The Curse of Socrates

A large part of Plato’s dialogues involving Socrates take place on the peripheral places in and about Athens. On doorsteps, outside the city walls, within a prison cell, at the steps of the palace of Justice, or in the suburb of Peirera, as with the case of the magnum opus, The Republic.

Socrates is often taken to such places by others to isolate him from the crowd, so that they might have his undivided attention. As in the case of The Republic, Symposium, and the Phaedrus, he is also frequently held against his will, even physically threatened by the self-chosen interlocutors. It is funny then that people consider him to be meddling when it is the people themselves who continue to drag him into the conversation, trying to refute him to show that they know more.

And, that is indeed the Curse of Socrates. The only engagement Socrates has is to ask that simple question of “do you really know more?” That does not mean facts, trivia, dates, and figures, but what special knowledge do you posses that is greater than others? For, for Socrates, there is only one knowledge that we can truly posses, self-knowledge, and that comes at a price.

To “Know Thyself” often means excluding others for periods of Time. There is sometimes a need to remove oneself from the familiar, the comfortable, the ordinary in order to achieve a sense of ex-stasis, or the virtual removal of the Soul from the Body, in essence, the origin of ecstasy. It is at those moments that the Self or Soul is exposed, stripped of its garments of job, social status, religion, gender, caste, and whatnot. All of those things are indeed part of “who we are,” but they can also limit our ability to see deeper, to see what we are without those things.

We have things that are part of us that are given to us by birth, such as gender, race, nationality, and so on, and then there are the accessories to life that we place upon our selves, such as job, social status and whatnot. But, who are we when we strip those away? Can we strip those away?

By searching to “Know Thyself” one often must alienate him or herself from others. To leave what is closest in order to find what is missing. I have done so several times in my life. Sometimes this removal has been by choice, other times by necessity, or yet other times by exigent circumstances beyond my control. Yet, not once has it been by pure indiscretion or to merely cause “chaos” in my life. Each time has been at a crucial moment, when a solution needed to be found, when I had lost touch with who I really was, when I no longer felt that I “knew myself.”

To be on the periphery can be exciting at first, a sense of liberation. But, to stay there, can be terrifying and very lonely. In the depths of that loneliness, however, sometimes, something quite profound can happen. We let go of our customary trappings and bare our Souls to the world, to say, “Here I am.” And, when we can do this, without fear, without anxiety, we can then re-enter the city walls, to go forth, and return to the marketplace with a renewed confidence and peace of mind. For each departure, there is also the prospect of a return.