by W.D. James
Heroes are willing to give their lives, and in the old tales usually do, to protect their homes and loved ones. Their deaths are literally salvific. Beowulf suffering his mortal wounds acquired in destroying the dragon saves the people of his homeland. Of course, the archetype here is Jesus Christ whose death saves the whole world according to the Christian gospel.
Socrates also embodies and fulfills this archetype. Confronting our own death is perhaps the fundamental task set each one of us.
Further, as mortal beings, we are all called to confront death. Even if we are never in a battle or on trial for our life, every single parent and every true friend is called to make sacrifices, if not of their life directly, of their time, their resources, their energy. That is, of the things that comprise their lives. In a real sense, we are called to heroism.
Death and courage
As we have previously noted, courage on Socrates’ account is more about knowing what to fear than not fearing anything. We should genuinely fear becoming bad. We should not fear what others may do to us as long as it leaves our virtue intact.
The ultimate fate awaiting Socrates is the prospect of death. However, he reminds us (by reminding his jurors) that death awaits us all, not just the convicted. Should we fear death? Clearly, we usually do.
Socrates’ first approach to this question is in relation to wisdom and his main insight into wisdom is knowing what he does not know. “For let me tell you, gentlemen,” he admonishes, “that to be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a man…” (29a).
This may not be enough to comfort us. Perhaps we can admit the formal point that we do not know what lies on the other side of death and, hence, are not justified in worrying about it. Maybe we’re not good enough logicians, but the unknown aspect of death, not to mention its finality, is rather what worries us most of the time though.
Socrates had made the above observation while his trial was still going on. After having been convicted and sentenced to death, he takes the topic up again in his final address to the court and to the city of Athens (from there on out, we have only record of discussions with his friends as the execution of his sentence is delayed). There he pushes in a bit further:
“Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change; a migration of the soul from this place to another. Now if there is no consciousness but only dreamless sleep, death must be a marvelous gain [as he likens it to the most restful night of sleep one has ever had]” (40d).
If, on the other hand, death represents a migration of the soul, he speculates on the joy of meeting Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer there. Note, these are all poets, not philosophers. He also muses on meeting Ajax and other heroes who met their deaths via unjust trials; he speculates “above all I would like to spend my time there, as here, in examining and searching people’s minds, to find out who is really wise among them, and who only thinks he is” (41b).
Socrates does not claim to know which of these death represents: annihilation or continuation. If continuation means he can really continue to philosophize, both sound fine to him. He’s about to find out either way (hence, one big question will be answered and he’ll know a little more… unless he’s annihilated, that is).
These statements are pretty telling. That he plans to continue examining people, except in the afterlife it will be great poets and heroes, is meant to be a sort of joke I think – sort of rubbing his jurors’ noses in it; perhaps you can’t even keep me from philosophizing by killing me.
That he hopes to meet the great poets and the subjects of the poets, the heroes, there leads to the final point we will make in the next section.
In his final admonition to his peers, he restates his fundamental doctrine which we looked at in a previous essay: “You too, gentlemen of the jury, must look forward to death with confidence, and fix your minds on this one belief, which is certain: that nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death, and his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods” (41c-d). He’s still trying to convince them that they should pay attention most of all to the condition of their souls. He concludes: “Well, now it is time to be off, I to die and you to live; but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God” (42a).
I think there is more of a positive teaching embedded here than may at first meet the eye. Socrates is staking his fate on the goodness of the good. We had seen that nothing which does not harm our goodness can cause us any real harm nor should it be feared. Death does not make us bad. Hence, our goodness (if we possess any), will be left intact and we will have carried out the mission the cosmos has assigned us – job well done. Further, Socrates sensed that the gods vouchsafed the fundamental moral nature of existence. If so, they are watching out for the good. Additionally, as we saw in the last essay, Socrates thought that there was something of the divine in us, or that some part of us touched on the divine. If so, it is the gods, the divine, which are not affected by death. Perhaps whatever is most essential about us has that same character. But only God knows.
Philosophy as poetry
Throughout this series we have been noting ways in which Plato presents Socrates as new sort of hero and the practice of philosophy for which he is the archetype as an heroic adventure.
We had seen in the first essay how the archetypal hero goes on a journey and discovers some new truth there that is needed by his endangered homeland. In the Apology that is represented by Socrates ‘testing’ the proclamation of the Oracle at Delphi about him being the wisest person and the insight he gains is that wisdom consists as much in knowing what we don’t know as knowing what we do.
The hero will also have to fight off the monsters posing the threat to their homeland. Here that is represented by those who subordinate truth to power. The court of law is the arena in which he fights. Socrates heroically defends a life committed to the truth.
The hero then must return home to share their enlightenment. Socrates does this by repeatedly admonishing his fellow citizens to care most about their souls and to accept the sovereignty of the good: the evil can do no harm to the good.
Finally, he finishes the good fight by laying down his life for his friends and fellow citizens of his beloved Athens. For “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, KJV).
In this dialogue, Plato has sung the praises of the new model hero. But, wait, to sing the praises of heroes is the job of poets, not philosophers, right?
We have noted how Plato (or possibly Socrates) supposedly ignited the perennial conflict between the poets and the philosophers. The poets, when Socrates examined them, were found to have real truth, but did not know the meaning of their own words; they were under some sort of divine inspiration (as was the Oracle). We alluded to how in his Republic, Plato notoriously ‘banishes the poets.’
Let’s start with the last point. In that dialogue, Plato banishes the (corrupt) poets, not poetry. In fact, he calls for new poets who will tell the truth about the gods and their relations with humans. They will compose new, true myths.
In this dialogue he is telling a new sort of story about a new sort of hero, his hero Socrates. He is mythologizing him (and philosophy). That is, Plato is acting as a poet, a new sort of poet who tells the truth about the gods and how they relate to humans and how, as a consequence, we are supposed to live.
At a minimum, we should be able to see this as some sort of reconciliation of poetry and philosophy. However, I think the ultimate point is a larger one.
At the end of the day, poetry wins. Philosophy must be thought of poetically. Also, certain lacunae are resolved if we accept this conclusion. Several times we had commented on Socrates’ relationship to the gods, the God, and religion more broadly. While on a strict account he might be seen as an innovator (‘the God’ vs just the gods and then his daemon), it was also noted that Socrates remains rather conventional in his piety at many points. He certainly takes what he sees as his divine vocation very seriously.
I think we can resolve this if we pay close attention to the merits of both poetry and philosophy as noted by Socrates (and Plato). The philosopher claims only ‘human wisdom,’ which is very limited, but which seeks to know what it knows and doesn’t know. The poets are presented as being in touch with a larger, divine, truth, but which they do not actually know or fully understand.
If one accepts that the stories of the poets (the myths of the gods and men) are essentially of a higher order of truth, then the task of philosophical seeking is within this overarching framework. The philosopher (lover of wisdom) respects and, to a degree, accepts the world as presented mythologically, but seeks to explore, question, and perhaps tease out a few certain truths within that overarching canopy of meaning, such as ‘a bad man cannot harm a good one’. But they always maintain a fundamental piety; neither Socrates’ nor Plato’s philosopher is the person who seeks to destroy ‘higher truths’ through the skeptical use of reason – both are always trying to save and make intelligible as much of that truth, through the use of reason, as is possible.
I think that is the framework for properly understanding what Socrates was up to and how Plato is thinking of the life of wisdom he and his teacher were committed to. This presents a model of wisdom-seeking which humbly utilizes ‘human wisdom’ coupled with a pious, but critical, engagement with the sacred wisdom traditions which are the inheritance of our species.
Such, anyway, is how I read the Apology. If it can stimulate us to follow something like the heroic path of Socrates, that is probably good. We could do much worse.
All quotes are from: Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant, Penguin, 2003.
Previous essays in this series:
Socrates as Hero (The Myth of Philosophy 1)
Monsters (The Myth of Philosophy 2)
Wisdom (The Myth of Philosophy 3)
Combat (The Myth of Philosophy 4)
winter oak 
yep. only always. no “bait” to take when One knows One. ❤
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