Known as the father of western philosophy, ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is regarded as one the
most influential thinkers in history. Encouraging and shaping the early budding of philosophy and
directly inspiring other formative ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle,
Socrates would be a catalyst to the way humanity has and continues to think about
the world and the way we live within it. There are no known written works directly
attributed to Socrates, so he remains a fairly mysterious figure. All accounts of his life and
philosophy are provided by other classical writers, many of which differ and sometimes
contradict each other. In historical studies, this is what is known as the Socratic problem,
making it difficult, if not impossible, to fully pin down an accurate image of him. However,
most of what is understood and believed to be closest to accurate is found in the work of one of
his students named Plato, who would go on himself to become an essential figure in Socrates’ legacy
as well as the development of western philosophy in general, writing around 36 books all comprised
of dialogues primarily featuring Socrates. It is generally agreed that Socrates was
born in Athens in Ancient Greece in around 469 BC. It is believed that his philosophical occupation
began after a successful career as a sculptor and serving with distinction in the Athenian military
during the Peloponnesian war. During this later philosophically focused part of his life, Socrates
spent most of his time wandering around Greece, asking lots of questions, and challenging lots of
men who the public believed to be wise. He would soon become very skeptical of the so-called wisdom
of the time, finding that most men who claimed and were held to be wise were essentially just
arrogant. In Plato’s book, Apology, Socrates says when referring to a wiseman, “…when I conversed
with him, I thought this man seemed to be wise both to many others and especially to himself,
but that he was not; and then I tried to show him that he thought he was wise but was not.
But of that he disliked me and so did many others who were there, but I went away thinking to myself
that I was wiser than this man; the fact is that neither of us knows anything beautiful and good,
but he thinks he does know when he doesn't, and I don't know and don't think I do:
so I am wiser than he is by only this trifle, that what I do not know I don't think I do.”
It was this that Socrates believed separated him from others of the time and defined true
wisdom. And arguably, he was right, as this credo would ultimately become one of the
defining components of his legacy that has lasted millenniums while most other wiseman of the time
disappeared in mere generations at best. Socrates would go on to spend much of his
time attempting to teach and convince others to question what they held to be true, and realize,
as he put it, “[t]he only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” In doing so, he believed he
would compel others to join him on a journey of philosophical inquiry toward a better life
as they realized their current answers and beliefs were insufficient. As time would pass,
Socrates would garner a following of young students interested in his way of thinking.
Although he was skeptical of knowledge and popular ideas, he was not without convictions. He taught
and made claims about politics, being extremely critical of democracy, made assessments of values,
prioritizing virtue, self-knowledge, goodness, truth, and happiness over wealth, fame, and power,
developed explanations of ethics, believing that evil is always done out of ignorance and harms the
doer more than the victim, defined concepts of the soul, and the list goes on. Arguably most notably,
however, is that differing from the more cosmic focus of the Presocratic thinkers before him,
Socrates maintained that the purpose of philosophy was answering the very practical,
down-to-earth question: “What is the way we ought to live?” Despite his good intentions, though,
Socrates’ efforts were often poorly received by the public. After pushing his luck too far,
he was put on trial for religious impiety and corrupting the youth. He was found guilty and
sentenced to death. In 399 BC, he would be given a cup of poison-hemlock to drink,
which would slowly move through his body until reaching his heart and taking his
last breath—one of history’s greatest minds shut down for asking too many questions
about a world that was not yet ready to admit it was still at the starting line.
Although his mission would be cut short, it would be far from unsuccessful.
One of Socrates greatest legacies was his student, Plato, who would successfully
take the handoff from him and officially begin the relay race of western philosophy.
Plato would follow in Socrates’ footsteps of skepticism, critical questioning, reasoning, and
the prioritization of knowledge toward achieving what was termed Eudemonia, or a fulfilled,
happy life. Unlike Socrates, however, Plato wrote down his work and crafted a more defined
philosophical system, producing thirty-six books during his lifetime and setting up the first ever
university called the Academy. In this right, Plato is considered by many to be the first ever
true philosopher, at least in the western tradition. In his work, Plato would explore ideas
related to things like love, friendship, beauty, politics, ethics, and happiness. However, arguably
one of if not his most prominent and influential philosophical contribution was his thinking
about thinking itself. Following in Socrates’ skepticism of knowledge, Plato’s next move was
to question how we can and do come to know things at all. Ultimately, Plato believed that knowledge
is possible and that there are fixed, objective truths to be discovered and used—more accurately,
rediscovered, as Plato believed all knowledge was innate prior to birth and then forgotten upon
birth, requiring recollection through reasoning. In what would become known as Platonic idealism,
Plato would separate the realm of truth from the material world, distinguishing the world of things
as we perceive them from the world of things as they really are. For Plato, reality as we observe
it is a flawed reflection of a higher truth—a realm beyond time, space, and the human mind
containing universalities and abstract objects that exist in their purest, unchanging ideal form.
Plato would refer these as the Forms, with a capital F, and suggested that they function as
the fundamental building blocks of the material world. As a simplified example, consider how
there are many trees in the world but that all trees are different. There is no tree that is
the same as any other, but all trees are still trees. According to Plato, this is because all
trees are imperfect shadows of the perfect, ideal tree Form that all trees are made from—through
which we can discern a tree’s treeness. From a practical standpoint, Plato suggested that
through reason and philosophy, individuals and societies could understand the ideals of things
like justice, happiness, friendship, being, and goodness in order strive toward and attain them.
Plato would illustrate this theory with arguably his most popular written work,
the Allegory of the Cave, which is contained in book seven of his work The Republic. In which,
he tells the story of a group of prisoners who have been chained up facing a wall inside a cave
ever since birth with no knowledge of the outside world. On the wall, shadows of different shapes
are casted by people passing with various objects in front of a fire behind them. The prisoners name
and classify the shadows, believing that they are seeing the true forms of things. However, when
suddenly one of the prisoners is freed, he exits the cave and discovers the real world outside—all
the actual forms and qualities of the objects that were previously just displayed as shadows to him.
This prisoner, after realizing what he has become aware of, returns to the cave to tell the other
prisoners. However, when he does, they think he has gone insane, brainwashed or corrupted
by whatever is outside. They respond not only with resistance but also violence, hostile to
his attempt to challenge their current beliefs and encourage new, improved knowledge of the truth.
There are, of course, multiple ways of interpreting this allegory, but in the
context of his theory of Forms, Plato creates the distinction between the shadows and the objects
they are casted from to parallel the Forms and the material world we experience, where we are
all caved inside our own senses, restricted and ignorant to the true forms of things—the
escaped prisoner, of course, representing the philosopher who, through reason, righteously tries
to communicate his discoveries but is resisted or even killed by the public. As interesting,
innovative, and useful as this allegory is, there is at least one obvious issue with it, which
is perhaps mirrored in the problem of Plato’s philosophy and almost all of western philosophy as
a whole. How does the prisoner who was freed know that once outside, he is not merely in another
sort of cave? How does he know that the objects in their supposed truer, pure form outside the cave
are not merely another sort of crude shadow casted by another purer source he is not yet aware of or
perhaps can never be aware of? And if he were to somehow reach or discover a subsequent truer
realm, how would he know this one to be true? Does not the increasing discovery of obviously
true things to be untrue increase the odds that what is currently being discovered is also untrue?
Of course, although Socrates and Plato were fundamental to the founding of western philosophy,
both combining to influence essential ideas and questions about reality, knowledge, reason,
and the way an individual and society ought to exist, much of what they believed and claimed
does not hold up today. Although perhaps they were the escaped prisoners of their time,
they were nonetheless still prisoners to another cave just outside of it. Perhaps
all reality is a prison and time is its guard. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says to the citizens
of Athens following his trial, “I prophesy to you that after my death the punishment
will soon descend upon you, a punishment far more severe than that which you have inflicted on me.
You will have caused my death, hoping in vain to escape from my critical questioning…”
Around 2,400 years later, it would seem that Socrates’ prophecy, in at least some sense,
has come true. We have yet to escape from his critical questioning. With each new generation,
each new philosophy, and each new realm of knowledge, we find ourselves in the wake
of Socrates, still either unsure or in denial. Socrates, Plato, and soon to be Plato’s student,
Aristotle, seemingly gave us some of the first tools needed to begin taking the
whole world apart, but they never had, and we likely never will have, an instruction
manual to put it back together. We still know very little of what it means to be a self,
let alone a true self, what it means to live or how we ought to, what consciousness is, why there
is life or a universe at all, what the ultimate purpose of literally anything and everything is,
if there is any truth and how we can know for sure, and the list goes on.
One of the only true constants that appears to have remained from the early groundwork of ancient
Greek philosophy is perhaps the recognition of our ignorance, the Socratic paradox,
“I know that I know nothing.” Socrates knew he knew nothing but seemed to believe that this
paradox could be overcome to good end. Perhaps it can; certainly in many practical cases,
it seems to be. But in other cases of these bigger questions of existence, perhaps philosophy is,
in some sense, futile. Perhaps there are no ultimate answers in philosophy,
perhaps there never will be, but there are no ultimate answers in music, in art, in a beautiful
landscape, or in a conversation with a friend, and yet, I know of no one who does not find value,
insight, love, and solace in all of these things. Perhaps by means of the very same thing that
cursed humanity with the need to philosophize, we can learn through philosophy to enjoy philosophy’s
futility. Perhaps the purpose of philosophy, then, at least of a certain broader kind,
is best recontextualized in which the ambiguity and unknowingness is an end in it of itself
rather than a means. Perhaps what we should and only can do is try to enjoy the process of playing
with the blocks of philosophy like children playing with toy blocks for no reason other than
the curiosity and fun of it; not because in the end the blocks will provide something that stays
up forever, but because we inevitably will take the blocks down, put them away for a little while,
and then play with them again another day in a different way. And for that, whether we agree
or disagree with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, or the western philosophical tradition in general,
we can and should thank them for this—for providing the materials and tools of thinking and
questioning that have and will continue to help provide millenniums worth of philosophical wonder.