A crash course in philosophy: what is philosophy? How did philosophy originate? And why do people actually philosophize? In philosophy people are concerned with life questions. Great thinkers have been pondering some of life’s questions for centuries.
One of the greatest thinkers ever: Socrates
When do we make the right choice? Is man by nature good or bad? These are life questions that philosophers have been pondering for centuries. One of the most famous even had to pay for it with his life. His name? Socrates.
Athens, the year 399 BC. It must happen at sunset. Seventy-year-old Socrates has been sentenced to the poison cup by the city council. Ostensibly for corrupting the youth and wickedness, but the vagueness of the charges suggests that there is more to this. It seems more like a show trial, purely to get rid of a critical mind. Socrates therefore considers it pointless to submit a request for clemency. Furthermore, he declines the offer to flee and live in exile outside Athens. What Socrates does do? He takes a bath, says goodbye to his family and children and then stays behind with some students. Then the keeper comes with the poison cup. “Socrates,” he begins. ‘When I go out I will not experience what I get with others, that they get angry and call me names when I announce to them that they have to drink the poison by order of the government. During this time I have come to know you as the most decent, kindest and most civilized man who has ever come here.’ The saved man wishes Socrates all the best, he turns around, bursts into tears and walks away. Socrates looks after him and says: ‘You too, fare well’. And to his students: ‘What a nice man!’. Not much later, the famous Greek puts the cup to his lips and calmly drinks it to the bottom.
Questions make people
How should we imagine such a conversation with Socrates? In the market or in the bathhouse, in fact anywhere where people gather, you could see Socrates talking to a group of men and boys. Barefoot and always wearing an old cloak, he was a striking appearance. Despite his shabby clothes, he was the center of attention. The group discussed what they saw around them, such as a demonstration of fighting techniques in the market square. The question that arose, for example, was whether boys had to learn to fight to become real men. In other words: how can you teach a person ‘andreia’, the Greek word for courage.
This is how the men started talking, looking for a definition of masculinity. Of course, almost everyone had an opinion about that. For example, a general participating in the conversation could say: Courage, that’s easy. Courage is staying at your post in battle. Guarding the fort, even when the enemy has superior numbers.’ But when asked further, and Socrates was a master at that, it turns out that it is never that simple. After all, you can also deliberately make a retreat to avoid senseless casualties among your troops, and to strike back with double force later. In short: what one person calls courage, another may call stupidity. And you can also be courageous in the face of illness and adversity, even though you really don’t need to take a fighting course for that. So what is courage? Sometimes these types of conversations led to completely new insights. At that time people lived according to the moral ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ and ‘you should treat your friends well, your enemies badly’. Socrates came to a new view of the world through discussion. For example, one of his most famous insights was: ‘Suffering injustice is better than doing injustice’.
Philosopher makes enemies
What is happiness? What is truth? It is these questions with which Socrates could provoke fascinating discussions, but at the same time he could drive his interlocutors to despair. Compare it to a child who keeps asking the infamous why question. Why do apples fall to the ground? Because the Earth is pulling on those apples with its gravity. Then why is the earth pulling on those apples? Soon, even the most decorated scientist will be left without an answer. By constantly asking questions, certainties disappear and people start to doubt everything. Exactly what a philosopher wants to achieve. But those in power who demand that the population simply follow their orders may experience it as threatening.
It was a politically turbulent time, at the end of the fifth century BC. Greece had a democracy, the first in the world. At least, a democracy by old standards. In a city like Athens, more than half of the population still consisted of slaves who were without rights. The empire did not have that many free citizens. The Greeks were also involved in a fierce war against the Spartans. During this almost thirty-year conflict, a bitter party struggle had arisen. Anti-democrats, led by thirty aristocrats, seized power during a revolution. This tyrannical group, better known as The Thirty, abolished democracy and only handed out civil rights to their rich friends. The Thirty also included a number of Socrates’ regular discussion partners. The philosopher himself never took sides, he spoke to everyone. But to outsiders these conversations could of course be interpreted as collaborating with the enemy. Socrates was increasingly suspected by the democrats. And when they took power again, they thought it was high time to silence the old philosopher. For good.
What should I choose?
He spent 9 months in a German camp and wrote regularly for underground resistance newspapers after his escape. It is therefore not surprising that the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was concerned with moral dilemmas. Who do you join? When should you rebel? Sartre pointed out a common human weakness, namely the tendency to abdicate responsibility for our choices. Just to mention something: ‘I’m Dutch, so I don’t have to worry about the problems in Africa’. Wrong says Sartre. At least, a Dutch person may well ignore Africa, but not for the reason that he simply belongs to a certain group. According to Sartre, every person is responsible for his own choices, regardless of whether he is Dutch, socialist, civil servant, woman, Catholic, elderly or whatever. And as long as you really make those choices yourself, without caring about what others think, according to Sartre there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and you always make the right choice.
The world according to Sartre
- Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you
- Hell, those are the others
- A lost battle is a battle that one thinks one has lost
- When the rich go to war, it is the poor who die
- Only someone who doesn’t row has enough time to rock the boat