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- [00:00]
A
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we are discussing Plato's Apology, the first half of Plato's Apology, with Father Justin Brophy, a Dominican out of the Eastern Province, the province of St. Joseph. He takes his religious name after Justin Martyr, a lover of Plato and of Jesus Christ, and we have a fantastic conversation looking at several key themes like piety, Socratic irony, a little bit of Aristophanes, Great Books, education in general, and much, much more. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Plato's Apology in Western culture. It is easily one of the most important texts, one of the most important speeches in all of the Western canon. So we are very blessed to have Father Justin Brophy with us today to discuss this text. Also, as an aside, if you have not checked out the Ascent, our sister publication over on Substack, please do so. Go check it out when you have a moment. But today we are going to have a fantastic conversation with Father Justin Brophy on Plato's Apology. Foreign welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I am a husband Father and I serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We are recording on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. If you're new to Ascend, we're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the Great books. So far we have read Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and now we are on our studies into Plato. You can find episodes on first Alcibiades, the Euthyphro, and last week we had an excellent conversation with Dr. Prudlow of the University of Tulsa on the Euthyphro Dilemma and Aquinas. You can check us out on Twitter or X, YouTube, Facebook, Patreon and we appreciate all of our supporters. You can visit thegreatbookspodcast.com and find a whole library of guides and articles and other things to help you learn from the Great Books. Today we are discussing the first part of the Platonic Dialogue, the Apology, the Trial of Socrates. Today we have a wonderful guest who's going to illuminate the apology for us. We have Father Christopher Justin Brophy, a Dominican and assistant professor of political science at Providence College. His teaching interests include ancient and contemporary political theory, philosophical conceptions of the human psyche, the human psyche and modern society, Plato, Augustine, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and philosophy of psychoanalysis. He also pulls from some modern Catholic intellectual tradition, thinkers like Romano Gardini, Joseph Pieper and Walker Percy, and most of all which caught my attention. His current project is focused on the political significance of Plato's Symposium. Father, welcome to the podcast.
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B
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
- [03:12]
A
I, you know, we should be talking about the apology, but I can't help myself. Like, can you just give, like, a little snapshot on your kind of current project on the Symposium?
- [03:22]
B
Sure. I love the Symposium. It's my favorite dialogue. And it's odd to write a political theory dissertation on Symposium. That's what I did a few years ago when I finished up grad school. But I was really struck. So Symposium is a dialogue where you have a conversation about an event that happened in the past. The Symposium happened prior to the conversation, where the characters are speaking about it. And the dating of the Symposium, when Agathon won his award for the tragedy that he wrote, takes place a year before the great Sicilian expedition, which Alcibiades encouraged Athens to tend to, and it led to the destruction of Athens. So great political significance. And Thucydides tells us that Alcibiades, before the expedition, participated in the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the mysteries. And Symposium ends right before the Sicilian expedition with a drunken Alcibiades running off with some drunken revelers. And so I think it's very suggestive. I think Plato does that intentionally. And then we can say that the conversation about the Symposium takes place a couple of years before 399, which is the trial and death of Socrates, as we'll talk about today. And so I think both of those dates kind of frame Symposium in such a way that it has some serious political significance, especially the political significance of Eros, or Passionate Desire.
- [05:18]
A
That is fascinating. Yes. I've read Strauss's commentary on the Symposium, and he makes a lot of the dating, the dating of the Symposium because it does a lot of gymnastics at the beginning. You're like, why, why do all these. Why do all this, like, why do this? Like, why do all this gymnastics at the beginning about this person, heard from this person, and Alcibiades is back, or when is he here? Et cetera. And, yeah, I really like the way that you've parsed that out, because Plato's definitely playing with, I think, when Alcibiades is in Athens. And so you have to know all that, that backstory. But I, yeah, I really enjoy the Symposium. I really enjoy studies into Eros. You know, I've written about it, studied it heavily inside, its kind of influence in the. In the Christian tradition as well. When we get to the symposium, which is going to be a while, but when we get to the symposium, we're going to have to have you back and have a good, robust conversation on it.
- [06:09]
B
I would love that. I'm always happy, always game to talk about symposium.
- [06:15]
A
Very good. Well, having a discipline, the discipline that we need to tell us a little bit about, like your ministry at Providence College. Sure.
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B
So this is my fifth year at Providence College, so I'm an assistant professor of political science. I teach political theory, so politics 101, but then ancient political theory and Contemporary political theory. I am teaching a senior seminar called Liberalism and Conservatism next semester. I've taught some other electives as well, our Development of Western Civilization program, which is kind of a great book sequence that are freshmen and sophomores take. So I love teaching here. I love our students here. And then I'm also the director of the center for Catholic and Dominican Studies, which is a center on campus where I try to cultivate relationships, friendships amongst faculty, staff and students to work on mission integration and also exploring the intellectual life from a mission lens, if you will. So it's a great gig here at PC.
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A
No, that's very good. So when you are kind of meeting with your, like, freshman students, right. You guys have this, this program that's analogous to like a great book sequence. And they're looking at, like, all these great texts they have to read. They might not think they're great. Like, what, what do you tell your young students? Like, this is why they need to read the great books. Like, this is why they need to spend the time before thinkers like Homer and Plato.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah. So I'll never forget when I was a sophomore in college, one of my best professors, great books professors, as a matter of fact, said at the very beginning of class, books are very dangerous things because if you take them seriously, they may change your soul. And I think some people might hear that and kind of say, okay, Prof. You know, whatever you say. But young Chris Brophy heard that and was like, huh, that's interesting. And so in homage to him, I say the same thing. I say, we're, we're gonna do some dangerous stuff here. If you take this seriously, if you take these arguments seriously, if you take what they say about the. The meaning of your life seriously, it can change you. And, you know, I'm not a dower guy by any stretch of the imagination. I like to be high energy. I'm passionate. But especially in this age of AI where students can so easily just kind of produce reflections and Papers. And the temptation to do that is very great. I always tell them one thing that AI can't do for you is contemplate death. And all of us are on this earth for a short period of time. And Even though at 18, 19 years old, this is not the first thing on your mind, the fact of the matter is, is that our time here is very short. And this is a privileged opportunity to think about what your life is going to mean. And these books which contain the reflections and experiences of those who have gone before and who have lived lives that we won't live, we can learn from them and we can start to develop our own answers to that question. And so I kind of lay it on pretty thick, Deacon, I got to tell you, but I think that that works for some of them at least, you know.
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A
Yeah, no, that's good. No, I could have used someone like you. In my, in my younger years, my exposure to the great books didn't come until I was in grad school at Ave Maria University and I was thrown into my systematic theology courses reading the Summa for the first time because I was still Protestant when I went to Ave Maria and. But they had a great book sequence as part of their master's program. And so we started reading, you know, these Platonic dialogues and I. I was just completely lost, but, like, fell in love at the same time. Like, I was just kind of tossed and turned, but almost in like the best way possible. So I can imagine trying to have some of these conversations with, you know, 18, 19 year old students at times can be somewhat challenging, particularly in the age of AI you have, you know, on your bio you have Plato listed particularly as like, someone that you're interested in. I didn't realize that this was allowed for the Dominican order. I thought you guys could only study, you know, Aristotle. And I mean, why would you even study Plato? Because Aristotle is just a better version of Plato. Right. So what is this love of Plato? What is this, you know, what's this love of play doh. That you have?
- [11:05]
B
Yeah, so that's a good question. It's funny you asked that. I just, I got back this past weekend. I was at the, the fall conference for Notre Dame center for Ethics and Culture, and I gave a paper on, on Walker Percy. And somebody asked me after, said, you mentioned Thomas Aquinas once. Is that allowed for you guys? Are you allowed to do that? So this is the second time in one week I've been asked that question.
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A
Good.
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B
The short answer is that when, when I was a freshman Going into college, you know, I had. I had kind of fallen away from the practice of my faith, and I was really deeply interested in politics, and I held some very strong views, frankly. I mean, I was pretty libertarian at the time. And I read Plato's Republic for the first time with a really great teacher with whom I'm now good friends. And that book just completely raised the foundations of everything that I thought I knew. It just blew up my conception of the world. It was the only book, really. I've had books that have been really influential. A lot of books have been really influential, but no book has ever just completely blown up my worldview like Republic did. And that is what set me on a journey. And it wasn't just the. It wasn't just the dialogue Republic. It was everything about it. It was. I was a freshman in college, and I. I was interested in debate and politics, and here we have a Platonic dialogue, and we have an argument. I love the way it was structured. I love the way it was written. I loved how high the stakes were. You know, book one of Republic is like the greatest poker play in all of philosophy. I'm going to tell you why. If everybody thinks that you're unjust and everyone considers you an unjust person and you have the worst reputation, why, it's still better for you to be just despite that, even though you'll never get any recognition for it. Chips all in on the table. And I loved that book. And it made me realize that freedom consists not merely in choice, but in the ability to choose that which is good. And so it changed the way I viewed freedom, which has been a preoccupation of my thinking. And ever since then, I've just been. Been deeply, deeply indebted to Plato. You know, Justin is my religious name, taken for Saint Justin Martyr, who, upon reading Plato, said my thought was given wings, you know, metaphysical wings. And then that led him eventually to the Hebrew scriptures. But. So, yeah, I've always carried Plato with me. He's been really, really important to me.
- [14:01]
A
That is beautiful. I wonder if there's something about Plato, particularly teaching a narrative, that really invites young intellects and intellects that aren't familiar with philosophy to open up. Because, you know, obviously our Lord teaches in narratives as well, right? Not only in, like, the Gospels as a whole, but also in his parables. But like, last week, I was discussing the euthyphro dilemma in St. Thomas Aquinas with Dr. Prudlow at the University of Tulsa, and he was just by providence, like, it was actually the Euthyphro dilemma, that woke him up, or the intro dialogue particularly, that woke him up as a young man. And I, too, when I. When I was reading the great books at the. In my Ave sequence, it didn't start with the poetics. It didn't start with Homer, like we have on Ascend. It started directly into Plato, in which I. I mean, I was just chunked in the deep end.
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B
I had.
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A
I had, like, no antecedents for it. I really had no idea what was going on. But the Republic was, you know, something that really captured my imagination. Right. That there are these rich dialogues. And the thing about narratives is they lend themselves to depths very much. You know, like we talk about with Scripture, you know, it's somehow scriptures where both the elephant and the sheep, right, can wade, they can both walk in at the same time. There's, like a shallowness to it that can reach everyone, but a depth that you really can't exhaust. I think that's. There's something indicative of that, of just people who teach in narratives and how that can open people up for the first time. But then also they tend to present you something that's inexhaustible, that you can continue to come to over and over again and still glean something out of.
- [15:40]
B
Yeah, it's. I mean, I think. Yeah. First of all, I think the narrative structure really is great, and it is hard sometimes for students to get into. But, you know, you can say the same of Aquinas. You get to a point reading Aquinas. At least I do, where I actually kind of like the structure. You know, you get used to that a little bit. But I like the dialectic. I've always. Again, I mentioned I was a debater in high school. You know, I like the back and forth. I love that structure. But it's also the case that, you know, that's what a great book is, is that you go back, you read it a second, third, fourth, fifth time, and you still get something new out of it. I take pride in the fact that I. I reread these texts every time I teach them. You know, is it the case that I could probably go in cold and give a lecture on symposium, say, like. Yeah, probably. But why pass up an opportunity to reread the text when I know I'm going to see something there I didn't see before? And that's always the way it is, you know, maybe not every single time, but it's a pretty high hit rate, I'd say, you know, so that's. That's that's the beauty of some of these texts.
- [16:56]
A
Do you, in your kind of great book sequence that you all have, you know, do you read the Apology with your students? And if so, like, how do you, how do you try and open it up for them?
- [17:07]
B
Yeah, so I've actually been teaching in, in 201, so the, that would be the, the modern sequence from French Revolution to the present. So I haven't been teaching it in development of Western civilization, but I do teach it in my classical political theory class. And the way I open it up there is, I say, why is it, why is it that these Athenians want to kill a philosopher? Typically, when we think about threats to society, philosopher isn't at the top of the, isn't at the top of the pile.
- [17:49]
A
Right?
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B
And what I try to get them to see then, I mean, we work through it throughout the class. But philosophy isn't something that should be done in an ivory tower. Philosophy isn't locking oneself in a room and reading books or being with oneself on a blackboard, writing out syllogisms or working out logic problems. Philosophy is love of wisdom. And it forces you to reevaluate not only yourself. And, you know, you mentioned Strauss earlier. I've. I've been influenced by that to some degree as well, but also the regime. You know, the study of philosophy makes you question the principles of law and it makes you question the principles of your culture. And that can be dangerous. And I think apology really hones in on that. I think that's what gives it a lot of its. A lot of its life. So I like to begin with that question, why is this guy who goes around talking philosophy pose such a political.
- [18:52]
A
I think that's an excellent, excellent question, particularly, you know, because sometimes these narratives become so hackneyed to us that we just kind of forget their importance. We kind of forget their uniqueness. But the west, in a lot of ways, you know, if you say, well, who, who built what we call the west now? Which in certain ways is a euphemism, I think, for just Christendom, but, you know, who built the West? Well, most people are going to point to Socrates into Christ, right? These two thinkers have influenced the west more than anyone else. And they're both killed by the state, right? They're both killed by their government. And so it's. No. So I think your question, like, who wants to kill a philosopher? I think in certain ways, killing the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, or even wisdom itself, is somewhat at the heart, you know, of the West. I teach A not teach. That's the wrong word. I have a Sunday Great Books group that was. That kind of precipitated this podcast. It's a just a group of men that meet at my house and we read the great books once a month together, come together in fraternity and, you know, have charcuterie boards and talk for about 30 minutes and catch up and then about three hours of dialogue, and then we officially end and then we go outside. You know, those who want to stay and talk more stay outside and we smoke and, you know, have a good time of it. But we were actually one of the things that really came up when we studied the apology just, you know, a few weeks ago that really caught a lot of our attentions is just like, to what degree can a civilization survive someone like Socrates or someone like Christ arising? What I mean by that is kind of the same things that I heard you say, which is when Socrates comes upon the scene, you know, he offers you a path, right? You can't just stay the same. He offers you to go one way or the other. And if you. If you tend to follow him and listen to him, then, yeah, you question like, well, wait, what does it mean to be a good man? And does the regime help me be a good man? And what does it mean to have good laws? And what does it mean to act justly? And you can find yourself very quickly following, you know, this. This old man that stands in the market and seemingly, you know, harasses people as a gadfly. But all of a sudden you find yourself being incredibly in contrast to the majority of the other citizens and the majority of your own regime, and all of a sudden you find yourself in danger.
- [20:57]
B
Yes. I mean, first of all, I kind of wish I lived in Tulsa. That group sounds. That group sounds great.
- [21:03]
A
Hey, listen, we'd love to have you. We'd love to have you.
- [21:09]
B
But. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's high stakes. And as I mentioned with Symposium and, you know, we'll get into the text, but it's not simply that Socrates finds himself at odds with the authorities, if you will. Some of his students are causing real trouble. You know, Alcibiades is example a of somebody who hangs around Socrates who kind of learns from Socrates, or people assume he learns from Socrates and then convinces Athens to go on this. This expedition that turns out to be disastrous for the empire. And so there's real. There's concreteness to these charges against Socrates. You know, I think corrupting the youth is not simply, hey, my kid was hanging around Socrates and Now, you know, he argues with me at the dinner table and that makes me angry. It's some of the people who hang around with Socrates become would be tyrants. And some of the people who hang around Socrates advocate for political positions that lead us to political ruin. So, yeah, I think the stakes are high.
- [22:29]
A
Yeah, no, that's a great segue just kind of into some, like, preliminary brass tacks, you know, on the apology. Like, how do we historically kind of look at it, put it in its context? So, you know, the Peloponnesian War is over, Right. It ends in 404bc. Alcibiades, he's been assassinated. He's not here. Right? He's not. A lot of times people ask, well, wait, wait, where's Alcibiades? In the trial we get Plato, but where is Alcibiades? Well, he's. He's already been assassinated. Also in 404bc you know, the Euthyphro dialogue that we kind of worked through the last couple weeks occurs just right before this. And we know Socrates is executed in 399 BC, which you mentioned earlier. And so that's kind of the dramatic date of this dialogue is, is, you know, right before the death of Socrates in 399bc. But I think you bring up a really interesting question which is one maybe we can wrestle with throughout the text. But, you know, Alcibiades poses, I think, a very particular question. And for those who are listening, if you're not terribly familiar with Alcibiades, we started off our studies into Plato with two episodes on First Alcibiades, a dialogue of Socrates in dialogue with Alcibiades and why he should study philosophy. But prior to that, we had a wonderful episode with the Cost of Glory, looking at Plutarch's live of First Al. Excuse me, of Alcibiades and kind of looking at this character, you know, and just in short, you know, Alcibiades was this larger than life character. He reminded me of like, you know, a real live Achilles living in Athens. You know, all the strata of society, you know, loved him. You know, he's smart, he's handsome, he comes from a good family and, you know, he's going to take over Athens. He said he has all the makings of a wonderful ruler, but he also has all the makings of a tyrant. And, you know, it breeds envy amongst the people. And as you mentioned earlier with your dating of the Symposium, which Alcibiades plays a strong role in that dialogue, you know, just in short, you know, Athens decides to Bring charges against him as he's leading the Athenian army. And this causes a split. And then, you know, Alcibiades defects and he defects to Sparta, which is hard for us to understand what this is. Like, this is like in World War II, if, like one of our generals to Sparta, like, you know, ran away to Russia. Like, it doesn't really. Like, it's, it's hard to explain, like how chaotic and insane this is. And he becomes like an advisor against Athens and then he sleeps with the Spartan queen and has to leave and he goes to Persia. That's like going from Russia to Nazi Germany. And, you know, then he's advising against both the Spartans and the Athenians. And then he comes back because they need him because he's such a military talent. And, you know, you know, long story short, you know, they end up blaming him again. He runs away. And then there's a few different variations of his death, but one of them is that Spartans arrange for the Persians to assassinate him. And so I think I just give that brief thing because I think I really like what you're saying here is that one of the things we have to put this in context is, is that I think when we talk about Socrates corrupting youth, I do, I very much agree that Alcibiades, I think, is example number one, right? That he almost became a tyrant. And also because he corrupted Alcibiades, maybe even Alcibiades wasn't the general that he needed to be. He wasn't there when Athens needed him. And just one more kind of historical point on this. You know, it's my understanding too that after the Peloponnesian War, there was a broad amnesty that was enacted that you really couldn't bring litigation regarding, you know, actions done in wartime. And so there's a certain way to look at the apology. And we'll kind of get into this with the text, but in which, you know, are the charges against Socrates really sound or is this actually an indirect way for Athens to punish Socrates for Alcibiades, they can't punish him for it directly because of the amnesty. So they have this like, trumped up charges of impiety, you know, which is what he's, you know, he's being charged with impiety, he's corrupting the youth because he denies the gods of the city, but he also makes new gods.
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B
Right.
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A
He's this kind of a mysterious figure trying to even understand the charges against him. But I think we'll see in the text several times, even when the charges are Discussed. You kind of get this feeling even as a first time reader, like these don't sound like they stick. Well, it kind of sounds like they're stretching. And so I think, I wonder how much behind the scenes is Athens redirecting a claim, a grievance against Socrates about Alcibiades and recontextualizing it as a claim of impiety and they're just going to punish him anyway.
- [27:00]
B
Yeah, I like that frame a lot. I don't know how Hollywood has not made a movie about the figure of Alcibiades. I mean, seriously, right? He's, he's the guy. I mean, you could do it. No, I like that frame a lot.
- [27:16]
A
I, I think just because your level Symposium. I don't know if you, I don't know if you've read Plutarch on Alcibiades, but his, it talks about one time when he's walking through the city and you know, he always dressed like a peacock, at least when he was in Athens. Right. Because one of his other great traits was that he could adopt, you know, whatever the cultural guideposts were of any city that he walked into. Right. So when he went to Sparta, he didn't, he wasn't a peacock. He was very austere. Right. So he knew how to kind of like gain this kind of social clout, if you will. But I didn't know when I read Plutarch that when he's kind of marching around Athens like a peacock and he has his large golden robes and stuff like this, he had a golden shield with Eros on it that was particularly his, and I found that fascinating.
- [28:02]
B
I find this fascinating as well, especially given the context of Symposium that we already discussed. You know, I talked about the political significance of it, given the setting. But for those who haven't read it yet, it's a dialogue where a bunch of speakers praise Eros, including Alcibiades, who praises Eros, but mainly just praises Socrates.
- [28:23]
A
Yeah, it's a fascinating dialogue and I'm looking forward to kind of building up to the symposium. We're going to read a few more dialogues and then we're going to read the Republic together. And that's going to take a little bit to work through, but it'll be certainly worth it. And then we're going to read the symposium after the Republic. And I think it's. I'm, I am very much looking forward to it. But right now, again, we have to be disciplined, right. We have to have a well organized soul, as Socrates says.
- [28:47]
B
Right.
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A
We have to have a well organized soul. And look at the text. Let's look at the actual text, the apology. I think we've done a good job of kind of setting up its historical context. And so, you know, we start in media res. So if you remember, when we, when we discussed Homer, you're with Homer. We talked about. Homer always started in media res. He starts in the middle of the thing. And so as I understand it, right, we're. We're starting here in the trial of Socrates. The prosecution has already spoken, they've already given their part. And so what we are getting, right, we're right in the middle of what we're about to see start is Socrates defense. He's going to give defense against these charges. And broadly, like, particularly for this first part that we're looking at, you know, broadly, I think how we can structure it is there's like a little preamble that kind of sets things up for us. And then we're going to see there's, there's some kind of distinction Socrates makes between these older accusations. Like, he actually doesn't start with the immediate accusations against him. He starts with some older accusations. He kind of discusses those first and then he moves into the newer ones or the current ones that have precipitated this trial.
- [29:49]
B
Yeah, well, we gonna get into it. I'm excited. I'm ready to go.
- [29:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. So let's look at, you know, there's a few, you know, the accusations, right. So let's kind of look at the accusations. Understand what he means. So this is 18A, where he starts to kind of parse this out. So the first accusers, right, that he kind of points out, these are prior to the charges, these are prior to the ones that have actually precipitated the current trial that he's in. And these have done reputational damage to him. Right. He's like, these are the things that you grew up hearing about me. These are things that have been around a long time about like, who I actually am. And he kind of gives like a little an 18C, right? He says, like, what are these things you've heard about me? Right. Because we should probably mention he's not just talking to like a jury of like 12 people. There's my understanding is there's probably like 500, right. This is kind of a randomly selected by lot large assembly of the Athenian people representing Athens. And so he's talking to, you know, a diverse group of individuals, but they all know who he is, They've all heard of him. Right. He has this certain reputation, but he says that this older reputation is, you know, it damages him. Right? So what is it? He says one that he can make the worst argument the stronger, and he does not believe in the gods. So this is kind of like, if you notice throughout, one thing to notice when you read the Apology is that every time he kind of rearticulates the charges, they kind of shift slightly. And so our first ones we get here is that he makes the worst argument the stronger, and he does not believe in the gods. One of the things that I. I have a question for, for you on this is as part of our studies here on Ascend, we read a lot of the Greek playwrights, particularly to kind of prepare for reading Plato. And I really enjoyed doing that. I. I had not read them before in my own formation. I think, understanding how the playwrights, they just served as an intellectual bridge between Homer and Plato. I think you can really see why someone like Plato came on the scene after reading the playwrights, you see them wrestling with justice. But kind of in a drama, I think Plato presents us that, but in a. In a slightly different way. But one of the plays that we read was Aristophanes, the Clouds, right? We read. We read this, and there's Socrates in the clouds, right, with his thinkory. It's. It's an incredibly comical, slash, crude, you know, presentation. But in that Socrates, you know, he laughs off the gods. He says multiple times, you know, on stage, the character of Socrates says, you know, that he does not believe in Zeus. You know, he's still very much a natural philosopher at that time. He's looking at fleas, he's staring at the stars, you know, these types of things. And one of the questions I had here, and you'll see that Plato will mention Aristophanes explicitly and even, even, even Socrates will mention too, that, you know, these comedies that have created this reputation. I'm just curious, like, when I first was introduced to the Clouds, I was introduced it under the theory that, like, Aristophanes was trying to warn Socrates, that he was trying to warn him. Like, hey, bud, like, this is how people see you. Like, you need to be careful. And it's really hard for me after reading the Clouds and reading the Apology, it's really hard for me to follow that. And what I mean by that is, like, if that was really his intent, I think he might have done the opposite of what he intended, because we could say he intended to do that, but it had an effect that was not his intent because it seems very clearly what we're seeing here with these old accusations is that it really is Aristophanes, the clouds that has colored the minds of the assembly of who Socrates is, that he really is this, you know, sophist character that can make, you know, the weaker arguments appear stronger. And he's an atheist. Right. He denies the gods, which, as you mentioned earlier, you know, piety is central to the life of the city. Piety and politics are not separable. And so I'm wondering, like, you know, what are your thoughts on how Aristophanes the clouds actually impacts the apology?
- [33:53]
B
Yeah, so I think it's all over the place. So the other thing I would add, he not only studies natural philosophy there, he, he also corrupts Pheidippides, he corrupts the youth. He teaches him how to make the weaker speech the stronger. But then he goes and abuses father at the end of the, at the end of the play. And, and it's also interesting too.
- [34:17]
A
You.
- [34:18]
B
Know, Fate Ies is a breeder of horses, and that's kind of his, his father gets angry at him because he spends all of his time around horses and horse racing, which is something that Alcibiades did. And there's all these, there's all these reasons why we can say historically Aristophanes did not have Alcibiades in mind. You know, this, Aristophanes wrote this before Alcibiades would have come on to the scene. But Pheidippides, the, the youth that Socrates corrupts in that, that play is very close as a character to, to Alcibiades. So in some ways I think clouds is almost predictive. You know, I'm a Socrates sympathizer, but I do think Aristophanes has something to say. I also think it's very interesting in Clouds that every time Socrates makes some weird pronouncements on stage that are meant to make us laugh and his students as well. But whenever he does his formal instruction, it's always done off stage. He walks inside the thinkery. Why is that? My own inclination is to say that Aristophanes real critique is it's not what you say, Socrates, that's necessarily problematic. It's the way you're being interpreted by the people who are listening to you. Socrates is very clear in apology that he doesn't talk about natural philosophy. He doesn't talk about sophistry. But in Clouds, the, the old interpret him, they see him as a natural philosopher, and the young experience him as a sophist. So what's, what's that about? And this, I think, is maybe a deeper reflection on the nature of dialectic and how dangerous dialectic can be as a. As an pedagogical form. I mean, I love it. You know, I'll defend it, but if you get. You get erotic youth, that is to say, youth who are really passionate, who want to know, who want to make a difference, and you. You train them in this method where you're asking them questions and you're teaching them to ask questions and to be sharp, that can also backfire in certain ways. I mean, you remember. I mean, I remember at least in college, you know, after I started reading Plato, I was probably a terror to be around at certain points because, you know, you get a little taste of philosophy, and all of a sudden, you know, you become kind of a little amateur philosopher questioning everything and everyone. At least I did. And you think you know more than more than you do and can even be destructive in some ways. So I think Aristophanes, at least my interpretation of him is along that line. And so I think it really bears deeply on the dialogue. And if we take Socrates at his word, you know, hey, these guys here are bringing these charges against me. But really the guy you all have in mind is Aristophanes, because he's been corrupting your mind about me way before these guys brought these charges. You've heard what he's had to say since youth.
- [37:52]
A
Yeah. So the problem there, right, is that what they're putting on trial is the caricature that Aristophanes put forward. Right. They're not. They're not actually putting on, you know, the real Socrates on trial. What they're putting on Ford, is this caricature that Aristophanes, you know, presented in the clouds, I think, too kind of to tether what you said. The clouds is a really good example of how impiety leads to political instability. Because as moderns, this doesn't make sense to us. You know, you teach a class on liberalism, that would be whole, fascinating conversation that I'd love to talk to you about. But, you know, one of the things that I think liberalism has done, whether left or right in a lot of ways, is it's. It's kind of taught us and told us that you can actually run a polis. Right. You can run a society without really having a unified piety to the divine right. That the police doesn't actually have to be aligned with the divine to be successful. That is not the Greek understanding. Right. You see this all the way in Homer this kind of threefold piety of. Of, you know, to the gods, to the polis, to the family, and these all have to align and be in order. And there's wonderful plays, right? I mean, the Theban plays about, you know, Oedipus very much pivot off of, you know, piety, and this. This order of piety becoming disordered and having to be reordered again. Antigone is a beautiful picture of this too, right? The play Antigone, where she, you know, has to fight for the rights of her brother against Creon. And it's a. It's a dispute, right? Creon doesn't think he's going against the gods, at least on the beginning, right? He thinks he's doing what the gods will so that they have a. It's a dispute on piety, right? What. What is the actual service I render to the gods and who's actually correct? And so I think one of the things I really liked about the clouds, even in its, like, comical way, is it showed you then how impiety, right? Well, I don't believe in Zeus, right? This caricature of Socrates on stage says, I don't believe in Zeus, and kind of mocks it as like an immature concept. Well, then the problem is that, right, Pheidippides comes in and says, oh, yeah, well, there's no gods. Well, if there's no gods, then, like, there's no justice because there's no punishment in the afterlife. There's no one to hold me to my oaths. Therefore, you know, I can lie. I can get out of my debts. And, like, I can, you know, I can beat my father. I can even beat my mother, right? I don't owe any of these things to anyone. And so I think, for sometimes as moderns, when we hear, like, Socrates on trial for impiety, we kind of have a flat understanding of that. That, like, he's insufficiently in. You know, he's insufficient in his devotions, right? He just, like. He doesn't say his rosary, right? He doesn't say his rosary enough. And so therefore, he's an impious person. But actually his impiety brings political instability. And I think that how you can kind of see the beginning of. Of the apology is that Socrates is trying to draw a distinction between these old accusations that are really predicated off of Aristophanes. The clouds present a caricature of me. That's not true, right? That. That. That impious character that breeds instability in the polis is not me.
- [40:49]
B
Yes, It's Got to be. It's got to be frustrating when you really think about it. This is a guy who, and he's, he's very upfront about this early on in the dialogue. And actually he uses the example of horses. Again, horses are coming up a lot in the conversation today. But, you know, look, if, if you need to tame a horse, you. You find a good horse breeder, someone who's an expert, and you take the necessary steps to, to breed the horse, to tame the horse, to train the horse, whatever it is you want to do. And you need somebody with a particular skill set to do that. Here's a guy who sees as his particular skill set as orienting the youth towards the highest things, the things that are most important. And so to be hit with the charge of impiety is almost the exact opposite of what his life work actually is. His work is to do the most pious thing, which is to get these youth to think about the highest things and the most divine things. But, you know, I think that that tension really highlights the importance of the clash between philosophy and politics and some of the danger. And, and I mean, I guess we would also say religion and politics in some ways as well, you know, given our, given our own background. But even, even within the context of the Greeks that we're discussing right now, what happens if those, those religious principles which provide a cultural and political unity are actually corruptive? You're stuck with another kind of tragedy, you know, since we brought up Antigone, because on the one, on the one hand, you know, maintaining the order of the state is a good. Is a good thing, but, you know, if the purpose of the polis, and I like that term a lot better than state, like state is such a modern term. But, you know, if the purpose of the city is to, to enable us to live well, to orient us towards a good life, then you have to, you have to visit the principles of the city, the principles of the laws.
- [43:08]
A
Yeah, no, I, I very much agree. I think that we have to take a step back and understand, like, particularly in this Greek mindset, that piety in a lot of ways gives structure to the cosmos. Right. The piety is. Is kind of what I owe. And there's a question coming up too, I have on this because I'm curious to what degree we can actually see the apology as an answer to the euthyphro on the question of piety, but to kind of tether the old accusations to the new. Right, so this is the problem that he has. These, the slander, this Reputational harm that's happened to him because of Aristophanes. The clouds setting aside Aristophanes intent, I guess. But the problem is that then this became a breeding ground for someone like Meletus, right? So Meletus is like his chief accuser. That's brought him to court. And what's curious here is that Meletus is a poet. And so I'm, I'm, I mean, all of my alarm bells go off, right, when you see that Meletus is a poet because you're like, to what degree? Then you know, the, the analogues, like, I don't think it's an allegory, right, but the analogs start just like going off of like, you know, is, is Meletus then some kind of successor to Aristophanes? Like he's, he's brought this kind of full circle. To what degree is the apology a dialogue between philosophy and poetry? Right. Because in a lot of Platonic texts, particularly like you, you like the Republic, you see that philosophy and poetry, particularly the, the poetics as Socrates knows them, right? He talks about them in this dialogue as well. They're kind of at war with each other about who is the, who is the proper teacher of human nature, right? Who do humans turn to to find themselves? Do they turn to the poets? Do they turn to the philosophers? And so I think that Meletus being a poet creates a certain sinew, a certain bridge between the old accusations and the new. And it's fascinating that again, Socrates finds himself being kind of characterized and accused by a poet.
- [45:07]
B
Yes, Socrates has a rough relationship with, with the poets. And you know, I think that sometimes, I, I think that sometimes that gets taken out of context, you know, and again, we'll try to be disciplined here. Man, there's so much to talk about. You talk about Plato, but you've got him banning the poets in Republic and, and criticizing them sharply. And you have. He criticizes them here in apology for similar reasons that he, he brings up later, more, develops more in Republic, but he's willing to admit an apology. You know, sometimes the poets say good things, but when they say good things, it's because they do it under inspiration. But they, they don't really understand the things that they talk about. So even if you have a poet who, who says something that's worthwhile, that's insightful, that's beautiful even, that's great, but don't ask the poet to explain it to you because they don't understand what it is that they're saying. Only the philosopher can do that according to Socrates. So yeah, you know, you're going to get, there's going to be, there's no wonder, you know, that some of the poets are going to criticize them.
- [46:28]
A
I think, yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that when you read the Republic, it's not as present in the apology, but it's present in the Republic, it's present in the Symposium, it's present in first Alcibiades in a certain way. Also in the Phaedo is that Socrates has a lot of recourse to myth, right. He creates these myths or he sometimes he creates them, sometimes he says, I'm, I'm reiterating this, but it's also his invention. Sometimes he changes them. But I think like one of the, one of the juxtapositions that you have to see when you read something like the Republic is the guy who is wanting to ban all the poets and says poetry has no place then has to have recourse to myth, to these poet, like these poetics to explain his ideas. And so you start, I think you start wrestling with the idea of like, you know, is it, is poetry wrong per se or to tether it to the apology, as we'll see in the text, is the problem with poetry is that it's being presented by poets who don't actually understand the perennial truths, right? They don't actually understand what they're talking about, about. So sometimes Homer is great. Sometimes. You know, I just read the, the Gorgias the other day and it, one of the things that caught my attention is that Plato cites Homer positively several times in that dialogue. If you read the Republic, you come away with the fact that Homer's the worst poet that has ever occurred in the history of humanity. Right. So I think in a lot of ways what we're seeing is like the Socrates present. Does Socrates present a new poetry? Right. Does he present a poetry that is like disciplined or purified by philosophy? Right. Is there something called a Socratic poetry that he actually presents?
- [48:07]
B
I mean that's certainly my read. And you know, here I'm indebted to one of my teachers, Dave o', Connor, who really hammered this into me and writes about this a lot. I recommend to your listeners Dave's works and, but you know, and yeah, in Republic you have heavy criticism of Homer, but there's, there's strong arguments that the cave passage is a self conscious imitation of Homer in many ways. So he criticizes as he appropriates and imitates and of course One of the reasons I love Plato so much is he's not only a great philosopher, but he's a great poet. You know, you read the Myth of Aristophanes and Symposium and you say, wow, that's absolutely gorgeous. So as he criticizes, he produces. And of course, what's a dialogue but a work of art? And you know, apology. I love apology. It's wonderful, it's beautiful. But you know, it's an earlier dialogue. And some of the later dialogues you get these dramatic contexts. And I tell my students, before we pick up a Platonic dialogue, you can't just read the dialogue. You have to attune yourself to everything that's going on. And sometimes what's unsaid is just as important as what's being said. And you have to pay attention to the dramatic action. You don't do that when you pick up Aristotle or you pick up Kant or you pick up Nietzsche. And that's not a criticism of those great philosophers. It's simply a recognition that Plato is a great poet, just as he is a great philosopher. And I think the way you put it, that he's being self consciously reflective on the truths he's trying to communicate and in the work of his poetry, his drama, his myth is what differentiates him. And I mean, I also think Homer is always in the background of Plato. And so many of the questions and themes that are raised by Homer are active, are food for thought for Plato.
- [50:22]
A
I very much agree. Yeah, it's a rough thesis of mine, is that even though the Gorgias kind of threw me for a loop a little bit, but Socrates tends to only mention Homer when he disagrees with him. And it's, it's funny to me that I think Aristotle does the same thing with Plato. But if you read a lot of Plato, right. If you read a lot of Plato, then you realize how much Aristotle is borrowing from him. And the same thing. Like one of the things I appreciated, you know, we just got done with a year of Homer, a year with Homer for ascend. We read the Iliad for six months, in the Odyssey for six months. And one of the things I really appreciated is on this read through is you could see how many concepts of Plato were antecedent in Homer. You could see kind of the first rumblings of like, what is the soul? You could see some, some dialogues between like, you know, is it intellect or the, the spirited part of man? You know, primary. You could see a lot of these things that I think even virtue, right. Homer using arete to Describe Penelope, right? Kind of turns some of these things on its head. And you could see then, I think in a lot of ways, when you read this is the beauty, right, of the great conversation. When you step into this, this kind of conversation of the great texts on perennial truths, you see very much how they're in dialogue with one another and indebted to one another, even if they don't mention it or even if, you know, you're like dear old Aristotle. You only mention your master when you happen to disagree with him, which, if you only read Aristotle, you kind of think that, like, Aristotle invented things like virtue and teleology and all these things. And, you know, Plato had a few dumb ideas about, you know, the soul being reincarnate, you know, thank God we dropped him. So anyway, to push into the text here a little bit, or I'm gonna. I'm gonna get lost in the rabbit hole of Plato overall. So we have this dialogue. We have this distinction between the old accusations, right, that it caused reputational harm, and the new ones. And I think Meletus, in a lot of ways, as we've mentioned, kind of a tethering between that. So. And he starts talking about the old accusations, particularly at 19B. Aristophanes is mentioned explicitly at 19. I do wonder in certain ways to what degree the apology is a rebuttal of the clouds, like Plato's writing this after the fact, obviously, as you mentioned, I agree with you 100. When you read the dialogues, you have to read them as a drama. You have to take in all the facts, you have to take all the settings, you have to take everything in to understand. Because Plato was a playwright, right? He. He burned all of his plays upon meeting Socrates. But he teaches us through the drama, right? We don't read the. We don't read the dialogues to just, you know, abstract some kind of cold principle, some philosophical principle from them. They're very warm, right? We step into them and kind of understand these things. So the mentioning of Aristophanes, you know, by name. I'm curious to what degree one could read the apology as a rebuttal of the clouds. But help me understand when he's going against these like this, these old accusations in 19e, he starts this theme, which he mentioned several times, that he's never charged a fee. He's never charged a fee for anything. Why does he.
- [53:29]
B
Yeah, so. Because that's what the Sophists do. So, I mean, this makes a lot of sense. So what? Who are the sophists? What do they do? I mean we still use the term in common parlance, he's a sophist, or that's just sophistry. Sophists are people who make the weaker speech the stronger. What does that mean, the weaker speech is stronger? It means even though your argument is not as good, you can make it more compelling. The sophists are not concerned with truth. They are concerned purely with using rhetoric to get ahead. And they charge a fee for this. And now look, you know, it's. You are a wealthy parent, a good Athenian aristocrat, and you've got some, some kids you want to educate. You want them to have good, successful careers. Well, what do you do? You're going to send them off to the best sophist you can find, and you're going to teach them how to speak well, so that in politics or in the law courts, they're going to be able to distinguish themselves. You know, the sofist is a guy. I could walk up to a sophist and say, hey, could you, could you give me the argument for why, you know, Walker Percy is the, the greatest 20th century American novelist? And he'll give you the argument, and then the guy behind me can walk up and say, hey, can you give me the argument for why Walker Percy is the worst 20th century novelist? And then he'll give you the argument and both of them will be good. And it's inconsequential to him whether or not it's true. What's consequential to the sophist and to the one who learns from the sophist is whether or not you're effective in being able to cultivate that skill. And so that's what people are paying for. This is a kind of educational system. And so by saying, I've never accepted money, Socrates is very directly confronting the charge that he's a sophist because he has no interest in remuneration for these discussions that he has with these students or these youth.
- [55:48]
A
Yeah, no, very good. I think that was incredibly well put. Yeah, I think it too, not only then kind of draws a distinction between him and the sophists, which again, the problem is, right. In Aristophanes, the clouds. He really is kind of a sophist in there. Right. Socrates, the character actually tends to lean more towards, you know, it depends on your translation, but the new logic, the new speech. Right. The sophistry that's distinct from the old kind of distinguished philosophy. And so I'm not sure, you know, I think one of the challenges that Socrates is Facing here at the beginning is that people can't distinguish between the sophist and the philosopher, right? The, the uneducated, the ignorant can't tell the difference. They can't tell the difference between him and Gorgias, right? They can't do that because they. And so the problem is, is that then when Socrates, you know, kicks in the gear and starts playing, being a gadfly and asking his questions, the problem is that then the ignorant person can't tell is he leading me to truth, or am I getting all tied up in his terms and syllogisms? And I'm just agreeing with him because I'm lost, not because it's actually true, but because he exerts a certain power over me via rhetoric that's divorced from justice, that's divorced from what's true. And so I think that Socrates is giving a very concrete example, because I don't think he can't come in and explain philosophically why he's distinct from a sophist, because I don't think it's going to do anything efficacious, you know, to this 500 Athenian assembly. But he can give a really concrete example, right? I don't take a fee. I'm also curious to what degree this is a plausible deniability of actually having students, right? I can't corrupt the young. If the young come to me, he kind of makes this argument, right? The young come to me and listen and imitate me. That's fine, that's on them. But, like, they're not my students. I'm not teaching them. I'm not teaching them how to do it. It's not. There's not an intentionality on his part to make them like that.
- [57:43]
B
No, I think that's right. And I. Look, I think that this is what's tied up in Aristophanes critique is precisely what you say, that. That people can't. People interpret him in ways that even he perhaps doesn't intend. And just another wrinkle I'll add to what you've already said. I mean, if you're a young man who's even. Let's even be charitable about this, let's say you're a young man who's interested in the pursuit of truth, and you're following Socrates around the marketplace and you see him and he's going to approach some politician, a powerful politician, and he's going to ask him a series of questions, and those questions are directed at showing this politician why he really doesn't understand what he. What he thinks he understands, shows him the limitations of his knowledge and does it in the service of truth in Socrates's mind to really educate in the sense of showing his interlocutor what he does not know. Well, how does the, and these, these youth would be younger than 18.
- [58:58]
A
You.
- [58:58]
B
Know, but think of yourself as a teenager, kind of witnessing this, this, this philosopher kind of cross examining a powerful or a reputable politician and kind of reducing him to rubble. In Socrates's mind, you're, you're doing that, you're performing this act of education. But it's real easy for a young adolescent to look at that and take away from it some rhetorical tricks to, to stump your parents when you get home.
- [59:28]
A
Right.
- [59:28]
B
You know, to put it, put it in a silly way, but you know what I mean?
- [59:33]
A
Yeah, it's the clouds again, right? It's, it's pheidippities, you know, can defeat his own parents in rhetoric and, and even beat them. Right. It brings a certain, again, you go back to that theme, that it brings a certain instability.
- [59:47]
B
Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think that's what's at the heart of this dialogue.
- [59:55]
A
Well, let's look at 20C. So at 20C, you know, I love this because Socrates is asked to give a speech and he just can't do it. Like he has to do it as a dialectic, right? So he either has to ask rhetorical questions and answer them, or he has to ask Meletus certain things. Right? Here we're getting rhetorical questions. But I thought this was a Good one, right, 20C. He says, well, wait, you know, what is your occupation? So if you're not a sophist, if you're not charging fees and everyone just misunderstands you, then like, what, what have you been doing, right? How have you actually, like, have you done anything to actually, like, merit this slander? Like, did this come out of nowhere? And this is where I, you have to laugh when you read Plato. Like, I don't know how people don't laugh like you, if you're taking the drama seriously and thinking about what he's doing. Like, and I think this is really where you start to see, at least in my opinion, that Socrates, well, we can raise this question, what is the purpose of Socrates speech? Like, what is the purpose? Right? Is the purpose, I think for a lot of us, we assume, because it's what we would do. The purpose of the speech is to not get killed, right? The purpose of the speech is to defeat the charges against me. By any means necessary and to not be executed by the state or exiled or found guilty in any way. And I'm not entirely sure, like, that's a question I think we're gonna have to wrestle with. I don't think that's entirely clear right now is what is Socrates actual purpose with his speech? And the reason I raise this is because we get into this wonderful passage, right, where he's like, well, wait, what have you been doing? Why is all the slander come up? Well, he says I have a certain type of wisdom, right? And you, you just, it's, you can't, you can't help but laugh when you start reading this, right? Like, so I have a certain kind of wisdom, and the wisdom just happens to make people upset, right? And it's like, okay, well, how did that happen? Well, then he get this wonderful story of the oracle at Delphi, right? And of course, I think he does a couple things that are subtle that I think we can miss as moderns, but are absolutely ridiculous to his audience. And one of the first ones, I think is right here in which he calls a God as a witness. That's at 20. That's at 20. E, right? So he's like, well, I have a certain kind of wisdom, and you guys say these things against me. Melita says this, X, Y and Z. But by the way, I'm going to call, right, basically Apollo, right, the oracle at deli. His, his kind of seer, I'm going to call him as a witness. And he gives a story basically saying that the oracle, Adelphi said that Socrates is the wisest person on Earth. And of course, like, you can, you can see how this is received by the assembly, right? I mean, this is ridiculous. Like, the gods would say, because he's being charged for impiety, right? So the contrast that Plato starts playing with here is really thick. So they're charging him with impiety. And Socrates is trying to say, by the way, the gods, or, you know, the God, right, says that I, the oracle, Delphi says that I am the wisest person that has ever lived. You can start telling this. There's this tension that starts to build and you're really thinking to yourself, like, Socrates, is this really the best way to alleviate the charges? Like, is this the. Is this the best thing that you could do? Because he goes on, right, to explain, like, well, you know, he takes the oracle seriously. And I think that's a question of itself. Like, why. Why does Socrates take the oracle seriously? And I maybe let's Just dwell with that for a second because I think that's a mystery. I'd love to know your thoughts on it. So maybe just like the tension, like, what's the tension there? Well, Socrates has, is. It's basically very clear that Socrates does not actually believe in the pantheon, but he, he does not believe in the, the gods of the city, but he believes in a God. He believes in the God, right. He mentions this kind of monotheistic singular God and he also believes in daemons, Right. He believes in these spirits, you will see later in the apology that he, he believes the God has actually gifted him with one. Right, These spirits that help to guide intermediaries. Yeah, this kind of intermediary spirit, you know, the, the Neoplatonic thinkers in the middle aged Middle Ages were very comfortable saying that, you know, these were angels, right, that they had kind of discovered, right, that these are the, the angelic creatures between man and God. But then he takes the oracle at Delphi seriously and it's like, how do you take that? Like, is he just receiving it as like a rhetorical device which would be kind of flat? You know, it's just something that's kind of helpful for him in his pursuit of philosophy. It's, it's, you could almost argue it's a myth. Right? He's created a myth about himself to help them understand. So he can't, he can't really explain I've created philosophy. You guys need to listen to me. So he, he comes up with a myth that falls flat for me because I, I personally find Socrates to be quite pious. I think Socrates is pious in a way that can make us uncomfortable. Right? Because we're used to reading Aristotle. Particularly if you come from the Catholic tradition in the west, you're used to reading Aristotle. God is the unmoved mover. Here we'll see that, that Socrates says that, that God speaks to him, that God gives him a vocation, that God has, you know, given him a daemon to guide him. Like it's much more personable. And I'm, I'm uncomfortable saying all of that is some type of rhetorical device for the philosopher, that it doesn't have a substance to it. So then you're kind of left with, well, who's Socrates who doesn't believe in the pantheon but believes in the God? How. Why does he give such deference to the oracle at Delphi? Do you have any thoughts on this?
- [65:26]
B
Yeah, I, I have a ton of thoughts on this. I'll try to. You know, the first one is Broader and I don't want to take us too far field, but you will see I am just obligated to say this. I mean, it seems very clear to me, you know, that, that the, this passage here especially really influenced Saint Justin Martyr. And you know, you, you frame, you, you kind of ask the question, you know, is, is Socrates really trying to get off of these charges here? Because the, the way he's talking.
- [66:01]
A
Where.
- [66:01]
B
He'S being very deliberately provocative. Well, this is not the most effective way, this is not the most effective way to get off. And he's clearly talented enough that he probably could if he wanted to. You know, you read St. Justin's martyrdom account in front of Rusticus, it's the one that's in the Office of Readings. And you're, you're involved in a dialectic that's very similar to this one and I think very self consciously so, you know, you say you are a true philosopher. You say that you possess wisdom. Yes, yes we do. And of course for Justin, the, the true philosopher is the Christian because the, the truth wisdom is a person, it's Jesus Christ. So I would be remiss if I don't mention that explicit connection here. But secondly, I agree with you that Socrates is very pious and I think the proof of that is in the fact that he claims to possess a certain kind of wisdom. But then he also claims at the same time that he finds human wisdom to be of little account. And I think there's a way of reading that, and I think it's a big temptation maybe for undergraduate students or even first time readers of the text to read this in a kind of relativistic way, you know. Well, Socrates eventually comes to the conclusion that the one thing I know is that I don't really know anything, that, you know, there's a short step there to well, there is no truth. And I think a lot of people read him that way and he's smart enough to know that. He knows that there's no truth and he's able to punch holes in the arguments of those people who would state that there exists some truth. But you notice carefully the wording that's used. The God has told me that I was the wisest of men, and I have come to see that he. Human wisdom, human wisdom is of little account. I think Socrates's position here is not because I know my limits, I don't think anything is true. It's precisely because I have seen something of the true, something of the good, something of the beautiful. I know that it is too great for any one person to possess in its entirety.
- [68:44]
A
Yeah, there's a 100% agree. I think that you were tempted that. Well, I mean even see historically, right. That that out of Plato came a school of skepticism, right. That we just, we can't know anything. And they, the problem with that is they only take the first step. So there is, there is in Plato, you know, in Plato, Socrates, a certain beautiful deconstruction that the first thing I have to know is that I don't know, you know, to, to know thyself in actually starts to actually bring with it that I come to understand that which I do not know. And this is really where the Socratic wisdom comes in. Right. And it's really interesting, I agree with you that he tethers that to a distinction between human and divine wisdom. I think that's a fascinating thing particularly know for a pagan philosopher to do. But no, we have to have that, that beautiful deconstruction, right. You see this too in, in First Alcibiades, you know, we had a lot of questions like in First Alcibiades where you know, Socrates will say something like, you know, first Alcibiades or excuse me, Alcibiades. Like what do you, you know, you're going to talk about justice to the assembly. What are you going to say like what's justice? And Socrates will ask him a series of questions and, and Aristotle and you know, Alcibiades falls over himself and he finally says, you know what, I don't know what justice is. What is it? And Socrates doesn't tell him and he just moves on to the next question and you're like wait, what is happening in this dialogue? And you realize particularly it can be very confusing for first time readers is that Socrates whole point is simply to deconstruct and say no, no, no, you actually don't know. But that, that beauty to coming to know, I don't know is not an invitation to skepticism or, or to relativism, but it's to kind of build a foundation for true wisdom. Right. And I think that's, that's what Socrates does very well because I think his Socratic irony, I mean I think he, I think the Socratic irony is, is typically always for the benefit of the interlocutor, right? He's, he's not caustic, you know, for the sake of, of being rude or showing that he knows more. But this is something that we've kind of been discussing in our, our studies into Plato is that the Socratic Irony is, is for the benefit of the other, even when it's a little bit sharp. You know, sometimes we see that in the Gorgias that in that dialogue, the Socratic irony can be a bit sharp, but it's still for the sake of inviting the interlocutor, the dialogue partner into truth. And so. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that that is, I mean, he says it explicitly, right. So kind of to push the text forward, he goes on this journey. He goes on his. Actually, it's really funny. He calls him his, his labor.
- [71:19]
B
Sorry, can I, can I just real quick make a quick comment on irony?
- [71:23]
A
Oh yeah, go for it.
- [71:24]
B
Since you brought it up there. The problem with the poets is, is that they get inspired, but they don't really know of which that what they speak. And now here we have just a few passages later. Well, the one thing I know is that I don't, I don't know. Very interesting juxtaposition. And like, you know, maybe we don't work that out now, but, you know, like, I just want to throw that out there to show how he's, he keeps playing around with the irony here.
- [71:57]
A
No, I appreciate that. Yeah, no, let's push into it because, you know, he goes and tests the oracle. So it's at 21B. And you just kind of give the structure here. Right. He first he goes to the statesman, right. He's going to people he thinks is wise because he's going to test his wisdom against theirs because he's going to prove the oracle wrong in a certain way too. I, you know, I, I like the idea that the oracle, Delphi is being Socratic with Socrates. Right. I, I like that idea.
- [72:23]
B
Yes. Right.
- [72:24]
A
She gives him something just enough for him to, to go out and try and prove this. And the whole thing is kind of saturated in irony. So he goes to the statesman, you know, he says, listen, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And he's trying to also prove. He's proving two things. One, he's proving, by the way, which I think is more practical. This is why I became unpopular. This is why I have a bad reputation because I've, I've had a dialogue with these people. They don't know anything, but I'm better because I know that I don't know anything. They think they know something. And we again, they have another reference to first Alcibiades. Right. This is what Socrates calls, like, you know, the worst of stupidity is to think you know something when you don't. And Particularly when you're talking about the highest things like justice. And so the statesman right there, they're. They're sunk. So he talks to the statesman. What I was mentioning earlier is he. He talks about this as his labors. And that's another point where I'm like, brother, I don't think you're trying to prove these charges wrong at all, right? Because first he talks about calling a God as witness, which is a ridiculous concept. And then he compares himself to Hercules, right? Hercules has the 12 labors. And here he's saying, like, these are like my labors, right? So he has this illusion that he is the God man, right? That he's a. He's a demigod and he's going on this mission, you know, of the divine. And again, you ask yourself, like. Because I don't think this is really resolved until the end of the dialogue, but I think it's a good thing. You know, all. You know, teleology, obviously, being a good Dominican, all things are judged, good or bad, according to their end, to their purpose, to their telos. And so one question we have to ask is, you know, what. What is the purpose of his speech? What is the purpose of the apology? So he goes to the. He goes to the statesman. They don't know. He goes to the poets. And this is what we've referenced already several times is that they do say true things, but they don't know why. They can't explain them, right? They kind of do it under this kind of erotic, you know, being amused by the muses, right? They. They say true things, but they can't really articulate this. And then he goes to the craftsman, and I found this fascinating. He goes to the craftsman. And the craftsmen, you know, they do know things. They know how to build things. They. They make things. They're craftsmen, but at the same time, it creates in them a certain pseudo wisdom. Because they think, because they're good at their craft, then they're actually wise, right? Because I'm good at making this thing, or because I have this thing, I'm wise. And it's really hard for me not to read that and think of us. I mean, I think the statesmen, the poets, the craftsman can all reflect different types of. But what I mean by that is there's something very modern amongst the craftsmen, right? We have a techne, right? We have this. We have this craft. We have this, this. This techne. And because of that, I find myself to be smart. And if this doesn't describe us today with our technology, Right. Even connecting the etymology there, if this doesn't describe us with our technology, I don't know what does. Right. I am smart. I mean, why would we even read Plato? I have an iPhone phone. Right. Why do I need to do this? Right. What you said at the beginning of, of the episode, right? Why, why do I need to read the great books? I can answer this all with AI. I mean, we find we're, we're so dumb compared to generations prior to us, but we think we're smart because I have an iPhone, because a very few of us actually know how to make this thing. The rest of us just benefit off of it. And I'm, I think it's making us actually dumber. And so it's interesting, the, the craftsman dichotomy, I think really has a certain analog to the modern age.
- [75:50]
B
I, I absolutely think so. And there's a, you know, it comes across in statesman, it comes across in Symposium too, in the speech of Eric Symmicus. But I think that there's an anti scientism in Plato as well. And, you know, that's where it really comes out. Because, you know, when you think of techne, you know, don't, don't just think of the craftsman as the craftsman who puts together chairs or belts or something, you know, that, that would also apply to someone, say like the physician who, because he has a particular scientific expertise or technical expertise, thinks that thereby he can unlock the secrets of the cosmos and that that's a dangerous place to be.
- [76:42]
A
No, that's a, that's a very good distinction. So then in 23B, this is what we've kind of mentioned. Right. Where does Socrates wisdom lie? Well, he, it lies in knowing that it's worthless. Right. And he makes that distinction between human wisdom in the divine wisdom, and he understands that his wisdom to a certain degree is worthless. Right. It's that coming to know that, I don't know. What'd you make of him pushing into. Hey, by the way, not only am I doing all things in service to the gods and actually, excuse me, in service to the God, but it's a sacrifice because I don't charge a fee, therefore I live in poverty. Right. This is another one of that substrata that's moving through his conversation where I think, because I don't think he's completely untethered from trying to prove the charges against him wrong. I think he's, you know, maybe just to play my cards like, I think he's actually more interested in trying to share the truth. He probably not convert the entire assembly, but convert those who have, you know, open minds to listening to him. But at the same time, he's very talented. So he also has these kind of sub motifs that are chipping away at the charges against him. And I think this is another one, like the fee, where he says, by the way, not only I am service to the God, but I've lived in poverty. I've made a sacrifice to do this right. I haven't gone in and become a craftsman. I haven't gone in and charged all these fees. I, I'm poor, and I'm poor because I'm serving the God. And you have to remember he's being charged with impiety. And so he's trying to show, actually I'm, I'm living a pious life.
- [78:16]
B
Yes. So I, I, I really think that a big part of this dialogue is Socrates making the claim that he is showing the youth what is most valuable in life. And what is most valuable is this is to love wisdom. And he began the apology. The very first thing he says, as you say, we begin in the middle of things. In what he begins with is, hey, look, I know that there's a particular way of making speeches, but I'm not really good at that. Instead, I have to speak the way I always speak. But what I can assure you of is that I just, I speak the truth. So the very first thing that, that you get in the dialogue is I speak the truth. That's the thing that I do. And then that, that theme comes up here in this passage that you've highlighted. He mentions again that all he is doing is speaking the truth. And he talks about, he says explicitly that it's the rich men who are coming to see him. Why? Because they're the ones who have the leisure to do it. So I think that there's at least two suggestions there. The first is, if I wanted to be rich, I could, I'm good at what I do. And the people who are coming to see me have wealth. So if I wanted to collect a fee, I could be doing a lot better than I am now. But secondly, it's to create the contrast. You know, your sons are rich in monetary wealth, but they're the ones who are poor in what matters. And I may be poor in material wealth, but I am wealthy in what matters. I think that's the contrast he's trying to create here. It's not just to show his purity of purpose, although I think that's certainly what he's doing. But it's to prove that he believes that true riches lie in seeking wisdom and in loving it.
- [80:25]
A
I think that's very good. Yeah, no, that's a very good read. I appreciate that. Right after that, too, he gives kind of a defense of corrupting the youth. And this is what we mentioned earlier. They follow him. They imitate him on their own free will. I'm curious, though, here. He. He makes this, like, side comment when he says, like, these are the accusations that you have against me. But he makes a side comment of, like, you know, really, this is. This is against all philosophers. That's a fascinating line, because I wonder, then, kind of going back to the poetry versus philosophy, the poets versus the philosophers, like, to what degree can we read this as a trial of philosophy? Right. To what degree is Socrates, you know, the stand in the analog for philosophy, you know, itself, which again, I think, creates a certain juxtaposition that makes it to anti. The clouds. Right. It's. It's a. It's a response, a rebuttal of Aristophanes, the clouds, where Socrates then, in a certain way was like this caricature, the stand in that really, at certain times didn't make any distinction between sophist and philosopher. But now he really is the philosopher and he's on trial. And I. I wonder to what degree. We can see then that philosophy itself is on trial.
- [81:38]
B
I mean, I think he. I mean, you know, you've brought it up already. Plato, the poet, the playwright, had his life substantially changed by his encounter with Socrates. That really moved him. So this is about. Yes, my friend, my mentor, was killed by you unjustly. And so I'm writing about that. But it can't just be about that. It also has to be, well, what was it that kind of blew up my life when I encountered this human being? And, you know, we certainly get a picture of Socrates, the man in this dialogue. It'd be foolish to deny that in a defense of the man.
- [82:26]
A
But.
- [82:27]
B
But the focus really, I think, is more on the way of life. I think that comes through very clearly a little later on. So I, I certainly think that that's certainly how I read it as well. I mean, that's my inclination.
- [82:43]
A
Okay, good. No, very good. So here's, here's another kind of. Like you, like you mentioned, Plato presents these with a certain pedagogical veneer. Right. They're not just simply like historical transcripts, like, he's teaching us something, and probably veneers even the wrong word. Right? I mean, he. He has needed a pedagogy deep into this text, where every little thing, in my opinion, right, every little thing is a pedagogical tool to allow people to kind of uncover the truth as they. They unpack this narrative. Something that's, it's. That's more on the shallow end here, but I think is worthy of discussion, is he lists his accusers, right? And so you have Meletus, we've talked about, who's a poet, and again, all the flags go off there. And then you have. How would you pronounce this other fellow's name? Antonis and Antitus. Yeah, he is a craftsman and a politician. So he turns. He serves two roles, right? Because what we're getting suspicious of is like, oh, wait, he just went through, you know, statesman or politician, poet and craftsman on his, like, you know, journey of the oracle of the deli, testing his wisdom. So notice here is their revenge, right? Here come this different strata of society and their representatives to accuse him. But what I find fascinating is there's three people, but they don't actually line up to the three strata. So Meletus is the poet, but then the second one, he is a craftsman and a politician. And then there's a third one who wasn't on the Delphi oracle journey, and this is Lycon, who is an orator or a rhetorician or a sophist. And so obviously, I think the question arises, like, wait, why wasn't he. Why wasn't that categorization of person part of the original journey of Socrates? Like, why? Because, you know, we like symmetry. So why do the three people line up to the three strata? In my, you know, my gut reaction here, which I don't think is, like, terribly profound, is that I don't think Socrates even bothered going to the sophists, right? He went to the people he thought might actually have wisdom, right? He went to the statesmen, your politicians, he went to the poets, he went to the craftsmen. He didn't even bother going to the sophists because he already knows they don't have wisdom at all. So it's funny, like the step. It's funny because I think the sophists are almost like the stepchildren of this, where they're like. It's like Sophrates doesn't even think they have wisdom to begin with, but they kind of like jump on with the poets and the craftsmen and the statesmen bringing these charges against him. I don't know. Plato's playing with something here that I.
- [85:26]
B
Think is somewhat comical, and I, I agree with that. And I mean, even to some degree, it's admitted. Like, I think, you know, the sophists isn't concerned with wisdom explicitly. We'll state it. Yeah, you know, I don't care about that. What I, what I do have for you is some technique. I mean, you know, it's connected to the technique question a little bit, but. No, I think that's right. Yeah. They don't make a claim, the wisdom.
- [85:55]
A
Yeah, no, that's a good. Yeah, they don't even make a claim. You see, that I recently, like I mentioned earlier, recently really started reading the, the Gorgias, and it's interesting in that one that Socrates, you know, he likes his. Is it calicles? He likes calicles as an interlocutor because he's not ashamed to mention kind of his baser appetites. And he's just very clear, like, no, no, I, I engage in this, you know, rhetoric, this sophistry simply for power. Like, I don't care what's just, I don't care these things, right? He has no, he has no like nice civilized veneer. And so. Right, you, you see that then that, that's, that's not something that Socrates even has to bring out too much, right. It just, it comes kind of tumbling out, so kind of pushing, though, into the text. He, this is where we get a shift, though, from the old accusations, right, where he had this reputational damage because of Aristophanes, etc. And then he gets into the new accusations, this is around 24B. And we get another reiteration of the charges which I think are worth noting. So, A, he's corrupting the young, B, he's not believing in the gods of the city, you know, the polis. And C, he believes in new spiritual things, right? He's also kind of a maker of the gods, which is interesting accusation. It's an interesting thing through here that, that Socrates again, as we mentioned earlier, can't really give a speech. And so he dialogues to a certain degree with Meletus, right? And in certain ways this too, again, you have to ask the question, what's the purpose? Because Socrates is about to give an example to the 500 Athenians of why he's so annoying, right? Like, what makes him the gadfly? Like, he's got to give an example of that. He's like, well, let me turn Meletus inside out. And sometimes we read this and we say, well, why, why aren't they convinced like Meletus, in my opinion. And we'll see this in Several points. Meletus stretches his answer. Like Mellitus's answers don't. Aren't even logical. They're not even logical to what we've read in the apology, in the text itself, in the four corners. Like, Meletus is. Is totally out ahead of his skis. To use a different analogy, like, why. Why does this not move the assembly in a certain way? Like I said earlier, I think it's because in a lot of ways, I'm not sure how many of them can distinguish between sophistry and philosophy. And so all they do is see Meletus get turned inside out by Socrates, this annoying godfly, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's why we're killing him. Right? Yeah, because he does that and it corrupts the young and the. And the young then bring political instability to Athens, who literally just lost, you know, their world war, and they need to create, you know, a new society. They need to figure out what went wrong.
- [88:32]
B
Yes. So I like that a lot. He really. Meletus is completely out of his depth. And you get the sense that it's not only that he's out of his depth, which he is, but he. He's not even interested in engaging. It's just like, look, let's just get rid of this guy. There's no need to keep him around. But with that said, even though it's hard not to read him that way, as being kind of dismissive and unconcerned with the dialogue, I'm just wanting to get on with the charges. Socrates does show. Start to show kind of the fact that he's a political threat here, because at the end of that, that interchange with Miletus where he says, you know, hey, well, what is it that makes. What is it that makes the polis better? What makes the city better? Oh, well, the laws. Okay, yeah, the laws make people better, but who makes the laws? And, you know, he keeps digging, digging, digging. And the conclusion that they come to at the end of that, or that Socrates explicitly states, because Meletus certainly doesn't come to it at the end of that is. So, okay, what you're. What you're saying is, is that nobody's corruptive of the youth except for me. Meletus says, yes, and then Socrates says, but really, we all know that the truth is the opposite, that the expert, the one who knows how to make something good, the one who knows how to make a good belt, the one who knows how to breed a good horse, the one who knows how to educate a good Youth actually stands in the minority, not in the multitude. And that, I think is going to tick a lot of people off because now here he's presenting himself. I think he doesn't state it directly, but you read between the lines. It's like, actually it's the exact opposite. All of you are corrupting the youth and I am here showing them the higher things of which you are ignorant and on which you turn your back.
- [90:45]
A
No, I think that's, I think that's perfect because there's a few things there that, that occurred to me. One is that it's such a marvelous move of, I mean, dare I say, Socratic rhetoric. So, you know, my suspicion is just like poetry, to borrow a phrase can be baptized and you can have Socratic poetics that do, do convey the truth. Like all the myths that we see that Socrates uses, you can also see a rhetoric that is in service to truth, right? One that's not sophist, one that's not divorced from the good. And this is a really marvelous move on his part, right? So Meletus is just, he's pushing things to the absurd. Literally. Everyone in Athens is wonderful and helps everyone else become a good person except for you, Socrates, like you're it. And that, and that's a point we're going to see that this happen again, where Meletus pushes his claim against Socrates to a point where it's absurd. And that raises all kinds of questions, why does this not move the assembly, why does the assembly not be able to see this, etc. But for Socrates to follow your point, for Socrates to take that absurdity and pivot it into a logical argument of like, oh, yeah, well, you know who trains horses? The, the assembly, right? The, the group, the, the crowd, or the one person who knows how to train horses, the horse trainer. Oh, it's the one person. And then, yeah, the implication, like you said, is, is clear, is that, oh, actually I'm the person who's actually leading the youth towards what's good and you guys are the corruptors. And this goes back to my, my thought process earlier of to what degree can a civilization survive someone like Socrates? And what I mean by that is that when they start to listen to Socrates, he reorients them. And take, take the conversation on piety, right? If you have a polis that reorients its piety towards the divine, it has to go through a transformation. In Antigone play, it's a brutal transformation, right, because it's a tragedy. But you can have a polis that goes through a positive transformation, information, because its piety shifts, it improves, it perfects. You see this thing too, with our Lord, right? Our Lord comes in and it. In a certain way, if we, if we keep the. The grammar the same, there's a huge shift in piety, right? Well, what. What do we owe the divine. What does the divine want of us? Right? And Jerusalem can't survive it. I mean, if you read John's gospel. I read John's gospel to my daughter not too long ago, and it was surprising to me how often Christ spends time talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, because it's a subject that maybe for various reasons, we rarely touch on today, but it's a prophecy that Christ touches on consistently throughout John, that Jerusalem is not going to be able to survive this kind of reorientation towards a true piety. So it's just a fascinating concept, because I think that goes back to many of the things that you've mentioned that the philosopher, piety, politics, these things are all tethered together, right? They actually have very deep, strong sinews. And if you start to shift one, it shifts the other. And you can see why it brings political instability and why it brings a threat to the polis.
- [94:00]
B
Yeah. And I, like, I'm a Socrates man, right? And I. This is what I bring to class. You know, I'm a Socrates man. I'm on Team Socrates. You know that he's great. But you have to see the tension. You have to see. This goes back to what we said at the very beginning of the podcast, right? Why do they want to kill a philosopher? Well, this is the reason why he upsets the apple cart. And a lot of people associate, at least in casual conversation, associate Aristophanes.
- [94:38]
A
As.
- [94:38]
B
Being kind of a liberal or libertine poet because, you know, a lot of his plays are bawdy. But in fact, you know, Aristophanes is a real political conservative. Like his critique of Socrates, like, look, man, I'm trying to maintain the order to polis here. You know, change is bad. We keep to our ways. Aristophanes will be the first to mock practices and festivals and cultural events in his plays. But then he mocks them and then. And then he goes and participates in the civic participation. That's one thing. It's one thing to point out the absurdities or point out the comedy that we experience in life, but then at the end of the day, you. You partake in the cultural practice. Socrates is a political threat because he. He threatens to upset the whole apple cart if you take what he says seriously. Well, now you're undermining the foundations of the polis. And that's a different thing than pointing out absurdities or writing a comedy. Those are two different things. And so I think, you know, even if you're a Socrates person, at the end of the day, you have to feel the tension a little bit. Like there's, look, there's a reason why they, they kill this guy. And even if you sympathize with them, like, some of the reasons are good.
- [96:10]
A
Yeah, it's, you know, not to jump too much to a different text, but, right. You think of the Republic that the individual who has seen the sun, right, they've escaped the cave, they've been outside, they've seen things that are real, they've seen the thing that enlightens all other things. He goes back into the cave to help his comrades and they kill him. They kill him for it. Right? They can't take that transition. They can't take the metanoia, I mean, the metanoia quite literally, right? They're turning around. They can't, they can't take it. And I mean, again, the, the implications here for understanding both Socrates and our Lord as bringing the truth and how humans, you know, respond to that truth. I mean, kind of an example, I mean, kind of pushing the text forward a little bit. You know, Meletus does another stretch here, right? So in a 26B, right, Socrates is like, how do I corrupt the young Meletus, right? Answer me this. How do, how do I corrupt the young? And Meletus answers by not believing in the gods of the city and creating new gods, but he gets pushed on this. And Meletus is like, yeah, you don't believe in the gods at all. And this is really, I mean, even for like first time readers, you got to realize that something's wrong because like Socrates literally just gave, first off, he's mentioned the God multiple times and two, he just gave this whole story about the oracle Adelphi and that he took it seriously. And Meletus is like, yeah, you don't, you don't believe in the gods at all. And Socrates. But I'm not sure and maybe, you know, I'd welcome, you know, any wisdom on this. What occurs to me here is that Socrates is trying to answer the claim against him, but he also, he's not a sophist. So he's not just going to say what the assembly wants him to say, he's going to say what's true, but he's gonna say in a way that still tries to address the charges, because, let's be honest, if he's a sophist, all he has to say is, guys, I believe in Zeus. I believe in Athena. I believe in Zeus. I believe only gods. I love Homer. I love all the Homeric tales, right? You go back to Euthyphro, where he's like, you know, you don't believe the Homeric tales, do you? Like, Socrates just says, yeah, I believe them all, right? I love all of them. I love Homer. Done deal. Great. He doesn't do that. But he also doesn't come out and say, I don't believe in Zeke Zeus, you know, kind of like the caricature does in the clouds. Like, what does he do? And he plays a little bit of, I don't want to say a rhetorical game here, but I'm really curious as to what you think he's doing, because, you know, he. He. Meletus pushes, he. He stretches. He gets out in front of his skis a little bit. And Socrates is like, hey, can you believe in spiritual activity? Right? If you don't believe in the spirits, right? Can you do this? No. Well, no, no, you can't. It. One implies the other. Well, you know, I've already given this whole speech about the oracle at Delphi, but then I'm really curious as to, like, the way he equates this, right? He says, like, he says, well, we say the spirits. This is in 27C. He says the spirits could be gods or children of gods. And that's such a funny phrase. Like, again, he couldn't just say, I believe in Zeus, but he doesn't. He says that he believes in these spirits, which I'm assuming I should have looked, but I'm assuming the Greek there is the daemons, right? That he believes in these. These, you know, spiritual creatures, and they can be gods or children of gods. It seems like he's being truthful. Like, this is. This is what he believes. But he's giving a lot of latitude there to. He's giving himself a lot of latitude because he doesn't just come out and say, I believe in Zeus, which would solve a lot of the problems. But he also doesn't want to come out and say, guys, you know, by the way, I'm. I'm what we call a monotheist. It's a new thing. I want to tell you about it. I think there's only one God, you know, and he has these daemons that are intermediaries between us, you know, X, Y and Z. He doesn't do that either. He kind of plays this, like, rhetorical game of equivocating the spirits, the gods or demigods, and says, look, I do believe in these. And that's not exactly what they're looking for. Like, any insights into what he's doing here?
- [100:23]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess there's two. Two things I'd want to say there. The first, just. Just because I think it's important to kind of get into the Greek mindset, you know, for those listening. Like, we can't just approach this with, with our modern kind of individualist sense where, you know, for us, for those of us who live in 2024, faith is, is a very personal thing. You know, I believe in God and I, I have a personal expression of faith. Even if I adhere to, you know, the Nicene Creed, say what the Catholic Church teaches, we still see faith as a very personal thing. There is a much stronger kind of cultic, communal sense in the Greek polis. And so, you know, how do you reconcile those lines? You don't believe in the gods. Well, I just told you that I, you know, I believe in the gods. I believe in demons and all the. These other things. Now I say you don't believe in the gods at all. Is he just saying, I think you're lying? You could interpret it that way. But I think it's exactly this point like that the gods you believe in are not the gods, because the gods have to be the gods of the polis. They are the gods of the city. That is connected. It's tied up with this political and cultural practice. I just think that's important because we have such a weakened sense, as you pointed out earlier, of the connection between, between politics and religious practice. It's important to recall it. And so then the second thing is, why is he being so coy? Of course we know he's going to speak the truth. He doesn't want to be a sophist. That's not what he stands for. That's not what he's about. But why doesn't he just come out and be more blunt about what it is he believes? And my inclination, you know, this isn't one of my stronger interpretations that I'm kind of wedded to. So I'm willing to be moved on this. But I think you whenever in doubt about these things. I always kind of view Socrates and Plato as a pedagogue. This is somebody who's trying to teach his interlocutors. And so I wonder if he comes out with the whole truth at once, if that's just simply too much for them to handle, you know, I do have to think that he's trying to reach out and convince at least some of those people in the assembly. And what do I think he wants to convince them of? Not that they should spare his life, that they should pursue wisdom. That's his go, you know, that's his M.O. and so I think that viewed in that light, you know, you give people crumbs at first. You know, you give them milk before you give them wine. That's. That's how I read it.
- [103:54]
A
Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I think we saw that same dynamic in the euthyphro, right? That was a question that we asked because we knew, we already knew that Socrates was holding to the God. We knew Plato had the capacity to recontextualize the euthyphro dilemma in a monotheistic context, right? He could have taken euthyphro all the way to showing, you know, monotheism, say, well, look, the whole pantheon's in contrast to one another. You know, they're. They're. It doesn't make sense. And the euthyphro dilemma, right? One horn has this realist metaphysic, right? It's in service to the ideas. This other one is kind of a voluntaristic, kind of chaotic world, you know, we know, like, he could have pushed it so much further, and he doesn't. And so I agree with you, right, that the actual pedagogue, right, the actual pedagogy, the taking one by the hand and leading them to the truth. And I think one of the things with Plato is, is that he can only take things as far as his interlocutor can take them. So, like, one of the questions in the euthyphro is, you know, is his goal, right? So again, here we are talking about purpose, right? Telos. And is the goal of the euthyphro to explain what piety is, or is it to try to convince? Is it to save euthyphro? And I actually think it's the latter. I think it's the save euthyphro. It's not. It's not a treatise on what piety is. And so you see then, as we mentioned earlier, right, that beautiful deconstruction, he deconstructs euthyphro, at least to the degree that the tradition says that euthyphro has a metanoia, that he doesn't go in and file the charges against his father, right? He. He Leaves, he rethinks his capacity to convince. It's actually very similar narrative to first Alcibiades, right, Where Socrates convinces bodies not to go to the assembly. He doesn't explain in that dialogue what justice is. He just explains that Alcibiades doesn't know what justice is. And that's a good. Right? That. That, you know, what you don't know is a good.
- [105:52]
B
You know, you don't know.
- [105:53]
A
Yeah, you know, that's a. That's a good thing. And so I think here, too, I think you're 100 on the mark. Like, Socrates can only take things as far as his interlocutor can take them. And you know what's interesting that occurs to me. I apologize because I. I read the Gorgias. You know how it is if you. The one. The one you recently read is the one that's constantly kind of haunting your mind. But the Gorgias has lots of allusions to the apology, where even some of them are comical. Where Socrates is like, well, you know, if I was ever put on trial for death. And then he gives, like, comments on it, and you're like, it's kind of funny.
- [106:26]
B
Yeah.
- [106:26]
A
But actually, one of the comments he gives in there. It's a very long dialogue, but one of the comments he gives in there is he actually says, you know, if I was ever put on trial for death, I couldn't explain to them that I was trying to be just. I couldn't actually explain to them that I was trying to be a just man because they won't understand it. And I think he gives, at least in that part or another part, right? He gives, like, an example of, like, you know, what if you gave. Like, what if you put the physician and the baker, like, in a contest or on trial, and the. The baker, the pastry maker, is, like, giving everyone sweets, and the physicians trying to convince everyone that they need bitter herbs. He's like, who's. Who's gonna win that, right? He's like, well, you can't. You can't actually give them the truth. You've got to give them the truth only to the capacity they can receive it. And I think that's what's happening in the apology. It's a defensive philosophy. I don't think it's. I don't think he cares. I mean, we'll see in the back half, right? Part two. I don't think he cares much about saving his life, you know, not because I think he. Not because he doesn't care, because I think he thinks that there are higher things. Right. He's more interested in the service to the God and more in service to what's, you know, true, good and beautiful. But it is the dialogues are not treatises that you very much have to take into account his interlocutor. And I think here you have to take into account. He's talking to 500 people.
- [107:45]
B
Yes. Yeah. Speaking to a multitude. And that's going to affect what you say. That. That's a great. I love that connection with Gorgias and I. That a dialogue that I haven't. I haven't read in a while. You're making me want to. Want to pick that up. It's going to be reading over break.
- [108:04]
A
Well, I. I recently. I have a very patient wife, and so she allowed me to. I went on an elk hunt, which really kind of turned into a hiking trip. And so. But I got to spend four days by myself on this lease that a buddy and I kind of stumbled into. It's a. It's 4,000 acres out in the panhandle of Oklahoma, and there's nothing on it. They. They run some cattle and some stuff, but there's no lodging. There's no, you know, plumbing. There's nothing. There's no utilities. And so I just car camped for four days. And it's one of those places where you can literally, like spin360 and not see an artificial light on the horizon. And you look up and you see a beautiful pristine sky and these kind of things. And so unfortunately, the. The elk had migrated off property. You know, I discovered that after hiking every day for a good amount of time. But in my free time, in the afternoons, in the downtime, I would read the Gorkias, and that's what I did. And so it's. It's very much on my mind because I was out there, out there last week. But it's a. It's a beautiful. Well, beautiful is probably the wrong word. It's a. It's an incredibly eventful and fascinating dialogue. A little, little longer we're going to get into it. Actually. Actually, it's on our. It's on our reading list for Ascend. Nice, but kind of coming to the. The end of part one here, which is something artificial that we've. We've created, but it's a good kind of halfway mark in the text. I'm interested because he gives one one last little comment. We'll start part two with his conversation in, like, 28B about death, which I think is a fascinating dialogue. But in 28A. He kind of just gives this kind of throwaway comment. He doesn't really comment on it. He doesn't really give them an opportunity to comment on it. And he says the slander and envy of many people has destroyed many good men and will, I think, continue to do so. So you talked about politics and Plato, you talked about even like the politics of the symposium, the politics of the apology. What are the politics here like? Is there, is there a contrast, is there a natural antagonism between the demos, the people. Right. The democratic regime and the magnanimous man, right, the great man. Like, are these two things that harmonize or are these two things that actually are in conflict with one another?
- [110:29]
B
Man, we got how many hours we got left from the podcast? So, I mean, it's funny because.
- [110:38]
A
You.
- [110:38]
B
Know, what immediately comes to mind for me is both Nietzsche and Tocqueville, both of whom in their own way similar yet different, are going to say that one of the defects of democracy, precisely because on its tendency to level, to demand kind of radical equality ultimately leads to, to a kind of mediocrity because we can't tolerate anybody who stands above the others. We just don't like that. And you know, Tocqueville says Americans love, love both liberty and equality, but at the end of the day they're going to love equality more. You know, equality is a good thing. Please don't, don't take me the wrong way. But there's equality and then there is a leveling kind of equality that demand everybody be the same and no one stand apart. And so I definitely think, you know, here's an ancient form.
- [111:36]
A
Yeah, no, I, I very much agree. I mean, I think again, he's kind of haunted this whole conversation, but it's because he haunts the dialogue. Right. I think this is, this is the tension with Alcibiades is, you know, to what degree if Alcibiades really is this kind of maybe potentially, I don't know if he, if he became a magnanimous man, but like, has the, the potential to be a great souled man, has the, the potential, maybe even the potential to be a philosopher king. Right? I think, I think, I think there's some arguments there that Socrates sees his potential to lead and then wants to lead him into loving philosophy, to love wisdom. Right? What would it be to have? You know, we think philosopher king's like a joke because when we think of philosopher, we think of like the absent minded professor who wears tweed and you know, can't function and you know, et Cetera. But really, I think at the heart of that is, is, you know, do we want a king who loves wisdom? We want a king that rules according to wisdom, right? Not sophistry or, or self aggrandizement or anything, these things that we see. But is it actually a king who loves wisdom and wants to rule according to the order of the cosmos? Right. What we would hope that, like. Well, we would hope Creon was in the play Antigone. Right? But we had hope that, you know, Oedipus, the, the king, right. Actually would, you know, become a good king that rules according to wisdom, right. Like what Solomon is, I guess, at his best. And so. No, I, I think that there is, as you see in Alcibiades life and even in Socrates own life to a particular degree. I think there is a natural antagonism. I think you laid it out really well. I think there's a natural antagonism with, you know, the democratic spirit and then, you know, the magnanimous man or the thumotic man, right, that actually wants to go and do these great deeds. It's amazing that, you know, you would think that, like, oh, the people will support you, but really what ends up happening is that it cultivates a certain envy and then the, the good men, you know, get dragged down back to that equalizer, right? This is where you belong. You belong in a certain equality, almost a false egalitarianism that you get sucked back into. So therefore you're not a threat to your fellow citizen.
- [113:50]
B
Yeah, so I, I just, I like that a lot. I just add this comment, you know, I, I read Symposium as a kind of tragedy. You know, Alcibiades is not in control, but Socrates does show him the kind of man he can be, and he just can't do it. And one of the things that Alcibiades says in that dialogue, and we'll talk about this more deeply when we do it, but he says, you know, Socrates is the one man who makes me feel shame. I do these things because I want to please the crowd and I want to get ahead and I want to be in charge. But there's a part of him that knows that that's, that's not what he should be doing. And at the very beginning of this dialogue, as a matter of fact, the very first page, very first paragraph, Socrates says, you know, they're going to say, I'm a clever speaker, I'm just going to tell you the truth. And he says, they are not ashamed, that they will immediately be refuted by me. Indeed. And so when you say that Socrates sees some potential in Alcibiades, I think that's absolutely right. At least Alcibiades has some prick of conscience to make him realize that there's something more. But these guys here, these accusers here, they're not ashamed at all. They feel nothing. They're just here to tear. Tear a great man down.
- [115:30]
A
Yeah, no, I very much agree. And I think there's. Yeah, as you mentioned, like, how many more hours can we go on this episode? But I think that there's just something because we're. How do I phrase this? There's something there because we are so ingratiated into the democratic spirit. Right. Being. Being Americans. And we're. We're so ingratiated into, you know, certain almost myths of, of egalitarianism. And so there's certain critiques here amongst the ancients. But I like you mentioning Tocqueville and Nietzsche as well about what can happen in a democracy. And it really is almost like a throwaway line in the apology. He just mentions it and he doesn't really. It's just like, it comes. It's almost stream of consciousness. Like he just mentions it and then he goes right back into, hey, well, what's another rhetorical question? Oh, yeah, well, like, do I fear death? Which is a whole nother. We'll start that with part two. That's a funny thing because he compares himself to the heroes at Troy. It's another moment where you're like, brother, I don't think you're really trying to. I think you're helping yourself here. But no, it's very good. Anything else that you see, kind of as we look at the first part of the apology, like any other comment or anything that you think we missed.
- [116:38]
B
I mean, there's always, always other stuff we can talk about. But I, I think, I think that's great. I'm happy with that. I'm, I'm stoked. I'm. I'm excited about the text.
- [116:50]
A
Good. No, this has been a delightful conversation. I deeply appreciate you coming on this evening to help guide us through the first part of Plato's apology. We very much look forward to having you next week to discuss part two of the apology and kind of wrap up this conversation. Where can people find more about, like, your thought or work?
- [117:11]
B
Yeah, so my, My website is cjbrophy B-R-O-P-H-Y.com and, you know, I've got a list of my, my publications there. But, you know, don't don't read Brophy. Read Plato. You know, seriously read Plato. And, you know, if you're interested in the work of the center for Catholic and Dominican Studies and what we're trying to do here, that website is ccds, Providence, Edu. And, you know, there's. There's some exciting, exciting things on that website about Providence College and Center.
- [117:58]
A
All right. Very good. Well, thank you, Father. We appreciate you coming on tonight.
- [118:02]
B
Thanks, Deacon. I appreciate you having me. This. This was a real pleasure.
- [118:05]
A
No. Very good. All right, everyone, we will see you next week. And in the interim, please go check out thegreatbookspodcast.com for resources and guides on the great books for you in your small group. And check us out on X and Facebook. And we appreciate everyone supporting us on Patreon. And we will see you next week.