Lessons from the OG Greek Philosopher
It might be a hard sell these days, to convince the old or the young, that the best guide to living a “good” life is an Athenian philosopher who died in 399 B.C. After all, Socrates did not have to confront Janus-faced AI applications that seductively boost our “intelligence” while corroding our cognitive skills or at the very least, our attentional capacities. Or other banes and boons like social media amidst existential threats to the planet: intensifying wildfires and floods, heightening risks of nuclear war, pandemics and unknown unknowns. Forget about “good”, it can feel enervating to endow whatever you are doing – running an enterprise, slaving on a job, parenting a child, writing a book – with meaning.
Choosing the Socratic Over the Tolstoian
In a different geography and later era, as Agnes Callard notes in Open Socrates, Leo Tolstoy was to observe the seeming pointlessness of everything. In Confession, a work penned in his early fifties, the Russian novelist was to admit to a surprising nihilism, given that everything in his life seemed stitched up. He had already penned Anna Karenina and War and Peace, works that had garnered his formidable literary reputation. Moreover, he was immensely wealthy, had an affectionate wife and children, was physically and mentally fit. But given the kind of mind he had, he was inclined to brood over questions like: “Very well, you’ll be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, than all the writers in the world – so what?”
Tolstoy managed to evade what felt like a logical end to futility (trigger warning: suicide), and reached what might feel like a facile conclusion. Watching slogging peasants who seemed unbothered by the vagaries of life, he inferred that Faith – which the peasants seemed to possess in dollops, and of which he had too little – was the only means to keep it going. Callard, however, suggests that Tolstoy might have leapt to an easy and hence dissatisfying answer. Rather than the Tolstoian approach, she suggests a Socratic method to lift our mundane every days. And even augment our love lives, our work, our boring chores, our chitchats with friends, and all the other minutiae that make up our moments.
Approaching Knowledge With Humility
Socrates felt his own purpose or raison d’être was to keep asking questions. Of people across ages, of the powerless and the powerful. However badgering and discomfiting such questions might have felt to his targets. But the asking was done with an attitude that he wasn’t all-knowing or any wiser. While on trial, he recounted why he was picked by the Oracle of Delphi: “This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.” As Callard puts it, in an age where the knowledgeable were accorded a higher status, Socrates derived a reputation from the opposite: by chest-beating about not knowing anything at all. Snarky moderns might term this humble bragging, while Callard calls it “epistemological humility.” Nonetheless, he does put a scanner on what constitutes “knowledge”, especially in an age that fosters disturbing gaps between intelligence and wisdom.
Making Time for the Untimely
In general, Callard observes that we can divide up our frenetically busy days into necessary duties or “have to dos” – caretaking, paid work, admin stuff – and “like to dos” – reading a book, watching a film, meeting a friend. But she argues against making our days so busy, that we don’t have time or space to ask ourselves the hardest, “untimely” questions. Like “Why am I doing all this?” In India, this would naturally involve ignoring the diktats of our L&T and Infosys chiefs. But merely setting aside the time for solitary quests may not fetch us solutions. For as Socrates observed, answers are not likely to pop into your consciousness. Instead, they are to be discovered by conversing with others, using each life situation to draw necessary lessons.
Keeping At Discomfiting Questions
Such self-improvement can only emerge from keeping an open mind, one that is willing to be or even delights in being proven wrong. Callard notes that the kind of self-awareness that is open to “refutation” is a paradox. After all, if you think you are open or tolerant or flexible, you are already foreclosing the possibility that you may not be any of those things. At least not to the degree you think you are. The paradox even has a name: Meno’s paradox.
Callard, who is currently an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chicago, is sharp at detecting such conundrums. She notes for instance that, “People will announce, ‘Question everything!’ without noticing that they have just uttered not a question, but a command.” This particular maxim has also been spotlighted by students whose dissenting views have been squashed by academies that purportedly support the “freedom of speech.”
Relentless questioning, with an open mind, should lead one closer to the “truth” or at least to “virtue.” One of the positive things about this approach is that it doesn’t assume that any human being is more virtuous than any other. Rather, we are all on a journey, and we can learn to be virtuous (however, we keep redefining it for ourselves) by asking questions and conversing with others.
Living with a Socratic Mindset
Written in a style that is accessible to laypersons, Callard consciously makes this a penetrating read that can stir intellectuals and ordinaries. She cites the example of Heinrich von Kleist, who explained his mathematical problems to his sister, who wasn’t a trained mathematician. As Socrates himself showed, the loftiest ideas can often be stated simply. But to actually live them, as he did, drinking hemlock rather than relinquishing his ideals, well, that’s a more complicated matter.
References
Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, Allen Lane, Penguin Random House, 2025