Americans Could Learn From Socrates
Most of us who studied philosophy when we were young think of Socrates as the guy who questions everything in Plato’s Dialogues. For a long time I suspected that if I had attended a dinner party in Athens at which he was present, I would have found him annoying.
During the dark days of the pandemic, I read about the plague that struck Athens in 430 BC, when the city state was under siege by Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.
Over the following three years, most of the population was infected, and perhaps as many as 75,000 to 100,000 people died. The Athenian general and historian Thucydides left an eye-witness account. The symptoms he described are non-specific and could be present in multiple diseases. The best clue he offered was his description of a blistering rash, which seems to be consistent with smallpox.
During both the plague and the war with Sparta, literary observers marveled at the extraordinary equanimity of Socrates. While so many around him were losing their heads, he always remained calm and cheerful. He was an excellent soldier of whom Epictetus observed: “He was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly.”
During the plague, Diogenes Laertius observed, “Socrates was so well-disciplined in his way of life that when plague broke out in Athens he was the only man who escaped infection.”
I doubt he was the only man who escaped infection, but I still find the remark very interesting. By numerous accounts, even under the greatest pressure, Socrates was unflappable, and it seemed to give him enormous
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