Hemlock, a poisonous plant with umbrella-like clusters of small white flowers, was found growing near a primary school in Suffolk recently, much to the consternation of parents whose children walk past it each day. Their fears helped the story reach the national press.
Hemlock contains alkaloid toxins that can cause muscular paralysis and death. A tiny amount can be fatal. But for anyone who has studied the history of philosophy, the toxicity of this plant is not news. It was the poison that killed Socrates when he ingested it after an Athenian court found him guilty of corrupting the youth and encouraging impiety.
Athenians were already suspicious of Socrates’ anti-democratic tendencies, and he wound up his accusers during his trial, recommending that instead of executing him they should give him a pension for his useful contribution to the city-state as a philosophical gadfly.
Our main source of information about Socrates is Plato’s dialogues. There are other places where he is described, such as in Xenophon’s dialogues, and there’s a caricature in Aristophanes’ The Clouds, but basically the Socrates we know is the one seen through Plato’s eyes. Plato was Socrates’ pupil and was traumatised by losing his charismatic mentor.
He described the poison taking effect. Socrates, who had been walking about after quaffing the poisonous liquid, lies down. He gradually loses the sensation in his feet and legs. Bit by bit his body becomes cold and rigid, and finally, the toxin reaches his heart and kills him.
His dying words to one of his followers, Crito, are “We owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it, and do not forget.” Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine, and this request for a sacrifice is generally taken to be Socrates’ way of saying he has been “cured” of life, though Armand D’Angour speculates in his fascinating book Socrates in Love that it could have been meant as an offering for the recovery from illness of Aspasia, the extraordinary woman who may well have inspired his famous discussion of love that Plato described in Symposium.
In her compelling The Death of Socrates, Emily Wilson mentions an academic debate that absorbed some classicists in the 20th century. They argued that Plato must have fictionalised and sanitised Socrates’ death because hemlock usually produces nastier symptoms including vomiting and convulsions. But it turns out there are many varieties of hemlock, and that so-called water hemlock does indeed work on the peripheral nervous system, producing numbness and death by paralysis of the respiratory system or heart.
However he died, there are things about Plato’s Socrates that remained central to philosophy, or at least the best philosophy, throughout its history. He came to realise that he was the wisest person in Athens, not because he knew a lot, but because he realised how little he knew. That kind of humility and self-awareness is important.
Gadflies asking awkward questions have a key role to play in keeping others intellectually honest. Socrates went around the Athenian marketplace engaging experts on their own subjects, repeatedly revealing by his questioning that they didn’t really know what they were talking about. In doing this he displayed the two great virtues of a philosopher: a deep curiosity about how things really are, and a willingness to pursue truth by rational means, even if that causes others offence.
In Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Drinking Song, Socrates gets this eulogy:
“Yes, Socrates is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.”
A lovely little thinker, yes. He kickstarted philosophy in the western tradition, with Plato and then Aristotle continuing that dynasty of thought. But Socrates didn’t have to be drunk to be awkward.
That’s always the risk when you pursue truth and challenge assumptions. He didn’t back down, and was prepared to take the rap for offending powerful people rather than compromise his integrity and disguise what he believed. In contrast, many academic philosophers today shy away from saying what they believe for fear of offending their colleagues and students or becoming the target of a vengeful mob of social media furies.
They worry about losing their jobs or being ostracised. Others seem to take a delight in vilifying colleagues who dare to argue for unfashionable views. Let’s remember, though, Plato’s Socrates didn’t walk that way. Nor should they.
