Morrissey “intrigued”; requests more information about Socrates

MORRISSEY WRITES: “Dear Mr. Barrington, in-between my extended fits of self-pity, self-loathing and ostentatious celibacy, I have been quietly reading your blog on the sly. I am intrigued by the character of Socrates, whom you frequently mention. Would it be possible to give me a bit more information about this enigmatic figure? Yours etc. Morrissey”

BRIAN BARRINGTON, PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELLOR TO THE STARS, REPLIES: Hi Morrissey, I am very flattered that you have contacted me, as I have been a great fan of your music since my days as a sulky teenager. I enjoyed your recent song “The more you ignore me, the closer I get - you’re wasting your time”.

Socrates lived in Ancient Athens. He never wrote anything. In fact, he never did much of anything at all. He just spent his time wandering the streets of Athens talking to people, and irritating them by asking them questions about why they were doing what they were doing. Eventually, the Athenians got so exasperated with him that they sentenced him to death, and executed him with poison.

Socrates’s main injunction was "Know Thyself". He introduced wisdom as the goal of philosophy i.e. he introduced the notion that to philosophise is to seek knowledge of the human condition. A pre-condition of the search for such knowledge is the awareness that one does not already possess it. Hence, Socratic knowledge of ignorance is the beginning of the philosophical search for wisdom. He said: “I know only that I know nothing”.

The best way to understand Socrates’s philosophical innovations is to compare him with the Greek thinkers who came before him. They can be divided into two broad groups: the pre-Socratic philosophers and the Sophists.

The pre-Socratics were similar to contemporary scientists or analytic philosophers. They pursued knowledge for its own sake, for the pleasure and joy that accompanies the scientific experience of discovering the truth. They had an intellectual curiosity for questions of metaphysics, maths, and science. They were theoretical men - but their curiosity was not directed towards self-knowledge, or knowledge of the human condition.

On the other hand, Sophists did place the human condition at the centre of their investigations. The Sophists were practical men who used their intelligence and rhetorical skills to get on in the world – to acquire money, status, fame, adulation and so on. They tended to be wealthy and conventionally successful. Contemporary examples of Sophists might include lawyers, political spin-doctors, post-modern theorists and so forth. For Greek sophists such as Gorgias and Protagoras, knowledge (particularly knowledge of rhetoric) was a means to an end, and not an end in itself. Rhetoric allows you to manipulate people for your own purposes. So for Sophists knowledge was a means of satisfying the various needs of the body. They pursued knowledge, not for its own sake, but because they understood that knowledge is power and could help them to satisfy their needs. They were wise guys rather than wise men.

Put at its simplest, a pre-Socratic satisfies the needs of the soul or intellect, but not the body; a Sophist satisfies the needs of the body but not the soul. In contrast, Socrates attempts to satisfy the needs of both the body and the soul. He seeks a rational ethics. Socrates attempts to blend what is best in the sophists, with what is best in the purely theoretical men who pursue knowledge for its own sake.

For Socrates the pursuit of knowledge is both and end in itself and a means to an end (the end being wisdom, or rational ethics). He placed self-knowledge at the centre of his quest for truth. Socrates is both a sophist and a scientist, and hence something different from either. Socrates is both theoretical and practical. For Socrates, man is both a body and a soul, a passionate being as well as a rational being.

The great French essayist Montaigne, regarded Socrates as the greatest human being who ever lived. He says:

The advice to every one, "to know themselves," should be of important effect, since that god of wisdom and light [Apollo] caused it to be written on the front of his temple, as comprehending all he had to advise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the execution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it in Xenophon.

Montaigne also says:

Pythagoras [a pre-Socratic philosopher], they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixt the two; but they only say this for the sake of argument. The true mean is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic than Pythagoric, and it becomes him better.

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