Latest / The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks / Was Socrates in a Toxic Relationship with his Wife?

Transcript

Was Socrates in a Toxic Relationship with his Wife? · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Socrates' wife Xanthope.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm pronouncing her name right.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when she's described, she's framed as almost just like this very hot-tempered crude, is that what you'd call it?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of Socrates is and Socrates is kind of a bit distant from her and kind of more focused on philosophy.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was thinking about the relationship, I was thinking that it sounds almost like a abusive relationship.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds almost like there's like the way she's acting, it sounds like she is verbally and physically abusing Socrates and he may have some kind of personality disorder, right?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's she's not quite stable just from the description.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think, yeah, I can see I can see that, right?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um but I think there's alternative ways of interpreting it, right?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's it's possible, right?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: With with something like that, I guess you know, writing biography and writing and telling a story, ancient history.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's multiple possible interpretations.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's one that's maybe more sort of favorable to her or to Socrates, and then there's ones that you know are are maybe a little bit more cynical or maybe like more concerned about like what we're reading.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then we also need to make cut some uh slack or make some allowances for cultural differences, right?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So in the ancient Mediterranean world, I think it's fair to say that people expressed emotion differently, and you know, we people it it typically expressed emotion in a much more physical form.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so some of the behavior in general seems a little bit shocking to us.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we will often hear um even about adult Mediterranean men tearing their hair out, beating their chests, beating their face with their fists, um in grief over something or or rage.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, we don't in modern day America, Britain or Canada kind of express our emotions in that way, but people in other cultures do, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's more of kind of physical expressiveness.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not with that in mind.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're told things like she tore the shirt off his back, she threw a bucket of water over him, she trampled a cake that he'd been given as a gift, um, which like sounds kind of extreme from our point of view.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it would actually have seemed as extreme in classical Athenian culture.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I could be wrong about that, but the impression I get is that that kind of really expressive physical emotional behaviour was not as unusual uh in in those times as it would be today.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: So can we view it as a personality disorder or some kind of mental health problem?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to make a judgment about that, in my view.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: When we're dealing with diff cultural differences in emotion, like if that's within the normal bounds of emotional expression, it might seem really weird to us or kind of extreme to us.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I suppose the question would be if someone's emotional reactions are much more extreme than other members of their culture, then we're more likely to think in terms of a mental health diagnosis.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: But what if that's within the normal bounds of what how how people in general express their emotion in that culture?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then I think it's harder to label it as a mental health problem.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's tricky, it's a is a notoriously difficult question, um, cross-cultural psychopathology, basically, and especially when we're talking about different eras in history.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I so I keep an open mind about it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can kind of see it either way.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Socrates' wife was crazy.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like she maybe she was like, you know, maybe or maybe she had mental health problems.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, maybe she was just maybe she was a really horrible person.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, maybe it can't I can imagine also it just coming across differently in that culture.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: It might be that people looking at her um just thought this is how this is how a lot of people react, like any in classical Athens in these situations.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it would seem weird to to us.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in terms of his relationship with us, we don't have a lot of evidence, but we by the way, she was we she's believed to have been about 30 years younger than him.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she's sounds like she was quite a lot younger, which actually wouldn't have been that also wouldn't have been that unusual in ancient Greece and and also like in in Roman society as well.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today we might think that's quite a big age gap, but no, it wouldn't seem so out of place then.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Especially also, by the way, um after the many adult men had been killed in the Peloponnesian War, so there would there wouldn't be as many there would be a lot of unmarried women and and uh uh not as many men around.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also a story that Socrates had two wives, and again it's some scholars believe that could that's plausible and it could be a consequence of the Peloponnesian War, like that maybe it became the norm for men to take a second wife, so that somebody you know would would have to in their culture take responsibility, perhaps for you know for women that had been widowed or that the husbands weren't available for, or um so there's there's some cultural differences and complexities there.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Socrates in one of Xenophon's dialogues, Socrates says that he emphasizes that Xanthope is uh a good wife and a good mother, and that he really values her, despite the fact that she has this hot temper.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's hard because we don't know her, right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: But he c it in at least in that little snippet he comes across as seeming quite confident that she's somebody that he values as a a wife and a mother to his children, maybe even I hesitate.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was about to say that it's somebody that he he loves, but you know, actually in classical Athens in that time it's not that common for men to express love towards their wives.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, most of the love poetry that we have, brace yourselves, gentle readers, like from from from from classical Athens, most of the lot most but not all of the love poetry is written by uh between men um rather than uh written by by men to to women.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so it was bisexuality of a sort was fairly normal, like sexual mores were very different from our society.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So Socrates quite possibly had a male lover of sorts, like in addition, and maybe two wife's like so it was a bit a bit of a different family setup, so much for the nuclear family and all that, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like it wasn't necessarily as simple as simple as that in in ancient Athens, but uh yeah, she can come across as a bad uh mother, but actually, in that dialogue with uh Lamprocles, there Socrates really seems to be making the case that despite her bad temper, she's still she's actually a fundamentally good and and caring person.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we maybe he's kind of making out that we shouldn't be too quick to judge somebody by just the the superficial behaviour.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So somebody might have quite a sharp tongue, but still you can imagine somebody who's who could be you know could raise a voice, you know, and be quite sharp.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: But but when you view the behavior in general, they still come across as a very loving and caring person, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: People are complex.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think that's the picture that I would I feel so we have such little information to go on, it's a little bit tricky, but that's one way of interpreting what he says about her.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was interesting because doesn't he kind of make the claim that he uses her to almost practice his tolerance and he chose a wife that was particularly difficult to kind of rein in?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: He compares it to training horses.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and but the the funny thing he does, I don't think it mentions this in the dialogue, but that's what her name means.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um Xanthippe means a yellow horse, and he says, uh, someone who's learning to train horses, again, a bit like this thing about choosing a sparring partner, which is a strange analogy for a wife, but like he he says someone who's learning to train horses would would pick like not easily domesticated horses, but ones that are you know that are harder so that they can train and improve their skills.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's if you imagine there's different you know, you could grade horses on how difficult uh they are to train, and if you want to really improve your skills as a horse trainer, then you you start pro working with progressively more difficult ones and until you're the go-to guy for dealing with even the most difficult and he says Xanthopy is challenging, but he I guess it's like this thing as well of being able to choose, you know, uh is this something that you're confident that you can deal with, or is it something that you would just feel overwhelmed by?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Socrates seems completely I mean Socrates we probably is an exceptionally resilient individual, so he's complete he seems completely unfazed.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, funnily enough, you could say if we say this is abuse, like tearing his shirt and throwing water over him, she doesn't actually do him any physical harm, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So and I sometimes he seems to joke about that, like he said there's a joke where she threw water over him, and he said, I I I told you that Xanthope's thunder would be followed by uh by rain, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So he's he's like it's nothing to him, like you know, it's not this is a guy that survived the plague and three major battles in the Peloponnesian War, also we we should remember.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, he he's seen people being slaughtered around him.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: His wife throwing a bucket of water over his head is you know is is like super trivial, yeah.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like in in Socrates' terms.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I'm fascinated by that relationship because there's so many questions and you it's open to interpretation.