In modern circles, especially where we find people talking about classical education, Socrates is spoken of as if he were a martyr. He’s spoken of as a hero of Western civilization who is to be honored and imitated. And yet, if we think about the life of Socrates carefully and accurately, and think about what he was ultimately charged with and put to death for, there’s a chance that we might actually be wrong about Socrates. I’m not willing to argue at present that we are wrong, but I am interested in thinking that we may be wrong about Socrates. So if you don’t mind, consider this discussion with me, and I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.
Set aside any romantic notion that you have about Socrates. Set aside any mythical or legendary ideas you may have about Socrates as the great truth seeker, and begin by thinking of Socrates as a man who was condemned by his own people in classical Greece and charged with corrupting the youth. Let’s be careful and not assume that the charges are false, but let’s consider whether to some degree or in some sense they might be true. Is it possible that Socrates was justly condemned as a corrupter of the youth?
Now, when he is defended, it’s often assumed that Socrates was a teacher of what’s true, that he was some kind of prophet of true philosophy and true religion, true morality, and so on. And when we assume that Socrates represented the truth, we then immediately leap to the conclusion that he was falsely accused of corrupting the youth. We say, “Ha! Those corrupt Athenians punished the man who was actually bringing the truth to ancient Greece.” But I’d like to challenge that. Was Socrates actually bringing the truth to ancient Greece? I’m not being contentious, I’m not being facetious when I say this, but it’s not true that Socrates was bringing the truth to the Greeks. Socrates was not bringing the truth to the Greeks, and I’d like to provide an illustration of what I mean. I’ll provide a couple of illustrations.
Actually, I was recently listening to a talk given by a professor from Yale (Click here, 21:46 mark). He was reflecting on this modern problem of parents losing trust in colleges and universities and accusing them with something similar to what Socrates was accused of—corrupting the youth. And as we think about it, we’ve all experienced this to some degree. There’s this sense that kids go away to college, they leave behind families and schools where they’ve been taught certain things, they’ve been trained on certain principles, and they get to college. In the name of critical thinking, they’re encouraged to turn all of this upside down and consider whether everything that they’ve been taught may be false. And this is all done in the name of critical thinking.
“Yes, you were baptized into this religion as an infant, and you were raised in a Catholic family, and you were sent to Catholic faith formation classes. You received the Catholic sacraments. You were taught to accept this religion by your parents, maybe your grandparents, by your pastor, by other people in the parish. But have you ever really examined it critically? Let’s critically examine the religion of your family. Let’s critically examine the church that you were raised in. Let’s critically examine the theology that you were taught in catechism classes as a child. Let’s think about this critically, rather than assume that what your parents have taught you is true. Let’s assume that it’s false. Let’s demand that it furnishes evidence for its claims. Let’s consider what science has to say. Let’s consider what other religions have to say. Let’s think critically about this.”
Now, what this professor wisely noted was that this idea of critical thinking, which often takes place for the first time in a college environment, has the tendency to make students think twice about everything that they’ve learned as children. The effect that it has is that it destabilizes students intellectually. It destabilizes their intellectual life. When they were young, they might have never thought that this or that could be wrong. They might have trusted their pastors. They might have trusted their parents. They might have enjoyed the culture that they were raised in. They may have never questioned it. They may have assumed that believers who shared their faith in history were the good guys. But this is all challenged in the name of critical thinking, and what’s left is a state of intellectual destabilization.
Many would say that this is a good thing. They’re learning to think critically, they’re learning to ask questions, they’re learning to test premises and evaluate arguments. But the net effect is destabilization. The disciplines, habits, beliefs, and maxims that they were taught as children are thrown into doubt in the name of critical thinking. What once seemed to some degree certain and helpful is now considered uncertain, doubtful, possibly harmful, possibly deceptive. And again, this is all done in the name of critical thinking.
Colleges have tended to be the place where this kind of destabilizing occurs, and parents don’t like it. It’s bad enough that the parents see their children leave home, but the parents don’t want their children being encouraged to abandon everything that they’ve ever been taught, everything that they’ve learned. The parents feel that this is what the university or the college is doing. So parents are tempted to send their children to colleges that reinforce what they’ve taught their children or protect the culture that they want their children to be raised in. And this is criticized as being sheltering or even brainwashing.
So we can see this dilemma that exists. And I think we all know that this is true. But the net effect of this experience is that the intellect is destabilized, and in the place of that established teaching, those established habits, and so on, nothing better is necessarily installed. And so the danger is that these young men and women can be moved into a destabilized state intellectually and then just left there. So again, the net effect is not growth or progress or any advance towards truth and goodness, but it’s just destabilization.
Many who have gone to college have felt this. I know when I went to college, I took a Western civilization course as I was growing as a Christian. I took a course where the professor, who was an atheist history professor—a former Southern Baptist, as I later learned—argued to the class, to a large lecture hall full of freshmen and sophomore students in a Western civilization class, that much of the teaching of Christianity was merely the recycling of older pagan myths and legends. There were stories in other traditions of a worldwide flood. There were stories of the creation of the world. There were stories of the fall of man. There were stories of resurrection from the dead and eternal life. These stories existed before and outside of Christian circles, and Christians just absorbed them and Christianized them.
Well, as a nineteen-year-old developing Christian, I had no way to respond to that. I remember going back to my apartment after that class and just plopping down on the couch and staring up at the ceiling and feeling like I have no idea if anything that I think or believe is true. I was thoroughly destabilized intellectually.
Now, in my case, I ended up being directed by Christian influences in my life to study the scriptures and to study the church fathers, to eventually study the classics myself, study Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. And I feel that I came to a place of stabilization with certitude. But I don’t think that my experience is normal. I think that I had many unique graces and provisions in my life. And when I think of my peers, I think many of them were led into that destabilized state and that they never recovered from it.
It could be argued that they were corrupted by irresponsible critical thinking, irresponsible skepticism or even cynicism, irresponsible doubt. It’s comparable to taking apart a car in the name of learning about auto mechanics—unbolting and unscrewing every piece, laying them all out on the garage floor. Which is easy. It’s easy to take a car apart. But then not realizing that we have no knowledge of how to put it back together again. So you could disassemble the entire car and have all the parts strewn all over the garage floor, and you can say you know more about the car than you did before when you thought of it as just a car, like any child would. You’re now familiar with all of these different parts. But do you actually have any increased knowledge of a car when you have no means of reassembling the original whole? That’s the state I believe we’re left in because of this irresponsible notion of critical thinking.
I would argue that this is what Socrates was doing in ancient Greece. I’m not saying that Socrates intended to do this, but I’m saying that the net effect that was observed by people in Socrates’ time was likely that he was leading young men from a state of some degree of order—social order, cultural order, religious belief—into a state of confusion. And that this was a destabilizing influence. It was observed that he was essentially or effectively corrupting the youth. And I think that that argument may be true.
Before I go further talking about that, I want to introduce one other related illustration in church history. When we get into the 1500s, we learn about the controversy that surrounded Galileo, where Galileo proposed the idea that the Church’s teaching—the historic teaching about the geocentric universe—may be false. He challenged the world to doubt and to think critically, and he presented some rough evidence that he argued showed that the earth was not at the center of the universe.
The Church’s response to Galileo was to forbid him to promote this theory for a number of reasons. First of all, it contradicted the established philosophy. It contradicted the image of the Ptolemaic or Aristotelian universe, and since that was established by wise men and maintained by wise men for more than a thousand years, it was irresponsible to stir people up against it, especially the common people, by publishing these objections and criticisms that the people don’t have the education to be able to analyze correctly.
But secondly, because the sacred scriptures seem to refer explicitly to an earth-centered universe—a universe in which the sun moves about, the earth rises in the east, moves through the heavens, sets in the west, and so on—the Church did not deny that Galileo’s argument could be true. It argued that it was dangerous and needed to be pursued in a responsible way. And Galileo went on to reject the Church’s request for this responsible approach to his investigation and went ahead and published his theory and was condemned for it.
Now, later on, Copernicus and others presented similar arguments with further evidence and more accurate statements, and they assembled a heliocentric model of the universe. And when they did so with good arguments and solid empirical evidence, many looked back at the condemnation of Galileo and said, “Ha! He was right. The Church was wrong.” The problem with that is that the Church was not wrong. The Church was actually right in two different respects, or maybe even three respects.
First of all, the Church was right in that philosophy and theology as they were established both seemed to be comfortable with an earth-centered or geocentric model of the universe, and that was not to be taken lightly. Secondly, the Church was right in that Galileo’s theory and his evidence were not sufficient to make the claims that he was eager to make. It turned out, in the end, that Galileo’s theory was not accurate, and that later developments in heliocentric models made corrections that Galileo was actually wrong about. So Galileo’s model was not accurate. So the Church was right in a second sense.
And thirdly, I would say the Church was right because tradition and established doctrines and beliefs should be protected from irresponsible, reckless criticism and doubting, especially when those who wish to introduce that criticism target the common people. There is a place for those discussions. We see the same thing at the time of the Protestant Reformation, where the proper forum, the proper environment, the proper method for raising controversial questions is abandoned or rejected by one who wants to run into the streets and seek the following of the common people. That’s immoral, that’s irresponsible, that’s disordered.
So in all three of those senses, I would argue that the Church was right in how it dealt with Galileo. The Copernican Revolution can’t be doubted in history. We know about the rise of heliocentric models of the universe and their value in the modern natural sciences and astronomy and so on. But still, to say that the Aristotelian model is false, or that the biblical passages are false, or that Ptolemy was false—none of those statements are true. In fact, Einstein, in a book titled “The Evolution of Physics,” explains that both of those models are acceptable. They simply begin from different frames of reference. So it’s irresponsible to say that this system is true and this system is absolutely false. It’s much more complicated than that.
So we could say that Galileo could have been accused of corrupting the minds of the common people. We could say that universities corrupt the minds of young adults, and we could say that Socrates corrupted the minds of young Athenians. And I think there’s reason to respect that judgment and not just assume that it’s a false accusation.
And here’s why. Let’s think about what the problem is with the so-called Socratic method. The reason why we’re talking about Socrates so much in modern society is not because Socrates is a very great philosopher. We’re not talking about Socrates because he is a great philosopher or because he established truth in many of the philosophical sciences. He didn’t answer many philosophical questions. He did none of those things. We talk about Socrates in the twenty-first century primarily because he has been taken up as a hero by this modern critical thinking movement and by the modern classical education movement, which promote all of this talk about critical thinking.
“We’re going to think critically about this and that. We’re going to read every book. We’re going to read all the great books, even the books that were prohibited by the Church. We’re going to read them too. We’re going to read everything. We’re going to critically examine everything. We’re going to see for ourselves, read all the books, and make our own judgments about what’s true or false. We’re going to think critically. We’re not going to be brainwashed. We’re not going to be indoctrinated. We’re not going to be told what to think or what to do. We’re going to test everything for ourselves. We’re going to be like Socrates, and we’re going to use the Socratic method.”
And the question comes up: “Well, what in the world is the Socratic method?” And none of the people promoting this great books education or the great ideas, a great conversation—none of them explain in a systematic way what they mean by the Socratic method. In most cases, what they mean is that we’re going to read books for ourselves, and we’re going to talk about them freely, and we’re going to decide for ourselves what these books actually mean. We’re going to interpret the great books. That method of study and discussion, arguing about the meanings and so on, gets called the Socratic method. Schools say that they teach in seminar format using the Socratic method. That’s why so many people in the twenty-first century are talking about Socrates.
I don’t know how many people actually study the works of Socrates, because there is no such thing. There are no works of Socrates. Socrates never wrote anything. We have nothing written by Socrates. All that we have are dialogues that were written by other philosophers. We have the dialogues of Plato—I think there are fifty-five of them, something like that, fifty-plus dialogues of Plato where Plato uses Socrates as his main character. And so we read all of these dialogues, imagining that this is the activity of Socrates himself. And then we have others, like Xenophon, which sometimes uses Socrates as a character in his own philosophical writings. But there’s no works of Socrates to study. There’s no scientific treatises to read. There’s no positive philosophy to study. There’s just Socrates as this controversial character, stirring things up, causing trouble, as it were, destabilizing Athenian culture, and ultimately accused of corrupting the youth.
When I was in college and was assigned for the first time to read the dialogues of Plato, I remember reading through the dialogue. And, you know, it’s entertaining to read through and to see the back and forth in the discussions. But I remember reading and going through and anticipating the answer to the questions, the solution to the problem. And I got all the way to the end of the dialogue, and I remember thinking to myself, “They never answered the questions. We never solved the problem.” All that Socrates did was point out the problems with all of the answers that were given, but we never went back through and positively answered the question.
I remember being frustrated that I spent so much time reading that dialogue, only to walk away in the end no closer to the truth than I was before. And I thought, “I must be reading this wrong. I must not understand what I just read, because it seems to me like this long dialogue ended up not really saying anything.” So I was turned off to Plato the first time I read him. But then eventually, in other classes, I was assigned to read more of Plato. And I realized the same thing was true every time I read him. Every time I read Plato, I labored through this long dialogue to end with no positive resolution, no answer, no truth—just this destabilizing effect of questioning or doubting every assertion that’s made, showing that somehow, by some clever means, it leads into problems. But there was never any rest for the soul. There was never any solution or light at the end of the tunnel for the intellect. It was just this destabilizing effect that created doubt. It filled the mind with doubt, and that was the end.
Socrates was not going through Athens leading people out of error and into truth. He was going through Athens stirring up trouble, leaving people with minds filled with doubt and no certain answers to the controversial questions that they were discussing. And for many people—we can imagine, for religious people, for political people, for family members—we can imagine that this would not be considered a good thing. And so Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth and was eventually sentenced to death by poisoning.
I think there is some truth in the accusation that Socrates was corrupting the youth. I think there is some truth in the accusation that Socrates was destabilizing their culture. I think there’s truth in saying that what Galileo did was wrong. I think there’s truth in saying that what Martin Luther did was wrong. They were wrong because they didn’t lead from a state of ignorance and suffering to certitude and freedom or healing. They simply introduced confusion, and they did so in an irresponsible way.
And I would argue that modern colleges, modern universities, and the classical education movement can tend to do the same thing, because the Socratic method is not a source of truth. It’s a means of introducing doubt, of destabilizing a confident intellect. It’s a means of preparation for true teaching. It’s a way to begin instruction. But if that instruction does not follow, if that instruction in the truth doesn’t follow, it becomes a source of destabilization, which is not good. It’s irresponsible and can leave students in a very dangerous place.
There is a saying in modern education that a little bit of science will turn you into an atheist, but more thorough scientific studies will lead you to believe in God. And that’s presented as a defense for the study of science in schools. But I would object and say, “Not so fast.” That line says a little bit of science will lead you to atheism. And the question is: when we introduce students to science, to natural sciences, are we giving them a little bit of science, or are we leading them deep into the natural sciences? And the answer is, we’re giving them a little bit of science. And we’re told that a little bit of science can lead you to atheism.
And remember, this is also what Socrates was charged with. He was charged with atheism as well. And so we’re introducing kids, introducing students to dangerous teaching—dangerous exercises, not dangerous in and of themselves, but dangerous in isolation. If we introduce kids to scientific ideas but don’t proceed, don’t guarantee that they’re going to continue in that formation to the end of those sciences, we could be leading them into a mindset that’s arrogant with respect to empirical knowledge and is irrationally quick to doubt philosophical or theological teachings.
A little bit of science can lead to atheism, so science as a subject of study in schools is not intrinsically good unless we can guarantee that the end of science is also provided. Likewise, critical thinking, where we don’t assume anything to be true, consider everyone equal, every argument equal, every teacher, every source, every book, every author—all equal. And we’re going to read everything. We’re going to judge for ourselves, interpret for ourselves, reject authority, reject tradition. If we’re not going to later correct and answer the questions and lead demonstratively to positive truths, then all we’re doing is destabilizing the intellectual life, the cultural life, religious life, and political life of young people. And that’s irresponsible and destructive.
I would argue that that’s what we’re seeing in modern society, and it’s being done in the name of critical thinking. We’re bringing Socrates, a man who is condemned for corrupting the youth, bringing him in as some kind of hero, as if he was the leader of the truth seekers, when he himself answered none of the questions, settled none of the debates, solved none of the problems, and was rejected by his own people. He’s not a Jesus figure. He’s a truly controversial, destabilizing figure. And like Galileo, it turns out that his philosophical inclinations, assuming that they were Platonic, were later proven to be false.
I often wonder why Christian people are so eager to study Plato when Platonic philosophy is not held to be true. It was disproven by Aristotle, who rejected Plato’s doctrine of forms and explained the true nature of things. And I’ll talk about Aristotle in a minute, because Plato and the person whom we know as Socrates—who is a character in the dialogues written by Plato—was not a true philosopher.
So again, criticism of Socrates in ancient Athens, the argument that he was corrupting the youth, the argument that he was promoting atheism, the argument that he was destabilizing their culture—I could make the case that all of those things were true, that the judgment of Socrates at the time was accurate. The only time that we can scoff at that judgment is if we’re assuming that Plato is true. After all, we read of the trial and death of Socrates in a dialogue written by Plato. Plato was false. Plato’s philosophy is false, as was proven by Aristotle.
Now, again, when we talk about the Socratic method in modern society, what we’re normally referring to—and this is very deceiving—we’re normally talking about a seminar-style class in which we read the so-called great books, which means really any books, and we talk about their possible interpretation.
Now let me ask you this: If you’re a Catholic, is the rule of interpretation in theological matters—let’s say, with sacred scripture or with church tradition—is the rule of interpretation that every man should read and interpret for himself? Is that the Catholic doctrine of how truth is to be pursued? Or does the Catholic Church and the doctors of the Catholic Church rather teach that you should yield your own judgment to the magisterium of the Church and to the doctors of the Church? If you’re a Catholic, it’s pretty obvious that the Church teaches that you should yield to the judgment of authoritative sources.
So this whole great books idea—where is that coming from? Is that a Catholic idea? I would argue that that’s actually not a Catholic idea. I would argue that’s much more truly a Protestant idea, as far as religion is concerned, and it’s a secular idea, as far as secular literature or even the natural world is concerned. I don’t know why or how Catholics have gotten onto this “judge everything for yourself” philosophy of education, or why they would ever teach that to children. But it seems to have anti-Catholic sources.
When Thomas Aquinas taught, he didn’t gather his students around a big round table and read and say, “What do you think, Mike? What do you think, Peter? What do you think this means, Julie?” St. Thomas Aquinas gave authoritative lectures when he taught. So I don’t know why a college named Thomas Aquinas College would teach in a way and conduct its classes in a way and offer a curriculum that has nothing to do with the actual example of Thomas Aquinas. It’s very strange.
So we’ve got this idea of critical thinking and classical education, and we’ve got all of these terms bundled with it: great books, the great conversation, seminar style, discussion classes, the Socratic method, classical education. All of these things are bundled together, and yet none of them have anything to do with true philosophy or true theology. None of them have to do with true philosophy because true philosophy is not established by means of class discussions or even Socratic dialogues. That is not the method by which true philosophy is established. Nor is true theology established by debates or private judgments of the meaning of source texts.
True philosophy is found in the systematic treatises that were written by Aristotle. True philosophy is found in Aristotle’s systematic works. His work on Nicomachean Ethics teaches the truth of moral philosophy. His work on physics and metaphysics teach the truth of natural philosophy. His work in the Organon teaches the truth of rational philosophy.
Aristotle, unlike Plato, unlike this person called Socrates, did not just stir up questions and stir up confusion and then go back home. Aristotle, first of all, established the art of reasoning known as demonstrative reasoning, by which we’re able to positively demonstrate philosophical truth. Socrates did not know the art of demonstrative reasoning. Plato did not know the art of demonstrative reasoning. It was discovered and developed by Aristotle, and it’s written out for us in his series of works that are called the Organon, which include the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations.
The Socratic method, so-called—again, not the modern idea of just class discussion, but the true Socratic method—Aristotle would identify as dialectical reasoning. And he teaches the art of dialectical reasoning in the work titled “The Topics.” Socrates may have crudely practiced this method, but Aristotle is the one who established the formal art and science of it.
In dialectical reasoning, one essentially reasons from premises that are not necessarily true, but they’re probable or they’re respected. This is what Socrates did. Socrates would ask a question to another person, and then he would take the person’s answer to that question—not what’s known to be true or what’s certain, but he would take the person’s answer and assume that to be true, and then use it as the premise to build an argument. That’s dialectical reasoning. The only thing that that’s good for, in most cases, is leading into contradictions, which prove that somewhere along the way, the premises must have been false. It does not positively establish true philosophy.
Aristotle taught the art of demonstrative reasoning, which begins all of its arguments from premises that are known to be absolutely certain—self-evident truths, axioms, and so on. Aristotle demonstrated that beginning with true premises—that is, premises that are known to be true—if we reason from them, we can draw conclusions that are also absolutely certain. That is, we can produce positive, true philosophical statements by means of a certain quality and method of reasoning that was not the method used by Socrates.
So if we want to learn true philosophy, we’ve got to study Aristotelian philosophy. We’ve got to study Aristotle’s philosophical treatises. That’s true philosophy.
Now, if we have Aristotle’s systematic treatises, it raises the question: Why would we need to study Plato at all? Why would we waste so much time reading the dialogues of Plato if we have the systematic treatises of Aristotle? And my answer to the question is: there is no reason. There is no reason why people are reading the dialogues of Plato, wasting all of this time only to get no answer in the end, when Aristotle has written positive treatises that actually prove true philosophical teachings.
I would further argue that the only time that studying the works of Plato would be valuable is if you did so historically and continued on through the treatises of Aristotle, so you got a full picture of both the imperfect and the perfect Greek philosophy. But if you read Plato as most great books students or college students do—they read one or two dialogues of Plato and go away telling yourself that you now know classical philosophy—you’re a crazy person. Classical philosophy ends in Aristotle. He is the one whom St. Thomas calls “the philosopher.”
If you read the Summa Theologica, you’ll almost never find Plato quoted anywhere for anything, because he was not considered to be a true philosopher. If you go back into church history and look at the history of heresies and schisms, you’ll find that the source of the trouble is usually some Platonic idea that’s crept into Catholic circles and has led people away from the true faith. Platonic philosophy leads to things like dualism and heretical ideas.
And so it’s similar to modern science. If you introduce some modern science, but the kids don’t have the opportunity to really go into it and explore further in the sciences and come to see the end of those sciences, you’re going to end up raising materialistic, arrogant skeptics that just trample all over tradition and authority and think that doing so is critical thinking, or it’s like Socrates, or it’s like Galileo. They think it’s heroic, when in fact it’s irresponsible.
And this is what’s commonly done in modern education, whether you call it modern liberal arts education at a college or university, or whether you call it classical education and pursue it in high schools. To have a true philosophical education, you’ve got to study Aristotle, because he is the philosopher. He is the one who teaches the true philosophy in systematic or scientific form.
You will quickly learn that the reason schools don’t do that, colleges don’t do that, is because the teachers can’t understand Aristotle. They’ve never studied Aristotle. They’re not nearly intelligent enough to understand the writings of Aristotle. And so rather than undertake that great work, they just ignore it and go and play around with the dialogues of Plato, which prove nothing, teach nothing, conclude with nothing.
I would argue as a teacher that great books classes, seminar classes, are a means by which teachers escape from the very heavy labor of systematic instruction—the kind that we see in the actual teaching of Thomas Aquinas. If we look back at his commentaries or lectures on the works of Aristotle, which show us what the true curriculum was and what the true teaching method was, we find incredibly notable difficult preparation needed for that teaching. And that’s what no one wants to do today.
So we’ve got the seminar class where the teacher picks a book and the students read the book, and then they all talk about what they think, and they imagine that they’re doing some kind of classical philosophical learning. When what they’re doing really has no foundation in Catholic philosophy or theology anywhere in history. In fact, like I said before, I would argue that this whole idea comes from anti-Catholic sources.
So wrapping this up here, since we’re at an hour, I’d like us to think a little differently about Socrates. We may argue that Socrates was a good man. Maybe what he was trying to do was noble, maybe what he was trying to do was good. But the way that he did it, the timing at which he did it, was destabilizing and dangerous.
And I’d like to leave you with a proverb from the Old Testament that I think should cause us to doubt and question this idea of study, this method of study. In Proverbs, chapter three, Solomon is writing, and he says, “Do not lean on your own understanding.” So in this inspired writing of the ancient world’s wisest man, the rule that he gives us to direct us in wisdom is to not lean on our own understanding. “Do not lean on your own understanding. Some translations say prudence: do not lean on your own prudence, but trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
So we’re warned about placing confidence in our own judgment, and we’re taught rather to trust in the Lord. And when we look back at history and we see a man like Aristotle, established and honored in history, honored by doctors of the Church, honored by popes of the Church, we don’t find Socrates or Galileo honored in such a way. We don’t find the open thinkers or the free thinkers honored in any such way. It may seem right to us to pursue the truth in this way or that way, but we should not trust in our own prudence. But we should trust in the Lord. We should trust in the authority of the Church. We should trust in the authority of the doctors of the Church.
And ask ourselves, first of all, what do they positively teach us? Secondly, how do they guide us to seek the truth? And both of those questions will lead us away from giving attention to Socrates or Plato or this broad and shallow great books reading—many texts of which Christians were advised by the Church not to read—and often to the neglect of approved works like Sacred Scripture, like our daily prayers, like the Summa Theologica, and so on.
There’s not time for reading everything, and therefore we’ve got to be careful to devote that time to studying what is positively true, because we need to fill our minds and build our intellect on what’s true. Not imagine that we’re somehow the judges of truth and falsehood, the critics of the world’s writings, or that any books we study contribute to the good of our character or to the truth of our intellect in the same way that the study of scientific philosophy—like the writings of Aristotle—and authoritative Catholic doctrine, like the writings of Sacred Scripture and the writings of the doctors of the Church, would do.
So I’d like to encourage students in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy to pump the brakes on this worship or idolization of Socrates, because I don’t think Socrates is an honorable model. If we’re going to honor anyone, let it be Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
I hope that’s helpful. God bless you.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
