Socrates was a good Citizen?

Socrates’ judgment was one of the most important historical facts in Ancient Greece and to this day inspires intellectuals, artists, writers etc. In 399 BC, Athens was recomposing after the defeat to Sparta in the Peloponnese War, trying to consolidate itsstill fragile democratic regime. Socrates’ critical positioning seemed like an affront to the customs of the city and he was framed, tried and sentenced to death for poisoning on charges of not worshiping the city’s gods, trying to introduce new deities and corrupt youth with their Ideas. The accusations did not intimidate the philosopher, who decided to lead his own defense, giving rise to the text “Apology of Socrates”. They are works that start from philosophical discussion, but assume religious, political and ethical ramifications showing why Socrates is the founder of western philosophical tradition. The pre-Socratics were only trying a cosmology, an explanation for the Cosmos. Philosophy is only recognized with Socrates. However, what is a citizen? Generally speaking, it can be said that being a citizen is to participate and respect the decisions of society to improve their lives and others. An individual who as a member of the State enjoys civil and political rights guaranteed by the State and performs the duties assigned to him. Socrates was a citizen of Athens, so his activity was in line with the Athenian constitution. Socrates’ activity, as opposed to sophists, was the search for truth transcending the circle of current opinions and which were not examined by the propagators of these opinions. Sophists socrates beat head-on were not interested in truth but to win the discussion, persuading the listener to agree with them even if it was unfeasible to prove them. It is important to emphasize that in the activity of Socrates, which we contemplated in Plato’s texts, doctrine was not the last end of the discussion, that is, the philosopher’s intention was not to pass a doctrine, but for the purpose of forming human souls, lovers of wisdom. What you have with Socrates is a process; an education process. And this aims to make his listeners, disciples and participants, aware of the implications of his own thoughts and own attitudes. Confront this “deep sense of truth.” If there were no such sense, useless would be socrates’ activity. Witnesses participating in the socrates education process are the listeners themselves in which dialogue takes place. Those whose Socrates ideas dispute, they are called to be witnesses of the falsehood of their own ideas and also witnesses to their own process of conversion into seekers of Truth, lovers of wisdom. Search this one that is more serious and deeper. In Socrates’ dialogues, when people are asked about topics such as “what is justice?”, they generally respond with opinions that already circulate publicly in the community. Through the questioning done by the philosopher, he makes them retreat from these speeches disseminated in the community and accepted as effective, to a deeper instance that is his own individual consciousness. Taken the citizen of Athens from the “doxa” by Socrates, to meditation and the demonstration of the unsustainability of these opinions before the very deep sense of truth now not as a citizen of the city-state, but as an individual conscience. Thus, the messenger of “doxa” himself becomes a witness to the falsehood of these collective beliefs and then becomes a seeker of truth himself.

Thus, Socrates inaugurates Philosophy, a pedagogical system. Simply elevate individuals to the condition of responsible and serious Truth seekers. Therefore, philosophers, lovers of Wisdom. Wisdom they do not yet possess, since they were attached to their own beliefs, but that will guide their steps from this initiated process. Love for Wisdom does not arise as a doctrine in which adherents are encrusted; comes with the discovery of an “unbridable fund”, a magnificent expression by Ortega y Gasset, to which it is activated through the right questions that lead the question ed well, an apparent conflict in which he will begin to want the Truth. Socrates demonstrates with this retreat the possible installation of the person within this “insubornable fund”, but will not give him access to truth, only to enable the openness of that individual, of that soul, to the Truth. However, this openness is not a doctrine but a discipline of life that will be lasting until the end of our day. This openness arranged now reveals to us the unlimited with which the human being is exposed. We are not infinite as God is, yet we must be open to him. And it is by this unlimited that when Socrates is confronted, he does not say what he thinks but a myth. In the myth is contained a series of images and knowledge that are contained there and that transcend our assimilation capabilities, and are therefore accessible only symbolically. This centrality of the soul proposed by Socrates, of this love for Wisdom, is that it becomes the goal of education. The problem is that this goal may be buried by countless lies, prejudices, fears and beliefs. Socrates respected and wanted the laws of thecity, since he defended Athens in wars and when he can escape the conviction he claims that he has always defended the laws of Athens and now that they turn against him will flee like a coward? Socrates’ contribution was the demonstration of the insolubletension between temporality and eternity. Put another way, the separation of temporal power, society, the world and the spiritual power of God accessed by the immortal souls created by Him. We will always live this drama of living in a temporal existence and at the same time aware of eternity, for this is the human constitution itself. In his case, he was, as an individual, bearer of an inaccessible discovery, for the time, to members and citizens of the community. This tension said earlier, now becomes between individuality vs. collectivity. If the individual as such takes on one side of the tension, he ends up increasing the reigning disorder and creates a number of problems. For example, we have a temporal existence with awareness of an eternity from which we do not have full access. If eternity is refused and is trapped within only temporality, individuality ends and there is only the collective and all sorts of revolutions are possible. So there is no solution to the eternity strain vs. temporality. This is the human condition itself. This discovery of Socrates makes the individual able to endure and live like this tension and tension will come to open to God, the infinite, through the dialectical method. So much so that when Socrates removes the possibilities of proving collective beliefs, at the end of the dialogue it tells a myth. In the myth is the symbolic condensate so that it is uncompressed. This arises an ascetic discipline of the dialectical method, which when taken to the extreme and can also last indefinitely, a revelation of the Truth is given by God and the individual has new knowledge and the whole problem begins, for now he will need inform others of their discovery. In this panorama, Greek culture did not believe much in the separation between temporal power and spiritual power. With this, it is possible to deduce that the Greek gods were actually representations of human aspects and these were explored for example in Greek theater for political purposes.

Socrates demonstrates that beyond that society, and many others, there is another world, of God, in which this one we live in is only preparation to enter the Kingdom of God or not and that the desired goods in this life are nothing compared to God’s plans. Socrates’ conviction for disrespecting the gods was the impossibility of the Athenian community in abandoning beliefs and verifying that outside there is something else. In other words, when Jesus Christ, our Savior, said, “Let Caesar know what caesar’s, to God what is god’s.” In these terms, Socrates was a citizen and that by his shocking revelations, unheard of in that society, it is fulfilled what Göethe said it is better to commit an injustice than to continue chaos.