Donald Robertson
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
dude i love every time that we get to speak i adored all of your last books and you've done a new one about socrates why would anyone want to think like socrates why would anyone care about this old dead white guy or whatever he i love socrates i i love marcus aurelius but socrates is like the next level you know i really am excited to to be able to talk and and write about him and stuff
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But often when they were questioned, the things they were saying were full of contradictions and fell apart. And so Socrates thought, well, look, I come to the conclusion that paradoxically, I don't know much either, but neither do these guys. And I am wiser than them by a hair's breadth because at least I know that I'm not wise, whereas they falsely believe that they are wise, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so the central thrust of his method becomes puncturing this kind of intellectual arrogance or conceit. Sometimes it's called double ignorance. So Socrates thought ignorance isn't a problem. Because I might be ignorant about medicine, but if I know I'm ignorant about medicine, I might be motivated to go and consult an expert, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I might not know how to fix the engine in my car, but if I go and see a mechanic, I can find somebody that maybe knows better than me. But if I believe that I'm an expert on engines or I believe I'm an expert on medicines and I'm not really, then I'm in trouble because I'll be guided by my ignorance to make lots of mistakes.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So Socrates thought this is one of our biggest problems in life, a bit like the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon, that we believe that we know things that we do not in fact know. So he found that his method was almost like a therapy for curing people of this intellectual conceit. So that's a story that Plato tells, but he also says that he did study philosophy prior to that.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Maybe for decades he'd been studying natural philosophy and learning a bit from other philosophers, but his trademark method developed at some point in his life as a result of this weird incident where the Oracle proclaims that no man is wiser than him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There's this thing called the Socratic problem. that we don't know, but we should acknowledge at the beginning, that we don't know for sure how close a representation Plato's dialogues or the other sources that we have are of the real Socrates. But I think his character comes through to some extent. Those dialogues are probably semi-fictional, like they're embellished a bit.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
That's really hard to say. I mean, I always feel like we almost need the sophists to have Socrates. You know, he's very much reacting to them. I mean, maybe he would have developed his method in response to the other, the natural philosophers, but it really seems to be the sophists that inspire him in a way because he's so concerned.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And one reason for that is that the sophists have a lot of influence over Athenian politics. And Socrates was friends with some powerful political figures and, And so although he wasn't really directly involved in politics himself, I think he was very concerned about Athens.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And what's missing from the Platonic dialogues and from Xenophon, although they refer to historical events and they refer to important figures, I think people still, when they read Plato, get the feeling that Socrates is just walking around in pleasant groves and sandals, kind of pontificating about things, and they don't visualize him properly.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
as a heavy infantryman who fought in at least three major battles of the Peloponnesian War. They don't imagine him as someone who survives a terrible plague. They don't see him at the heart of Athenian politics, surrounded by these key figures, like these senior statesmen.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And living through one of the most epic wars in European history, the Peloponnesian War lasted 27 years, you know, and under a dictatorship, the 30 tyrants that took over Athens. So his life was incredibly, you know, dramatic.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Basically, and his philosophy is shaped by, I think, all of these things, his experience as a soldier, living under different political regimes, including a kind of dictatorship that, you know, that was really brutal and sort of political purges where people were just rounded up and executed.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
um all of these things but definitely the sophists loom large in socrates's influences and his partly because he's concerned about them having so much sway over the athenian assembly and the political decisions that are being made how would you describe the main principles of his philosophical worldview
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, as we've said, I mean, the Socratic method, the core of what he's doing in a sense is more about the process. So some people in the ancient world would have seen wisdom or the goal of life as being the acquisition of knowledge, like having a bunch of opinions that are true, basically. And Socrates thought that's not real wisdom, though. That's just kind of learning stuff passively.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Real wisdom is more like a cognitive skill. So the goal of philosophy, I think, for Socrates is more of a process that we engage in every day of our lives, learning to think and question things more profoundly. He said the unexamined life is not worth living. He thought the goal of life was to examine your life continually every day.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It was like an ongoing process of personal development that, in a sense, never really ended. So the core of his philosophy, I think, is the actual method of his philosophy. doctrines in a sense often he doesn't state them but he seems to be kind of arriving at them so for example a famous one is in Plato's Republic in the first book Socrates asks for a definition of justice
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But the real guy kind of shines through to some extent. And he must have been an extraordinary individual. He's somebody who has a tremendous capacity for thinking outside the box, for spotting logical contradictions. And he said some of the most radical things in the history of Western philosophy. Not only that, I see him as the godfather
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And his friends say, well, justice is helping your friends and harming your enemies, right? This was a cliche in Athenian culture. It comes from the military world where you'd be helping your military allies and punishing or attacking your enemies in warfare. But it was also applied to civilian life as well. And Socrates questions us from a number of different angles.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But as far as I recall, in the Republic, he doesn't specifically state what the alternative conclusion would be. He just kind of implies it. Whereas later philosophers, Plutarch, for example, explicitly says Socrates believed that justice consists in helping your friends, but also helping your enemies by turning them into your friends.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So the goal is basically to convert enemies into friends, not just to kind of punish or harm your enemies. Socrates was concerned that if we try to harm our friends from a particular point of view, first of all, we're missing out. If we try to harm our enemies, first of all, we're missing out on the opportunity to convert them into allies or friends.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And secondly, we might kind of end up making them worse enemies by punishing them or harming them in a particular way. And actually, that's kind of what happened to Athens, right? There were certain more kind of aggressive, hawkish political leaders that took control of the Athenian assembly and they committed genocide.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And this really led to Athens' downfall because Athens' potential allies no longer trusted them and turned against them. So their regime collapsed. They had a catastrophic military defeat in Sicily that can be seen as the consequence of this kind of more short-sighted, more aggressive attitude towards other states.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So Socrates does have these doctrines, and there are many, many other ones that people derive from what he's saying, but we should be a little bit careful about making them into roles that are too rigid. One of his nicest ones that's a little bit different, for instance, is Socrates, according to Xenophon, Socrates repeatedly said that we should eat to live rather than live to eat.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
In general, he thought people were too much duped by appearances. So they were too much swayed by short-term pleasure and pain. And he thought we should think more carefully about whether something is actually good for our health or not, rather than just whether it tastes nice or doesn't taste nice. We should be thinking about the reality of stuff beyond the appearances.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Another one of his little sayings that's quite well known is, that we should be as we wish to appear. He thought, again, we're misled into focusing too much on appearances. We want to appear confident. Socrates said it would be better to actually become confident if you want to appear confident.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
If you focus too much on faking it or the appearances, that can kind of lead to a more superficial approach. It could be misleading it. You could get sucked into deception of other people. It would be better for you to actually become confident. People came to him saying, Socrates, how can I make myself seem like a good friend?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And Socrates said it would be better to become a good friend in reality.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
of modern self-help and self-improvement psychology or the great, great granddaddy of cognitive behavioral therapy. So as a psychotherapist, a cognitive behavioral therapist, you know, I look to Socrates as somebody who stands at the very origin of our tradition. But also I think in some ways we've kind of gone astray in ways that he warned us about.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
highlighting of the importance of action he's even taking it one step further and talking about the repetition of action yeah i mean socrates felt like we were constant we're constantly confusing appearance and reality that's i guess a recurring theme of his philosophy and he felt the sophists were all about appearances and completely neglected reality right so you know he's always challenging us to look beyond appearances by using reason in a sense socrates thinks we're kind of lazy
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know, and he's always kind of encouraging us to question appearances and use reason to think a little bit more deeply about things. I'll give you a really cool example of that that relates to something I mentioned earlier. I'd mentioned Lamprochle is getting annoyed with his mother.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates, at the beginning of the conversation, asks his son whether his mother really cares for him and whether she's made many sacrifices to help him. And Lamprocles actually admits quite easily. He says, yeah, my mum's dedicated her life to helping me when I'm sick.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
my mother nurses me like she spent all of her time raising me she's done everything for me but Socrates she just really annoys me when she's nagging me like I don't know how I could possibly put up with it and Socrates uses this amazing analogy um that just it's one of my favorite things that he says he says in the theater when you're going to see a tragedy being performed for example
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Do the actors not really say things that are much more vicious and insulting and hostile than anything your mother ever says? And Lampicli says, well, yeah, of course they do. But you don't understand, Socrates, they're just acting. It's not real, right? That's the difference. And Socrates says, but you just told me a few moments ago
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
that you believe that your mother doesn't really mean you harm, but fundamentally she cares for you, right? So sometimes she might seem really annoying, but in general, she actually cares for you a lot.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And what he's encouraging Lampocles to do is to kind of look beyond the impression that he has of his mother in those moments and think more about her personality as a whole in a more rounded and complete way by using reason to think about who is your mother really? What is the nature of your relationship with her, really? It's more than just the nagging. That might be part of it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It might be something you don't like. But by focusing only on that and putting it under a magnifying glass, you exaggerate your anger. But if you think about her personality as a whole, then it becomes just one small part, and it becomes less upsetting. Maybe you become more able to tolerate it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So in some ways it's tricky to define and in some ways it's easy. There's a lot of nuance to it. And Socrates doesn't sit down at any point and say, hey, let me just explain my methods to you briefly. Instead, what we see is example after example of him using his method in various different ways. So we have to kind of infer how he's doing it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But basically, what he tends to do is to ask people to define a concept, and it's usually a virtue. So he'll say, define piety, define courage, define justice. and typically it's something that's very relevant to them. So he's not just like we would in academic philosophy now, analysing concepts for the sake of it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So by going back and looking at what he originally said, I think we can figure out maybe and see beyond some of the mistakes that we might have made along the way.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He talks to military commanders about the nature of courage, for example, because it's something that they're already taking for granted, in a sense, in the conversations that they're having. So you could also say he's digging deeper beneath the conversation and questioning the underlying premise or assumption there. So you guys are talking a lot about courage, but what is courage?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
How do you actually define it? The whole conversation is based on that. And then he'll normally think of exceptions to the rule that they've given. The most famous example is when he's talking to Lachies and Nicias to Athenian generals. They define courage as standing your ground and remaining in formation in the face of the enemy.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And that's because the Athenians depended to a large extent on their hoplites, their heavy infantry, which Socrates was one, and they had to fight in the phalanx formation. And so each soldier's shield would protect him, but also the guy standing to his left.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And if you broke formation, not only would you place yourself at risk, but you place the soldiers that are fighting alongside you in greater danger as well by doing that. So they had to really drum it into these guys that they had to remain very rigidly in formation for this phalanx strategy to work. And Socrates says, okay, that's a good definition of courage, but it's too narrow, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Because what about during a tactical retreat? Like you break from the phalanx formation, but you could still exhibit courage. You're no longer standing your ground in the same way though. What if you fight in the cavalry and then you have to charge into the middle of the enemy rather than standing your ground? But the cavalry exhibit courage. You'd have to define it differently, though.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He says, what about the Spartans? They fight in phalanx formation, but they also sometimes charge into the enemy like cavalry do. But they're renowned for their courage. So you wouldn't say that they lack courage. You'd have to tweak your definition a little bit. So he starts this conversation going, usually by creative thinking.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and being able to come thinking outside the box and coming up with so he you know again like he's not following a formula here as much as using a skill like he's thinking right and he's coming up he's brainstorming examples what about this what about this what about this right it's like he's saying yeah but okay courage could be standing your ground but what about this what about this scenario what about in civilian life you'd have to define it differently
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so he constantly challenges the interlocutor, the person he's speaking about, to revise their definition and think about it at a deeper and deeper level. And he doesn't always arrive at a clear conclusion. Often he doesn't. His dialogues often end in aparia in Greek, which is the term that we use to mean a sort of confusion or bewilderment. So people walk away. And some people hated that.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But other people would walk away from it thinking, I kind of feel like I know less now than I did at the beginning of the conversation, but in a good way, because maybe I was too rigid in my thinking and I was assuming that I knew things that I didn't really understand. At least now I realize that there's more to
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
justice than helping your friends and harming your enemies or there's more to courage than just standing your ground and remaining the phalanx formation and maybe i've kind of spiraled closer and closer to the center of the meaning of these concepts so in the process of doing that he'd often point out contradictions in people's thinking um he said that what you're saying now is seems to clash with something that you said a few minutes ago
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, the most famous thing is that we have Plato's dialogues. There are like 36 or 37 of Plato's dialogues, most of which feature Socrates prominently. And it's generally assumed by scholars that Plato changed his approach throughout his career. Early in his career, he wrote a more literal description of Socrates, probably embellished a bit.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he was very sharp at noticing this. And, you know, I think one of the ways that that can help us today actually is there's a particular type of contradiction that Socrates would sometimes point out, a moral contradiction. I'll give you another example where he's talking to a teenage boy, an adolescent boy. There's a guy called Cretobolus that comes to him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
who's the son of one of his best friends, Crito. And Cretopolis says, Socrates, could you introduce me to some people that would be really good friends to have in Athenian society? He's asking him for help networking, weirdly, right? And Socrates says, sure. Like, how would you define a good friend? And Cretopolis says, well, they'd come and visit you when you're sick.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Maybe they'd lend you money if you're broke. Maybe if you were being a bit out of order, they'd take you to one side and gently kind of explain to you that you should change your behavior and stuff like that. So quite easily, he's able to kind of define what a good friend is. But then Socrates says, well, how many of these qualities do you exhibit yourself?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And Cretopolis is like, well, not many, like, you know, zero. I don't know. So Socrates says, again, haven't you got this back to front? You're kind of asking me to present you to these people as if you would be a good match, as if you would be a good friend to them. But they're bound to figure out if you don't have any of these qualities, and then they won't trust me as a matchmaker of friends.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And they're going to lose faith in you as a friend as well. You should have come to me and asked me how you could become a good friend yourself, how you could improve yourself. So you're exhibiting a double standard. You're applying one standard to other people in terms of friendship, but a different standard or no standard to yourself. This is a kind of moral hypocrisy, if you like.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So often Socrates is drawing people's attention to the fact that they're exhibiting moral double standards. And we do similar things in modern cognitive therapy as well. Sometimes people think philosophical ethics can be quite subtle and quite nuanced, and it often is. But in many cases, we can make moral progress, I think, just by not being hypocrites.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
The one thing that the majority of people agree on is that you shouldn't contradict yourself.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
morally you know and if you're saying one thing and doing another like if you're applying a double standard most people agree there's something wrong there like and it's reason that helps us to spot those contradictions and attempt to resolve them so there's a simple way i think that many people can make in progress in terms of morality and self-improvement just by questioning their own standards in the way that socrates teaches these young men to
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
As time went on, he starts to use Socrates more and more as a mouthpiece, probably for his own views. Like Plato's famous metaphysical theory, the theory of forms, probably wasn't something that Socrates ever actually said. Socrates' way of doing philosophy seems to be more kind of homely, down to earth, more focused on applied ethics in daily life, basically. So we have those.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think there are a number, let me kind of explain what he's doing, I think, from a different perspective, from a more psychological perspective, right? And in doing that, I'll maybe make its relevance a bit more apparent to modern self-improvement.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So there's a body of research in modern psychotherapy and psychology and in the field of coping and stress that we can analyze different coping strategies that people use to deal with stress, right? And these are the strategies that you find in self-help books and self-improvement books, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So maybe breathing exercises, relaxation technique, cognitive therapy, positive affirmations, positive visualization, even things like avoidance, just running away from the situation and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know or accessing other social support getting someone else to help you in a situation or things like that there's like lots of different ways that you could potentially cope with anxiety depression stressful situations right but no one of those coping strategies works every time and the people that exhibit the most emotional resilience and are most able to recover from anxiety and depression are generally found to be the ones that have something we call coping flexibility
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So they're able to choose intelligently between whether to confront a situation assertively or whether to back away from it and resign themselves to it with emotional acceptance.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
A little bit like saying knowing when to pick your battles and things like that, you know, or knowing when it's better to distract yourself from pain or discomfort and when it would be better to address the cause or when it would be better to confront it and adapt to the experience and learn to accept it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And by questioning, I mean, what we do in modern cognitive therapy, like often we'll find almost with every client, you'll find that they have coping strategies they've just made up themselves or coping strategies they've got from the internet or from self-help books.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
In many cases, they'll be using these maladaptively in a way that's contributing to the problem and making it worse, usually because they're doing them too rigidly or they're using them as a kind of subtle form of avoidance that's actually contributing to the problem. And so one of the first things we might do is what's sometimes called a functional analysis.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So we'll get people to very carefully weigh up the pros and cons of the strategies they're using. And this kind of thinking things through, so cognitive therapy technique, is similar in some ways, I think, to using the Socratic method to question your definition of justice, for instance.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Or Socrates would also... I'll give you an example of a specific technique that kind of blew my mind when I read it. In Xenophon, and scholars, like classicists, never mention this because as a psychotherapist looking at the Socratic dialogues, I notice him doing psychological stuff that a philosopher or a classicist might not even...
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know like register so there's a bit in xenophon where socrates speaks to another young guy um in a shop in the agora and this dude is a self-help junkie as we call it today he literally has a collection he's got the finest collection in athens of self-improvement books he says he collects the maxims of wise men and he's trying to improve his character so that one day he can become a great statesman and he wants to understand the nature of morality or justice
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And, you know, dude, Plato's dialogues are just incredible. You know, Plato was also a genius. And so we have the writings of a genius about another genius, basically. You know, some of these texts are the most profound and moving pieces of literature in the Western canon. And, you know, I seldom recommend books to people, funnily enough, unless I know them very well.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And Socrates questions about the definition of justice and quickly shows that he doesn't really understand it. It's contradicting himself. And so this guy thinks, well, I've been reading all these books and tried to memorize what they say.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But when someone tries to get me to explain the meaning of these concepts, I just kind of fall apart because he's never really thought things through very deeply. He's just parroting stuff. He's learning passively. Socrates draws a diagram. which I immediately recognized because we do it all the time in cognitive therapy. He draws two columns, right? Probably on a wax tablet or something, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And at the heading, at the top of one column, he writes injustice. And at the top of the other column, he writes justice. And he says, I want you to kind of brainstorm definitions of what's justice that you want to be a just individual.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like and brainstorm examples of injustice so for injustice he comes up with things like lying um or uh stealing um stuff like that right obvious examples of injustice and then socrates does exactly the same thing that we mentioned earlier he brainstorms exceptions he said okay lying what if you're an elected general and you're lying to the enemy in order to deceive them in a military campaign is that unjust or would you consider that to be just under the circumstances
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and so the this young guy euthydemus is his name he says well that's different that's an exception right so he says what if you're a parent and you're trying to give your kid medicine but they won't take it unless you hide it in their food is that injustice or would that seem like it's just he says well that's different as well and then socrates uses another example that's really well known in philosophy he says what if your friend was suicidal and they come to you and say where did you hide my dagger
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Like, would you lie to them and pretend that you don't know? Or would you say, oh, I guess I have this over there, you know, take it. And he says, well, that's different as well. These are kind of unusual circumstances. So Socrates says, well, maybe then there's more nuance to this idea that justice consists in always telling the truth and never lying.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Like, you seem to think that there's more to it than that. There's other perspectives, right? And this technique of drawing two columns, we can literally do it on coping strategies to get people to think, when would you practice mindfulness and what might be the pros and cons of doing that? When might you try to fake it to make it? And when might that be a bad idea?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right when might it be a good idea to always speak your mind to other people and be assertive and when might it be a better idea just to keep your mouth shut why in some situations and know when to fight your battles and so on and it's cognitive flexibility and coping flexibility the ability to view situations from different perspectives and the ability to choose intelligently between different types of coping strategies that really constitute in the same way that i said before that wisdom is more like a skill rather than just a bunch of ideas or opinions that you could hold
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think that, to some extent, that's missing from a lot of modern self-improvement literature. And the risk is then that people get techniques that work in some situations, but then they carry on using them rigidly in situations where they're no longer working, they're backfiring. I'll give you an example, right? Any self-help technique is going to backfire in some situations. Mindfulness.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
is some techniques are more robust than others. Mindfulness is a really useful strategy. It works really well, right? But for instance, clients who have health anxiety and are constantly scanning their body for symptoms like, oh, I just noticed, I think I noticed a weird sensation in my chest, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Practicing mindfulness in some cases could actually just exacerbate or heighten their focus, threat monitoring for symptoms, basically, and paying too much attention to every slight twinge in their body, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
social anxiety like we know that one of the main correlates of social anxiety is heightened self-focused attention so in fact many self-help techniques that people try to use in social situations actually increase their self-focused attention right so people with social anxiety will typically do things like trying to stand up like tall and straighten their back and look people in the eye
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
but my one exception to that is that i think everybody should read plato's apology because i think it's a masterpiece and it only takes a couple of hours to read as an aside so we've got all that stuff and then we have xenophon another student of socrates and his dialogues are less well known but we have a bunch of like 30 or 40 dialogues shorter ones more down to earth from xenophon as well um
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Because they feel like that makes sense and it should make them more confident. But what they don't realize is often it heightens their self-focused attention unnaturally and that contributes to social anxiety. And it also increases their cognitive load. So they're more likely to kind of feel awkward because they're trying to walk into government at the same time.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But getting people to think about the pros and cons of these different strategies is When might it be a good idea? When it might potentially backfire? Is there a good way of doing mindfulness? And maybe there's a bad way of doing mindfulness in some situations. That's the wisdom that allows people.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
The ancient philosophers used to also say if you could give somebody the problem of teaching moral precepts or like coping strategies.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know would be that if you give a piece of advice a maxim to someone who's wise they'll use it wisely but if you give it to someone who's foolish they're probably going to use it foolishly right if you give coping strategies to somebody who's got severe anxiety they're they're more likely just to turn it into a form of avoidance if you're not careful and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates was... I'll tell you why. This is going to seem like an odd answer, right? There's Eric Clapton, right, and guys like that. And then there's Jimi Hendrix, right? Eric Clapton's an amazing guitarist, but Jimi Hendrix, to me anyway, sounds like he's from another planet, right? Jimi Hendrix took his guitar to bed with him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
The people who have the most severe problems are the ones that are most likely to misuse the type of strategies that we get in self-help books, basically. So what's often missing, I think, is this meta skill, if you like, of being able to choose between strategies and figure out their pros and cons, which is actually one of the first things we'd normally do in cognitive therapy.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I remember it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
yes and no like generally speaking he didn't get directly involved in politics there was one incident where he was elected to a kind of
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
committee overseeing a trial um and socrates took a principled stand supposedly in a situation where the mob were kind of baying for the blood of a bunch of athenian generals that were on trial um and he almost was executed as a result of doing that but after that i think uh he said that look if i was to get involved in politics i'd just end up being killed
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know, because, you know, the stand that I would take would just, you know, in Athens at that time, one of our sources suggested his thinking was he just wouldn't last very long and it would be more constructive of him to kind of critique
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think there's some similarities and differences between him and Roger Stone. What's funny, Roger Stone is one of these people that have published books on roles. It's called Stone's Roles, his book. And some of them are the opposite of what Socrates would say. Roger Stone, I think it's fair to say, is a man who would probably characterize himself as being quite fixated on the idea of revenge.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Then we have this really weird thing, which is a play by Aristophanes, which is a satire ridiculing Socrates that was written and performed during his lifetime. And we learn almost nothing from that, or it's hard to tell anything from it because it's a caricature, but it tells us that he must have been pretty famous.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
That comes through pretty clearly from his book. At no point in his book, again, does he ever really discuss what he thinks is in the interest of society. He spends a lot more time discussing how much he hates his political opponents and how he uses politics as a means to get back at them, interestingly. I guess he has what you would call, with a small C, a very cynical attitude towards politics.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It's very different from the way that someone like Socrates would have seen it. Um, and Socrates, I think would be a critic of this idea that revenge is a rational motive for us to have. So there are some things, you know, I try to have an even-handed approach to understand it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Again, like weighing up the pros and cons, I looked at Richard Stone's book and I thought, are there bits of this that kind of make sense in relation to ancient philosophy? And are there bits of it that seem like they might be the opposite? He says one or two things about resilience, I think his phrases turning chicken shit into chicken soup or something like that is the way he puts it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Very artsy. Yeah, he has this idea that we should adapt to adversity and develop emotional resilience, which kind of sounds a little bit like the Stoics. But what's missing from it? I guess he has some ideas about emotional resilience, but he doesn't seem to see any connection between that and social virtue, for example, or justice. He sees...
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I mean, again, the first thing he would do is apply, like, for example, when he's talking to that guy, Yuthi Demas, he asks him that very question, but he encourages him to think it through for himself, right? So Yuthi Demas is this young dude that's been reading loads of self-improvement books, and he says, okay, like, so what is a good life?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Actually, Uthidima says, where is the first place that I should begin applying philosophy, incidentally? And Socrates says, here. The first thing you should do is start by asking yourself what the goal of life is and what constitutes flourishing, or eudaimonia. So basically, what's good for us and what's bad for us in life.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And Euthydemus says, well, okay, so stuff like noble birth, wealth, status, having a nice house, being healthy, having lots of friends are all good. Generally, people think that constitutes good fortune and flourishing in life. And then Socrates basically goes through the list and says, but each one of these things could potentially be bad.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
during his lifetime for people to have, you know, ridiculed him, caricatured him like that. And then we have what's called the anecdotal tradition, which is like basically a bunch of little anecdotes and quips about Socrates said this, Socrates did that, that we tend to find in later authors.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There's another dialogue by Plato where he provides a much clearer counter-argument where he says, okay, so let's start with wealth as the easiest example. Well, in the hands of somebody who's wise and virtuous would allow them to do more wise and virtuous things.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But if you give a big pile of money to somebody who's foolish and vicious, it's just going to allow them to do more foolish and vicious stuff, right? And the same would apply to status. And actually, most of these external things Goods, as they're known, in a sense, are more like practical advantages or opportunities that you have in life.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And what really matters is how you make use of them, whether you use them wisely or whether you use them foolishly. So then doesn't that suggest that the only thing that's intrinsically good would be practical wisdom or moral wisdom? Yeah. because how you use other things, even the disadvantages you have, even poverty and sickness might be used well by somebody who's profoundly wise, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
They might develop more resilience as a result. They might learn from the experience, for instance. But somebody who's foolish and vicious will use even every advantage in life badly yeah so it's by this kind of questioning method socrates gets his interlocutors the usually young adult young men um just embarking on adult life basically to realize that the things that most people assume
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
to be the goal of life, like reputation and material success and stuff like that, aren't really intrinsically the most important thing in life, but what matters more is your ability to use these things well, which is something that they tend to have neglected and not really discussed. And so Socrates says that's what we should be talking about. How do you use these things well?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so the goal of life or flourishing would consist in a kind of practical wisdom or moral wisdom and also in the realization that the prevailing values of our society are kind of back to front and the things that everybody is led to value, like consumerism and celebrity culture and all that kind of stuff, those are misplaced values, basically.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and them being the same values that everybody is still being swayed by now i wonder about that you know i think there's got to be a reason for that and i don't pretend to know exactly what it is but the ancient philosophers had some answers i believe that part of it is if you imagine when you're born as a child you're kind of a blank slate to some extent and you know you you start interacting with adults before you can even speak let alone reason and so you you just emulate what you see other people doing as a small child
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So they're a more dubious reliability, but altogether, all this stuff tells us something about what we could frame as the literary character of Socrates. So Marcus Aurelius and other subsequent thinkers that followed the subsequent Socrates would have known of him mainly through these writings.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and i think it partly comes from the fact that we model our values on other people's behavior so as a child growing up you think you take a look around you and you think what's all this meant to be about you think well everyone else seems obsessed with money and property and status like so you just kind of naturally fall into that if you're not careful are you saying that we are the progeny of uh socratic society's culture eventually just a few thousand years down the line
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, I think we're just a product of the fact that we can't really understand each other deeply, I think is the problem, that we're basing our values and just observing other people's superficial behavior. So, for example, we might see, as a little kid, you might see your dad working really long hours and earning money, you know, to kind of pay off the mortgage and stuff like that.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And if you're not careful, you might think, I guess working hard and earning money is what life is all about. But your dad might think, well, I'm doing that to care for my family. for example, because I consider being a good father to be what I want my life to be about. So we don't necessarily observe the values that are driving other people's behavior internally.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think so we fall into this trap. This is my belief over and over again, because we are not able to see inside people's hearts. We end up with a superficial understanding of their values And it's only over the course of life as we develop the ability to reflect on our values and question them more deeply, we start to think, why are we doing all this stuff? Why am I buying a house?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Why am I working long hours? It's for something deeper. It's in order to be a good person and a good parent and a good husband and stuff like that. And I think one of the things that can help us achieve that realization and question the prevailing values of our society is
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
is death because many people I think for whatever reason on their deathbed when they look back over the course of their life think is it really worth spending your life just trying to earn as much money as possible Was that what, in retrospect, my life should have been about? Was writing a best-selling book or something really the most important thing?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Or does that seem trivial in retrospect when you've only got a few days left to live or something like that? But, I mean, if you're lucky, maybe you have a brush with death early on and survive and it changes your perspective and it liberates you from these assumptions that we all have. Or sometimes when you're bereaved,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like you know i lost my father when i was quite young and i thought to be honest that really shook me and made me kind of question what's the point of all of that because i saw him um he died of lung cancer like he was bedridden for about a year and so i had about a year just to observe my father dying slowly and think he seemed to be going through this process of questioning what his life had stood for and so when i was like 13 14 years old that kind of made me think gee i don't want to end up like that
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So we could say what's influencing them is the character of Socrates that was passed down by other writers. And there's a big question mark about how closely does that correlate to the real guy? We'll never know.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like at the end of my life thinking maybe i've spent my time and energy in the wrong way so these things and also sometimes i think having children and looking at your kids and thinking what you want for them and what values you want them to have if we approach it in the right way can help us to gain some insight and start to question what our values are but if we don't do that we just look around us think everybody's obsessed with money and fame and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know we end up entering into the rat race chasing around after that then one day you end up in your deathbed and the doctors tell you you've only got you know a few weeks left and you think you look back on you think what a huge waste of time a lot of that was like you know maybe i've got like you know millions of dollars in my bank account but it's not you know you can't take it with you like you know does it really do anything that worthwhile in retrospect so that's why i
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
ancient philosophy is kind of obsessed with this question of death now the other thing that could help us would be reading about philosophers who contemplate the problem of our own mortality like that's why plato's apology is so influential because it depicts socrates standing in court knowing he's about to be executed can you tell us the the story of the end of socrates life what happened what was the build-up why did it occur
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It's a slightly long and convoluted story. For some reason, he was brought to trial. Charges were brought against him. So in Athenian law, other citizens could sue you. And he was brought to court under charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. What's impiety?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like that he didn't believe in the traditional gods basically and these are standard charges that were used against intellectuals basically you know there was nothing new but if you were like if you were too clever other people in athens would say you're corrupting the youth right and if you question things excuse for politically incorrect blasphemy
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, you're engaged in blasphemy as well if you're starting to question some traditional religious ideas and stuff like that. So it was kind of like stock charge in a way. There are many reasons why some people think Socrates had certain political views. He also had friends that became controversial in Athenian society.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so his association with certain influential figures might have been part of it. And it might also be that he went around humiliating people
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, the ancient answer to that question is that he wasn't the first philosopher. He wasn't even the first philosopher at Athens. But they used to say that he was the first philosopher that brought philosophy really down to earth and applied it to everyday matters, kind of almost making it into a psychotherapy, basically. He would talk to people about the nature of love.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
powerful people like he went out to politicians and said can you define the nature of justice and they'd be like i don't know why and that made them embarrassed and it made them look stupid in front of their fans and followers and stuff and so they wanted for all of these reasons i mean socrates's execution was overdetermined like there were multiple reasons why people wanted him dead
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And some of it was propaganda. Like I mentioned earlier, there was a play about him that caricatured him. So Socrates in the trial says, a lot of you guys, there were 500 people in the jury. And he says, most of you will know me mainly through this play. It would be like trial by media.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right so i've never met most of you but you've probably seen this play that makes me out to be this horrible corrupt pseudo-intellectual right like a charlatan and stuff so that's what you'll be judging me based on and he stands up he was meant to beg for mercy in court he stands up in one of the first things he says is he refers to his military service and to paraphrase he basically says i went out and fought in these battles and faced death and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
on behalf of Athens, to defend the walls of the city, and you guys told me that was honorable. Now I'm standing in court facing death because I believe in the practice of philosophy as a way of improving the people that live in the city. What's the point in defending the walls of the city if the people that live in it are corrupt, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So some of you think this is ridiculous, that I'm willing to risk my life in court, but you praised me for risking my life in the military, and this is actually much more important to me. right? It's how he kind of starts off his defense in a way. And then he goes on to talk about how he's not afraid of dying and all this kind of stuff, and he kind of reasons that through.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But he doesn't beg for mercy. He's very unapologetic in Plato's Apology. And so the jury condemn him to death because of what Xenophon called his big talk in court. Like, he was... They thought he would bring his family and And he would have them weeping in front of him because that was what was normal. But right from the very beginning of the trial, his family weren't even present.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he made it clear that he wasn't going to beg for mercy before he even began speaking. And he basically gives them a lecture on philosophy. He carries on in court doing the very thing that he's on trial for in court. Right. Everything about Socrates was paradoxical. But the other argument, again, there's many different aspects. He's like peeling the layers of an onion back.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
The other thing, Xenophon says Socrates was like 71, 72. He's pretty old for Athenian society. And you know, the kind of implication in some of the dialogues is he, he thought, well, I'm starting to lose my faculties. Maybe I'm getting older, becoming more of a burden to my family.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He'd reach a point where he thought rather than trying to kind of just keep extending my life indefinitely while I'm in decline, I'd rather go out with a bang and make this huge statement. And he became a martyr for philosophy, but say what you will about Socrates, it worked. And even today, we're still talking about him. And, uh,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He would still have had some impact, but the most famous thing about Socrates in the ancient world is Plato's Apology and his noble death. When Epictetus, the famous Stoic philosopher who was teaching 400 years later,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right so you know like that's Socrates' ancient history to Epictetus he's the most famous quote from Epictetus the most famous quote in all of Stoicism is people are not upset by events but by their opinions about them but no one ever quotes what he says next in the following sentence he says for example death is not intrinsically terrible because if it were Socrates would have been afraid of dying and he wasn't
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He would talk to generals in the military about the nature of courage. He would talk to priests about the nature of piety. He talked to his friends about the anger. The most kind of homely dialogue that we have is in Xenophon. And in it, Socrates has a conversation with his teenage son, Lamprocles, because Lamprocles is really upset about his mum nagging him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right? So this is an important argument that you find in Socrates, but it's really highlighted in the Stoics, which is, you know, we use a similar kind of strategy in cognitive therapy. If somebody is depressed or angry or frightened by something, one of the first questions you'd normally ask is, does everyone else feel the same way about it? I mentioned Lamprocles getting angry with his mum.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates says, do other people all find your mum unbearable? Or do certain people view her differently? Socrates himself, for example, viewed it very differently. He got nagged by Xanthropy, but it didn't really bother him, right? So one of the first questions we ask in cognitive therapy are, are other perspectives available, right? Is this the only way of looking at things?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Or, you know, might you potentially see it differently? Epictetus' main example of that, he goes straight for the jugular, right? He says, we're not upset by things, but by our opinions about them. Even when it comes to death, some people aren't scared of dying. Actually, loads of people aren't scared of dying.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There are many people I've found, it's one of the weird things, particularly younger people, often find it inconceivable. That someone wouldn't be afraid of dying. But a lot of elderly people are resigned to their own death because they've been bereaved many times and maybe they've had many health scales.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so over the space of decades, in some cases, if not all, you speak to elderly people and they say, I've got over it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know I've had years and years to get used to the idea of dying so you know it doesn't really frighten me anymore some elderly people are terrified of dying but others are surprisingly resigned to it Socrates again 71 72 facing his trial he's an older guy living in a society where there's not a lot of medicine you know I think he's the sort of dude that was perfectly resilient.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He'd lived through many dangerous... It's hard to imagine how many brushes with death Socrates had had, right? I mean, they tried to execute him, I think, about three or four times altogether under different political regimes. He was involved in battles where thousands of people were killed around him. And he lived through a plague that killed tens of thousands of people in Athens.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he was a guy who was well accustomed to the fragility of his own existence. I mean, we live a very, very, very sheltered existence by comparison to that. But it's interesting that Epictetus goes straight for that example. He has Plato's Apology in mind. He's like, you want to know what it means to realize that it's your opinions that shape your fear.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Look at the example of Socrates and how he was unafraid even of being executed in court. And that was the cardinal example to young philosophers in the ancient world.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
In the Crito, which is one of the dialogues that takes place when he's in prison, he's in prison for about a month awaiting execution. And his friends say, listen, we could just bribe the guards really easy and get you out of here and stuff. He talks about this fact that it would make him ridiculous in his own eyes if he now behaved inconsistently with his values.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know, and that seems more, I mean, allegedly in the Fido, which is the last dialogue chronologically when Socrates drinks the actual hemlock, they bring the poison to him and his friend, Crito, like his childhood friend who grew up in the same suburb of Athens as him, Crito says to him, Some people don't drink the poison straight away.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And Socrates helps his son to kind of reframe this, overcome his anger towards his mother. So that's probably the most kind of down-to-earth example of a Socratic dialogue that we have. So that's kind of what he was particularly known for doing.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I mean, I think you're actually allowed to have a final meal. He had lots of friends around him when he was being executed, if you can imagine that. That was the norm in Athenian society. Yeah, it was like a party. I suppose there were about 10 or 20 people. So they come and visit him every day in the prison. Weird kind of scenario. But they all gathered round and his family came.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
His wife brought his kids. He had a baby. We're told all we know is that Xanthope was carrying one of the children. So scholars think that kind of implies that it was a baby or a toddler. Socrates still got it at 72, 71, 72 years old. Yeah. So they say, you don't have to drink it right away. And he says, it would seem ridiculous of me.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I feel ridiculous in my eyes to kind of try and eke out another half an hour. He's like, I've been here for a month.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
waiting to drink it he goes what am i gonna do with another half you know like so that was his supposedly his thinking was i'm ready like i've prepared myself for this i'd i'd just i'd feel like a coward and it would seem inconsistent of me and ridiculous if i was like yeah yeah you're right maybe i could leak out another hour or so before i have to drink it so i'm ready to drink it
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I've been sitting here for a month getting ready to drink it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Controversially, yeah. Seneca has always been a divisive and controversial figure. In some ways, he could be compared to Socrates. Socrates had a friend and possibly a lover called Alcibiades, who was one of the most influential statesmen.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He was appointed the commander-in-chief of the Athenian military at one point, the most senior statesman in Athens, almost like an emperor over what had evolved into an Athenian empire before. And he was like one of Socrates' best friends and closest associates.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But also he took the method of dialectic or philosophical question and answer, turned it into his own trademark method called the Socratic method, and really began to much more radically and thoroughly question the assumptions about morality, mainly, that people around him were making. And that made him a controversial figure, He was like dynamite.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So his relationship with Alcibiades, like trying to get him to be a better ruler and stuff, is a bit like Seneca and his relationship with Nero. But Seneca, I mean... Some people will find this controversial, but although we think of Seneca as a Stoic philosopher, he was famous primarily as an author, not as a philosophy teacher. He probably didn't teach that much philosophy to Nero.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He mainly trained him in rhetoric. So in some regards, Seneca was more like a Latin sophist than a philosopher. The sophists often quoted philosophy, They made speeches out of it and things, but they didn't attempt to live in accord with it in the way that the Stoics or Socrates did. So Seneca is somewhere in between. It may be that towards the end of his life, he embraced philosophy more fully.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think earlier in his life, philosophy was more something he used to become a famous author. He became famous by writing consolation letters, using Stoicism to people that had been bereaved, that were wealthy, influential people.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
figures he was like a self-help guru to the rich and famous and roman society and that's how he ended up becoming an advisor to nero so he was a figure that really was compromised by that in a number of ways he was nero's right hand man nero was like a despot a dictator um
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And he also wrote speeches defending Nero in the Senate and trying to, I mean, ridiculous, like saying that he was virtually a philosopher king and that his hands were unstained by blood and all this kind of stuff.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
No, Socrates never sullied himself in that way. There's a guy, Marcus Aurelius' rhetoric teacher, we have his private letters, and Marcus is talking to him about Seneca. We don't see what Marcus wrote. Unfortunately, we only see Fronto's replies. Fronto can't stand Seneca, and he died a few generations earlier, but I think it's partly he doesn't like his writing style.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But he says looking for pearls of wisdom in Seneca's writings would be like someone grubbing around in the bottom of a sewer trying to dig a few silver coins out of the filth. Which is what the kids today call a sick burn. That's only something that another sophist could have come up with as an insult.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But I think what he means is that Seneca in Rome would have been known more than today for his political speeches defending Nero. And we have a couple of examples of those. We have on clemency, for example, which is this letter to Nero that was probably made public that kind of puts Nero on something of a pedestal. Also tries to improve his character and teach him more clemency or mercy.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But at the same time, it praises him as a great ruler, which is ridiculous. He was a tyrant. And at the same time that Seneca was defending Nero, and propping up his regime, there were other Stoics that were fighting against Nero and opposing him in the Senate. They're called the Stoic opposition. And several of them died or were exiled, defying Nero. Epictetus...
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
who was kind of on the periphery of this because Epictetus kind of came from the next generation, but he was a slave owned by Nero's Greek secretary, a guy called Epaphroditus, who was perhaps also Nero's bodyguard. Uh, according to one source, he was certainly very, very close to Nero. Um, Epictetus idolizes the Stoic opposition and never mentioned Seneca once.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he clearly felt those were the Stoics from that generation that he looks up to. And Seneca was seen, even by other Stoics at the time, as a guy that had maybe compromised himself morally.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Some people were almost addicted to being questioned by Socrates. They found it an incredibly liberating experience. Other people found it embarrassing, humiliating, and they hated him, and they went after him. So it wouldn't be overly simplifying things to say that Socrates asked too many questions, rocked the boat, upset some powerful people, and we all know how that ended for him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
That's actually a contested point. There's a really cool book that came out recently by Armand Danguer, a classicist who wrote a book called Socrates and Love that I really like that's kind of speculative biography of Socrates. And he claims that Socrates was probably not as ugly as he's made out to be. And that particularly younger in life, he may have been quite a virile and attractive person.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But, I mean, Socrates' friends describe him as walking like a pelican, having eyes like a crab, having a face like a torpedo fish, and being balding and pot-bellied. And he looks like a satyr as well, we're told. Like one of those kind of goat, like pan or whatever. So those are his friends. Right. And so I guess it's partly the Athenian culture. They were kind of ribbing him a bit and stuff.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
If you go to Athens today, there's a famous statue of Socrates, a modern statue of him outside the university where he's incredibly buff. Like, I mean, he definitely looks like he's been lifting weights, but that's a modern representation of him. The ancient sculptures we have of him are this little pot-bellied old man,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You know, that's more of a kind of, was seen as a bit of a, presented as more of a comedy character almost. So yeah, he makes fun of it. In Xenophon Symposium, Socrates jokes and he says, I think if we had a beauty contest, I would win it. And everyone kind of rolls about laughing at this. It seems ridiculous to them. But then it leads into him having a conversation about how they define beauty.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And he starts to question whether beauty is actually something that comes from a person's character. And he says he's confident that he would win on those terms. But his friends still think it's a bit ridiculous of him. Xenophon, to his credit, says, you know, you learn more about wise men by seeing them at their leisure. I believe that's how he begins the symposium. It's a drinking party.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And he presents Socrates as this guy who's quite witty and humorous, right? So he says things where he... Socrates was the type of guy that would say something to you and you'd think... Is he joking? Is he serious? And the answer is yes and no. He's kind of both joking and serious at the same time, often, I feel.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, I think that's in Xenophon's symposium. Or it might be in Plato's symposium. In one of the symposiums, he says, and they do it, he asks them to bring out smaller cups. And he says, if we use smaller cups, we could moderate our drinking.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He says alcohol, I think this is in Xenophon Symposium, he says alcohol is like watering a plant. He goes, if you don't give it enough, then it kind of shrivels up and dies. But if you give it too much, then it wilts. And he goes, this is the effect that I think wine has on conversation at a dinner party. You've got to find just the right level so that people loosen up.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he wasn't completely in favor of abstinence. He thought the right amount of wine was conducive to a good philosophical conversation at a dinner party.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He was made to drink hemlock.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
No, not normally. No. I know I do. But no, he stood for 24 hours. We're told from sunrise one day to sunrise the next day in Potidaea in the middle of a battle. No, we're not in the battle. While they were besieging the city way in the north of Greece, we're told that he just froze and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He woke up in the morning, strapped his guitar on and fried eggs wearing his guitar. He went to the lavatory wearing his guitar, right? Psychologists call that time on task, like he was constantly practicing and stuff like he was obsessed with it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And some of the other soldiers camped beside him overnight because they were kind of like, is he really going to stand here all night barefoot in the cold? Like they were having bets on it or something. And they watched him and in the morning, I believe Plato says that he said a prayer to the rising sun, which may have been associated with the god Apollo.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But one of the themes that runs through the dialogues is Socrates' association with the god Apollo. There's a debate about whether Apollo was associated with the sun that early. I think he was. So it may be Socrates saw the sun as an embodiment of the god Apollo, who's kind of the patron god of philosophy. And it was the priestess of Apollo who said, no man is wiser than Socrates.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And it was outside the temple of Apollo that it says, which is this statement maxim that became a kind of theme for the Socratic method in a way. It was pursuing self-knowledge. but they he was in a habit of the Plato tells us he used to regularly just freeze and meditate going to a trance what's the can you dig into the know thyself
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
yeah i mean it comes up again and again in different dialogues i'll tell you something really cool about it there's a dialogue that i think is authentically attributed to plato but other some scholars have questioned it doesn't matter in a way somebody wrote it like thousands of years ago so there's a dialogue called the first alcibiades that's about socrates having a dialogue with this great statesman i mean i'm
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Someone said recently on Twitter they should make a movie about Alcibiades. He has one of the most dramatic and colorful and exciting, you know, lives. And he was Socrates' companion. Socrates saved his life in battle. You know, I mean, honestly, his life is so cinematic. It's like this huge epic adventure story.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Now, in this dialogue, Socrates questions whether Alcibiades is competent to become a political leader, a statesman. He proves to him by questioning that he doesn't really understand anything about the nature of justice, but he should. And then this leads into a conversation about, and Socrates says to Alcibiades, you know, what do you think it means?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And he's like, well, I mean, I would think that I know myself, but, you know, Socrates says, well, it's not just like knowing the name of something. It's about really understanding it. He goes, this is how I understand it. And then he says, well, Often you get these remarkable metaphors or images in ancient literature, and this is one of my favorites.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates says that self-knowledge is like an eye that sees itself, right? It's the eye that sees itself. He said it's like the God said that you're instructed your eye to see itself when he says that the mind should know itself, right? And he says to Alcibiades, how can the eye see itself? And Alcibiades is like, I guess like in a mirror. And Socrates says, well done.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, the two main philosophical traditions that preceded him, and there were others, so it's a little bit more complex, but the ones that are most relevant to him is the first philosopher at Athens was a guy called Anaxagoras, who came from the Greek colonies, which would be in Ionia, which would be on the coast of Turkey, basically.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So how would the mind know itself by analogy? And Alcibiades is like, I guess you'd need some kind of mirror for your mind. I don't know how that would work though. And Socrates basically implies that because he's often a bit vague about things. He's engaged in this question and answer method rather than just giving a lecture.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he basically implies to Alcibiades that engaging in philosophical dialogue or conversation with other people is a mirror for our own soul. And he understands that we're biased. I mean, he was, again, way ahead of his time in this regard. And by the way, this is another problem for modern self-help, right? So there are many problems with self-help.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
One of the problems with self-help is the self part.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right the person in a sense the person least qualified to help you like is your because i don't know if you've noticed that there's actually research that shows this right i'm going all over the place sorry but that i interviewed recently a guy called igor grossman who you should speak to right he's a professor at the university of waterloo who does research on the nature of wisdom
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right and he has research that shows that confirms the suspicion that we all have that we're much better at giving other people advice than we are giving ourselves advice right this is a sensitive subject for psychotherapists right because all we do is give other people advice and stuff but if you go to a psychotherapy conference and walk in the door you would notice immediately that it's full of some of the craziest people you ever meet in your life
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like you're saying that being able to give advice to other people is not reliable evidence that you can give advice to yourself yeah but over time i think if you approach it in the right way and i think it has something to do with empathy right if you identify with your clients in a sense that you you put yourself in their shoes and you empathize with them you might to put it very simply start to think maybe i do some of the things that they do to
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Maybe by helping them to see through their own mistakes and to troubleshoot them, I could kind of indirectly learn something about myself. But we're better at giving other people advice. It's been proven by Professor Grossman's research than we are at giving ourselves advice. And Socrates seems to realize this.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
This is partly why he thinks engaging in philosophical dialogue about the most important questions in life, as he puts it, is so important. This provides the best mirror he can imagine for learning about our own soul, our own mind, and coming to know ourselves, knowing our strengths and weaknesses, our limitations, and so on.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There's another technique that he kind of uses, I think, that Professor Grossman has done research on. It might be worth mentioning because I know people are interested in this. Igor Grossman, based on his observations, based on his research, did a study, and there are several studies like this,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
where they ask people to keep a journal where they describe they have two groups and one group describes their relationship problems and so on and you know attempting to resolve them in the first person and the other group do the same thing but in the third person so rather than saying you know oh i forgot my wife's birthday and she got really upset with me and i don't know how to make it up to her like i would say donald forgot his wife's birthday and she became really upset with him so in the third person right
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So when we talk about Greek philosophers, we're often a bit confused about where they came from. They didn't all come from Athens. Many of them came from Greek colonies that were much further afield. So, Anaxagoras was what we call a natural philosopher. The famous thing about Socrates is we refer to everyone that came before him as pre-Socratic. That's how influential he was.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
As if I'm giving advice to another person, right? And they found, so they said, what happens if you make yourself do this? And they call it distant self-reflection. So by keeping a journal in the third person, they found that people exhibited measurably more wisdom in the advice and the solutions that they came up with for themselves. Now, Socrates does something a bit like that.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He doesn't talk to himself that much in the third person, but usually in the second person. He engages in imaginary or hypothetical dialogues quite a lot. So, for example, he imagines arguing with the laws of Athens at one point in the Critias, and the laws of Athens start criticizing him and questioning him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So they say he imagines that the laws are saying to him, Socrates, you're contradicting yourself in this way and that way and so on, and you're mistaken about this, right? But that's just an opportunity for him to critique himself in the second person and by name.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So with greater objectivity, basically, and actually recycling some of the skills that he's honed by critiquing other people and applying the Socratic method to them in real life, in the flesh dialogues.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Oh, there are many. I mean, I told you he's like Jimi Hendrix, right? So some people might look at Jimi Hendrix and they might think, well, maybe he's not technically the best guitarist that's ever lived. But there's still something kind of really unique about him, right? There's only ever one Jimi Hendrix. There's nobody else really that kind of sounds exactly like him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so Socrates is... I mean, the odd thing is that many academic philosophers will disagree with most of what Socrates says. And they'll often think that his arguments are incomplete, that there are gaps in them, that they're not very convincing. And I think even Socrates realized this. But those dialogues weren't written necessarily to persuade people that they should agree with him.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
They're more like teaching aids that are designed like an assault course for the mind. So they're meant to train us to be able to think through puzzles from different perspectives, right? That's why I said, you know, what we learn from Socrates more is the method. And he kind of implies certain really interesting conclusions. but they're often very radical conclusions.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It might be worth mentioning some of them. So people usually, most philosophers disagree with them, but one of the ancient dialogues has Socrates saying, when you talk to a wise person, it's like being bitten by a small insect, like a mosquito or something, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And you might not even notice when it happens, but then hours later or the next day, you suddenly start to itch in the spot where you were bitten.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and so people would say that's what it's like when you talk to socrates like he'll say stuff and you think that's a stupid argument socrates doesn't it's not really convincing it doesn't make any sense and then 10 years later you're still thinking about it it's kind of bothering you right but for instance one of the other things i i wrote about in my book because again it's very interesting in relation to modern psychology socrates had this radical position that
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, he's the before Christ. He's the before Christ of philosophy. Yeah. So the natural philosophers are kind of, in many ways, precursors of modern science. They try to explain things, broadly speaking, using physical descriptions. They were very interested in astronomy, very interested in physiology. And that was a great thing for Athenian culture and Greek culture.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
that injustice harms the perpetrator more than it does the victim. And he repeats this quite a lot. So people who read that think, that's a hard view to accept. But no one ever forgets it. Anyone that reads the Platonic Dialogues decades later will think, remember Socrates kept going on about this idea that acts of injustice harm the perpetrator more than they do the victim.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
In court, he said, you guys that are putting me on trial and convincing the jury to sentence me to death unjustly are harming yourselves more than you're harming me. Epictetus quotes him at the last sentence of the Enchiridion. He says, Anetus and Miletus, the two guys that brought him to trial, can kill me, but they cannot harm me. Which is crazy. That's hardcore.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
First of all, the guy that believes that, hats off to him. Like, you know, no wonder he was resilient. Do we agree with him? There may be a case for it, but it's an extreme... A bit like, you know, an extreme version of stoicism, basically. Nevertheless... In relation to modern psychology, I think there's a lot we can take from it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So there's a body of research that shows that people who suffer from clinical depression tend to have high levels of perceived injustice, right? And we also know that anger is linked to depression, and anger is also very directly linked to the perception of injustice, right? So how could our philosophy of justice affect emotions like anger and depression?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, if we agreed with Socrates, right, that our own injustice does us more harm than the injustice of others, then maybe we wouldn't become as depressed when we perceive injustice in the world around us. We might still object to that. We might still defy it. but we might respond to it differently emotionally.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates was fearless in court because he believed that the acts of injustice being inflicted on him couldn't really harm him because they could take away his property, his reputation, and even his life, but they couldn't harm his moral character. And that was the most important thing to him. On his deathbed, he'd think, did I maintain my integrity throughout life?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You guys can't take that away from me. Only I can do that to myself, right? Now, what's true in anyone's eyes, even if they don't go as far as that, time and time again what you'll find in therapy when you're working with people who are very angry, for instance, is that their anger usually, just at a practical level, does them more harm than the things that they're angry about.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Maybe not in every single case, but I struggle to think of a case where that's not true. In virtually every client I work with, when we sit down and go, what are the consequences of your anger? And one reason for that is that anger by its very nature impairs our ability to think about the consequences themselves. That's why angry people act impulsively, right? It's well known.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There's a large body of psychological research that shows, surprise, surprise, angry people behave impulsively. But they do that because they're not thinking straight and they're not able to really think through and weigh up the consequences of their action. They tend to think very short term. We all do when we get really angry.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
um we don't we're not we don't become really good at nuanced social problem solving when we're angry generally it's like you know we become a kind of blunt instrument and that's highlighted by the fact that very often angry people a day later or weeks later regret what they did when they're angry because now they're not angry and they're thinking about the longer term consequences and the
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It was also very controversial because they challenged traditional superstitions. So people would think that thunder and lightning was caused by Zeus and the natural philosopher said, we reckon it's caused by clouds rubbing together or something like that. You know, earthquakes are just a natural phenomenon and things. And that had a surprisingly big impact on society.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So maybe some guy gets really angry, he tells his wife to shut up, and he gets what he wants. Maybe she does shut up, right, in the moment. So it seems successful, makes him seem powerful, and then she divorces him, right? So it destroys the relationship, right? I mean, to caricature it a little bit, but often what we struggle to do is kind of think about the wider impact, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And think a little bit about the longer-term consequences of anger, right? And particularly in terms of relationships where it's complex, anger impairs our ability to empathize with other people. And when we get angry, we tend to engage in what's known as hostile attribution bias.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So we usually think of people as acting just out of hostility towards us, whereas normally if I say, oh, why did that guy not send me a Christmas card this year? I might go, well, there's probably a bunch of possible explanations for that. Maybe there's several reasons, depending on how you look at it. Whereas if I'm angry, I'll think, just because he's a jerk, that's why he did it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Just pure hostility. So we tend to have a very monolithic and simplistic understanding of other people's motives when we're angry. But that makes us rubbish at social problem solving. Anger is really bad for maintaining any kind of healthy relationship. So by its very nature, it means that we tend to underestimate the negative consequences of it. So in therapy, it's easy to go.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You sit with people and you draw a little list and you go, you know, what are all the ways in which anger is harming your physical health, your mental health?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
your relationship with other people the other weird thing about it anger tends to spread so if i get angry i could be watching tv and get really angry with some politician that i don't like you know and then i turn around you know and i snap angrily at my cat right now my cat has done nothing
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
right but it's not even involved in the american politics in any shape or form right but because i'm annoyed with some politician that's on the news or whatever i'm now also you know by associated i'm just annoyed with my cat as well because i'm in an angry frame of mind you know and maybe i'm going to be a bit short you know my wife might say what do you want for dinner
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And they'll ask me later, right? Because I'm annoyed with some so-called politician, right? So anger harms our relationships, even with the people that we're not initially angry with.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know we get angry with our perceived enemies but we end up taking it out on our friends as well if we're not careful so people massively underestimate the negative consequences of anger like and so usually in therapy what people find is yes anger your own anger is doing you more harm than the thing the politician said on tv or somebody not sending you a christmas card or the thing
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Not maybe in every case, but really for practical purposes in the majority of cases that we end up dealing with. So Socrates took it way further, but nevertheless, there's something really interesting about the point that he's making.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Just as an aside, there's a famous anecdote about how Pericles, the most influential, most powerful Athenian statesman at this time, was about to set sail with his fleet on a military campaign. And there was an eclipse and his crew were cowering in fear and they refused to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
i speaking of anger and frustration i seem to remember you saying that you thought it would be impossible to write this book i did think it was impossible why um i really did i thought it was impossible to write it uh because i thought socrates was too complex a character the peloponnesian war is really annoying um there's like
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
something like 300 greek states were involved in it it went on for 27 years so the politics of it and the history of it are so complex right i thought how can i summarize that and condense it into a book and have the life of socrates as a philosopher
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
have some discussion of philosophy and philosophical dialogues and have some modern psychology and fit it all into 50 000 words i it just seemed like it would take you know three different books right but then i don't know how exactly i changed my mind but what i realized was that i could maybe i think what i i did was i gave up trying to attempt a more academic history and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And I said from the outset, I'm going to approach this like I'm writing a movie screenplay. And so it'll be a kind of dramatized version. I'm going to make it as close to the historical sources as I possibly can, but I'm going to have to take two characters and points and combine them together for simplicity.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I'm going to have to massively abbreviate some of his arguments and just give like key selections out of them. And I'm going to have to figure out ways to, you know, to kind of simplify the history of the Peloponnesian war. So, You know, I'm kind of surprised that I managed to compress all of that into one book. But, you know, I thought very long and hard about how to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And, you know, there was a lot of planning that went into it. I think I put four times as much work into this book as I put into the preceding How to Think Like a Roman Emperor book.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Yeah, there's really frustrating things about the life of Socrates. So this thing about going to Delphi and the pronouncement is presented as a key moment in his life. We've really got no... We don't know for certain when it happened, right? So for instance, we don't know if it happened before or after other key events in his life, and then it would change the whole narrative.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It's very often the Greeks would abandon, particularly the Spartans were known for this, by the way, they would abandon battles because they were concerned about bad omens and so on. And Pericles supposedly explained the natural philosophy that he'd been taught by Anaxagoras.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So with things like that, you just have to go, we could write an academic history where we argue about the possible dates, but in order to write a movie, you'd have to go, we have to pick a date, got to pick one. It could be like one of like maybe three different, you've just got to choose one and go with it in order to be able to tell the story.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And that's, I guess that's what liberated me is I just thought it needs to just be approached like we're writing a graphic novel or a movie. Which you did.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I take some satisfaction in that. Some authors just write the same book over and over again. And I don't know that I did this deliberately. It'd be like an actor that just plays the same kind of characters over and over, and then you've got other people that do lots of different things. But I look back at the books that I've written.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates reminds me, in that solitary regard of Jimi Hendrix, because the way he's described to us is that he's a guy who abandoned everything else and just spent all day every day discussing what he considered to be the most important questions in life with anybody, the greatest intellectuals that he could find in the known world, prostitutes, politicians,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Although I did actually write three books in a row about Marcus Aurelius, they're all different genres. One's more of an academic history. One's a self-help book. One's a graphic novel. So if I look at the books, I've probably written about eight books, they're all quite different from each other. I feel like I kind of stretched myself.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I mean, the pros and cons of that are sometimes when you stretch yourself and do something you haven't done before, you can kind of fall flat on your face and maybe you figure out it's not your forte or whatever. But the positive side is that that's how you grow, by taking a chance and doing something that's... something you never even imagined that you'd be doing.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think that was part of it as well. I kind of thought it's too difficult to write a book like this about Socrates. And I thought, well, as I get older, I'm less afraid of making mistakes. And I thought, what's the worst that can happen? Maybe I'll just mess it up and the book will be rubbish or something. I thought, yeah, I think I'd rather just try, have a go at doing it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think the other thing that swings it for me is I really – always approach it with this question in mind i imagine that if i could go back in time and kind of give the book that i'm writing to my 17 year old self or when i was 15 or something like i think what would i want to write in a book that i'm giving to my younger self And, you know, would I be kind of ashamed to write a book?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And then maybe we go, okay, we pick one of these dates for when the pronouncement is made at Delphi. Oh, damn, we got it wrong. You know, like, so maybe the chronology is a little bit off or something like that. Or there's some other debatable historical point. Would my 17-year-old self care about that? Or would he just think, I don't really care if there's one or two details that are debatable.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And he said, look, this is just something passing in front of the sun as if I put my cloak in front of your eyes, but it's further away and much bigger. And he convinced, by giving this down-to-earth naturalistic explanation, he managed to convince his troops to set sail. And so it changed the outcome of battles. Basically, that's how dramatic it was.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
The story is really awesome.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, sometimes people ask you, you know, how'd you go about writing a book, right? And I don't think I've ever said this in a podcast before, but funnily enough, the answer to this is kind of weird, right? There's a bunch of things I do that are...
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
quite specific like one is that i write the audiobook first right um so when i'm writing a book i'm not writing a print book i think i'm writing an audiobook and as part of that i'll read it aloud a lot and i'll pay somebody like a local barmaid or something
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
like to come or one of my friends friends or whatever like to come over and I'll give them a case of beer like you know and I'll pay them whatever per hour and I'll give them a big printout of the manuscript and I'll say read the entire thing to me I think last time we did it, it took 12 hours. I've got a video of the aftermath. We're sliding out of our chair. We've got some snacks piled up.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think it was 12 hours. Maddie, I think it was the name of my friend's friend that came over and read through the whole of how to think like Socrates. I think I did it several times because I wanted to know what it sounded like as well as reading it on the page. But the other thing I would do is I normally work in the library.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And I would sit with a timer and I'd practice a meditation technique for 10 minutes called the Benson Method, where it's well known in psychotherapy. So I just repeat a word over and over. And I try and notice that I'm doing this voluntarily, but there's also intrusive automatic thoughts that pop into my mind.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So I try to become clearer about the differentiation between what I'm thinking voluntarily. I normally just say the number one thought.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
or i count down from 10 to 0 over and over again on each out breath like one number one number like 10 9 8 and then start again like because then if you're counting in your mind what attention wonders you're more likely to notice it because you've broken the sequence right And I'll observe, I'll think I'm doing this voluntarily. I'm counting voluntarily.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But if I suddenly think about paying my taxes or something, I'll go, that's an automatic thought. And I choose to think that I just popped into my mind. So I kind of train myself to become more aware of that distinction. Then for 10 minutes, I would imagine that I'm in Academia Platanos in Greece, like I wrote about at the beginning of the book. And imagine I'm talking to Socrates, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And the first thing I would always do, Chris, is shake his hand, right? And it took a surprisingly long time for him to get used to that. I always remember my imaginary Socrates, in my mind, I insisted on shaking his hand, but he thought it was a bit weird at first. And I would say to him, I'd ask him lots of questions about anything that I was struggling with in the book.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But at the same time, it also upset a lot of people. And so Anaxagoras was also placed on trial for impiety long before Socrates. So there was Anaxagoras, and Socrates thought, this philosophy, though it doesn't teach wisdom, He said Anaxagoras didn't really understand anything about the nature of justice and injustice. So when he was placed on trial, supposedly he was a broken man as a result.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And what I generally found, any of the history stuff, His opinion, well, you know, I'd be like trying to think, we need to kind of eye on this and get it accurate and stuff. And he would always, my imaginary Socrates anyway, would always be like, who cares? You know, it's like, I don't even know why, you know, he seemed to place surprisingly little importance on getting it historically accurate.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
and he said no there's just focus on telling the story of the literary character of socrates in a way that gets people interested in the philosophy that's what actually matters right you know there are other books that you can go and read where people try and argue through the evidence and you know yeah try to get to truth i've been thinking about something not too dissimilar a little bit more generalized but i think what you're getting at as well which is
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
See, you are thinking about it in a more Socratic way. So the very fact you're going, well, can I see it from more than one perspective? So the role that you always have to be qualified, well, maybe there's some exceptions to that, right? And you can easily think of examples of great thinkers in the past that...
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
they weren't qualified they were outsiders or talented amateurs or whatever but on the other hand having zero qualifications in certain subjects clearly in some cases just leads to the Dunning-Kruger effect and people making schoolboy errors that are just almost cringeworthy if you know about the subject um
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I mean, the most obvious example of that, I think, is the internet is absolutely awash with people that can't tell the difference between causation and correlation and medical research. But newspapers and magazines have exploited that confusion for generations, but now it's become a much bigger thing on the internet.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So like understanding kind of like basic medical research methods, like, you know, not getting confused about that, like does lead a lot of people to make basic mistakes, right? Basically to misinterpret. If you don't know, like during the pandemic, like, every five minutes people were waving around research studies and stuff that didn't have any medical research, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So they had no idea what the stuff they were reading actually meant. And over and over again, they're kind of like just making the kind of mistakes that you would get taught not to make, right? So there are problems that happen. And there are people when they discuss ancient philosophy that make errors that an academic philosopher maybe wouldn't make.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But, yeah, I don't think there's a conclusive answer to this. But, yeah, I think we just need to be aware. I think the best thing is just to kind of be aware of what are the pros and cons. In the same way that, you know, for any self-help technique, just at least sit down and make a list of what are the strengths and weaknesses of this, what's a good way and a bad way of doing it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So you've got a slightly more nuanced understanding of it, not just a kind of rigid idea. but I think in generally, you know, this thing about amateurs versus experts is similar. Like there's pros and cons to it. Just knowing what those are is perhaps the main thing.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And we can contrast how Anaxagoras dealt badly with being exiled and then subsequently sentenced to death.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I mean, I can tell you over the years I've, I've, I'm friends with and know many, uh, well-respected academics, historians, classicists, philosophers, um, you know, and I guess my attitude has changed a little bit from my experience over time. Um,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
um sometimes there are people that are incredibly highly qualified in the subject and say stuff that's bonkers like that's you know the other experts in the field just think they've lost their mind like you know that again they're making mistakes that a first year student would fail a assignment for for doing right um I mean, it's weird when you see that, but it happens a lot.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Like, you get books by people that are professors of philosophy or psychology or whatever, and you think a first-year undergraduate student would get lambasted for saying this stuff. It's crazy. But so, you know, they're not... The most highly credentialed people are often not experts. And there's... There's also a well-known problem with expertise.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
There's actually statistical research that shows that narrative reviews of medical research that are done by experts in a particular field tend to be unreliable. So normally you'd think this guy's like one of the most experienced heart surgeons in the world. Like, so he's written an article reviewing all the research. It should be authoritative because he really knows what he's talking about.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
for impiety and how socrates famously exhibited courage uh in court and stood by his principles because he'd prepared himself to understand justice and injustice from a much more profound philosophical perspective um so there's annex agris and many other natural philosophers that socrates had studied and then a bit later we get these guys called the sophists
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But experts are often biased and they're particularly prone to committing the cherry picking fallacy. So they just pick out studies that support their pet theory. Whereas professional statisticians that don't have any skin in the game will just look at what all of the research says and be really kind of cast a cold eye over it.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
you know, I, and they'll say, no, this is what the research actually shows. This guy is just telling you what half of the research says, you know, because it supports his theory and experts in a field, or if you want to put it another way, people that are really invested in certain theories that have been doing it for a long time can be biased. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And so their, their version of things can be quite distorted, but, um,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
I think the other difficulty I wanted to mention to you in terms of this idea of getting information from experts and becoming kind of passive rather than depending on our own reason, there's another piece of research that's very influential in state-of-the-art, like modern behavioral psychology, which shows there's a problem with something called role-governed behavior.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
so if you get two groups of participants in a study and you teach them how to solve some you give them you give them a puzzle they have to solve like pressing three buttons in a particular order or whatever and if they get it right they get reward if they get it wrong like maybe you know they get some punishment a buzzer goes off or something like that they lose points or whatever right and in one group
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You just give them oral or written instructions that say this is how you solve the puzzle. The other group, they have to figure it out through trial and error, right? This is phase one of the experiment. In phase two, so they do it repeatedly. In phase two, the rules that govern the success change without telling them, right? So they have to adapt, basically.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You create a circumstance where they have to adapt. One group had been verbally given the rule or solution. The other group had to figure it out through trial and error. The group that have learned the rule verbally will keep trying it even though it's not working. Whereas the group that had to figure it out themselves will adapt much more quickly.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So we call this insensitivity to environmental change, right? And the reason it's really important is that's exactly what people who come for psychotherapy are doing.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
they're usually using some strategy that's not working and so the puzzle is why do they keep doing it when it's clearly not like why do they keep yelling at their partners when and when they keep and they keep their relationships keep breaking up as a result surely like after a while they'd kind of figure out this isn't working out for me and they'd start to adapt and change so what is causing the rigidity in their behavior and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And one of the explanations is that when we learn a rule from other people passively, or sometimes even if we get it from a book or something like that, there's a tendency, an established tendency, to overextend it and apply it too rigidly. And that can cause problems.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, I've written a bit like famous philosophers and stuff, Chris. But I mean, all honesty, the thing that's... I sat down and I kind of thought, what if I could only write one more book? You know, what do I really, really, really, really want to write a book about? And I thought, oh, I'll write something that I really feel is going to benefit the maximum number of people.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And their name implies that they claim to be wise. They claim to have expertise. And the Sophists taught young men oratory and rhetoric. They were kind of like self-improvement gurus in a sense, but they also taught people how to become successful politicians and confident public speakers. And they... where the first one was Protagoras, who Socrates knew personally and questioned.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So it's one of the biggest problems that I think people have. And it's something we've talked a lot about today, you know, for that reason, because it's kind of on my mind. I want to write a book about the philosophy and psychology of anger. Because it's one of those areas where there's a huge gulf between stuff that we actually know from psychological research.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
We know loads about anger, but most people aren't told about any of the research. And anger plays a huge role in politics. And on the internet, we've got like sat trolling and cyber bullying and so much kind of aggression on social media and so much kind of hostility and aggression in politics.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But none of us are looking at it and thinking, oh, when people get angry, like their thinking becomes skewed. Like, for example, when people get angry, it's well known that they underestimate risk. So when you're really angry, you tend to expose yourself and other people around you to more danger than normal, right? We know loads of things like that about anger, right?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But most, the majority of people aren't aware that the research tells us all this kind of stuff. So to them, anger is just a feeling, right? It's not something that changes their thinking. And, you know... If that's what anger does, how does it affect the electorate? How does it affect the behavior of politicians? There are measurable problems that it would cause.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So I think there's a lot to be said. We've got some great... Seneca has an entire book called On Anger. And we can easily compare all of that ancient philosophical literature to... what some of the psychological research says today. So I think people can benefit a lot from working. I call anger management, the Royal road to self-improvement because most people that seek self-improvement, like,
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Anxiety and depression are self-blaming emotions, right? So people that are anxious or depressed tend to seek self-help or therapy. But angry people don't seek therapy, typically. Because if I'm really angry, Chris, I think you need therapy, buddy, not me. Right. So angry people avoid self-help.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So, you know, that's why you could go online and you see kind of self-improvement communities like the Manosphere, for example, in some cases. And there seem to be a lot of really angry people. Yet they're talking about self-improvement. I don't know if you noticed that.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
You know if you read the comments on YouTube videos and things like that. Angry people.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Well, they can find me on Substack. That's probably where I mainly put stuff. And my website is just donaldrobertson.name. And then, yeah, if they look me up online, I'm involved with two non-profits. One's the Modern Stoicism Organization, which is running Stoic Week at the moment.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And then the other one is a charity or nonprofit that we founded in Greece called the Plato's Academy Center, where we're trying to raise funds to create a conference center adjacent to the original location of Plato's Academy. So those are the two things I'm interested in. People want to check those out as well. I need to give them a bit of a plug, Chris.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
but uh it's always you know absolute pleasure because you're exactly you know when i'm writing books it's kind of guys like you that i kind of imagine reading them you know like i can see how passionate you are about these subjects and you know like i i hope that i it's it's reassuring to me that you find this stuff interesting
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
My specialism was always, I used to train therapists and I would always say that I was a techniques guy. So I was really interested in classifying different psychological techniques and comparing them and training. We used to train people and gather data and all of these scripted exercises that we had. So I love teaching people.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And I feel like when I do interviews and things like that, the one thing I'd love to do more of is just say to people, this is how you actually do this visualization technique. This is how you do this meditation technique. Let's just go through a bunch of them and show you how to actually do stuff.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And this seems to have been a key moment in his career. But Socrates basically thought the Sophists were far too concerned with just winning arguments and they'd sacrifice the truth. So they would teach you how to win a debate in the assembly.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
But Socrates' concern, to put it very simply, was he'd say, how much time have you guys spent trying to figure out what's in the best interest of society or what's just and what's unjust? Like zero time. But you spend all of your time trying to figure out how you can convince other people. What's just are in their interests before the assembly.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Now, this is a very simple argument, but weirdly, eerily, it kind of applies today. Like, you know, so people get into politics because they want to influence society, you know, but how many politicians seem to have invested that much time and effort in trying to figure out what's genuinely important? in the interests of individuals or society.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates says it would be like going to see a doctor that never spent any time studying medicine. I don't bother with that. I'm just really good at writing prescriptions, but I don't know what's actually good for your health. So politicians, all they're concerned about is winning debates, influencing legislation. But Socrates said, could you explain what justice is?
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Or explain to me what's in the interests of society? And when he asked him these questions, I don't know, I haven't really thought about it. So this was his concern with the Sawfists. It was all about appearances and they sacrificed truth. But he had a kind of love-hate relationship with them. He liked to kind of hang around them.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
He thought they said some interesting things, but they didn't really think deeply enough about what they were saying. I guess another part of it that I think is very relevant today
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
is that socrates found that the sophists would give speeches and they would teach people maxims a bit like watching a youtube video or getting kind of rules for life from from modern self-improvement experts right and socrates thought that was basically too passive and He thought there are no rules that are going to apply across every situation in life, basically.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
What's much more in your interests is learning how to think for yourself and to be able to question things and spot exceptions to general rules and principles. So that's a harder, it's a more kind of a less tangible concept for people. But so that's where the Socratic method comes in.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
Socrates thought we need to learn how to think for ourselves, question things more deeply, not just kind of memorize these phrases that we're getting from Sophists.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
slaves, you name it, everybody from all walks of life. So he had, he was like the Jimi Hendrix of philosophizing. Like he never took his guitar off. He was constantly doing, I can't imagine someone in modern society spending that amount of time really analyzing the contradictions in someone else's thinking. So Socrates to me is a kind of a unique individual and it comes through. We don't know.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
It's a bit circular. But if you learn to think like Socrates, you'll learn to think for yourself.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
What was his come-up story? We kind of have several bits of evidence there. So sometimes the evidence is a little bit contradictory or it's a little bit vague. So in telling his story, we have to make some assumptions. We have to iron out some contradictions and stuff because the ancient texts are a little bit messy in that regard. So the most famous explanation he gives is in Plato's Apology.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
where he says his friend Chirophon went to Delphi, which is a few days walk outside Athens in the mountains. It's an incredible place. It's like something out of Lord of the Rings. And there's a great famous temple to the god Apollo there. And you could ask questions of the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo. She sat on a bronze tripod, supposedly inhaling these fumes, and she'd go into a trance.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
And the god Apollo possessed her and spoke through her, right? And Hierophon, who was another philosopher, a weird dude who people compared to a bat, a respecter. I imagine him almost like a kind of goth or something. He was a bit of a misfit, but he was Socrates' best friend. He was known for doing kind of eccentric things.
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
So he went to the Delphic Oracle and said, asked it, is any man wiser than Socrates? And it replied, no man is wiser than Socrates. Apollo, the god Apollo, replied, no man is wiser than Socrates. And so the weird story in the Apology is that Socrates found this difficult to accept and so he went around grilling the wisest people that he could find and
Modern Wisdom
#864 - Donald Robertson - The True Story Of History’s Greatest Philosopher
to try and find evidence that there was indeed somebody that was wiser than him. Because he didn't believe that no one was wiser than him. But he found that when he asked great philosophers and statesmen, often they contradicted themselves. So he thought they can't be wise. They believe that they are. And the sophists literally called themselves wise men.