Whither piety, thither authority: thoughts from The Apology of Socrates

The scene of Plato’s Apology is Socrates on trial before the vast jury of Athens, but the effect of Socrates’ ‘defence’ is to place the city of Athens on trial. In so doing, he exhibits considerable impiety towards the institutions of his city. However justified we might think Socrates’ criticisms to be, it is worth meditating on the inherently destabilising effect of such criticisms, and whether they are worth the costs.

Athens was intensely proud of its public democratic life. Within Socrates’ on lifetime they had lost their democratic way of life under the tyranny of ‘the Thirty’, and then regained it. The rule of the Thirty is mentioned by Socrates in his speech as a period recognised for its injustice. It was unjust because the Thirty did not wield their authority as those who are under the law, but as those who are above it. When Socrates asks Meletus who or what in Athens is the source of improvement of the Athenian youth, Meletus first names ‘the law’. The law is the public measure of justice in Athens: the laws are what tell the Athenians that they are a just city.

In his defence of his way of living, Socrates explains his avoidance of public office (which is contrary to the usual course of life for citizens of Athens) as a calculated necessity. One early experience of narrowly escaping death because of his attempt to be just in an official capacity taught Socrates that if he wished to keep his life he must live as a private person.

By claiming that he could not live and act justly in public life in Athens, Socrates aims a challenge at the very heart of this city. He claims that they do not live up to their own standard. It is not enough that ‘the law’ teach justice—the law has to be upheld by just people. If people are not just, the law will not be kept, as Socrates’ experience shows.

But an even deeper problem Socrates lays open is that the whole operation of the Athenian justice system depends upon people concerning themselves most of all with their reputation and not with telling the truth. The jury want Socrates to plead with them and parade his family before them so that they can put on a show of justice by pitying and acquitting him. That’s how public judgement works in Athens — and it works because everyone agrees that it works. You need to play the game, Socrates. But he refuses to.

Socrates behaves as if the Athenian standard of justice is itself under judgement by a higher standard—a standard that he represents, and is sent by the god to teach them. Socrates rises up as a private person with special authority to hold the whole city to account. He insists that they will condemn him, not because he is guilty, but because they are envious of him. Then he seems to go out of his way to work them up into a state of envy so that they will condemn him, and thereby condemn themselves.

It must appear, to the judgement of the reader, that Socrates is vindicated. He alone seems willing to tell the truth of Athens, and their condemnation of him confirms this seeming. Maybe he couldn’t rouse Ancient Athens from its stupor, but surely he has roused some of its citizens—those ‘true’ judges who have recognised justice in acquitting him, and also us the readers of Plato’s dialogue.

It is worth asking, however, what would happen if Socrates succeeded in rousing more than just a handful of citizens, who then proceeded to adopt as private a life as he led. What if he succeeded in getting through to Athens herself, and brought her institutions to the ground in one powerful fit of truth-telling?

The dilemma of corrupt institutions

Any health of any society is dependent upon the stability of its institutions. A significant part of that stability is trust: the institutions (of law, political procedure, education) need a kind of epistemic stability if they are to survive: they need a right to legislate. This right doesn’t have to be conferred by the people as in a democracy, but it needs to be recognised by the people. The authority of these institutions needs to be a communally recognised standard of justice: that is what gives them the right of public judgement as opposed to merely private judgement that is wielded publicly by force of sheer personal strength.

Consider the current state of relative epistemic instability in our society. Many people have lost trust in various educational and medical institutions, and have especially lost trust in the key institution of public judgement which is our news media. The difficulty can’t be simplified to into a choice between truth and falsehood. Because if you stop believing in the public institutions—and especially if many people stop believing in the public institutions—you must ask, what and whom do you believe, instead? Just your own judgements? A society composed of people who follow only their own private judgements is a society in a state of anarchy; it is really no society at all.

Consider further the situation in Israel by the end of the book of Judges: each man doing what is right in his own eyes. The nation is in utter turmoil, and if not for God raising up Judges at key intervals to bring public judgement, they would have utterly destroyed themselves. As it was, they still nearly destroyed the entire tribe of Benjamin.

Judges is a useful example to dwell upon, because in Judges we see that the temptation for ‘each man to do what is right in his eyes’ applies particularly to worship. Various tribes and cities and even private households in Israel are worshiping as they please, in this is the deepest source of the turmoil in the nation — it is not merely moral turmoil, though there is plenty of that too.

We may be able to (tentatively) draw a comparison to liberal, pluralistic societies like our own here. Public authority in our society is premised upon securing the validity of private judgement. Is it possible that such a situation is inherently unstable, unless the society happens to be broadly united in common worship?

A new piety?

Socrates’ suggestion that Athens abandon its old forms of justice and piety is an incredible dangerous one. Particularly because it is not clear that he is able to offer a satisfactory replacement.

Firstly, because Socrates’ new piety is a fundamentally private affair: it is concerned with the self-examination of each individual soul; it occurs in his head through the private prohibitions which he takes to come from a new and better god. Is it possible for such a form of piety to make the transition from private judgement to the public judgement which is necessary for the founding of a city?

Secondly, there is a lingering worry that, even if it can be translated into the space of public authority, Socrates’ piety is caustic. The god that Socrates believes in and lives by is a god that tells the truth. But it is a god that tells the truth by saying ‘no’: by prohibiting Socrates from acting on what is not good, rather than by telling him what is good. Likewise the god has taught Socrates wisdom by teaching him what is not wisdom. Is this satisfactory grounds for executing justice in communal life? It is grounds for pursuing a philosophical life, certainly, as a distinct way of life on the periphery of the city — but perhaps that is the only life he can ground.

I suspect Socrates was aware that there was no real risk of the whole city coming to doubt its old piety. Indeed, much of his defence seems expressly targeted at arousing outrage at himself—not an attitude you want to work your audience into if you hope to bring them to admit some of their own wrongs. But if this is the case, and all he aims to do is present an exemplary way of life to the next generation of philosophers, he simply hands the problem over to that generation. Philosophers seemed doomed to live according to truth in a city built on lies.

Whither the new piety that can build a city on truth?