The Cross-Examined Life: Socrates Debates the Laws | Hacker News Reader

The Cross-Examined Life: Socrates Debates the Laws

laphamsquarterly.org

18 pointsdiodorus8 comments

Keep in mind this is all base don Plato's semi-fictionalized depiction of Socrates. In real life Socrates may have supported, and was certainly seen as supporting the Thirty Tyrants who briefly took over Athens, including one of his former students.

You're referring to the thirty tyrants he disobeyed, his apparent sin in the public mind was staying in the city at that time - but since he also stayed in the same city after it condemned him to death, this isn't much of a demonstration of his loyalty to the tyrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants#Socrates_and_th...

Well the tyrants killed or exiled everyone they thought were disloyal to them, and they let Socrates stay. This along with him being Critias teacher meant that the Tyrants at least considered Socrates to be on their side, even if Socrates didn't see it the same way. As far as disobeying the Tyrants Socrates said that he was ordered, along with three others, to bring another citizen to the tyrants where he would have been killed. Socrates said he disobeyed and just went home, refusing to help or to warn the man. I'm not aware of anyone who did corroborate this, and even best case scenario it's still a pretty weak form of disobedience which wouldn't have won him many friends among the families and friends of those executed.

I don't follow the logic; the tyrants didn't kill the majority of the population. He didn't start a one-man war with them, that's not proof of support.

What if the Laws of Athens, as personified in the dialogue, were subject to change over time, like our social contracts? Would they deserve such treatment that one would prefer death over harming them?

As I see it, this view of purity and absolute objectivity in law doesn't conform to our world, at least in its current state.

Edit: To add, the possible change in the Laws is also governed or driven by entities who are neither objective nor just: powerful individuals, corporations, parties, lobbies, etc.

As tempting as it is, I don't see it as useful to compare Socrates' Athens to any of our modern nations. IMO this is what's wonderful and exasperating about Plato: all of his arguments are based on a bulletproof ideal, a mental concept, that he himself never actually finds in real life. First principles, I guess, to reason from. In several of his dialogues, when Socrates himself is pressed to locate these ideals in real life, he has to recourse to myth or folklore. This doesn't invalidate them, in my opinion; but it's an important context for discussion. I guess what I'm saying is, it's a thought experiment; presumably even Socrates' Athens is not actually Socrates' Athens.

I guess as I sit here writing and thinking these thoughts, I'm coming to see it as actually kind of a strength. If, like Robert Kegan [0], we see identification with abstract systems (like laws, principles, constitutions, etc) as developmentally more sophisticated than identification merely with tribes, then like him we can also see it as still more developmentally sophisticated to learn not to restrict one's identity to a tightly-defined set of abstract principles; we can hopefully learn to adapt our identity to our circumstances with best intentions and a lightness of spirit. I think Plato's Socrates, with the occasional recourse to myth and folklore, is a pretty inspiring example of this.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan

I agree with most your grounding points but not with your interpretation. It sounds too risky of unnecessary apologism to me. I guess I feel I would have to question myself of fraud. This is in consideration of the incentive to justify immoral behavior, and the lack of evidence that more tribalism would have anything to offer society.

So, how do you reconcile with the apparent correlation between a lack of faith in philosophical ideals and dishonesty, neoliberalism, lack of nuance, late capitalist culture, etc.? Do you reconcile this with simple unfettered individualism? It seems to me that this sort of cartooning of Socrates is more than unnecessary; of course it isn’t provable and would undermine the already limited value it could otherwise have, and which it seems our society would do best to use make use of.

Solid questions, thanks for the thoughtful response. I can try to speculate. I should observe that I haven't studied developmental psychology or philosophy above an undergrad level, so I'm likely to misstep with both logic and terminology.

> the incentive to justify immoral behavior, and the lack of evidence that more tribalism would have anything to offer

First I can say that I don't think Kegan means that the relaxation of identification with abstract systems means devolving back into identification with tribe. I think it refers more to the ability to engage in good faith with criticisms of one's abstract systems, one's ideologies, and recognize their weaknesses and inconsistencies much as one did with one's tribe--that is, a transcendence of the need to associate weaknesses of the system with weaknesses of the self, with the associated defensiveness. I think anyone who uses those inconsistencies and weaknesses to justify immoral behavior probably didn't reach the abstract-system phase to begin with, though it doesn't seem unlikely that someone would feign that to display tribal identification. I'm guessing that's what people mean by the term "virtue signaling."

> the apparent correlation between a lack of faith in philosophical ideals and dishonesty, neoliberalism, lack of nuance, late capitalist culture, etc.?

I'm with you on this one. I don't think Kegan would advise sacrificing all faith in abstract systemic thought, and I don't think that's what Socrates is doing when, e.g., at the end of a long series of questions, he shrugs and tells a story he heard one time about the gods. I think what's at issue is whether one can separate oneself from one's ideals well enough to critique them, to balance conflicting ideas thoughtfully and not feel obliged to defend your system to the death when it butts up against other systems. I think what I called "lightness of spirit" above is key here, and we see it all the time in Socrates - the wisest in Athens not because he knew more, but because he knew that he didn't know more. I mean, so he says. There's obviously abundant lightness of spirit there too.

The charge of individualism is a good one. I hope that there's a stage past the militant adherence to first tribe and then ideology that doesn't necessarily entail individualism. Maybe it just looks like a relaxed broad view of the human tragicomedy that takes the good with the bad, sympathizes with the suffering, and makes choices according to conscience.

As for cartooning Socrates, I hope not. I'm certainly not caricaturing him mean-spiritedly. I admire his enterprise and methods, including when he has to set rationality aside and tell a good story. I think those moments make him more humane, more relatable, more realistic. I realize that my current representation of him is at odds with the point made in the article, but even here, choosing death according to conscience, it's still not about making some grotesque martyr of himself. I think it's admirable.

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