Would there be such a thing as phi­los­o­phy had there been no such person—or lit­er­ary char­ac­ter, at least—as Socrates? Sure­ly peo­ple the world over have always asked ques­tions about the nature of real­i­ty, and come up with all sorts of spec­u­la­tive answers. But the par­tic­u­lar form of inquiry known as the Socrat­ic method—a blan­ket pre­sump­tion of ignorance—would not have become the dom­i­nant force in West­ern intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry with­out its name­sake. And that is, of course, not all. In the work of Socrates’ high­ly imag­i­na­tive stu­dent, inter­preter, and biog­ra­ph­er Pla­to, we find, as Alfred North White­head sug­gest­ed, a “wealth of gen­er­al ideas” that have made for “an inex­haustible mine of sug­ges­tion” for philoso­phers since antiq­ui­ty.

As blues­man Robert John­son did for rock and roll, Socrates more or less sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed the for­mu­las of West­ern thought. He might be called the first philo­soph­i­cal rock star—and judg­ing by the Guns N’ Ros­es sound­track to the ani­mat­ed video above, the pro­duc­ers of the Greek Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion series Ani­mat­ed Philoso­phers seem to feel the same. Dubbed into Eng­lish, and with char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion that owes more than a lit­tle to South Park, this episode makes the case for Socrates’ impor­tance to phi­los­o­phy as tan­ta­mount to Christ’s in Chris­tian­i­ty. Over­stat­ed? Per­haps, but the argu­ment is by no means a thin one.

To make the point, writer, edi­tor, and host George Chatzi­vasileiou inter­views Greek philoso­phers like Vasilis Kara­ma­n­is and Vasilis Kalfas, who basi­cal­ly agree with Roman ora­tor Cicero’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Socrates bring­ing “phi­los­o­phy down from the heav­ens to the earth”… as well as, says Kalfas, “into the city” as a “teacher of the cit­i­zen” in a mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic city-state. A key part of Socrates’ appeal is that he “did not take any­thing for grant­ed, no mat­ter how obvi­ous it may have seemed.” Though this atti­tude is as much a per­for­mance as it is a gen­uine admis­sion of igno­rance, the Socrat­ic approach nonethe­less set the stan­dards of intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty in the West.

The com­par­i­son with Christ is rel­e­vant in more ways than one. The fathers of the Chris­t­ian church relied as much on Pla­to and his stu­dent Aris­to­tle—some­times it seems even more so—as they did on the Bible. Per­haps chief among ear­ly the­olo­gians, Bish­op Augus­tine of Hip­po receives the ani­mat­ed rock star treat­ment above in anoth­er episode of Ani­mat­ed Philoso­phers, this one sub­ti­tled in Eng­lish. The many oth­er episodes in the series—on Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Dem­ocri­tus, Empe­do­cles, Par­menides, Plot­i­nus, Epi­cu­rus, Her­a­cli­tus, and Pythagoras—are all avail­able on Youtube, but only in the orig­i­nal Greek with no titles or dub­bing. It’s no great sur­prise the series focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on Greek philoso­phers. And yet, nation­al pride notwith­stand­ing, the ancient civ­i­liza­tion does have legit­i­mate claim to the ori­gins of the dis­ci­pline, espe­cial­ly in that most influ­en­tial fig­ure of them all, Socrates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

Allan Bloom’s Lec­tures on Socrates (Boston Col­lege, 1983) 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“If I am con­demned, I shall be anni­hi­lat­ed to noth­ing: but my ambi­tion is such, as I would either be a world, or noth­ing.” — Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673)

A phi­los­o­phy can­di­date or fem­i­nist schol­ar ven­tur­ing into Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Project Vox web­site may expe­ri­ence a sen­sa­tion akin to dis­cov­er­ing King Tut’s tomb.

Such trea­sures! Not just a scrap here and a morsel there, but a seri­ous trove of infor­ma­tion about phi­los­o­phy writ by females!

Lady Damaris Masham (1658–1708), Mar­garet Cavendish (1623–1673), Vis­count­ess Anne Con­way (1631–1679), and Émi­lie Du Châtelet were high­ly thought of in their day, and praised by male con­tem­po­raries includ­ing John Locke.

Project Vox seeks to res­ur­rect their over­looked-to-the-point-of-undis­cov­ered con­tri­bu­tions by pub­lish­ing their long out of print texts, some trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time. Bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion and sec­ondary resources will pro­vide a sense of each philoso­pher as well as her phi­los­o­phy.

Even­tu­al­ly, the site will include a forum where teach­ers can share les­son plans and arti­cles. Male phi­los­o­phy doc­tor­ates cur­rent­ly out­num­ber their female coun­ter­parts by an over­whelm­ing num­ber, but that may change as young women begin to see them­selves reflect­ed in the cur­ricu­lum.

Edu­ca­tors! Edu­cate thy­selves! Project Vox is the Guer­ril­la Girl of ear­ly mod­ern phi­los­o­phy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 110 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks: From Aris­to­tle to Niet­zsche & Wittgen­stein

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Han­nah Arendt Dis­cuss­es Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics & Eich­mann in Rare 1964 TV Inter­view

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Click here for larg­er image, then click again to zoom in.

Back­sto­ries of famous­ly accom­plished peo­ple seem incom­plete with­out some past dif­fi­cul­ty or fail­ure to be over­come. In nar­ra­tive terms, these inci­dents pro­vide biogra­phies with their dra­mat­ic ten­sion. We see Abra­ham Lin­coln rise to the high­est office in the land despite the hum­blest of ori­gins; Albert Ein­stein rewrites the­o­ret­i­cal physics against all aca­d­e­m­ic odds, giv­en his sup­posed ear­ly child­hood hand­i­caps. In many cas­es, these sto­ries are apoc­ryphal, or exag­ger­at­ed for effect. But what­ev­er their accu­ra­cy, they always seem to reflect unde­ni­able char­ac­ter traits of the per­son in ques­tion.

In the case of influ­en­tial philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da, prog­en­i­tor of the both beloved and reviled crit­i­cal the­o­ry known as “Decon­struc­tion,” the sto­ries of aca­d­e­m­ic strug­gle and great men­tal suf­fer­ing are well-doc­u­ment­ed. Fur­ther­more, their details accord per­fect­ly well with the mature thinker who, remarks the site Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “can’t answer a sim­ple god-damned ques­tion.” The good-natured snark on dis­play in this descrip­tion more or less sums up the feed­back Der­ri­da received dur­ing some for­ma­tive years of school­ing while he pre­pared for his entrance exams to France’s uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem in 1951 at the age of 20.

Der­ri­da may have “left as big a mark on human­i­ties depart­ments as any sin­gle thinker of the past forty years,” writes The New York Review of Books, but dur­ing this peri­od of his life, he failed his exams twice before final­ly gain­ing admit­tance. Once, he “choked and turned in a blank sheet of paper. The same month, he was award­ed a dis­mal 5 out of 20 on his qual­i­fy­ing exam for a license in phi­los­o­phy.” One essay he sub­mit­ted on Shake­speare, writ­ten in Eng­lish (above), received a 10 out of 20. The feed­back from Derrida’s instruc­tor will sound very famil­iar to per­plexed read­ers of his work. “Quite unin­tel­li­gi­ble,” writes the eval­u­a­tor in one mar­gin­al com­ment. The main com­ment at the top of the paper reads in part:

In this essay you seem to be con­stant­ly on the verge of some­thing inter­est­ing but, some­what, you always fail to explain it clear­ly. A few para­graphs are indeed total­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble.

Anoth­er exam­in­er—points out the NYRB—left a com­ment on his work “that has since become a com­mon­place”:

An exer­cise in vir­tu­os­i­ty, with unde­ni­able intel­li­gence, but with no par­tic­u­lar rela­tion to the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy… Can come back when he is pre­pared to accept the rules and not invent where he needs to be bet­ter informed.

As it turns out, Der­ri­da was not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the rules, but in invent­ing a new method. Even if his “apos­ta­sy” caused him great men­tal anguish—“nausea, insom­nia, exhaus­tion, and despair” (all nor­mal fea­tures of any high­er edu­ca­tion­al experience)—it’s prob­a­bly fair to say he could not do oth­er­wise. Although his intel­lec­tu­al biog­ra­phy, like the his­to­ry of any revered fig­ure, is unlike­ly to offer a blue­print for suc­cess, there is per­haps at least one les­son we may draw: What­ev­er the dif­fi­cul­ties, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off just being your­self.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

Jacques Der­ri­da Decon­structs Amer­i­can Atti­tudes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness