Reading Log: The Trial of Socrates (I. F. Stone)

January 10, 2008

Like many who have studied philosophy, Socrates has long had an established place in my intellectual pantheon. How could the man who essentially created Western philosophy occupy any lesser place?

After reading I. F. Stone’s The Trial of Socrates I am left shaken. How could I have read so many works and listened to so many lectures about or involving Socrates without this devastating assessment being mentioned even once? Stone makes a very strong case that Socrates was far from the martyred philosopher, finally executed for standing up for principles that endure today. Instead, Socrates is a brilliant, obsessed, egomaniacal, rabble-rousing flake… more the crazy person ranting in the coffee shop to whoever will listen than the object of the philosophical conversations held in those shops.

Socrates stood firmly and directly against democracy and in favor of a totalitarian, divinely-supported monarchy even after two bloody revolutions that saw the Athenian democracy destroyed by his students. He preached a negative dialectic, delighting in poking holes in the positions of people at every level of Athenian society regardless of their political position. Finally he committed suicide by mocking a jury inclined to let him go with a reasonable fine, practically forcing them to sentence him to death and then staunchly resisting every possible avenue of escaping that sentence legitimately or through escape.

At every turn when the Socrates I believed in had a chance to prove otherwise he chose either silence or mockery. Stone has returned to the source texts and outlines with laser-like detail and precision how historians from Ancient times until today have glossed over almost all of this evidence to hold onto a cherished story supported only by the most contradictory sources and the most charitable (and in most cases obviously wrong) interpretations.

Socrates shouldn’t have been put to death– he wasn’t harmless, by an means, but the Athenian ideal should have found a way to put up with him. But it’s easy to see why an angry and scared group would see it done. In fact, it’s hard to understand why it didn’t happen sooner.

The picture of Socrates I have after reading this (pragmatic, entertaining, often funny and always highly readable) account is of a man tortured by his own, still unsolved questions. A brilliant thinker, Socrates sought absolute definitions, believing that only from that base could a coherent understanding of the world be formed… and in the grip of that obsession– over questions that we continue to argue about almost 2500 years later– he was essentially a broken man. Choosing suicide, which he couldn’t bring himself to do by his own hand, but which he believed to be the only way to fully transcend the earthly limitations of his own logic, doesn’t seem so surprising.

Tags: books, Philosophy, reading log