What's Socrates up to?

Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is an ancient occupation. I would say it is as old as the cognitive revolution. What is that and how old is it, you may wonder. We don't really know. But, our best guesses so far goes anywhere from 50 to 75 thousand years! For more on that, please check out the book Sapiens by Harari and the section on Göbeklitepe. In religious terms, we can say that cognitive revolution is when Adam and Eve started to talk. As I wrote elsewhere, their parents were smart homo sapiens as well, however, they, we presume, could not articulate most of their thoughts using something like the human languages we know today. That last sentence maybe a surprise for two reasons. First, some seem to believe that Adam and Eve are the first humans and they didn't have parents. But, that contradicts what we know about biology. Second, some seem to believe that Adam and Eve are simply imaginary figures and science proves that they didn't exist. But, that contradicts what science already tells us that there is something revolutionary in our past, denoted as cognitive revolution that gave homo sapiens the ability to not only walk the earth, which they did earlier along with Homo Erectus, but also talk to each other and come up with a rich shared/social imagination. Let's leave the cognitive revolution, Adam and Eve and Göbeklitepe to another time and page and go back to philosophy and Socrates. 

We can define philosophy to be the main ingredient of spoken or written languages. Without any wisdom, there is no language. I hope that makes sense to you. You might object and say: hey what about computer languages? Computers aren't wise, are they? I agree, right, computers aren't wise, but we can program our wisdom into them so they help us solve problems in a smart way. Now we can ask: what is wisdom? Where does it start? Does it have an end? These are important and possibly immortally open questions. Let's get to them later after we talk about Socrates first. What he tells us is a great step forward. 

Socrates is the first philosopher who divides philosophers temporally into two: 

1. Pre-socratic philosophers like Parmenides, Heraklitus and even Pythagoras and Thales even though the last two are more mathematicians. Their math is superb, but philosophy is rather not so much. As in any real life division this is not perfect. Democritus who famous with his theory of atoms long before Einstein provided the best evidence for the existence of atoms is a contemporary of Socrates, but, the two apparently never met. And, Democritus is kind of a dead end in philosophy even though scientists picked up on his contributions two millenia later. 

2. Philosophers who come after Socrates like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and many many other good ones. He is a revolutionary figure in human thought. He is the first philosopher about whom much was written thanks primarily to one of his most famous students, Plato. Xenophon and some other students and contemporaries of his also wrote about Socrates. Yet, Plato was the most prolific. 

Socrates had somewhat of a mystical approach. Just like Buddha and Jesus and Muhammad, Socrates never wrote anything. He preferred to talk to his friends and he mostly asked questions and said very little and seemingly puzzling and paradoxical things like "there is no evil other than ignorance." That kind of mysticism of Socrates also divided philosophers into two schools of thought starting right away with Plato and Aristotle. As Plato was Socrates' most famous student. Aristotle was in turn Plato's most famous student. As a side note, you may know that Aristotle's most famous student is Alexander the Great! But, let's come back to Socrates. Plato, inspired and heavily influenced by Socrates, wrote first about the subjects dear to Socrates: how to live a good life. In other words, he gave us a lot of classical writings on ethics and moral philosophy, possibly word for word from Socrates' mouth. But many years after Socrates death Plato ventured into other areas of philosophy like metaphysics and attempted to answer questions like: what is reality? What is the nature of nature? Where do ideas come from? Where do values come from? His main theory is a form of dualism: there is an ideal world of forms (like circles, goodness, etc.) and the world we live in is a poor replica of it. Two worlds. Aristotle didn't like that approach. In fact he vehemently denied it. Instead, he worked to figure out how this world worked by studying it, by learning from the past to predict the future. And, that started, at least for the Western world, the scientific approach. We can denote Aristotle's approach as materialism as it contrasts with the dualism of Plato. 

All that is fascinating and there are many good books on metaphysics, Plato, Aristotle, and how Kant seems to synthesize those two into one overarching explanation. But, that's for some other time. Let's go back to Socrates, because, Socrates tackled what is most important to you and me and all humanity trying to get along: what is a good life and how to live it? 

Socrates' main ideas are misleadingly simple because even little children can get what he seems to be saying. Yet, many adults, in their struggle to live practical lives within social constructs often diverge from these simple precepts and accordingly create unnecessary suffering for themselves and those around them. Many philosophers even look down on Socrates, claiming that he only asked questions and never provided any answers. We beg to differ. Here is what Socrates reminds us:

1.  We all want to be happy. Not only in the future, but here and now, too. 

2. Happiness requires that we are good and we do good. 

3. To be good and to do good, we need to know what good is.

4. When we don't know any better, we do wrong. 

5. Therefore, it is best to find out what we need to know.

6. The greatest obstacle to finding out what we need to know is the somewhat unconscious belief that we already know. 

That's it! Fairly clear, I hope. Nothing too sophisticated or obscure or academic. That's the wisdom of Socrates. Yet, I can hear some of you getting critical about all this, saying, oh, I know all that already. I need other things to be happy like a good family, many friends, a good education, a few diplomas, a good job, a better career, a great calling, a spouse, kids, cars, house, hobbies, so on and so forth, and when I get some of that, by the way, a great nation, at least one that's doing better than its neighbors... Maybe not. Maybe you agree with Socrates. But, I remember my somewhat younger self having such doubts as I wrote above and getting a good education myself (have M.S. and PhD degrees and diplomas as evidence to my own confusion :-). Even as recently as a few weeks ago, it was almost an unconscious belief that unless I finished my tax return, I couldn't be happy. Or this morning, I almost believed that I needed coffee before I could be happy. Or, feeling good and almost believing that having a good movie lined up for tonight or even better a good series to binge up on was what made me happy now. Almost!

So, what's going on? What is Socrates up to? Did he really say those things? And, aren't they just obvious? Didn't he say paradoxical things like "I know that I know nothing" and "Nobody can do any other than their best"? The six assertions above seem to be either simple and irrelevant to our lives or unsubstantiated by what we believe Socrates said. Socrates was joking or doing irony. Etc. 

Let's clear up this confusion here. But, as I keep repeating, please check for yourselves as we go. Question everything you read here. Take the ideas one at a time and pass them through your mind's filter, questioning and inquiring. 

Let's start with the first statement. That's why it's the first statement :-) Ask yourselves, is there anything you want more than happiness? Can you imagine someone who wants something else? Say, John wants a bigger house and a better job and without those he can't be happy. Oh, by the way, his marriage is not doing so well and that's not surprising -- many marriages end up in divorce, many intimate relationships end up in a break-up, some even as abruptly as being "ghosted!" How could he be happy before working out all those? 

Indeed, it is very easy to believe all that. How can we be happy without having more than what we got now? Isn't pursuit of happiness the experience of all humans? Meaning that we are not happy now, but we plan to be in the future after a lot of toil and struggle and many many years... But, please question these questions and the presuppositions behind them. Only you can do it. I will point out what goes on in my mind, but, unless your own inner truth comes into your awareness, what is the use? 

So, here is something to consider: if I believe that I need more than what I have now or else I won't be happy, then that means that I am stuck in a vicious cycle! How so? Well, simple: that belief "I need more than I have" is too simple, too strong and too general: it applies to the totality of all of the rest of my life!

But, you might say, I do want my relationships to thrive, a bigger house, less debt and so on and so forth. Is that wrong? Not at all! It's human and it's normal to desire good things in life. What Socrates is pointing out is that when we don't get our priorities right, we could get stuck in an everlasting misery. He is simply saying that it's better to choose to be happy here and now and then with a clear mind to go after those other things. That makes it more likely that we do the right things to get those other things instead of taking wrong turns inadvertently. And along the long way until we reach them, we are still happy and content. Actually according to Plato's early writings on Socrates, in his famous defense, Socrates only said "the best state of our soul," but what else could he mean by that other than being our best selves here and now? I suspect that was clear to his friends. After all, they would talk, discuss and argue for hours and days and years...

Now, another belief that might confuse us is summarized in the pithy saying "no pain, no gain!" To expand on it, you might think that if I am happy and content, I would not work hard to get all those other things. Is that true? Just check with yourselves. Remember the last time you felt blissfully good. Did that feeling kill your motivation to move about, enter life, do what you love to do and help others as well as help yourself? I suspect not. We are energized and creative (some scientists say in the flow, or in the zone) when we are happy and not worried too much about things of the future like getting a diploma, a job, a girl or boy friend, a circle of good friends, so on and so forth.

I hope this is sufficient to make you think twice about what Socrates reminds us succinctly, clearly and very wisely. The consequences of his ideas are significant to you and me and humanity. But, don't just say that these are his ideas. Where did he get them from? His teacher the wise old lady by the name of Diotima? Yes and no. Diotima seems to have reminded these things to Socrates, but until Socrates made them his own, worked it out in his own mind and with his own wisdom, and talked to not only his friends, but anybody whom he encountered in the marketplace, those ideas would not have done him any good. Now, it is your turn. 

I suspect you want more or this kind of wisdom. And don't feel guilty judging yourself greedy. This kind of wanting-more of your own truth is the best kind of wanting-more as opposed to wanting-more of goods and services that you can get from Amazon or your favorite strip mall. All that is endless -- that is until our last breaths. But, Socrates' kind of wanting-more brings us back to here and now so that we get to the final destination sooner, rather than later. Here and now.