Last time we talked about how the Axial Revolution came into Greece. We first reviewed Pythagoras and then we concentrated especially on the figure of Socrates and the Socratic revolution. We saw again how issues of meaning, wisdom, and self-transcendence are so tightly bound up together. We took a look at Socrates and how he has a particular conception of wisdom in which what we find salient or relevant is closely coupled to what we find true or real.
Those two concerns—what is transformative of us and what is true of the world—are meant to be held together and this was pivotal in Socrates’s method of trying to get people to realize how much they (all of us!) are so prone to having those two come uncoupled from each other.
We become subject to bullshit and to self-deception. A life that is beset by self-deceptive, self-destructive behavior is not a life that’s worth living. The way to afford human flourishing is by developing the skills/the wisdom to keep those two tightly coupled together.
Socrates was so convinced of how important this was to making a life meaningful that he was prepared to die for it. As I mentioned, there was somebody who was a follower of him who was at his trial, not present at his death, but was deeply traumatized and affected by his death and this of course is Plato.
Continuing on last week’s commentary, Socrates mostly makes sense as part of this move from the continuous cosmos (in which the Gods are physically real and power is what matters) to the two worlds mythology (in which the material world is low and a different world is high).
Like, we begin in a world where Power is Glorious, where Zeus commands respect because he can zap with you lightning bolts. If you read The Iliad, it’s full of people (and gods!) explicitly threatening each other. Aphrodite tells Helen to have sex with Paris, Helen doesn’t want to, and Aphrodite replies with “look, this is me being nice to you, do you want to see me being mean to you?”, and Helen goes through with it. Hera complains about Zeus, her son pleads with her to stop because he doesn’t want to stand idly by and watch Zeus beat her (standing idly by, of course, because Zeus could easily beat him as well). The importance of heroes is determined primarily by where they fall in the power ranking, rather than their moral qualities. The Achilles-Agamemnon conflict is mostly about how respect should be distributed between power and legitimacy. And we somehow end up in a world where Truth is Sacred.
Socrates does something that seems sort of astounding to me, which is conflate goodness and power strongly enough to insist “look, Zeus has to be a moral exemplar, otherwise he wouldn’t be a God.” A related perspective—”if God exists, we need to destroy him / put him on trial for his crimes”—seems pretty common in rationalist fiction, at least. From this perspective, refusing to bow from pressure from the citizens of Athens seems like the obvious move. “Look, either they’re right and I should accept the punishment, or they’re wrong and I’ll be a martyr for the truth, which is better than living without principles.”
There’s a parable that I like, about a monk and a samurai:
A monk and a samurai were both in a shrine when a sudden rainstorm appeared. The samurai, seeing an opportunity to show off, stepped into the rain, darting quickly and dodging raindrops, so that he was able to make it all the way to the torii and back without being hit by a single drop of rain.
The monk calmly stepped out of the shrine and was immediately inundated. “I am dry on the inside,” he said.
The samurai, seeing that he was beaten, grew red with anger, pulled out his katana, and cut the monk in half.
Normally I read this with the sense that “yes, you can redefine victory by changing your perspective, but only so far.” The monk can’t physically say “I am whole on the inside,” because he’s dead. But this is what Socrates is doing! He’s taking his ability to reframe ‘winning’ to its logical conclusion.
And, importantly, this is what’s happening in things like Functional Decision Theory, where one is trying to do the thing that leads to the logical you winning, instead of this particular you. You need that to be saved from the desert in Parfit’s Hitchhiker, as well as other problems, in a way that will show up more later.
[Two others come up in this lecture but don’t make it into the summary: Thales, the first philosopher thinking scientifically (by which we mean from a ‘causal systems’ perspective instead of a ‘mythological narrative’ perspective), and the sophists, who study persuasion independently of truthseeking.]
Just wanted to say that even if i don’t find something to say and don’t comment, i still enjoy reading the summery each day and especially your commentary, so thanks!
This seeking of both truth and relevance together feels so important. I wonder where in modern society we see this the most.
I like the concept in this lecture a lot of bullshitting vs. lying to yourself. Even in a lot of the self-help genre, which seems to be going after a similar goal to Socrates of becoming a good person, there is a lot of bullshit in the form of misguided values (fame, fortune, etc). We have few institutions, structures, or communities that enable people to strive over both truth and relevance.
Episode 4: Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom
Continuing on last week’s commentary, Socrates mostly makes sense as part of this move from the continuous cosmos (in which the Gods are physically real and power is what matters) to the two worlds mythology (in which the material world is low and a different world is high).
Like, we begin in a world where Power is Glorious, where Zeus commands respect because he can zap with you lightning bolts. If you read The Iliad, it’s full of people (and gods!) explicitly threatening each other. Aphrodite tells Helen to have sex with Paris, Helen doesn’t want to, and Aphrodite replies with “look, this is me being nice to you, do you want to see me being mean to you?”, and Helen goes through with it. Hera complains about Zeus, her son pleads with her to stop because he doesn’t want to stand idly by and watch Zeus beat her (standing idly by, of course, because Zeus could easily beat him as well). The importance of heroes is determined primarily by where they fall in the power ranking, rather than their moral qualities. The Achilles-Agamemnon conflict is mostly about how respect should be distributed between power and legitimacy. And we somehow end up in a world where Truth is Sacred.
Socrates does something that seems sort of astounding to me, which is conflate goodness and power strongly enough to insist “look, Zeus has to be a moral exemplar, otherwise he wouldn’t be a God.” A related perspective—”if God exists, we need to destroy him / put him on trial for his crimes”—seems pretty common in rationalist fiction, at least. From this perspective, refusing to bow from pressure from the citizens of Athens seems like the obvious move. “Look, either they’re right and I should accept the punishment, or they’re wrong and I’ll be a martyr for the truth, which is better than living without principles.”
There’s a parable that I like, about a monk and a samurai:
Normally I read this with the sense that “yes, you can redefine victory by changing your perspective, but only so far.” The monk can’t physically say “I am whole on the inside,” because he’s dead. But this is what Socrates is doing! He’s taking his ability to reframe ‘winning’ to its logical conclusion.
And, importantly, this is what’s happening in things like Functional Decision Theory, where one is trying to do the thing that leads to the logical you winning, instead of this particular you. You need that to be saved from the desert in Parfit’s Hitchhiker, as well as other problems, in a way that will show up more later.
[Two others come up in this lecture but don’t make it into the summary: Thales, the first philosopher thinking scientifically (by which we mean from a ‘causal systems’ perspective instead of a ‘mythological narrative’ perspective), and the sophists, who study persuasion independently of truthseeking.]
Just wanted to say that even if i don’t find something to say and don’t comment, i still enjoy reading the summery each day and especially your commentary, so thanks!
This seeking of both truth and relevance together feels so important. I wonder where in modern society we see this the most.
I like the concept in this lecture a lot of bullshitting vs. lying to yourself. Even in a lot of the self-help genre, which seems to be going after a similar goal to Socrates of becoming a good person, there is a lot of bullshit in the form of misguided values (fame, fortune, etc). We have few institutions, structures, or communities that enable people to strive over both truth and relevance.