Part I

Setting Goals with Socrates

Socrates, the father of Western moral philosophy, spent his days in the Athenian marketplace, his nights at drinking parties, and his time in-between at the city’s gyms. What these venues have in common is the opportunity to talk with people. Part 1 explores Plato’s Socratic dialogues set in athletic contexts. Charmides (chapter 2) and Lysis (chapter 3) are set in actual gyms. Laches (chapter 1) opens as characters have just watched a demonstration of fighting in armor. Book 1 of Republic (chapter 4) opens as characters discuss an upcoming torch race on horseback. Beyond mere entertainment, athletic competitions, as well as gym training, provided vehicles for reflecting on key aspects of life. Athens’s gyms were an ancient forerunner of modern schools. When Plato sets dialogues in them, his intent seems to be to raise questions about the nature of education. Socrates, who was Plato’s teacher, never wrote down his own ideas, opting instead for face-to-face conversations.¹ Plato, however, uses Socrates as a character in his own dialogues. The particular works we will look at are considered “Socratic” insofar as scholars think that they present the philosophical project, though not the actual words, of Socrates the historical individual. That project mostly involved engaging others in attempts to define key virtues: bravery (Laches), discipline (Charmides), friendship (Lysis), and justice (Republic 1). Each attempt ends in perplexity (aporia). The Greek term, aporia, literally means “no way forward.” Plato’s Socratic dialogues end as characters realize that important aspects of their lives are in fact more complicated than they had thought. Not all of Socrates’s contemporaries appreciated this process. Apology presents the speech Socrates gave in reply to charges that he had corrupted the youth of Athens. While set in a courtroom rather than a gym, Apology ties the set of dialogues together by reflecting on the value of Socrates’s conversations in athletic spaces and how they might embody a fifth virtue, wisdom (chapter 5).

In the broader arc of Greek thought, Socrates raised questions that later figures attempted to answer. As we proceed, these five central virtues—bravery, discipline, friendship, justice, and wisdom—provide a structure for our reading of Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of happiness. Yet, as the game show Jeopardy illustrates, answers are useless if we are not clear what the questions are. Today, K–12 schools spend so much time drilling the right answers into students’ heads, that there is often little chance for them to formulate questions for themselves. A bit of time with Socrates, exploring questions and lingering in perplexity, can serve as a useful antidote to our overgrown culture of standardized tests.