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November 20 - December 13, 2024
According to Plato, for instance, we’re told that Socrates himself would have told us:
If you take my advice, you’ll care little for Socrates but much more for the truth. If you think I’m speaking the truth, agree with me; but if not, resist me with every argument you can muster.
“I CANNOT SAY FOR CERTAIN, fellow Athenians, how you have been affected by the words of my accusers. What I do know is that they spoke so persuasively they almost made me forget who I was.”
Wisdom cannot be taught, but, perhaps, it can be learned—especially if we make the effort to examine our own lives and the assumptions on which our actions are based.
Philosophy for Socrates was, first and foremost, a process for improving ourselves by critically examining our deepest values.
He believed that the purpose of life itself is to converse daily about virtue, or the improvement of our own character, because “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Judge not, ye men of Corinth,” Aesop cried, “Of virtue as the jury-courts decide.”25
“Virtue” is the conventional translation for the Greek word arete. Modern academics tend to prefer “excellence,” as arete refers to those qualities that make something exceptionally good.
Someone who believes that he is loved mainly for his physical appearance will cultivate his looks, even to the neglect of his soul. One who knows that he is loved for his soul will cultivate that above all else, and he will become a better person.
THE PRACTICE OF THE GOLDEN RULE
ASPASIA’S POINT WAS THAT BY learning to appreciate the potential for wisdom and goodness exhibited by others, we pave the way to a broader understanding of our own highest good.
Socrates was constantly talking with his friends about virtue because he found that their efforts helped him to perceive it more clearly. We come to know ourselves best, he believed, in conversation with others about the most important things in life.
Socrates employs many different strategies to expose the contradictory nature of our beliefs. One of his simplest and most important methods is often overlooked. In the dialogues of both Plato and Xenophon, he uses a version of what modern cognitive therapists call the “double standards” strategy. This entails drawing your attention to the fact that you are applying a different standard to someone else than to yourself—whether to their character, beliefs, or actions.
Socrates therefore began by asking Critobulus what sort of person a good friend is. They agreed on the following examples: He is no slave to eating and drinking, lust, sleep, or idleness, because otherwise he would be unable to do what is right for either himself or his friends. He is no spendthrift, always begging his companions for help, borrowing from them without paying them back or growing resentful if they refuse to lend him anything. He is not a greedy businessman, trying to make money by exploiting his acquaintances, without doing anything for them in return. He is not so obsessed with
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Even if he is free from all such faults, they agreed that if he accepts goodwill without reciprocating it, he is not a true friend. I call this Socrates’s strategy of “negative definition.”
Vices can be easier to identify than virtues, but once you know the bad you should, by figuring out its opposite, be able to define the good.
He should, in other words, treat his prospective friends as he wishes to be treated by them. The qualities he admires in a friend are ones he should seek to cultivate in his own character.
When patients consider other people’s beliefs, they often get psychological distance from their own dysfunctional beliefs. They begin to see an inconsistency between what they believe is true or right for themselves and what they more objectively believe is true about other people.
