Ancient Greek Wisdom Every Man Needs To Hear - Donald Robertson

1. 0:00 – 7:50

   Why Should We Care About Socrates?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Dude, I love every time that we get to speak. I- I adored all of your last books. And you've done a new one about Socrates. Why would anyone want to think like Socrates?

   2. DRDonald Robertson0:12

      Why would anyone care about this old, dead white guy or whatever? He bec- I- I love Socrates. I- I love Marcus Aurelius, but Socrates is, like, the next level, you know. I- I really am excited to- to be able to talk and- and write about him and stuff. Socrates was a... I'll tell you why. This is gonna seem like an odd answer, right? There's Eric Clapton, right? And guys like that. And then there's Jimi Hendrix, right? Eric Clapton's an amazing guitarist, but Jimi Hendrix, to me anyway, sounds like he's from another planet, right? Jimi Hendrix took his guitar to bed with him. He woke up in the morning, strapped his guitar on and fried eggs wearing his guitar. He went to the lavatory wearing his guitar, right? Psychologists call that time on task. Like he was constantly practicing and stuff, like he was obsessed with it. Socrates reminds me, in that solitary regard, of Jimi Hendrix because the way he's described to us is that he's a guy who abandoned everything else and just spent all day, every day, discussing what he considered to be the most important questions in life with anybody. The- the greatest intellectuals that he could find in the, uh, in the known world. Prostitutes, uh, politicians, uh, slaves, you name it. Everybody from all walks of life. So he had... He was like the Jimi Hendrix of philosophizing. Like he never took his guitar off. He was constantly doing... I can't imagine someone in modern society spending that amount of time really analyzing the contradictions in someone else's thinking. So Socrates, to me, is a kind of unique individual. And it- it comes through. We don't know, there's this thing called the Socratic problem, that we don't know but we should acknowledge it at the beginning, that we don't know for sure how close a representation Plato's Dialogues or the other sources that we have are of the real Socrates. But I think his character comes through to some extent. The- those dialogues are probably semi-fictional, like they're embellished a bit. But the real guy kind of shines through to some extent, and he must have been an extraordinary individual. He's somebody who has a tremendous capacity for thinking outside the box, for spotting logical contradictions, and he said some of the most radical things in the history of Western philosophy. Not only that, I see him as the godfather of modern self-help and self-improvement psychology or the great-great-granddaddy of cognitive behavioral therapy. So as a- a psychotherapist, a cognitive behavioral therapist, you know, I- I look to Socrates as somebody who stands at the very origin of our tradition. But also, I think in some ways we've kind of gone astray, in ways that he warned us about. So by going back and looking at what he originally said, I think we can figure out maybe, and see beyond, some of the mistakes that we might have made along the way.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:03

      You mentioned there a maybe historical gap, uh, with regards to what we know about him, how we would have learned about him. How do we know anything about him? Sort of what are the scraps of material that you've been-

   4. DRDonald Robertson3:15

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:15

      ... using to write this book?

   6. DRDonald Robertson3:17

      Well, the most famous thing is that we have Plato's dialogues. There are like 36 or 37 of Plato's dialogues, most of which feature Socrates prominently. And it's generally assumed by scholars that Plato changed his approach throughout his career. Early in his career, he wrote a more literal description of Socrates, probably embellished a bit. As time went on, he starts to use Socrates more and more as a mouthpiece, probably for his own views. Like Plato's famous metaphysical theory, the Theory of Forms, probably wasn't something that Socrates ever actually said. Socrates' way of doing philosophy seems to be more kind of homely, down to earth, more focused on applied ethics and daily life basically. So we have those. And- and you know, dude, Plato's dialogues are just in- incredible. You- you know, Plato was also a genius, and so we have the writings of a genius about another genius basically. You know, some of these texts are the most profound and moving pieces of literature in- in the Western canon. And you know, I seldom recommend books to people, funnily enough, unless I know them very well. But my one exception to that is that I think everybody should read Plato's Apology because I think it's a masterpiece, and it only takes a couple of hours to read, as an aside. So we've got all that stuff. And then we have Xenophon, another student of Socrates, and his dialogues are less well known but we have a bunch of like 30 or 40 dialogues, shorter ones, more down to earth, from Xenophon as well. Um, then we have this really weird thing which is a play by Aristophanes which is a satire ridiculing Socrates that was written and performed during his lifetime, and we learn almost nothing from that. Or it's hard to tell anything from it because it's a caricature. But it tells us that he must have been pretty famous during his lifetime for people to have, you know, ridiculed him, caricatured him like that. And then we have what's called the anecdotal tradition which is like basically a bunch of little anecdotes and quips about Socrates said this, Socrates did that, that we tend to find in later authors. So they are more dubious reliability, but all together, all this stuff tells us something about what we could frame as the literary character of Socrates. So Marcus Aurelius and other subsequent thinkers that followed the... subsequent to Socrates, would have known of him mainly through these writings. So we could say what's influencing them is the character of Socrates that was passed down by other writers, and there's a big question mark about how closely does that correlate to the real guy. We'll never know.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:52

      Why was he so influential?

   8. DRDonald Robertson5:55

      Well, the, the ancient answer to that question is that he was the first... He wasn't the first philosopher. He wasn't even the first philosopher at Athens. But they used to say that he was the first philosopher that brought philosophy really down to earth and applied it to everyday matters, kind of almost making it into a psychotherapy basically. He would talk to people about the nature of love. He would talk to generals, uh, in the military about the nature of courage. You know, he would talk to priests about the nature of piety. He talked to his friends about their anger. The most kind of homely dialogue that we have is in Xenophon, and in it Socrates, um, has a conversation with his teenage son, Lamproclus, because Lamproclus is really upset, um, about his mum nagging him. And Socrates helps his son to kind of reframe this, overcome his anger towards his mother, right? So that's probably the most kind of down-to-earth example of a Socratic dialogue that we have. So that's kind of what he was particularly known for doing. But also he took the method of dialectic or philosophical question and answer and turned it into his own trademark method called the Socratic Method, and really began to ra- much more radically and, and thoroughly question the assumptions about morality pre- mainly that people around him were making. And that made him a controversial figure, you know? He was like dynamite, you know. Some people were almost addicted to being questioned by Socrates. They found it an incredibly liberating experience. Other people found it embarrassing, uh, humiliating, and they hated him and they went after him. So it wouldn't be overly simplifying things to say that Socrates asked too many questions, rocked the boat, upset some powerful people, and we all know how that ended for him. He was made to drink hemlock.

2. 7:50 – 14:42

   Philosophy Before Socrates

   1. CWChris Williamson7:51

      What was the existing philosophical world that he entered into? You mentioned there that he-

   2. DRDonald Robertson7:57

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:58

      ... h- he wasn't the first philosopher probably by broader categories but he's the first one to bring it down to earth. What was th- what was the, uh, state philosophically of the existing world?

   4. DRDonald Robertson8:07

      Well, the two main philosophical traditions that preceded them, and there were others so it's a little bit more complex, but the ones that are most relevant to him is the first philosopher at Athens was a guy called Anaxagoras who came from the Greek colonies, um, which would be on, uh, in Ionia which would be on the, on the coast of Turkey basically. So when we talk about Greek philosophers, by... We're, we're often a bit confused about where they came from. They didn't all come from Athens. You know, many of them came from, from Greek colonies that were much further afield. So Anaxagoras was what we call a natural philosopher. And he... All these... It's... You know, the famous thing about Socrates is we refer to everyone that came before him as pre-Socratic, that's how influential he was. You know, like pre-Jim Hendrix.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:49

      Yeah, he's the before Christ-

   6. DRDonald Robertson8:51

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:51

      He's the before Christ of philosophy.

   8. DRDonald Robertson8:53

      Right. Yeah. So the natural philosophers are kind of in many ways precursors of, uh, of modern science. They tried to explain things broadly speaking using physical descriptions. You know, they were interested in... Very interested in astronomy, very interested in physiology, and that was a great thing for Athenian culture and Greek culture. Uh, it was also very controversial because they challenged traditional superstitions. So people would think that thunder and lightning was caused by Zeus and the natural philosopher said, "We reckon it's caused by clouds rubbing together," or something like that. You know, earthquakes are just a natural phenomenon things. And that had a, a surprisingly big impact on society. Just as an aside, there's a famous anecdote about how Pericles, the, the most influential, the most powerful, uh, Athenian statesman at this time, um, was about to set sail with his fleet, um, on a military campaign and there was, uh, an eclipse. And his crew were cowering in fear and they refused to do... It's very often the Greeks would abandon, particularly the Spartans were known for this by the way, they would abandon battles because they were concerned about, uh, bad omens and so on. And Pericles supposedly explained the natural philosophy that he'd been taught by Anaxagoras and he said, "Look, this is just something passing in front of the sun as if I put my cloak in front of your eyes but it's further away and much bigger." And he convinced... By giving this down-to-earth naturalistic explanation, he managed to convince his troops to set sail by... And so it changed the outcome of battles basically, and that's how kind of dramatic it was. But at the same time it also upset a lot of people. And so Anaxagoras was also placed on trial for impiety, uh, you know, be- long before Socrates. So there was Anaxagoras, and Socrates thought this philosophy though doesn't teach wisdom. He said Anaxagoras, um, didn't really understand anything about the nature of justice and injustice. So when he was placed on trial, supposedly he was a broken man as a result. And we can contrast how Anaxagoras dealt badly with being exiled, uh, and then subsequently, uh, sentenced to death for impiety, and how Socrates famously exhibited courage, uh, in court and stood by his principles because he'd prepared himself to understand justice and injustice from a much more profound and philosophical perspective. Um, so there's Anaxagoras and many other natural philosophers that Socrates had studied. And then a bit later, we get these guys called the Sophists, and their name implies that they claimed to be wise. They claimed to be... to have expertise. And the Sophists taught young men oratory and rhetoric. Um, they were kind of like self-improvement gurus in a sense, but they also taught people how to become successful politicians and confident public speakers. And they were... The first one was Protagoras who Socrates knew personally, um, and questioned. And this seems to have been a key moment in his career. But Socrates basically thought the Sophists were far too concerned with just winning arguments and they'd sacrificed the truth. So they would teach you how to win a debate in the assembly-... right? But Socrates' concern, to put it very simply, was, he'd say, "How much time have you guys spent trying to figure out what's in the best interest of society? Or what's just and what's unjust? Like, zero time. But you spend all of your time trying to figure out how you can convince other people what's just or in their interests before the assembly." Now this is a very simple argument. But weirdly, eerily, it kind of applies today. Like, you know, so people get into politics because they want to influence society, you know. But how many politicians seem to have sp- invested that much time and effort in trying to figure out what's genuinely in the interests of individuals or society? Socrates says it would be like going to see a doctor that'd never spent any time studying medicine. "Oh, I don't bother with that." Like, you know, "I'm just really good at writing prescriptions, but I don't know, like, you know, what's actually good for your health." You know. So, politicians, all they're concerned about is winning debates. Like, you know, influencing legislation. Then Socrates said, "Could you explain what justice is? Or explain to me what's in the interest of society?" And when he asked them these questions, they're like, "I don't know, I haven't really thought about it." So, the, this was his concern with the sophists. It was all about appearances, and they sacrificed truth. But he had a kind of love-hate relationship with them. He ta- he liked to kind of hang around them. You know, he thought they said some interesting things but they didn't really think deeply enough about what they were saying. I guess another part of it that s- I think is very relevant today, is that Socrates found that the sophists would give speeches and they would teach people maxims. A bit like watching a YouTube video or, or getting kind of rules for life from, from modern self-improvement experts, right? And Socrates thought that was basically too passive. Like, he thought, "There are no rules that are gonna apply across every situation in life," basically. What's much more in your interests is learning how to think for yourself and to be able to question things and spot exceptions to general rules and principles. So that's a harder, it's a more kind of ... a less tangible concept for people. But so, that's where the Socratic method comes in. Socrates thought we need to learn how to think for ourselves, question things more deeply, not just kind of memorize these phrases that we're getting from the sophists.

   9. CWChris Williamson14:22

      Do you think it's kind of ironic that one of Socrates' fundamental principles is that you must think for yourself and your book is called How To Think Like Socrates? How To Think Like Socrates, which is how to think for yourself, is-

   10. DRDonald Robertson14:33

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson14:33

       ... seems, uh, nice in- nice and circular there, I love it.

   12. DRDonald Robertson14:35

       It's a v- it's a bit of a circ- it's a bit circular. But if you learn to think like Socrates, you'll learn to think for yourself.

   13. CWChris Williamson14:40

       Uh-huh. Uh, so,

3. 14:42 – 21:04

   Why Socrates Became a Philosopher

   1. CWChris Williamson14:42

      do we know how Socrates got into philosophy? Have we got any idea about his upbringing or history or introduction? If he's this sort of, you know, game-changing, world-renowned, e- e- everything before him was nowt and after him was just a r- replicant of what he said before. Like, w- what was his u- what was his come-up story?

   2. DRDonald Robertson15:03

      We kind of have several bits of evidence there. So like sometimes the evidence is a little bit contradictory or it's a little bit vague. So, you know, in telling his story, we have to make some assumptions. We have to iron out some contradictions and stuff, 'cause the ancient text is a little, a little bit messy in that regard. So the most famous explanation he gives is in Plato's Apology, where he says his friend Chaerephon went to Delphi, which is a few days' walk outside Athens in the mountains, this incredible place that's like something out of Lord of the Rings. And there's a great famous temple to the god Apollo there, and you could ask questions of the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo. She sat on a bronze tripod, supposedly inhaling these fumes and she'd go into a trance, and the god Apollo possessed her and spoke through her, right? And Chaerephon, who was another philosopher, a weird dude who people compared to a bat to respect her. He was k- I imagine him almost like a kind of goth or something. Like, he, he was a bit of a misfit. But he was Socrates' best friend. And he went to the ... He was known for doing kind of eccentric things. So he went to the, the Delphic Oracle and said, uh, asked it, "Is any man wiser than Socrates?" And it replied, "No man is wiser than Socrates." Apollo, the god Apollo replied, "No man is wiser than Socrates." And so the weird story in The Apology is that Socrates found this difficult to accept, and see, he went around grilling the wisest people that he could find to try and find evidence that there was indeed somebody that was wiser than him. Because, you see, he didn't believe that no one was wiser than him. But he found that when he asked great philosophers and statesmen, often they contradicted themselves. So he thought, "They can't be wise. They believe that they are." And the sophists literally called themselves wise men. But often on, when they were questioned, they, their, the things they were saying were full of contradictions and fell apart. And so Socrates thought, "Well, look. I come to the conclusion that paradoxically, I don't know much either. But I'm ... Neither do these guys, and I am s- wiser than them by a hair's breadth, because at least I know that I'm not wise, whereas they falsely believe that they are wise." Right? And so the central thrust of his method becomes puncturing this kind of intellectual arrogance or conceit. Sometimes it's called double ignorance. So Socrates thought, "Ignorance isn't a problem. 'Cause I might be ignorant about medicine, but if I know I'm ignorant about medicine, then I, I might be motivated to go and consult an expert, right?" I might not know how to fix the engine in my car, but if I go and see a mechanic I can find somebody that maybe knows better than me. But if I believe that I'm an expert on engines, or I believe I'm an expert on medicines and I'm not really, then I'm in trouble, because I'll be guided by my ignorance to make lots of mistakes. So Socrates thought, "This is one of our biggest problems in life." A bit like the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. Like, that we believe that we know things that we do not in fact know. So he found that his method was almost like a therapy for curing people of this intellectual conceit. So that's a story that Plato tells. But he must ... He also says that he s- he did study philosophy prior to that. Maybe for decades he'd been studying natural philosophy and learning about, from other philosophers. But his trademark method developed-... at some point in his life as a result of this weird incident where the Oracle proclaims that no man is wiser than him.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:37

      I- How much do you think he would've spent his time playing this game of poking holes in other people's hypocrisy, ignorance, uh, like, shallow rhetoric that isn't sort of foundation philosophically if he hadn't stepped into a world where the Sophists were kind of the number one band, uh, available at the time?

   4. DRDonald Robertson19:00

      That's really hard to say. I mean, I always feel like we almost need the Sophists to have Socrates. You know, he's very much reacting to them. I mean, maybe he would've developed his method in response to the other, the natural philosophers, but it really seems to be the Sophists that inspire him in a way because he's so concerned. And one reason for that is that the Sophists have a lot of influence over Athenian politics and Socrates was friends with some powerful political figures. And so, although he wasn't really directly involved in politics himself, I think he was very concerned about Athens. And what's missing wa- from the Platonic dialogues and from Xenophon, although they refer to historical events and they refer to important figures, I think people still when they read Plato get the feeling that Socrates is just walking around in pleasant groves and sandals, kind of pontificating about things. And they don't visualize him as, uh, a heavy infantryman who fought in at least three major battles of the Peloponnesian War. They don't imagine him as someone who survives a terrible plague. They don't see him at the heart of Athenian politics surrounded by these key figures, like, these senior statesmen and living through one of the most epic wars in European history. The Peloponnesian War lasted 27 years, you know, and under a dictatorship, the 30 tyrants that took over Athens. So his life was incredibly, you know, dramatic basically. And his philosophy is shaped by, I think, all of these things, his experience as a soldier, living under different political regimes including a kind of dictatorship that, you know, that was really brutal, uh, sort of political purges where people were just rounded up and executed. Um, all of these things, but definitely the Sophists loom large in Socrates' influences and his... And partly because he's concerned about the h- them having so much sway over the Athenian Assembly and the political decisions that are being made.

4. 21:04 – 35:42

   Main Principles of Socrates’ Philosophy

   1. DRDonald Robertson21:04

   2. CWChris Williamson21:04

      How would you describe the main principles of his philosophical worldview?

   3. DRDonald Robertson21:11

      Well, as we've said, I mean, the Socratic method, the- the core of what he's doing in a sense is more about the process. So some people in the ancient world would've seen wisdom or the goal of life as being the acquisition of knowledge. Like, you know, having a bunch of opinions that are true basically. And Socrates thought that's not real wisdom though, that's just kind of learning stuff passively. Real wisdom is more like a cognitive skill, right? So the goal of philosophy, I think, for Socrates is more of a process that we engage in every day of our lives. Learning to think and question things more profoundly. You know, he said the unexamined life is not worth living. You know, he thought the goal of life was to examine your life continually every day. It was like an ongoing process of personal development that in a sense never really ended. So the core of his philosophy, I think, is the actual method of his philosophy. And he does have doctrines in a sense. Often he doesn't state them, but he seems to be kind of arriving at them. Um, so for example, a famous one is in Plato's Republic in the first book, uh, Socrates asks for a definition of justice. And his friends say, "Well, justice is helping your friends and harming your enemies." Right? This was a cliché in Athenian culture. It comes from the military world where you'd be helping your military allies and punishing or attacking your enemies in warfare. But it was also applied to civilian life as well. And Socrates r- questions this from a number of different angles. But as a... Far as I recall in The Republic, he doesn't specifically state what the alternative conclusion would be. He just kind of implies it. Whereas later philosophers, Plutarch for example, explicitly says Socrates believed that justice consists in helping your friends, but also helping your enemies by turning them into your friends. So the goal is basically to convert enemies into friends, not just to kind of punish or harm your enemies. Socrates was concerned that if we try to harm our friends from a particular point of view, first of all, we're missing out, uh, if we try to harm our enemies, first of all we're missing out on the opportunity to convert them into allies or friends. And secondly, we might kind of end up making them worse enemies by, by punishing them or harming them in a particular way. And actually, that's kind of what happened to Athens. You know, there, there were certain more kind of aggressive, hawkish political leaders that took control of the Athenian Assembly and they committed genocide. Um, and this really led to Athens' downfall because Athens' potential allies no longer trusted them and turned against them. Right? So their regime collapsed. They had the catastrophic military defeat in Sicily that can be seen as the consequence of this kind of more short-sighted, more aggressive attitude towards other states. So, you know, Socrates does have these doctrines and there are many, many other ones that people derive from what he's saying, but we should be a little bit careful about making them into rules that are too rigid. One of his nicest ones, eh, you know, that- that's a little bit different for instance is Socrates... According to Xenophon, Socrates reputedly said, um, that we should eat to live rather than live to eat.You know, he thought people- in general, he thought people were too much duped by appearances. So they were too much swayed by short term pleasure and pain, and he thought we should think more carefully about whether something is actually good for our health or not, rather than just whether it tastes nice or, you know, doesn't taste nice. We should be thinking about the reality of stuff beyond the appearances. Another one of his little sayings that's quite well known is that we should be as we wish to appear. Right? He thought, again, we're- we're misled into focusing too much on appearances. We want to appear confident. Socrates said it would be better to actually become confident, uh, if you want to appear confident. If you focus too much on faking it, like, or the appearances, that- that can kind of lead to a more superficial approach and can be misleading. You could get sucked into deception of other people. It would be better for you to actually become confident. Um, I- people came to him saying, "Socrates, how can I make myself seem like a good friend?" And Socrates said, "It would be better to become a good friend in reality."

   4. CWChris Williamson25:32

      I'm feeling a lot of this sort of tension between practical and abstract, especially stepping into a world where it's this sort of rhetorical device. People getting Toastmasters or improv or comedy speech coaching in this way, but they're not actually assessing the underlying motivations of why they're doing this particular thing.

   5. DRDonald Robertson25:51

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson25:51

      And, uh, you know, he's got that, uh, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

   7. DRDonald Robertson25:58

      Okay.

   8. CWChris Williamson25:58

      Uh, so even in the, um, highlighting of the importance of action, he's even taking it one step further and talking about the repetition-

   9. DRDonald Robertson26:07

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson26:07

       ... of action.

   11. DRDonald Robertson26:09

       Yeah. I mean, Socrates felt like we were consta- we're constantly confusing appearance and reality. That's, I guess, a recurring theme of his philosophy. And he felt the Sophists were all about appearances and completely neglected reality. Right? So, you know, he's always challenging us to look beyond appearances by using reason. He- in a sense, Socrates thinks we're kind of lazy, you know? And he's always kind of encouraging us to question appearances and use reason to think a little bit more deeply about things. I'll give you a really cool example of that that relates to something I mentioned earlier. Um, I'd mentioned Lamprocles getting annoyed with his mother. Socrates, at the beginning of the conversation, asks his son whether his mother, um, really cares for him and whether she's made many sacrifices to help him. And Lamprocles actually admits quite easily, he says, "Yeah, my mum's s- like dedicated her life to helping me. When I'm sick, my mother nurses me. Like, she's spent all of her time raising me, and she's done everything for me. But Socrates, she just really annoys me when she's nagging me, like I don't know how I could possibly put up with it." And Socrates uses this amazing analogy, um, that just ou- it's one of my favorite things that he says. He says, "In the theater, when you're going to see a- a tragedy being performed, for example, do the actors not really say things that are much more vicious and insulting and hostile than anything your mother ever says?" And Lamprocles says, "Well, yeah, of course they do, but you don't understand, Socrates. They're just acting. It's not real, right? That's the difference." And Socrates says, "But you just told me a few moments ago that you believe that your mother doesn't really mean you harm, but fundamentally she cares for you, right? So sometimes she might seem really annoying, but in gen- she actually cares for you a lot." And what he's encouraging Lamprocles to do is to kind of look beyond the impression that he has of his mother in those moments and think more about her personality as a whole in a more rounded and complete way by using reason to think about who- who is your mother really? You know, what is- what is the relate- nature of your relationship with her really? It's more than just the nagging. Like that might be part of it, it might be something you don't like, but by focusing only on that and putting it under a magnifying glass, you exaggerate your anger. Um, but if you think about her personality as a whole, then it becomes just one small part, right, and it becomes less upsetting. Maybe you become more able to tolerate it.

   12. CWChris Williamson28:42

       You mentioned it a couple of times, assume that somebody hasn't heard about the Socratic method before, what is it? How's it work?

   13. DRDonald Robertson28:50

       So it's- in some ways it's tricky to define, and in some ways it's easy. Like there's a lot of nuance to it. And Socrates doesn't sit down at any point and say, "Hey, let me just explain my methods to you briefly." We- instead what we see is an example after example of him using his method in various different ways. So we have to kind of infer how he's doing it. Um, but basically what he tends to do is to ask people to define s- a concept, and it's usually a virtue. So he'll say, "Define piety, define courage, define justice." And typically it's something that's very relevant to them, so he's not just like we would in, uh, academic philosophy now analyzing concepts, you know, for the sake of it. He talks to military commanders about the nature of courage, for example, because it's something that they're already taking for granted, in a sense, in the conversations that they're having. So you could also say he's digging deeper beneath the conversation and questioning the underlying premise or assumption. So you guys are talking a lot about courage, but what is courage? How do you actually define it? The whole conversation is based on that. And then he'll normally think of exceptions to the rule that they've given. So the most famous exemp- example is when he's talking, uh, to Laches and Nikias, to Athenian generals, they define courage as standing your ground and remaining in formation in the face of the enemy. And that's because the Athenians depended, to a large extent, on their hoplites, their heavy infantry, which Socrates was one, and they had to fight in phalanx formation, right? Um...And Socrates says, "Okay, that's a good definition of courage, but it's too narrow," right? Because what about during a tactical retreat? Like, you break from the phalanx formation, but you could still exhibit courage. You're no longer standing your ground in the same way though. What if you fight in the cavalry, and then you have to charge into the middle of the enemy rather than stand in your ground? But the cavalry exhibit courage. You'd have to define it differently though. He says, "What about the Spartans? They fight in phalanx formation, but they also sometimes charge into the enemy like cavalry do. We- but they're renowned for their courage." So you wouldn't say that they lack courage. You'd have to tweak your definition a little bit. So he starts this conversation going, "Usually by creative thinking, and being able to come- thinking outside the box and coming up with..." So he, you know, again, like he- he's not following a formula here as much as using a skill. Like he's thinking, right? And he's coming up, he's brainstorming examples. What about this? What about this? What about this? Right? It's like he's saying, "Yeah, but. Okay, courage could be standing your ground, but what about this? What about this scenario? What about in civilian life? You'd have to define it differently." And so he constantly challenges the interlocutor, the person he's speaking about, to revise their definition and think about it at a deeper and deeper level. And he doesn't always arrive at a clear conclusion. Often he doesn't. His dialogues often end in aporia in Greek, uh, which is the term that we use to- to mean a sort of confusion or bewilderment, right? So people walk away, and some people hated that, but other people would walk away from it thinking, "I kind of feel like I know less now than I did at the beginning of the conversation, but in a good way, because maybe I was too rigid in my thinking and I was assuming that I knew things that I didn't really understand. At least now I realize that there's more to justice than helping your friends and harming your enemies, or there's more to courage than just standing your ground and remaining in phalanx formation. And maybe I've kind of spiraled closer and closer to the center of the meaning of these concepts." So in the process of doing that, he'd often point out contradictions in people's thinking. Um, he said that, "What you're saying now is- seems to clash with something that you said a few minutes ago." So he was very sharp at noticing this. And, you know, I think one of the ways that that can help us today actually is, there's a particular type of contradiction that Socrates would sometimes point out, a moral contradiction. Uh, I'll give you another example where e- where he's talking to a teenage boy, an adolescent boy. There's a guy called Critobolus that comes to him, who's the son of one of his best friends, Crito. And Critobolus says, "Socrates, could you introduce me to some people that would be really good friends to have in Athenian society?" He's asking him for help networking, weirdly, right? And Socrates says, "Sure, like, how would you define a good friend?" And Critobolus says, "Well, they'd come and visit you when you're sick. Maybe they'd lend you money if you're broke. Maybe if you were being a bit out of order, they'd take you to one side and gently kind of explain to you that you should change your behavior and stuff like that." So quite easily, he's able to kind of define what a good friend is. But then Socrates says, "Well, how many of these qualities do you exhibit yourself?" And Critobolus is like, "Well, I don't- not many, like, you know, zero. I don't know." Like, so Socrates says, "Haven't- again, haven't you got this back to front? You're kind of asking me to present you to these people as if you would be a good match, as if you would be a good friend to them, but they're going to figure out if you don't have any of these qualities, and then they won't trust me as a matchmaker of friends, you know, and they're gonna lose faith in you as a friend as well. You should have come to me and asked me how you could become a good friend yourself, like how you could improve yourself." So you're exhibiting a double standard. You're applying one standard to other people in terms of friendship, but a different standard or no standard to yourself. Um, this is a kind of moral hypocrisy, if you like. So often Socrates is drawing people's attention to the fact that they're exhibiting moral double standards. And we do similar things in modern cognitive therapy as well. Sometimes people think philosophical ethics can be quite subtle and quite nuanced, and it often is, but, you know, in many cases we can make moral progress, I think, just by not being hypocrites. You know, the one thing that the majority of people agree on is that you shouldn't contradict yourself morally, you know? And if you're saying one thing and doing another, like if you're applying a double standard, most people agree there's something wrong there, like... And it's reason that helps us to spot those contradictions and attempt to resolve them. So there's a- a simple way, I think, that many people can make s- in progress in terms of morality and self-improvement just by questioning their own standards in the way that Socrates teaches these young men to.

5. 35:42 – 45:35

   Why Some Find Socrates Annoying

   1. DRDonald Robertson35:42

   2. CWChris Williamson35:42

      It seems like that's the consistent trend or theme or perhaps outcome of this Socratic method, which is discontinuity, inconsistency, hypocrisy, um, poorly clarified underpinnings and foundations and definitions of what's going on. Uh, but yeah, I can also imagine that simply by asking questions and continuing to refine, you may avoid untruths, and perhaps by avoiding untruths, move yourself closer to truth. But it's very much a- a sort of do-it-yourself, paint-by-numbers... Socrates isn't coming in and saying, "Well, this would be a better approach." He's saying, "I think there may be a problem with this." So I can quite imagine why people could find him annoying, because he's basically just permanently poking holes in everything.

   3. DRDonald Robertson36:33

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think there are a number... Let- let me kind of explain what he's doing, I think, from a different perspective, from a more psychological perspective, right? And in doing that, I'll maybe make its relevance a bit more apparent to modern self-improvement. So there's a body of research...... and modern psychotherapy and psychology, and in the field of coping and stress that there are m- w- we can analyze different coping strategies that people use to deal with stress, right? And these are the strategies that you find in self-help books and self-improvement books, right? So it might be breathing exercises, relaxation technique, cognitive therapy, positive affirmations, positive visualization. Even things like avoidance, just running away from the situation, you know, or, uh, accessing other res- social support, getting someone else to help you in a situation or things like that. There's like lots of different ways that you could potentially cope with anxiety, depression, stressful situations, right? But no one of those coping strategies works every time, and the people that exhibit the most emotional resilience and are most able to recover from anxiety and depression are generally found to be ones that have something we call coping flexibility. So they're able to choose intelligently between whether to confront a situation assertively or whether to back away from it and resign themselves to it with emotional acceptance. A little bit like saying knowing when to pick your battles and things like that, you know? Uh, or knowing when it's better to distract yourself from pain or discomfort and when it would be better to, to address the cause, or when it would be better to confront it and adapt to the experience and learn to accept it, you know? And by questioning... I mean, what we do in modern cognitive therapy, like often we'll find almost with every client, you'll find that they have coping strategies they've just made up themselves or coping strategies they've got from the internet or from self-help books, right? In many, in many cases they'll be using these maladaptively in a way that, that's contributing to the problem and making it worse, usually because they're doing them too rigidly or they're using them as a kinda subtle form of avoidance that's actually contributing to, to the problem. And so one of the first things we might do is what's sometimes called a functional analysis. So we'll get people to very carefully weigh up the pros and cons of the strategies they're using, and this kind of thinking things through, it's a cognitive therapy technique, is similar in some ways, I think, to using the Socratic method to question your definition of justice, for instance. Or Socrates would also, um... I'll give you an example of a specific technique that kinda blew my mind when I read it. In Xenophon, and scholars, like classicists, never mention this because it like, you know, as a psychotherapist looking at the Socratic dialogues, I notice him doing psychological stuff that a philosopher or classicist might not even, you know, like register. So there's a bit in Xenophon where Socrates speaks to another young guy, um, in a shop in the Agora, and this dude is a self-help junkie, as we would call it today. He literally has a collection. He's got the finest collection in Athens of self-improvement books. He says he collects the maxims of wise men and he's trying to improve his character so that one day he can become a, a great statesman and he wants to understand the nature of morality or justice. And Socrates questions about, about the definition of justice and quickly shows that he, he doesn't really understand it. He's contradicting himself. And so this guy thinks, "Wow, I've been reading all these books and tried to memorize what they say, but when someone tries to get me to explain the meaning of these concepts, I just kinda fall apart," 'cause he's never really thought things through very deeply. He's just parroting stuff. He's learning passively. Socrates draws a diagram, which I immediately recognized 'cause we do it all the time in cognitive therapy. He draws two columns, right? Probably on a wax tablet or something, right? And at the heading, at the top of one column he writes "injustice" and at the top of the other column he writes "justice." And he says, "Uh, I want you to kind of brainstorm definitions of what's justice then. You want to be a just individual, right? And brainstorm examples of injustice." So for injustice, he comes up with things like lying, um, or, uh, stealing, um, stuff like that, right? Obvious examples of injustice. And then Socrates does exactly the same thing that we mentioned earlier. He brainstorms exceptions. He said, "Okay, lying. What if you're an elected general and you're lying to the enemy in order to deceive them in a military campaign? Is that unjust or would you consider that to be just under the circumstances?" And so the- this young guy, Euthydemus is his name, he says, "Well, that's different. That's an exception, right?" Socrates says, "What if you're a parent and you're trying to give your kid medicine but they won't take it unless you hide it in their food? Is that injustice or would that seem like it's just?" He says, "Well, that's different as well." And then Socrates uses another example that's really well known in philosophy. He says, "What if your friend was suicidal and they come to you and say, 'Where did you hide my dagger?' Like, would you lie to them? I... And pretend that you don't know? Or would you say, 'Oh, I guess I have this over there,' you know, take it." Um, and he says, "Well, that's different as well. Like, these are kind of unusual circumstances." So Socrates says, "Well, maybe then there's more nuance to this idea that justice consists in always telling the truth and never lying. Like, you seem to think that there's more to it than that. There's other perspectives, right?" And this technique of drawing two columns, we can literally do it on coping strategies to get people to think, "When would you practice mindfulness and what might be the pros and cons of doing that? When might you try to fake it to make it and when might that be a bad idea, right? When might it be a good idea to always speak your mind to other people and be assertive, and when might it be a better idea just to keep your mouth shut, like in some situations and know when to fight your battles and so on?" And it's cognitive flexibility and coping flexibility, the ability to view situations from different perspectives and the ability to choose intelligently between different types of coping strategies that really constitute... In the same way that I said before that wisdom is more like a skill rather than just a bunch of ideas or opinions that you could hold. I think that to some extent that's missing from a lot of self- modern self-improvement literature, and the risk is then that people get techniques that work in some situations but then they carry on using them rigidly in situations where they're no longer working, they're backfiring. I'll give you an example, right? My... Any tech- any self-help technique is gonna backfire in some situations. Mindfulness,... is some techniques are more robust than others. Mindfulness is a really useful strategy. It works really well, right? But for instance, clients who have health anxiety and are constantly scanning their body for symptoms like, "Oh, I've just noticed a... I think I noticed a weird sensation in my chest," right? Practicing mindfulness, in some cases, could actually just exacerbate or heighten their, their focu- it's threat monitoring for symptoms, basically, and paying too much attention to every slight twinge in their body, right? Social anxiety, like we know that one of the main correlates of social anxiety is heightened self-focused attention. So in fact, many self-help techniques that people try to use in social situations actually increase their self-focused attention, right? So people with social anxiety will typically do things like trying to stand up s- like tall and straighten their back and look people in the eye, right? Because they feel like that makes sense and it should make them more confident. But what they don't realize is often i- it heightens their self-focused attention unnaturally, and that contributes to social anxiety, and it also increases their cognitive load. So they're more likely to kind of feel awkward 'cause they're trying to walk and chew gum at the same time, right? But getting people to think about the pros and cons of these different strategies, when might it be a good idea, when it might potentially backfire? Is there a good way of doing mindfulness and maybe there's a bad way of doing mindfulness in some situations? That's the wisdom that allows people... It- the ancient philosophers used to also say if you could give somebody... Uh, the problem with teaching moral precepts or like coping strategies, you know, would be that if you give a piece of advice, a maxim to someone who's wise, they'll use it wisely. But if you give it to someone who's foolish, they're probably going to use it foolishly, right? If you give coping strategies to somebody who's got severe anxiety, they're, they're more likely just, just t- turn it into a form of avoidance if you're not careful. The, the people who have the most severe problems are the ones that are most likely to misuse the type of strategies that we get in self-help books basically. So I- what's often missing, I think, is this meta-skill, if you like, or being able to choose between strategies and figure out their pros and cons, which is actually one of the first things we'd normally do in cognitive therapy.

   4. CWChris Williamson45:29

      Yeah, very prophetic by Socrates to be able to see that out front. What

6. 45:35 – 49:50

   Did Socrates Get Involved in Politics?

   1. CWChris Williamson45:35

      was the Organon? Organon?

   2. DRDonald Robertson45:39

      That's one of-

   3. CWChris Williamson45:39

      What was the-

   4. DRDonald Robertson45:40

      ... Paracelsus' books, isn't it?

   5. CWChris Williamson45:41

      Yes. Yeah.

   6. DRDonald Robertson45:42

      If I remember rightly.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:43

      Yeah. So yeah. So I saw, I saw that and this sort of interesting pivot toward... Well, you see with these two different people that one is focused very much on what seems to be practical. But then there's this s- begin of a trajectory toward philosophy being involved in politics, philosophy being involved in sort of statesmanship, uh, with, uh, logic, solicitation, deduction, ethics, stuff like that. Um, why did Socrates not get involved in politics during his time, or did he? How much did he?

   8. DRDonald Robertson46:22

      Yes and no. Like, generally speaking, he didn't get directly involved in politics. There was one incident where he was elected to a kind of committee overseeing a trial. Um, and Socrates took a principled stand supposedly in a situation where the mob were kind of baying for the blood of a bunch of Athenian generals that were on trial. Um, and he almost was executed as a result of doing that. But after that, I think, uh, he said that, "Look, if I was to get involved in politics, I'd just end up being killed," you know, because, uh, you know, the, the stand that I would take would just, you know... In, in a- in Athens at that time, like he, I- one of our sources suggested his thinking was he just wouldn't last very long and it would be more constructive of him to kind of critique politics from the sidelines, as it were, rather than trying to get directly involved.

   9. CWChris Williamson47:29

      Did you not say-

   10. DRDonald Robertson47:29

       And you could s-

   11. CWChris Williamson47:30

       Do you not say something about Roger Stone? Was there not some similarities between him and Roger Stone?

   12. DRDonald Robertson47:38

       I think there's some similarities and differences between him and Roger Stone. What's funny, and Ro- Roger Stone is one of these people that have published books on rules, but he's- it's called Stone's Rules, like his book and some of them are the opposite of what Socrates would say. Like Roger Stone, I think it's fair to say, is a man who would probably characterize himself as being quite fixated on the idea of revenge. That comes through pretty clearly from his book. Um, he at no point in, in his book does- again, does he ever really discuss what he thinks is in the interests of society. But he spends a lot more time discussing how much he hates his political opponents, um, and how he uses politics as a means to get back at them, interestingly. Um, I guess he has what you would call a ver- with a small C, like a, a very cynical attitude towards politics. It's, it's very different from the way that someone like Socrates would have seen it. Um, and Socrates, I think, would be a critic of this idea, uh, that revenge is a, a rational motive for us to have. Um, so there are something- there, there... You know, I try to have an even-handed approach to understand. Again, like weighing up the pros and cons, I looked at Roger Stone's book and I thought, "Are there bits of this that kind of make sense in relation to ancient philosophy and are there bits of it that seem like they might be the opposite?" He says one or two things about resilience. I think his phrase is turning... chicken shit into chicken soup or something like that, is the way he puts it.

   13. CWChris Williamson49:13

       Very artsy.

   14. DRDonald Robertson49:15

       Yeah. He has this idea, um, that we should adapt to adversity and develop emotional resilience, which kind of sounds a little bit like the Stoics. But what's missing from it, I guess he has some ideas about emotional resilience, but he doesn't have a, doesn't, he doesn't seem to see any connection between that and social virtue, for example. Like, or, uh, justice. Like, he sees politics, I think, in a, through a much more Machiavellian lens, as far as I, I can tell.

   15. CWChris Williamson49:49

       Mm. What,

7. 49:50 – 57:57

   Socrates’ View of a Good Life

   1. CWChris Williamson49:50

      how would you summarize, uh, what Socrates believed about what a good life consisted of or how to achieve a good life? Did he talk about that?

   2. DRDonald Robertson50:00

      Yeah. I mean, again, the first thing he would do is apply, like for example, when he's talking to that guy Euthydemus, he asks him that very question. But he encourages him to think it through for himself, right? So Euthydemus is this young dude that's been reading loads of self-improvement books, and he says, "Okay, like so what is a good life?" Uh, actually Euthydemus says, "Wha- where is the first place that I should begin applying philosophy, incidentally?" And Socrates says, "Here. Like, the first thing you should do is start by asking yourself what the goal of life is, and what constitutes flourishing, or eudaimonia. Like, so basically what's good for us and what's bad for us in life." And Euthydemus says, "Well, okay, so stuff like, you know, noble birth, wealth, status, you know, having a nice house, like, being healthy, having lots of friends are all good." Like, generally people think that's, that constitutes good fortune and flourishing in life. And then Socrates basically goes through the list and says, "But each one of these things could potentially be bad." There's another dialogue by Plato where he provides a much clearer counterargument, where he says, "Okay, like so let's start with wealth as the easiest example. Wealth in the hands of somebody who's wise and virtuous would allow them to do more wise and virtuous things. But if you give a big pile of money to somebody who's foolish and vicious, it's just gonna allow them to do more foolish and vicious stuff, right?" And the same would apply to status, and actually most of these external goods, as they're known, in a sense are more like practical advantages or opportunities that you have in life. And what really matters is, is how you make use of them, whether you use them wisely or whether you use them foolishly. So then doesn't that suggest that the only thing that's intrinsically good would be practical wisdom, or moral wisdom, yeah? Um, because how you use other thing, even the disadvantages you have, even poverty and sickness, might be used well by somebody who's profoundly wise, right? They might develop more resilience as a result. They might learn from the experience, for instance. Um, but somebody who's foolish and vicious will use even, every advantage in life badly, yeah? So it's by this kind of questioning method Socrates gets his interlocutors, the usually young m- adult, young men, um, just embarking on adult life basically, to realize that the things that most people assume to be the goal of life, like reputation and s- material success and stuff like that, aren't really intrinsically the most important thing in life, but what matters more is your ability to use these things well. Which is something that they tend to have neglected and not really discussed. And so Socrates says, "That's what we should be talking about. How do you use these things well?" And so the goal of life or flourishing would consist in a kind of practical wisdom or moral wisdom, and also in the realization that the prevailing values of our society are kind of back to front, and the things that everybody has led to value, like consumerism and celebrity culture and all that kind of stuff i- is, uh, those are misplaced values, basically.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:07

      Isn't it interesting that it's the values of our society talking about this thousands of years ago, and them being the same values that-

   4. DRDonald Robertson53:15

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson53:15

      ... everybody is still being swayed by now?

   6. DRDonald Robertson53:17

      I wonder about that. You know, I think there's got to be a reason for that, and I don't pretend to know exactly what it is. But you know, the ancient philosophers had some answers. I believe that part of it is, if you imagine when you're born as a child, you're kind of a blank slate to some extent, in, you know, you, you start interacting with adults before you can even speak, let alone reason. And so you, you just em- emulate what you see other people doing as a small child. And I think it partly comes from the fact that we model our values on other people's behavior. So as a child growing up, you think, you take a look around you and you think, "What's all this meant to be about?" And you think, "Well, everyone else seems obsessed with money and property and status." Like, so you just kind of naturally fall into that if you're not careful. Before you-

   7. CWChris Williamson54:01

      Are you saying that we are the progeny of, uh, Socratic societies, uh, culture, eventually, just a few thousand years down the line?

   8. DRDonald Robertson54:10

      We're, we're, yeah, like we're, I think we're just a product of s- the th- the fact that we can't really understand each other deeply, I think is the problem, that we're basing our values on just observing other people's superficial behavior. So for example, we might see, you, you as a little kid, you might see your dad working really long hours and earning money, you know, to, to kind of pay off the mortgage and stuff like that. And if you're not careful, you might think, "I guess, I guess working hard and earning money is like, is what life is all about." But your dad might think, "Well, I'm doing that to care for my family," for example. Like, because I consider being a good father like to be what I want my life to be about. So we don't necessarily observe the values that are driving other people's behavior internally. We, we, we've, I think, so we, we fall into this trap. I, this is my belief, uh, over and over again, because we are not able to see inside people's hearts. Like, we end up with a superficial understanding of their values, right? And it's only over the course of life as we, uh, develop the ability to reflect on our values and question them more deeply, we start to think, "Why are we doing all this stuff?"... why, why am I buying a house? Why, you know, why am I working long hours? Why, it's for something deeper. Why, it's in order to be a good person and a good parent and a good husband, and stuff like that. And I, I think one of the things that can help us achieve that realization and question the prevailing values of our society is, uh, death. Like, you know, because many people, I think, for whatever reason, on their death bed when they look back over the course of their life think, was it real- did- is it really worth spending your life just trying to earn as much money as possible? Was that what, you know, in retrospect my life should've been about? You know, was, like, writing a best-selling book or something like really the most important thing? Or does it- that seem trivial in retrospect when you, you know, like you've only got a few days left to live or something like that. But, I mean, if you're lucky maybe you have a brush with death early on and survive and it changes your perspective and it liberates you from these assumptions that we all have. Or sometimes when you're bereaved, like, you know, I lost my father when I was quite young and I think, oh, to be honest that really shook me and made me kind of question what's the point of all of it, 'cause I saw him. Um, he died of lung cancer. Like, he was bedridden for about a year, so I had about a year just to observe my father dying slowly and think, he seemed to be going through this process of questioning what his life had stood for. And so when I was like 13, 14 years old that kind of made me think, "Gee, I don't want to end up like that. Like, at the end of my life thinking maybe I've spent my time and energy in the, in the wrong way." So these things, and also sometimes I think having children and looking at your kids and thinking what you want for them and what values you want them to have, if we approach it in the right way can help us to gain some insight and start to question what our values are. But of- if we don't do that we just look around us think everybody's obsessed with money and fame, you know, we end up entering into the rat race, chasing around after that, then one day you end up on your death bed and the doctors tell you you've only got, you know, a few weeks left and you think, you look back on it and you think, "What a huge waste of time a lot of that was." Like, you know, maybe, eh, I've got like, you know, millions of dollars in my bank account but it's not, you know, you can't take it with you. Like, you know, did I really do anything that worthwhile in retrospect? So that's why ancient philosophy is kind of obsessed with this question of death. Now the other thing that could help us would be reading about philosophers who contemplate the problem of our own mortality. Like, that's why Plato's Apology is so influential, 'cause it depicts Socrates standing in court knowing he's about to be executed-

8. 57:57 – 1:08:48

   Why Socrates Was Executed

   1. CWChris Williamson57:57

      Can you tell us the, the story of the end of Socrates life? What happened? What was the build-up? Why did it occur?

   2. DRDonald Robertson58:03

      The, it's a slightly long and convoluted story, um, for some reason, like he was brought to trial. Charges, um, were brought against him. So in Athenian law, other citizens could sue you, and he was brought to court under charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, and these are-

   3. CWChris Williamson58:24

      What's impiety?

   4. DRDonald Robertson58:25

      Like, that he didn't believe in the traditional gods basically, and these are standard charges that were used against intellectuals basically, you know, there was nothing new about it. If you were, like, if you were too clever other people in Athens would say you're corrupting the youth, right? And if you questioned things too much-

   5. CWChris Williamson58:44

      It's an excuse for p- politically uncorrect blasphemy.

   6. DRDonald Robertson58:47

      Yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're engaged in blasphemy as well if you're starting to question, you know, some traditional religious ideas and stuff like that. So it was kind of like stock charge in a way. There are many reasons why, uh, some people think Socrates is, had certain political views. He also had friends that became controversial in Athenian society, um, and so his association with certain influential figures might have been part of it, and it might also be that he went around humiliating powerful people. Like he went up to politicians and said, "Can you define the nature of justice?" And they'd be like, "I don't know." Like, and that made them embarrassed and it made them look stupid in front of their fans and followers and stuff, and so they wanted, for all of these reasons... I mean, Socrates' execution was over determined. Like, there were multiple reasons why people wanted him dead. And some of it was propaganda. Like there were, there was, like I mentioned earlier there was a play about him that caricatured him, so Socrates in the trial says, "A lot of you guys," there were 500 people in the jury, and he said, "Most of you will know me mainly through this play." Like it would be like, you, you, trial by media, right? "So I've never met most of you but you've probably seen this play that makes me out to be this horrible, corrupt pseudo-intellectual, right? Like a charlatan and stuff, so that's what you'll be judging me based on." And he stands up, he was meant to beg for mercy in court. He stands up and one of the first things he says is he refers to his military service, and to paraphrase he basically says, "I went out and fought in these battles and faced death on behalf of Athens to defend the walls of the city and you guys told me that was honorable. Now I'm standing in court facing death because I believe in the practice of philosophy as a way of improving the people that live in the city. What's the point in defending the walls of the city if the people that live in it are corrupt?" Right? "So some of you think this is ridiculous, that I'm willing to risk my life in court, but you praised me for risking my life in the military and this is actually much more important to me." Right? Is how he kind of starts off his defense in a, in a way, and then he goes on to talk about how he's not afraid of dying and all this kind of stuff and he kind of reasons that through, but he doesn't beg for mercy. He, he's very unapologetic in Plato's Apology and, uh, and so the jury condemn him to death because of what Xenophon called his big talk in court. Like he was a, he was a, they would- thought he would bring his family in and he would have them weeping in front of the- 'cause that was what was normal, but right from the very beginning of the trial his family weren't even present, so he made it clear that he wasn't gonna beg for mercy.... before he even began speaking. And he basically gives them a lecture on philosophy.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:34

      (laughs)

   8. DRDonald Robertson1:01:34

      He carries on in court doing the very thing that he's on trial for-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

      (laughs)

   10. DRDonald Robertson1:01:39

       ... in court-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:01:40

       (laughs)

   12. DRDonald Robertson1:01:41

       ... right? Like everything about Socrates was paradoxical. But the other argument, and again, there's many different aspects. He's such, he's like, um, uh, peeling the layers of an onion back. The other thing, Xenophon says Socrates was like 71, 72. He was pretty old for Athenian society. And, you know, the kind of implication in some of the dialogues is he- he thought, "Well, I'm starting to lose my faculties maybe. I'm getting older, becoming more of a burden to my family." He'd reach a point where he thought, "Rather than trying to kind of just keep extending my life indefinitely while I'm in decline, I'd rather go out with a bang and make this huge statement." And he became a martyr for philosophy. But say what you will about Socrates, it worked, in that even to the... We're still talking about him. And, uh, he became an icon to generations of young philosophers that followed him because they were inspired-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:02:33

       Do you think he would... Do- do you think he'd be less impactful if he hadn't died in that way?

   14. DRDonald Robertson1:02:38

       100%. Like, he would still have had some impact. But I- I mean, the most famous thing about Socrates in the ancient world is Plato's Apology, and the way that he- his noble death. Uh, when Epictetus, the famous Stoic philosopher who was teaching like 400 years later, right? So, you know, like that's... Socrates is ancient history to Epictetus. He's... The most famous quote from Epictetus, the most famous quote in all of Stoicism is, "People are not upset by events, but by their opinions about them." But no one ever quotes what he says next in the following sentence. He says, "For example, death is not intrinsically terrible, because if it were, Socrates would have been afraid of dying, and he wasn't." Right? So this is an important argument that you find in Socrates, but it's really highlighted in the Stoics, which is, you know, and we use a similar kind of strategy in cognitive therapy. If somebody's depressed or angry or frightened by something, one of the first questions you'd normally ask is, "Does everyone else feel the same way about it?" I mentioned Lamproclus getting angry with his mum. Socrates says, "Does other- do other people all find your mum unbearable? Or do other- you know, do certain people view her differently?" Socrates himself, for example, viewed her very differently. He got nagged by Xanthippe, but it didn't really bother him, right? So one of the first questions we ask in cognitive therapy are- are- "Are other perspectives available?" Right? "Is this the only way of looking at things or, you know, might you potentially see it differently?" Epictetus' main example of that, he goes straight for the jugular, right? He says, "We're not upset by things, but by our opinions about them." Like, even when it comes to death, some people aren't scared of dying. Actually, you know, loads of people aren't scared of dying, right? Um, so there are many people I've found, it's one of the weird things, particularly younger people often find it inconceivable that someone wouldn't be afraid of dying. But a lot of elderly people are resigned to their own death 'cause they've been bereaved many times and maybe they've had many health scares. And so over the space of decades, in some cases, if not all, you'll speak to elderly people and they say, "I've got- I've got over it." Like, you know, "I've had years and years to get used to the idea of dying so, you know, it doesn't really frighten me anymore." Some elderly people are terrified of dying, but others are surprisingly resigned to it. Socrates, again, 71, 72, facing his trial. He's an older guy living in a society where there's not a lot of medicine, you know. I think he's- he's the sort of dude that was perfectly resi- and he'd lived through many dangerous... It's- it's hard to imagine how many brushes with death Socrates had had, right? I mean, they tried to execute him, I think, about three or four times altogether under different political regimes. You know, he was involved in battles where thousands of people were killed around him and he lived through a plague, you know, that- that killed tens of thousands of people in Athens. So he was a guy who was well accustomed to the fragility of his own existence, right? I mean, we live a very shelt- very, very sheltered existence by comparison to that. Um, but it's interesting that Epictetus goes straight for that example. Look at... He's- he has Plato's Apology in mind. He's like, "You want to know what it means to realize that it's your opinions that shape your fear? Look at the example of Socrates and how he was unafraid even of being executed in court." That's your primate. That, and that was- that- that was the cardinal example, um, to young philosophers in the ancient world.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:06:16

       It's wild to think of somebody so steadfast in their beliefs, especially given the fact that almost all of their career was spent highlighting hypocrisy. So it would have been a odd curtain call had he of, at the final... I- I imagine how much more tarnished his entire philosophical career would have been had he have done the pliable, begging for mercy, on the floor doing... You know, he, it would have- it would have changed an awful lot, I think, about how people perceived his work.

   16. DRDonald Robertson1:06:44

       In the Crito, which is one of the dialogues that takes place when he's in prison, he was in prison for about a month awaiting execution and his friends say, "Listen, we could just bribe the guards really easy and get you out of here," and stuff. He talks about this fact that it would be... And it would make him ridiculous in his own eyes, like if he now behaved inconsistently with his values, you know, and that seems more... And I mean, allegedly in the Phaedo, which is the- the last dia- dialogue chronologically when Socrates is- drinks the actual hemlock. His- they bring the poison to him and his friend Crito, like his childhood friend who grew up in the same suburb of Athens as him. Crito says to him, um, "Some people don't drink the poison straight away. I mean, I think you're actually allowed to have a final meal." He had lots of friends around him when he was being executed, if you can imagine that. That was the norm in Athenian society.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:07:38

       It was a party.

   18. DRDonald Robertson1:07:38

       Yeah, it was like a party. There, there were like... I suppose there were about 10 or 20 people there a- like... So they come and visit him every day in the- in the prison, like weird kind of scenario.But they all gathered round, and his family came. His wife brought his kids. He had a baby. Like, his wi-... We're told, all we know is that Xanthippe, Xanthippe was carrying one of the children. So scholars think that kind of implies that it was a baby or a toddler. Like-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:08:02

       Socrates still got it at 72-

   20. DRDonald Robertson1:08:04

       Still got it-

   21. CWChris Williamson1:08:04

       ... 71, 72 years old.

   22. DRDonald Robertson1:08:05

       ... at 72. Yeah. So, they say, "You don't have to drink it right away." And he says, "It would seem ridiculous of me."

   23. CWChris Williamson1:08:13

       (laughs)

   24. DRDonald Robertson1:08:13

       And I'd, I'd feel ridiculous in my own eyes to kinda try and eke out another, you know, half an hour." He's like, "I, I've been here for a month waiting to drink it." He goes, "What am I gonna do with another half," you know. Like, so that was his, supposedly his thinking, was, "I'm ready. Like, I've prepared myself for this. I'd, I'd just, I'd feel like a coward and it would seem inconsistent of me, and ridiculous, if I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, you're right, maybe I could eke out another hour or so before I have to drink it.' So I'm ready to drink it. Like, I've been sitting here for a month getting ready to drink it." (laughs) Right. So... (laughs)

9. 1:08:48 – 1:19:40

   Links Between Socrates & Seneca

   1. DRDonald Robertson1:08:48

   2. CWChris Williamson1:08:48

      The thing, uh, you've mentioned the Stoics a couple of times. I'd like to talk about-

   3. DRDonald Robertson1:08:51

      Uh-huh.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:08:52

      ... his sort of enduring influence on them, and, and, and links between the two. But the first person that comes to mind for me is Seneca.

   5. DRDonald Robertson1:08:58

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

      Somebody for whom, uh, proclamations and fantastic contributions to thought and philosophy and stuff were replete. But in his private life, when the rubber met the road, so to speak, he was much more malleable. He was playing these sorts of game, political games, and, and, and backbiting, and, and sucking up to people, and so on and so forth.

   7. DRDonald Robertson1:09:23

      This, controversially... Yeah. Seneca's always been a divisive and controversial figure. In some ways, he's, he could be compared to Socrates. Socrates had a, a friend, and possibly a lover, called Alcibiades, who was, you know, one of the most influential statesmen. He was appointed the commander-in-chief of the Athenian military at one point, the most senior statesman in Athens. Like, almost like an emperor over the, what was evolving and what had evolved into an Athenian Empire. And he was, like, s- one of Socrates' best friends and closest associates. So his relationship with Alcibiades, like trying to get him to be a better ruler and stuff is a bit like Seneca and his relationship with Nero. But Seneca, eh, I mean, it's, it wouldn't be... Some people will find this controversial, but although we think of Seneca as a Stoic philosopher, he was famous a- primarily as an author, not as a philosophy teacher. He probably didn't teach that much philosophy to Nero. He mainly trained him in rhetoric. So, in some regards, Seneca was more like a Latin Sophist than a philosopher. The Sophists often quoted philosophy, like they made speeches out of it and things, but they didn't attempt to live in accord with it in the way that the Stoics or Socrates did. So Seneca, somewhere in between. It may be that towards the end of his life he embraced philosophy more fully. I think earlier in his life, philosophy was more something he used to become a famous author. He became famous by writing consolation letters using Stoicism to people that had been bereaved, that were wealthy, influential figures. He was like a self-help guru to the rich and famous in, uh, Roman society. And that's how he ended up becoming an a- an advisor to Nero. So he was a, a figure that really was compromised by that in a number of ways. He was Nero's right-hand man. Nero was like a despot, a dictator. Um, and he also wrote speeches defending Nero in the Senate, um, and trying to, I mean, ridiculous, like thing, like saying that he was virtually a philosopher king, and that he, his hands were unstained by blood, and all this kinda... So that-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:11:43

      Stuff you couldn't really imagine Socrates saying.

   9. DRDonald Robertson1:11:45

      No, I mean, Socrates never sullied himself in that way. Um, there's a guy that... Marcus Aurelius' rhetoric teacher, um, we have his private letters. And Marcus is talking to him about Seneca. We don't see what Marcus wrote, unfortunately. We only see, uh, Fronto's replies. Fronto can't stand Seneca. And he died, you know, a few generations earlier. But I think it's partly he doesn't like his writing style. But he says, "Looking for pearls of wisdom in Seneca's writings would be like someone grubbing around in the bottom of a sewer trying to dig a few silver coins out of the filth," right? Which is a kind of, what the kids today call a sick burn, right? That's only something that another Sophist could have come up with, right? As a, as an insult. But I think what he means is that Seneca in, in Rome would have been known more than today for his political speeches defending Nero.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:12:47

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DRDonald Robertson1:12:47

       And we have a couple of examples of those. Like, we have On Clemency, for example, which is this letter to, uh, Nero, that was probably made public, that kind of puts Nero on something of a pedestal. Also tries to improve his character and teach him more clemency or mercy. But at the same time, it praises him as a great ruler, like, which is ridiculous. He was a tyrant. And at the same time that N- Seneca was defending Nero and propping up his regime, there were other Stoics that were fighting against Nero and opposing him in the Senate. They're called the Stoic opposition. And several of them died or were exiled, defying, uh, defying Nero. Epictetus, who was kind of on the periphery of this, 'cause Epictetus kind of came from the next generation, but he was a slave owned by Nero's Greek secretary, a guy called Epaphroditus, who was perhaps also Nero's, Nero's bodyguard, uh, according to one source. He was certainly very, very close to Nero. Um-Epicitus idolizes the stoic opposition and never mentions Seneca once. So he clearly felt those were the, the stoics from that generation that he looked up to. And, and Seneca was seen, even by other stoics at the time, as a guy that had maybe compromised himself morally.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:14:11

       What is the truth that we know about whether Socrates was really ugly or not?

   13. DRDonald Robertson1:14:17

       That's actually a contested point. There's a really cool book that came out recently by Armand Danguor, a classicist, um, who wrote a book called Socrates in Love that I really like that's kinda speculative biography of Socrates, and he claims that Socrates was probably not as ugly as he's made out to be-

   14. CWChris Williamson1:14:37

       (laughs)

   15. DRDonald Robertson1:14:37

       ... and that particularly younger in life, he may have been quite a virile and attractive guy. But, I mean, Socrates' friends describe him as walking like a pelican, having eyes like a crab, having a face like a torpedo fish, and, uh, being balding and pot-bellied. So, and he looks like a satyr as well, we're told. Like one of those kinda goat, uh, for like Pan or whatever. So those are his friends, right? That they... And so I guess it's partly the Athenian culture, they were kinda ribbing him a bit and stuff. If you go to Athens today, there's a, a famous statue of Socrates, a modern statue of him outside the university where he's incredibly buff. Like, I mean, he definitely looks like he's been lifting weights. But that's a modern representation of him. The ancient sculptures we have of him are this little pot-bellied old man, you know, that's more of a kinda... Was seen as a bit of a... Presented as more of a, a comedy character almost. So yeah, he makes fun of it. In Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates jokes and he says, "Uh, I think if we had a beauty contest, I would win it." And everyone kinda rolls about laughing at this. It seems ridiculous to them. But he then, it leads into him having a conversation w- about how they define beauty and, uh, you know, he starts to question whether, you know, beauty is actually something that comes from a person's character, you know? And he thinks, he's, he says he's confident that he would win on those terms, but his friends still think it's a bit ridiculous of him, you know?

   16. CWChris Williamson1:16:11

       (laughs)

   17. DRDonald Robertson1:16:11

       They thought... Xen- Xenophon, Xenophon to his credit says, you know, "You learn more about wise men by seeing them at their leisure." I believe that's how he begins the Symposium. It's a, a drinking party and he presents Socrates as this guy who's quite witty and humorous, right? So he says things where he... And Socrates was the type of guy that would say something to you and you'd think, "Is he joking? Is he serious?" And the answer is yes and no. Like, he's kind of joking and serious at the s- he's kind of both joking and serious at, at the same time often, I feel.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:16:47

       Was there... I can't remember who it was from that era of philosophers. I seem to remember a story of one of those philosophers complaining that every time they went to dinner or had a party, uh, the people got too drunk, and one of the solutions to people getting too drunk would be to reduce the size of the cups. If only we could make the-

   19. DRDonald Robertson1:17:08

       Yes.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:17:08

       ... size of the cup smaller. Was that Socrates?

   21. DRDonald Robertson1:17:11

       Yeah, I think that's in Xenophon's Symposium, if- or, or it might be in Plato's Symposium. Like, in one of the symposiums, like, he says, he reckoned... And they do it. He says that he asked them to bring out smaller cups and he says, "If we use smaller cups-"

   22. CWChris Williamson1:17:24

       'Cause everyone's-

   23. DRDonald Robertson1:17:25

       "... we could moderate our, our drinking more."

   24. CWChris Williamson1:17:26

       Everyone's getting too drunk.

   25. DRDonald Robertson1:17:27

       He said-

   26. CWChris Williamson1:17:28

       And just ruining the quality of the conversation.

   27. DRDonald Robertson1:17:30

       He says, "Alcohol..." I think this is in Xenophon's Symposium. He says, "Alcohol is like watering a plant." He goes, "If you don't give it enough, then it kinda shrivels up and dies, like, but if you give it too much, then it, it wilts." And he goes, "This is the effect that I think wine has on conversation at a dinner party. You've got to find just the right level so that people loosen up and you have a..." So he wasn't completely in favor of abstinence. He thought if you... The right amount of wine was conducive to a good philosophical conversation in a dinner party.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:17:59

       Didn't he stand in one place for-

   29. DRDonald Robertson1:18:02

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:18:02

       ... a day at one point?
10. 1:19:40 – 1:26:11

    The Meaning Behind ‘Know Thyself’

    1. CWChris Williamson1:19:40

       Can you dig into the "Know thyself" thing?

    2. DRDonald Robertson1:19:42

       Yeah. I mean, it comes up again and again in different dialogues. I'll tell you something really cool about it. There's a dialogue that I think is authentically attributed to, to Plato but other, uh, some scholars have questioned-It doesn't matter, in a way. Somebody wrote it, like thousands of years ago. So there's a dialogue called The First Alcibiades that's about Socrates having a, a dialogue with this great statesman. I mean, Alcibiades, someone said recently on Twitter they should make a movie about Alcibiades. He has one of the most dramatic and colorful and exciting, you know, lives, and he was Socrates', you know, companion. Socrates saved his life in battle, you know? I mean, honestly, you could... His life is so cinematic, it's like this huge epic adventure story. Now, in this dialogue, Socrates questions whether Alcibiades is competent to become a political leader, a statesman. He proves to him by questioning that he doesn't really understand anything about the nature of justice, but he should, and then this leads into a conversation about Ɣnḕw dĕuɸ ʔaeɪtɑ or know thyself. And Socrates said, uh, says to Alcibiades, you know, "What do you think it means?" And he's like, "Well, I mean, I would think that I know myself." But, you know, Socrates says, "Well, it's not just, like, knowing the name of something. It's about really understanding it." He goes, "This is how I understand it," and then he says... Often you get these remarkable metaphors or images in ancient literature and this is one of my favorites. Socrates says that self-knowledge is like an eye that sees itself, right? It's the eye that sees itself. He said it's like the god said that you're... Instructed your eye to see itself when he says that the mind should know itself. And he says to Alcibiades, "How can the eye see itself?" And Alcibiades is like, "I don't know, I guess like in a mirror?" Right? And Socrates says, "Well done. So how would the mind know itself by analogy?" And they'll... Alcibiades is like, "I guess you'd need some kind of mirror for your mind." Like, "I don't know how that would work though." And Socrates basically implies, 'cause he's often a bit vague about things, he's i- he's engaged in this question and answer method rather than just giving a lecture. So he basically implies to Alcibiades that engaging in philosophical dialogue or conversation with other people is a mirror for our own soul, and he understands that we are biased. I mean, he was, again, way ahead of his time in this regard. So, and, by the way, this is another problem for modern self-help, right? So there are many problems with self-help. One of the problems with self-help is the self part, right? The person-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:15

       Yeah.

    4. DRDonald Robertson1:22:15

       In a sense, the person least qualified to help you.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:22:18

       (laughs)

    6. DRDonald Robertson1:22:18

       Like... It's y- because I don't know if you've noticed it. There's actually research that shows this, right? I'm going all over the place, sorry, but the... I interviewed recently a guy called Igor Grossman, who you should speak to, right? He's a professor at the University of Waterloo who does research on the nature of wisdom, right? And he has research that shows, that confirms the suspicion that we all have, that we're much better at giving other people advice than we are at giving ourselves advice, right? This is a sensitive subject for psychotherapists, right? Because all we do is give other people advice and stuff, but we... If you go to a psychotherapy conference and walk in the door, you would notice immediately that it's full of some of the craziest people you'll ever meet in your life. Like-

Episode duration: 2:00:26