Review of "Six Questions"

Book Review of Christopher Phillips, "Six Questions"

By John Taylor; 11 October, 2005

Six Questions of Socrates, Christopher Phillips, W.W. Norton and Co.,
New York, 2004

This is the latest popular work of Christopher Phillips, author of
Socrates Cafe, the chief initiator of the philosopher's cafe
movement... popular philosophy in action, where a philosopher, amateur
or professional, initiates informal discussions on philosophical
questions open to all comers. Phillips's own meetings tend to be more
Ad Hoc than most, he lets the group choose the topic on the spur of
the moment and he takes the meetings just about anywhere, in schools,
public squares, prisons, anywhere with people interested in thinking
deeper thoughts. His influence extended even into deepest Wainfleet,
in whose public library we hold our own Philosopher's Cafe meeting
evening every month, and from whose "new arrivals" bookshelf I
borrowed this book, Six Questions of Socrates.

Pound for pound, Six Questions is the most thought provoking book I
have read in a while. Phillips has read scads of published books by
academics and does not shy away from citing them at length. But
characteristically he asks the very questions that Socrates asked and
plies them where Socrates did, in the street and marketplace. In fact,
modern jet travel being what it is, you could say that Phillips has
taken the questions even further. He takes them to modern-day Athens,
both in a field within view of the Stoa and in the halls of an
Athenian High School. But goes to Korea, to a market square in Mexico
City, to a mixed group of Israelis and Palestinians in an American
campus, and most amazingly to me, he takes it to "mentally challenged"
adults in a group home -- and even more amazingly, their comments and
insights stand right up there along with other answers produced by the
best minds in the world.

Truly, Phillips proves that there is a democracy of philosophical
enquiry and nobody should feel unqualified. Indeed, I believe that we
were all built and designed to ask and answer, to examine and
reexamine such questions, and if we fail to do so we cannot really say
that we have lived. If anybody doubts the value of thinking and
discussing these questions with as wide a variety of people as
possible, let them read this book. Here are some highlights of what I
got out of it.

One of Socrates questions that Phillips took around the world was,
"What is Piety?" The chapter on this question demonstrates that here
is one question where Socrates, the once and future king of
philosophy, still blows all comers out of the water. In his time as
now, most people understood that the gods were bigoted and interested,
doling out rewards and punishments according to whether men side with
them or not, and even that they were capricious, sending ill upon both
good and bad. Socrates held that only good can come of God, never
evil. The gods are, in the words of Phillips' favorite modern
interpreter (Socrates never wrote a word himself), "relentlessly
beneficent." Piety is the conviction that they have work to do in
perfecting humanity, and that we can and should help them out. Piety
is "doing the gods' work to benefit human beings." (Six Questions,
280-281) We do it by perfecting our own soul, making it more wise and
God-like. Socrates saw his mission imitating the beneficent mission of
the gods by "summoning all and sundry to perfect their soul, to work
as he did ... as his own service to the gods." Socrates changed many
lives forever and for the better. Some were upset but only those who
were corrupt themselves, who neglected to perfect their own souls.
These determined to kill him.

It is humbling to recall that the Athens that killed Socrates was not
a tyranny but a democracy; democracy can be the best government or it
can be the worst, depending upon how many people live examined lives.
At the end of the book Phillips mentions an important objection that a
skeptical teacher in a private school posed while walking to a
Socrates Cafe that he was about to hold in that teacher's class. The
teacher called his dialogues mere shams asking to whom he thinks he is
accountable. Phillips replies, "I think I am accountable to myself,
mostly, to letting my conscious be my guide. And my conscious dictates
that I should feel accountable to all those who came before me and
risked it all so that humanity had a chance to inch forward." The
teacher find's this answer offensive, and asks: "Don't you think it is
dangerous what you are doing, giving young people the license to
question everything?" Phillips replies:

"Yes, wonderfully dangerous. And I think it is more dangerous --
terribly so -- if we do not give them license, along with the tools,
to think for themselves. It seems to me that we adults have made a
pretty good mess of things. Maybe young people, if imbued early on
with a social conscience, can show us the way out of it." (Six
Questions, 302)

While this is a good answer, I do not think it is good enough.
Phillips has spent too much time on secondary sources and misses the
most important point that Socrates was trying to make. Socrates did
not claim just to be "following his own conscience," he honestly
believed that his conscience was the voice of a god, no, the voice of
God, directing him to do what he did. By trying to keep God out of it,
Phillips is denuding Socrates of his deepest and most influential
meaning. Without Socrates' sacrificial application of belief in God as
laid out in the dialogues of Plato -- not many realize this but it is
true -- there could not have been a Christianity or an Islam or any
other monotheistic religion. The whole idea of one God before that was
incomprehensible to intelligent seekers of truth. Indeed, in the axial
age of Socrates, not even Judaism was theistic in the modern
understanding of the word, not because people were stupid but because
the idea of a personal God was incomprehensible. Socrates -- along
with the prophet Job -- demonstrated that God was not a first among
equals, God is that small voice within that directs one to right
action, even in the face of suffering and defeat.

Why is this so important? Because behind Socrates' questioning method
is a single item of faith: there is only one truth, one reality, one
God, and no matter how much questioning and criticism goes on, every
thinking person will inevitably and naturally end up in the same
place. This is of the nature of things, it is human nature. Each and
all can be rightly guided without need of outside compulsion because
one God directs conscience with complete dependability. One God means
one truth, a truth that does not admit of division, and as a result
multiplicity of opinions must eventually fuse into one opinion. Or to
speak more exactly, there would be universal agreement upon essentials
and a good and beautiful diversity of opinion about what is not
absolutely necessary. Without this simple faith that skeptical private
school teacher is perfectly correct, conscience would need fetters,
chains and accountability. Totalitarian government would be
enlightened and paternalistic laws sensible, force would be our only
hope for union of conscience, for harmony between hearts and minds.

Socrates, I maintain, taught a simple faith that external force is
unnecessary to bring about conformity, only the internal compulsion of
a small voice within guiding toward truth and knowledge is needed. One
of his students was Zenophon, who was literally sitting in the gutter
when Socrates called him out with a question. So moving was meeting
this great teacher that the boy in the gutter, Zenophon, became a
writer and historian. He understood that Socrates' great secret was
that he changed the nature of our questioning from idle speculation
about the natural world to serious questions about virtue, the kind of
question that gives real power over human realities.

"The student of human learning expects, he (Socrates) said, to make
something of his studies for the benefit of himself or others, as he
likes. Do these explorers into the divine operations hope that when
they have discovered by what forces the various phenomena occur, they
will create winds and waters at will and fruitful seasons? Will they
manipulate these and the like to suit their needs? or has no such
notion perhaps ever entered their heads, and will they be content
simply to know how such things come into existence? But if this was
his mode of describing those who meddle with such matters as these, he
himself never wearied of discussing human topics. What is piety? what
is impiety? What is the beautiful? what the ugly? What the noble? what
the base? What are meant by just and unjust? what by sobriety and
madness? what by courage and cowardice? What is a state? what is a
statesman? what is a ruler over men? what is a ruling character? and
other like problems, the knowledge of which, as he put it, conferred a
patent of nobility on the possessor, whereas those who lacked the
knowledge might deservedly be stigmatised as slaves." (Zenophon,
Memorabilia)

You might say, then, that even though Phillips has not completely
grasped the implications of Socrates teaching, the very power of the
questions he asks around the world in "Six Questions of Socrates"
smears over his book a "patent of nobility" that is incomparably
powerful. If you have not time to read the entire book, at least read
the chapter on moderation, called "Moderation Unveiled." Here Phillips
takes the question to a roomful of Muslim women, some in modern dress
but most veiled. They talk candidly about the state of women and
issues of equality, and give a surprising answer to the question,
"What is Moderation?" To them, the veil and other forms of covering up
the body are symbols of the virtue of modesty, which in turn is an
outer sign of a moderate way of life. Whenever we dress, we balance
one extreme, making an exhibition of ourselves, and the other extreme,
hiding away in complete invisibility. As they point out, you can be
very unchaste and immodest even under a chador or burkah, and you can
be chaste and modest in a bikini. Every culture tries to find a
balance between dress and undress in order to moderate these
polarities. I have to admit, I never thought of moderation as modesty
in this way, and I find myself feeling differently as I choose what
clothing to wear in the morning.

But Phillips caries the idea of moderation further than its
implications for relations between the sexes. He looks at its
consequences in the economic realm. He asks a very thought provoking
series of questions about the insanely immoderate plutocracy known as
America,

"What if the way we measured the nation's overall prosperity were
based in part on how many additional low- and moderate-income people
were able to fulfill the American dream of owning their own home, and
had good health care? In the pharmaceutical industry, what if growth,
in part, were based on how cheaply they were able to distribute their
products to the most people, and turn a modest profit? In the food
industry, what if growth were measured partly on how their products
contributed to the nutritional health of its consumers? What if
overall economic growth were measured in part by whether there is an
increase in the number of people who earn at least a middle-class,
living wage? Is this far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky nonsense? Corporate
muck-a-mucks profess to be soul-searching, after an orgy of
irresponsibility. Perhaps they now will be inspired to subscribe to a
moderate ethic based on ideals that were widely shared by Franklin and
others in this country's early years. (Six Questions, 93)

Behind these questions is a greater one, one the Greeks asked and that
we must ask too, "What is the measure of man?" As soon as the spirit
of moderation and equity departs no economy can be economical, no free
enterprise either free or enterprising. We have to measure all this as
we measure ourselves. Quite rightly in this context, Phillips cites
the following from the Spirit of the Laws, and I will end this review
with this.

"True is it that when a democracy is founded on commerce, private
people may acquire vast riches without a corruption of morals. This is
because the spirit of commerce is naturally attended with that of
frugality, economy, moderation, labour, prudence, tranquillity, order,
and rule. So long as this spirit subsists, the riches it produces have
no bad effect. The mischief is, when excessive wealth destroys the
spirit of commerce, then it is that the inconveniences of inequality
begin to be felt." (Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book 5, part VI)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com