“No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.“

Chances are, you’ve heard of the name ‘Socrates’ before, but you may not know who exactly he is. Socrates is one of the most famous and influential philosophers to have ever lived, despite never having written anything himself. He lived in Athens, and was one of the poorer citizens by will (according to remaining records of him by others, he actually embraced his own poverty and never charged money for his teachings). He was also apparently famously ugly, and due to his own poverty, didn’t change clothes a lot. Because most of the information known about Socrates comes from books and records written by his students, such as Plato or Xenophon, and those records were mostly focused on academic affairs, not much was written about his personal life. However, it has been recorded that Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus and Paenarete. He married a woman named Xanthippe and had three children with her. 

Despite his outward appearance, he was noted to be extremely arrogant, preaching his beliefs and knowledge to random people that he met on the street, trying to convince them that he was right through extensive questioning and debating with them. Although this behavior was noted to be semi-annoying and harmful to the youth of Athens, in addition to being a bother to other citizens of Athens, Socrates himself thought nothing of it. He believed that the behavior itself

This behavior, however, angered the citizens of Athen and drew the attention of the Athenian court, who accused Socrates of impiety and influencing the youth in a negative way. In the end, the people of Athens held a trial to determine whether Socrates was guilty or not, and what punishment would he receive. Socrates was found guilty of his crimes, and was sentenced to death. The remaining records of this event are from Plato’s Apology, which details Socrates’s opinions on death and his own trial. Due to the fact that Plato is Socrates’s student, the book is known to be subject to Plato’s subjectivity, which may paint Socrates in a better light than how other’s may have known him. In addition, it is hard to tell which ideas are Socrates’s own ideas, and which ideas are Platonic, projected through the persona of Socrates. 

One of Socrates’s most famous beliefs (and one of the points he gets made fun of the most) is that he knew that he knows nothing, and therefore he thought he was more intelligent than everyone else (which in itself is a contradiction, but at the time, it was a truly profound idea). Everyone else that Socrates encountered in Athens thought their own knowledge was irrefutable and real, so he wanted to help others share this supposed “truth” by walking around and teaching the citizens of Athens about his belief by asking others what they know and disproving them one by one. Many of the dialogues were recorded by Plato in the Platonic dialogues. Due to Socrates’s continous and main belief that no one can truly know anything, apart from the fact that he knows that he knows nothing, Socrates believes there is nothing to fear when it comes to death, since no one can really know what comes after death. Socrates believes that to fear death is to have a preassumption that death is supposed to be inherently bad, which is just one pretending to be smart when one is not. In the Apology, Plato writes, “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.” This idea is linked to the quote at the top of the page, in which Socrates explains no one knows whether death could be the greatest blessing, or the greatest evil (which is both dependent on the nature of death itself, and the person experiencing it). Socrates also proposes two situations: death involves the ending of one’s consciousness, in which case death is nothing but a dreamless sleep, or death involves the soul of the body being admitted to an afterlife, where souls are ruled by just judges. Neither situation can be constituted as necessarily frightful (in his case, at least), so he has nothing to fear. 

In the end, Socrates was executed by reason of impeity and corruption of the youth (although some believed that he technically commtitted suicide because he was granted the chance to escape, but he insisted on following the law and being executed instead), and we are left with unanswered questions, courtesy of Socrates’s legacy. Is being scared of death truly an act of ignorance? Will it always, under any circumstances, be irrational to fear death?

Bibliography:

Nails, Debra. “Socrates” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/

Timmons, Greg. “Socrates Biography” The Biography.com Website, https://www.biography.com/scholar/socrates#:~:text=Socrates%20was%20a%20scholar%2C%20teacher%20and%20philosopher%20born,to%20death%20by%20hemlock%20poisoning%20in%20399%20B.C.

Plato. Apology, trans. G.M.A. Grube. Pp. 112.130 in Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.