Xenophon's Apology

Welcome back to New Think Cream. My name is David Barren with me. It's always just my good friend Alex, Priya Harri Alex. Doing well, very disappointed.

We're talking about a dumb, dumb name. Xenophon. And how we apologize for being so dumb. Is that what we're doing?

Hey, Greg. No. Hey, guys. This is a Gregisode.

Yeah. And favorite fan favorite or quarterly Gregisode. Yeah, just like the, they always included a song by Ringo Starr. The Ringo of this group.

No, I Ringo Starr. The Ringo of political philosophy. The best, best title, nasty book on Xenophon. Man, it's a great book to today.

It'll be an interesting episode. We're grateful. Because you are a Xenophon scholar. The protagonist.

Xenophon scholar in a manner. Maybe the greatest living in the world. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the last half of a million, I would say, just to be modest. Yeah. So we, we, we, no, Plato's apology. Right.

We really, really have to learn about Xenophon's apology, which is the same story. I really don't have to. No, of course not. No, no, no.

Why would I potentially be interested in reading the same old text, Greg? I mean, that would make me, I mean, answering that means I might have to begin with my conclusion. So I'll begin with my conclusion. Okay.

You can't understand. It's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to understand Socrates without Sennifen. That he provides a necessary corrective to a common misreading of Plato. And therefore his apology is a, is a good counterbalance or corrective of Plato's apology.

That's not to say that I think ultimately they're saying very similar things, just that one can replay it when it comes away with some very strange and incorrect things in one's head about Socrates. Yeah. And really quick, sorry to interrupt you said about almost like a corrective. Yeah.

In time, so historically, which came first of the Athenians, where they have received Plato's apology as a text first circulated, then along comes Ephron or where roughly, how far are they apart from one another? Then more nose, zoom, zoom, slow, nose. But here's one thing I will say. It seems fairly clear to me that Sennifen is writing explicitly in response to Plato.

And I hate to jump in these things right away. You know, Sennifen, by the way, was this other famous student of Socrates. Very importantly, for our purposes, he sort of joined the military on a whim and was actually often Persia or maybe back and smart by this point. He's not in Athens when this all goes down.

One thing probably keep in mind is that Plato only wrote platonic dialogues, although our friend Ariel Helfer will try to persuade us that Plato's letters are somehow a dialogue. So Socrates is the key figure in all of the dialogues. Some might say he's not in the laws in epinomas, but anyway, there's the secret figure. By contrast, Sennifen wrote all kinds of stuff.

Only four of his works are about Socrates. And his shortest work by far is the apology of Socrates to the jury. And then just to answer your question directly in the first section of Sennifen's apology, he says others to have written about this. And so I take that to be a fairly clear, of course, it's not just Plato.

Others wrote about this, but that seems to be a pretty clear notion that he's he has Plato in mind and that he's trying to offer a correction of Plato in a way. Yeah. And he brings to the fore in his correction, an issue that I think a lot of people scholars to play, or at least Strauss, to scholars, but often debate, which is this guy's all about the good life, which requires living. And then he didn't try to avoid death.

In fact, he seemed to actually imprudently encourage and that's exactly what Sennifen says. He says they did not make quite clear that he already believed death to be preferable to life for himself, so that his boastful speech appears to be rather imprudent. Right. So this leads to a real issue.

Now, Plato does bring this issue up in the Fido, for example. Well, what you end up getting at the solution to this is something like dogmatic platonism, right? That's not what Xenophon is going to do. And so once it's one of the ways, like, yeah, yeah, but even the boasting and Plato's apology, which I think is evident, it's not the thing that most people get away from their first right?

And the first blush of reading Plato's apology is not that Socrates is boasting and talking big. Although it's, I mean, once you see it, it's sort of glaring and it's all it's right there from the page one, but that's not most people's common reading of it. Whereas Xenophon begins by saying, look, he boasted, he talked big. And that's the thing that that's the puzzle that needs to be explained to Dave was trying to jump in.

Yeah, so really quick to our listeners at home. This is a dialogue. Right. Did you stated that already?

Just to be clear. Yeah. So what is it? I mean, we're using this word corrective.

So usually I think in some listeners who are unfamiliar in their minds, OK. So Xenophon is writing some sort of essay correcting the right, right, right. No, he's also fabulizing things, yeah, adding a dialogue, but also he's speaking to you directly. We don't get as much of this in Plato as an accurate or in Plato's apology.

Alex should jump in, but even Plato's apology is so properly speaking, only the economic is a dialogue of Zenofins. So speaking somewhat loosely, it's dialogical. I mean, it's conversational. We do hear Socrates speaking and there is a brief exchange, actually, with some others.

But by and large, it's Zenofins report of what he heard about Socrates' trial or defense, not the prosecution, by the way, just like Plato. And so it's just his record of what he's heard. Other people say, and the principal person from whom he's heard about the apology is this guy named Hermajinese who happens to have been a brother of Calius, this sort of famous wealthy guy. Hermajinese, you know, he sort of appears, he peeks out a few other places in Zenofins works.

So Plato's apology is also not really a dialogue. There's a brief moment where he has a dialogue with Melodus, but it's more like a recounting of a defense speech, like it's Socrates speaking the whole time. And in Plato's apology, Plato gives us the impression that he's giving us three complete speeches by Socrates from beginning to end. We don't get anything like that here.

Zenofins is reporting parts of a report that Hermajinese himself reported, which don't include the whole thing. So you're getting Zenofins giving pieces of Hermajinese that speech and Hermajinese is giving parts of Socrates this speech. So there's filters in the way that there aren't filters in the and the platonic dialogue. Plato presents it as though it's happening right in front of you, you're hearing it.

And we're at two steps removed here for Zenofin. Yeah, and we should be clear that there's sort of emphasis on Hermajinese from the very beginning. Very, very big. He says in the second section, he says, Hermajinese, the son of Hipponicus, however, this is right after the appearance of a prudence problem.

Hermajinese, the son of Hipponicus, however, was a comment of his and reported about him such things as make it clear that his boastful speech fitted his purpose. Now, the question you obviously want to ask is, OK, why is it that Hermajinese has this information? And well, the answer, obviously, is as well, Hermajinese asked about it. Right.

Right. But it seems like Hermajinese raises an objection and that objection is not met by the other authors, but it was met by Socrates. And Zenofin thinks it important to center his discussion of Socrates' trial and death around meeting this objection. And so the figure of Hermajinese ends up being really important in a way.

So can you tell us something about his character, Greg, who was? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

And by the way, just like Hermajinese, he's not just reporting first of the speech. He's reporting parts of his conversation with the House of Socrates, presumably after this defense speech, right? Why did you do this? Why didn't you say this?

Why didn't you say that? And so it's Hermajinese's work. Who's Hermajinese? He features most prominently in Plato's, excuse me, Plato's.

And Zenofin's symposium, he's a sort of, you probably know the type. He's kind of a morally serious man, but maybe a little unorthodox. Maybe someone who prides himself on being somewhat slightly heterodox, but still remaining firmly in one's orthodoxy. I don't know if that's right, would you say it?

So he's pious, he's decent. And it's probably also noteworthy that he seems to have been passed over for inheritance by his brother. And so he was, he was not wealthy. Um, and that's another thing, right?

You can imagine somebody who comes from wealthy family who doesn't have money. Uh, there's probably a kind of pride in one's character, uh, and a despising of people with money. Um, and one can see automatically, therefore an affinity that Hermajinese might have for Socrates as someone else, like a fellow person who's been slighted, who didn't get his just deserves, whose excellence wasn't recognized. Um, he's not funny.

Uh, Socrates makes a joke in the symposium about, uh, I'm actually not sure it's a joke, but about the, the, the sort of the way that the useful and the beautiful, it might be the same and Hermajinese gets very offended and Socrates has to repair that relationship and get on friendly terms against Hermajinese. So kind of morally serious guy, the kind of guy who would be impressed by somebody standing up and telling the man to stick it, something like that. Like that helps. Yeah.

And he's, and he's a guy who, uh, in fact finds some kind of ennobling quality in persisting in his, in his love of excellence, despite not having its material rewards. Right. And so there's a kind of kinship and therefore you could say that this boastful speech and accepting death and not sort of extending his life more than he needs to somehow, uh, strikes Hermajinese. So that makes me wonder when he asked the question, shouldn't you also consider so I was what you were saying your defense, um, before the speech.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Before the speech, that could be considered as you should be more careful.

Um, but it could mean you're not being very careful. Why? Yeah. It's just some kind of interest in Socrates apparent willingness to court death and sticking to his guts.

That's right. Right. You feel like we can scratch this. You don't know, but Hermajinese also appears in the Crattleis.

That's right. Yeah. Do you have anything to say about that? No, I don't know.

The Crattleis. Okay. All right. Just wondering.

Okay. Um, should we go into some of the arguments he makes? Sure. Majinese about why he doesn't.

Well, why Socrates does do it. Yeah. Um, well, I mean, Socrates says the reason he didn't prepare better speeches because he's done nothing unjust, which he believes is the noblest care for one's defense. So I mean, this is the first, which of course, this looks tough and manly, right?

I've done nothing wrong. So therefore I have no reason to present a defense. Also just my small point. Um, it's not proactive.

I mean, you see this in Plato as well. He doesn't insist on his justice, just his omission of injustice. What's wrong? Yeah.

He says twice already, I tried to consider my defense, but the Dimonion opposes me. And then he says, do you really believe it? Amazing if in the opinion of the God too, it is better than I die now. So he must have considered at least whether to defend himself, right?

Yeah, right. And he pretenses though, the, the Dimonion opposes him. Um, and that's the reason why he shouldn't consider his defense. Well, it's interesting.

Deliberate it. Yeah. You hear about it, right? So there's like this theological justification, but there's obviously this other more philosophic consideration preceding it, right?

Okay. That was the important point. Yes. Uh, which comes first, the theological or the rational.

Um, and it seems like he's trying to at least make it such that Hermogen doesn't see which comes first and what's the distinction, right? But you're, you're careful. Like the, I tried to do about the Dimonion oppose me. Um, do you really believe it's amazing if in the opinion of the God too, it's better than I die now.

So the God seems to be confirming something that Socrates has already come to one his own. So if that, so you can see how it still appeals to a religious man, he's still using religion, still part of the calculation, but it seems as though what's driving it for Socrates, his decision here is his reason. And this is something you very, I mean, you don't get this in play at all. Like right here on page one, it's actually like the reason I'm doing this is because it's better to die.

Like it's time to die. Um, and there's, there's nothing like that whatsoever in Plato seems to me, maybe later, at the very end of the Plato's, you know, if you just wait a few months, I would have died. That's kind of the closest you get, I think. Yeah.

So I don't understand. I mean, or this is probably best left for the end, but just orient me and some people at home. What is this corrective off? What is this in the service of a salutary corrective for people that may misread Plato's apology and draw the wrong conclusion?

Or is it a thought experiment? I mean, what is being what's in a fund's project here? Yeah. You said that you have to read both to a right.

Did I understand you correctly? Great. That's what I said. Apologies to arrive at the essence of the courtroom case or what's the other thing?

I guess I'm really, I guess I'm really external evidence and then I'll try to come to it. Right. So we're the final books that Strauss worked on. It was Zenitham.

And so I think that there's an indication on natural right history where he's saying in the chapter on classical natural right where he seems to lay out most clearly what he thinks socratic rationalism actually is about. And it's book ended by quotes from Zenitham and in the middle, it's punctuated by another note from Zenitham. So I think probably listeners have heard us talk often about how platonism became the dominant interpretation of Plato. And so the impression one could get from reading Plato's apology is that Socrates is a kind of martyr.

The Socrates is sort of dying. There's a huge sacrifice that he's making for the sake of his friends or even just on behalf of loss or something like this. And you know, murder already conjures up these sort of super religious ideas, right? That what he's doing is somehow religious.

It's exalted. It's mystical. He's on a mission from God, right? The Delphicoracle Apollo made him go do this stuff.

That's obviously needs. You can see that by few restaurants. And that's not quite right. How it is.

And so I think that Zenitham presents him as much tougher, more manlier and much more down to earth and like a winner. Let me try this. One could read Plato's apology. Most of my students read Plato's apology.

At least the first pass through as though Socrates loses, right? He's like, it's Socrates defense and he loses. Gosh. And then page one says that's nothing's like, no, no, he was trying to die.

And so he didn't really prepare defense. And so there's this way in which I think Zenitham is showing you that Socrates achieved what he was trying to achieve in apology, that he was actually up to something that he achieved his goals. That's a big part of, I think the correction, but that's not all of it. I don't know if Alex is going to jump in too.

Yeah, there's a kind of, I think so. I mean, he, he faces the issue of the self interest in, in the death really more squarely, right? Not to say, I think fully adequately. And so how much is this related to him talking to her homogenies, right?

He says, this is in section six. But now if my age will advance further, I know that it will be necessary to do a little age to see and to hear less well and to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful of what I've learned. And if I perceive that I'm becoming worse and if I fall with myself, how could I still live? Pleasantly, right.

And then this is elaborated towards the end in section 27. He says, now indeed, if I perish prematurely while good things are flowing in, it is clear that I am my well washers must be pain. But if I end my life when difficult things are expected, I think that you all ought to be cheerful in this assumption that I fare well. Something very strange is here.

Let me throw this on. Tell me what you're going to do. A lot strange. Yeah.

So the main issue is when you read the first one, you're like, well, yeah, you are going to pay the twos of old age. Everybody does, right? It's inevitable at some point, if you're just going to die of old age and nothing else, right? And therefore, you might perceive that you're becoming worse, right?

And you might say, oof, that's not pleasant. But by the end, he says, if I perish prematurely while good things are flowing in, and then he compares as the opposite, if I end my life when difficult things are expected, those two are compatible, right? Yeah. You will always expect you should actually always expect difficult things throughout your whole life, because you will eventually die and you don't know when, but you can still have good things flowing in.

So this justification is a little slippery at best, if not completely. And it's not so not clear to me that even as one big clients guy, I hope this is true, that it's that's good things still couldn't flow in. Maybe just not all of them. And even what you just read, like, it's a rhetorical question.

Well, he asked this question, right? But now if my age will advance further, I know that it will be necessary to pay the duesable of age to seem to hear less well and to learn more difficult and to be more forgetful of what I've learned. And if I perceive it, I'm becoming worse and I find fault with myself, how? He said, could I still live pleasantly?

That's a rhetorical question. There might be a way to still live pleasantly, even when one's old and in decline. It's just that, I mean, one might take pleasure in seeing how his students have gone on or even in trying to remember what he's forgetting or something like this. It's not entirely, it's not cladding off pleasure entirely, which by the way, in passing, he seems to have identified the pleasant with the good in that paragraph sections five through six as well, which is probably problematic.

Can I throw another very little from section seven? Yeah. He says, in order to justify these dying, not only an opportunity, but in the easiest way, he says, it is clear that if I'm condemned now, it will be possible for me to avail myself of the death, which has been judged by those in charge of this business, we have all deaths the easiest. And there's a footnote says, presumably the public executions are met.

But it's very difficult. How can anybody know which death is easiest? They have to die. Can I just press this out by the way?

Those if that is those in charge of the business, those who are the public executioners, as our footnote mentioned, this is Mr. Pachia, Andrew Pach, this is Bartlett's edition, the shortest fragrance. But by all accounts, hemlock deaths were awful. It was not easy at all.

It was extraordinarily painful and gruesome. And basically, don't you like suffocate yourself to death or something like this? Yeah. And everything shuts down.

And but it's not like poop only. Yeah, it's not like your heart is the act. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very different. I mean, at the, I mean, you still you'd have to know other deaths too. Well, and he also says it's least troublesome to friends. But then a paragraph later, he says, it's going to cause them the greatest longing for me or something like that.

That's the point. Yeah. And he's always productive in them with the most regret. Exactly.

So how is it the easiest, least troublesome on them? If it's producing and then the greatest regret? I mean, he means at least troublesome there, right? We don't have to like take care of him when he's a little noise, but yeah, they don't have to do all the gross stuff.

I think which means which means that. And I'm going to have to do every day. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you could choose if your death were such that right before you came to that situation, you're like, Hey, just so, you know, tomorrow is when you're going to become like just like a meat sack on a table, like **** wife has to wipe your ass. You're going to be like, OK, I'll, but you don't know that. And by the time you meet sack, you're in no position to kill yourself. So when you look at it, for me, all the arguments really make sense, really except for this point about productive in them at the most regret on some level, because there is this general sense of the injustice of right.

And Hermogenes is interesting because he on the one hand will say, Socrates died nobly, right? Seems like that's what he would say. Like he really stuck to his guns and he was killed unjustly. And that's really upsetting.

And Apologorus echoes that much later in the apology. And yet they would kind of make their terms with it. As a result of its nobility, right? So, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I guess I'm back to Hermogen's question, but is that what is up to? It's really just trying to have a death that makes him remembered by these sorts of people or? I think that's right. I mean, we've probably often talked about on this on the show about philosophy on its own, probably can't survive.

And you need, you need sort of hosts who can carry the virus onto others who aren't themselves necessarily philosophers. And it seems that, you know, two things. One, I think that it shows you part of what Socrates is up to here that he's trying to appeal to this type of human being. I also think it shows you that Zenithin's writings are also aiming at this particular type of human being to a greater extent than Plato's is.

And so it's a two pronged effort. I mean, I said a corrective. I think that's true, but I also think it's not playful that Plato and Zenithin, you know, Zenithin at least I can't speak for Plato. I think that there's this conscious notion that we can't let those types, those types, the hyper religious types, the only type that keep philosophy alive.

We need this kind of manly, gentlemanly type also to try and keep it alive. And to have at least a kind of respect for these intellectual types, and I'm not suggesting that any of one of us is a philosopher, but I do find it strange. I have some sort of manly friends who sort of admire what I do in some way. And I'm always like, I don't know why, like I admire them.

They work hard to actually do something. Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't think we can say that word anymore. But, you know, thankfully we're an American, not great Britain, so I'll just learn here.

But like, isn't it weird sometimes when people, you know, ordinary, regular, decent folks admire Republicans, like not necessarily public elections, but like academics, like, yeah, and there's something to that. I suspect that Zenithin was aware, actually, is aware that these types would be not only useful vessels, but useful defenders against those who might try to attack philosophy. Yeah, and there's a funny thing here where it works with hermogenes, right? But it also doesn't work with hermogenes.

You need hermogenes to tell Xenophonic. Right. He's to write it because hermogenes is kind of simplistic, right? Right.

Nothing he says here at least is terribly impressive. And when you see him in like the symposium, Xenophonic symposium, right, isn't he just like the gods or my buddies? Yeah, that's what he's most proud of. The gods, he always says my gods are my friends of these most powerful guys.

Like he's playing, he starts playing coy, and it's like, it's the gods, those are my friends. And like, OK, all right, buddy. Would you need something? But so therefore you see how he's got this in common with Socrates, right?

But he has this kind of this private relationship with the gods that superior to most people's ordinary relationship with the gods. And so Socrates's Daimonian is kind of in the same, I don't know, same spirit or something like that. Yeah, it's a kind of I always taken in both Plato and Xenophon as an interpretation of some kind of like philosophic instinct that is sort of accompanied by reasons and investigation, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I got this feeling about this and he examines the feeling and it checks out with reason and then he shares it. That always seems to be the sort of mutual friend is I think going to phrase that I'm on to borrowing out. Punch. You just have a hunch.

Who's your mutual friend? Tom Cleland. I think he always says hunch. Yeah.

I suspect that that's what he means. There's a weird line in this. I didn't check the Greek. Maybe.

So at the end of 16, right before 17, with Socrates, right before 17, yeah, when he's trying to argue why he's wise. So this seems like a very important statement. He says, how could someone plausibly deny that I am a wise man? I who from the very, very time that I began to understand what is said, never yet see seeking a learning whatever good thing I could find.

The thing I'm hung up on is what does he mean by from the very time that I began to understand what is said? What does that mean to understand what it said? And when does one begin to do that? Like, because you take this since I was.

I would. Yeah. That's what I think. Or did he at some point discover something about reason or speech?

Right. And then he decided to seek the good things. I don't know. Right.

This is why we win the context of. Go ahead, sorry. Does this ring bells to other passages that phrase? No, nothing.

I can have an action or call it up my head. But it's you're quoting a passage that's in his retelling of the Delphic Oracle story, which is another reason I think he's cribbing off of Plato. But what's interesting in this passage is in it's a completely retelling of what the God of the Delphic Oracle story tells him and Plato's apology. For here, it's, by the way, he noticed that in section 14, he refers to that and he changes it in section 16.

It's actually says that the God told him that no one was more free, more just or more moderate than he was. Those three free, just moderate. But he changes it to wise in the passage. He just said, so he changes it from moderate to wise.

So then he says, how could you believe anyone's more just more free or more wise than I am? So he replaces moderation with wisdom, maybe his immoderate pursuit of wisdom even. But if that's what the gods told him. That's just true.

What would he be upsetting the gods by taking his own life? Yeah, I mean, this isn't this kind of what Ramaji is saying right at the beginning, right? Like, and that's I think this wise actually gives this cover that well, I tried to make it a fence, but my little God voice told me not to. It was OK.

Yeah, I mean, Krato says something. I just don't understand. I guess the relationship between his little God voice, the diamond and then the Oracle. It's like one super see the other.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the little guy does. Yeah, it's all too his little God. I mean, that's the second my kids try that nonsense with me at home. You know, that's right.

My mind's got all over the place. But just while we're on the subject, I was reminded that another difference here, I think between the the Zenovans apology and Plato's apology is that you kind of get in miniature Plato's apology, the Socratic turn. The Socrates had been investigating natural philosophy as you've had this turn. No mention of that here, or at least only a sort of illusion to it here.

The notion that Socrates was in any event, in any case ever a natural scientist. Yeah, that's one of the possibilities I had in mind for that weird to understand what it's saying. I see this is a turn to speeches or something, but it's too small, I think, to do much with that. I like that though.

Let me ask you about the section 27. There's two things that chump cuts me from the first sentence here. It says, having said these things in a way that quite agreed with what had been said before, tell me what that means. But anyway, what does that mean?

But then he says, Socrates went away with beaming eyes and mean and gate. And I was just struck me as a kind of religious or almost messianic appearance. Yeah, like that. Or maybe diluted appearance.

I don't know. You can go in many different directions with that. But like maybe like, yeah, maybe this is him saying, Oh my God, I just did this thing. Oh God, my face, you know, this thing.

I'll give you evidence to confirm that actually if you want to go with that second interpretation. Or maybe it's a presentation to fill and it's Hermogini's reading. Oh, I see. Another one.

Yeah, fair enough. We're kind of, we've been jumping up. This is an section 27. So let me just give my outline of the text, by the way.

I think this is my own. I mean, I've read a lot of stuff on this. So it begins with this sort of introduction on how Socrates deliberated about his defense in his life, that section one. And then we get the largest section of the book, sections two through 21, which is Hermogini's report of what Socrates said before and during his trial.

That sections two through 21. Section three, part three, excuse me, is Zenefin's remarks on Socrates' remarks in his trial. That's sections 22 and 23. So there's this Zenefontic interlude.

And then we return to Hermogini's and now we're talking about what Hermogini said after his trial, that section 24 through 26. And then what you just read again in section 27, now we start saying something else. And it's not actually clear who the source of this report is. You'll notice in our translation by Mr.

Patch that Hermogini said that is in brackets. That's because the Greek doesn't actually identify Hermogini's as the speaker. And some other folks have indicated this as well. But I actually think that these two main stories in sections 27 through 31 are not Hermogini's anymore.

It's somebody else reporting something. And so what's going on here, I think, will confirm what you just... In other words, we're done with Hermogini's by the end of section 26. In section 27, we get somebody else telling us things that happen after Socrates' trial.

So you're already wondering whether his eyes with me and the gate and what's going on. And then what we get is Socrates consoling those who accompanied him. We get his buddy of Hollidore's lamenting and Socrates' response to that. And then we get this prophecy that Socrates gives to Antitist regarding his son, followed by Zenith and confirmation of the prophecy.

That's in section 2931. And then the book concludes sections 32 through 34, so those are the six parts. But I suggest that these un-intributed reports of Socrates after the trial show a little bit of lack of confidence in Socrates. So for example, let's take the Apollodorus one, section 28.

In a certain Apollodorus who was present, an ardent lover of Socrates, but otherwise naive then said, but I at least Socrates bear this with most difficulty that I see you die unjustly. And Socrates responds by making a joke. And it said that Socrates, he doesn't say her homogenes by the way, it said that Socrates after stroking Apollodorus's head said, dearest Apollodorus, would you prefer to see me die justly or unjustly? And at the same time he laughed.

So he laughs. And then the second thing he does is he sort of gives this nasty prophecy to Antitist about how his son's going to be a screw-up. And so like after the trial, Socrates has just set out to do the thing that he apparently wanted to do, he accomplished it. And what happens?

He tells a joke and then he gives that angry prophecy. Like I would say, laughter and anger are not necessarily rational responses. So Socrates is uncharacteristically giving in to his desire to laugh and his desire to be angry. And I think Strauss notes that this is the only time where Socrates himself is specifically identified as laughing in any of Zenithm's works.

And so yeah, sorry. Yeah, no going. I know what's up. What's up, Joe Cool.

It's a you say there's betrays of kind of uncertainty. I talk to where we're about to give it psychological. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm about to drop some serious knowledge. Yeah.

Yeah. Drop it. This is my warm-eyed system. Yeah.

People, people, you should have the month is going to be too bright. So they're looking directly at the sun. Are you ready? I'm not going to put them on.

That's right. Yeah. Here it is. Death might be bad.

You're here for first folks. Right. You're first folks. Great.

Subscribe. Don't eat. So I mean, look, I say that's about a chance, right? Because the thrust of this short little work, the thrust of the short little work is that death is not bad.

Socrates is tough. He can handle it. And he's sort of courageously sort of brushing off death, right? I suggest that the end here might give being an indication on Bon's own of his part that it's actually a bit of an act and that Socrates is actually a little bit afraid about the prospect of dying.

And so he lets himself laugh because laughter is the kind of way that we can forget about the terrible thing that's happened to us. And the revenge thing is like, I'm actually kind of angry at this guy, you know, so I'm going to take it out on him. So this is just, by the way, it's not actually clear if Socrates does these things. As Evan just says, it's reported that Socrates did these things.

Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, I agree with Greg. If for no other reason than if there's one thing Greg knows about, it's the thrust of short little works.

Yeah. Yeah. So they're not often as confident as you would think. So I think what you're getting at is actually there's a kind of ambiguity here because it's reported whether Socrates actually did and said these things or whether this is the reputation they did about.

You know, he says in section 32 to 33, 32, he says, he received the faith dear to the gods. He left behind the most difficult part of life and he obtained the easiest of that. So he goes out. He also displayed his strength of soul.

Yeah. For when he recognized that to be dead was better from its own. So there's a kind of display of strength of soul. So this is an indication, I think, that he does produce regret in his friends, or says pretty obvious.

Right. And he does show himself to be nobler and a better educator, then anatist. So he succeeds in that. And he does succeed, therefore, in cultivating this kind of reputation.

And so I think the ambivalence is interesting because if what he's trying to do is cultivate a reputation among noble, but somewhat disaffected men like her homogenies, disaffected with morality and yet still clinging to succeed. But it still begs this question that we've been asking all along, which is, was it actually a good death for him or his death always just right? So then we're back to the question of why he did it, which is somewhat not clear. I mean, one thing I play around with as an idea in Plato, and I think it kind of works here as well, is that look, it is a matter of fact that he will eventually decline, right?

And he is getting quite close to that. And perhaps he has to sacrifice some of the good things flowing in to have a death that while bad is also noble, right? And he does get that. I think he does have a noble death.

One way to put this is that when you think about Socratic philosophy, a lot of what we focus on is, okay, are the noble and just things actually good, right? Right. And then the idea there is to maximize the good things for oneself in the little time when it happens. Why would you want to know what death do you think?

Well, because death is a bad thing you can't avoid. And so this whole life has been put into noting that some of the noble things are bad, but some of the bad things that you would face are shameful and some are noble. You have to choose, you can't choose on the basis of the good, what choice do you make it on? It's like the flip side of it might be that it doesn't work completely as an argument, but it does seem like if you're going to die and you're going to have to experience a bad thing, you have to choose among the range of options available to you.

And this seems an effective choice for the purpose of cultivating philosophy in the future, which is the best you can hope for out of a day. I guess a quick question, just to follow up on that. It's a question I've thought about with you guys, first of all, but I, do you think that was there any other option for Socrates that would have effectuated the same philosophy saving result that his suicide did? Right?

Like going off to an island, an apotheosis into a cloud, some likely story. I mean, is there, do you ever play the sonic experiment? Like could philosophy have been, quote unquote, saved with any other option besides his suicide, or is this totally necessary? It's totally necessary.

It's very it seems like a complicated option, right? It's like, and we repeat this piety over and over again as the students of political philosophy. Well, no, of course he committed suicide, right? Is he safe philosophy for the West?

Right? This was a symbolic death look at this great thing he did. And I've been wondering if it could have been done another way or if not, why? Does that make his that?

I find I find Plato really helpful for this. Okay. Ology. And maybe Greg has as a sort of response on the basis of zenifying, but I think in the apology, if you look at the parts where Socrates clearly indicates that the jurors are actually getting angry, it's with the boastful speaking, right?

And about how excellent his life is and how noble it is. When he's engaged in an argument with Melidas, there's no indication that Jerry gets upset. And I think if you just read that part, the immediate reaction is, oh, Melidas doesn't really know what he's talking about as tricky as Socrates might be. This is not really justified.

Maybe we slap a fine on him. Socrates could have survived. But the later payoff is that he comes off rather, is sophisticated as well. Like it's there's a little bit of smoke there.

And it seems like the choice before him now this ignores the questions of whether he deliberately provoked the charges, which I think Plato suggests he does, but leaving that aside, once you're in this situation, however, you got there, you do have a choice between sophisticated getting your way out. And that's the legacy, the guy who like any other self-serving character got away with some crime, or you go balls to the wall and noble it. And maybe they quit you, but maybe you die as well or flee. Yeah, easy to just look at the same as the statistic thing, right?

Well, I see, I was going to say, no, no, couldn't you say they won't stand against me. I don't stand. I'm not going to stand for your show trial. Or you can have his friends say, look, no, I swear to God, he went and he exposed himself to the in the wilderness and just was eaten by a cairnion or something.

It's not as effective, of course, of just treating poison in front of everybody. I will say, I mean, my impression, you know, I've thought about this a lot too, David. And I think that the dialogues, the Zenofen and Plato, I think presented as though Socrates calculated that this was the thing that had to be done, that it couldn't have been done another way. That's my suggestion.

I don't, I actually do think that Socrates does get something out of it. Maybe it's sort of not the main door prize, but there is this notion, I think that Socrates can enjoy the prospect of knowing that his legacy will live on in some way. So not just philosophy, but that he'll be identified with flossing and semi. Let me try this a couple of small steps, and then I have a more serious point.

Look, I think my grandmother died and her dying wish was that we all hiked this mountain in Georgia. You think you died? I think my family never know. No, I had to say that.

Listeners, you write in and donate with a dollar with your vote. So what I was going to say is I think that one, what I said is I think one can kind of orchestrate some things after one dies. So my grandmother, when she died, her dying wish was that we all hiked up this mountain and spread our ashes, which we all did. And so one thing one could say is that it's impossible to have any, you can't have an effect after your dad period.

But I think even that small example I just gave was like an ordinary human being, my grandmother who might love was able to have some power over the choices that we made after her death. If you think that someone who was more capable of thinking these things out and is capable of having an effect after his or her death, you could, I think that you see that Socrates thought that he would have this long term effect. And I think that that that was part of his calculation. And by the way, there's some enjoyment of you know, there's some kind of motion like, hey, they're going to do this.

That's kind of cool. I like that maybe it'll go on, right? Now, I don't think it was efficient because he still got a little scared and had to make a joke and got really angry at it. But there is still something pleasant about it.

So I do think that one of the things that we're doing here is Socrates is trying to benefit his friends, which I don't see as much of here in Zenithin's apology as you do in Plato's. There's delusions to Achilles, for example, in Plato, which indicates that something similar. But I do wonder the following question. When did Zenithin himself turn to life of philosophy?

It seems as though one of the reasons he may have left Athens was because he was aware that those hanging around Socrates were about to get in trouble. So that's one reason he left. I submit that Zenithin himself had not turned to philosophy yet when he left to go and this sort of analysis in Persia. He disobeys Socrates slightly.

And I wonder to what extent Zenithin is pointing that he himself was a homogeny type. So there's this way in which what Zenithin is doing. I mean, we sort of sort of stare at these types and that that's who they are. But I wonder if there isn't a more serious type like Zenithin, who sort of gets this spur of Socrates in his saddle and can't ever quite get rid of it.

And so somehow after his failed political adventures, there's a rethinking of what Socrates was up to. And Zenithin himself turns to Socrates later. So your suspicion then is that this was written later in life? Well, yeah, or that it could be like the way he writes reason exile.

Right. And it could be Zenithin's playful way of presenting in a literary way his own turn. So like, hey, why was he asking homogenies, for example, or something like this? Like he hadn't quite figured it out for himself.

Man, what's the proper reading order of Zenithin's work? Go. I find this really interesting. I'm a complete novice when it comes to Zenithin.

I've only really read a lot of his works, but I've really only thought about a couple of them at all. Right. So yeah, sure. I'll say the reading order, you know, like one thing we didn't talk about, that stress makes sense.

It's how the end of the memorabilia is very similar to but also different from the epoch. So there's kind of a suggestion that maybe read the memorabilia than the apology and then, right, I suppose, you know, suposium, economicus or yeah, and the economicus seems like the most serious of the Socratic works, I think. Yeah, I think that that's, I think that's right. I mean, there are probably multiple interpoints in this, but I'll say the following.

I think I suggest, or I wonder if Zenithin didn't think so he wrote the whole thing, which is the continuation of apparently a continuation of Thucydius-Pelpanishin War. And according to Diadius, Zenithin may even have been responsible for the publishing of Thucydius-Pelpanishin War. And so I wonder if you read the Pelpanishin War and the Leneca, you come aware that Zenithin is aware that Greek civilization is going away. If you think that that's so, you might come to realize that future peoples, non-Greeks, would come to have an interest in Greek things and that their attention in the first place would be drawn to the political deeds of the Greeks and the greatest war of the Greeks, Spartan Athens.

And so I suspect that Zenithin wants to lead you from the political horse that Philosophal works. So, Hellenica, for example. And then Hellenica might lead you, might lead you to the Anabasis because the Anabasis is described in brief. The Anabasis might lead you to the education of Cyrus.

Cyrus might lead you to start thinking about, well, there are these ocratic characters all along the way. Actually, he's actually mentioned the Leneca, and then maybe the Socratic works. I'm not entirely sure how the gentlemanly works fit in, because I could see that being a different entry point. So the horsemanship and the hunting which allows in these.

So there's might be sort of entry points for the gentlemanly type, there are homogeneous types. On the one hand, and on the other hand, I think that those might contain some of his most serious philosophical writings. So the Hipparchicus might actually be about writing. I've seen Strauss suggest in a letter to Jacob Klein that the Hipparchicus is actually about writing, WRITING.

And I think we did an episode actually on the, again, the leading dogs out expertly. And I think that that might actually be about philosophy, philosophical arguments, and even metaphysics at the highest point. So that's the relationship to friendship as well, right? Because there's these animals that help you out.

Right. Right. Right. In front of those.

Little puppies. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where you want to say it would have to be, it's almost like you're moving, yeah, if you really want to push it, his most serious work, the Hellenica, is actually his most elementary work.

Right. Is apparently least serious or grave work, we should say. On like, you know, when I was in your house and then hunting with rabbits, that's being the most philosophically important. Right.

Right. It would be fit, xenophon, I think, to kind of have that kind of reading order. Yeah. But Greg, so the practical education proceeded, the theoretical.

I think that's right. Yeah. It's kind of like Churchill too, right? He was.

Oh, is it? Anyway, no kind of interesting like, uh, I don't have a complete thought here. I don't know. We've got time.

We're not going anywhere. Yeah. Kind of just looking at the beach. Why do you want to go to the beach?

It's it's it's it's we so usually it's it's the school of life educated xenophon. It's hard to believe though that somewhere along the way, I mean, even Churchill benefited from his public school education and being introduced to philosophy at a young age. It's hard to do a lot of reading during the analysis, you know, during something like that. It's hard to understand where he would have educated himself.

But it's that it's that life life was more because usually we're like, look, we're going to devote our lives to the study of great books to better understand ourselves, right? Yeah. But here, xenophon is a student of life, especially the nastiest and most difficult aspects of life. Right.

And that gives him the insight into philosophy. Do you understand like the direction you want to talk about? Well, I think the direction let me try this. I think so in the memorabilia, Zenithin mentions that he was present for some of these socratic conversations.

And so he direction goes something like the following, I think. And Zenithin was interested in moral and political matters. Socrates tried to encourage him to take up philosophy. He was not the best student by his own account.

Socrates chastises him a couple of times for not being a good student. And so he's kind of half in half out decides to go pursue this other thing, which may or may not be political, but ends up being political. That actually, that entire episode of his life confirms to him what Socrates had been trying to teach him, which is I think the ultimate futility of all deeds. And so he retreats back into the life of the mind and he begins to see Socrates' the idea that the philosophical life is the best life.

Yeah. So I mean, it's a roundabout way, whereas Plato, we don't get much of an away biography in that way. It's sort of, he just had this one moment where he turned all of a sudden that was it. And that's that that event is the apology of Socrates.

And one wonders, by the way, in Zenithin's apology, what role not only is Zenithin's failure in politics turned him back to philosophy, but he's coming back and seeing what happened to Socrates, what role that actually played in turning him as we know that it did by Plato's account in his own case. He comes back and his dad, his dad's been killed. Right, right, right. Right.

All right, Phyllis, I hate to issue an apology of my own. I think I'm tough. Yeah, this is what folks at home. This is like way past everybody's bedtime, apparently except for David.

It was right at a party. Now I was trying to- He's got a bunch of blonde beach bimos behind him. That's no way to talk about my wife, sir. All right, Phyllis.

Thanks, Phyllis. Please rate, like and subscribe to New Think Green and donate. Doo doo doo doo doo doo.