To achieve his Empire, Alexander the Great had swept aside all remnants of Greek democracy, but the deeper challenge to the idea of democracy didn’t come merely from force of arms, but from the sheer difficulty of running an open society. Socrates the philosopher, the educator AND the questioner was executed for being a dissident.
And this challenge had been thrown down 80 years earlier, not by a glory-drunk hero, but an old man who asked awkward questions - questions which are still being asked today.
400 BC, and the Athens of this time wasn’t a happy place. War so drained away her wealth and social conflict ate away at her young democracy. Tyrants had briefly seized power and used thuggery to suppress the voice of poorer citizens.
When democracy was restored, it felt itself besieged. And one of its most contemptuous critics was the philosopher Socrates.
Today we remember Socrates as the father of philosophy, the founder of a tradition picked up by Plato and Aristotle.
But in Athens, at the time, he was seen as a dangerous influence, and a dissident who was a genuine threat to this embattled democracy.
Socrates Execution - A Greek Tragedy
He taught his students to question everything. For him, learning to ask that challenging questions was essential to the development of a mature civilisation.
So he jabbed and pinched the Athenian democracy. Political leaders lacked virtue and some voters were simply too stupid to choose well.
This was dangerous stuff. And Socrates’ adoring pupils included aristocrats who would later revolt against the democracy, becoming tyrant themselves.
The greatest problems for would-be democracies have never really been about voting systems or institutions, hard though those are to get right.
It’s about how an open society deals with genuinely subversive critics. Socrates was challenging the Athenian democrats to come up with an answer to this dilemma.
When the democracy is under threat, for how long do you hold on to your principles of free thought and free speech? When do you give way to censorship and repression?
By 399 BC, the authorities had had enough of Socrates’ awkward questions. They panicked and arrested him. Socrates was tried on charges of corrupting the youth of the city and undermining the government.
Corrupting the Youth of Athens
He gently mocked the court as he forced them to confront the consequences of their own censorship. He was narrowly convicted. The sentence was death.
In Athens, the death sentence was carried out by making the prisoner drink the poisonous juice of the hemlock plant.
Socrates could easily have bolted for exile, which would perhaps be an easier way out for his critics as well, but his principles would not allow that.
And so he said goodbye to his wife and his family and, with his students around him, he calmly prepared to die. Better that than shut up or live as a hypocrite.
Confucius had argued that the good society is ordered and obedient. For Socrates, it was stroppy, dissident and open.
Thinking of the differences between China and the West today, it’s pretty obvious that these ancient stories still haunt the modern world. And so they should.
One of the great Greek tragedies was the death of Socrates. He showed that even this wonderful, brave, pioneering society thought there were some questions too dangerous to ask.
And even the greatest minds were not able to express themselves quite freely. And he leaves all open societies with the same dilemma.
When you feel genuinely threatened by a dissident. If the dissident is challenging your liberties.
Do you lock them up? Do you shut them up? Ancient Athens didn’t have the answer to this, and nor do we.
Tyrants and despots have long battled over power and wealth; none more so than the Battle of Marathon.
External Links
Socrates - Wikipedia Page
The Analects: By Confucius - Illustrated
