rereading a book called “What is ancient Philosophy” by
Pierre Hadot……… early in the book, he writes about Socrates………
and what exactly does Socrates offer us?
Socrates himself, says that he know nothing and he says that quite often and that
he has nothing to teach others…
so, what is the point of Socrates?
what does he bring to the table for us moderns?
he has no wisdom, no ideology, he knows nothing…
what can we learn from that?
he says the reason for his search was because the oracle of Delphi said
that he was the wisest man in Athens……….well, he knew this wasn’t true,
he said he knew nothing… so, how could the oracle claim that he was the wisest
man in Athens, when he had no knowledge or anything to teach…………
so he went about Athens trying to find a wiser man, thus proving the oracle wrong,
but everyone he met believed that they had wisdom, knowledge and after talking to
them, he discovered that they really didn’t know anything more then he did…
so, in his questions, he lead the person he was questioning to the understanding
that they didn’t know anything… that they too had no knowledge or wisdom……
now, this brings us to an interesting point, what actually happened?
the person being questioned thought they had knowledge but what they really had
was their myths, biases, prejudices and superstitions and that passed for,
wisdom or knowledge… but it isn’t wisdom or knowledge if it is simply mindless
myths and prejudices passed down from generation to generation to generation…
without being examined………… so what the person being questioned thought was
wisdom and knowledge, was actually just unexamined myths and biases and ism’s
and prejudices of their childhood……………. Socrates brought the person in question
to the point where they were forced to have a Zen moment… recall that a Zen moment
is like where the mountains dance and the sea waves foam and wildly churned
and the rivers overflow their banks… and after the Zen moment
the mountains return to calm and the sea becomes tranquil and the rivers
return to their banks………Socrates forces people to realize that didn’t
have wisdom or knowledge and when people discover that, they
become dislocated from what is solid in their lives…………
what we believe about what we know is part of the glue that keeps
us attached to the earth…if we believe we have knowledge about
the reality we exist in, that gives us trust and faith
in our universe…
if we no longer have faith or trust in our knowledge, then we are shaken
up, we have our Zen moment………….and this is the point that Socrates was
driving to with people, to force them to have their Zen moment that
to rethink or reevaluate what they believe in or what they think is true………
they must overcome their belief that that they have knowledge and wisdom
and to the point where they can now find real knowledge, real wisdom
about what is the goal of people…………………facts are not knowledge, facts
are not wisdom, understanding the values, that is real wisdom… knowing what is
worth living for…for Socrates, values like justice, duty, moral purity, they were
the values worth living for, worth dying for…
but is Socrates right about those specific values being the values worth living
for, worth dying for?
or are there other values worth understanding and worth living for, worth
dying for?
that is the question, isn’t it?
and that is philosophy………
not necessarily knowing that a specific philosopher believed
in some certain thing like “eternal forms”
but what values are values worth living for, worth dying for?
not facts, but values…………
it is not a question of having knowledge or being wise, but of understanding values.
Kropotkin