Socrates: Dialogue, Maieutica, Daimon — inner voice and civil disobedience
Lecture by Italian student professor of philosophy Davide Tutino, translated by Lena Bloch
Davide Tutino, a student professor of philosophy, founder of the Freedom Of Choice Radical Non-Violent Resistance movement in Italy,
recorded a video of his lecture on Socrates on December 3, 2021 — video in Italian is here.
Here is the lecture, very beautiful, powerful and deep statement.
THE QUESTION WE LEAVE THIS WORLD WITH
“Today we will talk about what is not seen, what is a hidden reality and what is the foundation of reality, and we will continue the discourse about it, starting from Socrates using some key concepts. In fact, our previous research had already been all about that, about what is the foundation of reality. And when we went to look for the basis of every experience, of every knowledge, of every form of reality, we always found that this search for a basic made us encounter something that was not tangible, something that forced us to abandon our usual way of seeing. It forced us into a change of our view. For example: Water in Thales: “Everything is made of Water”, but we do not experience that everything is made of water. Or — the four elements proposed by Empedocles — but we do not experience that things are made out of the combinations of these four elements. Or the atoms of Democritus, etc. In short, we discovered that every time we went to question reality, the foundation of knowing — we found the unknown, we had to meet the unknown. In short, the unknown became and is becoming the foundation of knowing. And today, inside the key words that we are going to touch upon, we are going to meet this “stranger”. So these key words will not be words that open the way to a total understanding, so that in the end we are done and have solved all our problems. They are words that open new questions — as we have already shown, when we called one of our moments of encounter “The question with which we come into the world.”
Human beings are a question about the world.
Let’s see. Let us start, first of all, from what Socrates proposes to us. Starting from the experience of the destruction of the concept of truth, carried out by the Sophists, Socrates searches for “what is”, the definition and therefore the foundation — of experience, of knowledge, of reality, he searches in dialogue. Not in something about which we have the ultimate answer, but in the Dia-Logos, that is, in a discourse that crosses the One and the Other, that is, the answer is not in me, I am not the knower who knows the answer. The answer is a new question that arises in the dialogue between several human beings, who, questioning together, realize that they do not know. Therefore, facing questions such as “what is justice” and facing the fact that the answers such as “Oh, this is right, or this is right, or this is right” are proposed time after time — one realizes that the continuous refutation of these answers carried out by Socrates — refutation because it is not enough to know that one thing is right or that another thing is right, it is necessary to know the essense, the foundation, that is “what is justice”. And in the face of this, the dialogue with Socrates tends to end in silence that opens a human being to the understanding of his own ignorance, of his own “not knowing” — or rather, opens a human being to that silence of knowing not knowing.
So first keyword: Dialogue.
There is no knower, sophist meant “ I know, I am the Knower, I am the Teacher and I teach you. So I give you a package of knowledge”.With knowing “not knowing” the understanding cannot be “given” to you. That’s why Socrates was helping the other person to get there as a matter of personal experience. It’s not like he met him and said,” Look, we don’t know anything, that’s it, the lesson is over, let’s go home.” Through the questioning, the refutation of all the arguments aimed at defining the “what it is” of everything that was the topic of their talk, through the refutation of all the arguments, the Other came into contact with his own non-knowledge. And Socrates too — Socrates asks because he in turn does not know. And here is the same difference that exists between knowing that strawberry is a fruit and knowing the taste of strawberries. No one can ever make you know the taste of strawberries. No one will ever be able to make you know the feel of the wind blowing. No one can ever really communicate to you the understanding of what it means to “know that you don’t know.” In this sense it becomes a live knowledge that cannot be made into a package to put in a book so it can be given to the student. There is no wisdom in the possibility of receiving a package of knowledge, but wisdom in the possibility of being transformed together by the question. So what is knowledge for Socrates at this point? Knowledge for Socrates at this point becomes an inner transformation in dialogue that involves all the dialoguers, becomes a transformation of all who participate. Without any of the participants having for themselves a package of answers. But then where does it come from? It doesn’t come from me and it doesn’t come from you… Socrates here brings a new concept of midwifery, or maieutica. What is maieutica, what is midwifery? He says, “I am a midwife, that is, my art is maieutica. That is, to assist in giving birth.”
And while I am assisting in giving birth, the truth does not come from me, I help the other person, who converses with me, to give birth to the truth, to bring it into the world. This truth that comes into the world through continuous questions is not a definitive conclusion. It is not truth as an object obtained. It is a living thing, just as a child would be a living thing, this truth is a living thing in the sense that it is a transformation of those who have participated, a transformation that takes place precisely in mere knowledge, as knowledge of the illusory nature of what one thought one knew before. Therefore, maieutica (first keyword — Dialogue, second keyword — Maieutica) is the technique with which Socrates helps the other to bring the truth into the world. Truth as a living thing, as a transforming event, as an awareness of not-knowing.
And so, we are talking about things we do not know, things we do not see.
We said we will talk about things we do not see, and so we are talking about “what is” — and we discover that at the end we seem to have nothing in our hands. Why do we have nothing in our hands? Because there is nothing tangible, yet tangible is our inner experience, which has transformed us. So the constant that we seek is a constant that is not to be sought in the outside world as “truth”, it is something that passes through us, something invisible, and this is why Socrates invites us to take care not of our bodies, not of our possessions, not of what “passes”. Rather, to take care of one’s own soul. That is, he brings in the Psyche. He brings this great innovation in philosophy -there was already an innovation, the whole Orphic-Pythagorean current, which bases human identity on something that is only accidentally in the body, but then reincarnates after death — but in Socrates, this becomes a leading element of philosophical thought, also because — “what is the soul”? The “soul” is something we are looking for outside, that is, the constant what does not change. When I ask myself who I am and I discover that I don’t know, and if this question still persists, it is clear that this question is being asked by someone inside me. And therefore, for Socrates, our care must be taken of That, that inside us is asking the question about the world. So care must be taken of our soul. When he was condemned to death he could have saved himself by obeying the city, by stopping philosophizing. But he says: “A life if not worth living without philosophizing, because philosophizing is exactly taking care of the soul. of what remains beyond all changes, that is the constant”. Taking care of what we are. So he cannot accept stopping taking care of what he loves and thus save his “life”. Rather, he accepts dying. And here another invisible element comes into play. For precisely in speaking of this inner dimension of the soul, Socrates says that he receives suggestions. Inside himself, from whom does he receive them? From what he calls Daimon. Here is the other key word, who is this Daimon? So, Daimon in Greek means divinity — but here is a big problem, and now we begin to understand, thanks to this Daimon, why Socrates was put to death. It is true, he was very annoying, yes. True, he questioned the powerful and exposed their ignorance, yes. But he went even further, that is: he was accused of not recognizing the “gods of the city”, but what problem was there in not recognizing the gods of the city when there were so many, it was a polytheistic society, so what is the disorder, brought by Socrates? It was that the inner God he hears cannot be heard by others. What does this mean? It means that there is an inner voice in each of us, which he called Daimon, and this inner voice that cannot be heard by others, our conscience, this inner voice is the one we must obey. That is, we are not there to obey the City first and foremost. We submit to the City, we submit to the laws of the City, but that doesn’t mean obey. Here we come to the same distinction brought later by Jesus: “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” That is, I can submit, to the City, I submit, I get killed, I accept the death sentence, but why do I accept it? So that I don’t betray my inner voice, so that I don’t betray my soul, so that I don’t betray my Psyche, so that I don’t betray what my Daimon has proposed to me. Therefore, submission to the laws, because I cannot do without them, I give Caesar what is Caesar’s, as Jesus Christ said four centuries later, but I must give to divinity what is of divinity. Submission to the laws — but obedience to one’s conscience, to one’s inner voice. Irreducible to everything others say, OUR inner voice cannot be heard by others. This is the deepest reason, in my opinion, for the killing of Socrates. He states that there is an inner voice that is more important than what all the voices around us say, it is more important than what the laws tell us, and it is this inner voice that we must obey. Even if this inner voice cannot be seen.” — Davide Tutino
