The Memoirs of Socrates

[Editor’s Note: these memoirs of Socrates were dictated to scribes over the course of twenty-five mornings during which Socrates (convicted of impiety) resided chained to a wall in the prison of Athens awaiting his execution. A complete explanation of its discovery and its translation can be found in the first addendum at the back of the book. A brief outline of the minimally known facts that constituted the previously “understood” version of the life of Socrates will be found in the second addendum which ends with a chronology of the major historical events of his world. The entire Socratic text now follows.]

So here I sit, in this windowless putrid-smelling dungeon carved into the Hill of the Muses west of the Acropolis. And among the many other ironies of my circumstance is this: I am inarguably the most famous living Athenian. Not counting a handful of military figures (such as the devil Lysander) I am arguably the most famous living citizen in all of Hellas. In all of Athenian history, only Alcibiades who died six years ago is more famous today than I am. To most of today's voting-age citizens, Pericles the Great has become a vague “character” from the distant past. Hardly anyone alive today speaks of him or even remembers his name. At least that's the way it seems if one reads the pamphlets and listens to the rumors about politics and socially prominent “celebrities,” past or present, the “social gossip story” stuff. For several years now there are more bullshit stories about Socrates than anyone else who ever existed—man, God, or Demigod.

During the last several months when my indictment for “impiety” became a matter of “public” discussion, I should have paid closer attention to the political organizations dedicated to the eradication of this so-called “dangerous educator” of Athenian youths. But even if I had, I would have done nothing different than that which I have always done. As I said to some of my friends weeks before my trial began: “It is as if I were a physician arraigned by a confectioner and tried before a jury of children. My only refuge, my only defense is the factual ‘evidence’ of the innocence with which I have so publicly lived my entire seventy-year life.”

I have an awful lot of lies about me to correct, and only twenty-four or twenty-five or maybe twenty-six days in which to do it. So let me begin with this point: to call me an “educator” is to get the rational subjective point-of-view (or “vision”) of everything backwards. It would be more accurate to call me an “anti-educator.” With the rarest of exceptions, Sophists, professional paid educators, lecture and most especially teach “rhetoric.” I never charge for my time in conversation. I never lecture anybody. I practice the “dialectic.” They speculate and theorize and manufacture fancy words with which to befuddle those less capable of utilizing if not quite “comprehending” such empty sophistry, such sophisticated bullshit. I take the opposite approach: I ask clarification questions along two basic lines of reasoning. I ask questions that enable me to better visualize what I am told about the objective world of nature including human nature, and I ask questions to clarify the precise meaning of the words the “educated” use to describe what they so foolishly believe is “newly discovered” as true about nature or morality.

When I was a boy almost all voting citizens were very skeptical about any “new ideas” being “publicly advocated” with fancy rhetoric used by young articulate “politically active” or “socially prominent” types.

Well, times have changed—and not for the better! People can be made to believe in anything—even irrational ideas about nature or how to advantageously change it, or even “protect” nature from human intervention, so long as it is dramatically and repetitively “discussed” with little, if any, contradiction. The more prestigious the speakers are the more powerful the message. The more educated the sincere believer in the latest theoretical “scientific knowledge” (which always turns out to be extremely generalized and uselessly imprecise if not out and out misleading foolishness) the more sincere the motivation of the believer to spread the word of their “newly discovered” beliefs to the “nonbelievers.” Nowadays, quite a few people can be made to sincerely believe anything crazy. And the more articulate the “true believer” advocate is, the more they find clever verbal ways with which to “justify” an irrational belief in the crazy ideas their dopey “followers” so sincerely believe in. Human nature is what human nature is. Sometimes it's pretty rational. Not often—but occasionally.

It’s a lot more “fun” going through life, minute-by-minute, with a palpable emotional awareness guiding your consciousness than it is applying reason and logic with the forcible application of “willpower.” After all, there are so many more ways to be “amused” today than there were way back when.