Lance Schaubert

And I thought William Penn was amazing.

Well, he is, but Socrates is something else. We’re on volume two of the Harvard Classics: Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. Starting with the writings of Plato, I was amazed at the Apology of Socrates.

Okay, in my defense (pun intended), I knew Socrates died of hemlock. I knew this because when I got my copy of Richter’s Seed-Ordering Catalogue, they had every plant known to man. Including hemlock. The line beneath hemlock reads, “conium maculatum – In the fresh state all parts are very poisonous. Juice was used in early times to execute criminals. Socrates is the most notable to die in this manner. . . Seeds: pkt/$2.75.” Just your garden-variety murder weapon.

So yeah, I knew he was executed via my 2011 herb catalogue, but I had no clue why.

Turns out, they thought he was corrupting their youth. They brought him before the court and convicted him in a single day of a capital crime (though, as Socrates points out, this would not be allowed in other cities). Despite their determination, Socrates throws down the gauntlet and proves his innocence.

Of course, they don’t care. They make him drink the ‘lock anyway. Suppose that’s what you get for sticking up for truth, justice and the Athenian way, So-crates.

Despite the injustice, his brilliance shines through in things like his refusal to fear death like other men in his situation would, refusing to weep or beg for pardon:

For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men-that whereas I known but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.

I had chills last night when I read that. I started saying “wow. wow. wow,” and covered my face with the book. Kiddo’s in the middle of reading The Deathly Hallows right before it comes out, so she sets down Yaxley and Charity Burbage (whom Voldemort had already slammed down) and asks “what?”

I try to explain it, but the words don’t come out. It’s hard to relay meaning at bedtime. That’s why bedtime stories are so important – they catch people at seeding time, as the bards call it.

This morning, I came across something I thought Paul though up in his letter to the Philippians. Turns out Socrates said it first:

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dream, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that do die, is gain; for eternity is only a single night.

But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what godo, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? . . .What would not a man give if he might converse with. . .heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. . . . What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do no put a man to death for this; certainly not.

So while I’m philosophizing, get a cool glass of lemonade and some kettle-chips and maybe a Socra-ball and I’ll let you know how the rest of Plato and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius works out.

Words I learned:

• conciliatory - tending to overcome hostility
• dithyrambic – wildly irregular in form
• inveterate – settled or confirmed in habit
• calumnies – false, malicious statement designed to ruin a reputation.
• cognizance – awareness, realization
• comely – hot (as in drop-dead gorgeous)