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Socrates' "Mirror For The Mind" Will Transform Your Thinking · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think really fundamentally one of the things that we get from Socrates is the idea that we can learn by observing other people's thinking.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's difficult for us to critique our own thinking because we have these biases and blind spots.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if we critique other people and we can do it in such a way that we see them as kind of analogous to us, we in a sense have a kind of empathy for people that we're debating with or engaging in philosophical dialogue with.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: There were many of them, but the most famous is Gonothai Sauton, which means know thyself and has a profound effect on Greek philosophy.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Socrates seems to keep coming back to it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: He compares it to an eye that can see itself, which is a really powerful and kind of evocative image, right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Imagine the god the god Apollo is commanding your mind to know itself, says, Know thyself.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine he commanded your eye to see itself.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: He says this to Alcibiades.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now Sobides says, I guess you'd need like a mirror or something.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Socrates says, So what would be the mirror for the mind?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what he's he implying or insinuating is that another person with whom you're engaging in a collaborative philosophical discussion would be like a mirror for your mind, and that that would be like the eye being able to can see itself.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you learn something about yourself by engaging very sincerely and very deeply in a debate with other people about what Socrates likes to describe as.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think some of the most profound things that Socrates says are just like him often saying quite simple things.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the very fact that he keeps he tends to refer to some of the things he's talking about is the the most important things in life, like the highest things he says.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's what he's implying is that one of the distinctive things about the dialogues that he's engaging in is that he keeps bringing the subject back to the most fundamental questions, such as what is wisdom?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what is good for us, what is bad for us, you know, what is the goal of human life, what does human fulfillment consist in, what is the nature of justice?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these absolutely like fundamental questions about how we should live our lives and the things upon which we should place most value.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So when we ask those really deep questions in a really sincere dialogue with other people, we we learn more about ourselves.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I think to me, my interpretation of what's going on in uh in the course of Socrates' life is that he says in the Apology that initially the when the oracle said no man is wiser than Socrates, and he thought, I need to go and check this out, I find it hard to believe.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna see if I can find someone that's wiser than me.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: What he f says that he initially did was to seek out people that were known for wisdom, and when he questioned them, he found mainly that makes us think of the Sophists, because um like the the Greek word sophistes means an expert or someone who claims to be wise.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: The sophists were basically people who literally went around claiming to be wise or and claiming to be enlightened, and their followers claimed that they were.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Socrates went, okay, I guess I should speak to these guys, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Protagoras, the the first famous sophist, was literally referred to as the wisest man alive, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So Socrates went to him and was like, Okay, like can you explain what virtue is and how it can be taught and stuff like that, right?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when he questioned him very thoroughly, he found that Protagoras struggled to answer some basic questions, um, and he contradicted himself and he tied himself in knots.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So Socrates thought maybe these guys aren't really that wise then, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm only wiser than them because I at least realize that I'm ignorant of the answers to these questions, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something else going on here, which is Protagoras and some of these other guys became annoyed with Socrates and kind of evasive.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So Plato often portrays them wanting to change the subject and kind of trying to, you know, uh misdirect uh Socrates, launching into prepared speeches and kind of getting other people to step in for them in the in the conversation and things like that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So being kind of evasive, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Socrates says that he was surprised to find that sometimes he spoke with people who had no reputation for wisdom and found that they exhibited more wisdom than people who were famous wise men, right?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So just like humble tradesmen and things like that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Socrates spoke to prostitutes and slaves and you know, all sorts of people.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I think part of it, what that uh he's implying, and maybe this is even stated explicitly in one of Plato's dialogues, that people who claim to be wise are unsuited to philosophical discussion because they have a too much of a reputation to defend.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that prevents them from ever admitting that they're wrong.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you could point out the contradictions in their thinking and the gaps in their reasoning.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're just going to get defensive when you do that and change the subject, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or try and gloss over it.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because they've they've basically poisoned the dialogue by investing their reputation in maintaining the appearance of wisdom, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: The appearance of wisdom is more important to them than real wisdom, and that's going to make them highly evasive, like it's going to make them resist ever having their errors being pointed out to them.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So Socrates increasingly turned to a group of individuals that nobody considered to be wise.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and those were the youth of Athens, like who seemed much more open to you know being interrogated by Socrates and having their errors.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I think that it's sometimes said he looks like over time he he some spends somewhat more time talking to younger people, you know, and I think it's because he initially he went, right, I'm gonna go straight to the people that are called wise, the wisest men alive.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then he thought these guys are like useless to talk to because they're so defensive, because they have to protect their reputation.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas slaves, prostitutes, and young people have got nothing to lose.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so if I ask them how they define justice, and then I kind of point out that that you know there's maybe a a flaw in their definition or there's a contradiction, they're more they're more willing to accept that and to have another go and revise you know what they're saying and to keep the conversation going.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they they they don't have a reputation to protect.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they're they provide a better mirror like for my soul than you know, the someone who claims to be wise is like a clouded mirror, they're not, it's not much good, you know.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone who has more intellectual humility is gonna provide a better mirror.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I can actually see that a lot in the uh when I train jujitsu.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when people get a black belt, it's like they they just they're no longer open to learning from the lower belts, and it's like they've got to always maintain this authority when you talk to them.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas someone who's a white belt, they just like, I don't know anything.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we both don't know anything.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I really respect the black belts that still act like they don't know much, you know, and they've got lots to learn.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Socrates avoided this.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes the way I explain it is that he always avoided setting himself up as a teacher.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like he didn't charge fees, uh, whereas the sophists charged huge fees, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they're financially invested in maintaining a reputation.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't make any money from teaching, he never claimed to be a teacher, he avoided saying that he was a teacher, avoided he denied being wise.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And ironically, what he does is cast himself more in the role not of a teacher, but of a student, but of an exceptional student.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I guess you could say he's kind of got a beginner's mind or whatever would be another way of maybe putting it, but he casts himself much more in the role of a kind of eternal student, and he would be a bit like you know, at the same time, it's almost humorous, like how annoying Socrates can be, but at the same time, kind of you know, that that's part of his character, and he this is what makes him inspiring.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like you went to a lecture by a famous public intellectual, and it's really expensive, and there's like hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people that went to see them, and there's one guy in the audience that keeps is asking them really difficult, really penetrating questions, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And some people might start to turn around and think some people in the audience might think this guy's kind of annoying, just let it let him go on.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're all paid to come in here this dude.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And but other people, the audience might be divided.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: There might be other people in the audience that think this guy's questions are more interesting than this dude's answers, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's almost like Socrates is like this guy at the back that everyone's starting to turn around and watch and think this dude's questions are more are better and more interesting than the expert at the front giving the answers.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there would be people who hated him for that.