Scott Samuelson: Plato’s Defense of the Humanities
People in the humanities shouldn’t forget that the humanities are worth dying for.
By Scott Samuelson
I was a freshman in college when I first read Plato’s Apology, his version of the event that probably made the biggest mark on him: his city’s trial and condemnation of Socrates.
I recall how a fellow student in Humanities 101 was skeptical of the claim in the Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living. He asked about the worth of the lives of the world’s two heaviest twins, the ones pictured on Honda motorcycles in the Guinness Book of World Records (an image emblazoned on all our minds). Regardless of if they led examined lives, he asked, didn’t they seem to be living well, zooming around the country together?
We ended up debating if philosophy is just one way of having a good life, or if it’s a necessary ingredient in all lives. I don’t remember where I landed (in fact, I’m still making up my mind), but I vividly remember thinking that all of us have bottomlessly deep lives, and that all human lives are worth examining, especially those of the two brothers on their Hondas.
I went on to major in philosophy and eventually to teach philosophy in a wide variety of venues—not just liberal arts colleges, universities, and community colleges, but houses of worship, bars, prisons, and even online. I’ve often had occasion to assign the Apology and debate the merits of the examined life.
In my experience, readers of the dialogue are inevitably struck by how Socrates doesn’t seem to care about winning his case. So, what’s he really up to? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about in light of higher education’s current predicament, where the academic humanities are fighting for their existence against powerful economic, cultural, and political forces. What should I as a defender of the humanities be doing? What can I learn from Socrates at his trial?
Having just reread the Apology, this time for the Catherine Project with a group of especially sharp readers, I’ve drawn nine lessons from how Socrates, in a far more perilous situation than our current one, presents and defends the humanities.
1. The humanities are fundamentally the practice of the examined life.
In the Apology, Socrates defends philosophy, which we consider to be just one of the humanities. But what he describes as the life of philosophy is quite broad and involves trying to understand the meaning and value of human life, both in its peculiar individuality and tricky collectivity. It’s “discussing goodness” (38a) and “the care of the soul” (30b). Socrates says that he engages in the examined life with various groups of Athenians: politicians, poets, and craftsmen. We’d classify his inquiries as political philosophy, religious studies, ethics, and aesthetics; and his discussions are enlivened by history, literature, and the arts (just as history, literature, and the arts are enlivened by discussing goodness and the care of the soul).
In other words, the activity that Socrates practices is what in the Renaissance (via Cicero) comes to be called the studia humanitatis—the humanities. In this sense, the humanities are not a specific academic discipline but a way of being human that can animate any number of academic disciplines, even as it goes beyond them. The humanities (or whatever you want to call the practices of the examined life) appear whenever we engage in thinking, reading, writing, or conversation about fundamental matters that isn’t a rationalization of our current way of life or a powerplay to advance an agenda but an honest inquiry into what really matters.
2. The humanities aren’t a body of knowledge.
According to one of the official charges against the philosopher, Socrates enquires into “things below the earth and in the sky.” Socrates is adamant that he has no interest in scientific matters, though, as he says, “I mean no disrespect for such knowledge, if anyone really is versed in it” (19c).
The work of the humanities shouldn’t be modeled on the sciences. While there’s much to be said for the research and scholarship that goes on in the academic humanities (footnoting, fact-checking, evaluating arguments, learning languages, constructing theories, and so on), the fundamental goal isn’t building a body of knowledge about being human. It’s not quite like astronomy’s goal of building knowledge about the stars. (I happen to believe that the studia humanitatis can animate even the sciences, but that’s another story.)
In fact, if Socrates is right, it’s more about not knowing than knowing. The famous story in the Apology is about how Chaerephon goes to the Delphic Oracle to ask if Socrates is the wisest of all. The priestess answers that nobody is wiser. Socrates can’t believe it, because he thinks that he has no wisdom. So, he sets out to disprove the Oracle. If he can find even one Athenian with a shred of wisdom, he has proven that someone else is the wisest. After thoroughly examining various Athenians reputed to be wise, he sees that the oracle is indeed right. At least he knows that he has no wisdom; everyone else believes to have wisdom when they don’t.
It’s sort of like how to really see something you must stop thinking that you already know what you’re seeing and just pay attention to what’s in front of you. Sometimes (to draw on another famous story from Plato, one about a prisoner liberated from a cave) you need to push through a blinding light to a whole new reality. I also think of the Chinese poet Li Bai’s lines: “Without tiring, I look at Mount Jingting, Mount Jingting looks at me; / Finally, there remains only Mount Jingting.”
To examine the meaning and value of human life, you have to break out of thinking that you know what life is all about and come to a fresh ego-humbled relationship to the mountain of what’s real and valuable.
3. The humanities shouldn’t have a specialized vocabulary.
Socrates begins his self-defense by insisting that he speaks as a normal person in the “language which it has been my habit to use, both around the trading stalls of the marketplace (where many of you have heard me) and elsewhere” (17c). With a twinkle in his eye, he insists, “I have not the slightest skill as a speaker—unless, of course, by a skillful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth” (17b). In short, the humanities ought to be able to speak to humanity. No jargon necessary.
4. The humanities shouldn’t be focused on getting ahead in the economy!
In the Apology, Socrates gently mocks the sophists for being paid to teach citizens how to advance themselves in the city. What does it mean to advance oneself? We’re inclined to think that we know the answer: it means to wield more power, to make more money, to be respectable, maybe to get famous. Whatever knowledge and skills contribute to attaining such ends are worth our investment of time and money. But such “advancement” assumes that the standards of power, money, respect, and fame properly measure our human worth. If a group of teachers had the secret of how to live a truly good life, we should be willing to pay them whatever price they asked!
Though I think that an education in the humanities grows the mind in ways that can have any number of uses, the study of Dante or James Baldwin is as likely to make you ill-fit for certain economic or political functions as it is to turn you into an efficient worker or manager. To make the humanities a handmaiden of the business department is to sell out their soul.
5. People cut the humanities at their own peril.
One of the most mind-bending of Socrates’s claims in the Apology is that he’s not really the one on trial. Even the question of his punishment pertains less to him than to all who accuse him. He says, “If I am what I claim to be, and you put me to death, you will harm yourselves more than me” (30c). The memorable image he uses is that of the gadfly (the philosopher) buzzing around a working horse (the city). The city’s elimination of the philosopher might seem like silencing a buzzing annoyance but in fact it means that the city will fall asleep on the job.
Because the care of the soul is what’s fundamentally valuable, cutting the humanities is less a punishment to their practitioners than to those who cut them. The proper emotion to feel toward those who are hostile to the humanities is pity. They’re likely on the treadmill to meaninglessness or burnout.
By contrast, anyone who can still take care of the soul is in relatively good shape, even if it means poverty or death. That might be a hard pill to swallow for those of us gainfully employed as teachers of the humanities, but if the humanities are what they claim to be, it’s the right pill to ingest.
6. The humanities should be open to anyone and everyone.
Since the humanities are about what matters to us as humans, every one of us should have access to them. Money should never be a barrier to their study. Socrates says, “If anyone, young or old, is eager to hear me conversing and carrying out my private mission, I never grudge him the opportunity; nor do I charge a fee for talking to him, and refuse to talk without one; I am ready to answer questions for rich and poor alike, and I am equally ready if anyone prefers to listen to what I have to say and answer my questions” (33a).
Insofar as people like me care about the humanities, we should be willing to teach them for free. Such pro-bono work isn’t about self-sacrifice or dutiful generosity. Examining life is part of what makes life worth living. It’s a true pleasure to do it with others, pay or no pay. In fact, it’s probably best when no money has to change hands.
7. Ideally, the humanities should be funded by the state.
Socrates says something extremely funny—and extremely ballsy—at the end of the Apology. After he’s found guilty, both the prosecution and the defense are asked to suggest penalties. The prosecution suggests the death penalty. Rather than plead for something like banishment or even a big fine, Socrates says, “If I am to suggest an appropriate penalty which is strictly in accord with justice, I suggest free maintenance by the state” (37a). In fact, he asks to put up like an Olympic victor for the services he has rendered to Athens.
It’s a joke; but like most jokes, especially the ones that Socrates cracks, it makes a point. Not only is he saying that justice would demand that a good action is rewarded rather than punished, he’s saying (at least in my view) that if the state cares about its people, what could be better than maintaining an infrastructure of education that puts citizens in the ballpark of self-knowledge and maybe even helps them flourish as human beings?
For all my despair about the current shape of the humanities in higher education, I realize just how lucky I am to have spent so many years being paid to teach philosophy—and just how wise my (often unwise) country has been to have provided some measure of funding for the humanities as a necessary part of a general education.
I hope that the state doesn’t altogether lose this wisdom. It has contributed in immeasurable ways to our quality of life—certainly to my quality of life.
8. The humanities help make life worth living.
The most famous line from the Apology—the one that hooked me back in college (and has hooked countless others over the years)—is, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Actually, what Socrates says is, “If I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that a life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is” (38a).
One of the ways we see the glory of the examined life is in how calm Socrates is in the face of his execution. He claims that death is either an endless sleep or a journey to the realm of souls. Either way, he’s fine. If death is an absolute end, he knows he’s spent his limited time on earth well. If death leads to an afterlife, he’ll just keep on doing exactly what he’s been doing: “Above all I should like to spend my time there, as here, in examining and searching people’s minds, to find out who is really wise among them, and who only thinks that he is” (41c).
It’s an astonishing test of any activity we engage in. Would we be fine doing it if our life was over tomorrow, and would we also be happy doing it if we had to do it indefinitely?
9. People in the humanities shouldn’t forget that the humanities are worth dying for.
When we lose sight of the nature and worth of the care of the soul, we warp our ability to defend it. We start talking about things like return on investment or soft skills. Even worse, we lose our ability to practice it by converting it into a political project of either shoring up or tearing down a tradition.
The Apology is certainly not a model of how to defend the humanities to a jury—or, for that matter, a dean or a legislator. The way I’ve come to read Plato’s dialogue (at least this time around) is as a defense against the inner degradation of the humanities. The Apology is an apology addressed to people like me, people who claim to care about the things of the spirit. It reminds us what’s worth defending—what’s worth fighting and even dying for.
If nothing else, rereading the Apology for the umpteenth time has reminded me of that vision I had as a freshman, where everyone’s life—mine, my classmates’, the Honda-riding brothers’, Socrates’s, yours—appeared to me as bottomlessly deep, simultaneously common and unique, pricelessly precious, and definitely worth thinking about.
Scott Samuelson holds a joint appointment at Iowa State University in Philosophy & Religious Studies and Extension & Outreach. He also works with the Catherine Project. He’s the author of three books: Rome as a Guide to the Good Life, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering, and The Deepest Human Life—all published by the University of Chicago Press.
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"The proper emotion to feel toward those who are hostile to the humanities is pity. They’re likely on the treadmill to meaninglessness or burnout." Amen, brother. Cheers for another brilliant essay.
Would Socrate be teaching in a College or a University? What are the chances of finding him there?