Socrates: Question as Though Your Life Depends on It

 

It was a philosopher’s dream come true.

It was a philosopher’s dream come true. Playwright and renowned actor Tim Blake Nelson brought to the stage a three-hour play set in ancient Athens during 430-369 B.C.E. about the compelling life and infamous death of Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.), with gifted actor Michael Stuhlbarg brilliantly embodying the titular character.[1] From staging and acting to philosophical precision, historical accuracy, and modern-day relevance, Socrates is nothing short of astonishing.

The staging was sparse, doing a lot with a small performance space that seats about 180 people. One enters a dimly lit theater with a stage bare of all but a bench and a few stone ornaments. When needed, the set is “extended” by having actors engaged in activities while facing the wall, prompting us to imagine what each sees in the direction of his gaze. Occasionally, the stage is “extended” even further by planting cast members in the audience to address those on the stage. We are informed in a leaflet handed out at the end of the play that the ancient Greek lettering inscribed in and mounted on long blocks at the back of the stage and along all of the theater’s walls is from the text of Pericles’s Funeral Oration.[2] The thoughtful simplicity of the staging parallels Socrates’s humble garb and no-nonsense approach to life, allowing the audience to focus on what’s important, namely, the characters’ ideas and actions.

The casting and acting were of the highest caliber. The performances, adroitly directed by Doug Hughes, had me riveted for the entire time, making me feel as though I were a citizen in the Athenian agora. All of the actors were proficient and invested in their roles, but a few especially stood out. Beyond Stuhlbarg’s mold-breaking depiction of Socrates, we have David Aaron Baker’s Anytus, a fiercely jingoistic defender of Athenian democracy; Austin Smith’s Alcibiades, a swaggering, aristocratic, lovelorn admirer of Socrates; Teagle F. Bougere’s dignified Plato (427-347 B.C.E.); and Miriam Hyman’s powerful Xanthippe, Socrates’s exasperated, grief-stricken wife and mother of their three sons.

Nelson took thirty years to do his homework and produce a magnificent work of art.

There is much for philosophers to love about Socrates. As an Aristotle scholar who translates ancient Greek and teaches the history of ancient Greek philosophy as well as a first-year seminar called “Socrates in the City,” I was on the alert for the playwright’s understanding of the subject matter. This was the most historically and philosophically accurate representation of Socrates’s life, death, and legacy I have ever seen performed. Nelson took thirty years to do his homework and produce a magnificent work of art.[3] The wait was more than worth it, as he succeeded beyond my wildest dreams to grasp and accurately render nuanced philosophical ideas in a vivid and compelling way. Grade: A+

With the title being Socrates, I had expected the play to include at least a few of those who appear in Plato’s dialogues. And it does so by including about two dozen of them from at least eight of his works: Republic, Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Meno, Crito, Apology, and Phaedo. Nelson extracted just the right ideas and scenes from these dialogues and created an essentialized composite that offers the audience an excellent sense of what living philosophically can look like, who Socrates was, and why he was on trial for his life.

Imagine my surprise and utter delight that Aristotle was an integral part of this performance!

Imagine my surprise and utter delight that Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) was an integral part of this performance! The meta-frame of the play is that “a boy” (Niall Cunningham) has arrived on the doorstep of Plato’s Academy, hoping to study with him though he is wary of residing in a “murderous” city responsible for the death of Socrates. We are not told who the precocious boy is, but I knew quickly from various hints (e.g., his deceased father was physician to a king, he categorizes things as a way of understanding the world) that it was a teen-aged Aristotle.

The play’s meta-frame is a recounting of Socrates’s life and death by Plato, who provides a deep explanation to Aristotle’s persistent and penetrating questions about how Athens could have killed one of its greatest minds. Plato and Aristotle move to the side whenever the rest of the cast takes the stage to enact different key scenes throughout Socrates’s life up to and beyond Socrates’s death. A major part of that narrative is taken from Plato’s Apology. That dialogue itself involves a series of flashbacks through which Socrates explains to an Athenian jury of 501 members selected by lottery why he believes he is being prosecuted after practicing philosophy for most of his seventy years.

Nelson also deftly handles what is referred to as “the Socrates problem.” Given that Socrates left no writings behind, how are we to know what beliefs Socrates held? To what extent does Plato use Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own views, conveniently cloaking his own beliefs lest he too becomes an object of the mob’s ire? We see Socrates ask Plato to stop writing about his conversations, arguing that “writing distorts truth” and cannot capture the essence of a man. Socrates fears that Plato’s memory will change what Socrates said, making their ideas blur together and tricking readers into believing that they know something they do not. Plato later admits to Aristotle that he put more of his own words than Socrates’s into Socrates’s mouth. He defends this by saying that it was important to preserve Socrates’s example of “teaching not what to think, but how, which is far more important.”

While Socrates reveals great erudition, it is also a play for everyone. For if there is one thing that the life and death of Socrates can reveal to us, it is that ideas matter. The play raises many thought-provoking questions about the problems of democracy, what kind of life is worth living, the nature of virtue and wisdom, what one is willing to live or die for, and learning second-handedly through books versus learning first-hand through experience.

Socrates was sentenced to death on the trumped-up, contradictory charges of atheism, worshipping the wrong gods, and corrupting the youth. Lurking behind those charges was his “crime” of calling into question Athenian democracy, this after Alcibiades dubs Socrates “the only true democrat” among them. The tension between free speech and democracy reaches a climax in a heated argument between Socrates and Anytus (one of Socrates’s three accusers at his trial):

 

Anytus: “Would you tear down our democracy?”

Socrates: “Not by any means.”

Anytus: “The greatest system of government ever devised! … You relentlessly attack our leaders, claiming they’re not fit to rule!”

Socrates: “When do I ever claim anything? I simply ask questions. And our leaders, do we choose the best among us for the task? If not, why? And should we blame the leaders for that or those who vote for them or the system itself? Is this not Athens where I may speak and question as I choose?”

Anytus: “Not in ways that challenge the state that gives you the right!”

Socrates: “Who’s more dangerous to your democracy, Anytus, you or I?”

 

Free speech and democracy have ever been uneasy bedfellows. It took a deliberate shift to a republican form of government (i.e., a constitutionally limited indirect democracy), to mitigate the pitfalls of unchecked majority rule.[4] Republicanism, though, is also vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Nelson’s Socrates serves as a reminder that grappling with ethical, political, and legal issues is of perennial human concern—as pertinent today as it was when Socrates faced a jury that sentenced him to death over 2,500 years ago.

Contemporary American audiences often assume that it’s their right to question everything, forgetting that freedom of speech is a rare and hard-won accomplishment. (Whether they exercise that right—or exercise it well—is another matter.) I for one was celebrating my right to free speech by attending Socrates while wearing my “The answer is more speech” shirt and sporting my Heterodox Academy tote bag.[5]

Many individuals in other places today and during other times and places—including ancient Athens, the “birthplace of democracy”—cannot and could not take free speech for granted. Plato explains to the young Aristotle how the birth of democracy was “fragile” and “messy,” noting that the wider historical context of Socrates’s dramatic life was marked by war, plague, and political turbulence. Nelson adds even more texture to fifth century B.C.E. Athenian life by developing the character of Xanthippe in such a way that she represents more than just the weeping woman in the background of Jacques-Louis David’s unforgettable 1787 painting The Death of Socrates. Hyman vividly shows us a Xanthippe who is by turns angry and frustrated with her often-absentee husband. She poignantly notes to Socrates, when he complains that even his nagging wife wants him silenced, that she is asking him to be “silent, not silenced.” As women at the time were excluded from politics, she knew a great deal about the latter, reminding us of women’s invisible role at the time as “bearers of children” who are to tend the home and be seen rather than heard.

…for by condemning him, we are condemning our own nature. Who are we, if we condemn a man to death merely for asking searching questions?

So intent was my focus on the sheer substance of Socrates, that it was not until after my fourth (and final, on closing night) viewing of the play that I noticed some of the more subtle intricacies of its layered presentation. The audience is placed in the position of alternating between observing the action on the stage and being members of the jury addressed by Socrates and Anytus during Socrates’s trial. Baker and Stuhlbarg manage the latter not by breaking the fourth wall, but by speaking to it: the stage is dark, the spotlight on each actor in turn, while each speaks to some audience “out there” in such a way that we feel as though they are speaking to us. This technique heightens the powerful, conflicting ideas of the two men, compelling one to contemplate the charges and at least mentally take a side. The beauty of Socrates’s defense speech, where he shows his integrity by refusing to stop practicing philosophy though he be “murdered a hundred times over,” cannot help but turn the focus onto us, the audience, for by condemning him, we are condemning our own nature. Who are we, if we condemn a man to death merely for asking searching questions?[6]  

 

Audience members also shift between viewing from the outside and experiencing from the inside what I can only call “sacred spaces.” The former occurs when Alcibiades describes how Socrates stood barefoot and lost in reverie for hours on end at their winter military encampment. When asked by Alcibiades what truth he discovered during that time, Socrates replies that he was busy “not learning, but unlearning.”

The latter occurs when the audience sits for two to three minutes in silence as Socrates gives himself a sponge bath to spare others the task after he dies. Xanthippe scrubs his back with increasing vigor to match her mounting agitation at his impending death. When the bath is complete, they silently, briefly touch hands—during the only tender moment in the play—before Socrates joins his friends in one last conversation before drinking the deadly hemlock. What was going through the minds of other audience members during that extended silence broken only by the gentle splashing of water? I don’t know, though I did hear the sniffles and sobs of fellow theatergoers who, like myself, were moved to tears. What I do know is that this pause in the volley of words gave me time to think, to reflect on the significance of Socrates’s life and actions—and of my own. Did I question enough? Was I courageous enough? What more do I need to unlearn? Silence speaks volumes.

One of the primary takeaways of Socrates is to question everything, including one’s own cherished values and society’s most widely held beliefs, to act as though one’s life depends on such questions—for it does.

The bulk of the play depicts the mob’s increasing anger with Socrates’s incessant questioning that reveals the ignorance they are desperate to hide, Plato’s pessimism about human nature, and the grief of Socrates’s friends at his death. This somber tone is bookended, though, by positive notes. Socrates opens with Aristotle, a youth representing the future and an optimistic realist who wants to tread the path of fearless philosophical inquiry. It closes with Plato agreeing to take on Aristotle as a student, who then proceeds to read out the opening line of a treatise he is drafting: “Everything we do, every action, all we attempt, is thought to aim at some good.”[7] Plato expresses his hope that it is so, ending with: “But now, some questions.”

I wonder how many emerged from the dark cave of that theater inspired to sign up for a philosophy course. More importantly, I hope that audience members left the play with a renewed sense of moral earnestness, seeking truth and courageously striving to live good lives of meaning and purpose. One of the primary takeaways of Socrates is to question everything, including one’s own cherished values and society’s most widely held beliefs, to act as though one’s life depends on such questions—for it does. It’s the quality of one’s life that’s at stake. As Socrates reminds us, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”[8]

 

 

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[1] Socrates’s relatively brief, twice-extended run (April 16-June 2, 2019) at New York City’s The Public Theater is over, but Nelson’s aspiration is to create a film version of the play. While nothing can substitute for the emotionally gripping immersion of live theater, for those who were unable to attend, a film version will be a must-see experience.

[2] As recalled by Thucydides in his fifth century B.C.E. The Peloponnesian War.

[3] Nelson recounts why it took him thirty years, while working around other creative endeavors, to write Socrates; see Genesis Johnson, “What to Know About Tim Blake Nelson’s Play Socrates at the Public Theater,” Playbill (April 15, 2019), accessed online at: http://www.playbill.com/article/what-to-know-about-tim-blake-nelsons-play-socrates-at-the-public-theater. For a somewhat different but complementary take on the play, see Robert Begley, “Socrates: Dramatizing the History of Western Thought,” The Objective Standard (May 30, 2019), accessed online at: https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2019/05/socrates-dramatizing-the-history-of-western-thought/.

[4] In particular, as defended by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, in their The Federalist Papers, especially in Madison’s Fed. #10.

[5] Heterodox Academy’s mission is to improve education “by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher education”: accessed online at: https://heterodoxacademy.org/.

[6] Socrates lost by only 30 votes out of the 501 cast. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates makes it clear after his sentencing that his accusers and the jury cannot escape moral judgment for their actions: “You are wrong if you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way. To escape such tests is neither possible nor good, but it is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible” (39d).

[7] This is the opening line of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

[8] Plato, Apology, 38a.