What You Can Learn From "The Gadfly of Athens"

Today I’d like to offer a paean to one of my all-time intellectual heroes, Socrates.

Born in Athens in 469 B.C., Socrates was one of the greatest thinkers of all time, a founder of Western philosophy who devoted his life to learning. Yet he insisted that he had nothing to teach.

Instead, he spent his days wandering through the great, teaming Agora – the massive, 37-acre marketplace at the heart of ancient Athens – asking questions and debating the essence of what it means to be human.

Like Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates never jotted down a word. Everything we know of his life and ideas comes from the works of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary, Aristophanes.

They describe him as an intellectual giant and master of irony who made lasting contributions to ethics, epistemology and logic. He did not, however,cut a particularly fine figure. The Ancient Greeks made a fetish of human beauty, but Socrates was described as the ugliest man in Athens with his spindly bowlegs, paunch, hairy neck and shoulders, bald bumpy head, snub nose, protruding lips and bulging eyes.

We also know he had an extremely ill-tempered wife, Xanthippe, reputedly “the most troublesome woman of all time.” When asked why he married such a shrew, Socrates good-naturedly replied that he wanted to prove that there was no one he could not mollify.

I’m skeptical on this point. Socrates did not become “The Gadfly of Athens” by soothing souls. Rather he encouraged his listeners to challenge arguments from authority and question even deeply held beliefs. Especially deeply held beliefs. In doing so, he frustrated and embarrassed many powerful people with his persistent line of questioning, known today as the Socratic method.

Socrates wanted those around him to think deeply, critically, about how they spent their days. The most fundamental measure of time is a human lifespan, he declared. It is essential that we adopt a life-affirming ethic and imbue our lives with meaning.

He insisted that much of what he was taught as a young man was insupportable or wholly wrong. He was hostile to “received wisdom” and encouraged his students to challenge parents, teachers, politicians, religious leaders and so-called experts.

With his probing questions, he became a master at exposing pretense and erroneous belief. He purported not to instruct but to “un-teach” men, arguing that the greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

Socrates stood for unfettered, unflinching philosophical inquiry. He wants to prevent us from clinging to unreflective thought. “The highest form of human excellence,” he maintained, “is to question oneself and others.”

Alarmists claimed that he was destabilizing Athenian society.

There was a backlash. Socrates was accused, tried and ultimately condemned to death on trumped up charges of “impiety” and “corrupting the youth of Athens.”

This was particularly shameful since Socrates was completely devoted to Athens. He never left it except to fight for it – and was shaped by its democratic ideals and its zeal to be the most forward-looking city-state on Earth.

But Socrates chose to accept his death sentence – by drinking the poisonous hemlock – rather than escaping or seeking exile. He upheld his principles to the end… and became a martyr to the independent mind.

What are the ideals that Socrates died for?

He believed that life should be devoted to learning. Education and awareness makes you virtuous, he said, and virtue is the surest road to happiness.

He believed that very little is necessary to live the good life. He delighted in reducing his needs to an absolute minimum, insisting that poverty is a shortcut to self-control and that the richest man is he who is content with the least. Observing the shop displays in the Agora one day, he exclaimed, “How many things I can do without!”

Many of his best-known utterances still speak to us today:

* Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

* Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

* Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

* Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Leisure is the most valuable of possessions.

* We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

* The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

*Let him who would move the world first move himself.

Ancient Greek culture is widely recognized as the foundation of Western culture. Before the Greeks, intellectual inquiry was always tainted by cant or superstition. Socrates helped change that with his insistence on reason and observation.

In the West today, we think the way we do, in large part, because Socrates thought the way he did. In his unwavering commitment to truth, he set the standard for philosophy and science.

His questions disturbed, provoked, exhilarated and intimidated his listeners. He insisted it is not enough to have the courage of your convictions. You must also have the courage to have your convictions challenged.

He encouraged his students to practice and refine the art of questioning. When you do, you develop a better sense of who you are, why you are here and what you can be. Contrary to popular belief, the more questions you have, the firmer the footing you are on.

Socrates exemplified the philosopher’s endless quest, a path where the goal is not just the finding, but the seeking. Gregory Vlastos, a Socrates scholar and Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, describes Socrates’ method of inquiry as “among the greatest achievements of humanity.” Why? Because he demonstrated that how we should live is every individual’s primary business.

Socrates was among the first to ponder deeply about what makes humans happy and how such blessings can be acquired. He inspires us to use the power of our own minds to approach the truth. And he compels us to seek a deeper understanding of what constitutes The Good Life.

Socrates was a philosophical genius, the quintessential seeker and conveyor of wisdom. We know this because his goal was not to show us what to think but rather how to think.

As he famously put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Carpe Diem,

Alex