Civilization #10: The Trial of Socrates and Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Okay, so we are doing Socrates and Plato today. Last class we did Greek theater, and remember I said that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are really prophets of democracy. They see themselves as teachers who teach Athenians how to practice democracy. We also said that there are three major benefits to democracy. The first major benefit is that kings are bad. Kings have hubris, and hubris creates all sorts of problems. So remember in the play Antigone by Sophocles, the king Creon sentences Antigone to death even though it was unjust, and that was because of hubris. The second major benefit of democracy is that it is a gift from the gods that teaches citizens individual responsibility. So remember that Aeschylus told us that democracy is a gift from Athena in order to promote justice and truth in the world. And the third major benefit is that democracy is really the best way to promote justice and truth in the world. If citizens come together and they deliberate and act in good faith, then the world will be a better place. So that is the argument from the plays of Athens.

Now obviously there are people who disagree with this perspective, and one of the most famous opponents of democracy is Socrates. He lived during the time of the Golden Age of Pericles in Athens, and he was a very vocal opponent of democracy for the following reason.

In order to practice democracy properly, people need to access the truth, but to access the truth you need to have reason, and his argument was that most people are not capable of exercising reason in their thinking. To prove this, every day he would be sitting outside the Agora, which is the marketplace of Athens, and this is where everyone came together, and he would spend all day arguing with people in something called Socratic dialogue and showing the flaws in your reasoning. Showing you why you don't really understand the world when you think you do. Trying to prove that you are ignorant.

So let me give you a demonstration of what Socrates did. Give me a statement that is fundamentally and inherently true. Give me a statement that you think is fundamentally and inherently true. The Earth is a sphere, right? The Earth is a sphere, and so this is a statement that we think is true. And so what Socrates would do is he would slowly and methodologically expose the flaws in this statement. So the first question for you is: what is a sphere?

Explain what a sphere is. A three-dimensional round-shaped entity. And give me an example of a sphere. A ball, right? So you're saying the Earth is like a ball, is that correct? It's all around. And how do you know the statement is true? Who told you this? I mean, you can know a ball is a sphere because you hold it in your hand, but you're not a god, you don't hold the Earth in your hand, so how do you know it's true? Anyway, I can go on like this obviously for a very long time.

So this is what Socrates did. This is what is called a Socratic dialogue, and actually we still use this in many different places, like for example law school. So in American law schools, if you ever make the stupid mistake of ever applying to law school and you get into law school, they will teach you using the Socratic dialogue. But the idea is to show the flaws in your reasoning, and obviously if you get into an argument with Socrates you come out as a very mad person. So the reputation of Socrates in Athens during this time was that you could see him as a bully.

He was an intellectual bully, or he was a clown, or the most common understanding of Socrates was that he was a trickster. He tricked you into making statements that were illogical, because fundamentally language does not capture the truth. Language is just a convention we have in order for us to communicate, but it's not meant to reflect reality, and Socrates was exposing the flaws in our language system. So any questions about this so far?

All right, so to give you a sense of how Athenians thought about Socrates at that time, let me describe to you a play by Aristophanes. Aristophanes was a very famous satirist in Athens, and he made fun of all the very famous individuals of Athens, including Pericles, who as we said was the de facto king of Athens at this time, but also Cleon, who replaced Pericles as the leader of Athens. He also made fun of Socrates. The play was produced in 423 BCE and the play was called The Clouds. So let me first explain the plot of The Clouds and then we will interpret what it meant.

So in The Clouds, there is an Athenian farmer, a normal citizen, and he's in a lot of trouble because his wife spends a lot of money, so he owes a lot of money to creditors, and his creditors are banging at the door and demanding their money back.

So he comes up with this plan to get rid of his debts. There's a school called a thinkery, and it's run by a man, and the thinkery proposes to teach you reason, logic, truth, so that you can go and deceive jurors. You can basically go and manipulate people and deceive them in a trial to get out of your debts. So he wants to send his son to the thinkery to learn how to lie to juries. His son, who is a playboy, refuses, because he says that Socrates, he's a thief, he's a liar, he's a fraud, I refuse to go.

The man decides to check out the thinkery by himself. He goes in and he sees Socrates hanging from a basket from the ceiling, and the man's curious, like, what are you doing up there? And Socrates says, well, from up here I have a clearer and higher vision of the world, I can access truth better. Also from here I can draw inspiration from the clouds, who are the true gods. Not Zeus, not Heracles, the clouds are the true gods, and they're the ones who give me inspiration to come up with all these brilliant ideas.

So the man and Socrates have a very long conversation and he's completely convinced Socrates is a sage, he's a philosopher. He runs back and he tells his son, you must go enroll in the thinkery and learn from Socrates. So the son decides this is the path of least resistance, he goes to the thinkery, he becomes a faulty student. Meanwhile the man's creditors are banging at the door and saying to him, where is my money? And the man is now going to use all the tricks that Socrates taught him. So what he says is, I don't owe you any money. And then the creditor says, you swore by Zeus that you would pay me back. The man says, oh, guess what, Zeus doesn't exist, he's not a god, so I swore an oath to nothing, therefore I owe you nothing. The creditor obviously gets angry and he leaves.

Now the son comes back, and the first thing he does is start beating his father, and the father is like, why are you beating me, son? And then the son says Socrates taught me to beat you.

And the father's like, what? Why is he teaching you that? And the son says, he taught me justice. Now when I was young, did you beat me? The father says, yes of course, I beat you because you were a naughty boy. And then the son says, therefore I can now beat you because you're a naughty person for refusing to pay back your creditors. The man gets very angry and he decides to go burn down the thinkery with Socrates inside it, and that's how the play ends.

Now this is not a great play, this is not a famous play of Greece, but it tells you what Athenians thought of Socrates at this time, and it shows us that Athenians didn't think much of Socrates. He worships the clouds, which is nothing. So what they're saying is Socrates makes things out of nothing, he's just a fraud, he's a manipulator, he's a liar. But Socrates did have a lot of fans, specifically people who really hated democracy. The people who really, really hated democracy were the children of the rich. These were aristocrats born into the wealthiest, most noble, aristocratic families of Athens, who hated the fact that the normal people thought they were their equals.

So what Socrates did was he taught them basically mental or linguistic kung fu to go beat up these commoners who dare to think they're equals. One of the most famous students of Socrates included Plato, who we all know, but also Alcibiades, who was one of the wealthiest members of Athenian society, and he actually became leader of Athens as well. So Socrates had his fans, and because Athens was such a wealthy and open and tolerant society, they allowed Socrates to basically do whatever he wanted, until BC. This was the year that Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to Sparta. And when Athens lost the war, Sparta did not burn Athens down. Sparta had the right to burn Athens down but it did not. Instead Athens imposed a dictatorship called the 30 Tyrants, and the 30 Tyrants came from the wealthiest families of Athens, who also happened to be students of Socrates. Socrates did not actually participate in the tyranny. Socrates refused to participate in the tyranny, but there were many of these tyrants who were Socrates' students, and they were terrible people. They killed at least 5% of the Athenian population, they stole a lot of wealth, and they were so terrible that ultimately the Athenian people revolted against them and reinstalled their democracy.

So when the tyranny was overthrown, the 30 Tyrants were exiled, but most people were given clemency. They were forgiven if they participated in the regime.

Then what happens next is very strange. In BCE Socrates is put on trial. Remember, this is after the democracy is reinstated, and this is when people who participated in the tyranny were forgiven. But in 399 BCE Socrates was put on trial, and he was charged with two crimes. The first is impiety, which basically means he was insulting the gods of Athens, including Zeus, which is what he did in the play The Clouds. The second is corrupting the youth of Athens, basically miseducating the youth of Athens, which is also what he did in The Clouds. So it almost seems like this entire trial was a cruel joke put on by the people of Athens to teach Socrates a lesson. Does that make sense? So the people of Athens expected Socrates to apologize, make some jokes, be funny, and then all forgiven. During the trial Socrates refused to defend himself. What he said was this: "I am not a good speaker, I am bad with words, I'm just a poor person who comes from a poor family, who spends every day seeking out the truth.

I spend all my time seeking out the truth, thinking about the truth, that I have no time to practice rhetoric. I'm not good with words. Also I should not have to defend myself, because you're all capable of reason, you're all capable of logic. Therefore if you just think for yourself you will realize I'm not guilty. I had absolutely nothing to do with the 30 Tyrants. I spent all my life trying to help Athens. Therefore if you're stupid you will vote me guilty. If you're stupid there's nothing I can do about it."

So obviously the jury was insulted by his speech, and they voted, out of 500 people, 280 to 220, they voted that he is guilty. They declared he was guilty of these two charges. Now as you can see it's still a pretty close vote. I mean, Socrates was basically being a jerk during a trial and they voted him guilty, but it was a pretty close trial, 280 to 220. Now the second part of the trial is, if you are guilty they have to figure out what your punishment is.

So the jury asked Socrates to propose a punishment for his crimes, and then what Socrates said was, "You have found me guilty, and the reason why you found me guilty is because I speak the truth. I am a godly gadfly. I go around and I point out the nasty truths of Athenian society. I put a mirror to your face and I show you your warts, your pimples, your ugliness, therefore you hate me. But what I've been doing all my life has been for the good and better of Athens. I'm a public servant, I am the most selfless servant, because I speak the truth, and by showing the truth I make you a better person. Therefore I think a just punishment would be a pension. You guys should pay me to retire in peace. But you know what, I'm a generous and forgiving individual, therefore if you don't want to give me a pension I will understand. Therefore I am willing to pay a small fine. I'll pay a fine, and then we're good. How about that?" And again the Athenian jurors were pissed off, so they voted to condemn him to death by drinking hemlock.

They basically gave him the death penalty, and after they did so they came to realize that they were perhaps tricked by Socrates. Socrates was 70 years old, that's very old for back then. 70 years old was probably the age limit back then. He really didn't have much to live for, and here was the opportunity for Socrates to be a martyr for the truth. All his life he's been trying to convince people democracy does not work because people are incapable of reasoning out the truth, and what this trial shows us is he was correct. Does that make sense? So in many ways you can make the argument that for Socrates this trial was a type of art. He was a performance artist. And so the people of Athens realized that they were probably tricked, and they were trying to get out of condemning Socrates to death, but Socrates insisted, and it came to a point where Socrates was just left alone and he had to demand to be given hemlock, and he had to administer the hemlock by himself, and so when he drank it he died.

Now after his death Socrates remained an extremely controversial individual in Athens, and he had a student, Plato, who was maybe 28, 29 at the time his mentor died.

He loved him and he committed the rest of his life to restoring and redeeming the reputation of Socrates. So when he was 40 years old he founded a school called the Academy, which was inspired by the vision of Socrates as a philosopher who sought the truth. In 375 BCE he wrote a book called The Republic, and The Republic is the most famous of Plato's works. It is arguably the greatest work of Western philosophy, and many today consider The Republic the greatest book ever written. There are people in this world who read The Republic and it forever transforms the way they see the world. It's a life-transforming event to read The Republic, and next semester we will actually read The Republic together. But let me give you a quick introduction to The Republic.

So in The Republic there's a very famous metaphor and it's called the allegory of the cave, and this is really the most famous allegory or metaphor or analogy in Western thought, by far. Nothing comes second to this. So before I start the allegory of the cave, are there any questions so far about what I've discussed?

Anything unclear? Anything you would like to question or doubt or argue with before I continue with the allegory of the cave? Okay, clear so far? All right.

So this is the allegory. Imagine a cave deep under the Earth. There's a cave. Now in this cave at the back there's a large fire that shines light into this cave. There are these prisoners who are chained to the floor, and they're chained so that they cannot move their necks, they can't move around. The only thing they can do is stare at a wall in front of them. That's the only thing they can do. Now there are these people behind them who are like puppeteers. They hold up cardboard pictures of, like, maybe rats and birds, and the fire will project these images onto the wall. And so these people, who again cannot move around and can only see the wall in front of them, come to think that this wall is the truth, it's the only reality that exists. They start naming things that they see, and that creates language, and they like to play games and try to figure out who can create the best language. And then they give awards to the people who create the best language, who are playwrights.

So what Plato is saying is that we may honor art and poetry and drama, but they're all lies.

Now one day, for whatever reason, we don't know why, one man finds his chains are loosened and he's able to get up. He swims around, he sees a light coming from the top, so he's curious and he climbs all the way to the top and he's now outside in the free world. And it's painful because his eyes are not trained to see the sunlight, so the sunlight is like burning him, it's like burning him alive. And so at first all he's doing is staring at the ground and he's seeing reflections in the pond, in the pool, but then he slowly accustoms himself to the sunlight and he starts to see the world around him, and it's beautiful. It's so beautiful that it's beyond language. He doesn't have the language to describe this world that he's in. It's beyond language. Then finally he develops the courage to stare up in the sky and he sees the sun, and he is amazed by how the sun is the source of all life, and now for the first time he fully understands the truth of the world.

And when he does he is seized by regret, because he remembers he has all these friends who are still trapped in prison in the cave, and he pities them. So he swears that, even though he loves where he is, he will still venture back into the cave in order to show people the truth of the world and to tell them that you've been living a lie all your life.

So he goes back into the cave. Now remember, his eyes are now accustomed to sunlight, so in the cave it's all dark. So he stumbles around, he stumbles around, he falls and he hurts himself, and then he goes and talks to the prisoners and tells them, hey, I've been to the outside world, I've been to the sunlight, I know what truth is. And then they're like, can you describe to us what it's like then? And he can't do it. And then they're like, tell us what you see on the wall. And because he's been so accustomed to the truth he can no longer use human language to describe anything. And so the people are convinced, utterly convinced, he's an idiot, he's insane, he's a clown, and so they refuse to follow him, and at some point, because he insists on revealing the truth to them, they kill him.

That's the allegory of the cave, and you will remember this allegory for the rest of your life.

Now this allegory is powerful for three reasons, and I want you to remember these three reasons because we will go into them later on in the course. The first reason: who's the man who goes out in the sunlight and sees the truth? It's obviously Socrates. So with this allegory Plato redeems the reputation of Socrates. Because remember, before, Socrates was despised, he was laughed at by the Athenians, and what the allegory is saying is that that's because Socrates is a philosopher of the truth, and people cannot deal with the truth. So that's why today we celebrate Socrates as the greatest philosopher who ever lived. Not only that, but we consider him the first philosopher, even though he was not the first philosopher. So that's the power of the allegory of the cave. This image forever transforms the way humanity understands and perceives Socrates. That's the first thing.

Second thing is this allegory becomes so powerful that in the imagination of Christians, Socrates becomes Jesus.

Does that make sense? Socrates is Jesus for Christians, because Jesus was God and he came down to our world in order to speak the truth, and because we feared the truth we... So for Christians the allegory of the cave is really the story of Jesus as well, another martyr for the truth.

And the last thing is this allegory of the cave becomes the framework, it becomes the intellectual framework, for the religion of Christianity. So let me show you how. This is an allegory, and behind the allegory there is an understanding of reality, of philosophy, a religion. So here is the Platonic understanding of the world. There's something called the form of the good, and obviously the metaphor would be the sun. And the form of the good is a source of everything, it's a source of all truth, it is the truth. It's called the form of the good, and emanating from the form of the good are concepts and ideals that structure the universe, and they are beauty and truth and justice, and there are others, but these are the main ones: reason, truth, beauty and justice. They emanate from the form of the good.

And then emanating from these concepts are these forms that are perfect. So for example maybe the perfect horse, which represents beauty, or the perfect woman, who represents justice and beauty as well. But this is all perfection, and from this higher world comes our lesser world, the reality we live in. So everything that we see here, everything that we are here, is only an imitation, a shadow, of this world. Does that make sense? Imitation. So there are horses, but these horses are just copies of that perfect horse up there.

So the major difference is, this world is eternal, it has always existed and it will always exist. It's eternal. Second, it is immutable. Immutable just means it will never change, and the reason why is it's perfect. So these are three distinct qualities of this higher world: eternal, immutable and perfect. And everything down here is basically the complete opposite. We will all die, we all feel pain, but up there no one feels any pain, no one dies, it's all perfect. Does that make sense? Guess what, guys, what is this? This is a Christian universe. This is God, this is heaven, this is Earth.

Does it make sense? This is the allegory of the cave, and you can see how it does these three things: it redeems the reputation of Socrates, it gives Christians an understanding of Jesus, and it becomes the framework from which Christians will build their understanding of the world. It becomes the basis of the Christian religion. So Plato is the real founder of the Christian religion, not... and we will go more into this when we discuss Christianity in the future.

All right, questions? You look confused, just ask any question. Let's start having discussion, because I know this is a lot, let's try to unpack it. Yep. Oh, great. The Republic. So The Republic isn't really about the allegory of the cave. The allegory of the cave actually appears in The Republic, in The Republic itself. So Plato is trying to answer the question: what is a good society? That's a question he's trying to answer, because it's clearly not democracy, because democracy kills Socrates. So it's clearly not democracy, so what makes a good society? And the answer is it's a society that's based on justice. It's a society that's based on justice.

But then what is justice? It's... okay, but then what's truth? Well, truth is the form of the good. Then what's the form of the good? It is the thing that philosophers can access through their own reasoning. Therefore a good society is one that is ruled by philosopher-kings, because you're the only ones who can access the truth. And this society that's perfect he calls the Republic. That's why it's called The Republic. The Republic, and we'll read this again next semester, is really trying to figure out what makes a good society. And to further his argument Plato uses the allegory of the cave. And listen, 50 years from now you will still remember the allegory of the cave. Maybe you won't remember the Socrates or anything else you've learned in this class, but you will definitely remember the allegory of the cave, because first of all it's a beautiful metaphor, but it's also embedded in our society. So does that answer your question, Echo? Okay, do you have more?

All right, something else I want to explain. Some might be interested as to why Plato is considered the greatest philosopher of all time. All right, so it's not because he's the bass.

I would say there are three good reasons why he's so influential today. The first: the way Plato writes is unique and original to him. Plato originally trained as a playwright, so he wanted to be Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, because everyone wanted to be a playwright in Athens, it was the honor. So he learned the art of dialogue, because dialogue is the basis for theater, and so what he did that was innovative, and no one did this before, was he basically took the dialogue of the stage and he transferred it onto the page. So when you read Plato it's actually a lot of fun, because it's basically Socrates as main character having arguments and conversations with other people. So in terms of readability Plato is definitely one of the most readable philosophers. He's definitely the most readable famous philosopher. Later on in the semester we will talk about Immanuel Kant and Hegel, and they are not readable. They're just not. But Plato, anyone can read Plato and enjoy Plato. So his readability, the originality of his writing, is one really good reason why he remains so popular today.

Second, he is extremely anti-democratic. His thinking is because, remember, the most traumatic event in his life was the death of his mentor Socrates, and so it's Athenian democracy who killed his mentor, so he passionately democracy. Well, you know who else democracy? Kings hate democracy, and throughout most of human history kings ruled the world. So what's amazing about Plato is he's the only writer in human history who has been read continuously for 2,000 years. Does that make sense? We lost Homer for a bit, we lost the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides for a long time, but Plato has always been read continuously, and he's been the most, and as a result, because it's easy to access Plato, he's become the most influential philosopher of all time. Does that make sense?

And third of all, what was his Academy? The Academy in Athens at that time is like Harvard or Oxford today. It's a place where all the elite children went. So his students were the most powerful people in the world, basically, and his most famous student was Aristotle, and as we will discuss in future classes, Aristotle is the one who basically packaged and promoted Greek culture, and Plato became a very important individual in the spreading of Greek culture.

In fact he was basically the main hero in this process. So does that make sense? All right, feel free to argue with me, by the way. I mean, if you feel I've said anything controversial or you disagree with, let me know and I will rebut. We can have a Socratic dialogue. Any more questions? Ask a question.

Okay, that's a great question. What are the influences on Plato? So you can make the argument that Socrates was not that much of an intellectual influence on Plato, and the reason why is, remember, Socrates questioned your wisdom but he himself did not propose any of his own theories. Proposal, right? So what we know is this: first of all, during this time, this was the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. You had lots of philosophers in different poleis, different places, proposing all these wonderful theories, so Plato definitely had access to them. Plus they were all friends. And we also know this world of Greek thought was heavily influenced by Egypt, because Egypt was really the epicenter of learning and philosophy at this time, and Egypt was actually very close to Greece.

Also Mesopotamia, the Persians. So 399 BC Socrates dies, and then Plato spent the next 12 years traveling around the world, and while he's traveling he's absorbing lots of different philosophy. So look, we don't have access to Egyptian sources, so we don't know what sources would influence Plato, but we know the Egyptians heavily influenced the Greeks, so we can make the assumption that the Egyptians were a heavy influence on Plato, as well as Mesopotamia, as well as the other Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Democritus. So what's really important is Athens at this time was not an isolated society. It was part of a larger intellectual landscape, and a lot of these places had richer intellectual histories than Athens. Egypt, definitely.

So does that answer your question? The answer is we don't know, and the reason again is most of this is lost to us. I'm sure there were philosophers at this time who were the equal of Plato in terms of originality, but we don't know who these people were, because remember, censorship is not really just about changing the past, it's also about eliminating most of the past. Okay, it was very common.

It was very common for Greeks to think they should rule the world. It was just very common. So Plato himself actually went to a place, Syracuse. Syracuse is a city on the island of Sicily, it's very prosperous, and the king of Syracuse invited Plato to come counsel him on how to be a tyrant, a good tyrant. He wanted to be like a philosopher-king. Then Plato basically said to him, well, you should let me be the king and then you will have a philosopher-king. And of course the king of Syracuse didn't like this idea, so he almost killed Plato. But again, Plato has very wealthy friends and he was very rich himself, so he basically ransomed his way out of Syracuse. So as a politician, as a practitioner of his philosophy, he's terrible. He tried his philosophy in Syracuse, it didn't work out, pissed off a lot of people. But everyone wanted to be a philosopher-king.

Any questions? Okay, so next class we will do the rise of Macedonia. So remember, these are ideas that are being incubated in Athens and in Greece at this time, but ultimately these ideas conquer the world.

Greek theater, Greek philosophy spread all around the world, and the main reason is Macedonia. The main reason are two individuals, Philip II of Macedonia and Alexander the Great, who together will create the Hellenistic Empire, and this is why Greek culture will spread around the world and become the basis of Western civilization.