Book 3, Letter 20. To Socrates, an apology.

Socrates

Plato

Dear Socrates,

Holy Shit! They really fucking did it, didn't they? They killed you for asking too many questions. Impiety! Ha! Corrupting the young! God dammit! I can't believe it, 280 to 220 votes. Those stupid sons of goats, couldn't they see?...Ah shit.

I just read your defence speech, given at your trial. It reads like a three part, bar room joke.

First you went to a politician, one who had the reputation for wisdom:

“When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.

After this I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me - the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.”

Then you went to the poets:

“Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

Then:

“At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.”

You must have been a difficult person to know, but I think that the hardest of all would have been for you to be yourself. You demanded the truth from those around you, and were fierce in your condemnation of the pretentious frauds you met, but how much harder must you have been on yourself? You held yourself to such an a high and exacting standard, but it was a level of virtue that you had learned to live with. So, at age seventy, when faced with execution at the hands of the assembly, you declared yourself to be equal to your own legend.

“Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, - that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

I got a copy of your speech from a friend, a tiny and beautiful 1921 edition published in New York.

There is so much in your speech that I haven't brought up, though it is all worthy of reading and discussion. I read your speech this morning, ferociously absorbing the meaning of everything you said, (or at least, everything Plato recorded of the event in Apology...), my heart racing as if I were in the court room with you.

Goddamit! They really did it. They really killed you for asking too many questions.

Well, two and a half thousand years later, I think you're a real hero, Socrates. Above my desk your words now sit, An unexamined life is not worth living.

You're someone I can look up to, and someone I can look forward to meeting in that afterlife of which I know nothing, and of which you might now know something...

With Gratitude and Respect,

Morgan.

P.S. Oh, and your recent portrayal in the Assassins Creed game is excellent.  Long Live Socrates.