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Oct. 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:55
892 Socrates, Laws and Family (audio to a video)

Some evidence for a core theory of mine...

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How's it going? Steph.
So I finally managed to drag you into bed with me.
Let's get busy.
With the last days of Socrates.
Sorry, the red room is currently occupied, so I have retreated to the bedroom, and we will have a menage à trois, you, me, Socrates, and...
Crito.
Sorry, menage à quatre. So, it's often been said, and I think it's very true, that when people believe that they're thinking, they're merely mouthing the platitudes of some long-dead philosopher or economist, and that does seem to be the case.
So, I wanted to talk a little bit about our good friend Socrates, which is a thinker that every thinker needs to wrestle with or come to grips with at some point, and he perhaps went mad trying to do it in his way, and I hopefully will not Trying to do it my way.
So, one of the most famous things that comes out of the story of Socrates is the fact that he did not flee the death sentence imposed on him by the Athenian court.
He was dragged into court because he was considered to be corrupting the young.
And there is a famous...
I actually adapted this for the stage many years ago, but there's a famous...
Speech that he gives called the Apology in court regarding why he has not been corrupting the young and confronting his accusers and so on.
And it's a great speech, mad in its own way.
And then what happens is he has to wait for a ship to arrive at Athens before he gets his death sentence, which is to be put to death by drinking hemlock, or as some grade 6 student once put it, I believe, by drinking wedlock.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about Socrates' speech, defending why he does not flee the city of Athens, despite the fact that many people there consider his sentence to be unjust, and who also are willing to give him egress,
or an exit from the city, and why he decides to say, as Aristotle later, and Socrates taught Plato, and Socrates never wrote anything down, it was all written down by Plato, But Socrates taught Plato.
Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle did flee when he was faced with the same situation.
And his immortal line, and it was a great line and is a great line, was, I will not let the city of Athens sin against philosophy twice.
So, let's have a look at Socrates' justification for why he stays and drinks the hemlock, actually giving thanks to the gods for relieving him of an affliction he calls life.
Anichi goes into this quite a bit in Twilight of the Idols, which is well worth a read for the criticism of rationality and the ennui that mere rationality provides, or creates, would be a better way of putting it.
So, let's have a little toodle through Socrates' justification As to why he decides to stay in Athens and accept the death sentence, even though it is very clear to everyone that this is an unjust death sentence.
And the reason that I wanted to talk about this is that I get a lot of criticism, and perhaps it's valid, I don't think it is, but I get a lot of criticism for my stance that the state...
that the believability of the government combined with people's blindness to the violence of the state, that my belief is that it arises out of people's familial experiences, out of their early experiences with authority, with brutal, unjust, or corrupt parents, which they then must claim allegiance to despite which they then must claim allegiance to despite rationality and pretend that it is not a massive power disparity that is imposed, usually through violent or manipulative means, on the part of the parents.
And that is why when they grow up, they cannot see the corruption and the violence of the state and do all they can to infuse the state with a kind of morality that is clearly not empirically there.
As I've mentioned in a recent podcast, the argument always goes something like this.
People say, well, the initiation of the use of force is always wrong.
And that's called the non-aggression principle, or also being called a porcupine pacifist, which is that you use violence only in self-defense and as a response to violence and in a justly proportional manner and so on.
I'm totally fine with that.
That doesn't seem to me in universally preferable behavior, Irrational Proof of Secular Ethics, my new book.
Please buy. I talk about this.
It's the only logical moral stance.
It's the valid justification for a moral validity of self-defense.
So people always say, well, yes, using violence is always wrong.
And then you say, well, by that criteria, the state is an immoral institution.
And then they say, no, that's not the same because it's a voluntary relationship between the citizens and the state.
To which you reply, well, it's not voluntary because the government points guns and takes taxes without consent and throws people in jail who have not initiated the use of force, people who use drugs or gamble or, you know, just want to keep their own money and so on, or give it to charity as they see fit.
And so you say, well, the government clearly is not a social contract because the government uses force.
And they say, well, no, it is a social contract because people vote and they're born in a certain society, they choose to stay and so on, which, of course, would never be valid for your neighbor.
Your neighbor just can't say, hey, okay, your house is now my jurisdiction, and if you choose to live there, you have to give me half your income or I get to shoot you.
It's never a valid moral law for individuals.
But in this magical world called the state, up is down, black is white, and violence becomes virtue.
So people always say, well, violence is wrong, the state is violence, you say.
No, no, no, the state is voluntary.
But if the state is voluntary, why does it need guns?
Why does it need to point guns? Well, because there are bad people.
Oh, okay, well, whether it's bad people or not, it's still not a voluntary situation.
And they say, well, no, it is voluntary because of the social contract.
So it is just this roundabout nonsense where people say the initiation of violence is always wrong, but somehow the state is exempted from that.
And that, of course, comes, as I argue in Untruth, The Tyranny of Illusion, another book, That this comes from the corrupt edicts of the parents, which they're not allowed to examine, and which they must then twist their minds to enable the justification of those silly things.
So my belief that people's blindness to the corruption of the state and the violence of the state and the evil of the state arises from their emotional defenses for their own parenting.
It's a longer theory than that, but if you'll just sort of go with it for a moment, you can see this, at least I can see this very clearly in Socrates, and in particular in Crito.
So this is the morning of the day before.
Socrates is going to be murdered, basically, by this date.
And, of course, in perfect allegory, he has to drink his own poison.
And Crito, who is an old man, Socrates is in his 70s at this point, is saying that this is unjust and you should flee the city and so on.
And Socrates says the following.
He says, look at it in this way.
Suppose that while we were preparing to run away from here, or however one should describe it, the laws and communal interest of Athens were to come and confront us with this question.
And here he embodies the voice of the laws or of the society, which says...
Sorry, this laptop is about to melt my legs, so let me just...
Sorry about that.
Just so you don't see little smoke rising from the webcam...
So the laws interrogate Socrates in this manner.
Now, Socrates, what are you preparing to do?
What are you proposing to do?
Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating, you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the laws, and the whole state as well?
Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?
And then he reverts to himself.
He says, How shall we answer this question, Crito, and others of the same kind?
There is much that could be said, especially by an orator, to protest at the abolition of this law which requires that judgments once pronounced shall be binding.
Shall we say, Yes, the State is guilty of an injustice against me, you see, by passing a faulty judgment at my trial?
Is this to be our answer, or what?
Crito says, What you have said, certainly, Socrates.
Socrates replies, Then what if the laws say, Was there provisions for this in the agreement between you and us, Socrates?
Or did you undertake to abide by whatever judgments the State pronounced?
If we expressed surprise at such language, they would probably say,"'Don't be surprised at what we say, Socrates, but answer our questions.
After all, you are accustomed to the method of question and answer.
Come now. What charge do you bring against us, and the state that you are trying to destroy us?'"'Did we not give you life in the first place?
Was it not through us that your father married your mother and brought you into this world?' Tell us, have you any complaint against those of us laws that deal with marriage?
No, none, I should say.
Well, have you any against the laws which deal with children's upbringing and education such as you had yourself?
Are you not grateful to those of us laws which were put in control of this for requiring your father to give you an education in music and gymnastics?
Yes, I should say.
Very good. Then since you have been born and brought up and educated, can you deny, in the first place, that you were our child and slave, both you and your ancestors?
And if this is so, do you imagine that your rights and ours are on a par, and that whatever we try to do to you, you are justified in retaliating?
Though you do not have equality of rights with your father or master, if you had one, to enable you to retaliate, and you were not allowed to answer back when you were scolded, nor to hit back when you were beaten, nor to do a great many other things of the same kind, will you be permitted to do it to your country and its laws, so that if we try to put you to death in the belief that it is just to do so, you on your part will try your hardest to destroy your country and us its laws in return?
And will you, the true devotee of goodness, claim that you are justified in doing so?
Are you so wise as to have forgotten that, compared with your mother and father and all the rest of your ancestors, your country is something far more precious, more venerable, more sacred, and held in greater honor both among gods and among all reasonable men?
Do you not realize that you are even more bound to respect and placate the anger of your country than your father's anger?
That you must either persuade your country to do whatever it orders and patiently submit to any punishment that it imposes, whether it be flogging or imprisonment, And if it leads you out to war to be wounded or killed, you must comply, and it is just that this should be so.
You must not give way or retreat or abandon your position.
Both in war and in the law courts and everywhere else you must do whatever your city and your country commands, or else persuade it that justice is on your side, but violence against mother or father is an unholy act, and it is a far greater sin against your country.
What should we say to this?
Crito, says Socrates, that what the laws say is true or not?
Crito replies, Yes, I think so.
Now, before we move on, I mean, this is important to understand that, I mean, this is not an argument.
This is a mere habitual and sequential assertion of opinion.
And said opinion is entirely predicated upon the ethics of the family in ancient Athens, which of course was patriarchal, and that violence against children was not considered to be violent or immoral.
In fact, it was considered to be an ethical necessity.
To beat your children, to make them virtuous, as is unfortunately so common in religious societies that violence against children, who by their very natures do not believe in God, because they are uncorrupted, at least originally.
But here we say that he says that the laws gave him life in the first place and sanctified the union of his mother and father.
This is to unite the law with the family.
Do you see why It is not such a radical position for me to hold that our allegiance to and blindness to the evil of the state arises from our allegiance and blindness to the corruption of our parents if they were corrupt.
And of course, given people's allegiance to the state, we can assume that there's more than a few corrupt people out there.
So the laws are lecturing Socrates and said that we gave you life.
We validated and sanctified the union of your mother and your father.
And we educated you.
And we taught you gymnastics and music and all of the other things that would have been taught in ancient Athens, geometry and so on.
So this is a very clear conflation of the authority of the parents with the authority of the state.
And you see this all the time in religious circles, of course.
I mean, there's a reason that he's called the Holy Father or priests use Padre or Father.
This is so common, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and so on.
This is very common, right?
If you can tap into the authority of the bad father, then you have a lot of allegiances.
And I myself get accused of this from time to time in the old...
Free Domain Radio is a cult kind of thing, but we don't have to get into that silliness right now.
But he's saying that if you have a father or a master, then you are not allowed to retaliate against your father.
You are not allowed to lift a hand against your father, and no more is it justified that you lift a hand against the state.
Your father gave you life, brought you into being, educated you, and you have no right of self-defense against the violence of your father.
In fact, it would be evil to retaliate like against like to your father, and in the same way, and in an overarching way, The same is true of the state, that in this view the state gives you life, nurtures you, educates you, protects you, and therefore you owe it eternal slavery and allegiance, to the point of war, to be a murderer.
And of course this arises from the Platonic ideal of the world of forms, which we don't know whether or not Socrates subscribed to, but certainly it's all over Plato's writings, although of course Aristotle is entirely opposed to this view.
But in Plato's view, the state is not composed of individuals, but is composed of a perfect form of justice which individuals merely represent.
And therefore, there's no problem when you say, well, if I can't do this to Bob and Bob can't do this to me, why should somebody who claims the mantle of the state be any different?
Because for Plato, the state is a higher ideal of divine virtue and therefore you can't apply standards that you would to other individuals, to those who claim to represent the state.
And of course, this is a very common view and a very poisonous and destructive view all the way down to the present.
So, it's not my imagination.
That has conflated this idea that our views of the state arise from our views of the family.
This, of course, is a 70-year-old man on the verge of being murdered by people who claim to be the government having a conversation not with the abstract laws but with his own father, who he was never allowed to raise a hand against despite the violence that he received, which is very clearly spoken of here.
So, of course, Socrates, by never processing the child abuse that he received at the hands of his father, Socrates is never able to see the violence and evil of the state, but must spend his whole life justifying its power and virtue.
So then, let us continue here.
Socrates then continues.
Consider then, Socrates, the laws would probably continue, whether it is also true for us to claim that what you are now trying to do to us is not just...
Although we have brought you into the world, and reared you and educated you, and given you and all your fellow citizens a share in all the good things at our disposal, nevertheless, by the very fact of granting our permission, we openly proclaim this principle, that any Athenian, on attaining to manhood, and seeing for himself the political organization of the state and us, its laws, is permitted, if he is not satisfied with us, to take his property and go away wherever he likes.
If any one of you chooses to go to one of our colonies, supposing that he should not be satisfied with us and the state, or to emigrate to any other country, not one of us laws hinders or prevents him from going away wherever he likes, without any loss of property.
On the other hand, If any one of you stands his ground when he can see how we administer justice and the rest of our public organization, we hold that by doing he has, in fact, undertaken to do anything that we tell him.
And we maintain that anyone who disobeys is guilty of doing wrong on three separate counts.
First, because we brought him into this world.
Second, because we reared him.
And thirdly, because After promising obedience, he is neither obeying us nor persuading us to change our decision if we are at fault in any way.
And although we set a choice before him and do not issue savage commandments giving him the choice of either persuading us or doing what we say, he is actually doing neither.
These are the charges, Socrates, to which we say that you too will be liable if you do what you are contemplating, and you'll not be the least culpable of the Athenians, but one of the most guilty.
Socrates says, If I said, Why do you say that?
They would no doubt pounce upon me with perfect justice and point out that there are very few people in Athens who have entered into this agreement with them as explicitly as I have.
They would say, Socrates, we have substantial evidence that you are satisfied with us and with the state.
Compared with all other Athenians, you would not have been so exceptionally much in residence if it had not been exceptionally pleasing to you.
You have never left the city to attend a festival, except once to the Isthmus, nor for any other purpose except on some military expedition.
You have never travelled abroad as other people do, And you have never felt the impulse to acquaint yourself with another country or other laws.
You have been content with us and with our city.
So deliberately have you chosen us and undertaken to observe us in all your activities as a citizen, that you have actually fathered children in it because the city suits you.
Furthermore, even at the time of your trial, you could have proposed the penalty of banishment if you had chosen to do so.
That is, you could have done then, with the sanction of the state, what you are now trying to do without it.
But whereas at that time you made a fine show of your indifference if you had to die, and in fact preferred death, as you said, to banishment, now you show no respect for your earlier professions, and no regard for us, the laws, whom you are trying to destroy.
You are behaving like the lowest slave, trying to run away in spite of the contracts and undertakings by which you agreed to act as a member of our state.
Now first answer this question.
Are we, or are we not, speaking the truth when we say that you have undertaken in deed and not in word to play the role of citizen in obedience to us?
What are we to say to that, Credo?
Are we not bound to admit it?
We must, Socrates.
It is a fact, then, they would say.
That you are breaking covenants and undertakings made with us, although you made them under no compulsion or misunderstanding and were not compelled to decide in a limited time you had seventy years in which you could have left the country.
If you were not satisfied with us or felt that the agreements were unjust, you did not choose Sparta or Crete, your favorite models of good government, or any other Greek or foreign state.
You could not have absented yourself from the city less if you had been lame or blind or decrepit in some other way.
It is quite obvious that you outstrip all other Athenians in your satisfaction with this city.
And as for us, its laws, for who you could be pleased with a city without its laws?
For who could be pleased with a city without its laws?
And now, after all this, are you not going to stand by your agreement?
Yes, you are, Socrates.
if you will take our advice, and then you will at least escape being laughed at for leaving the city.
Just consider what good will you do yourself or your friends if you breach this agreement and fall short in one of these requirements.
It is fairly obvious that the risk of being banished and either losing your citizenship or having their property Confiscated will attend to your friends as well.
As for yourself, if you go to one of the neighbouring states, such as Thebes or Megara, which are both well-governed, you will enter them as an enemy to their constitution.
And all good patriots will eye you with a suspicion as a destroyer of laws.
You will confirm the opinion of the jurors, so that they'll seem to have given a correct verdict.
For any destroyer of laws might very well suppose to have a destructive influence upon young and foolish human beings.
Do you intend, then, to avoid well-governed state and the most disciplined people?
And if you do, will life be worth living?
Or will you approach these people and have the impudence to converse with them?
What subjects will you discuss, Socrates?
The same is here, when you said that goodness and justice, institutions and laws, are the most precious possessions of mankind.
Do you not think that Socrates and everything about him will appear in a disreputable light?
You certainly ought to think so.
But perhaps you will retire from this part of the world and go to Cretus' friends in Thessaly.
There you'll find disorder and indiscipline and no doubt.
They would enjoy hearing the amusing story of how you managed to run away from prison by arraying yourself in some costume.
Putting on a shepherd's smock or some other conventional runaway's disguise and altering your personal appearance.
And no one will comment on the fact that an old man of your age, probably with only a short time left to live, would dare to cling so greedily to life at the price of violating the most stringent laws?
Perhaps not, if you avoid irritating anyone.
Otherwise, Socrates, you'll be the subject of a good many humiliating comments.
So you will live as the toady and slave of all the populace?
Literally roistering in Thessaly as though you had left this country for Thessaly to attend a banquet there?
And where will your discussions about justice and other good qualities be then?
We should like to know.
But of course you want to live for your children's sake so that you may be able to bring them up and educate them.
Indeed! By first taking them off to Thessaly and making foreigners of them so that they'll have that to enjoy too?
Or if that is not your intention, supposing that they are brought up here, will they be better cared for and educated because of your being alive, even without you there?
Yes, your friends will take care of them, but will they look after your children if you go away to Thessaly and not if you go off to the next world?
Surely, if those who profess to be your friends are worth anything, you must believe that they would care for them.
No, Socrates, be advised by us who raised you.
Do not think more of your children or of your life or of anything else that you think of what is just so that when you enter the next world you may have all this to plead in your defense before the authority is there.
Neither in this world does doing this appear to be any better, or more just, or more holy, not to you, nor to any of your family, nor will it be better for you when you reach the next world.
As it is, you will leave this place when you do, as the victim of a wrong done, not by us, the laws, but by your fellow men." But if you leave in that dishonorable way, returning injustice for injustice and injury for injury, breaking your agreements and covenants with us, and injuring those whom you least ought to injure, yourself, your friends, your country, and us, then will you have to face our anger while you live.
And in that place beyond where our brothers, the laws of Hades, know what you have done, know that you have done your best to destroy us, will they not receive you with a kindly welcome?
They will not receive you with a kindly welcome.
So here we have some just wonderful, wonderful stuff, which is echoing down to the present, to the current day, which really is all in a desire to convince people of their obsequious requirements and individual insignificance relative to these great and magnificent laws.
And this idea that love it or leave it, you know, if you think America or Canada is such a bad place, why don't you go live somewhere else?
This is exactly, was written down almost 2,500 years ago in this text and has echoed down to the present.
Of course, it's a completely false proposition, but I imagine that the murder of Socrates at the hands of the state did give Plato some pause relative to his own future.
He was still a relatively young man at this point, and Plato did live into his 80s.
But this, of course, is the intellectuals who then cleave to the state based on threats to their fellows.
And this is, again, a pattern that continues down to this day.
But there are just two things that I wanted to point out of this speech, and there's much more that we could go into, but I'll keep these relatively short.
The first is that, he says, you are under no compulsion to accept the laws of the state of where you live.
But it's complete nonsense.
It's complete nonsense.
If you don't pay the people who claim to be the government, they shoot you and throw you in jail where you'll get raped and brutalized and put in solitude and starved and just treated with the most abhorrent disrespect and violations.
And how is it that some people get to draw a color on a map and say, now I own this, and anybody who doesn't pay me rent, quote rent, I can shoot.
Well, this of course is what we would call the mafia in any local situation.
The ethics don't change when you get a goddamn flag or a House of Parliament.
It's still a bunch of arbitrary individuals who arbitrarily paint a map a certain color and say, now everybody owes me tribute who lives in this color.
It's a complete fictional madness.
I might as well go to my neighbor and say, I'm the High Lord of Gondor.
Give me one of your children.
People would view me as insane, but in this world of platonic dialogues, and in the world of newspapers, and in the world of patriotism, in the world of the military, in the world of the police, in the world of academia, in the world of the general common sense of the general public, This madness is always considered sanity.
So, naturally, of course, you are subject to compulsion.
It's like saying to a woman, well, you have to marry a man, and someone else is going to choose the man that you get to marry.
And yes, if we force you to marry Bob, you can never complain about him, ever.
And you must submit to everything that he does.
Because you chose to marry Bob, and you could have chosen to marry Joe.
Oh, sorry, we chose Bob for you, but you could have appealed to us and said, I want to marry someone else.
The whole question is, why does somebody get to force you To marry someone in the first place.
Why is it that somebody gets to force you to surrender property, livelihood, income, time to them at the point of a gun in the first place?
Not which slave master do you choose, but why is there a slave master to begin with?
And this, of course, is not addressed in this dialogue in any way, shape, or form.
It has to be studiously avoided.
And, of course, the conflation of the laws with the family is very clear here.
We raised you. We sanctified your marriage.
We educated you. You are only alive because of us, and so on.
This is all parental responsibilities which are supposed to create filial or a childhood in perpetuity response of obligation back to the parents.
So when I talk about the state as being in effect to the family, that's really what I mean.
And I think that there's plenty of evidence for this.
It's well worth having a look at this.
This is the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Hugh Treadnick.
It's well worth having a look at this.
And viewing it as a psychological document describing the family, rather than as any form of political document describing the state, because that's the only place where it gets any kind of credibility.
Nobody would believe this argument's put forward without the family context, and that is what I'm always trying to get across.
Thank you so much for watching. I look forward to your donations.
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My new book, a highly acclaimed novel, The God of Atheists, is out, which I hope that you will buy and enjoy.
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