Socrates, Relativism and Absolute Truth

Must Read: Refutation of Moral Realitivism by Peter Kreeft

Today society is saturated with relativism and hedonism. If one gages by the popular view as depicted in many a movie or heard on the local Shock Jock station or seen in magazines or Internet, whatever floats your boat is the motto to live by. Yes, there are a few countervailing voices, radio pundit, Dr. Laura for one. But all in all its a Tsunami of cultural relativism. It's almost expected in movies that our earthy action hero will bed his independent smart co-star with whom he has virtually nothing in common socially and actually wouldn't be given the time of day ordinarily. Violence, foul language, nudity, casual sexual situations are common place. Commonly, these movies glorify the rogue individual. For example the James Bond characters in the service of the secret agency, invariably fornicates with his willing co-star, kills without conscience and in the end thwarts the evil genius intent on destroying society. This is simply a vicarious wish fulfillment of the a base sort. And it allows ones to fantasize about acting in an unrestrained manner in the service of the "good" guys. More about that character in just a moment.

Nonetheless, the argument for relativism seems compelling. Anthropology, much used by relativists, looks across other societies and other cultures and even back into history and sees that moral behavior varies and seems far from universal. Part of the argument is made that since a Judeo-Christian ethic is just one of numerous moral systems, we can draw the conclusion that other societies have a validity. Cultures vary and so do morals, its argued. Just recently it was pointed out to me that the Aztec culture was valid as American Society; it just had different religious viewpoint. The sacrifice of thousands by riping their hearts out was deemed necessary to placate the gods of their religious system. This fails on two counts of course, one how to defend the cultural values patently monstrous as a society that routinely violates our moral sensibilities. That is where do we draw the line? A society that commits genocide, like Hitler's Germany? And there were many fine minds in Nazi Germany that defended its behavior. They would say the winners write history; thus might makes Right.


Socrates was confronted in Plato's Republic with an another argument against moral absolutes illustrated in what is called the myth of Gyges. This myth will demonstrate that character is a mere facade or veneer to our true selves. Gyges who is a mere shepherd finds a magic ring much like the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He discovers whenever he twists it people wonder what happened to him; he disappears. Eventually he is able to have his way with queen, enlist her aid and kill the king and become ruler of the land. And it is argued that this is what anyone would do given the chance. Socrates would have argued here that the real person harmed here is Gyges, because in his excess he's destroyed his inner soul; the most valuable part of our being. The Republic goes on to demonstrate on a bigger scale an ordered government ruled by the enlightened elite would promote justice not the ravages of a Gyges.



Secondly, relativism can't be defended on its own logical merits. "Societies vary in their values, so values vary" is a relativist conclusion without premise. Since all is relative, how can their conclusions be anything but relative as well.


Back to a portrayal of our hedonistic society. An example of this sickness...words fail me... is the National Book Award that was granted to The March by Doctorow, a book about Sherman's March to the Sea in the Civil War. National Book Awards I have read in the past have been superlative books. Granted contemporary literature is not on my list to read; I read too much else, including nonfiction History and Philosophy and Theology and such. So I most infrequently read fiction, but based on the aforementioned award I looked forward to an inspiring read. Nothing could be farther from the truth; there is nothing heroic or inspiring or insightful about it. It speaks to the pathetic state of current literature if this depicts the best of it. I've read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Dickens and Thomas Hardy even Mark Twain; but this had nothing redeemable. The book had debauched and unprincipled characters that came and went, none thoroughly heroic. It celebrated the bawdy, coarse and the salacious and much of it seemed designed to titillate. One small example features General Kilpatrick whose main interest was bedding a mother and daughter, seemingly of fairly good standing, who seemed quite willing, in the midst of an active Calvary campaign. Highly improbable; any woman of the time except the lowest and most desperate of circumstances wouldn't chance casual affairs especially out in the battle field, for fear of loss of social respect, an illegitimate pregnancy which could led to death during the primitive birthing practices of the time not to mention the social disgrace attached to it. Possibly an unloved or abandoned women meets the General socially outside the theatre of war and commences a tryst but not like this. The General's main preoccupation seems to sexual escape rather than conducting war. It's a novel steeped in moral turpitude. There's nothing uplifting or edifying or insightful about it. Based on the popular acclaim of this novel at Amazon.com there are many who prefer this genre. In comparison Gone With The Wind, by Mitchell is a fine novel about a self-centered young women's struggle to survive in the war and its aftermath, who triumphs in her own way. Only the basest of woman readily abandons herself to her circumstances or cavorts around in such a manner that belies decency; it belies credibility in the case of the Doctorow's work. Yes, people, man and women, many times simply follow their urges and do foolish things in peace time and war. And yes, racy pulp novels get written and people like to buy and read them; something is very wrong when a book of this ilk is granted the Highest award for the best fiction book of the year; that's the most bothersome and telling aspect. This denotes a disturbing sickness in the society. Yes, I admit I'm a prude but there's an ancient and storied legacy of moral refinement that society has mostly forgotten in this Tsunami .


It's easy for democratic republics to lose their moral compass. That's one of the reasons, not the only reason mind you, that they're a rare form of government. And the reason they are quite widespread today is that the strongest country in the world is one and after the last war it destroyed and transformed its enemies two of the strongest countries in the world into democracies, Germany and Japan. Look at history, democracies are NOT inevitable, both Italy and Germany were Democracies before they became dictatorships. Ultimately, a country's leadership must serve justice, the Right and the Truth, to prosper, not political correctness or expediency. They must not simply serve the popular. Democratic governments must needs be a Republic of virtue foremost; the individual citizens need to be virtuous to guide the ship of state. Another pitfall for democracies, temptation to rob the public treasury (welfare, social security, corporate welfare, subsidized insurance for beach houses, list goes on). But there's generally little or no established moral authority in the democratic societies. People need to be taught how to behave in some large measure. The Christian influence now seemingly fading educated the society in right behavior in the past. Now this inheritance is largely discounted; its presumed the benevolent state will create the just society. This was demonstrated in the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties it could not be disputed; the Central Government stepped in and eliminated Segregation in the South and elsewhere. Of course it was popular government that erected segregation and before that slavery in the first place. Even now the Central government begins to cleanse religion from the public square. Be fearful if this benevolent Government with the vast power given over to it, chooses to do great harm; much more harm than a monarchy ever could. The Founding Fathers understood a limited Government, not a mindless abeyance to popular will that does no wrong. Thank God for its current restraint.

Now once again I must back step a bit and acknowledge that non-democratic societies are frequently frightfully unjust. The Duke of Saxony gave little concern for oppression of the serf of Medeival Germany or the Czar of Russia for his freed ones in the 19th century.

Its quite popular to believe that Democracies do no wrong, or the inverse, what is done with popular consent presumably makes it right. The Founding Fathers didn't presume this and feared the rule by the mob. The constitution has checks and balances designed to damper popular mis-rule and tyranny on the other hand. Little known the British embargo of the Germans that resulted in hundred of thousands of deaths in World War 1 was unquestioned as was the strategy of merchant shipping at the last moment opening fire on submarines, who had surfaced to call for their surrender, the result of which the German Submarine ceased asking and just started to sink merchant shipping without warning. Slavery and segregation were both very popular in their day. Certainly only a minority wished to see slavery abolished: no one in the South supported it and only a little more than half of the North; an abolitionist was considered a radical. Legislatures all or in part in Indiana, Missouri and Maryland were suppressed to prevent unpredictable actions against the propagation of the war against the South.

Another example. Not using an atomic bomb after spending a few billion to build it would be too much to ask in the midst of war. But the idea of building one in the first place; yes! there's the evil. Destroy whole cities at one swell foop? So in modern morality dropping atomic bombs to incinerate cities are not war crimes, just a way to shorten a war, done in the concert with the popular will. War is already organized murder, does it have to be unrestricted horror? Who would have conceived of systematically eliminating an entire ethnic group, the Jews, as the Nazi's did? Viewed in the long distance view of history the instances will begin to look very similar. Yet, Relativistically speaking they, the Nazi's, were just trying to cleanse their society, based on their equally valid ideology; America wanted to propagate a war.

Christians are muddied by the Holocaust as may they should be, but they shouldn't shoulder the majority of the blame. It took Darwinian thinking to propel an otherwise civilized society into mass murder that played on prejudice and bigotry. Virtually no Christian leader, worthy of his name advocated such things....ooops! I skip Luther's vile diatribe "On the Jews and their Lies" in 1543, which advocates burning their houses and driving them from Germany. Can we name another Christian Leader? Yes, one is too too many I admit. But that tract lay mostly dormant for 4oo some years until the Nazi's took possession of it. NO ONE could have advocated or imagined that depraved minds at the 1942 Wannsee Conference in Potsdam could have conceived of devising a "Final Solution" with a massive mechanized system of death camps to exterminate an entire ethnic group! I weep as I write this. The lamentable thing is that we are not completely blameless; somehow one is responsible to others, being part of the same civilization. In any case so we shan't feel too superior to the Middle Ages and all its unenlightened backwardness; we too are members of a mass society as was Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia; the prime pre-occupation is consumerism in our case. What's busier on Sundays the market place or the church? Leaving the church aside if deemed too sanctimonious, compare the emptiness of the park on a summer day to the bustling shopping mall. And I can't forget we too have our own death camps in a manner of speaking in the local abortion mill. There is something suspect about the mass society dedicated to the ignoble wants of the common man (woman), and Socrates saw this in the Athenian demos.

Yes, I forget this was meant to be about Socrates. He was an ancient Greek lover of truth and lived in Athens one of its many city states, called a polis, ruled in this case by the demos, the democratic assembly. Although limited to free Athenian males it was far more participatory then ours. Assemblies of Greek citizens were continually involved in adjudicating public policy. On the other hand we send politicians off to govern to the capitals never to be heard from again until election time, while we occupy ourselves with bread and games (yes, the proverbial fingers are pointing back at me as well.... as I finger point).

Socrates lived in the 5 the century B.C. (470-399 B.C.) He doesn't seem to have had an occupation but wandering the streets of Athens and involving people in Socratic dialogues. He was beyond a doubt the most influential moral philosopher in Western Civilization. He argued that true reality is the moral truth, likened unto the absolute principles of mathematics. The ideal Right-triangle, rather than the depicted and imperfect copy, was used to illustrate this ideal truth, mathematical in this case. The existence of an ideal form of triangle represents absolutes in contradiction to the relative truth of Sophism. He used his Socratic method, dialectic: question and answer to prove or point to it. Throughout much of Plato's Dialogues he attempts with varying degrees of success to educate the Sophists away from their relativism. Part of his argument was that they taught simply rhetorical techniques not Truth; Socrates taught the virtues and examining oneself.

He inspired the most prominent ancient schools of thought, Platonism and Stoicism. Platonism is most famous for the allegory of the cave in which humanity is chained to a wall only to gaze at the shadows on the walls. The shadows arise from the a fire behind those chained that the real objects outside the cave create. Unchaining oneself is the journey to real truth. Only humanity is so thoroughly trained to view the shadows if released they are blinded by the brightness of the real world of objects outside the cave. Of course the allegory is a product of Plato, his student. Stoics the most wide spread philosophy in the ancient world believed as did Socrates that no harm can come to you unless you let it; suffering was of your own making. True happiness comes to those that use reason or wisdom to harness the passions and incensive parts of mankind. Harnessing these passions required the virtues, the good habits. Virtues could be attained by education of the correct type. True education is uplifting and teaches us the importance of acquiring the virtues and good habits.


Socrates had very jaundiced view of the Greek Demos, democracy, as well, and this highly democratic society put him on trial and then to death as a corrupter of youth. His central focus was moral education through the dialectic: question and answer. The ones primarily dedicated to educating youth at the time were the Sophists, supposedly lovers of wisdom. But Socrates didn't find them all that wise, more like wordsmiths, golden mouths. They would train their students in the art of persuasion. They would come in handy persuading the City (Polis) assembly that sat almost continually acting as judges similar to our highly selective juries of the most dumbed down. So in the Democratic Polis moral truth is relative and changeable, and becomes what the assembly says it is, subject to the persuasive rhetoric of the Sophists. Today, lawyers are their equivalent and thus sit in the same low light in our society. Ultimately, its lawyers who've led us into this moral morass of abortion on demand in the legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the vaunted jurist and amoralist. No contravening benighted church to hinder the enlightened 7 Supreme Jurists of Roe v. Wade!

Socrates believed highly in education. Little moral education is being carried on today. Churches do some of job of it but as of the Sixties the schools can no longer take on that task. The best they can do is hand out condoms and explain the mechanics of sexual intercourse which any dumb beast figures out pretty quick. A society that fails to train its young does so at its peril. We're educated most by T.V. and movies. In other words corporations, whose only goal is profit motive, pandering to the lowest denominator. And yes, I realize attempts to edify are thoroughly discredited today and would be held in suspicion. But society still sees the need to do so even in its marginal attempts to educate re: the evils of smoking and the need to wear your seat belt and in a rare event see a public service message on the importance of say honesty or something. I suspect this is why there are so many laws. Case in point after the property of the Roman church was expropriated in Tudor England, Queen Elizabeth needed to establish the Poor Laws to attend to the poor in absence of the Roman Church's charitable efforts, whose extensive lands had been taken by King Henry VIII.

Once again I'm off point. Socrates had no use for non-edifying art and surprisingly censured the poets, including the vaunted Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, who today are considered the flower of their civilization. Theatre at the time was played at religious festivals and was meant to be in large part emotionally cathartic. Greek theater survives today, Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle are examples whose themes deal with the most basic of emotions: unconscious sexual desire towards your mother and hatred of your father in the first instance. These would not have been considered uplifting to such a moralist as Socrates, considered unbridled passions. And neither were the shenanigans of the Greek gods, Zeus taking the guise of various animals and impregnating many a maiden for example. And his criticism of them most likely lead to his execution.

Skipping around to the role and influence of Christianity in society. What little was done in the way of moral education in our society through our history was left up to the churches, since there is no authoritative institution to "guide" the populace in moral education. (Yes, a most impossible statement to defend; it take a book.) The Reforms of the 1840's in America were championed by the religious as was abolition of slavery. (Prior to the temperance movement consumption of alcohol was something like 40 gallons per capita. Figure it out; a pint of whiskey will get the average person pretty drunk considering that only adult males drank: 1/4 of population. That's a substantial amount of booze.) Many of the early colonists were motivated by religious impulses and so we see a long history of religious influences in our society. Since the Supreme Jurists began their cleansing campaign in the Sixties every effort has been made to remove religious influence from schools and the public place. Socrates argued that education was key to transforming the human soul. Yes, Communist and Nazi's understood the value of propaganda. Unfortunately, theirs was a depraved evil. Be aware it was Plato who started the first academy and his student Aristotle the Lyceum to give systematic education. Today "Politically Correctness" looks to educate using a relativistic viewpoint. One of the most infamous was a Brown Colleges attempt to regulate date etiquette in absence of rules laid down by a religious tradition, the male was to have asked permission each progressive step of a dating/sexual situation even through sexual congress I suppose... in reality a totally silly proposition (no pun intended). Religious traditions inform people how to behave even if it is "Victorian". PC is a simply a joke, a tyranny of relativism.
How do I sum up? A teaching of moral absolutes is the foundation of our civilization as seen in Socrates and his philosophical heirs the Stoics whose emphasis on teaching virtues and the role of reason in edifying our inner selves was attractive to the Early Christians. The hedonism and relativism of society today although widespread in its acceptance remains a road to societal suicide. Currently in Europe Islam shows the signs of beginning to take over the their morally bankrupt society. Islam provides absolutes much like the Judeo-Christian tradition that has been discounted there and is in the process of being discounted here. Civilization seeks absolutes; the relativist rails against them. But I suspect full strength Islam with its insistance on ruling society by Shar'ia with its harsh punishments, intolerance and authoritarianism would be much less palatable than tolerating a few straight laced Baptists. And lastly what was meant to be education throughout Western History, recognized some element to build character all but set aside today except in amature athletics.