Lakewood the Thinking City
Socrates is the patron saint and
founding father of the Western intellectual tradition, and of Western
philosophy in particular. At first
glance, it may be difficult to understand why he should occupy so exalted a
role. It wasn’t because of any
distinctive philosophical views he enunciated. As far as we know, he wrote nothing, and almost everything we
know about him derives from his appearances as a character (usually the chief
character) in Plato’s dialogues. In
many of these he is apparently Plato’s mouthpiece. Other dialogues portray episodes in Socrates’ own life. Even in these he sometimes seems merely to
be mouthing Plato’s thoughts, and in one – the Crito – he is a shameless
shill for the authoritarian state.
Socrates, then, is revered not so much for his thoughts as for his deeds. In brief, he made a practice of questioning his fellow citizens about their deepest beliefs and commitments. (He called himself the gadfly of Athens.) This made him unpopular in some circles, and the democratic government of Athens condemned him to death on some bogus charges of which the most infamous is “corrupting the young.”
His importance, then, lies in his
providing a model of commitment to the life of reason, even unto death. Why has this model become so important? The answer can be found in two facets of his
life: his questioning (which has given
us the term “Socratic teaching”) and his protestation that “All I know is that
I know nothing.”
The claim that he knew nothing, if
taken literally, is of course ridiculous.
He knew many things. The claim
could have been meant as mock humility, comparing his allegedly slight
knowledge against the pretended knowledge of his adversaries, as a setup for
shattering their pretensions. But it
goes beyond that. Socrates’ most
important point, I think, is that his knowledge, whatever it may have been, was
unimportant to those he was talking to.
Furthermore, their opinions – insofar as they were merely taken
over from authority or convention – were unimportant also. What is important, Socrates implied,
is that individuals arrive at their own beliefs by reasoning them out, using
their own experience and their own understanding of basic principles as a
foundation. Individuals must examine
their own lives so as to arrive at beliefs that are true to their own
experience and to their own basic values.
This is why Socrates claimed to be a midwife, aiming to help others give
birth to true beliefs and justified values.
This is why he said, “An
unexamined life is not worth living.”
Thus the themes that have continued
to arise in our consideration of Socrates’ life: reason, autonomy (critical thinking, “thinking for yourself”),
and integrity.
Socrates has been called the first
Christian (for reasons involving metaphysical beliefs largely extraneous to
this discussion). In addition, he might
be called the first democrat. For the
reasoned, independent, critical thinking he championed – and championed for
everyone, no matter what level of society (remember his teaching the slave boy
the Pythagorean theorem in the Meno) –is at the heart of the democratic
process. Surely, if every person helps
guide public policy through their vote, and if the welfare of society depends
on its being guided wisely, then everyone had better have the capability to
come to wise decisions. If, on the
contrary, the people as a whole cannot make wise decisions (or are not able to
evaluate their leaders’ decisions) then we had better be governed by an
intellectual elite, or the nearest thing we can get to an intellectual
elite.
So one would think that a democratic
society would do everything in its power to give its citizens the capability to
arrive at well-reasoned decisions on their own. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The two institutions that are most crucial in teaching us to
think in a reasoned, independent and critical manner and aiding us in doing so
– namely, education and the news media – both fail miserably.
Education pays lip service to the notion of critical
thinking and, in fairness, K-12 education often engages students in
“discussion.” But there is virtually no
attempt to teach students how to reason well in their discussions or in their thinking. In college education, the lecture method is
still dominant, supplemented only by “discussion,” which does little more than
encourage thinking without discipline or structure.
Likewise, the media fail to give us the facts we need to
make a reasoned decision about public policy, much less introduce us to the
arguments that bear on such decisions.
Instead they entertain us with the flashy, the superficial and the
simple. (I would hope there is no need
to expand on these points. If further
explanation is needed, it can be found elsewhere on this Thinking City page.)
And so in this, supposedly the most
successful democracy in the world, we still fail to hear what Socrates tells us
about the good life and healthy self-government.
--
G.B.