Americans Could Learn from Socrates

The ancient Athenian always kept his cheerful and gentle composure.

Most of us who studied philosophy when we were young think of Socrates as the guy who questions everything in Plato’s Dialogues. For a long time I suspected that if I had attended a dinner party in Athens at which he was present, I would have found him annoying.

During the dark days of the pandemic, I read about the plague that struck Athens in 430 BC, when the city state was under siege by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.

Over the following three years, most of the population was infected, and perhaps as many as 75,000 to 100,000 people died. The Athenian general and historian Thucydides left an eye-witness account. The symptoms he described are non-specific and could be present in multiple diseases. The best clue he offered was his description of a blistering rash, which seems to be consistent with smallpox.

During both the plague and the war with Sparta, literary observers marveled at the extraordinary equanimity of Socrates. While so many around him were losing their heads, he always remained calm and cheerful. He was an excellent soldier of whom Epictetus observed: “He was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly.” 

During the plague, Diogenes Laertius observed, “Socrates was so well-disciplined in his way of life that when plague broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection.”

I doubt he was the only man who escaped infection, but I still find the remark very interesting. By numerous accounts, even under the greatest pressure, Socrates was unflappable, and it seemed to give him enormous reserves of strength and resilience.

Toward the end of his life, when the war with Sparta was going badly for Athens, Socrates developed a strong reverence for Asklepios, the physician god, whom he regarded as a healer of all man’s afflictions—spiritual as well as physical.

As Socrates understood Asklepios, the god embodied the virtues of patience, diligence, caring, gentleness, and helpfulness. Asklepios was not interested in money, power, or self-aggrandizement.

Socrates perceived the war with Sparta to be a calamity resulting from Athens’s desire for money, power, and control—vices that he perceived to be embodied by the archaic gods of the Homeric era that were still worshipped in Athens. His lack of reverence for the old gods is apparently what brought upon him the charge of impiety.

It seems to me that Americans—and especially American men—could learn a great deal from Socrates.

For some time I have observed a childish emotionality in public affairs. Lashing out and using intemperate language—including the “F” word—is now commonplace, even in public discourse.

Such angry and aggressive outbursts are not merely a matter of poor taste or a sign of ill-breeding. They are expressions that many people who work in public affairs are not in control of themselves, and one who cannot master himself has no business being the master of others.

Socrates emphasized that many of the misfortunes that befall a man are the result of his own vices, weaknesses, and poor decisions. This being the case, he thought it childish for a man to blame his misfortunes on the perfidy of others.

He believed that war—including the war with Sparta—arises primarily as a result of mankind’s excessive love of money.

Socrates was married to a woman named Xanthippe, who was the mother of their three sons: Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus. In Xenophon's Symposium, Antisthenes describes Xanthippe as “the most difficult, harshest, painful, and ill-tempered” wife. As Xenephon tells it, Socrates deliberately chose her as his wife because she was so difficult.

It is the example of the rider who wishes to become an expert horseman: "None of your soft-mouthed, docile animals for me," he says; "the horse for me to own must show some spirit" in the belief, no doubt, if he can manage such an animal, it will be easy enough to deal with every other horse besides. And that is just my case. I wish to deal with human beings, to associate with man in general; hence my choice of wife. I know full well, if I can tolerate her spirit, I can with ease attach myself to every human being.

Nietzsche doubted this telling, and imagined that Xanthippe drove him to become a street philosopher.

Socrates found the sort of wife that he needed — but even he would not have sought her had he known her well enough: the heroism of even this free spirit would not have gone that far.

Xanthippe drove him more and more into his characteristic profession by making his house and home inhospitable for him: she taught him to live in the streets and everywhere that one could chat and be idle and thus shaped him into the greatest Athenian street dia­lectician : who finally had to compare himself to an obtrusive gadfly that some god had placed upon the neck of that beautiful horse, Athens, in order to keep it from finding any peace.

The following image simultaneously depicts Xanthippe dragging Socrates home from the agora and pouring water on his head, to which he quipped, “Did I not tell you that the thundering Xanthippe can also make water?”

One of the most lamentable results of America’s execrable education system is that it has deprived young people from learning about fascinating figures like Socrates and gleaning their wisdom. The point of education is to equip young people with wisdom so that they can avoid the pitfalls and ditches of life instead of stumbling into every one of them.

For the American Republic today, the example of Socrates is more relevant than ever.