in the contact you know the context is in the context of a guy being executed for being heretic you know for daring to question you know I made an earlier video that was titled you know Socrates must die ohai Socrates why Socrates must die Socrates remains a profoundly instructive example of both what was right and what was wrong with Athenian society it's I think it's a fundamentally wonderful thing for a society to turn to its own population and say you yes you are capable of a higher level of responsibility don't just be responsible for your own household for your own amusement for your own self-indulgence you know I want you to be responsible for the greater good of this city as a whole or this the societies all that's a wonderful thing and you see all of Athenian society was infused with his tremendous dynamism just because ordinary people took on the type of responsibility and planning and thinking and debate that in a monarchy in the Dark Ages in Europe only a tiny number of people surrounding the King engaged in a tiny number of aristocrats in the immediate company of the King would engage in that kind of thinking education debate what-have-you so there's this amazing wonderful intellectual dynamism and depth that the whole society takes on thanks to this democracy but Socrates and the history of the Peloponnesian War shows us also the tremendous danger of placing that responsibility in the hands of people who do not have the education who do not have the intellectual capacity to handle that responsibility and that is ultimately what killed Socrates himself and what ruined Athens in their long long war against Sparta
with Socrates here sitting in the background but this video is actually about the philosophy of Socrates now I know some of you might prefer some of you might prefer the videos where I'm just talking about facts in a very dry and detached manner but I think it would be a disservice to this video and would make everything I'm explaining seem a lot more abstract a lot more difficult to relate to if I didn't give a little bit of autobiographical context or what this means in my own life how I've ended up approaching philosophy from ancient Athens again and again and why it matters to me what philosophy means and why it matters is really easiest to explain an approach through contrasting opposites what a philosophy is trying to refute what it's trying to debunk can be understood right away what problem it's trying to solve or what positive role is trying to play in your life may be a lot more difficult to get a handle on now in my own life I made a decision maybe was a disastrous decision when I was the wrong man not to learn Latin and not to learn Greek and that was in large part because of my family my upbringing and how I perceived myself in the social order within Canada I thought of Latin and Greek as things that rich people learned and rich people studied and that I didn't have access to and I was wrong I mean it seemed makes sense when you think about where I came from and who my parents were my father grew up in a steel manufacturing town he became a communist extremist his mother was a single mom who worked in the steel factory and his whole story arc was escaping from the fate of being a steel worker like most of his other male relatives whom he knew and and so on and so forth he had lumpin and proletariat attitudes his whole life he never stopped regarding cloth napkins with a certain kind of religious awe you could sit him down and a restaurant he'd pay for a five-star restaurant or five course meal or whatever and he'd never touch the cloth napkin he would be afraid to get a cloth napkin dirty in his own home in a restaurant if he'd never left him this you know working-class everyone don't don't touch the cloth napkin so who so this was transmitted to me with a kind of rational fear of learning Greek and Latin but it's a fear that was completely false and the other feeling I had really reflected the way libraries used to work which was that I would I would walk through the shelves of the library and look at physical books on the shelf and I had the feeling I had the impression that all of the research about ancient Greek philosophy especially about a mainstream famous name like Socrates that everything had already been done that everything there was to know and everything was to research was already known just in the last couple of days I was using Google Scholar and looking through what's available and you know peer reviewed academic research going back 300 years I mean it's it's not just recent publications you get now when you search digital archives and on several different questions I was searching for in English admittedly I wasn't looking at what's published in Russian or French but in the English language it's mind-blowing to me that so much of the work has never been done or has only been done in a slapdash inadequate crappy way by some really intellectually feeble eccentric who clearly did a very bad job really fundamental questions about mainstream ancient Greek philosophy famous names famous names like Socrates Aristotle and Plato I didn't perceive that field of studies as being at a nascent or incomplete stage or being a field of studies I could make some kind of really positive contribution to starting off in Toronto Canada that no Mises those things and I was wrong now by contrast Buddhism presented to me the philosophy of poverty philosophy that embraced poverty that was about poverty it was uplifting but in contrast to this perception had that the philosophy of Athens and Rome was attached to privileged wealth and you know obviously people from a certain kind of background within England the United Kingdom but even within places like Italy and Greece that exist today those people had a kind of special access to this tradition and some kind of imaginary British aristocrat it never occurred to me that I could just with hard work and talent you know master Latin or master ancient Greek and knock it out of the park and do original research and and write things that matter and make youtube videos that matter view change look that never occurred to me in that framework but then when you shift the Britta's 'm and I was looking at Buddhism in the war-torn ashes of Cambodia Laos you know this is especially the form boards maybe even then sri lanka sri lanka with a civil war still ongoing you know and this is a philosophy of poverty and anyone can get in and make a positive contribution and you walk past that shelf and it seems like nothing has been done before there are these huge caps in this culture there's so much to do and on most of these things only one translator had ever done only once gone that's okay so this can be my ancient Greek this can be my Latin this can be where I where I make my difference and for a few years it was surgery for another video and as I said we have made many other videos about I had a friend who got a PhD in ancient Hebrew studies and he said several things that really shocked me it's right on this topic but one of the phrases used again again was when we were discussing particular issues in the scholarship of ancient Hebrew he simply said to me ancient Hebrew is not well understood it came up a different context he was like no no there are many passages there are many artifacts many things that you that are not well stood where we don't know what the text means where people are winging it or making things up we don't really know what that word means we don't know why that verb is in that form in that context whatever it is like like he was really indicating to me in these discussions we had the scholarship has not been done this is not well understood they really need people to go back and look at many scripts few of them and again so you can imagine with this kind of background that time I was I was very actively working on on ancient Buddhist manuscripts and stone inscriptions and stuff that I was shocked that the core of the judeo-christian world that right in the middle of this area of what seemed to me the most oversaturated most highly funded field of ancient philosophy historical research telling me that stuff is on a achievement I can borrow his phrase here and say it is it is really true in 2019 the philosophy of Socrates is not well understood I think the main impression that guides educators all levels whether it's in the university in high school NATO is actually just that Socrates is a man in a rope even a man who walks barefoot in the snow that's another anecdote about Socrates he's a barefoot man robe and people think of him as a Buddhist monk for that reason I mean maybe some people in Catholic culture still think of him as something like a Catholic monk and maybe some people think of him like this sort of mythified fictional version of Mahatma Gandhi the reality of who Gandhi was so quite another quite another story too and people do not think of Socrates as a sort of angry crotchety old man who tells people to be ready to go to war all the time to keep up their military training to have many sons to have sons with beautiful women as the mothers by the way so that there'll be good citizens for the future someone whose idea of of civic virtue civic duty isn't just jury duty and isn't just you know playing his role in government when he when he wins the election by a lot which he did but is actually being ready for military service all the time someone who really lived through a period of constant war in some ways you know this is not the whole of the philosophy of Socrates but understand who he was in his own culture and also what what he means for us now already the military side of what he's teaching the overtly macho life of perpetual readiness this is not a Buddhist monastic ideal of readiness this is not a life of introspection and prayer his his philosophy a great deal of his philosophy this is part of why he's seen as the founding philosopher of the ancient cynics has to do with toughness in the most crude physical sense now just the rest early what is toughness they were somewhat burdened by the pseudoscience of their times there so the early cynics and Socrates himself in Anniston A's you know they did have the idea that for instance not eating when you felt hungry made you tough well you know maybe in some abstract psychological sense you feel strong they thought that being cold and enduring the cold and this kind of thing makes you tough there's an idea in Plato also that you know you become taller by being lean when you grow up that going through puberty clean result you being tall whereas being fat will keep you short so yeah they were burdened by some scientific misconceptions I'm not saying that his guide for how to be a tough guy would work today but you know there's this huge effort made to clear the name of Socrates in the context of nine public guilt over the fact that he was murdered I used the term murderer loosely here he was brought to trial judged and condemned to death and then executed and Athens seemingly five minutes later thought that this was a terrible crime against philosophy and was the wrong thing to do a name you guys may not know is antis Phineas in large part the tough-guy philosophy of Socrates continues on in an undiluted form in the philosophy of medicine ease the help the question nobody really wants to deal with this is about sincere having now been reading about this stuff for more than 20 years of my life I've never seen anyone who really is willing to deal with the extent to which the philosophy of Socrates is honestly and accurately presented by Plato now a mission so the tough guy side of it as I say continues natus thinnies simply by temperament Plato does not seem to be all that interested in that however how would we characterize the philosophy of Plato broadly speaking and thematically speak so antis thinnies is interested in toughening you up a kind of life of Perpetual military readiness sleep with beautiful women and have beautiful children with them to make the city more virtuous and so for the future it's not all there is to it but there's a lot of emphasis there on strength and that the only real joy in life the real happiness comes from virtue and it's a very quote unquote manly tough-guy notion of virtue and this more or less films a whole major movement in greco-roman philosophy that continues for centuries and centuries thereafter okay so and again this is nothing like Buddhism this is more like you know some crap again this is some crazy old man who tells you to you know in American politics tells you to always carry your gun with you and always be ready for the Russians to in fate or something and again the times Socrates lived through they had to be ready all the time for all of their surrounding nations to invade not just the Spartans they were invading and being invaded by all these three people and launching off on new on new expeditions there were there were real social reasons a component story okay so Plato Plato is absolutely obsessed with the idea that philosophers ought to take over government so people praised this they talk about the core unquote philosopher-king this is this is like you know what the relationship of Satanism to Christianity is less of a contrast than the relationship between platonic philosophy and what ISM Buddhism is about these men in robes who were announced the world as they know we're gonna have nothing to do with politics we don't know Plato everything about his philosophy it's all about taking over the state through often through dishonest means through various imaginations that philosophers can and should for example pervert one of the most crucial notions of democracy they have that it's it's acceptable for philosophers to take over government and manipulate lotteries of deciding things through random lot that just to placate the people to make them think they have democracy and equality you have the appearance of a lottery and then actually secretly corrupted so this is and this is in Plato this is one of most fundamental virtues of democracy as it in the Athens people why because they know better because Plato thinks he's one of the wives people who ought to be deciding this Plato believes in quite a totalitarian system of government where he's going to decide everything including whom you reproduce with who should have children with who for the eugenic improvement of humanity Plato wants the total militarization of society and want society being ruled by these quote-unquote Guardians who are a superior special class of hyper-vigilant hyper military muscle men want to say who also have studied philosophy as he defines it and there's a lot of common ground between Plato and the idealized representation of Sparta and this is at a time when Sparta is the enemy of Athens not their friend not their ally he's looking across and he's seeing this hyper military organized the top-down authoritarian society and saying hey me too no in academia what you always get is this attitude you see this even with because you see this with the representation of Socrates and Plato and you see this even with the representation of Socrates and Xenophon this is even in the introduction to our additions in other ways like oh no no no um Plato just takes the name of Socrates and then presents his own philosophy through the most and there's no connection there's no sense in which the fact that in Plato it's it's telling you Socrates says X there's no sense in which that represents the historical surgeons of Plato just took the liberty of using Socrates a man he knew face to face in to some extent worshipped as his teacher just use them as a hand puppet to represent a philosophy that is in many ways totally contradictory to to what Socrates actually preached isn't it much more disturbing and much more difficult for us to imagine the extent to which these various pupils the direct students of Socrates like Plato Vinay destinies really are in broad thumb attic terms accurately representing the teaching of of Socrates well who else were among the influential students of Socrates have mention this before the single most important in terms of both understanding who Socrates really was and understanding why he's been misrepresented in history the way he has is alkie be at ease now the standard english pronunciation is Alcibiades I'm gonna choose to be a slightly more Greek in my pronunciation I know this is not remotely the way modern Greeks method and I've been referred to as alchemy at ease now alky be at ease was young and handsome and he was the star pupil of Socrates alkie be at ease was absolutely mono maniacally fixated on taking over leadership of government just like Plato these are two of Socrates as pupils who have this incumbent who feel that they're better educated they want better education for everyone's true as a positive part of of Socrates flaws but you see that throughout his pupils and there wasn't running okay but they're the people who've received this superior education they have this higher level of philosophical education and now lqb Oddie's wants to take over the leadership of athens and it's in the midst of this long ongoing war and alkie be at ease also this is ultimately why he's put on trial and changes his whole political you know direction he also seems to have scornful contempt for the petit superstitions of the he doesn't believe in the same religion he doesn't have the same kind of religiosity that Athenians expected one other so I talked about that more in an earlier video where I talked about the extent to which Socrates really was guilty of what he was accused of and I think we have a very very good source for that which again most academics don't want to take seriously in the comedy written about surgeries with a satire written about Socrates it's a satire titled the clouds by Aristophanes and again it's a satire if someone makes a satire about George Bush or Donald Trump it's not funny if it has no connection to reality and even the title the clouds is pointing out socrates was a guy who was going out and in an iconic light and iconoclastic way he was challenging the superstitious and religious these are people he was teaching a religious philosophy that no there wasn't a magical man in the sky called Zeus who controlled the clouds and the rain and lightning there were these principles of natural physics we today say philosophy of nature or something but for them it was physics that they taught and he says well he believes in this one God that stands behind the phenomena of nature but it's a completely abstract God it's not a God with a face like Zeus or with a name the comedian goes too far say it is ultimately just a vortex like chaos so one digression leads to another here the ancient Greek concept of chaos is more like our concept of things emerging from chaos it's a kind of creative chaos so again the use of the word vortex is not that bad here it's not it's not chaos in a more absolute or abstract sense that they're thinking of but that ultimately the clouds move in the sky the churning of the clouds of the sky is a chaos is a chaotic vortex that ultimately all the principles of nature and the creation of the world and the churning of the tides in the ocean reflect this principle of nature this is not a God in the same sense that Zuza you can interpret this as atheism you can interpret it as monotheism guess who else preaches this completely consistently with Aristotle sorry perfect completely consistent with Socrates antis thinnies and it's the the guy mentioned earlier who was on this macho tough and yourself up continues that side of of the philosophy of Socrates and then we have this comedian ridiculing Socrates but again are we just willing to accept this satire this critique this criticism in some ways is accurately conveying to you a problem with Socrates laws a problem from the common public perception of it this is I'm very very challenging um so in this context of someone who has already been publicly criticized and scorned for being an affront to common morality to the religion of the the common man in Athens Socrates has this star pupil who's young and handsome and in Athens they care a lot about being handsome at this time in this culture that really matters to politics and he's received the philosophical learning of Socrates and there are all these rumors about him that he's participating in these dark rituals that show his scorn and contempt for the common man's mysteries the common religion and how does he propel his political career forward he goes to the Olympics and at the Olympics he arrives the team of seven charioteers seven different chariots he enters into the Olympics and he wins he doesn't just take first place I think he takes first place second place and fourth place in this prestigious race at the Olympus and nobody had ever shown up with so many horses so he's the handsome young man who became you know like a rock star he became famous at the Olympics apparently he's also a great Horseman or great at riding horses and he's done this and we have his we have his lectures we have his speech recorded by Thucydides he openly admits he did this both to propel and the greatness of Athens as a kind of propaganda for Athens in the middle of the war and also to propel himself he says openly yes he wants to be a military leader and a political leader in the democracy he's putting so forth now at what point do we stop dismissing evidence of what the teaching of Socrates was so we have these huge incredibly boring books from Plato we said oh no no no no that's just evidence of the philosophy of Plato not the philosophy of Socrates really so so why doesn't Aristotle say that when he criticizes Plato Aristotle is basically one generation later Aristotle knew Plato that Aristotle didn't really know Socrates there's a passage of time ago there is a younger half generation removed whatever we don't so we got really nasty really tough criticism of Plato from from Aristotle he really scorns Plato's intellectual legacy and I think rightly so I think he's basically correct and what he what he says he's gonna split up mm-hmm he doesn't say well you know the problem with Plato is that he totally misrepresented Socrates no wouldn't that be tempting wouldn't that be important him to say and all conversely I would not imagine that Plato is very accurately and very slavish Lee continuing the philosophy of Socrates I do think Plato as philosophers know right but in this broad thematic sense that Socrates was someone who wasn't just interested in lecturing on the nature of virtue and justice but that he was really interested in talking about philosophers meaning people who had been trained by him taking over leadership of government and he was interested in Plato doing it he was interested in elke VI he's doing he was interested in his own pupils playing a more direct civic role in Athens just ask why not I mean this is not an enormous democracy like the United States of America where you'd say well come on you have a few pupils at your university in Virginia why do you think you are going to get elected to the Senate no in fact I think there are professors of political science in Virginia who are training their students to be elected to the Senate but this is a town this is not even a city by modern standards they don't have millions of twins of people you run a school it's a school for philosophy it's a school for politics to some extent to someone you want a school in this town you're teaching these virtues you're teaching what it is to be a man you're teaching what is to be a leader and you want your pupils to be elected someone's going to be elected in Athens and it's in the middle of this terrible war where if the wrong people are leaders if Cleon becomes a leader it has consequences if one leader or another comes to prominence it has real consequences for us all and again he's not a Buddhist monk he's not a peacenik he's not anti-war he's not about withdrawing from public life there's no reason to doubt that in broad brushstrokes no I don't think I don't think Socrates shared plato's fantasies about a specific utopia but in broad-brush jokes that Socrates wanted his students to play the kind of aggressive political role that Plato played that a generation later Aristotle played and that alka be a tease played and so I'll keep you a tease here's his star pupil rise in top now after Socrates is dead and during the trial of Socrates oh no no no everyone has to say oh well you know um you know I'll keep yachties he was really he was really doing his own thing he wasn't um he wasn't falling philosophy I'm sorry really really and Plato too huh gee it's see it seems like nobody represents the the continuation of the philosophy have started again Xenophon oh no no Xenophon he's just completely making up his own philosophy and he's just using the name sorry really so all of his pupils just decided to radically depart from his Lawson we can't we can't by the comparative study of his pupils you know pick out a really strong continuum of at least ematic and political interests that show a very clear direction that's that's what I think and I think I'll keep you at ease and thinking exactly the shame of alka Betty's in the shock is the algae be at ease was Socrates a star pupil they slept in the same tent during the war they went up and observed the troops he trained Alka be at ease to be a warrior to be a military leader to be a political leader they walked in we know this is when al-kuwaiti's was too young to be to be a general and a leader they they went and visited the battlefields of all this recorded and there are um there were actually disputes about whether or not Socrates was in love with I'll give you a tease because this is Athens and everyone everyone wants to make up homosexual romances about every historical figure you're mean about this this period a lot of things about Socrates his story seemed that it seemed indicate that he was on the heterosexual side of the equation but regardless what does al-kabir DS do he transforms his social status by participating in the Olympic Games and the by the way these were incredibly politically tense Olympic Angels a unique Olympic Games it's it's a weird historical parallel to the period when the Soviet Union the United States we're both trying to exclude each other from the Olympic Games the Spartan side and the Athenian side and different proxies they were trying to exclude each other there is this question of who would be allowed to participate and who would be allowed to participate in sports who bless it was this intensely political example of the Olympic Games in the midst of this huge war that time was like a world war for them the known world was at war and they were trying to get together and put aside their differences having Olympic Games at home we're not gonna let you participate in this ceremony at this temple so he catapults himself to being a major military leader it's sometimes translated that he's a general sometimes they he's an admiral because this war involves a lot of boats at the head of a navy of over 100 galleys at the most crucial part of the war but I just mentioned very briefly the rumors about his impiety about him him following these newfangled philosophical ideas and not adhering to the gods of his ancestors they follow after him you can read the rest of the story if you want to I'm not gonna get into details he is ultimately dragged down and his public reputation is destroyed because of his connection I would say to the philosophy of Socrates to the philosophy of the man who was ridiculed ridiculed in a comedy for saying that lightning is not created by Zeus it's created by the clouds and the clouds are not controlled by a God in the sense of Zeus they aren't gods themselves that they follow the principles of nature the principles of physics they would use the word physics vortex chaos is that our and we have this philosophy continuing through his students some of the students were more interested in one part the legacy someone another so as I say my conclusion for this video when I look back at my own life Here I am at 40 years old and I am still astonished still to this day I'm astonished at the extent to which simply the philosophy of Socrates for better and for worse I'm by no means I am NOT an uncritical fan of Socrates is not well understood Socrates wears a robe he is not therefore an exponent of peace or an exponent of Buddhism or any kind of you know philosophy like Buddhism it's not about celibacy it's not about non-violence it's not about withdrawing from public and political discourse and the fact that he wears a robe and comes from Athens we've taken him as a symbol of democracy people say that about Plato also and if I were teaching a university course on Plato verson I'd have to say to people for first thing look guys Plato was the world's worst enemy of democracy he's not just a critic he Plato is a key democracy and you know it's it's a real question to what extent was Socrates not just a critic of democracy but even anti-democracy did Socrates believe like Plato or did he come to believe with the passage of time that the rule of the majority was less important than the rule of the why is the rule of the competent the rule of philosophers or the rule of at least educated people just as in our own time you know you need a driver's license to drive a car but you don't need a you don't need a voting license to vote you don't need an education and politics all of these guys lived through the tragedy of watching illiterate stupid ignorant people be led by their passions and make terrible decisions terrible decisions in both peace and war that bankrupted the country led to enormous numbers of deaths led to people being enslaved led to the empire expanding and expanding too much and then collapsing these guys lives live then it led to also the collapse of democracy and democracy being replaced now oligarchy and above all else that same impetuous stupid element of democracy as they saw it have ins led to the trial and execution of Socrates himself it led to the bizarre trial and condemnation of alka be at ease his star pupil who was rising up quickly to be a great leader of men and and they tried him in his absence they tried him in of sting he was not in court to plead his own sight they waited from the leave town and then had this trial accusing him of of impiety they lived through all of this and were left with an intellectual legacy where we mostly know when understand Athens through its harshest critics but we can understand Athens the advantages and virtues of its democracy precisely because we know it through its critics not through people who are just praising it and I'm amazed that a 2019 it seems to me that people are still reluctant to accept and learn about Socrates through his critics even though it's called comedy I really think if you take a detached look at the clouds by Aristophanes this this critique this vilification of Socrates you're gonna get a much much more honest insight into both why Socrates became famous and why he became hated and on the contrary if you read whether from Plato or from zeniff on the apology for Socrates the explanation from afterwards you have to read these things as being 180 degrees opposite of the truth in some cases every mention of alka be at ease oh no no no all of Socrates is students were very humble and never tried to take over the government and you know Alka be at ease you know he one bad egg and you know I tried to give him a good education but he just didn't fall you know this is in the contact you know the context is in the context of a guy being executed for being heretic you know for daring to question you know I made an earlier video that was titled you know Socrates must die ohai Socrates why Socrates must die Socrates remains a profoundly instructive example of both what was right and what was wrong with Athenian society it's I think it's a fundamentally wonderful thing for a society to turn to its own population and say you yes you are capable of a higher level of responsibility don't just be responsible for your own household for your own amusement for your own self-indulgence you know I want you to be responsible for the greater good of this city as a whole or this the societies all that's a wonderful thing and you see all of Athenian society was infused with his tremendous dynamism just because ordinary people took on the type of responsibility and planning and thinking and debate that in a monarchy in the Dark Ages in Europe only a tiny number of people surrounding the King engaged in a tiny number of aristocrats in the immediate company of the King would engage in that kind of thinking education debate what-have-you so there's this amazing wonderful intellectual dynamism and depth that the whole society takes on thanks to this democracy but Socrates and the history of the Peloponnesian War shows us also the tremendous danger of placing that responsibility in the hands of people who do not have the education who do not have the intellectual capacity to handle that responsibility and that is ultimately what killed Socrates himself and what ruined Athens in their long long war against Sparta