Socrates vs. the Sophists on Ethics

[Music] foreign [Music] talk is on Socrates versus the sophists I entitled my history of philosophy Socrates children because Socrates is the father of philosophy Socrates is the first great philosopher the first to clearly know when a point was proved to be true and when it was not the first person to consciously practice the art of logic in the Quest for wisdom which by the very definition and literal meaning of the word is what philosophy is supposed to be logic and wisdom Clarity and profundity Socrates was the first to combine them Socrates is the archetype and Touchstone for all subsequent philosophers every one of the many schools of philosophy in the ancient world claimed to be the true Disciples of Socrates except for the materialist and atheist epicureans just as each of the 30 000 different Christian denominations today claim to be the true Disciples of Christ if there had been no Socrates there would be no Plato and without Plato no Aristotle and Aristotle laid the foundations not only for almost all subsequent philosophy but also for most of the Sciences which gradually split off from philosophy like children leaving home to set up a new family and the rest of the history of Western philosophy flows from these three Socrates Plato and Aristotle the history of Western philosophy can be usefully oversimplified by a geographical image think of Two Rivers arising from a swamp flowing separately for about 500 years then blending into a single River for the next 1500 years separating again for another 500 years and then ending in another swamp the two rivers are philosophy and religion reason and faith centering on Socrates and Jesus the two most influential human beings who ever lived both Rivers emerge from the swamp of pagan mythology and polytheism Socratic reason and judeo-christian Faith were not just two new teachings new thoughts but to fundamentally new ways of thinking one in Israel the other in Greece both distinguish themselves from and criticize the teachings of the myths that surrounded them but also from the Mythic imaginative intuitive dreamlike subjective way of thinking that produced the myths both Hebrew faith and Greek reason opposed not only the teachings of the polytheistic myths but also its mode of thinking its epistemology faith for the Hebrews meant not Mythic dreams or mystical experiences but a public revelation of the one true God in two new forms miraculous and providential historical events and the moral writings of the prophets both of these two objects of Faith were objective and public exoteric instead of esoteric one needed no special talents to understand the visible works of God in history some of which were miraculous and all of which were providential or to understand the moral writings in the law and the prophets the object of the other new kind of thinking from Athens was also not imaginatively invented myths but reason that is defining terms clearly and proving controversial conclusions logically two things that had simply not been done before Socrates in any conscious or consistent way both of these two new ways of thinking were objective and realistic in that they were public and Democratic not private and esoteric neither of these two new ways of thinking Hebrew Faith or Greek reason could marry the myths that would be like a man Marrying an animal if they could marry each other that would be like a man marrying a woman and that's what they did and that's what produced Christian culture or Christendom which is not primarily a political order but a spiritual order and that is the culture that is now dying in Europe and North America though it is continuing to grow everywhere else in the world to go back to our geographical image the mingling of these two rivers happened in the Roman world which was the only time the Western world was unified in a single Republic and later an Empire it was like the marriage between two missionaries philosophical missionaries of the socratic reason and religious missionaries of the Jewish god who had become incarnate in Christ the claims of both missionaries were Universal and not just for one race or Nation truths revealed by reason were Universal truths and the law is revealed by God were universal laws the name for that marriage was Christian culture or Christendom it was a stormy marriage but a fruitful one especially in its two giants Augustine and Aquinas the two most brilliant Christian Minds who ever lived and it lasted for 1500 years until the reformation and the Renaissance began to pull it apart in a kind of divorce on the one side the Protestant Reformation wanted to divorce religion from Greek rationalism and Roman legalism and on the other hand the humanistic and scientific Renaissance wanted to divorce science and art from religious faith and Dogma although they destroyed the medieval marriage and thus created the so-called modern world both were nostalgic backward-looking movements the Reformation wanted to restore the simple gospel and free it from its marriage to Greek reason and Roman law to free the Divine from its marriage to the human whereas the Renaissance wanted to free the human from its marriage to the Divine and restore the glory that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome both the reformation and the Renaissance began as relatively modest reforming and purifying movements but they soon became increasingly rebellious and independent and eventually became the two post-christian cultures of on the one hand the scientific and humanistic rationalism of the early 18th century enlightenment and on the other hand numerous protests against that in the name of a subjective Romanticism or irrationalism especially in the 19th century and this has left us with our present split culture and split personalities typified by C. S Lewis's complaint in his autobiography that quote the two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast on the one side a many islanded sea of poetry and myth on the other side a glib and shallow rationalism nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary nearly all that I believe to be real I thought grim and meaningless for faith has collapsed into feeling and reason into computing which were only two ghosts of their former robust and vibrant medieval selves and two ghosts cannot marry that is my x-ray of the skeletal structure of the modern mind and what is the so-called post-modern mind that now surrounds us well there is no consensus in fact there's an increasing Division and distrust the only thing common to all post-modernisms is the laws of faith in modernism that is the adequacy of either objective reason or subjective feeling it is as structuralist a swamp as the Swamp of Mythology that both biblical faith and classical reason emerged from see the ongoing importance of Socrates for our present world look at Kierkegaard and Nietzsche the two founders of modern existentialism which is the only really interesting School of modern philosophy these two are as opposite as any two philosophers can be in what they value Kierkegaard said that his whole extremely diverse philosophical output is about only one thing what it is to exist as a Christian aniti called Christianity the synthesis of all errors the most total and loathsome falsehood in human history yet for both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche all of Western Civilization circles around Socrates and Jesus like planets orbiting a double star they are character guard's two greatest heroes anichi's two greatest villains Nietzsche is profoundly right to see Socrates worship of Truth as religious it is his Lord it is god without a face that's why Nishi hates in fear Socrates almost as much as he hates in Fierce Christ he called himself the Antichrist he could equally have called himself the anti-zocrates obviously Socrates and Jesus are profoundly different but they're also profoundly similar two profoundly different people can be more profoundly similar than any two shallowly different people can be for the deeper you go down into the canyon the closer you get to the single River that is at the bottom Socrates was very different from Jesus he was not virgin born was not predicted by prophets performed no miracles did not claim to be divine was not crucified did not resurrect and did not promise to return to judge the world at the end of time Jesus did yet they are strikingly similar in a number of ways first of all they were similar to each other and they're very different from all others who ever lived C. S Lewis says somewhere that there are three people whom it will be impossible to mistake for any others when you meet them in heaven Jesus Zachary's and Samuel Johnson wrong because G.

K Chesterton is the new Samuel Johnson but two out of three ain't bad a second similarity is that both Socrates and Jesus were monotheists that was a universal cultural requirement in Israel and a unique counter-cultural achievement in Greece Socrates always speak seriously when he speaks of the god in the center but never when he speaks of the Gods in the plural in fact soccerise was martyred because he could not honestly profess publicly that he believed in any of the Gods of the state Socrates was the only person that Athens the world's first democracy ever executed for religious reasons like the Rome of the Caesars Greece was very tolerant to all religions except the three examples of monotheism in the ancient world Jews Christians and Socrates so a third similarity is that both Socrates and Jesus were martyred for their so-called impiety their religious non-conformity Socrates for being too monotheistic Jesus for apparently not being monotheistic enough in an Exquisite irony both were executed for impiety even though both were by far the most Pious persons in their culture a fourth similarity is that both were Saints if the definition of a saint is simply one whose whole life is devoted to obeying God's will that was the ultimate reason they both accepted martyrdom both were led by and obedient to the Holy Spirit Zachary spoke of a spirit a diamond a Divine voice that spoke to him it was literally the only thing he never questioned even when it gave no reasons and forbade him to do what others in his culture saw as honorable for instance to enter politics here's a fifth similarity both Socrates and Jesus endured mistrials and both were executed for religious offenses that were draped in the disguise of political offenses although most men were apolitical similarity both never published a word Jesus only writing was in the sand and Socrates wrote only poetry the last night of his life to exalt the God of Light Apollo and to festoon esop's fables the most childlike of All Greek writings the sands of time have blown these writings away as surely as it blew away the words Jesus literally wrote In The Sand Socrates would never get tenure at a typical American University no research no Publications as to what Jesus would meet as his fate in a typical American Church well read dostoevsky's Fable of the grand Inquisitor deeper and more mysterious similarity is that both were remarkably humble yet both made outrageous astonishing claims this is obviously true for Jesus but how is it true for Socrates well in his apology Socrates was so honest that after he was declared guilty of the crimes of not believing in the gods of a state and corrupting the youth by teaching them to question as he had questioned he had to propose a counter penalty that he thought he deserved rather than either death or exile and he proposed as his counterclaim to be honored by the state by free room and board in the town hall because he was his greatest benefactor no one else in history comes even close to either Jesus or Socrates in the contrast between the enormity of their claims and the humility of their personalities an eighth similarity both were hated by both the political right and the political left of the time the traditionalists and the progressives which in the case of Socrates was the establishment on the one hand and the sophists on the other hand more about them in a minute and in the case of Jesus it was the dogmatic and legalistic Pharisees on the one hand who added to the Jewish law and the prophets and the skeptical Sadducees on the other hand who deleted much of it Jesus was also hated both by the herodian collaborators with Rome and by the Zealot revolutionary Rebels both Socrates and Jesus fit the description Chesterton gives of Jesus by this analogy he says imagine someone described by some as far too fat others as far too skinny some as ridiculously tall by others as ridiculously short either he is a very strange shape or he is exactly the right shape and nobody else is similarity number nine both were enemies of moral relativism which was taught in One Way by the sophists and in another way by the Pharisees who actually fulfilled all the fears of jesuitical Casualty that Protestant critics specialize in by not demanding perfection in the heart only in the hands in correct Behavior similarity number 10. both defended Traditional Values but in an untraditional way both were truer than their culture was to the culture's own Origins and Foundations and yet both seemed radically new and threatening to those who thought they were defending the culture against them similarity number 11. Socrates taught by a systematic questioning the famous Socratic method and so did Jesus the rabbinic method of teaching is the closest thing to the Socratic method that we find anywhere in the ancient world the classic Jewish joke for me is this one why does a rabbi always answer a question with another question and the answer is why shouldn't a rabbi answer a question with another question eh that's only a funny description of what Jesus habitually did even as a boy when his parents lost him for three days they found him in the temple doing what asking and answering questions to the rabbis like the rabbinic method of the assumptions of the Socratic method are the opposite of the assumptions of the sophists first that truth is the end the goal it is an intrinsic and absolute value that we must have a respect for truth and an honest intention when we argue that truth is objective and Universal and third that it is knowable by ordinary human beings uni using ordinary human reason especially by defining our terms clearly and arguing logically similarity number 12.