Philosophy 101 by Socrates: An Introduction to Philosophy via Plato's Apology

By Peter Kreeft

Philosophy means “the love of wisdom.” Kreeft uses the dialogues of Socrates to help the reader grow in that love. He says that no master of the art of philosophizing has ever been more simple, clear, and accessible to beginners as has Socrates. He focuses on Plato’s dialogues, the Apology of Socrates, as a lively example to imitate, and a model partner for the reader for dialogue. Kreeft calls it “the Magna Carta of philosophy,” a timeless classic that is “a portable classroom.”

“If only every introductory course were as engaging as Philosophy 101 by Peter Kreeft! Kreeft offers a marvelous way of using Plato’s Apology both to introduce the whole scope of philosopher and to evoke a personal response. Even the diffident freshman, prone to keeping a new subject like philosopher as arm’s length, will feel the enchantment of love-for-wisdom that philosophy is supposed to be.” – Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., chair, Department of Philosophy, Fordham University

“A terrific introduction to philosophy through this not uncontroversial commentary on Plato’s Apology. Not everyone will agree that Socrates provided the best possible defense for himself nor that he intended to. But Kreeft’s is an eminently defensible reading of the Apology and will awaken many a student to the delights of Plato and Philosophy. The comparisons of Socrates with Christ are fascinating. This book will go a long way to consoling those who are not privileged to have Socrates or Kreeft as teachers in the flesh.” – Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press
• Release date: May 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781587318290

Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft (PhD, Fordham University) is professor of philosophy at Boston College where he has taught since 1965. A popular lecturer, he has also taught at many other colleges, seminaries and educational institutions in the eastern United States. Kreeft has written more than fifty books, including The Best Things in Life, The Journey, How to Win the Culture War, and Handbook of Christian Apologetics (with Ronald Tacelli).

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Acknowledgments

An Introduction to Socrates

There are three great introductions to philosophy that were written by three great ancient philosophers: the Apology of Socrates, by Plato, the Protreptikos, by Aristotle, and the Hortensius, by Cicero. Only the Apology has survived.

I should call them matchmakers rather than introductions, because the purpose of all three of these little ancient classics is to have the beginners actually begin, not just understand philosophy but do it. St. Augustine says, in his Confessions, that Cicero’s Hortensius did exactly that for him and changed his whole life.

This is this book’s purpose too.

I have taught all levels of philosophy to all kinds of students for forty years, and I have never found a more effective way to accomplish that purpose (the intellectual seduction by which the student becomes a lover of wisdom, that is, a philosopher) than to begin with Socrates, especially the Apology. Thus this book: a portable classroom.

Reading Socrates is not like looking at a picture of a dead man; it is more like conversing with his ghost. For if you read any great book actively, especially if the book is in dialogue form, as Plato’s are, you find it talking to you: asking you questions and demanding answers and answering your questions if you actually ask them. It draws you in, into its activity of questioning. Like a ghost, it is almost alive.

When we read Plato’s Socratic dialogues, it is almost like having the Father of Philosophy himself present as your teacher. It is the equivalent in philosophy to practicing the presence of Christ in Christianity or being a Buddha in Buddhism. The presence is very different in the three cases, but whatever it is, it is more than reading a book, though reading a book can be its catalyst. Remember, these three men, surely the three most influential teachers in history, together wrote—how many pages? Zero.

The dialogues of Socrates are the best introduction to philosophy because we learn any art best by apprenticeship to a great master, and no master of the art of philosophizing has ever been more simple, clear, and accessible to beginners than Socrates.

An Introduction to Philosophy

A sage is a lover of wisdom. A saint is a lover of God and man.¹ Being a sage is the second best thing we could possibly be, next to being a saint. Philosophy means the love of wisdom or friendship (philia) with wisdom (sophia). That is the essence of philosophy, that is its correct definition, that is what its inventor designed it to be.

For Socrates to profess to be a philosopher was not to be a university professor. It was not to be a professional at all but an amateur. Amateur means lover. A philosopher loves wisdom; a professional loves money. Most philosophy professors today are professional employees of universities that hire them to sell their wisdom for money. Socrates would call them intellectual prostitutes. I am one of them. Boston College is my pimp.

But I am also a lover of wisdom, a philosopher; and philosophy is not intellectual prostitution but true love because it loves truth. It loves a certain kind of truth called wisdom.

Wisdom is more than knowledge. Knowing all the facts in a library does not make you wise. Wisdom is a knowledge not just of facts but of values, of what is humanly important; and it is a knowledge that is lived, that is learned by experience and lived out in experience.

Knowledge, like religion, is common. Wisdom, like saintliness, is rare.

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¹ Man means mankind, not males. It is traditional inclusive language. Humanity does not go with God (God and humanity) because God and man are concrete nouns, like dog and cat, while divinity and humanity are abstract nouns, like canininity and felinity or dogginess and cattiness. Whatever the political or psychological uses or misuses of these words, that is what they mean. We do not undo old injustices against women by doing new injustices against language.

An Introduction to This Book

This book is designed both for college classrooms and for do-it-yourself readers. It is designed both for introducing philosophy in general and for introducing Socrates in particular. And it is designed both for beginners in philosophy and for those who want to specialize in ancient Greek philosophy, especially Socrates.

It is not a book of technical textual or historical scholarship about Socrates and the origin of philosophy, but an act of philosophizing. It plays the same game Plato was playing in the Apology, but on a little league field: same game, lower level. It does not treat the Apology as a quaint, arcane, extinct bit of primitive data for some superior modern science to explain (or to explain away), but as a living example to imitate, a model partner with which to dialogue. In short, it tries to do the same thing Socrates did (philosophizing) rather than explain it or do something else, however valuable, such as scholarship about it.

There are many other aspects of the Apology—historical, psychological, political, textual—and many other good approaches to it. But this book uses it just to introduce philosophy.

I

The Apology of Socrates: Philosophy Defended

(Forty Things Philosophy Is)

1. ignorant (17a)

2. selfish (17a)

3. ironic (17a)

4. plain (17c)

5. misunderstood (18b)

6. a failure (8b–d)

7. poor (19e)

8. unscientific (19c)

9. unteachable (19e)

10. foolish (20e–23a)

11. abnormal (19c)

12. divine trickery (19e–20e)

13. egalitarian (22a)

14. a divine calling (22b)

15. laborious (22b)

16. countercultural (22a–e)

17. uncomfortable (24c)

18. virtuous (25c–26b)

19. dangerous (27e)

20. simplistic (28a)

21. polemical (28de)

22. therapeutic (29a)

23. conformist (29d)

24. embarrassing (29d–30a)

25. invulnerable (30c)

26. annoying (30e–31a)

27. pneumatic (31cd)

28. apolitical (31a)

29. docile (teachable) (33b)

30. messianic (33e)

31. pious (35d)

32. impractical (36bc)

33. happy (36e)

34. necessary (37de)

35. death-defying (39ab)

36. fallible (40c–41a)

37. immortal (41b)

38. confident (41d)

39. painful (41e)

40. agnostic (41e)

1. Philosophy is ignorant

The first words of the first sentence in Greek are: "I do not know" (ouk oida). This is the hidden key to the central meaning of the dialogue.¹ Plato usually gives the reader such a clue, to help him, and hides it, to test him. For example, the first words of the Republic, I went down to the Piraeus, signals Plato’s descent into the cave of politics. The first words of the Meno, Can you tell me, Socrates, signals the point of the dialogue as the Socratic method of teaching by questioning, not by telling. The first words of the Phaedo, Were you there with Socrates? ask the reader to identify with Socrates’ life and death (Socrates dies in the Phaedo), somewhat as a Christian does with Christ’s (Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there?). The first words of the Euthyphro, This, Socrates, is something new? signals the fact that Socrates represents a fundamentally new kind of religion and piety that the old one (represented by Euthyphro) cannot comprehend.

The most unforgettable section of the whole Apology, for nearly all readers and for the subsequent history of philosophy, is the account of the Delphic oracle’s pronouncement, relayed by Socrates’ friend Chairophon, that no one in the world was wiser than Socrates, and Socrates’ response: devoting his life to unraveling this riddle by trying to find someone wiser than himself, developing the Socratic method of cross-examination in order to do this, and concluding, now at his life’s end, that he has solved the oracle’s riddle. His solution: Though he has no wisdom at all (only God has wisdom, he says; man pursues it), this is wisdom—to know that he does not know—and the world must learn it if it wants to be wise. This is Lesson One, the first and most indispensable lesson. If we forget it, all subsequent lessons are only apparently learned.

Pascal said there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners, and sinners, who think they are saints. He learned this wisdom, of course, from Jesus, who taught Socrates’ Lesson One in religion. For Socrates would also say that there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools, and fools, who think they are wise. In philosophy as in religion, pride is the deadliest sin.

So Socrates begins his defense, of himself as a philosopher and of philosophy itself, with his chief claim to fame, Lesson One—like the Zen master whose first lesson to the student eager to learn his wisdom is to pour tea into the student’s cup until it overflows, and overflows more. Master! Stop pouring! The cup is full. Like your mind. How can I fill your cup if it is not empty?

2. Philosophy is selfish

"I almost forgot who I was." Philosophy is not morally selfish but mentally selfish. Know thyself (gnothi seauton) is almost philosophy’s definition. You can be knowledgeable without knowing yourself, but you cannot be wise without knowing yourself. For if you do not know yourself, if you are a stranger to yourself. If you have never wondered about the knower, only about the known, then no matter how much knowledge you have, you do not know who has