Month: December 2022

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2022 Book Reviews

September – December 2022

Main Currents of Marxism, Volume One: The Founders by Leszek Kołakowski

Tony Judt refers to this author, Leszek Kołakowski, as “the last illustrious citizen of the Twentieth-Century Republic of Letters.” That is an apt slogan. The depth of this author’s knowledge of both Marxism and philosophy in general is astonishing. He analyzes and penetrates all the main Marxist principles, picks them apart so we can see their component parts and what makes them tick. This is not an easy book. It’s dense, very dense, but immeasurably rewarding if one wishes to understand the philosophical underpinnings of Marxist thought, the ways in which Marxism was and is innovative and useful, and where Marxist theories fall short (or even disastrously short). Among other things, this book contains the most elegant dismantling of Marx’s theory of historical materialism that I have ever read. After reading it, I struggle to find a counterpoint that can stand against Kolakowski’s analysis. I feel as if I am looking upon the very pinnacle – the mountaintop – of erudition and scholarship, and I have to bow my head and acknowledge the greatness of it. I feel like an amateur composer listening to a Beethoven concerto (but then again, I’m actually pretty used to that feeling). Kolakowski does not set out to embarrass Marx, but instead respects him for the pioneer that he was, and for his far-seeing vision. But Marx’s theories are subject to a forensic analysis that lays bare all the gaps and missteps, and opens up many questions with which Marxists must wrestle: Does Marxist analysis have any scientific value? Do Marx’s ideas on value and history have anything useful to tell us about the real world? Does Marxism invariably slip into totalitarianism? These are questions Marxists have been exploring for a century, and I intend to do the same.

The Apology of Socrates by Plato

You can find my thoughts on Apology here:

1st read: philosophy as a pious act

2nd read: the folly of trying to prove that nobody knows anything

Histories (The Persian Wars) by Herodotus

This is a masterpiece! The author, Herodotus, is often nicknamed the “father of history” (or alternatively, the “father of lies”), and when you read this book it’s easy to see why. On the surface what makes this book remarkable is that it’s the first systematic historical chronicle in the western world. Herodotus, who composed this history around the year 430 BC, tells with vivid detail the stories of all the major battles of the Greco-Persian wars, including the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. But at heart this book is so much more than a history. Herodotus traveled extensively through the Greek world, and everywhere he went he collected stories, interviewed priests and historians and seers, visited battlegrounds and famous monuments, and most importantly absorbed the cultures, customs, and myths of the diverse peoples he encountered. He then poured all of this knowledge (both factual and mythical) into his Histories. Thus his tale opens up the entire ancient world to the reader, rendering it personal, intimate, and real. One can luxuriate in all the local myths, oracular visions, religious customs, and superstitions that permeate the story. The author clearly believes in the visions of oracles and the awesome power of the Greek gods, so when he tells of prophesies that were proven true, or desecrations of temples that angered the gods and invited their wrath, or battles that were won due to the favorable omens obtained through human sacrifice, it becomes impossible for the reader to disentangle fact from fiction in his narrative. But the writing is so delicious that the reader need not care about this! Instead it is best to let oneself become completely submerged in the story, and take the entire narrative as it comes. The author’s knowledge of the ancient world (and even of the back-room dealings of the various monarchs) borders on omniscient, which makes him the perfect guide on this whirlwind tour of a long-lost place. Though perhaps it’s not so lost as one might think. The characters within are at once so fascinatingly foreign, and yet simultaneously so relatable, so human. When the leaders of Persia debate whether democracy is superior or inferior to monarchy, the arguments they make (on both sides) are still potent today; they still ring true (including the critique of democracy). When the best laid Persian war plans are spoiled by poor weather, the soldiers who attribute the outcome to divine intervention sound much like modern believers who see divine planning in every historical event. When ancient politicians take bribes, or parents flee with their children from war zones, or enslaved tribes revolt to regain their freedom, or powerful oligarchs lobby for government hand-outs, or leaders in times of crisis choose pride instead of compromise and so perish, I see the modern world in ancient dress. Though much has changed, much remains as it was. Humans are still just as human today as they were then, and in many ways their problems are our problems: How can we best govern ourselves? How can we best share scarce resources? When is it best to compromise and make common cause with our enemies, and when is it best to fight? In times of war and crises, when we are beset by danger on all sides, what is the best and most ethical path for one to take? How can one live a good life, find happiness, and survive the seemingly random perils that each person faces in life? These questions all still matter today, and we as a species still do not agree on the correct answers. What a fun book to get a person thinking! I never thought a book this old would hold such sway over me, but that’s the power of timelessly excellent writing.

July – August 2022

The Cambridge Companion to Marx edited by Terrell Carver

I feel quite sad to reach the end of this lovely book, though also immensely satisfied with the experience of reading it. A collection of gifted philosophers/writers gather to examine Marxism from a variety of angles. These scholars are not necessarily “Marxist” scholars, so we hear critiques of Marx’s vision as well as agreement with it. But all agree that Marx contributed in profound ways to the history of thought. Furthermore, if we examine that contribution through various lenses and expand it in new directions, we can reveal many hidden truths about humanity and the world we inhabit. How does moral philosophy challenge Marxist thought, and how does Marxist thought challenge moral philosophy? How did Marx’s theory of history become so mainstream that modern historians who are very far from being Marxist still unwittingly deploy Marx-style materialism when explaining how societies change and adapt over time? Can Marxism go hand-in-hand with feminism, and what are some areas that Marxist feminism can be expanded by future thinkers? Is Marxism a science, and if so then what part of it is scientific: the critique, or the prophesies, or both? Has Marxism been debunked by the events of modern history (such as the fall of the Soviet Union), or does it still have much to offer us? Or perhaps it was only Lenin who was debunked, but Marxism lives on? So much to ponder, if one cares to explore a controversial field of study. This book is for readers possessing a mind already open, who wish to expand it further. Caution: one must enter with the understanding that this book will not draw the conclusion that Marxism is irrelevant, or that capitalism has ultimately been proven victorious for all time and forever amen. While these authors don’t slavishly praise Marx (and they certainly don’t treat him as a saint beyond reproach, nor do they respect the sanctity of Marxist orthodoxy as an unchanging and timeless series of truths), they all recognize that the school of thought he founded still has much to offer our sick, sad world. In fact, while reading this book the thing that struck me most about Marxism was its sheer applicability. Despite the failures of many “Marxist” experiments during the 20th century, the Marxian worldview still holds many keys to understanding what really makes society tick, and why we humans keep finding ourselves in such serious jams (I’m looking at you climate change). But even though Marx helps us understand our jams and how we wound up in them, it does not necessarily follow that Marxism holds to key to solving them. I hope to study many more sources to find out any way this worldview can contribute to a workable solution to climate change. I consider Marxism a premier lens to apply when seeking to understand our world, but remain skeptical that Marxism can rise above being a system of critique and finally assume the mantle of “problem-solving tool”. But anyways, this book put me on the right track. Highly recommend!

Marxism: Philosophy and Economics by Thomas Sowell

Most of this short book is plain summary of Marx’s and Engels’ work, but not the clearest summary I’ve ever read. In the end Sowell comes around to his critique. Though at times his critique is on point, he distracts the reader with underdeveloped arguments that detract from his more substantive points. For example, Sowell tries to draw a connection between Marx’s “dictatorial” personality and later dictatorships that claimed to be in the Marxist tradition. I find that connection to be tenuous since Sowell himself argues that one must look to the main body of an author’s work (not the author’s side comments) if one wishes to unlock the real meaning of that author’s philosophy, and Marx’s writings on the whole do not advocate dictatorship. Sowell also argues weakly that it can’t be true that workers in America are alienated at work, because so many people flee to America from totalitarian countries. So because people flee worse situations, that proves Marx was wrong about capitalist alienation? Sowell, following this kind of logic, might say: “how bad could skin cancer really be if you would choose it instead of AIDS?” Just because AIDS is worse does not mean skin cancer is just fine. Sowell doesn’t really wish to tackle alienation head on, so he offers a brief argument that it doesn’t exist at all; in other words, he skirts the issue and moves on quickly. I was especially disappointed in Sowell’s mini biography of Marx, where he went out of his way to denigrate Marx’s personal character, highlighting with great relish all his character flaws and personal weaknesses. I’m not here to defend Marx the man, but this book claims to be about philosophy and economics, about Marx the “ism” not Marx the dude. It’s as if Sowell didn’t have enough ammo to take down the “ism” so he resorted to painting Marx the man in a negative light, as if that alone could weaken Marx’s philosophy. In the end, Sowell’s real mission in this book is to equate Leninism with Marxism, to blame Marx for all the 20th century bloodshed and horror perpetrated by his intellectual descendants, by those who (long after Marx was dead) committed mass murder in Marx’s name. This is another weak argument that ignores all the strains of Marxism that sharply criticize Leninism, not to mention the fact that most of Marx’s Marxism consists of critique of capitalism (still valid and true in our modern time), not prophesy of what future communist societies must look like. Lenin took Marx’s critique and developed his own vision for what a communist society should look like, but that is just one man’s interpretation. Many many other Marxist scholars have gone down entirely different roads than Lenin, repudiating him altogether, and developing visions of communism that differ greatly from Lenin’s. It requires an impressive feat of feigned ignorance for Sowell, a scholar of Marxism, to claim that Leninism equals Marxism. But then to extend that argument further – to conclude that therefore all of Marxism is not only dangerous but also invalid, debunked, and not worth serious study – is an approach that abandons scholarship and sinks to the level of propaganda. Ultimately Sowell reads like a man who loves and admires capitalism, and therefore seeks to hamstring the philosopher who developed the most potent and relevant critiques about capitalism, critiques that many scholars (and regular people) today still find quite compelling. But rather than attack those critiques head-on and attempt to reveal their flaws in a careful and serious way, Sowell instead uses ad hominem attacks, and attempts to blame the philosopher for the actions of those who lived long after his death. He boils down a varied and diverse school of thought (Marxism) until all that remains is the vulgar totalitarianism perpetrated by Stalin. Where other students of Marxism see a large tree with many interlocking branches, Sowell sees only one branch – the sickly one. He’d like to use this branch to condemn the whole tree. One has to ignore a lot about Marxism to arrive at the conclusion that because Leninism was a philosophical monstrosity in the end, therefore Marx’s analysis of capitalism, his critique of ideology and culture, and his discovery of dialectical materialism are worthless. Sowell wishes to use Lenin as a tool to rob Marx’s critiques of their splendor, their relevance, their power. I would expect this from a Fox News commentator, for whom ignorance of Marxism is a prerequisite for the job, but not from a serious scholar of Marxism, one who has read and read on this subject, one who understands just how diverse the Marxist tradition has become, one who is informed enough to recognize the validity lurking beneath Marx’s 150 year old critique. I wonder if Sowell would blame Martin Luther for the Salem Witch Trials (which took place 150 years after Luther’s death), and therefore condemn the entire Protestant worldview? Or perhaps we must blame Jesus himself for those crimes, since it was ultimately his message that Luther was interpreting. Yes Jesus is directly responsible for the witch trials! This is fun game to play, but it’s not serious scholarship. It would be difficult to take seriously a thesis that argued the teachings of Jesus are proven false (or irrelevant or dangerous) by the simple fact that many have misinterpreted or warped them. This is essentially Sowell’s thesis about Marx. Frankly I expected better from a writer/thinker of Sowell’s caliber.

The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

I enjoyed this one much more than I expected. It seems that when Marx and Engels set out to write this book, they intended it to be a polemic against a certain group of German philosophers who have long since been forgotten by all but a few experts in 19th century German philosophy. So I figured this work would probably be largely irrelevant, or at least lacking in modern applicability. But as I read the Cambridge Companion to Marx, this book kept coming up! Clearly it made an impact on a variety of scholars, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Turns out the real core of this book is something much deeper and more interesting than a pure polemic: it’s a clear and eloquent exposition of Marx’s and Engels’ philosophy of history, otherwise known as dialectical materialism. Here is my brief attempt to sum it up: on the one hand, our culture, philosophy, ethics, state, and system of laws are all results of the intermingling of the economic and material conditions we find ourselves in during our particular historical epoch, the ever-changing state of technology, and the on-going and never-ending struggle between the different classes (workers vs. bosses, peasants vs. nobles, slave vs. slave owner, etc.). But at the same time those same contingent forces (culture, philosophy, ethics, state, laws) turn around and impact the very economic systems and material forces that created them in the first place. So material forces are ultimately the true drivers of history, but the structures those material forces create come back to alter the material forces themselves. There is a perpetual conflict between causes and effects, and each of these conflicts shapes the world around us. Example: the proliferation of the internet alters the economic landscape, generating entirely new sectors, such as same day delivery of groceries. These new sectors come into conflict with older ones (brick-and-mortar book stores). The daily lives of workers are shaped and altered by these changes (employees at bookstores lose their positions, and become drivers for Amazon Prime). These changes to workers lives cause conflicts with the pre-existing culture (the previous generation, who lived a different way, struggles to comprehend the changes happening around them), and eventually the culture itself changes, taking on the role of perpetuating and justifying the system as it exists today. In time these cultural and economic changes spawn further technological advancement and cultural change, which impacts the economic system, and on and on in a never ending dance. This is the dialectic at work: endless processes of conflict and contradiction spawning new outcomes that then generate new contradictions. But Marx’s dialectic is materialist, because it imagines economic forces and class struggle to be the primary drivers of events. These material causes are then shaped by the forces they unleash, but ultimately the material forces are the the root causes and main shapers of all the other forces. So ideas do not create revolutions; material forces do – in fact material forces create those very ideas that often get the credit for the revolution. This vision of history offers a different way to understand why human events occur the way they do. These ideas can be quite challenging for those of us who live in cultures that place so much emphasis on groundbreaking ideas (freedom, liberty, equality, democracy), and imagine that those ideas are true drivers of history. In reality, as Marx argues, the liberty-obsessed ideology that we witness in America is just an off-shoot of the economic forces already at work; in fact our liberty-obsessed culture is a defense mechanism that keeps the economic status quo in place. Much more to explore on this front, but it’s fun to feel my mind expanding.

April – June 2022

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One by Karl Marx

I’ve officially started my long-awaited deep dive into Marxism, and what better way to begin than with Marx’s magnum opus, the work he spent 20 years researching: Capital. This is a truly remarkable work, unlike anything I have ever read. All at once it is a deep analysis and critique of capitalism, a scathing polemic directed against “bourgeois” economists who fail to see the underlying exploitation that drives capitalism, a journalistic expose of the disgusting treatment of the working class by capitalists, and a philosophical treatise that melds the dialectical tools of Hegel to economic/historical analysis. Marx puts on a very impressive performance here. He creates an entirely unique and complete worldview – a timeless lens which can be applied to capitalism/economics/the state/history – and manages to encapsulate it in one book. There isn’t much talk of solutions to the problems Marx reveals, but this book isn’t about solutions; it’s about critique. And I have never read a more well-thought out, deeply researched, and expertly reasoned critique of capitalism in my life. Engels once said that nobody saw as far or understood as much as Marx did, and I am inclined to agree. Though this is a difficult work to get through, I understand why it is considered Marx’s masterpiece, and why Marx is hailed as one of those few timeless geniuses who understood and revealed what nobody else had seen up to that point. Now so many of us take Marx’s reasoning for granted, which is a testament to the power of his analysis.

A Companion to Marx’s Capital by David Harvey

This was the perfect book to pair with Capital. Harvey brings a unique perspective as a Marxist geographer who has spent decades teaching a course on Capital. Even though on the surface Capital is an economic text, Harvey reveals the deep philosophical current that provides the foundation for the entire book: the plethora of contradictions contained within our capitalist system. Labor nowadays is social (for example: all the laborers in a factory work together to create products), yet the fruits of the labor are privately owned (owned by the laborers). Production is in a state of anarchy, governed only by the laws of supply/demand/competition, yet within a factory production is under the strict control of the capitalist. The vast majority of people own nothing but their own labor power, yet they are forced to give much of it away for free in the form of surplus value, which is extracted and owned by the capitalist. Capitalists make all their profits from this extracted labor, which they then use to generate more capital (factories, labor, machines, etc) so that they can produce even more wealth for themselves, at the expense of the majority. In the end the capitalists generate more wealth than a human could ever actually spend, so the wealth becomes simply a means for generating more capital, and therefore more wealth, until the gap between rich and poor becomes an unbridgeable chasm. A country’s economy (i.e. capitalists, stock market, property market, etc.) might be thriving, while the vast majority remain impoverished, without equity, possessing only their labor power which they are forced to sell so that capitalists can generate more profit. These examples of contradictions demonstrate why there is a constant struggle between laborers and the owners of capital. Harvey lays this all out perfectly, and shows how Marx was a master of the dialectic style (a philosophy that focuses on the unending contradictions in life, and the unexpected results that these contradictions generate).

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

In every way that Capital is careful and detail-oriented, in every way that Capital uses a fine tooth comb to examine issues from every possible angle and probe each question to reveal its hidden secrets, in every way that Capital thinks things through to the very core so that no stone is left unturned and no logical fallacy is left in tact, the Communist Manifesto takes the very opposite approach in all of these regards. This is a political work through and through, not a deep work of philosophy. This work is intended for mass consumption and not for someone who wants every angle examined. Marx here uses a mallet instead of a scalpel, and makes grand, sweeping prophesies that are not to be found in his masterwork, Capital. For that reason, the Manifesto has had a much broader appeal than Capital, and remains a powerful call to action for all oppressed people, while Capital is a slow and monotonous climb to the heights of philosophical discovery. The Manifesto predicts unprecedented social and economic change, massive movements of whole populations, the abolition of the ruling class and capitalistic freedom of exchange, and the overthrow of exploitation if only the workers can unite. It’s a stirring read, though it lacks almost entirely the scientific basis that Capital carefully constructs, and contains none of the scrupulous detail Marx is so careful to include in his critique of capitalism (details, for example, about what exactly these unprecedented changes will look like in real life, or how they can be accomplished). It seems to reveal (to me anyhow) how Marx’s critique of capitalism rose to the level of true science, whereas his predictions about how capitalism will be abolished remained undeveloped, overly general, full of unexamined assumptions – in other words the very opposite of what I admire about his work in Capital.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels

Engels wrote this book with the intention of distilling the main arguments contained in Marx’s Capital down to a short and clear book for mass audiences. In that regard, it does an decent enough job. Engels does add some bits of his own, which I find pretty interesting, though I do not necessarily agree with his conclusions. He starts by analyzing the beliefs of some of the socialist thinkers and activists who pre-dated Marx, and concludes that their brand of proto-socialism was “utopian” because it lacked a scientific basis for analyzing capitalism (Marx would create this scientific basis by publishing Capital). Engels goes on to argue that his and Marx’s brand of socialism is not utopian because they have successfully unlocked and revealed the real mechanisms that drive capitalistic oppression. This is all fine and true, but then Engels goes on to lay out a very unscientific and overly general prophesy about how the demise of capitalism and the advent of communist society is inevitable. He predicts that ruling classes, capital, and the state itself will become superfluous and will fall away over the course of the communist revolution. He believes that the proletariat can unite to such a degree that they can finally free mankind from exploitation, and make man a master of his own history and destiny by eliminating competition and instituting a planned economy. I find this prediction to be thoroughly utopian because it assumes that the revolutionaries who establish this communist society – the planners who run the new command economy, the spearheads of the revolution who are now placed in a position to organize and design a new system – will not themselves simply become the new ruling class. Won’t, under communism, the vast majority of people still need to take orders from these planners, if a command economy is to exist? Engels assumes that humans are capable of functioning (and running large-scale economies) without automatically developing into ruling class and exploited class, but how can a planned economy exist without planners? And if these planners are ever tempted to organize production in self-serving ways, or allocate resources in such a way as to benefit courtiers, or if they use their positions as planners to consolidate power, a ruling class will organically develop. The notion that we can eliminate exploitation by instituting a world-wide planned economy is something that is utterly untestable, has never been observed, and seems not to match what we know about humans (power corrupts us). Therefore this prediction appears to be unscientific, though Engels claims that his prophesy is the result of scientific socialism. Once again, Marx’s critique of capitalism appears to be scientific – testable, backed by tons of data, applicable across the globe and throughout time – but the predictions about what will follow capitalism are nothing more than hunches dressed up as science. I find that sort of pseudoscience to be very weak, despite my hatred for exploitative capitalism. I am very eager to find a socialist writer who spends the majority of his time focusing on solutions instead of critique. If someone can take the same level of rigor, research, deep thought, philosophical excellence that Marx used in Capital, and apply it toward creating a real-life workable solution to capitalism (instead of easily digestible platitudes and grand utopian promises), we may actually get somewhere with all this. Without that piece, we are left with only a critique; we can describe in incredible detail the prison in which we are trapped (down to the very atoms that comprise the bars of our cell), without getting any closer to understanding how to escape the prison.

March 2022

Great Courses: The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas by Lawrence Cahoone

This course is a guided tour through a universe of ideas. The guide is omniscient: he understands and knows intimately every bud on every twig on every branch on the tree of philosophical knowledge. He takes in his hands the countless competing worldviews and myriad conceptions of justice of so many illustrious scholars across so many years and spins them into a web. The web doubles and redoubles back on itself, and spreads out in new directions, and those new branches double back and connect with the old, and soon it resembles a galaxy. Is there some ultimate truth that guides all the twisting strands of that galaxy, that unites them? The way the ideas all connect and intersect and branch off into new ideas is a very visually pleasing image in my mind. It lights up my pattern recognition software, and soon where I once only saw scattered ideas I now see a superstructure, a framework. But is that superstructure real, or is the galaxy itself simply an optical illusion? Perhaps there is no superstructure, and what appears to my human eyes to be a solid thing is instead nothing more than a collection of bright stars, many light years away from one another, all alone in the darkness of space. Or I should say a collection of bright minds, each striving in its own way to understand how exactly we are all supposed to cope with the fact that we are all alone, clinging to this rock while we fly around our little sun, surrounded on all sides by endless darkness and cold. Then again, the very fact that we all share this sense of mortality does indeed provide at least one thread, one hint of a superstructure, one bond that unites me with every other human, and even every other living creature. So I guess I won’t be so quick to dismiss the notion that the superstructure could be real, that there may be some over-arching shape and unity to the vast history of political thought, or even some ideas that may one day unite us all. If there is one truth or guiding idea that could accomplish such a task, it would have to be based on something we all have in common, so mortality is at least a good place to start, if one is trying to puzzle out worldviews and conceptions of justice that can bring humankind together. But I digress. This was an excellent course, highly recommend!

February 2022

India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy: Guha, Ramachandra: 9780060958589: Amazon.com: Books
Here is what this book taught me: in a truly diverse and pluralistic land, it is damn near impossible to get everyone (or even a strong majority) on the same page. People can derive their values and sense of community from their class status, religion, business, geographic region, ethnicity, tribe, party, hobbies, philosophy, etc., and these various avenues can create contradictory and overlapping sets of values, often within the same person. A poor Pathan farmer living on the border of Pakistan might identify as a member of the lower class and push for Marxist policies and a strong centralized government that can institute sweeping land reform, while simultaneously identifying as a tribal Pathan who wishes to push back against the centralized Indian government that is encroaching on tribal sovereignty (even if this same government might provide the sought-after land reform); meanwhile the farmer also identifies as a Muslim, which will come with a whole host of other crucial values and community ties. The possible combinations are endless! In a country with a billion people, the electorate becomes thoroughly unmanageable, and the enormous diversity of belief adds an unfathomable layer of complexity to every political/economic/social/philosophical issue. Any time I hear someone claim to have an all-encompassing theory of The Good, or a theory of humanity that all humans across the world and across cultures can rally behind, or one single avenue of values that is objectively the most important above all the others (for example that all people should identify above all else with their class status), I find myself thinking that the person making these claims has not looked hard enough at the real diversity that exists on this planet, and the myriad ways people can construct their belief systems and build their communities and their senses of self. In other words, theories like that (with that level of totality) just don’t seem feasible to me. That’s what I learned from this wonderful book.

January 2022

Great Courses: A Historian Goes to the Movies: Ancient Rome by Gregory S. Aldrete

Amazon.com: A Historian Goes to the Movies: Ancient Rome : Movies & TV
A very light topic and a fun escape! It gave me a good excuse to finally watch Cleopatra. I’ve listened to a few of this professor’s courses, and he always does a great job. I wouldn’t say this particular course teaches a whole lot about Roman history, but it is a lot of fun! I’ve been curious about whether Gladiator was historically accurate, ever since I first saw it in the theaters when I was 15. Personally, I have been shying away from straight-up history lately (recently I’ve turned more toward philosophy instead), so this course was a way for me to dip my toe back in the “historical” waters, without going very deep at all.

2021 Book Reviews

2020 Book Reviews

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First reading of Plato’s Apology: philosophy as a pious act

The great philosopher Socrates, on trial for his life, faces the jury and prepares to defend himself. An array of trumped-up charges have been leveled against him, namely impiety, corrupting the youth, and turning “the weaker argument into the stronger.” The entire affair is a thinly-veiled attempt to silence a steadfast and incorruptible voice that has been speaking truth to power for decades. The accusers are powerful and well-connected Athenians who eagerly hope he will be exiled (or, fingers-crossed, put to death). The nature of the charges are irrelevant; the point is to destroy Socrates by whichever means are available. A trial seems a most expedient tactic.

It’s no big surprise that Socrates is on the receiving end of this indictment: he has spent his whole career making enemies of powerful citizens with his incessant habit of publicly cross-examining anyone who considers himself to be wise or moral. Socrates openly acknowledges as much: “The effect of this questioning, fellow Athenians, was to earn me much hostility of a very vexing and trying sort, which has given rise to numerous slanders.”1 The more citizens he interrogated – whether they be politicians, priests, lawyers, poets, or craftsmen – the more he discovered ignorance masquerading as wisdom, and also (to his “dismay and alarm”) the more enemies he made. Now during the great political upheavals taking place in the aftermath of Athens’ devastating and humiliating defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, the enemies of Socrates see a golden opportunity to finally take their revenge on the annoying old trouble maker, by painting him not just as a public nuisance but as a scapegoat for all of Athens’ woes.

Socrates’ main defense against the accusation of impiety is that the gods themselves commanded him to do as he had always done: to perform philosophy, cross-examine any who claimed to be wise, and point out flawed logic wherever he encountered it. Socrates explains: “Why then, you may ask, do some people enjoy spending so much time in my company?… My listeners enjoy the examination of those who think themselves wise but are not, since the process is not unamusing. But for me, I must tell you, it is a mission which I have been bidden to undertake by the god, through oracles and dreams, and through every means whereby a divine injunction to perform any task has ever been laid upon a human being.” This was a divine command, so therefore Socrates must continue these activities at all cost, even if in the process he makes enemies out of the most powerful and influential Athenians – even if in the end it costs him his very life.

By following this command, Socrates is in fact demonstrating every day his devotion to the gods, proving his piety through the very actions for which he has been condemned: practicing philosophy, teaching, and questioning the powerful. Socrates makes it clear that he will continue to follow this command even unto death, that the gods must be obeyed. When he ponders aloud what his reaction would be if the jury decided to free him on the condition that he give up philosophy forever, he declares, “I have the greatest fondness and affection for you, fellow Athenians, but I will obey my god rather than you; and so long as I draw breath and am able, I shall never give up practicing philosophy… and you may let me go or not, as you please, because there is no chance of my acting otherwise, even if I have to die many times over.” Socrates is willing to sacrifice his very life in order to pursue what he perceives to be a religious agenda, an order from heaven to practice philosophy. Following this logic, he should not only be set free but honored, because clearly he is one of Athens’ most pious men.

Of course this defense doesn’t work against the jury, who ultimately condemn him to die by poisoning. When his sentence is proclaimed, Socrates makes it abundantly clear that he has no regrets, that he is not scared, and that he will never stop. After all, why should a death sentence scare an old man, when death is already close at hand? And why should the condemnation by a group of small-minded individuals bother a man who perpetually seeks truth and wisdom at the behest of the gods themselves? The unending search for truth and the endeavor to truly understand our world (and make others understand too) are divine imperatives, and Socrates will be blessed for having dedicated his life to these efforts. In the end, philosophy is not just a noble profession, but a mission worth dying for, and one that is sanctioned and encouraged by the gods.

And thus in this light, the book reads like prophesy. The gods order Socrates never to stop questioning the powerful, never to stop teaching, even if the authorities put him to death. This execution (which Socrates could have easily avoided by simply agreeing to stop being a gadfly, or by accepting exile) stunned and mortified his disciples, especially his brilliant student Plato. Plato was so affected by the death of Socrates, that he wrote a series of dialogues wherein Socrates takes the starring role, representing the ultimate seeker of truth and wisdom, the figure who exists to unmask the liars and those who fool themselves, the teacher who shows us a whole new way of understanding reality: through the lens of the Socratic method. Plato’s vision of the legendary Socrates (which is the Socrates we encounter in this very book) went on to inspire and guide philosophers across the globe for the next 2,500 years, making Socrates one of the most influential men who has ever lived. In this way the prophesy of the gods was fulfilled, since only through his unjust execution could Socrates ultimately spread his crucial message to such a wide audience that transcends time itself.

Would we even know the name of Socrates, if he had agreed to stop teaching to spare his own life? Would Plato have turned him into a symbol of truth and justice if he hadn’t followed the gods’ orders? Would the message that philosophy and the search for truth are worth dying for have taken root among the countless thinkers who have dedicated their lives to that endeavor, if Socrates had chosen not to martyr himself for the cause? The gods seemed to know from the start that the only way to teach mankind that we must never abandon the search for truth was to ask a man to lay his own life on the line for that very purpose. Only through that example could the lesson be brought home, and a whole world of philosophers be inspired enough to dedicate their lives to that same effort. That’s the prophesy that Socrates, who seems to me to be more pious than any of his accusers, fulfilled.

Notes

  1. I use the translation of Apology by David Gallop, appearing in John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Martin Fischer, eds., Introduction to Philosophy : Classical and Contemporary Readings, Seventh Edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).