Ask A Genius 835: Plato and Socrates
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/05/09
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Alright, so you just asked me what I think Socrates or Voltaire would think if they suddenly found themselves in a very religious era, for example, in the year 800 AD in Europe, when the Catholic Church ran civilization to a certain extent. The cultural life, the passing on of non everyday knowledge to the extent that was still going on, it was going on via the church.
Socrates, I think would be annoyed, if he knew the whole history. When did Socrates live or his years?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I think it was about 2500 years ago because I know Plato was 2500 years ago. He died 399 BC.
Rosner: Alright, so he would have been heartened by the rise of the of civilization via the Roman Empire except the Roman Empire was a mess in a lot of ways; it was corrupt and decadent, but they did a lot of stuff and they probably pushed knowledge forward some. If you were in Rome and if you weren’t a slave, life was pretty sweet in the Roman Empire but most people were not there and so life was pretty grubby. So, going from the year zero under the Roman Empire to the year 800 under the Catholic Church probably meant for most people life was roughly equally grubby I guess or maybe not because if you were like a stonemason on a huge Cathedral project, then life was maybe pretty sweet. I assume Socrates would have been cheerleading intellectual advancement and also cynical and disgusted with the lack of progress perhaps.
Voltaire would certainly have been pissed off to find himself 900 years further into the past living in what to him would have been a very unenlightened age. I think an equally interesting question is what they would think if they woke up now and were competently briefed. I think they would be pleasantly astonished by science and its products and appalled at our massive wars in the last century and how we are still teetering on the precipice of fascism once fascism was explained to them and destruction and now perhaps having to contend with disruptive constructed entities in the near future. I think for the most part they’d be kind of delighted and would also feel that maybe their intuitions were vindicated that even in this enlightened era, that we’re still huge assholes.
I’m assuming that all the great thinkers of history were pretty cynical that even if they espoused cheerful points of view they were smart enough to see the flawed packages that people are, that you might get some good shit but there’s a lot of venality.
[Recording End]
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