Interesting Take on Socrates' Last Words

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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When I studied philosophy in college the Nietzschean interpretation of his last words was pretty much the orthodox one. I like the interpretation by the author of this article better. Whether or not it’s truly what Socrates intended, who knows? But it speaks more to me about our own times and the warlike country I live in.

My sense is that those currently in power in the government are more concerned with peace and it seems like many of the Republicans are more afraid of war and therefore want to prepare for one, even though we really have no natural enemies in the world. I hope the Republicans don’t win. I don’t think fear and paranoia are going to serve us well.

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I don’t know.we all are trying to grow into objectivists, at least appear as one, yet fear is born out of projecting that sense, and accordingly there may be some merit in holding that an internal struggle counterbalances a need to export struggle unto recognizably differently bounded other sources who by virtue of those differences can afford to be blindsided, as a form of insulation against violating societal bounderies.

By becoming sensitive to such felt boundaries, the Democrats are vastly different from the Republicans whose supposed platform promotes rigid and retroactive abstracted relationships, disengaging patterns of social networks generated since at least the early formation of what used to be called the NewLeft,

‘Open -Society and their enemies is/was a seminal work which brought forward some of the continuations and disruptions that the two party system has to bear as an aggregate equation .

Could one say , Childress, that a trickle down Reganamc system could work given a time span of a decade, or would you concede that may be another generation would be needed for a near exact simulation of such recollection?

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Not sure what you mean by “boundaries.” or “retroactive abstracted relationships.” Reganomics was more or less military Keynesianism. I’d rather see money invested in infrastructure and other things beneficial to our society. Weapons can only be used in war. We’ve been at war for 20 years and it’s left our country impoverished to the point where we’re a 2nd world country now.

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No natural enemies in the world? :face_with_raised_eyebrow: What about Russia, Iran (including Hamaz and Hezbollah), IS, North Korea and China—not to mention some bad actors in South America and Africa—? Or doesn’t it count if it’s indirect (thus far), if they’re only the enemies of your friends or allies?.. Still, a Republican win would be far worse in that respect, too.

Anyway, Socrates was a philosopher, not some social justice warrior. As perhaps the most devout of academic Nietzscheans wrote,

“Nietzsche says that his ‘ridiculous and terrible “last word” means, for those who have ears, “O Crito, life is a disease!” Is it possible!.. Socrates, Socrates suffered from life!’ Nietzsche adds the most condemning word in his vocabulary: ‘Did a Socrates really need revenge?… O friends! We must overcome even the Greeks!’ I would like to think that Nietzsche thought that it was not possible, that his 1881 denunciation of the ‘one turning point and vortex of so-called world history’ is part of his effort to undermine and destroy the prevailing Platonism—one main fragment of Nietzsche’s killing all 108 suitors in order to found a new spiritual order. But whether Nietzsche can be spared his condemnation of Socrates in that way or not, Socrates’ last words share the feature of all his public words: they are Odyssean; with an exoteric ring of edifying piety, they convey the esoteric and deadly content of philosophy. Crito and the pious others express their gratitude to Asclepius in the fitting Greek way, Socrates does that too while implying gratitude for life as it is, life that peaks with philosophy’s effort to understand life, always mortal life.” (Laurence Lampert, How Socrates Became Socrates, page 86.)

And as for myself, I’d say it’s both… After all, life is a disease, but also the opposite; and, as Heraclitus said,

“Sickness makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; weariness, rest.” (Heraclitus, fragment 111, my translation.)

This is the reason Zarathustra can sing that “pain is also a joy” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part IV, “The Noctambulist’s Song”): enjoyment (Gk. hēdonē, lit. “sweetness”) without suffering is also a kind of suffering: for it’s suffering and suffering alone that makes enjoyment good. So it’s the pain, or rather the joylessness, of joy without pain that makes pain also a joy.

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Fair enough.

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I got that wrong, I am sorry, Childress, it is or it was Ronald Regan’s implication, that in account of his insistence on his economic policy of the use of the Capital’ , social benefits would be greater than under the socialist/communist system.

My own intention is not equivocally this system or that, but is crosswired, alongside those, who have admittedly become so polarized now, more so than at any other time, with resounding opinions they exclaim of the suspiciousness inherent in the media’ take on what is fake or real in journalism.

I didn’t pull this out of the hat, Reagan was said to remind Gorbachev that the answer is in the pudding, that Communism fell and the economic Capital still stands. He reminded Gorbachev that his mansion is as luxurious as any which can be found in any Western nation, and it may be a sign of premature thinking to assert the superiority of one system over another in the short time they were competitively tested.

The warlike athmosphere abounding during that critical time, when battles were lost, and the East/West problem had not subsided, particularly sensed by it’s historically sustained sensitivity, starting with Peter the Great’s efforts to incorporate the western part of Russia into the European fold, up to even now, when the idea of the serfdom of workers have not been satisfactorily clarified,where ‘colonialism’ remained a de-facto universal label for the utilization of production in both systems, …

The internallly bounded conflicts of singular politicians, who tried to synthesize internal , national social processes, like Kennedy, and King, … well, thhose became also experiments, that actually failed to erase the now mytthical import of their messages, so the reactive result of the formation of a. New Left failed in tandem, and so here we are like men sitting inside of a bubble with a seeming no exit sign barely visible .

This sickness , if one may call it that, has. Been misdiagnosed, it really is a state like one of human labor, where the offspring straining to come out, to evolve into a new world not understood, fearful of what’s out there,fearful of the coming of further disconnect, and that of further devolution , trying to attempt to give it a try, in this brave new world order’s demanding recollection of it’s attributes.

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Nietzsche saw lots of things through the lens of his own emo nihilism and need to be edgy. While pretending to be fighting against nihilism. I wouldn’t give his takes on something like this too much value beyond a basic level observation.

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Nietzsche and Socrates have that in common. Far less concern for truth itself where it may conflict with a more narcissistic inclination to drop edgy takes on unsuspecting people unable to realize they’re being trolled.

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I suppose it’s a good thing you realize they were both exoteric communicators, albeit in your own way… You do you!

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Why necessarily a good thing? Maybe a blend of bad, hidden above all for practical purposes, so that it can be structurally inverted, so that Narcisse could ever begin to morphe.

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Right: in itself, it’s neither a good nor a bad thing—or a blend of bad and good, like you say. But in the context of a philosophy forum, where it’s actually extremely rare to find people who (want to) know about genuine, exoteric, political philosophy, it’s a good thing—in relation to the stated purpose, philosophy.

“[T]he difficult task of philosophical pedagogy […] —the conversion to philosophy—would not be so difficult if one’s readers were already fully rational beings who could be motivated and instructed by purely rational means. In reality, one must often make artful use of the student’s irrational motives until one has succeeded in strengthening the rational ones—just as we use grades to motivate students until the hoped-for time when they come to see the inherent interest or utility of the subject matter.
Furthermore, if obscurity has so strong and irrational an effect on us, that can only be because we ourselves remain irrational. Obscurity has a way of tapping into the groundless hopes and fears that we continue to harbor within us. And the best way to purge ourselves of these may well be, not to ignore them or bury them in disdain, but precisely to stimulate them, bring them out in the open, and truly work them through. Only a person fully in touch with the irrational temptations buried within him has a chance of becoming genuinely rational. For this reason too, an effective philosophical pedagogy will not necessarily shrink from—indeed, it may positively require—an esoteric rhetoric that makes initial appeal to our irrational tendencies.” (Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, pp. 224-25.)

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Understood, precisely and clearly. Jung was pretty much alone in his work to defy analysis, where Freud was unable or fearful to go for all practical or personal reasons perhaps, so that his pedagogy may have extended from him to Freud, maybe as a signal too return to hermetic inquiry.

All this conjecture is more probably recollectable, rather than collectible between the lines. the psychologist agreed again probably with Laing and other mythologists.

The Sacratic method was certainly not directly attributable proof of whether social activism or the foundations of philosophy was on his mind when he presented his argument to prove his innoscence.

Much obliged for the rationali approach, which may now explain the onset of divergence between science and the logic which brought it foreward

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Yes, I was reminded of Jung when posting that quote. And as I wrote elsewhere on this forum last year,

‘During my adolescence […] I discovered Jung, and in my early twenties a couple of Krishnaist and Thelemic books happened upon my path, which I then read in a Jungian fashion. This way of reading could be called “proto-Straussian”, for me: reading between the lines.’

When you read between the lines in a Straussian fashion, you may find “whether social activism or the foundations of philosophy” can be a false dichotomy:

“The first, indicative part of Socrates’ sentence is in the plural, we owe, and it is natural to suppose that the friends Socrates and Crito mutually owe that debt. But the second, commanding part is also plural, and the plural you who are to pay the debt and not be careless cannot be the same as the we because it cannot include Socrates. […] Plato pays his debt and is not careless, for he ensures, as far as possible, the transmission of the teaching that Socrates himself, in part at least, received from others, from Homer through Parmenides. Plato pays his debt for the greatest of Socrates’ gifts with the greatest of all monuments, ensuring as far as possible that the death of Socrates will not be the death of philosophy.” (Laurence Lampert, How Socrates Became Socrates, pp. 83 and 85.)

In fact, Plato became a kind of social activist, a political activist:

“In what then does philosophic politics consist? In satisfying the city [state: Gk. pólis] that the philosophers are not atheists, that they do not desecrate everything sacred to the city, that they reverence what the city reverences, that they are not subversives, in short, that they are not irresponsible adventurers but good citizens and even the best of citizens. […] This defense of philosophy before the tribunal of the city was achieved by Plato with a resounding succes (Plutarch, Nicias ch. 23). […] One sometimes wonders whether it has not been too successful.” (Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, pp. 126-27.)

If anyone is responsible for the state of the world, it’s the philosopher…

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Or those who martyr them.

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Aren’t those really the same, though? Socrates, for example, could have chosen exile instead of death. Would he still have been a martyr then?

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Define “those”.

Are you saying he martyred himself because he didn’t choose exile?

Either way, exile or martyrdom, he was expelled from Athens—so those who did such were responsible for the state of Athens (for the world within his/their sphere of influence).

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I’ve been consistent with my pronouns, while you haven’t:

“If anyone is responsible for the state of the world, it’s the philosopher…”
—“Or those who martyr them.”
“Aren’t those really the same , though?”

You turned “the philosopher”, singular, into “them”, plural. It’s alright, though, because I did mean the philosopher in general.

Now logically, when one uses a demonstrative pronoun like “those” without being more specific, it must, if it can, refer to the subject of the previous sentence. So my “those” should be your “those who martyr them”. But to be sure, it could also refer to “them”. Then again, I said “Aren’t those really the same”. So I could mean that your “those” are the same as your “them”, or your “the[y]” are the same as your “those”. The same thing amounts to it!

And yes, I’m saying Socrates martyred himself by not choosing exile. He chose to stay, and drunk the hemlock himself; it was not forced down his throat.

Lastly, what I meant in particular is that the great philosophers, e.g. Socrates/Plato and Machiavelli, are responsible for the state of the world today, especially the existential threats that confront us (climate change, AI, and nuclear war)… If anyone, that is.

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Rubbish.

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In what way are Socrates, Plato et al. responsible for climate change, AI, and nuclear war? Are they any more responsible for those things than anyone else is?