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Ancient Philosophy and Self-Transformation

Outline

Introduction
On being a philosopher in the ancient way
The unexamined life (mythos) and ignorance (agnoia)
Unexamined values and the desire for happiness
Unexamined ideas and the meaning of life
Self
World
God
The uses of reason (logos) to achieve wisdom (sophia)
The path of preparation
The discovery and criticism of mythos
The path of completion
The development and application of sophia
The love of wisdom and the inner Socrates
The need for a teacher who loves wisdom
The development of the philosophical mind
On ancient philosophies
Fundamental questions and the parts of philosophy
Value theory and the desire for happiness
Ethics, politics, religion, and aesthetics
Metaphysics and the love of wisdom
Ontology, physics, theology, and psychology
Logico-epistemological theory and the development of the mind
Training in logic and the avoidance of error
The nature of knowledge and its acquisition
My method of teaching and its purpose
Greek philosophers as our teachers
Self-transformation and the philosophical mind
The metaphorical meaning of Plato’s Apology
Socrates is our philosophical mind and we are his Athens
Our fear of death and the condemnation of the philosophical mind
The charge that Socrates denies the gods
The charge that Socrates corrupts the youth
Why the charges are made against Socrates
Ancient Philosophy and Self-Transformation

Why Socrates does not corrupt the youth or deny all values
What the philosophical mind’s divine mission is and its source
Why Socrates is confused with a sophist and with a materialist or atheist
Why philosophy is not pursued in public life
The futility of trying to put our philosophical mind to death
Why Socrates does not fear death
Why Socrates will not abandon his mission
Why Athens cannot harm Socrates, only itself, by putting him to death
Why Socrates does not pursue his mission in public life
Why it is pointless to put our Socrates to death
The study of ancient philosophy and the pursuit of wisdom
The philosophical mind and overcoming the fear of death
Ancient philosophy and rebirth

Introduction

Why study ancient Greek philosophy? Because of the special character of ancient
Greek philosophy we might wish to use the study as the Greeks did, for the
purpose of seeking the philosophical wisdom that promises a life worth living. The
academic goal is to learn the philosophical theses and arguments presented by the
ancient Greek philosophers. But more exciting is the personal goal of becoming a
philosopher in pursuit of wisdom of the sort the Greek philosophers pursued. An
ancient philosophical system includes a value theory, a metaphysical theory and a
logico-epistemological theory. If we adopt the personal goal we too can use the
study to help us ask and attempt to answer philosophical questions with which
value theory, metaphysical theory and logico-epistemological theory are con-
cerned.

Philosophy of the ancient sort is pursued for the sake of achieving the human good.
Many scholars of ancient philosophy think that it was pursued for the sake of
knowledge, but I think that it is knowledge of the good that is its ultimate goal. The
path of wisdom begins with self-examination. Self-examination properly con-
ducted promises to free us from the false beliefs that impede progress on the path
of wisdom to the best life for ourselves. An ancient Greek philosophical system is
the theory of a practice that leads to human fulfillment. The practice is difficult
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because life-negating actions of body, speech and mind are old habits difficult to
change and the theory is difficult because its development makes considerable
demands on the mind.

To complete the path of wisdom to the human good we need to adopt a philo-
sophical attitude I call the ancient philosophical mind. This mind may be called the
inner Socrates because it is to you and me what Socrates was to the youth of
Athens. The wisdom of the inner Socrates is to be found buried in the philo-
sophical works of the ancient Greeks. The inner Socrates asks us to read their
works for the sake of discovering the wisdom it contains. If we do not look there
for it we are not likely to find it. As students of ancient Greek philosophy we study
the work of the ancient Greek philosophers so we may learn what they believe to
be the fundamental philosophical questions, what their answers are to these
questions, and whether or not their answers are well-argued and correct.

What is ancient Greek philosophy?

Ancient Greek philosophy is both the reasoning of the Greeks about fundamental
philosophical questions and the systems of philosophy that result from their
reasoning. In the ancient world in the West reasoning about the fundamental
philosophical questions was motivated by the desire for the wisdom or self-
knowledge that yields happiness. The desire arises if we realize, as Socrates did,
that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Ancient Greek philosophers sought
self-knowledge that transforms conventional life into a truly worthwhile life. We
too can study ancient Greek philosophy out of desire to possess the wisdom that
makes a worthwhile life possible. Self knowledge is the penultimate purpose of the
study of ancient Greek philosophy, whose ultimate purpose of study is the
possession of the human good. Without self-knowledge we live on faith in the
conventions into which we are indoctrinated, conventions that at best facilitate
conventional life with others, not meaningful life for us individually.

On being a philosopher in the ancient way


If we pursue philosophy in the ancient way we will use logos (reason, rational
discourse) to answer the fundamental philosophical questions for the sake of

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acquiring the wisdom of a meaningful life. We are then a philosopher who


struggles to break out of the cave of ignorance for the sake of achieving the human
good.

Why do the ancient philosophers try to answer these philosophical questions?


Socrates thinks that they seek answers because they think that the unexamined life
is not worth living.

But what is the unexamined life?

1. The unexamined life (mythos) and ignorance (agnoia)


The unexamined life is an immature life of a child who has not learned to use
reason, an inauthentic life lived on the basis of convention, a life of unfreedom like
that of a slave, a life of unexamined values and ideas, a life that imprisons the
mind, a life of dogmatic belief, a life of closed options, a life of unexamined
answers to philosophical questions not asked, a life of stories that put us to sleep.
Let us use mythos to refer to the unexamined life so characterized. Literally,
mythos means “story,” but for us it becomes the story we accept about ourselves
and our world before we are capable of examining and evaluating it.

The function of mythos is to enable us to accept unquestioningly a conventional


understanding of self and world. The mythos is a bedtime story that provides a
shaky foundation for conventional belief. We are born into and indoctrinated into
our cultural beliefs and values before we are in a position to evaluate them. This is
the unexamined life Socrates said is not worth living.

Why is the unexamined life not worth living?


The unexamined life is a life in which we are trapped by our ignorance of what is
most important in life. We are trapped by this ignorance into living lives not of our
own choosing. Human ignorance begins with our birth into an unexamined
conventional story or myth that at best enables us to survive with others. But in this
story our full potential for meaningful life may or may not be actualized.
Underlying it all is ignorance of our true nature whose remedy is self-knowledge.
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Imagine yourself as a truly wise and caring person, dedicated to a worthwhile life,
an important life with a higher purpose. We are capable of being this person. We
need only to study and practice and internalize the wisdom we develop as we
examine our values and ideas.

What are the unexamined values and


why do we want to examine them?

The most basic unexamined values are what the human good is and how we are to
achieve it. We want to examine values because we desire happiness.

Unexamined values and the desire for happiness


Do we know what our good is and how to achieve it? We have learned to value
things we are told to value. But are the values we have acquired valuable or
desirable? Doesn’t what is good for us depend upon what sort of creatures we are?
Don’t we all desire to be happy? Do our actions lead to our happiness? Is the
human good comfort, pleasure, wealth, fame, possessions, good health, a good
family, or a good mate? Or does it include the good of others? Have we attempted
to determine what is truly good for us and how to achieve it? In order to answer
fully the questions of what the human good is and how to achieve it we need to
examine our ideas about ourselves, our world and their cause.

What are the unexamined ideas and


why should we want to examine them?

At the most basic level, they are self, world and God. We should want to examine
them to determine what the meaning of life is.

Unexamined ideas and the meaning of life

Self (psychē)

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How can our lives have meaning if we do not know ourselves? Are we what we are
said to be by convention? Are we in any real way consumers, males, females,
students, teachers, children or adults? Do we know what our true nature is? Are we
just bodies that have by chance become conscious? Are we something more than
that? What more? Are we separate substances? Are we our minds? Why do we
exist? Do we really die? These are a few of the questions about the self.

World (kosmos)
Do we have a theory about what the true nature of the world is? Does the world
exist in the way it appears to exist? How does it appear to exist? Is the world what
appears to our senses or what appears to our minds? Is the world of the senses
intelligible by itself, apart from being interpreted by the mind? Is the world what it
is by convention thought to be? How is it by convention thought to be? Is it atoms
in motion? Is it a continuum of matter and energy? Is it a mental creation? Is it a
world produced by a divine cause?

God (theos)
Belief in God as the first cause of all things is part of our Western religious
tradition. But does God exist? Can the existence of God be proved? If God exists,
what is the nature of God? If God exists, how do we know what Gods’ nature is? Is
God just a lie told to control the masses?

How is logos used to answer these questions?

The use of logos results in wisdom and there are two stages of its use

The uses of reason (logos) to achieve wisdom (sophia)

We need to use reason to achieve wisdom. Wisdom is the result of using logos to
examine the mythos. How do we achieve wisdom? We achieve wisdom by using
logos (i) to examine the assumptions we make about what is real, what is good, and
how we are to conduct our lives, (ii) to use what we learn to develop a complete
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philosophy of life, and (iii) to practice the philosophy of life we develop.

We are rational creatures. This means that we are able to use reason to determine
what we are, what the meaning of life is, why we exist, what our place is in the
world, whether or not we can escape the human condition that is birth, sickness,
injury, old age and death, and so on. Maturity comes with self-examination; so the
initial use of reason on the path of self-transformation is self-examination.

There are two stages of the use of reason: there is the path of preparing ourselves
to gain wisdom and there is the path of acquiring wisdom and applying it to our
lives. These are the two stages of the path of reason. The two stages are not always
successive, a mix is possible, in which on this or that matter we pass from
preparation to completion and on others we remain on the path of preparation.
There is no way to tell just how it will go. It depends on us individually and on our
propensities and talents.

The path of preparation (self-examination)

The two stages on the path of self-transformation are the discovery and criticism of
the mythos and the development and application of sophia.

The discovery and criticism of mythos

On the path of preparation we uncover our false beliefs and assumptions. Not all of
the mythos need be found wrong or incorrect, but there is no other way to find out
which parts are and which are not other than by self-examination. This leads us to
our own answers to the fundamental philosophical questions.

The path of completion

The development and application of sophia

After we develop a systematic understanding of the answers to fundamental philo-


sophical questions we are to use the answers to make life meaningful. On this path
we formulate a philosophy that can be practiced to gain a meaningful, happy life,
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and apply that philosophy to our lives. There is a difference between wisdom
sought and wisdom lived. This is a system-building and implementation phase, a
framework built on reason and insight.

What motivates us to use logos in these ways?

It is the love of wisdom which the inner Socrates personifies.

The love of wisdom and the philosophical mind

The ancient philosopher is motivated by the love of wisdom. The inner


philosopher, an internalized disposition to love the wisdom that makes meaningful
life possible, is the ancient philosophical mind. Pythagoras coined the term,
philosophia, which means the love of wisdom. This love is a desire to possess the
wisdom that promises a meaningful life. This is a necessary motivation for the
pursuit of philosophy in the ancient way.

How do we cultivate the love of wisdom?

We learn by imitation, from the Greeks themselves

The need for a teacher who loves wisdom

The love of wisdom usually arises from having teachers who love it, since we
learn, as the ancient Greeks teach us, by imitation. Who are the teachers we have in
this course? They are the ancient Greek philosophers.

In general, when we attempt to learn something new, we need a guide, a teacher.


Plato needed Socrates and Aristotle needed Plato. In our study we will need to rely
on the Greek philosophers as teachers of the wisdom path. Because we do not
innately know how to seek wisdom and apply it to our lives we need teachers. The
teachers are those who have sought wisdom, found it and organized it into a system
the practice of which they believe will enable us to live meaningful lives: they
teach us how they obtained their wisdom so that we may learn how to obtain it for
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ourselves. For all of the later Greeks the teacher is Socrates, who showed them
philosophy as the path of self-knowledge. The best teacher teaches us how to find a
way for ourselves, not to tell us what the way is.

Some teachers specialize in teaching us the path of preparation and others the path
of completion. Contemporary analytic philosophers might be said to specialize in
the path of preparation, since what they teach can enable us to examine the mythos.
Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues specializes in the path of preparation, but many
ancient Greek philosophers specialize in the path of completion. The teacher
teaches us how to do philosophy for ourselves. The goal is the internalization of
wisdom, which can be done only by the student himself or herself.

How do we internalize the philosophizing of the Greeks


to develop an inner Socrates?

The development of the philosophical mind

We can develop a philosophical mind as we study ancient Greek philosophy. Most


Greek philosophers believe that we have an innate desire to acquire the wisdom
that makes life meaningful, that enables us to live well, to flourish, to have a
meaningful life, and that we have the capacity for reason and insight. But we need
to develop a philosophical mind of the ancient sort if we hope to learn from the
Greeks how to acquire the wisdom that gives us true freedom.

What is ancient philosophy defined as the result


of applying the logos to the mythos?

On ancient philosophies

The Greeks identified the most fundamental philosophical questions and began the
process of dividing philosophy into its parts. They offer us alternative answers to
these questions which we need to consider if we are to develop our philosophical
minds. Their inquires created the basic parts of philosophy, which are value theory,
metaphysics and logico-epistemological theory
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Fundamental questions and the parts of philosophy

Value theory is the part of philosophy that satisfies our desire for happiness.

Value theory and the desire for happiness

Ethics, politics, religion, and aesthetics

The desire for happiness is the motivation for the practice of a theory of values.
What is happiness and how is it achieved? Value theory is the theory of what is
valuable and how to get it. In ethics we seek the good for the individual in this life,
in politics we seek the good for the state, in religion we seek the good for the soul
in eternity, and in aesthetics we seek beauty (another form of the good) in this and
whatever future lives we may have. These disciplines deal with inquiry into what is
and is not good for us in these dimensions of our lives.
Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that satisfies our desire for wisdom.

Metaphysics and the desire for wisdom


Ontology, physics, theology, and psychology
(to on) (physis) (theos) (psychē)

The desire for wisdom is the original reason for the study of metaphysics.
Metaphysics is inquiry into what is and is not real (ontology), what nature is and
how it functions (physics), whether there is a God, and if so, what God’s nature is
(theology), and what the soul or self is and how it functions (psychology).

How do we achieve knowledge of value theory and metaphysics?

Logico-Epistemological Theory and the Development of the


Mind

We need to develop the mind if we are to obtain wisdom. How do we know what
we think we know? What does it mean to know anything? How do we determine
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what is good or real? We need to develop the tools of knowledge in order to ground
our philosophy of life.

How do we avoid error in the pursuit of this knowledge?

Training in logic and the avoidance of error

How can we avoid error in our reasoning? The Greeks distinguished the different
sorts of uses of reason and set out criteria for the correct uses of reasons of these
different sorts. They explained induction, deduction, and intuition.

If we are to acquire knowledge we need to know


what it is and how it is acquired.

The nature of knowledge and its acquisition

What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? Since the possibility of


knowledge has been questioned, we may need to explain how it is in fact possible.

How should we proceed our study?

Our method of study and its purpose

Ideally, we should read carefully and thoughtfully what the Greeks wrote in order
to master and evaluate their ideas, decide which are and which are not applicable to
our lives, right or wrong, and finally apply the best ideas to our lives. We need to

(i) study what the Greeks say with a mind that seeks to learn (not
merely to find what is false)
(ii) evaluate what is and is not applicable to the development of our
own philosophical mind after learning what they say, and
(iii) use what is learned to do self-examination

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Greek philosophers as our teachers

To learn what an ancient philosopher has to teach you might imagine yourself
sitting at his feet with other disciples attempting to learn what the questions are to
ask, what kinds of answers are feasible, and why alternative answers to these
questions are objectionable. This is how we can learn from the ancient Greek
philosophers what some of the most important answers are to the fundamental
philosophical questions.

Self-transformation and the philosophical mind

From the ancient point of view, the ultimate purpose of our study of ancient
philosophy is to develop a philosophical mind that leads to self-transformation. By
seeing how the Greeks do philosophy, we can learn how to use discourse and
thought to achieve the wisdom that shows us how to make this life meaningful.

What internal obstacles will we face if we attempt to seriously


continue the practice of philosophy in this way?

The answer to this question is the metaphorical meaning of Plato’s Apology.

Literal and metaphorical meanings of Plato’s Apology

Plato’s Apology can be interpreted literally or metaphorically. From a literal point


of view, it has been extensively studied as a historical document and as a piece of
philosophy. Here I shall interpret it, as I think Plato himself meant it to be
interpreted, as a metaphor for what happens in us individually when we attempt to
allow our inner Socrates to begin to determine how we think about our lives.

The metaphorical message of the Apology is that when our inner Socrates begins
his work in our Athens, our city-self, there are some parts of ourselves who will try
to convince us to put the inner Socrates to death. This dialogue is about a struggle
that occurs when the ancient philosophical attitude is introduced into our inner
world and threatens to bring about great changes in how we live our lives.

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Great changes in our lives are difficult because of our ingrained habits of mind. It
is these ingrained habits of mind, our personal Meletus and other accusers who will
try to put the inner Socrates on trial and ask us to put him to death because he is a
sophist, an atheist and a materialist who corrupts the student or learning parts of
ourselves with false values and ideas. The inner philosopher needs a defense
against these charges. He needs to explain why he is not a sophist who misuses the
logos, that he is not a materialist or atheist who denies all values and religion, 1 and
that he does not corrupt students in our Athens.

The problem with which the Apology deals is that since the inner philosopher
represents great changes in the city there are aggrieved parts of the city who try to
convince the rest that he is a great danger. The inner philosopher in turn needs to
convince us, Athens, that he is not a danger to us, but is in fact our benefactor.
Because his calls for a moral self-transformation can be mistaken for calls for the
death of the city-self rather than for its rebirth into a more meaningful life, it is
likely that we will, as Athens did, put the philosopher to death.

We are in fact ruled by forces within us, inner selves who rule our Athens. They
appear in different guises such as an inner child, inner parent, inner hedonist, or
inner consumer, and so on. In the dialogues Plato’s opponents represent an inner
sophist, inner tyrant, inner poet-priest, inner craftsman, and so on. These different
parts of us claim to know what is best for us, and so, and when the inner
philosopher confronts them and shows us that they do not know what is best for us,
they get upset and fear that the inner Socrates will unseat them from their rule over
us. So they make false charges against him and try to get us to put him to death.

We need to realize that to allow the inner philosopher into our Athens is a
challenge to internalized archetypes that influence our thought, feeling and action.
These archetypes are images that are impressed upon us early in life and that we
unconsciously use to guide us in our thought, feeling and action. Jungian
psychologists are concerned with archetypes such as an inner king, an inner queen,
an inner fool, and the like, which are characters in the medieval stories we learned
when young. For Plato, archetypes that should guide our lives on the good side are
1
This is not to say that atheists or materialists deny all values and religion, but that Plato uses the charge that
Socrates is an atheist and/or materialist to symbolize the inner Socrates as denying all values and religion.
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Zeus, Hera, Ares, Apollo, Dionysius, each of which for him embodies a different
human virtue or excellence. It is in part for this reason that in the Republic Plato is
so upset with the fact that Homer, the most influential poet of his day, represents
these archetypes with bad characters.

The treatises of the Greek philosophers provide us with new archetypes pertinent
to the pursuit of a meaningful life, the most important of which is Socrates, who
represents the archetypical philosopher. Socrates confronts (i) archetypes of
philosophers like Heraclitus and Parmenides who mislead us about the nature of
things, (ii) archetypes of sophists like Protagoras whose theories of knowledge and
truth undermine our pursuit of knowledge and truth, and like Thrasymachus and
Callicles whose theories of justice turn us to evil, (iii) archetypes of sophistic
rhetoricians like Gorgias whose rhetoric will corrupt us, and (iv) archetypes of
poets like Homer who tells lies about the gods who are in fact archetypes of virtue.
All of these characters represent different parts of us who are in conflict with the
inner philosopher.

A Platonic dialogue is an external representation of a dialogue that Plato thinks is


likely to occur within our city once the inner Socrates is admitted. Let me now
show how this representation of an inner dialogue plays out in the Apology. First of
all, to understand the dialogue we need to realize that

Socrates is our philosophical mind and we his Athens

Athens, of course, is the conventional self in which these archetypal selves live.
The idea of inner selves is that of forces within us that guide the actions of our
body, speech and mind, forces such as an inner coward (our fear of pain), an inner
child (our fear of death), an inner hedonist (our desire for pleasure), an inner hero
(our desire for recognition or honor), an inner capitalist (our desire for wealth), an
inner tyrant (our desire for power), an inner sophist (our desire to win arguments),
and so on. Plato teaches us that it is possible to be guided in life by a desire to
fulfill our true natures as rational creatures and to use wisdom to make our lives
worth living. This desire, which in the dialogue, the Symposium, Plato calls eros, is
the desire to acquire wisdom for the sake of the good and the beautiful in our lives.
The desire that is the love of wisdom, the inner philosopher, arises from the love of
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the objects of wisdom, which are truth, beauty, goodness, virtue and unity, and the
like. The inner philosopher seeks to instill in our Athens a deep desire for a
meaningful life achieved through wisdom.

An important part of understanding the message of the Apology is that Plato is


saying something about the relation between

Our fear of death and the condemnation of the philosophical mind

Out of fear of change (which is ultimately the fear of death), the part of us that
stands to lose the most from the presence of the inner philosopher in our city-self
tries to convince us to put him to death. I will call this part of us “the inner
accuser.” The inner accuser, Plato is saying, will use rhetoric to induce our fear of
death so that to protect ourselves, we will put the inner philosopher to death. The
accuser actually wants to retain his rule over us, but makes it appear that the inner
philosopher is a threat to our very existence. The inner philosopher, moreover,
knows that we have, apart from the accusations of the inner accuser, strong
reservations about the inner philosopher, reservations we have picked up
throughout our lives. One of these is the accusation that philosophy is atheistic,
meaning that it denies the existence of the values in which we believe.

What does the charge of denying the gods of Athens signify?

The charge that Socrates denies the gods of Athens

The charge that Socrates denies the gods of Athens means that the inner
philosopher denies the values that now govern our lives, values determined by the
inner hedonist, the inner materialist, the inner demagogue, and such like, who
deceive us about our good with false logic. Another older charge that lies behind
the charges of the accuser is that Socrates corrupts the youth of Athens.

What is the meaning of the charge


that Socrates corrupts the youth of Athens?

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The charge that Socrates corrupts the youth of Athens

The charge that Socrates corrupts the youth of Athens signifies that the philo-
sophical mind corrupts the youthful parts of us, the newly developing parts of us
that are open to learning. We may call this part of us the inner student. The
philosophical mind, it is charged, turns our inner student against the forces that
now control and rule us. The charge is that by educating the inner student about
how to do self-examination, the philosopher is corrupting the inner student. This
means, in part, that he is challenging the authority of the inner ruler’s conception of
education. The inner student is that part of us who is constantly changing, each day
learning new things, such as what I am telling you about ancient philosophy in this
course.

The philosophical mind raises the question of whether or not our inner student is
learning what is conducive to self-knowledge and happiness. The inner Socrates
influences this inner student, not the fossilized, established pillars of learning, who
pretend to know things they do not, the old guard, who are incapable of change,
lest they lose power and authority. The inner Socrates does not attempt to get the
establishment to change, the parts of us that stand to lose out if change occurs, bur
our youthful aspect which will someday rule.

We are not only a constantly changing collection of the cells of our bodies, but also
a constantly changing set of values and ideas, and as our values and ideas change,
they are replaced by new ones.

What is a liberal education? It is a truly liberating education. It liberates us from


the prison of conventional conditioning. Does the modern-day liberal education do
this? Students in college and those who continue to study represent the possibility
of self-transformation, of the use of reason to become liberated, not the amassing
of large quantities of information. Socrates’ message is meant for those of us
whose inner student is still alive, enabling us to be more capable of change than the
rulers of learning establishments, who present and defend the status-quo
understanding of the world, who have become fixed in their ways.

I am writing this essay to help you, my readers, to liberate yourselves from the
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prison of unquestioned conventional thought. The philosophical mind is the key.


Embrace it. Do not kill it off. Those of you who study ancient philosophy must
take full advantage of the opportunity the study provides for a profound
understanding of yourself and your world.

The only real impediment to your personal liberation from unexamined con-
ventionality is yourself, allowing the internalized forces of acculturation to dictate
who you are, what you want from life, how you conduct yourself in college, how
you study, what you major in, why you do what you do, who your friends are,
whether they are those who seek true freedom or who just play at being students,
caring more for social station or sexual excitement or acquiring boy-friends or girl-
friends, and the like.

Why does Socrates think that the


older charges are made against him?

Why the charges against Socrates are made

Socrates says that the older charges of corrupting the youth and denying the
existence of the gods are made because he exposed the pretenses of divine wisdom
by the powerful forces in our Athens. The pretenses of wisdom made by our inner
bosses, who are in control, are exposed by the philosophical development of inner
student on the path of self-examination.

What is the metaphorical meaning of Socrates’


brief dismissal of the older charges against him?

Why Socrates does not corrupt the youth or deny all values

Socrates quickly dismisses the charges of corrupting the youth and of denying the
traditional gods of Athens because they are easily refuted, since they are, as he
shows, internally inconsistent and are gross exaggerations. The charge, that only
the philosopher corrupts the inner student, is absurd, since he would be harming
himself, since he is part of you. Moreover, the charge, that he denies all values (the
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gods), is inconsistent with the admission that he follows the god at Delphi (has
values). The point is that the inner philosopher does not corrupt us and does not
deny our values. He tries to get us to engage in self-examination, to learn for
ourselves what the values are that constitute the good life.

Why is Socrates confused with a sophist


and with an atheistic materialist?

Why Socrates is confused with a sophist and with a materialist or atheist

To convince you to destroy the philosophical mind your internalized ideas and
values charge him with sophism, the misuse of logos, and with materialism or
atheism, which is denial of all values. The confusion is easy to make because both
the inner philosopher and the inner sophist use as their tool the logos, which is
properly used by the philosopher but improperly used by the sophist. The sophist
claims to have divine wisdom, and the atheistic materialist denies that it is
possible. But the inner philosopher does not misuse the logos and does not deny all
values, only false values, values that are not conducive to a meaningful life. The
middle way of the inner philosopher is to deny that he has divine wisdom and to
assert that he seeks to achieve it so that he may have the values that promote the
good life.

Where do these confusions come from? How are they internalized? As an example,
compare what others will say if you should tell them that you want to study
philosophy. Most will say, “Why waste your time on philosophy? You should turn
your attention to more important things, things that make a difference in the world.
Philosophy is pointless. The only things we can count on in this life are science and
technology, and if you want to amuse yourself, there are plenty of good novels you
can read. Be practical. Philosophy will cause you to deny the existence of God, and
without God life is meaningless.”

Have you internalized voices like these? Can you hear them in yourselves?

What is the metaphorical significance of


Socrates’ divine mission and its divine source?
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What the inner philosopher's divine mission is and its source

The inner philosopher’s mission is to urge us to achieve the excellence (aretē,


virtue) that will enable us to achieve our ultimate good, beyond the conventional
goods taught to us when young.

The source of the inner philosopher’s mission is Apollo, the god of healing,
including the healing of the soul. Apollo is the brother of Athena, the goddess of
wisdom, who no doubt had Apollo convey this message to Socrates. As the god of
medicine and healing, Apollo, whose human voice is the oracle at Delphi, sends
the inner Socrates to us, to Athens, to heal our fractured nature, to help us to realize
our true nature. Apollo urges us to be devoted to his sister, the goddess of wisdom,
so that we might receive from her the wisdom that makes life worth living.

Be careful not to reject this talk of gods and goddesses as religious in nature. These
gods and goddesses are archetypes, not objects of religious belief.

Socrates first says that he is trying to find out whether there is anyone in Greece
wiser than himself, and he discovers that there is no one, since only he knows that
he does not possess the divine wisdom the others claim to possess. The deeper
meaning of the oracle’s claim, that Socrates is the wisest man in Greece, is that in
learning that we do not have divine wisdom, we need to realize that it is our sacred
duty to seek it, since only such wisdom can ensure us of a truly meaningful life.

We all have sick souls, and the inner philosopher has been sent to heal them. We
need not take seriously the idea that his source is divine, only that the wisdom he
would have us seek is the means to a fulfilled life. The inner philosopher is
Apollo’s representative on earth, who shows us how to acquire the wisdom of
which Athena is the goddess. He sends us the inner philosopher as medicine for the
soul. He will show us how to acquire wisdom.

In the Apology Socrates refers to his daimon, which is a messenger sent by the
gods and who warns him against erroneous ideas and actions he might take up.
This daimon is another symbol of the ancient philosophical mind. It seems to be
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that part of the philosophical mind that is inspiration, that part that directly speaks
to what Plato calls the spirited part of our souls. It too, we learn from the dialogue,
the Symposium, is sent by the gods to help us achieve wisdom.

What is the meaning of Socrates’ claim


that he does not fear death?

Why Socrates does not fear death

Like Socrates, the inner philosopher does not fear death, since he knows that he
does not know that death is an evil, for to know that it is an evil is to possess divine
wisdom and he knows that he does not possess this. The meaning is that the change
brought about by self-examination is not an evil. This is just a matter of faith at the
beginning of our philosophical development. Socrates’ daimon or inner spiritual
companion does not warn him about death. Why? Because he knows that there is
something deep within us, the urge for perfection and completion. This faith, he
promises, will gives us the courage to face the death of the old self, which is
needed if the new self is to take its place as we follow the path of self-knowledge
We need to have faith that we will be reborn rather than killed.

What is the meaning of Socrates not abandoning his mission?

Why Socrates will not abandon his mission

Would a genuine healer, one who has taken an oath to heal, abandon his mission?
The mission of the philosophical mind is a sacred duty, set by Apollo, the god, who
urges us and guides us on a journey to obtain the wisdom of the goddess. We have
the capacity to embrace her and share in her wisdom, which we can do only after
we face the death of the old self and follow the lead of the inner philosopher, who
is motivated by the love of wisdom (philosophy).

Why does Athens harm itself, not Socrates,


by putting him to death?

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Why Athens cannot harm Socrates, only itself, by putting him to death

The meaning is that the inner philosopher cannot be harmed by putting him to
death, since he cannot in fact be put to death. The inner Socrates comes to our
Athens if upon reflection we become dissatisfied with a life unfulfilled, a life in
which our best capacities are not utilized. When through reflection this
dissatisfaction is again present, he will return. This dissatisfaction, however, does
not permanently go away unless the quality of our lives is improved, which is why
the inner Socrates comes to our city if he comes. As a representative of the god of
healing the soul, he cannot be put to death. He enters the soul to heal her of her
sickness, which is her unfulfilled nature. So we cannot really put the inner
philosopher to death, and when we try we harm only ourselves, since only he can
show us the way to a better life.

Why does Socrates say that he does not pursue


this mission in public life?

Why Socrates does not pursue his mission in public life

The metaphorical meaning of Socrates not pursing his divine mission in public life
is that the mission of our inner philosopher is not to pursue wisdom by examining
the ideas and values put forward by others. The mission is pursued within our-
selves, asking ourselves the hard questions and seeking their answers. If
philosophy is, as many today say it is, a conversation, it is a conversation with
ourselves, not with others. Our assignment as a student of our inner philosopher is
not to learn how to show others that they do not know what they think they know;
it is to learn how to show ourselves that we do not know what we think we know.
The divine mission of our inner Socrates is to get us to engage in an inner
philosophical dialogue and to ask ourselves what is real, what is good, how we
achieve the good, and how we know these things. Externalizing philosophical
dialogue of the sort the inner Socrates recommends pollutes it, and it creates the
impression that we already have the divine wisdom we claim to seek. This false
appearance is partly responsible for Socrates being put to death.

We cannot change the world except by changing ourselves through careful self-
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examination. This is the meaning of Socrates not taking public office: taking public
office is a symbol of the attempt to change others rather than ourselves. After we
have achieved self-knowledge, we can teach others how to examine themselves for
the sake of self-knowledge. Wisdom does not come from without, but from within.
The development of the philosophical mind does not take place by examining the
ideas and values of others.

Why is it pointless to put our philosophical mind to death?

Why it is pointless to put our Socrates to death

Once awakened, our inner philosopher cannot be permanently put to death, since
the futility of the old way of life and its values will cause the inner philosopher to
return. He does not actually die if we now think we have killed him off. We all
come at some point in our lives, usually near the end, to realize that the
unexamined life is not worth living. We realize that we have not gotten out of life
what it has to offer, that we have not fully lived the life we would like to have
lived. We have the opportunity to realize it now. Don’t waste the opportunity.

How can we use the study of


ancient philosophy to pursue this mission?

The study of ancient philosophy and the pursuit of wisdom

As we read the words of the ancient philosophers, we can take Socrates as a


representation of the inner philosopher. Although the Socrates in the dialogues
examines the theses of others, what this represents is the inner philosopher
examining the theses held by other parts of our Athens. Use what the Greek
philosophers have said like this, in an imaginative way, to foster self-examination.

Some of the things claimed by the Greek philosophers will seem rather bizarre.
When they do, ask yourselves why you think they are bizarre, and whether your
reasons for thinking they are can be substantiated. It may be that some part of their
philosophy is profound and that you may benefit from considering their

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perspective on the world, their attempts to break away from a conventional


understanding of the world, to find an underlying reality that explains why the
world is as it is, to discover the true nature of things far from the madding crowd.
Some part of their philosophy can lead you to ask questions you have never
considered before, and to entertain ideas that excite you and cast the world into an
amazing array of possibilities. You can develop a philosophical imagination that
will serve you later in life.

The message of the Apology is not to condemn the inner philosopher to death as
Athens condemned Socrates to death. Read the Apology to see the need at the
beginning of the course to take advantage of the opportunity to develop a
philosophical mind. The philosophical mind can help you to make your lives more
meaningful, more exciting, especially during this early part of the course, when we
explore the early Western philosophical imagination in search for meaning and
reality.

Socrates overcame his fear death in his pursuit of virtue and wisdom.

Can we overcome our fear of the death?

The philosophical mind and overcoming the fear of death

The inner philosopher may be treated as a mentor who helps us to develop the
wisdom to find a meaningful life. The inner philosopher is the love of wisdom, the
desire to embrace the goddess of wisdom, to make love to her. Use your imagin-
ation. Start a love affair. She will be faithful to you if you are faithful to her. You
need to trust her and her message of using your powers of reasoning and insight to
answer the fundamental philosophical questions.

But how can you come to trust her? I suggest that you try what she asks you to do
and see what happens. Examine this or that idea or value you have that conflicts
with an idea or value put forward by a Greek philosopher you study. Observe
whether, in seriously reflecting on it and subjecting it to examination, it is defens-
ible, and if it is not, check on how you can change it. If it seems defensible, ask
what else follows if you were to adopt it, see how it affects your actions and
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feelings, whether things become better or worse for you. Check why it is that you
react as you do to a change of idea or value. Check up! Explore the ramifications
of an idea or value proposed by one of the Greek philosophers. Is the idea or value
exciting or depressing? Why do you think so? Observe yourself and how you
approach these ideas, whether it is in the way the Greek philosophers we study do,
or some other way. Question your approach.

It does not matter whether you are male or female in order to begin a love affair
with ancient philosophy. Some of you may want to put your inner Socrates to death
because the symbolism or ideas of the Greek philosophers are male-dominated and
demeaning to women. And although this is in fact true to some extent, are you
willing to miss an opportunity to develop your mind because of this failing?
Perhaps you can overlook it, or use the fact in order to help you analyze and adjust
what the Greek philosophers say to eliminate the gender bias. In any case, we learn
from psychology and biology today that each of us has both male and female traits
and hormones, but one or the other is dominant. So from a psychological point of
view, males can adopt, and benefit from doing so, the female perspective, and the
females the male perspective. This too is a way in which to get the most from your
readings in this course.

How can you overcome the fear that you will cease to be the person with whom
you are familiar and comfortable if you allow your inner philosopher to survive
and make you a different person? One way is to ask yourself whether or not you
have a desire to understand your true nature and to fulfill your full potential by
using reason and insight to achieve wisdom.. If you get in touch with such a desire,
you can face the death of the old self and welcome the new that wisdom may bring,
confident that you will be reborn rather than perish through self-examination.

How to begin? One way is for men to take refuge in the archetype I have been
calling the goddess of wisdom and for women to take refuge in her brother
archetype, the god of healing the soul, Taking genuine refuge in the archetype
helps you to devote yourselves to seeking the wisdom that promotes a life worth
living. In taking refuge generate a love of the archetype, this part of yourself, to
feel deeply that she or he will help you. They have sent you your inner Socrates to
mentor you on the path to wisdom. Think of the pursuit of wisdom as a divine

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mission the archetypal goddess or god has given you.

You might instead attempt to realize in a profound way that you really do not know
your true nature and that you cannot discover what the meaning of your life is
without knowing your true nature. If it is true, as many psychologists claim, that
our lives are lived in accord with archetypes or images or forces within us, and that
by cultivating the influence of the best archetypes we can change our lives, then it
is possible to change our lives, to make a commitment to develop the inner philo-
sopher they sent so that we may ground our lives in wisdom.

Am I suggesting that you develop a quasi-religious devotion to the pursuit of


wisdom and use the devotion to motivate self-examination? You bet I am. If it is
true, as many have said it is, that we in fact have a deep need to understand
ourselves and our world, I am encouraging you to tap into that need. By not taking
what I am suggesting seriously, devoting yourself to self-examination and the
search for the wisdom that makes life more worthwhile, you are killing off the
inner philosopher, and this is what Plato in the Apology is trying to help you to
avoid.

It is no accident that Plato wrapped Socrates’ pursuit of a meaningful life in divine


garb. To pursue philosophy you need to feel it as a calling, a divine mission you
must undertake in order to find for yourself a life worthwhile. To develop the sort
of philosophical mind I am talking about you can create an imaginary world in
which you engage your inner Socrates, feel admiration for what he is trying to do,
and make an effort to learn what he has to teach. At first it may feel like an
artificial exercise of imagination, but if you continue to engage the inner Socrates
in your imagination your relation to him may become something more serious, a
second nature, which will enable you to think and act like a philosopher. The
message of the Apology for us is that the study of ancient philosophy for the sake
of self-transformation is not to be feared, since it leads to a rebirth of the self, not
to its death.
Ancient philosophy and rebirth

By studying Greek philosophy, Plato is suggesting, you can start the rebirth
process that ends in a life worth living. The philosophical mind will facilitate self-
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transformation, not the death of a self the nature of which you do not even know.
But what exactly does the inner philosopher teach us, and how does he teach us?

The inner philosopher has us carefully study the work of the Greek philosophers so
that we may learn from it the tools we need, the questions, the possible answers to
these questions, the distinctions, the arguments, and so on, all for the sake of self-
examination and the development of a systematic personal philosophy. When the
inner philosopher enters our city he enters through the gates provided by the work
of the Greek philosophers. Like Socrates, he does not claim to have wisdom, only
to seek it. Remember that he is the philosophical attitude of loving wisdom. If we
adopt this attitude we will quickly learn to do philosophy, since when we are
looking for wisdom we will find it wherever it is, especially in the work of the
Greek philosophers. The Greeks teach that we learn by imitation. So in our study
imitate the way they do philosophy. Our inner philosophers can enable us to use
what we learn to create a philosophy of our own. If we study long enough for the
purpose of finding wisdom we will find it. It comes to be from within ourselves as
we study for this purpose.

The modern enemy of the development of this sort of philosophical mind is the
inner dogmatic skeptic – the part of ourselves that is skeptical about the possibility
that there is such a thing as the wisdom that makes life worth living. This inner
dogmatic skeptic is closely related to the inner accuser of Socrates, the self that
charges him with sophism and atheism. The inner dogmatic skeptic is an inner
voice that says, apart from ever having made the attempt to achieve this wisdom,
that it is impossible. But how can he be sure that it is impossible without having
made the attempt to develop it? A study of the attempts by the ancient Greek
philosophers to acquire wisdom needs to be made. Do not assume as we study that
wisdom is impossible. The claim that wisdom is impossible is of the sort that
Socrates debunks in the dialogues.

So what will you do? Condemn the inner philosopher to death or encourage him to
do his work in your city?

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