A Socrates for Our Time
A review of Donald Robertson's "How to Think Like Socrates"
Socrates lived in troubled times.
The greatest of all ancient Greek philosophers survived war, plague, and the downfall and restoration of democracy in his home city of Athens before his fellow citizens condemned him to death in 399 BCE. Though we don’t know much about the historical Socrates beyond this basic biographical sketch, the literary accounts of his life produced by devotees and disciples like Plato and Xenophon dramatically influenced virtually all later varieties of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from Stoicism to Epicureanism to Cynicism. These schools all saw Socrates as the ideal philosopher, and all drew on their own versions of Socrates to make philosophical points and advance arguments.
So too does contemporary writer and psychotherapist Donald Robertson, one of the leading thinkers of the modern Stoicism movement, in his recent book How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World. Like his ancient Greek and Roman predecessors, Robertson uses Socrates to make a compelling argument about how Socratic philosophy and modern cognitive-behavior psychology can help us better navigate whatever life throws our way. Unlike many of today’s self-improvement gurus, Robertson notes, Socrates gives us tools for thinking and solving problems rather than brittle, inflexible rules that shatter on contact with reality.
But How to Think Like Socrates is more than an accessible, readable synthesis of biography, philosophy, and psychology. It’s a timely warning against demagogues and political charlatans—and shows how Socrates himself can serve as a role model for living honestly in low, dishonest times like our own.
Socrates rose to prominence in Athens during the rule of the great democratic statesman Pericles. He lived through an age of war, pestilence, and political turbulence that saw Athens ultimately give up on the democratic ideals Pericles had championed.
Robertson presents Pericles as a small-d democrat, a political leader committed to ruling through persuasion and consent of the Athenian people rather than threats, coercion, and violence. In foreign affairs, moreover, Pericles claimed that he expanded the Athenian empire by giving benefits to the city-state’s allies rather than receiving or extorting tribute. He brought out the best in Athens and its citizens, “continually appealing to reason and justice” rather than the imperatives of power.
But war and plague claimed Pericles, leaving Athenian politics vulnerable to the depredations of demagogues and charlatans. “As desperation took hold in Athens,” Robertson observes, “so did political cynicism and despair; at the same time, religious disillusionment and superstition were on the rise.” Into this political and social vacuum came Cleon, whom Robertson describes in eerily familiar terms as “a businessman whose wealth came from his family’s tannery… a political outsider, a demagogue who quickly gained popularity by attacking the ruling elite.”
Where Pericles spoke to the best in his fellow citizens, Cleon appealed to their worst instincts. Again, it’s hard not to see the present in Robertson’s depiction of the past: Cleon insulted his political rivals, and Athenians “found his unusually brash style more entertaining than the polished rhetoric of established statesmen.” Soon enough, Cleon’s “outlandish behavior” became the norm in the Assembly, and “Genuine statesmen gave way to demagogues, who stoked the fear and anger of the citizens and pandered to their greed and other vices.”
This turn to demagoguery would ultimately cost Athens the war, its democracy, and its soul. When the Assembly debated what to do with Mytilene, a rebellious one-time ally of Athens, Cleon claimed that might made right and pushed the most punitive measure possible: the death or enslavement of the entire population of Mytilene. When the Assembly had second thoughts, Cleon—often suspected of corruption himself—accused his rivals and opponents of taking bribes. Democracy, he charged, was too weak and slow to truly be effective; “Athens needed a strong leader like him, to save them from the chaos caused by indecision.”
Robertson’s Socrates “watched from a distance, observing how easily Cleon was able to conceal his own corruption by accusing his critics of corruption, undermining the democratic process, while posing as a champion of the people and promising to be their savior.”
All the while, Robertson’s Socrates fulfilled his duties as an Athenian citizen—he and his protégé Alcibiades had been out on campaign with the Athenian military while the plague ravaged the city itself—and incessantly questioned those who claimed to be wise in one respect or another. Socrates, according to Robertson, was concerned above all with “whether or not those wielding power possessed the wisdom and virtue that might make them competent to be in charge.” He interrogated Protagoras, the philosophical advisor of Pericles, as to whether wisdom, virtue, and good citizenship could be taught, Alcibiades about the origins and nature of justice, and the Sophist rhetorician Gorgias on the different ultimate goals of rhetoric and philosophy.
Cleon would go on to die in battle, and Athenian oligarchs staged a series of coups against the city’s democracy with Alcibiades, in Robertson’s telling, standing as democracy’s most prominent defender before his assassination. Sparta eventually won its war with Athens, imposing an oligarchy on the city that became known as the Thirty Tyrants—a regime that more than earned this sobriquet with its campaign of rampant executions of political enemies and confiscations of property from foreigners. Socrates remained in Athens despite the danger he faced from Critias, once a member of the Socratic social circle and now the head of the murderous new regime.
In a dialogue years earlier, Critias made clear his stance that might makes right—and that, contra Socrates, “being the victim of injustice is a greater evil than committing injustice.” Democracy, Critias tells Socrates, is merely a conspiracy of the weak against the strong; philosophy simply an elaborate exercise to deceive people “that men ought to be equal and other unnatural nonsense.” Once again, it’s not at all difficult to see the parallels with modern American politics and society here; Robertson’s Critias articulates the credo of the modern right-wing populist and online chauvinist influencer with uncanny precision.
Socrates, however, will have none of it. He proceeds to poke holes in the flawed arguments of Critias, observing their logical contradictions and pressing his own claim that political rulers need to “rule themselves wisely” above all else. A truly wise statesman, Socrates argues, would aim to improve his or her fellow citizens—not prey on their fears or pander to their baser instincts to elevate himself above his countrymen and -women.
Like Cleon, Critias eventually met his demise on the battlefield—though against his fellow Athenians rather than Spartan rivals. By the time Socrates faced death at the hands of a restored democracy, however, the damage to Athenian politics had already been done. While Pericles embodied the best of Athenian democracy, Robertson argues, his successors “showed how easy it was to manipulate the Assembly, appealing to the citizens’ worst tendencies and most irrational fears… The democracy became hopelessly corrupt as the political class became better at manipulating votes by exploiting weaknesses in the system their ancestors had created.”
That may turn out to be an epitaph for our own democracy as well.
As we look down the barrel of a second and even more unhinged Trump presidency, we can look to Robertson’s Socrates as a role model for how to approach the next four years. Like Socrates, we can speak our minds and ask penetrating questions of our political leaders—a task that’s all the more important given the visible and morally craven abdication of responsibility on these fronts by social media companies and traditional media outlets alike. We can and should raise these questions in discussions with others in our social circles, just as Robertson’s Socrates did with his own interlocutors.
Above all, Socrates tells us to never stop questioning ourselves or anyone else—no matter the cost. He reminds us that we should stick to our values and rely on reason for our arguments. Unlike media moguls and business titans eager to ingratiate themselves with the incoming administration, we should refuse to compromise ourselves and our moral codes out of fear of potentially harmful consequences. And as Socrates would undoubtedly remind us, it’s much worse to commit injustice than to suffer it.
If we want to live honestly in a dishonest age, we could do worse than to follow the example of Robertson’s Socrates.
