Plato’s Apology: The Only Book Every Human Needs to Read ft. Donald Robertson

If you could only ever recommend one book, what would it be? For Donald Robertson, the writer behind How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, the answer is Plato's Apology: Socrates on trial, defending his way of life and refusing to flinch in the face of death.

In this clip Donald explains why this short text sits underneath so much of what came later, the seeds it planted that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus grew, and what Socrates' fearlessness about mortality still has to teach us. A small book with a long shadow.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Because the one of the books you recommend people read is The Apology, right? As like one of the best philosoph philosophy book books ever. No, I'll correct I'll correct I'm gonna correct you there. Right. It's the only book that I recommend that people read. Like I know sometimes I'll recommend books to individuals, right? But actually I seldom do that. I think it's presumptuous to recommend books to people. People, you know, it takes time to read a book, you know. And so if I sometimes in coaching or therapy, I know a client quite well, or a person I think you as an individual should maybe read this book. But in general, I don't recommend that people read books normally, with one exception, like Plato's Apology, because I think it's one of the most profound and moving and important texts in the history of the Western canon. And it only takes a few hours to read. Why do you put that book in like a league of its own? What's special to you about that book? Because first of all, actually, this might sound a bit glib, but like I said a moment ago, it's relatively short. That means a lot to me because someone could just sit down and read it in an afternoon. Like anyone could have a go at it. What have you got to lose? It's one it would be like reading a work of Shakespeare, like, and it only taking a few, it's shorter than Shakespeare. Like it would only take uh a few hours to get through it. It's pretty easy to read. Some of Plato's dialogues, like The Republic, is really long and it gets quite dry in the middle, right? And kind of abstract at times. You know, it's fascinating if you're a bit of a nerd for these things, but it's a bit much for somebody who's coming to it for the first time. But the Apology is pretty dramatic because it's a courtroom drama, essentially, in a way. And Socrates condenses quite a lot of stuff in there. He says, and it's beautifully written. So I think it drops lots of kind of little seeds of philosophy. It doesn't have many complete arguments in it, but it has lots of little seeds of ideas that you know you might read it and be thinking about it decades later, like you know, because it creates images in your mind, and it it was hugely influential in the ancient world. If you want to understand any ancient philosophy, all ancient philosophers were familiar with Plato's apology. It was like that famous, it was um you know, uh it influenced everybody pretty much, and you know, it sort of someone like Marcus Aurelius, for example, would be like really familiar with it. It's a fundamental cultural reference point um for basically all ancient thinkers. That's why uh one of the reasons why I think it's it's really important, but it was, for example, taken to be the most iconic example of what's sometimes called a uh a good death or a noble death, right? So that was meant to be profoundly inspiring. I'll give you one illustration of that. Uh 400 and 500 years later, um Epictetus is teaching stoicism. So to Epictetus, Socrates, by the way, is ancient history. It's like late medieval periods or something, right? Like this is five centuries earlier. Epictetus turns to his students and he says that people aren't upset by events but by their opinions about them. The most famous quote in the stoic literature, right? It used to be a cliche in cognitive behavioral therapy, it was in like every book on CBT. Um but no one ever quotes the next sentence, right? In the next sentence, Epictetus says, for example, so he gives an example of what he means, and he said, uh, death, so you go straight for the jugular, right? You know, death itself is nothing terrible because if it were, Socrates would have been frightened of dying, and he wasn't, right? So he said this is a fundamental strategy that Socrates himself uses in the dialogues of both Plato and Xenophon. He won't he'll often say to people, when someone's scared of something or they're angry about something, he'll say, Do other people all feel the same way about it that you do? And if the answer to that is no, people feel differently about this thing, then that would suggest that your fear, your fear of it, your anger towards it is shaped by your beliefs, uh your opinions and your assumptions. Death seems like the most extreme example of something that we should fear, and yet not everybody feels the same way about death, right? Some people actually are completely resigned to their own death. You know, that's it's a really interesting one because some people I know find that almost inconceivable, particularly, I think, younger people, right? And I think there's a reason for that. As you get older, I hate to break it to you kids, but as you get older after 50, and just get into your 60s, 70s, or whatever, like other people start dying. That you know, and so you're probably going to be be bereaved multiple times. By the time Socrates was 71, 72, let's say, he'd probably seen loads of people dying. He'd served in the military and thousands of people had died around him. He'd seen tens of thousands of people die in the Athenian plague, right? But a lot of a lot of his friends had died as well, right? So he'd had plenty of opportunity to face up to and come to terms with his own mortality. And also, as you get older, you have brushes with death, either because you're in dangerous situations, like you're in a car crash or something, or you have a health problem, like you have a health scare and you rush into the hospital, but you know you're it turns out you're fine. But for a minute you think maybe this is it, or maybe like maybe my number's up or whatever. As time goes on, you have more and more opportunities to think, yeah, like maybe maybe this is it. Like, you know, maybe, maybe there isn't any more, maybe, maybe uh, you know, any minute now, like, or or maybe in the next few days, like uh, you know, it could be over. And I think as that happens to a lot of people when they're older and they have these multiple experiences of bereavement, multiple brushes with death themselves, a lot of people become more resigned to their own mortality, you know. So Epictetus wants to point to Socrates and say, he's the cardinal example of this. Like he was completely indifferent, like, to his own death. Partly, Xenophon says part partly it was to do with his age. That's not the only reason, but part of it was that Socrates felt he'd had a good innings, you know, he was about to become a burden to his family or begin losing his his faculties. He talks a lot about this. He says, Um, death is is like someone who's lent you money and he makes you repay it a little bit of time. He goes, I'll have your eyesight, I'm gonna have your hearing, gonna have your the strength in your legs now. He says, old age kind of robs you, like it makes you pay your life back in one installment at a time, you know. And he wasn't so keen to go out like that. He wants to go out Socrates wants to go in a blaze of glory, you know, in a sense. Or he wanted to make a statement on behalf of philosophy. He thought he could do benefit Athenian society more by making this kind of principled stand in public than he could by continuing the same discussions that he'd been having for decades when he was he was starting to get on a little bit. Um, that's part of you know what we see going on there. But Epictetus is like, this guy's not afraid of dying, he's he shows complete indifference to it. You know, he's ready to go. Like, you know, and because of that, you know, people are amazed. They're like, you're about to be executed, you're standing trial in court, right? If the jury don't like you, you're gonna be executed. Do you understand that? And Socrates is like, yeah, I understand it. It's not going to stop me from saying what I want to say. Like, I'm not scared of dying. He says something remarkable as well about his military service at the beginning. I'll paraphrase. Like, one of the first things he mentions in his defense is that he talks about his military service. Socrates was a hoplite, a heavy infantryman. By the way, I my personal view is that he wasn't an ordinary hoplite. He is depicted by both Xenophon and Plato discussing military training, by Xenophon discussing strategy and tactics in considerable detail. Like he talks, he's comfortable being consulted by uh Athenian generals and like senior officers. Like he's more like a sergeant major, or if in the Roman legions, he would have been like a centurion, I think, like, than just like a regular soldier. Like he's he's kind of he knows a lot, he studied warfare, he's experienced, and he's kind of like a mediator with this with senior officers, um, a go-between. Like, so he says, Look, I fought in three major battles in the Peloponnesian War. Lots of people died around him. He says, You guys praised me for my courage when I risked my life in order to protect the city walls of Athens. Now I'm standing here in court, you're talking as if I'm ridiculous for risking my life in order to defend philosophy. But this is much infinitely more important to me, right? Because of what value are the walls of the city if the men that live within them are no good? Like if they're corrupt. So he said doing philosophy and trying to improve my fellow citizens is more important to me than serving in the military. You know, you praised me for risking my life doing that. You know, I feel exactly the same way about risking my life right now in court, it's more important to me, right? That was part of how he put his reasons for making the unapologetic. The the Greek word for defence speech is apolodia, um, and so that we get the English word apology. Um, but Socrates is obviously completely unapologetic. He couldn't be less apologetic. He not only he carries on doing philosophy in the trial. Like, and was when he takes the stand, he starts doing philosophy while you know interrogating the the guys that are are prosecuting him and bringing the charges against him, you know, weirdly, he's doing the very thing that they're putting him on trial for in the trial. Like they're going on about you should stop doing philosophy, and he's like, Well, you know, like tell me define what you mean by you know corrupting the youth and stuff like that. You're like, you're doing the thing right now that you're on trial for. Like, that's how unapologetic he actually was. So he he to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche, uh Socrates pressed his hand upon aeons as though upon wax during his trial. Like he sent shock waves uh through the the Greek world and changed history by you know, this is a guy that never wrote a book, yeah. You know, and he's the most iconic philosopher in the the Western tradition. And part of it was also he said some radical he helped to define the philosophical method as we know it today, and he said he tended to say things and come to conclusions that were so radical whether we agree with them or not, they kind of, you know, they stick in our minds and you know, like force us to to ask very deep questions. You know, often people would walk away from discussions with Socrates and think, I don't find these arguments convincing. And I'm not really sure what he's driving at. And I can't I just can't buy his conclusions, they seem too extreme. But weeks, months, years, decades later, you're still thinking about the stuff that he said, because he pushed it further than most other thinkers would dare.