Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Monday, August 18, 2025

James Barasch | Barasch on Books

This week we turn from the world of the Cold War to the world of classical Greece with "Socrates: A Man for Our Times," by acclaimed historian and biographer Paul Johnson, who produces a brief celebration of the life and influence of the well-known Athenian philosopher. This little treasure of a biography succinctly explores the life of Socrates in classical Athens and the great philosopher's essential ideas, written in Johnson's famed accessible and engaging style.

The life of Socrates (469-399 B.C.), the wandering philosopher, was filled with paradoxes, as was acknowledged even in his own day. In modest fashion, he claimed that he knew nothing, yet he displayed abundant wisdom in his cross-examinations of philosophical rivals. Raised to be a stonemason and relatively poor, he nevertheless gravitated towards the wealthy. Though many of his students were perhaps oligarchic, he remained adamantly loyal to the principles of Athenian democracy and proved to be a staunch patriot and heroic soldier in the Athenian army. Nevertheless, by challenging the fundamental social and philosophical beliefs of his day, he left his contemporaries (and later biographers) questioning whether he was a smooth-talking agitator or a genuine, serious thinker.

Socrates lived during both the best times of the Athenian golden age and the empire's worst era of war and civic unrest. He loved Athens and city life and was inspired by the hustle and bustle of a powerful democratic city at the center of a rich, diverse commercial empire awash in new ideas from all across the eastern Mediterranean. Its wealth, security and intellectual openness provided a cultural vibrancy unknown elsewhere. Socrates knew well the great Athenians of his age — Pericles, Alcibiades and the family of Plato — a familiarity that would have been impossible without Athens' progressive attitudes toward social class.

However, the long Peloponnesian War, which ended in 404 B.C. with the defeat of Athens and the destruction of its empire, brought a decreased tolerance for his philosophical inquiry and ultimately his demise. His trial and subsequent suicide by drinking hemlock remain an enduring indictment of the mob-like nature of post-war Athenian democracy and its volatile, uneven jurisprudence, as well as a much later (18th century) argument for constitutional republicanism over direct democracy.

Johnson also highlights numerous Socratic principles and their subsequent effects on Western philosophy. He skillfully elucidates some of the most notable trends in Socratic thought, such as the separateness of the body and soul, the integrity of law, the need to educate women, the immorality of revenge and a disregard for material possessions and honors. These and other ideas would become the foundational questions for over 2000 years of subsequent Western philosophy. Socrates himself comes alive in Johnson's book as a lively, thoughtful figure that rejoices in intellectual discussion and repartee and who seeks knowledge with a religious zeal.

Lacking any writings from Socrates himself, Johnson must rely on the records and testimony of others — primarily Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes. However, Johnson actively admits and engages with this problem of documentation, arguing, for example, that Plato's dialogues, the primary repository for Socratic philosophy, are initially reliable, then become less so as Plato interjects his own ideas. At other times, Johnson uses phrases such as "I suspect" and "I assume" to keep his arguments flowing, which is understandable in light of the genuine dearth of primary sources. This tendency poses no challenge to the veracity of his analysis. Regardless, Johnson's gripping narrative and insightful commentary makes Socratic ideals relevant to the 21st Century, moving Socrates from "ancient history" to a "man for our times."

Rating: ***

--

James Barasch is a sophomore majoring in history. He can be reached at James.Barasch@tufts.edu.