WHAT DID SOCRATES MEAN??

     I have long been fascinated and a bit confused by Plato’s claim that in his final speech before the Athenian Senate Socrates stated that “Wickedness runs faster than death”. Clearly, he was accusing the Senate of being “wicked” when it sentenced him to death for causing the Athenian defeat at the hands of Sparta following the Peloponnesian Wars around 399 BCE. It seems clear that the Senate was using Socrates as a scapegoat to cover their own failures in the recent war with Sparta.

            Thus, Socrates’ statement entails the claim that the Athenian Senate was being wicked when they sentenced him to death for his part in this fiasco. If one reads Plato’s Apology it is clear that Socrates claimed he was innocent of any crimes in connection with the war with Sparta. History would seem to bear him out. My difficulty has long been with the poetic contrast that Socrates draws between “wickedness” and “death”. Put bluntly, just wherein lies the difference between these two negative qualities?

      Clearly, Socrates is accusing the Athenian Senate of being “wicked”, or evil, in their self-effacing reasons for sentencing him to death. And his death sentence at their hand thus speaks for itself in this regard. They do appear to have been evil, or “wicked” in this case. So, Socrates would appear to have been “not guilty” in this contest. This much is clear. What is not fully clear to me is the meaning of the contrast between wickedness, which “runs faster than death” and death itself. These two realities do not somehow seem to be fit for drawing such a contrast. The one is an ethical characteristic while the other is a physical characteristic.

            Clearly, in Socrates’ case, death will overtake him soon. Yet he claims that the wickedness of the Senate will “out run” his death. Clearly the contrast is not so much between “death” and “wickedness”, nor between Socrates’ death and that of the Senators, since apparently, he would and did die before any of them. No, Socrates’ contrast was between two quite distinct domains of action, that of moral evil and mortal death. But the question remains: why or how would evil run faster than death? The two categories are on the face of it incompatible.

            Setting aside the possibilities that Plato miswrote, and Socrates misspoke, where does this seemingly off-center dilemma leave or lead us? A good poetry teacher would mark down one or both of these ways of speaking. The contrast does not seem to make sense. How can a moral quality, in this case “wickedness”, run at all, let alone faster than death itself? Has not Plato, or Socrates, misspoken here? Death and wickedness are not meaningful opposites. Who is to blame for this error?

            Well, I think that what Socrates was trying to say here is that the wickedness of the Senators condemning him to death is morally worse than the merely mortal death to which they have condemned him. The pay-off for their immorality will arrive “before”, or “more significantly”, than will the death of Socrates. Indeed, in the very act of condemning him unfairly the Senators have already “outrun” Socrates’ impending death by virtue of the fact that they have committed a moral evil, which counts more, weighs more, or “runs faster than” the mere death of Socrates.

            Socrates never lied to his students nor to his inquisitors, and everyone in Athens knew this. Indeed, he was highly thought of as a former soldier and current Senator, as well as admired for his teaching the youths of Athens for free. It is clear, from this exchange of images and his own proven character, that his accusers are way off-base here. So, in wrongly condemning Socrates to death his accusers have already “outrun” him and his death, putting themselves to shame for having condemned one of their favorite citizens to death. It took a while for his time to come, but Socrates did drink the fatal hemlock. His accusers, whose own wickedness outran Socrates’ death, were left to live with this ironic fate even though Socrates was now dead.     

REMEMBERING GOOD FRIENDS FROM WAY BACK WHEN

            Over the last sixty years I have had very many students, many of whom I still remember. But along the way there has been a group of them that have stood out in my memory largely because we, for one reason or another, have remained good friends. I would like to share a few of my concrete memories of these friends so you can see why they have become so special to me.

            In my first group of students at Seattle Pacific College in the early 1960s there were six young fellows with whom I became very close friends and have remained so with several of them ever since. Del Wisdom and Warren Barnes from the “Inland Empire” near Spokane Washington became vital parts of my first group of philosophy majors. They, along with the others in this group, were extremely outstanding students and went on to distinguish themselves, in both graduate school and after.   

Warren was well known for his unique and frequent laughter in class. It was akin to an insistent crow-call and a quiet snicker, both endearing and annoying simultaneously. Everyone soon came to know that behind that laughter lay a very brilliant mind. Warren had his emotional difficulties throughout those four years, but after earning his graduate theology degree he emerged as aa effective union leader for the California Farm Workers.  

Del Wisdom served as a kind of “older brother” to Warren and the others in this special group. He also helped me out in his final year of college grading freshman philosophy papers. After graduation Del inherited his aunt’s farm in Eastern Washington and chose to drop out of his graduate philosophy program at the University of California to take over his aunt’s farm. Soon he turned it into one of the largest and most successful vegetable farms in the West. Del spent his “spare time” advising a group of farmers in Mexico and Guatemala. In his “retirement” years Del has continued to advise local farmers while managing his growing bookstore business in Eastern Washington.

            Jim “Skip” Matthews came from Seattle and double-majored in philosophy and literature with distinction. His only “B” grade was in a softball PE class. Jim was the most lively and outspoken of the group, but his insights and remarks were almost always recognized as on the mark. He grew up playing trumpet and testifying at fundamentalist youth rallies, but in college he soon became, along with his philosophy colleagues, more of a mainline Protestant Christian. In his Senior year Jim served as editor of the student newspaper and was enthusiastic supporter of the newly formed philosophy major. Jim earned his Doctorate degree at Vanderbilt University in English and went on to an outstanding teaching career.

Jim and I taught together at Eckerd College for a number of years before he became President of a church related prep school in Texas. He was an outstanding educator and was always well-liked by his students. I had the good fortune of living in his garage apartment for several years while we were both in St. Petersburg, Florida. In this way I got to know his son Justin during his childhood days. Jim and I had many long talks during those years about how our lives had met and continued to intertwine over the years. He called me just the other day and reminded me of some of my peculiar teaching methods in our first years together. Made me laugh O).                      

After earning his master’s degree in philosophy, Dale Rammerman went to law school at the University of Washington and later became a judge in the state and local court systems. In his “retirement” Dale moved to Anacortes, Washington and became a lay reader in the Episcopal Church where he still serves on a regular basis. Whenever we got together for small reunions Dale would share many interesting and funny stories about the ins-and-outs of legal systems. I think his training as a statistician for our college basketball team stood him in good stead when he got to law school.

Dale’s high school buddy Roger Dexter was obviously one of the very brightest of this very bright group. His wry sense of humor kept us all on our best metal during those years before he went off to earn his philosophy degree at Yale. Roger loved basketball and rumor has it that he spent many hours playing pick-up ball in the Yale gym while earning his Ph.D. degree. I recall several long conversations with Roger about the basis of his Christian faith, and we had not finished these before his untimely death a few years after he began his teaching career at Portland State University in Oregon.

            Jim Watson received a scholarship to study philosophy at the University of Chicago but as soon as he arrived there his eyesight failed him. Jim was always the gentle, humorous “wise old owl” amongst this group. He had spent much of his youth in the Boy Scouts of America organization, so it was natural that he sought a career working for this organization. He also worked for many years as Director of Curriculum for the Seattle School System. When it came time for me to choose a student to write a recommendation for my own Ph.D. studies, I asked Jim to do the honors. I did get to know Jim better in the years after I returned to Seattle later on.

            Dale Cannon interrupted his undergraduate study of philosophy to study for a year in his other “first love”, physics, in Edinburg, Scotland. Along with his colleagues, Dale was both brilliant and committed to a life of learning and teaching. In fact, he, like myself, chose to do his graduate work at Duke University in the philosophy of religion. We have been able to meet each other at various philosophy conferences over the years to renew our on-going discussions of the ideas of Michael Polanyi and religious belief. Dale developed a strong career as a professor of philosophy at Western Oregon University. We both had Professor Wm. Poteat as our dissertation advisor at Duke. We, like the above-mentioned others, stay in touch with each other on a semi-regular basis.

            A sort of “free-loader” in this group was Rex Hollowell, late-comer to our philosophy group but, after a year’s theological studies in Edinburgh, earned his master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Washington in Seattle and landed a position in philosophy at Spokane Falls Community College. Rex was an outstanding, vibrant teacher who fascinated and entertained his students with his wit, while introducing them to some of the intricacies of philosophy. After many years as a first-rate teacher, Rex died a premature death of some strange disease that I didn’t understand.

As one might surmise, I consider my time with the above-mentioned persons/scholars one of the very most important aspects of my own life, both as a teacher and as a friend. My interactions with them at the very beginning of my teaching adventure was absolutely crucial to my own development as a teacher and as a person. These vibrant young men gifted me with their intelligence and friendship at a time that served as a very special gift to me when it proved crucial for me personally and for my development as a teacher.

Although I have had literally thousands of students, many of them close friends, I can honestly say that this group, my first group, has always meant the most to me personally. To be so close for so long to so many of them has been an extremely rich gift. How lucky can a guy get? I am so very grateful for their persons and their lives.