Dialogus

Ever met that one kid in your family that just annoys everyone with their never-ending questions? I don't know about you, but I've met quite a few like them. Sometimes, it feels like they do it on purpose just to see when you go ballistic. However, over time, I've realized that their understanding of the world is just as incomplete as ours (we who call ourselves 'adults'). They are just as confused as we are, only they project their confusion in the loud. (Maybe this is their way of philosophizing.) In this text, we talk about one such person (only this person wasn't a kid but an old man) named Socrates, who is considered the founding father of Western philosophy. Socrates never wrote anything down, so his ideas are mostly known to us from sources like Plato and Xenophon, but his ideas carry enough gravity to still bring us here more than two millennia later. In the next few lines, I present to you an analysis of three of his dialogues—Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito—in a form where it becomes less of a dialogue by Plato and more of a dialogue with yourself. Here come the never ending questions…

Do you believe that there are objective grounds for morality? Or wait... let me put it this way: is there something that is absolutely 'right' or absolutely 'wrong' for everyone? When faced with a question like this, most of us generally have no one conclusion we can arrive at. For instance, all of us (or at least... most of us) generally would consider 'murder' to be objectively 'wrong,' but something like euthanasia (mercy killing) generally has people in a dichotomy. The intrinsic nature of our actions is something that has been questioned for thousands of years, but it feels like the answer is always farther away. One such discussion takes place in Euthyphro, where Socrates meets up with his friend Euthyphro, who was prosecuting his own father for the murder of his servant. When Socrates finds out about this, he starts questioning him about what he thinks the true nature of piety (the closest definition to it could come to was ‘righteous action’) is. According to Euthyphro, 'pious is anything that is dear to the gods.' This seems like a very fair and obvious point to make. Whatever the gods deem to be right has to be right without a doubt, right? Now think about this... we humans often have an immense amount of subjectivity and differences on ideas of justice, beauty, morality, and more, which cause strife among us. What then causes these 'gods' from being in a similar state of strife? Is it not the same differences in their perceptions of 'right' and 'wrong'? So if the same things are loved by some gods and hated by others, can we really make the distinction between right and wrong? This is when Socrates says something that goes down in history by the name of Euthyphro's Dilemma. He says, "Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?" So... is it 'God' that makes this list of 'right' and 'wrong'? Or do you think 'morality' is something that comes under a larger umbrella?

How often does it happen that you were convinced you knew something when you actually didn't? I believe this is a question a lot of us will struggle to agree with. Often, this problem is so deep within ourselves that it is beyond the point of realization. The reason for that, I believe, is this game of 'fake it till you make it' that we've become so adept at. When navigating through our everyday life, there is an infinite number of assumptions we make about different things, and these assumptions compound over time to form our beliefs and worldview. Only very seldom do we ever consider the possibility that we might be... wrong. Now you see... when we're told that we are wrong about something, it doesn't make us feel very good, does it? It takes a lot of courage to admit your faults and weaknesses. Some of us find it almost impossible to summon up this courage. This is what led to Socrates' bad reputation in Athens at the time and eventually to his death. After being declared by the Oracle at Delphi as the wisest, he set out on a search for a man who was wiser than him. He could not accept the fact that he was wise at all, as he thought he really didn't have any wisdom. In his search, he had encounters with different statesmen, politicians, poets, and craftsmen all around Athens and came to one conclusion: these people were not wise at all. In his conversations with these people on topics like virtue and piety, he always managed to prove to them that they had no idea what they were talking about, and this was something they couldn't bear. In the end, he realized that he was the wisest because he was aware of his own ignorance, something he could not find in anyone else. Socrates was later sentenced to death on accounts of corrupting the youth with his ideas and for not believing in the gods that the city believed in. I mean... why is it that we take so much pride in this 'knowledge' that is so shaky even in our own minds?

The situation that Socrates finds himself in is somewhat like the ones we face quite a good number of times throughout our life. What would you do in a case like this? A case where you know you're right and that you've done nothing wrong, but you're still held responsible for something? I feel like it really is one of those things in life that calls into question everything that you are. Everything the heart longs for in a moment like this... is a moment of escape. Our friend Socrates was fortunate enough to be offered escape from the prison in which he was awaiting his execution, but he just very plainly refused. What would you do in a case like this? Would you escape? I know I would. I assume each of us would. So why would Socrates let go of his one chance to live? He believed that by escaping, he would be going against everything he stood for and could in no way think about mistreating the law, even if it mistreated him. He was afraid that he would be seen as a hypocrite among the people in front of whom he had most strongly defended his virtues while at his trial. He accepted the inevitability that approached him and continued his time in prison.

To him, death was one of two things. If it's nothingness and a complete lack of perception, he calls it a 'dreamless sleep,' where all eternity is a single night. I feel like this is just such a beautiful description of something that keeps us in fear for all our lives. However, if it's a relocation of the soul to a different place, he firmly believes that he will keep questioning people there too and continue his search for answers. I think it lies beyond our capabilities as human beings to comprehend something as incomprehensible as this. All we can do is hope that it's a better place. For the next one, I plan to bring forth more ideas on love, knowledge, and truth from Socrates and his disciple Plato. Also, if you've reached here, your opinion is something of great value to me, and I would really appreciate it if you could let me know what you think about this post or suggest improvements in the comments section below. Thank you for wanting to know more than you did yesterday. See you next time!