Hi all,
Today is the official publication date of Defending Socrates: Political Philosophy Before the Tribunal of Science, so I thought I’d send around a brief preview, with links to a longer preview and to purchase the book on Amazon.
Below, you’ll find the first part of the “Overture,” which attempts to reconstruct and examine the early modern “trial” of Socrates; the second part (available in the link below) offers a sketch of the reading of Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman elaborated in the book’s four main chapters.
As the book’s title and this characterization suggest, I read these dialogues as the scientific corollary to Socrates’ political trial. And though the two trials are deeply connected, I do my best to treat the scientific trial in isolation.
Read the whole “Overture” with other front matter, or buy the book on Amazon.
Cheers,
Alex
OVERTURE
In what sense is Socrates in need of defense? And political philosophy, the activity with whose discovery he is so often credited? Since the inception of the modern scientific project, whose explicit goal has been the mastery and possession of nature, we have grown accustomed to relying on human ingenuity and power much more than ever before, thereby raising man to new heights. Yet we have been able to do so only by virtue of a lowering of our self-understanding. Turning away from man’s highest ambitions, of noble self-sacrifice or the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, we have harnessed instead our fear and greed, so that scientifically and politically our shared purpose has been the invention of such technologies as will allow us to live longer and more comfortable lives. This reduction of human longing, and the good at which it aims, had the political effect of delegitimizing traditional hierarchies and the scientific effect of prioritizing, over other considerations, the material nature of things—that is, our bodies and the physical things around us. Common to both is the democratization of truth. We deem most true whatever alleviates our common physical fragility or increases our leisure, and does so demonstrably, that is, by an equally accessible and certain use of reason. To be sure, this democratization has had its benefits. It has arguably put at our disposal a greater proportion of our now longer lives. Yet it has done so at the price of making us skeptical that there are any standards, beyond individual whim, by which to judge whether that leisure is well-used and our lives well-lived. Every life, including the good life, is deemed idiosyncratic. With the good so conceived, political philosophy came to be tolerated, a great achievement no doubt, but only by being much misunderstood, even maligned. All higher claims to the work of our hands and our minds came under increasing suspicion, with the way of life exemplified by Socrates deemed most foolish of all. Athens may have put Socrates to death, but in so doing she allowed Plato to consecrate him as a martyr. It is rather we moderns who have sought, whether we know it or not, to nail the coffin shut.
We have achieved this closure on Socrates, and the way of life he modeled, only by virtue of a second trial conducted against him, in the name of science, nearly half a millennium ago. Though he was tried in absentia, still by nearly all witness accounts Socrates lost. Much like their Athenian counterparts, his modern accusers leveled two charges against him, which we can reconstruct along the following lines.
In the first place, they claimed, the Socratic method is simply unscientific—in truth, no method at all. Socrates always begins from ordinary opinion. Ordinary opinion, however, is based on ordinary experience, which relies in turn on the evidence of the senses. Yet doesn’t ordinary experience also teach us that the senses are not to be trusted? The opinions with which Socrates begins are, therefore, hardly worth even thinking about, scientifically speaking. They are instead to be rejected out of hand. The proper starting point is rathera deep skepticism about our senses. We must aspire, that is, to the utmost care in formulating our opinions about the world by developing aids to render the senses more precise. We would thereby avoid the characteristic error of Socrates’ use of inductive reasoning, which is at best sloppy and at worst sophistic. Reliable inductive reasoning proceeds on the basis of a comprehensive set of data and by means of a precise, mathematical method. Socrates, however, tended to argue on the basis of a single example, or at best of a few examples, and by means of a metaphorical application to the matter at hand, and a dubiously selective one at that. In short, Socratic argumentation is ad hominem when deductive and specious when inductive. Never is it really scientific.
In the second place, these accusers continued, Socratic political philosophy is unscientific not simply in method but also in subject matter. Political philosophy is concerned with ends, with categories like the good, the just, and the beautiful or noble, as well as their opposites, but about such things there can be no knowledge, only vague and varied opinions. The good, we suspect, is not subject to scientific demonstration but a matter of individual fancy, a subjective vision. We must therefore avoid Socrates’ mistake of trying to understand such categories, that is, of trying to determine the good life or the good in truth. What we can know are rather those material objects we make by craft or artifice, due to the mechanical necessity guiding their operation. If we wish to understand natural beings, therefore, we need only approach them as machines. We must focus simply on the mechanical necessity exhibited in nature, regardless of how we might use it for our own good. That is, we must seek the truth in abstraction from the good. At least thereby we will know our bodies and the things around us in such a way as to allow us to perfect the medical and technical arts. And, in any case, don’t all of us readily admit that the power of these arts, and the health and comfort that issue therefrom, are self-evidently good?
Finding Socrates guilty on both charges, philosophy embarked on its attempt to mature into a science, that is, a mathematically precise natural science. This shift was at first small, in that it was confined to a few individuals with a special devotion to this emerging project. Yet its consequences have proven to be seismic. As the natural sciences advanced, their power to grant us health and ease of life grew indisputable. This had an inevitable charm on Europe, as sectarian war had left the philanthropic longings of much of its Christian population without an outlet. Charity became scientific, and so of this world. Scientific innovation, in turn, became a valuable commodity, by which enterprising individuals might be able to enrich themselves. It was inevitable, therefore, that the modern hybrid of liberal economics and scientific innovation would emerge. Emerge it did, and more: it came to dominate the West and, in time, the world. The contemporary form of this development is a technologically advanced and deeply interconnected world economy, in which nearly every worker contributes either directly, as scientist or inventor, or indirectly, in support of them, to the project of mastering nature for the sake of easing our ills and magnifying our comforts. To maintain this massive political and economic regime, workers have been necessary, that is, workers educated to the point of extreme specialization and sophistication in the sciences. Consequently, our educational institutions have grown larger and more lop-sided toward the so-called STEM fields—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. To persuade students down this path, the public rhetoric surrounding education has placed much emphasis on the usefulness of one’s degree, on earning potential and job stability, and on the outsized demand for certain specializations, in addition to the honor accruing to the discipline required and the generosity in sharing the fruits thereof. This shift has therefore had an inevitable effect on what it means to be well-educated, as interest in the Humanities has steadily dwindled among students, to the point of near extinction.
We should hardly be surprised at the decay of interest in those disciplines treating the human things, following as it necessarily does from our dismissal or tabling of the question of the good life, the central question of Socratic political philosophy. This decay is but Socrates’ second death, that of the tradition he initiated. Of course, we ought not lament when the sun finally sets on a long error. Why even call this evening respite a “decay”? Didn’t Socrates lose his scientific trial? What is this tradition, really, but a parade of deformed offspring, sired by unscientific men unjustly claiming to know the unknowable? All these books on the good, and from them no measurable good. We should lament much more if they continue to be read. How much good, by comparison, has come from modern natural science and technology? Are we not today immeasurably happier than our forebears? Do we not, at any rate, live longer and in greater comfort? The history of philosophy may be, as Alfred North Whitehead famously declared, a series of footnotes to Plato; but if, for the scientist today, philosophy is dead, then Plato is a footnote in the history of science and, what’s more, a non-entity for the present.
It is here, on the question of happiness, that the case against Socrates grows suspect. The founders of modernity set their sights on satisfying what is most common in human nature, our material needs. Toward that end, they focused on the operation of our bodies and the bodies of the things around us, the mechanics of a thing rather than its end or good, that is, the ultimate purpose guiding its organization and operation. This abstraction has cut two ways. It has, of course, unleashed immense powers to preserve and delight us, to keep us alive and keep us pleased. But it has done so only by defaming those aforementioned higher claims to our time and energy. And it is for this reason that the conveniences of modern life have proven unsatisfying to our deeper longings. Is it really a matter of chance that, by organizing politics and education around mere preservation and convenience, we have left ourselves unfulfilled? Whereas the ancient philosophers spoke of love, wonder, and happiness, our philosophers speak of boredom, anxiety, and despair. But what else should we expect from tabling the question of the highest good so as to ascertain the low but true, the basest truth and it alone? If the great experiment of modernity has taught us anything about the human good, it is that we want our place in the whole to consist of something more than mere material satisfaction.
But so what if we want more? Does wanting alone suffice to demonstrate the possibility of what’s wanted? Yes, we have abstracted from the good in order to approach the true and, yes, this has left human life unmoored and unsatisfying. But might this not be the hard truth at the end of history, of this “highway of despair,” the irrationality at the end of reason, namely, that we are driven by ambitions that reality cannot satisfy? Is it not still the case that philosophy has matured into a science and that this science has discovered the truth, in all its stubborn ugliness? This line of reasoning, advanced by Socrates’ latest accusers, is not without its merits, but it differs from the line advanced by his earlier accusers. Paradoxically, they abstracted from the good for the sake of the good, that is, for the sake of the material goods provided by artifice. The hope then was that most might find happiness in a life of comfortable contentment, while the ambitious few might seek honor and glory in scientific discovery. Men have refused, however, to be so mollified. The initial project is thus open to suspicion on the grounds of the question of the good life, the very question that project’s proponents claimed to have abstracted from yet quietly invoked. Our descent into nihilism may be a creature of modernity and not borne of an unassailable insight into the human condition as such. Socrates’ conviction before the tribunal of science may therefore be owed to his absence, to his being tried in absentia—to the fact that he could not ask questions of his accusers. Regardless, his trial was poorly adjudicated; he deserves to have his case reheard. If justice toward Socrates does not move us here, then the possibility of living happily in the modern world certainly should.—