The Socratic view is a great alternative to the Christian vision:
(Excerpts from a paper I wrote many many years ago):
How far does the Truth admit of being learned? With this question let us begin. It is a Socratic question, a question with respect to virtue, since virtue was determined as insight (Meno 87d; 88d). Insofar as the Truth is conceived as something to be learned, its non-being is evidently presupposed, so that in proposing to learn it one makes it the object of an inquiry. Here we are confronted with the difficulty to which Socrates calls attention in the Meno (80e) :
"Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for."
Socrates thinks the difficulty through in the doctrine of Recollection, by which all learning and inquiry is interpreted as a kind of remembering; one who is ignorant needs only a reminder to help him come to himself in the consciousness of what he knows. Thus the Truth is not introduced into the individual from without (Christianity), but was always within him. Every human being is in possession of the Truth.
In the light of this idea it becomes clear with what marvelous consistency Socrates remained true to himself, through his way of life giving artistic expression to what he understood. He entered into the role of midwife and sustained it throughout because he perceived that this relation is the
highest that one human being can sustain to another. Socrates was a midwife subjected to examination by the God ( Plato’s Apology 33c).
From the standpoint of Socrates every point of departure in time is an occasion, a vanishing moment. The teacher, the college professor, the tutor are no more than this; and if they offer themselves and their instruction on any other basis, they do not give but take away, and are not even the other’s friend, much less his teacher. Herein lies the profundity of the Socratic thought, and the noble humanity he so thoroughly expressed, which refused to enter into a false and vain fellowship with clever intellects, but felt an equal kinship with a slave boy (Meno 82b).
In the Socratic view each individual is his own center, and the entire world centers around him, because his self-knowledge is a knowledge of Truth. It was thus Socrates understood himself, and thus he thought that everyone must understand himself, in the light of this understanding interpreting his relationship to each individual, with equal humility and with equal pride. He had the courage and self-possession to be sufficient unto himself, but also in his relations to his fellowmen to be merely an occasion, even when dealing with the meanest amongst them, such as
Anythus (Meno90c). How rare is such magnanimity! How rare in a time like ours, when almost every second person is an authority! For while no human being was ever truly an authority for another, or ever helped anyone by posing as such, or was ever able to take his client with him in
truth, there is another sort of success that may by such methods be won; for it has never yet been known to fail that one fool, when he goes astray, takes several others with him.
From the Socratic point of view, I owe nothing to the Teacher(in Christian terms, that means Jesus); for the Truth in which I rest was within me, and came to light through myself, and not even Socrates could have given it to me. If I imagine myself meeting Socrates or anyone of my teachers in another life, then none of them could be more to me than an occasion, which Socrates fearlessly expressed by saying that even in the lower world he proposed to merely ask questions; for the underlying principle of all questioning is that the one who is asked must have the Truth in himself, and be able to acquire it by himself. All authority figures vanish and become occasions to deepen my search for Truth as soon as I discover that I have known the Truth from eternity without being aware of it. |
