The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [198]
And for 400 years the ‘Tomb of Socrates’ stood opposite one of Athens’ great madrasas, the Islamic school where the faithful learned to praise Allah, and also to praise Socrates. Because, remember, Socrates does not just belong to a Western tradition. The mystic and philosopher Ibn ’Arabi approved of the Socratic maxim ‘I know that I do not know’. Al-Razi, the prolific writer, produced more than 200 books and modelled himself closely on Socrates. The madrasa in Athens, continuously – for 200 years – employed the Socratic method of question and counter-question.
When Islamic culture made Greece its home throughout the Ottoman period, locals elevated Socratic influence. They believed that the Parthenon was ‘Plato’s Academy’ – the place from which the ‘divine’ pupil of Socrates would share his pearls of knowledge. They imagined Plato sitting in the marble throne in the apse, considering the decoration of the east wall.2
Sometimes in history it is helpful to put the cart before the horse. When we see how enthusiastically Islam embraced Socrates as ‘The Source of Wisdom’, we are reminded both that the philosopher’s own, fifth-century life was orientated east before the chart was reset west, and that Plutarch was prophetic when he described Socrates: ‘Not as a citizen of Athens, or a citizen of Greece, but a citizen of the world.’3
Socrates escapes the compass. His ideas were peddled by caliphs as avidly as they were in the courtyards of Renaissance princes. The humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino self-consciously replicated Socratic-style seminars in Florence, but so too did the scholars of Coptic Alexandria. One of the oldest surviving copies of Plato – from the tenth century AD – sits in the library of the Carouine Mosque behind the souk in Fez; its edges are crumbling, like fine biscuit, but the internal pages are yesterday-bright. Plato (in Arabic ‘Aflatones’) is still a very popular Islamic name; as popular as the name Socrates still is in the US and Europe. Whether we approve of Socrates or not, whether we believe Athens was or was not justified in contriving his death, we must remember him. Because he is part of our heritage and because our lives can only be better if we keep pursuing knowledge, and ‘the good’. We are indeed ignorant if we pretend that we already have all the answers to life on earth.
SOCRATES: For no one knows whether death happens to be the greatest of all goods for humanity, but people fear it because they’re completely convinced that it’s the greatest of evils. And isn’t this ignorance, after all, the most shameful kind: thinking you know what people don’t?4
I know that I do not know.
Ibn ’Arabi – following ninth century AD Islamic Hadith
Socrates is a strange hero. His life interrupts the predictable beat of world civilisation, a rhythm that pumps out wars and tyrants, experiments, certainties, old solutions to new problems. We strive for answers, for closure; but all Socrates does is ask questions. His notorious slogan is stimulating and troubling in equal measure: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’
Socrates’ debates between duty and desire, between politics and personality, between sex and sophistication, between the power of men and the capabilities of women, between principle and pragmatism, still inform our lives