The first philosopher I fell in love with was Plato. In my undergrad, I took a number of courses about him and read a variety of his works. (I still haven’t read everything.) At first, I would have probably thought myself something of a Platonist, but as I furthered my studies, that changed. There are very few today who share Plato’s views, yet his work remains unsurpassably relevant. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said this of Plato’s legacy:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

How can this be, if it is true that there aren’t Platonists running amok in the Academy or in society at large? I would gander that this statement is true because Plato’s enduring impact does not stem from the veracity of his views, but rather from his depiction of the character and method of his mentor, Socrates, whose mission would become the founding force of the Western philosophical tradition. For this reason, he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Western Philosophy”.

There is only so much we can say about the historical Socrates since Plato’s depictions of him sometimes use him as more of a mouthpiece to parrot Plato’s own views. Nevertheless, it is generally believed that Plato’s work presents a fair portrait of what Socrates was like: he was a gadfly, whose life was dedicated the pursuit of truth through (a sometimes irritating) dialectic. He was a truth-seeker, who would roam about Athens, seeking the company of who were purported by society to be wise men (sophists), and would speak to them about various philosophical issues. Rather than provide answers, since Socrates was always adamant that he knew nothing, he would ask them questions to determine the validity or coherency of their points of view. This method of cooperative argument would later become known as the Socratic Method, named after the man who embodied its spirit until his death.

Interestingly, it was pointed out to me recently that Jesus also exercised a sort of dialectical approach in the Gospels. He would often ask questions, such as: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15) or “John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” (Matthew 21:25). I had heard people compare Jesus to Socrates in that they were both executed by the State, but it wasn’t until I had heard Trent Horn speak about Jesus and his habit of asking questions that I saw the comparison go even further.

Except that while both exercise a kind of dialectic, that is, I’m afraid, where the comparison must end because while Socrates was undoubtedly a mere man who sought the truth, Jesus was a man (more than a man, but I digress) who claimed that he was the truth:

I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

John 14:6

Did Jesus seek Himself, who is the truth? Of course not! I do not believe Jesus asked questions because he was having some sort of existential crises, and wanted to discover himself. Rather than being simply a man who, by virtue of his Socratic humility recognised the limits of his own knowledge, Jesus was a man who claimed to be the truth, and asked questions to bring people to him. Simply put, Socrates was a man that asked questions to get to the truth, but Jesus was (and is) the truth who asked questions to help bring people to himself.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever expressed this here, but one of my favourite paintings has to be Raphael’s The School of Athens. As a young undergraduate student studying philosophy, it was my favourite: aside from the School of Athens, it more subtly depicts the debate between Plato and Aristotle. In the picture, Plato is pointing up towards the Heavens while Aristotle is seen pointing down towards the Earth, prompting us to ask the question: are the answers out there or down here?

What I didn’t realise at the time was that opposite this painting was another painting by Raphael: The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament. It depicts the Church in Heaven and on Earth with the Blessed Sacrament in between.

These two paintings directly face each other, as if the one was in response to the other. If one spent their time searching for truth exclusively in either place, they would likely find some truth but be left wanting, as the truth of the matter is found in both, as the Blessed Sacrament demonstrates: Heaven met Earth. On the one hand, we can see Earthly men reaching out in search of truth, while on the other, we can see the Truth Himself reaching back.

In the midst of these two paintings, we see yet another: The Deliverance of Peter, which depictions of liberation from prison by an Angel of the Lord:

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

John 8:32

As human beings, we are naturally disposed towards what is true. Nobody, or at least nobody who we would call sane, searches to be deceived. And as such, we reach out in search of truth in the world. This is the realm of philosophy, and all subsequent branches of knowledge. But we cannot get to the Truth itself (or rather, the Truth Himself) in all of its fullness unless the Truth reaches back. To put it another way, the Truth is what sets us free, not simply our own abilities. So, in addition to Socratic humility, one must have humility in receiving the knowledge and wisdom imparted on us by Divine grace.