Socrates and the Search for the Good Life
AN ADDRESS GIVEN BY NICK MORRICE AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
I have always had some sympathy for the little boy who thought God was called Harold. “Harold? Who said anything about Harold,” his parents asked. “Well, it’s in the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven. Harold be thy name.”
From the age of 10, as a boarder at a boys’ prep school, I was frogmarched to church every Sunday morning where I sat and prayed my way through endless Nunc Dimittises and Te Deums, of whose meaning I had precious little awareness. The Te Deum was, of course, so called because it was tedious, while the Nunc Dimittis was simply a nice message to a family called the Gentiles (“to be a light to lighten the Gentiles”). I didn’t know them personally, but, they were obviously the lucky ones. But I did have a certain fondness for the Magnificat: a) it had a nice ring to it, savouring of something rather magnificent, and b) it had the best tune. I never understood what was meant by “My soul doth magnify the Lord” but I loved singing it. It was one of the few inspiring moments in an otherwise bleak Sunday which formed part of my early education.
Later I learnt through Latin that ‘magnify’ means to make great. So on the one hand Mary’s soul was making great the Lord, while on the other he was making her great, and that was all because of another mystery called the incarnation.
My example of a great soul and one who consistently searched for the good life is that sage of ancient Athens, the philosopher Socrates. We remember him mainly through the dialogues of Plato, his disciple and scribe. The leading character in these dialogues is usually Socrates so they are often referred to as Socratic dialogues. Characters are created within a scene and engage in spontaneous conversation, not unlike the way a playwright would present his work. So why did Plato adopt this form? Well, in a way it was a tribute to his mentor, for Socrates always believed that knowledge came through conversation. He himself never wrote anything down, preferring the cut and thrust of lively discourse.
When Socrates first comes into focus in the 5th Century BC, he is seen wandering through the streets of Athens, debating the essence of what it means to be human. For the young men and women of the city he is irresistible, and through the force of his personality becomes extremely, some would say dangerously, influential. He talks of spiritual welfare and rather than the desire for wealth and military glory, promotes an idea of leading a simple life of good. In a city where beauty of body was pursued with unswerving dedication, Socrates was famously ugly. He is described variously as pug-nosed, thick-lipped, rotund, his eyes though quick were bulbous, and he seems not to have been devoted to personal grooming as was the fashion on the day.
Athens at this time is profoundly materialistic: proud of its recent victory over the Persians, the Athenians become empire-builders and money-hoarders, preening themselves with dazzling buildings and sculptures, and amassing a glittering harvest of wealth from slave labour. So we find Socrates preaching a form of fundamentalism – a return to absolute values rather than the pursuit of advancement at any price. He typically wore no shoes, and all year round he sported the same thin, worn-out woollen cloak. And when he debated and conversed in the public spaces of the city, he suggested to young Athenian men that their future might not lie in imperialistic ambitions and rows of colonnades, but in a simpler life: a life that revolved round the good rather than the great.
Socrates’ ambition is to find the psyche, humanity’s soul, its spirit. It is this that needs to be enlarged, magnified and made glorious. Just as he was absolutely of his time, so is he also of ours. For he realised that the more we learn to act in and with the world, the more we need to learn about ourselves. The more sophistication and complication there is around us, the more important it is to be sure of what is going on within us.
In the dialogue called ‘The Symposium’, the assembled group at a dinner party debate the theme of Love. Socrates is all too aware of the massive power of love. He says, ’’I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with someone.’’ Socrates’ love is literal: the point of life is to love it. He states that if Eros passes you by in life, you are a nonentity. All those aspects of love he approves of are motivated by Eros. And, more than that, Love is a guide: a passion for what is good and a horror for what is degrading. In his eyes, it is honesty and a pursuit of knowledge rather than ignorance that leads to loveliness in life. Love is the life-force, the desire to do, to be, to think. It does indeed magnify our souls, and Socrates describes these ‘good’ dynamos as "ta erotika", the things of Love. Love equals virtue, equals knowledge, equals social cohesion and happiness. His life work was therefore to encourage men to find a way to live together and be good.
According to one legend, Chaerephon asks the Oracle at Delphi whether anyone is wiser than Socrates, and the surprising answer is that no one is wiser. Socrates is astonished and tries to prove the oracle wrong by approaching those who profess wisdom and asking them about the virtues. When he reduces each one to confusion, he concludes that the oracle is right, in a way: Socrates knows he doesn’t know anything, whereas others are wrong in thinking they know.
Herein lies the interest that Socrates’ dialogues have, I believe, for Unitarians today: for although Socrates never clearly settles upon a definition, he does not consider his efforts failures. On the contrary, there is kind of upbeat satisfaction, even gratitude shown all round to those who have taken the time to reflect with him. It might well be that a stable definition is not the main purpose; maybe the simple desire for truth is after all the point. As he famously said, ‘’The unexamined life is not worth living.’’
Socrates thrived in Athens’ democracy because this was a state that gave ordinary men a voice that tolerated new ideas. He was silenced, on the face of it, because although democratic Athens could stand much criticism, it could not take criticism of the value of democracy itself. Certainly not from men who suggested it was neither walls nor fine neither buildings nor warships that made a democrat great but the soul within him. Socrates argued that it was the soul of man that needed to be enlarged, not his wealth or power.
His single most plangent message, which is I think as relevant now as it was then, is that there can be no good, even in a democracy, if each individual is not as good as he can possible be. “In short true virtue exists only with wisdom, whether pleasures and fears and other things of that sort are added or taken away.”
Socrates had watched the world’s first democracy flourish, diversify, dull, die and, briefly, revive. He never let the democratic ideal become complacent. He died obeying its laws, and his death reminds us to care about the world we live in, to respect it, to challenge it, but above all to remember (τα εροτικα) – the “things of love”, the things that drive us to pursue the good.
Meditation
EXPERIENCING THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD AND CHRIST
Close your eyes, put your attention on the heart, and feel the greatest love that you ever felt for another person. Let that love saturate every cell of your body.
Now expand the feeling of love, like an encircling sphere embracing your family, friends, all your loved ones.
Feel your love ever increasing; include in that sphere all the people in your city, then all of your country.
Now everything in the world is bathed in that love. The whole earth, the solar system, the far-flung galaxies and island universes – everything is floating in this vast sphere of love.
Feel, meditate on, merge yourself in that love which permeates and upholds the infinitudes of manifestation – a demonstrable presence of God’s heartbeat of bliss, setting the pace of cosmic harmony and unity, and known to the devotee as the All-in-all fulfillment.
The love felt in the heart at the beginning of this visualization is human love. And the love that expanded until it encompassed everything is the universal love of Christ, the infinite love of God.