Would Socrates Be Anti-Woke? A Stoic Critique of Identity Politics

“For the Stoic, however, personal identity is not a fragmented life of intersecting cultural identities but rather a holistic and unified embodiment of rationality endowed by nature.”

At the age of 70, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates had achieved sufficient notoriety in his native city of Athens to warrant a charge that he had corrupted the youth. In attempting to engage people with questions about the nature of wisdom, Socrates had alienated many of the leading members of the Athenian community. In Aristophanes’s The Clouds, for example, he was panned as a foolish sophist, depicted as a man “treading on air and uttering a vast deal of other nonsense.” Fed up with this poor, old, and homely man wooing the sons of Athens with frivolous sophistry, Meletus of Athens brought Socrates before a court of his fellow citizens to face a charge of impiety. Conviction brought with it a penalty of death.

The odds stacked against him, Socrates seemingly had much to fear. He had not murdered, cheated, or slandered anyone. But he cut a sorry figure against the institutional force of the court. He was accused of “investigating the things beneath the earth and in the heavens” and “making the weaker argument stronger,” but what really stirred up his accusers is that he went about teaching “these same things to others.” The ruling class of Athens did not appreciate that so many of its sons were fond of Socrates. They viewed his antics as a threat and were prepared to make an example of this otherwise marginal figure who had no wealth, no youth, no beauty, and seemingly no other privilege with which to sway some person of influence to intervene on his behalf.

Perhaps most gallingly, however, Socrates faced the court with the aplomb of a man who felt no fear and who was convinced of his innocence. With consummate skill and simplicity, he recounted a life of philosophical inquiry that began when the oracle of Delphi told a boyhood friend that no one was wiser than Socrates. Puzzled, Socrates set about in search of men deemed wise. When he found them, he discovered upon examination that they were not, in fact, wise. In each case, Socrates did not conclude that he was wiser than the man he examined. He realized, however, that he was aware that he was not wise, whereas his interlocutor did not. The meaning of the oracle’s proclamation eventually became clear to him: Socrates was aware that he was not wise, in contrast to those who were not wise because they did not recognize that they were not wise.