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Documentary, BBC: Genius Of The Ancient World. Ep. 2 Socrates
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00:00Since the dawn of civilization, the forces of nature and the whims of gods held sway over humanity.
00:13But two and a half thousand years ago, humankind experienced a profound transformation.
00:21Suddenly, there were new possibilities.
00:27This is a time when rationality overrode superstition and belief.
00:32This is an ethic which does not rely on the gods.
00:36The world is now explained in terms of natural forces.
00:39We are now responsible for our own destiny.
00:46Upheavals across the globe sparked an ambitious vision of what humans could achieve, spearheaded by three trailblazers.
00:56Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha.
00:59Great thinkers from the ancient world whose ideas still shape our own lives.
01:05Is wealth a good thing?
01:08How do you create just absurdity?
01:12How do I live a good life?
01:15By daring to think the unthinkable, they laid the foundations of our modern world.
01:24I've always been intrigued by the fact that these men, who live many thousands of miles apart, seemed spontaneously and within a hundred years of one another to come up with such radical ideas.
01:37So what was going on?
01:43I want to investigate their revolutionary ideas, to understand what set them in motion.
01:48This time, Socrates.
01:50So thrilling, imagining those big new ideas could possibly have been enacted there.
01:56He was the soldier whose bravery in battle was matched by the inflammatory courage of his ideas.
02:03Socrates encouraged his fellow citizens to rationally examine every aspect of their lives.
02:09Does the person who possesses knowledge in a big way know everything?
02:13You don't know?
02:14I don't know. I give up. I give up.
02:16I'm going to inhabit his world.
02:18To examine how his subversive philosophy challenged superstitious belief that had reigned for millennia.
02:26And to discover how his search for truth led to his downfall.
02:46In 469 BC, Socrates was born, the son of a midwife and a stonemason, into a city in the midst of a tumultuous transformation.
03:04He grew up in the suburbs of Athens, at eye level with the sacred Acropolis Rock.
03:11But young Socrates wouldn't have looked out over the elegant lines of the Parthenon Temple,
03:17that exquisite symbol of Western civilisation that still stands proud today.
03:22Instead, he'd have woken every morning to a horror.
03:26The blackened and burnt-out remains of buildings brutalised by war.
03:33His city bore the scars of a ferocious conflict with the region's superpower, Persia.
03:46But against the odds, Athens had triumphed just ten years before Socrates was born.
03:52Now it revelled in what some call the Greek miracle, a golden age.
04:00Burgeoning trade flooded the region with new wealth, and crucially, with new ideas.
04:05But the key ideology that would shape young Socrates' life belonged to Athens alone.
04:16Because here, around 508 BC, democracy, the power of the people, was born.
04:24Virtually overnight, all adult male citizens found they didn't just serve the state, they were the state.
04:32You cannot overemphasise how electrically exciting this must have been.
04:37Ordinary men were selected randomly at lot to hold the very highest of offices.
04:42The equivalent of being head of the Foreign Office or Home Secretary for one day.
04:47Socrates wouldn't only witness a city being rebuilt, but the ethical hazards of a new social experiment.
05:00As he was growing up, democracy too was finding its feet.
05:06Ordinary Athenians now had the potential to determine their own future.
05:12But their fate was still very firmly in the hands of the gods.
05:16Gods, demigods and spirits were believed to be everywhere, influencing people's everyday lives.
05:25If I'd been looking out over Athens during Socrates' lifetime, then this scene would have been thick with smoke,
05:31and the smell of sacrifice would be heavy in the air, as Athenians frantically rushed around,
05:36trying to keep their gods on side. All 2,000 of them.
05:40This pantheon of gods gave people a sense of their place in the universe.
05:47But in these exciting times, a few were daring to question religious convention.
05:53As a teenager, Socrates sought them out in one of Athens' most edgy and marginal districts, Kerimikos.
06:02For 600 years, this had been Athens' main burial ground.
06:09Come Socrates' day, and it had evolved into a kind of cosmopolitan suburb of sin.
06:16Travelling salesmen plied their wares here, along with prostitutes,
06:20who offered what were euphemistically known as middle-of-the-day marriages.
06:25Many young Athenians didn't need to work. There was one slave to every two free citizens.
06:36So Socrates had the free time to come here and listen in on Ceres, carried in on the trade routes.
06:43He encountered thinkers from the eastern Mediterranean whose ideas had, for over a century,
06:48confronted traditional explanations of the cosmos.
06:52What people saw as mysterious and unfathomable, they viewed as rationally ordered,
07:08and to some degree, rationally explicable.
07:16We refer to them now as one group, the pre-Socratics,
07:19but in reality, they were brilliant, independent thinkers.
07:24They asked hugely ambitious scientific questions.
07:29What is the cosmos made of?
07:32What is matter, and how do we perceive it?
07:35Their answers, in some cases, undermine the role of the gods as rulers of the cosmos.
07:42Their abstract theories, obviously conceived without the help of scientific instruments,
07:48that the universe was made of atoms and empty space,
07:51that water was a fundamental element of the world,
07:55and that the sun was one giant red-hot rock, were wildly provocative.
08:01The scale and audacity of their thinking was breathtaking.
08:12The pre-Socratics not only struck at the core of traditional belief,
08:17but their use of reason opened up a new way to look at the entirety of human experience,
08:22an approach eagerly taken up by the young Socrates.
08:28Suddenly, it's not just tradition or myth or religious hierarchies
08:32that are telling you how to make sense of your world,
08:35but rational debate, systematic thought.
08:39Just like those other groundbreaking philosophers of the age,
08:42Confucius in China and the Buddha in what's now India,
08:45Socrates and his contemporaries are daring to harness the power of the mind
08:50to explain the world around them.
08:54This is a quantum shift.
08:59Confident, brave new world Athens didn't seek to suppress this new spirit of inquiry.
09:05The city became a magnet for innovation,
09:08thanks in large part to the man who would dominate Athenian politics
09:12for almost half of Socrates' life.
09:15The visionary politician, Pericles.
09:19He gathered thinkers and artists to advise him
09:21and set about making democracy the dominant ideology in the Greek world.
09:27He glorified the streets with sumptuous statues
09:30and fetishised democratic principles.
09:34Athens built warships called freedom and freedom of speech.
09:38Yet Socrates would understand all this success had its flip side.
09:43Democracy's high ideals would need to be interrogated.
09:49A later source tells us that Socrates declared beautiful statues,
09:54high city walls and warships are all very well,
09:57but what's the point if those within them aren't happy?
10:01So we have to imagine a young Socrates walking around this fabulous febrile city,
10:08beginning to ask those big questions that are still utterly relevant today.
10:13Is wealth a good thing?
10:15Can a democracy itself create a just society?
10:19What is it that makes us truly happy?
10:22Democracy had opened a Pandora's box of new dilemmas and contradictions.
10:37As he reached adulthood, Socrates would become the one to point them out.
10:41A constant irritant known as the gadfly of Athens.
10:46An infamous celebrity of his day.
10:48But Socrates is also an enigma, because as far as we know he didn't write anything down,
10:59not a single line.
11:01He thought that writing was dangerous because it imprisoned knowledge.
11:05It's only thanks to contemporaries such as Plato,
11:09who may have coined the term philosopher, perhaps with Socrates in mind,
11:13that his thoughts and life story have been preserved.
11:18And what a man he seems to have been.
11:21Ironic, courageous, brilliant, wildly charismatic and utterly infuriating.
11:28Plato's compelling accounts of his life, his ideas and his dramatic death
11:33are a jewel in the canon of Western thought.
11:35When we think of the ancient Greek philosophers, we often visualise them as they've been portrayed in Renaissance works of art.
11:54Lofty greybeards draped in elegant robes hanging around classical columns.
12:01We don't perhaps imagine them involved in the dirty and bloody business of war.
12:06Athens' appetite for territorial expansion seems to have been sharpened by the collective will of democratic voters.
12:19Socrates, like all male Athenian citizens, was expected to fight.
12:26He was in his late 30s when he was sent here to Potidaea to help take control of this strategic city in northern Greece.
12:34It's from this time of war we get sharper textual details for Socrates' life.
12:41The man himself starts to come into focus.
12:44His vision, his physical courage, his eccentricities and a man with something momentous on his mind.
12:53The fighting was fierce and for three years the town was besieged.
13:01In desperation, locals turned to cannibalism.
13:06Yet, in amongst all these horrors and the pity of war, somehow Socrates found stillness.
13:13We're told he became absorbed by complex, private thoughts.
13:27In the depths of winter, wearing just a threadbare cloak and with bare feet,
13:31he stood for 24 hours at a stretch, stock still, lost in his own mind.
13:44Unlike the pre-Socratic thinkers, Socrates came to believe that understanding the cosmos was an esoteric diversion from something far more important.
13:53Studying the secrets of the stars was all very well, but human affairs had far greater urgency.
14:06So Socrates did something truly groundbreaking.
14:09He turned rational thought inward to solve the mortal dilemmas we all face.
14:20He threw all his energies into resolving the fundamental questions of human existence.
14:25What kind of a life should we lead?
14:28What sort of people do we want to be?
14:29He's the first individual in the West to put ethics at the very heart of his philosophy.
14:47Socrates' starting point was simple.
14:49Everyone yearns for a full and flourishing life.
14:52But it wasn't to be found in the transitory pleasures and distractions of the material world.
15:00Socrates believed we can only realise our human potential when we nurture the most precious, the most permanent part of our beings, our souls.
15:10When we do right, we protect our soul.
15:13When we do wrong, we harm it.
15:15Knowing right from wrong was fundamental to every aspect of life.
15:23And in 5th century Athens, the issue was acute.
15:27As many as 4,000 legal cases were heard each year.
15:32Democracy had revolutionised the law courts.
15:36Now, any male citizen, from aristocrats right down to fishmongers, could be a judge for the day.
15:43We're told Socrates found such amateur governance troubling.
15:48If those sitting in judgement weren't qualified to understand the difference between right and wrong,
15:54then they could convict an innocent person.
15:57They'd be punishing someone who didn't deserve to be hurt.
16:03But in Socrates' view, the innocent person would only suffer physically.
16:08It's the jurors who would be harming themselves much more.
16:11By unknowingly doing wrong, they would inflict terrible, lasting damage to their own souls.
16:19In order to protect Athenians, Socrates needed to teach them.
16:24The only evil is ignorance, he said.
16:28But Socrates faced a problem.
16:31The Greeks did have an ethical framework of sorts, but it wasn't either clear or consistent.
16:36The destiny of all Greeks was in the hands of the gods.
16:43They were venerated, even though their personal lives were pretty short on moral guidance.
16:49Capricious and vengeful, they fought with each other, they slept with one another's wives, they abducted mortals.
16:58And appropriately, the gods didn't seem that interested in human morality either.
17:02Living a good life didn't guarantee favour with the gods.
17:08Respecting their power and offering the most expensive and bloodiest sacrifice was a much safer bet.
17:15Greeks did however believe there were five virtues.
17:22Justice, temperance, courage, piety and wisdom.
17:26But in practice, these virtues were slippery, shifting ideals.
17:30What was considered just or pious for an aristocratic man wasn't necessarily the same for a slave woman.
17:39In Socrates' experience, traditional moral thinking, the kind taught by elders and priests and epic poets, just didn't stand up to scrutiny.
17:49His philosophy became a search for more robust, universal definitions.
17:54Socrates thought that all the virtues were interlinked, they couldn't be separated.
18:03He thought of them as one thing, something he called knowledge of the human good.
18:13For him, virtue is knowledge, knowledge of the human good.
18:17He says that this knowledge of the human good is going to, in some sense, save your life.
18:24This is really strong language.
18:26But is that an abstract idea or is this something that can play out in people's day-to-day lives?
18:32Oh no, absolutely. Knowledge of the human good is what enables us to make the right, practical decisions in our daily lives.
18:40But it's going to look different in different contexts.
18:43For instance, if you're on a battlefield, it will manifest itself as courage.
18:48If you're sacrificing in a temple, it will look like piety.
18:52And it's through those decisions and actions that we are enabled to take care of our souls.
18:58Our most precious possession, on which all our happiness depends.
19:03But that means that people have real agency, because it seems to be that he's saying it's not down to the gods to make the world a better place, it's down to us.
19:10Absolutely. Socrates is saying you don't have to depend on the whims and the caprices of the gods.
19:17It's really about individual empowerment and responsibility.
19:21And furthermore, where has he inherited a tradition which said there was one kind of virtue for a man, another for a woman, one for a well-born person, another for a slave?
19:31He's saying no, it's about knowledge of the human good in a universal sense. It's available to everybody.
19:39Cicero later says of him, he brings philosophy down from the heavens and into people's homes and into people's individual homes.
19:48This really is a very radical moment in Western thought.
19:51Exciting and empowering, but also dangerous.
19:56Indeed, because even though Socrates himself was personally very religious as far as we know, very pious, this is socially threatening.
20:07It's threatening traditional religion. And of course, these messages are disturbing to a lot of people.
20:12Socrates didn't deny the existence of the gods, but his emphasis on the capacity of humans to shape their own destiny could be seen as challenging their traditional roles.
20:27Fortunately, the sacrificial fires to the gods, which had burned for centuries, were now lit in a city that also prized freedom of expression.
20:41Initially, Socrates' unorthodox ideas were tolerated.
20:46But then, in 431 BC, the good times looked set to end.
20:51The violence of Potidaea escalated into all-out conflict.
21:00The pitiless Peloponnesian war between Athens and its nemesis, the city-state of Sparta.
21:08Here at the National Archaeological Museum, funerary urns depict the heartbreaking suffering and loss experienced by the Athenians.
21:16With Spartan hordes ravaging the countryside around Athens, Pericles ordered every citizen from the surrounding area to come inside the city walls.
21:31It was a fatal strategy. A new kind of terror was unleashed from within.
21:37Athens became one giant refugee camp. With the population hemmed in together, a deadly disease spread like wildfire.
21:50The symptoms were ghastly. Sweats, fevers, a suppurating rash and a racking cough.
21:57At a conservative estimate, at least one third of the population was wiped out.
22:09Angry and frustrated, Athenians turned on their poster boy and removed Pericles from office.
22:16Eventually, he died. It's believed of the plague himself.
22:20A thriving Athens had been robust enough to deal with the searching questions of Socrates.
22:27Now, with confidence ebbing away, tolerance was threatened.
22:32Yet, energised by the same sense of crisis and danger which motivated the philosophies of Confucius and the Buddha,
22:40Socrates seems to have flourished.
22:42By now in his forties and surrounded by war, death and disease, his search took on a new intensity.
22:54How do we decide what is good?
23:00Is wealth a good thing?
23:03What makes us truly happy?
23:07In Athens, Socrates wasn't the only one discussing big ideas with its embattled citizens.
23:17The Sophists were cocksure, showy educators, masters in the art of persuasive argument.
23:25They acted as speech makers in legal trials, entertaining huge crowds in stadiums.
23:31Socrates was sceptical to say the least.
23:34Like the Sophists, he challenged orthodox thought.
23:38But he also passionately believed that philosophy should have a higher purpose.
23:43Clever ideas and persuasive arguments just weren't enough.
23:51To the Sophists, smart words were currency.
23:55They sold their services to the highest bidder.
23:57But Socrates refused to be paid, preferring handouts from friends.
24:04That's not to say he didn't enjoy worldly pleasures.
24:09He drank and made love.
24:12But barefoot and unwashed, he stood out in materially minded Athens.
24:16We're told that he marked our shop stalls in his shabby robes, saying,
24:23How many things I don't need?
24:25He saw wealth as impermanent.
24:29A distraction from the search for absolute values.
24:32Socrates believed you couldn't buy knowledge.
24:36And wisdom didn't come from listening to long speeches.
24:38It could only come through something else.
24:42Dialogue.
24:44So, Bethany, I understand you're here to do a documentary about Socrates.
24:48Yes.
24:50Why are you making this documentary?
24:52His Socratic method worked something like this.
24:54Socrates would engage someone in the street.
24:57I can learn something more about Socrates,
24:59and I can share that knowledge with the people who are watching it.
25:02These are big words, knowledge and truth. Should we take one of them? What would it mean?
25:07He'd ask them an ethical question.
25:09So what is this thing, knowledge, that you want to impart?
25:13In my book, knowledge is love of what it is to be human.
25:19The person would attempt to define the concept,
25:22but Socrates would find inconsistencies in their answers.
25:26Knowledge is love.
25:27OK, so if you wanted to have an operation for an appendicitis,
25:33would you go to a woman who was full of love but knew nothing about surgery?
25:39No.
25:41OK, so I would say that the definition of knowledge as love is not good enough.
25:45They would be forced to withdraw their definition,
25:48and to reformulate and refine their ideas.
25:51So let's try it again.
25:53Is there one kind of knowledge or many kinds of knowledge?
25:57Knowledge is one...
25:59Take your time, I don't know the answers to this.
26:02Maybe knowledge is one thing, but knowing is many things.
26:07This process would spiral into a dizzying round of question and answer.
26:12To know how the stars move and to know how the liver operates is the same thing.
26:18No, they're not the same thing.
26:20Does the person who possesses knowledge in a big way know everything?
26:25Between those two, who is probably the best corn maker?
26:28Er, the one who...
26:32I don't know. I don't know.
26:34Come on. I give up. I give up.
26:36Socrates likens his role to that of a midwife,
26:39who helps to nurture and deliver the thoughts of others.
26:41But it was never an easy birth.
26:44I have to say, the one thing you've proved to me is that I know nothing.
26:48Ah, no, no, that's me.
26:50I'm the expert at making other people know things, but I'm no good.
26:55I know nothing and that is the only knowledge I claim for myself.
26:59That Socratic method is fascinating and stimulating, but it is also infuriating.
27:08Yes, because it's in an oral context, the way we do it,
27:11and Socrates famously believed in the supremacy of the oral over the written,
27:16and that also stirs up the emotions.
27:19First of all, in his pretense of being the fool, the ignorant man.
27:24Of knowing nothing, yeah.
27:25Yes. And because that is his tool that he turns, in fact,
27:30against his friends or opponents, as you may take it,
27:34and makes them admit to things that they don't want to admit to
27:38by playing essentially the fool, saying, I know nothing, I know nothing.
27:43I can only ask you to tell me because I know nothing.
27:46So he laid an emphasis on definitions, then on what he called diaresis,
27:51division of breaking down a problem into little parts, analysing parts, analysing it,
27:58and then attacking each one separately and then trying inductively
28:02to group them back together into a more general concept.
28:06So Socrates uses that to make people become aware that things they consider simple
28:12and elementary and basic and that they know they, in fact, don't know.
28:16And what about the modern world?
28:19Do you think we could have the modern world without Socratic debate,
28:25without questioning what it is to be human and what it is to be human in the world around us?
28:30Well, I think that the best way to accept, to find Socrates' place in it,
28:36is to see that the opposite of the Socratic method essentially is fanaticism and dogmatism.
28:45And in that sense, the modern world very much needs an antidote to those things at every level.
28:56The Socratic method was cathartic.
28:58It got difficult issues out into the open and defined concepts with much greater precision.
29:07Socrates' tough questioning with his trademark irony was conducted in public, causing a stir wherever he went.
29:15He was inviting everyone to seek knowledge of the human good, to identify fundamental truths.
29:25But people could only do this for themselves by constantly interrogating their actions and most deeply held beliefs.
29:32The unexamined life, Socrates said, is not worth living.
29:36But there was a problem.
29:44Socrates' teaching found particular favour with the young.
29:48With no end in sight to war with Sparta, these human resources were vital to Athens' future.
29:55Laws attempted to protect the youth from malign influence.
30:00Encouraging them to think for themselves was fraught with danger.
30:04Yet Socrates sought them out, close to the most public place in the city, the Agora.
30:12Across the ancient world, commerce was increasingly a driver for change.
30:18And that was felt particularly keenly here in Athens.
30:22The Agora was a buzzing market, a place where people came to exchange goods and gossip.
30:27Socrates loved sharing his ideas here.
30:34It's from Agora we get the word Agora-phobia, a fear of open spaces.
30:40There was anxiety back then too, as under-18s were barred.
30:45Now archaeology helps point to how Socrates met young Athenians just outside the Agora's boundary in a private dwelling.
30:55So we're right on the edge of the Agora space and we're in between the public space and the private space behind us here.
31:01And this wall behind us right here is one of those private establishments.
31:06And we have a later source that mentions Socrates visiting the house of a friend of his.
31:11And we have this figure, Simon the cobbler, and he's hosting young men.
31:16So we have the literary source, but what's nice is that during the excavations right here, they found hobnails, they found bone islets, and then they also found a cup.
31:24And this is the amazing bit of evidence, really, because this cup has the name Simon scratched on it.
31:32And this is a replica right here of the cup, and you can see that it does have Simonos scratched on it.
31:39It's so thrilling being here, imagining those big new ideas could possibly have been enacted there 2,500 years ago.
31:45Absolutely. We can say that Socrates was walking around this space and he was probably hanging out right here in order to discuss things,
31:53things that might otherwise be something that might get him in trouble.
31:57I mean, it's a dangerous situation that, potentially, so you've got this magnetic personality having these rumbustious conversations with young men and encouraging them to think for themselves.
32:06That's exactly right. This is the place where we're supposed to have freedom of thought and freedom of expression and so on in this democratic idea.
32:15But this is a place where you have to respect the gods and you have to respect your elders and you have to respect the laws of the city.
32:23He's questioning the gods, he's questioning the laws, so he's really putting it to the test and forcing these young guys to see things in a different way and the city didn't really like that.
32:33Socrates was storing up trouble, especially as some of his devotees were confident young aristocrats, the city's future leaders.
32:47Most notable was Alcibiades.
32:53Well born, wealthy and an Olympic champion, this sexually promiscuous hell raiser entranced and scandalised Athens for decades.
33:04Yet this playboy was friends with Socrates, who was 20 years his senior.
33:12Socrates had actually saved Alcibiades' life during the Battle of Potidaea.
33:17Plato's Symposium describes an infamous exchange that took place between them during a heady aristocratic drinking party.
33:25A drunken Alcibiades, we're told, crashes the discussion, which turns to the question of beauty.
33:35In Greek culture, Alcibiades' body beautiful would typically have been regarded as a sign of his moral beauty too.
33:42But it appears Alcibiades brought into Socrates' alternative concept of real beauty.
33:51Socrates, he says, might be ugly on the outside, but he has an inner beauty that by far outshines any physical beauty.
34:00And that he, Alcibiades, loves Socrates because he is the wisest man and therefore the most beautiful.
34:07However, when it came to achieving inner beauty for himself, Alcibiades was woefully out of step.
34:22He thought his good looks could help him, but his cocky plan to seduce Socrates was rebuffed.
34:29You're plotting to get real beauty in exchange for its appearance, Socrates said.
34:33That would be gold for bronze.
34:42For Socrates, the talents of young aristocrats were worthless without the wisdom to use them properly.
34:49By debating with them, he was pushing the patience of Athens.
34:52Yet, Socrates didn't compromise his principles, as demonstrated in the story of the Oracle of Delphi.
35:09We're told that a friend of Socrates called Chirophone, a rather impetuous individual from all accounts,
35:14came on pilgrimage here to this sacred site.
35:21Delphi had been a place of religious devotion for 2,000 years.
35:28Chirophone, in time-honoured fashion, climbed the sacred way to ask a question of the god Apollo, who spoke through a priestess.
35:36When he finally reached the Oracle, he asked,
35:43Is there any man wiser than Socrates?
35:47And the answer came back,
35:50No.
35:51Chirophone took the message to Socrates, who, in typical manner, questioned the Oracle's words.
36:04Even the words of Apollo, a god, for heaven's sake, was subject to Socrates' scrutiny.
36:10He set about cross-examining people who had a reputation for wisdom or a particular kind of specialist knowledge.
36:17After questioning public officials, poets, and craftsmen, he discovered that they all lacked the wisdom they claimed.
36:31Eventually, Socrates concluded that the Oracle was indeed right.
36:36He was the wisest of men.
36:38But only because, as he put it,
36:40I don't pretend to know what I don't know.
36:47Socrates was wiser because he acknowledged the limits of his own understanding.
37:01By publicly exposing the false pretensions and ignorance of those who did claim to know the truth, he was bound to make enemies.
37:08But there was something else about Socrates that was even more unsettling.
37:13He claimed to tie up his own daimonion, or guiding spirit, a kind of hotline of communication to the supernatural world.
37:21That's it.
37:31This daimonion spoke to him during trance-like episodes.
37:36It warned him from making wrong decisions.
37:39On one occasion, it advised against entering public politics.
37:42Socrates' followers would have been in awe of this uniquely personal divine calling.
37:50But the average Athenian would have been confused and deeply disturbed by it.
37:55Don't forget, this is a time and place where ritual, devotion and belief all take place out in public as part of a shared experience.
38:04Not only that, but Greek folk culture imagined the world to be infused with spirits, not all of them good.
38:20Socrates' unorthodox private spirituality could easily be confused with a darker, more troubling kind of magic.
38:27Some muttered that he was a sorcerer.
38:33In this super-religious culture, the philosopher was laying himself open to scandal.
38:40False rumours and innuendo would culminate on a very public stage, fostering the kind of misinformation that would ultimately spell disaster for Socrates.
38:57Picture Socrates bustling up here to the Theatre of Dionysus in spring 423 BC, buying some snacks to munch during the show.
39:13Chickpeas, figs, nuts. Settling down to watch the drama.
39:16He's here to watch a new comedy called Clouds by the young buck of Athenian theatre Aristophanes, only 22 and eager to make his mark.
39:31By now a big character in the city, Socrates is considered fair game and he's parodied pretty mercilessly.
39:37He's portrayed as a ludicrous figure, the head of a ridiculous school called the Think Shop.
39:45What's that up in the air, in a basket?
39:48That's Socrates.
39:50Oh, Socrates, Socrates, could you please tell me what you're doing up there?
39:56Walking on air, circumquagitating the sun.
40:00Socrates' character was merged with other intellectuals who were arousing popular suspicion.
40:10The devious sophists, who undermined society by making the weak argument defeat the stronger.
40:17And the pre-Socratics, who in some cases displaced the pre-eminence of the gods with their science.
40:22We're told that Socrates actually came to the theatre to watch Aristophanes' clouds.
40:28What could it have felt like to see himself portrayed in that way?
40:32I think he must have been amused.
40:34There's this anecdote of Socrates actually standing up in the seats of the theatre so that those who didn't know him knew who he was and what he looked like as his character was being ridiculed on stage.
40:47So I think Socrates was detached from all these standard norms of society.
40:54I think it's possible that he might have enjoyed that.
40:58On the face of it, this is all very amusing, but do you think that Socrates should be worried by the way that Aristophanes is choosing to portray him?
41:06In hindsight, I think he should have been worried.
41:09The core of democracy, the principle of democracy, is that the citizens be educated.
41:13If you don't have educated citizens, democracy does not work.
41:17The theatre was a major tool for educating the Athenian citizens, and the memory of that portrayal would have remained for decades to come as a whole generation of Athenians would have been exposed to it.
41:30It's the ancient equivalent of trial by media.
41:32It is, it is, in 5th century Athens, yeah.
41:34He's going to strike me again.
41:35Of course. Using the unjust logic, I am convinced I can prove the necessity for it.
41:43If you do, you can take yourself off to the bottomless pit. You and your newfang of logic and Socrates too.
41:49But the cracks appearing in Socrates' reputation were nothing compared to what was happening to Athens itself.
42:02As the war with Sparta dragged on, people questioned the success of the democratic experiment.
42:14At the heart of the uncertainty was Socrates' close friend, Alcibiades.
42:19He'd been chosen to lead an expedition against Sicily in 415 BC, the largest in Athens' military history.
42:26But one night, before they set sail, someone stalked through Athens' streets, mutilating statues of the protector god Hermes.
42:38The rumour spread that Alcibiades and his aristocratic friends were the vandals, part of a plot to bring down democracy.
42:47Back in Athens, rumour escalated to outrage and Alcibiades was ordered home to face trial on charges of sacrilege.
42:56But then, en route, he vanished and where he reappeared shocked everyone.
43:03He turned up a traitor in the bosom of Athens' greatest enemy, Sparta.
43:16Alcibiades' damaging defection exacerbated the anxieties of a god-fearing public.
43:21They needed a scapegoat, and Socrates was tainted by association.
43:27But he seems unconcerned, doggedly pursuing the knowledge of right from wrong above all else.
43:35So when the philosopher unexpectedly entered public life in his 60s, he was on a collision course with Athens.
43:47He became presiding officer in an emotionally charged case whose drama was played out here on the hill of the Pnyx.
44:01Six disgraced Athenian generals were accused of failing to collect the bodies of dead soldiers lost at sea.
44:10The public called for the generals to be tried together, in breach of Athenian law.
44:20But Socrates refused to be swept along by the vengeful mood of the crowd.
44:24Even though threatened with indictment for treason, Socrates refused to budge.
44:32He wanted no part in this kangaroo court.
44:35As the sun set, there was stalemate.
44:38And then the next morning, Socrates was off the case.
44:41Later that day, the generals were all trialled here together at the Pnyx.
44:47Condemned and then executed.
44:49To me, this case embodies one of the most important ideas that Socrates has been developing all his adult life.
45:03Which is that one should never take revenge.
45:06And in this, he's completely turning on its head.
45:10One of the foundational tenets of traditional Greek morality,
45:14which said that you should help your friends and harm your enemies.
45:19And Socrates says no.
45:21Because all you can do to another person is you can take away their possessions,
45:25you can damage their body, you can kill them.
45:28But you can't harm their soul.
45:30But by doing wrong to somebody else, you are damaging your own soul.
45:35And thereby taking away your chance of a virtuous and hence also a happy and flourishing life.
45:41This was a city-state that believed in justice, that wanted to see justice enacted.
45:47So in Socrates' book, what form should punishment take?
45:51It's a good point. He does believe that sometimes punishment is appropriate.
45:56But you punish somebody solely in terms of trying to cure their soul,
46:01of the damage that they have brought upon themselves by doing wrong.
46:05So punishment is there to cure and purify a damaged soul.
46:11I mean, even today, those still feel like quite progressive ideas.
46:15Absolutely. I mean, we're barely catching up with these ideas.
46:19Even now, we still have debates.
46:21What is the purpose of punishment?
46:23Is it to, is it to kind of retribution or is it some kind of reform?
46:28Now, Socrates is absolutely clear. The purpose of punishment is to reform.
46:35They are fascinating ideas, but they must have been very, very troubling to the Athenians.
46:40Because it must have felt as if he was kind of unpicking the foundations that kept communities together.
46:45Yeah, it would have, it would have looked weak to them.
46:49It would have looked like, oh, no, you're not a real man.
46:51You're not standing up for yourself. What are you doing?
46:55In a way, he's almost anticipating the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
47:00You know, turn the other cheek in a sense.
47:03But he's 500 years before all that.
47:05Oh, yes.
47:06How does he dare to march so out of step from the rest of society?
47:09Because I think he absolutely believes that nobody else can harm his soul, but if he takes part in the illegal actions that he was invited to take part in,
47:22then he will be absolutely damaging his own soul and taking away his chance of a happy and flourishing life.
47:31In the name of wisdom and truth, Socrates was prepared to stick his head dangerously high above the parapet.
47:40Interestingly, it's a quality that he shares with both Confucius and the Buddha.
47:45For all three philosophers, personal comfort and personal security came a poor second to principle.
47:52And in the case of Socrates, having the courage of his convictions would prove to be a matter of life or death.
48:00As Athens' enemies closed in, society turned in on itself.
48:15Freedom was a luxury it could no longer afford.
48:24Finally, the Spartans brought Athens to her knees.
48:27They tore down her city walls and installed a junta of 30 handpicked oligarchs.
48:37Death squads roamed the streets and thousands of Democrats were disappeared, forced into exile or executed.
48:45Even though a counter-revolution restored democracy just eight months later, it was a deeply compromised democracy, riven with suspicion and recrimination.
48:59In this poisonous atmosphere, Athens finally decided to deal with its troublesome gadfly.
49:06In 399 BC, at the age of 70, Socrates was back in court. This time, he was on trial.
49:24The accusations against him were read out here in the Agora, close to this oath stone.
49:34The first charge was impiety, denying the gods and introducing new ones.
49:40The second, that he'd corrupted the young. Both could carry the heaviest penalty.
49:45Execution.
49:46The trial took place in a religious court. Using the latest technology. A water clock measured the three hours allowed to the prosecution's case.
50:03Were his accusers politically motivated? Was he being scapegoated for his association with prominent anti-Democrats like Alcibiades?
50:14Perhaps. But then he'd set about to open the minds of the young, and with his goading questions, to challenge the status quo.
50:24Eventually, the water clock was refilled for the philosopher to defend himself.
50:33Plato recounts how Socrates feels he's fighting a lost cause, thanks to Aristophanes' searing, damaging caricature of him.
50:42How mad I was! How mad to swap the gods for Socrates!
50:48It's not my crimes that will convict me, he said, but rumour and gossip. I can't possibly defend myself. It's like boxing with shadows.
50:59You will persuade yourselves that I'm guilty.
51:05Yet, in typical style, Socrates uses his defence to sting his fellow Athenians from their moral slumber.
51:11It is a brilliant, audacious speech, but it's also provocative and arrogant, and the jurors don't like it one bit.
51:21The city that once fetishised freedom and freedom of speech could not tolerate freedom to offend.
51:27Socrates was judged by at least 500 men, chosen at random, and recruited from all over the traumatised city-state.
51:43The jurors would have used these ballots in a secret vote, a solid stem for acquittal, a hollow for condemnation.
51:51Found guilty, a second vote is held to determine his punishment.
52:06Socrates has the chance to avoid execution by proposing a lesser alternative, typically a fine or exile.
52:12Instead, by speaking freely, democratically, he seems to invite martyrdom.
52:21He declares that he's lived his life for the benefit of the city. He deserves reward, not retribution.
52:28He suggests dinner in perpetuity, at the citizens' expense.
52:32Socrates' irony loses him more support in the second vote.
52:41It seems he takes the news philosophically.
52:45The jury couldn't harm his soul, but they had harmed their own.
52:51Now I go to die and you to live. God only knows which is the better journey.
52:56Socrates didn't fear what he didn't know, including death.
53:07The man the oracle proclaimed to be the wisest was now on death row for putting his own philosophy into practice.
53:14One of the things I find so compelling about Socrates is that even though he lived 25 centuries ago, in many ways he saw us coming.
53:27He denounces an obsession with looks, with material goods, with spin and with fame.
53:34He wasn't just exploring the meaning of life, but the meaning of our own lives.
53:39Our own lives. Just listen to this.
53:43Oh my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up wealth and honour and reputation,
53:54and so little about wisdom and truth and the improvement of the soul?
54:00Are you not ashamed?
54:02Are you not ashamed?
54:07Socrates would have to wait a month for his execution, a sentence intended to silence him.
54:14But Socrates' death at the hands of the people provided the perfect ingredients for his resurrection as an ideological martyr,
54:23a kind of blueprint philosopher.
54:25And ironically, what secured his legacy was the very thing that he disregarded throughout his life, the written word.
54:36His supporters wrote detailed accounts of his extraordinary life, immortalising his ideas and his spirit.
54:43Through their words, his game-changing, history-making voice endures.
54:48Still asking those probing, universal questions, which even today are at the heart of our value systems.
54:56What makes us good? What is justice? How can we be happy?
55:03Socrates was the inspiration for Plato and Aristotle, two giants of philosophy whose ideas would shape Western and Eastern civilization up until today.
55:14Following Socrates' death, Plato abandoned his political ambitions in disgust and set up his academy,
55:24which would continue as a centre of learning for close on a thousand years.
55:29This building is Athens' modern academy, and it's just a couple of miles from the original,
55:33and it's part of a network of academic institutions right across the globe, inspired by that Athenian example.
55:41On the day of Socrates' execution, his distraught friends and family came here to the Agora.
55:51The place where Socrates had once walked freely was now his cage.
55:55But he is serene.
55:56Calmly, he lifts the lethal little cup of hemlock poison and drinks.
55:58Socrates' death.
55:59On the day of Socrates' execution, his distraught friends and family came here to the Agora.
56:01On the day of Socrates' execution, his distraught friends and family came here to the Agora.
56:03The place where Socrates had once walked freely was now his cage.
56:08But he is serene.
56:13Calmly, he lifts the lethal little cup of hemlock poison and drinks.
56:23We're told that Socrates' last words, as the lethal hemlock took effect, were,
56:28Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius.
56:35With this cryptic message, even on the brink of death, he kept his followers and future scholars guessing.
56:44Was he proving himself pious by invoking one of the city's deities?
56:52Or was he ironically giving thanks to the God of healing for relieving him of the sickness of existence?
57:00Socrates might have been infuriating, but his tenacious questioning of what it means to be human still has absolute resonance.
57:11By stating that the ultimate evil is ignorance and that a good life is within our reach,
57:18he challenges us all never to be thoughtless.
57:27The unexamined life is not worth living.
57:34With his head covered, no one saw the final moment when Socrates' precious soul
57:40slipped from that ugly, satirical, unforgettable face.
57:46If the mind of Socrates has made you think, then explore further with The Open University.
57:49To discover how great minds have influenced our thinking today, follow the address on the screen and then the links to The Open University.
57:55Next time, I investigate the gentleman philosopher Confucius.
57:56His attempts to influence the rulers of his day ended in failure.
57:58Yet, his vision of harmonious society is not the same.
57:59Socrates is not the same.
58:00Socrates has made you think.
58:01Socrates has made you think, then explore further with The Open University.
58:02To discover how great minds have influenced our thinking today, follow the address on the screen and then the links to The Open University.
58:07Next time, I investigate the gentleman philosopher Confucius.
58:19His attempts to influence the rulers of his day ended in failure.
58:24Yet, his vision of harmonious society inspired by the sage kings of the past would eventually shape one of the world's greatest civilizations.
58:37And the final part of Genius of the Ancient World is here on BBC Four at the same time next week.
58:52Coming up this evening, we're exploring a city beneath the waves in Pavlopetri in just a moment.
58:57And then Bettany's back in an hour as we're dredging up the evidence for Atlantis at 11.
59:02Stay with us.
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