Philosophy Series: Accounting For Your Life
In Plato’s Apology, we follow Socrates at his trial as he aims to defend himself against accusations of corrupting the youth. Specifically he is charged with injustice and being a busybody by investigating the heavens and the earth, making the weaker argument the stronger, teaching these to others, and not acknowledging the gods. These accusations come at him because of his propensity to go around the city talking to all sorts of different people and interrogating them about their beliefs on different topics, such as the virtues. His method of debate and interrogation is known as the Socratic dialectic, or the elenchus.
You may be familiar with this dialogue of Plato’s as it’s one of the most famous texts in the Western philosophical corpus. Unfortunately, as we know, Socrates was indeed convicted by his fellow Athenians and ultimately sentenced to death. (Cancel culture’s first victim?)
The entire dialogue is certainly worth reading as Socrates dissects each accusation against him in his defence. He’s really giving it his all in this one, and you can’t blame him.
In this post, what I’d like to focus on from this dialogue is a short passage near the end, when Socrates basically claps back at his peers for convicting him and giving him the death penalty.
“Next, I want to make a prophecy to those who convicted me. Indeed, I’m now at the point at which men prophesy most – when they’re about to die. I say to you men who condemned me to death that as soon as I’m dead vengeance will come upon you, and it will be much harsher, by Zeus, than the vengeance you take in killing me.
“You did this now in the belief that you’ll escape giving an account of your lives. But I say that quite the opposite will happen to you. There will be more people to test you, whom I now restrain, though you didn’t notice my doing so. And they’ll be all the harsher on you, since they’re younger, and you’ll resent it all the more.
“You see, if you imagine that by killing people you’ll prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way, you’re not thinking straight. In fact, to escape is neither possible nor noble. On the contrary, what’s best and easiest isn’t to put down other people, but to prepare oneself to be the best one can. With that prophecy to those of you who convicted me, I take my leave.”
– Plato’s Apology, 39c – 39d.
The reason I think this passage is so important is because it gets right to one of the roots of reality. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever energy you put out there will come back to you. Karma. Whatever you want to call it, there’s no escaping the consequences of your actions and there’s no escaping having to account for them. Whether it’s in the short-term, the long-term, or in the after-term, you will have to take responsibility for your beliefs, your actions, and your decisions. There’s no getting around it. You cannot hide.
What’s more, whatever we seek to escape will often come back to haunt us anyway. If you have a problem that you’re just sweeping under the rug, it’s going to grow and fester until it becomes much more difficult to deal with than if you had just attacked it head on in the first place. Most problems, as we all know, start out relatively small. It’s when we ignore them that they become bigger and bigger.
In the example from the dialogue, Socrates is accusing the jurors of being too cowardly to live rightly, debate him in earnest, and try to become better people. Instead they’d prefer not to have their beliefs and actions interrogated too much. They’d prefer to keep believing that they know what’s what. They’d prefer to keep thinking they are wise and good and that it’s actually Socrates who’s the problem. Rather than looking inward, they are placing the blame outward, on the person asking the questions. As a result, Socrates prophesies that they are going to be interrogated even more intensely after he’s gone. And it will be much harder to account for their lives because the younger students won’t be as lenient.
We see much of the same thing today from people who invest their identities into certain trendy cultural ideologies. They’d prefer not to think about the consequences or logical conclusions of those belief systems too thoroughly, or at all. And then when confronted with those consequences or logical conclusions, their instinct is to silence and attack rather than think.
But of course, sooner or later, we all have to confront the Truth.
So that’s all for this post. I’m continually amazed at how we’ve been wrestling with certain ideas for thousands of years. It seems the instinct to silence, to run, to hide runs deep, because of course it’s easier. But, as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
A good ancient lesson for our modern times.
Quotations:
Cohen, Marc S., Patricia Curd, and C.D.C. Reeve, editors. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle. Plato’s Apology. Third ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2005.
