Having been immersed this semester in discussions of civil disobedience, it’s impossible for me, at least, to not keep Socrates and King in mind when I learn of social unrest and injustice in the world.

Would an Iranian Socrates willingly allow himself to be taken to Evin prison? I admit this hypothetical is a difficult one to take on. Socrates, I’m sure, had great confidence in the laws of Athens. I’m not so sure he would undertake the same action in Tehran.

I’ve often wondered where the Muslim “Martin Luther King” is in the Islamic world. Where’s the Gandhi? This direction of thought has been made all the more a matter of concern since I finished reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel. I highly recommend it.

The middle class Bonhoeffer moved from a concerned bystander, to passive resistor, to active resistor, even to the degree of sanctioning violence. Bonhoeffer was in contact with Gandhi and had hoped to visit Gandhi in India. Would Gandhi have tried to convince Bonhoeffer to avoid the violent resistance to Hitler?

Many “go along to get along” Blacks in the South became active participants in the nonviolent resistance movement. Thousands of people eventually followed Gandhi’s lead in India. His methods worked against the British and King’s methods worked against the American segregationists. Would it have worked against Hitler or Stalin?

Most people think not.

But what about Iran? We witnessed some nonviolent action last summer immediately following the elections in Iran. We saw Neda’s lifeless body. Today there are reports of more deaths. The demands are known, the body count is rising. What’s next?

From the NY Times:

In a statement posted on his Web site, the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who took part in the revolt against the Shah in the 1970s and is now a supporter of the opposition, denounced Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, for today’s violence. Mr. Makhmalbaf’s statement sarcastically praises Ayatollah Khamenei for outdoing the caliph Yazid, whose forces killed the Shiite martyr Imam Hossein on Ashura, the holiday being celebrated today in Iran:

Khamenei! You are more scrupulous than Yazdi. You won! Yazid is no longer the top winner of killing people on Ashura. You beat him.

I am so sorry that I fought against the Shah when I was 17. He left the country when he realized that people no longer wanted him. but you are resisting until everyone else leaves the country.

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Here’s a short profile on Cornel West from a recent issue of The New Yorker.

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The second scene is about Socrates’ trial. Andocides has switched sides: despite taking Xanthula’s money, he now speaks on behalf of the prosecutors. It is Lysias, whose speech on love is discussed in Plato’s Phaedrus, who proposes to defend Socrates, but the latter refuses, again. Xanthula asks her money back from Lysias, but it is not clear why, since she only gave money to Andocides.

Andocides gives two reasons for Socrates’ accusation: his corruption of young men and his atheism (the most important reason, i.e. Socrates’ anti-democratic stance, becomes clear at the end of the scene). To these two main reasons Andocides later adds some comical ones, that Socrates would have instigated youngsters to use drugs and to keep rats. After Andocides’ speech it is time for Socrates’ defence. The reader/spectator who is familiar with the Apology of Plato (and of Xenophon) will be surprised at Socrates’ words. Here, Socrates is not the triumphing philosopher, but a very weak person, who even wants to weep at the end of the scene. We might see this as an evocation of the frailty and impotence of the individual in the face of the state system. The scene ends with the verdict: the votes for acquittal are equal to the ones for the death sentence, but the judge (Democratia herself) has the last word. She condemns the philosopher to death. The conclusion has a clear political message: in the end it is democracy itself that condemns an individual to death.

While the last scene of the first act is a comic highlight, the last scene of the second act is a tragic highlight. We are now in Socrates’ prison. The situation recalls Plato’s Phaedo, but what happens is totally different. A demonstration has taken place in Athens calling for Socrates’ release. Socrates disapproves of the chaotic and violent situation in the city, and we might see here Socrates depicted as an ancient Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Because of the anarchy that rules the city as a result of the people’s call for Socrates’ release, Democratia comes to visit Socrates in prison. Playing the role of Plato’s Crito, she offers Socrates to flee into exile. As in Plato’s dialogue, Socrates rejects the offer. He does not want to violate the law, for he wishes to be a model for society.

A comic interlude is provided by the entrance of Xanthula and her maid. Now his wife truly is “A Belle in the Prison of Socrates”. This meeting is comic, for, when Hedone sees Socrates together with Democratia, she thinks the two are having an affair. Like Democratia, Xanthula tries to persuade Socrates to escape, but again he does not agree.

Next, Socrates has another guest: Plato himself. Like the encounter between Socrates and Aristophanes, this is a highly pleasant meeting for classical philologists. An intertextual joke is made at the beginning of the dialogue between the two philosophers: Socrates’ question if his pupil is still ill reminds of the opening of Plato’s Apology, in which is said that Plato could not be present at Socrates’ trial, since he was ill. Afterwards, Plato says he is planning to travel to Egypt to gain wisdom. This is an allusion to the legend that Plato went away from Athens for a while after Socrates’ death.

After Plato has left, together with Socrates’ wife, maid and children, Socrates’ guard (well-known for the warm relationship he has with Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo) reveals that he has instigated a revolution and thrown off Democratia. Now that he is in power, he wants to set Socrates free. Socrates does not agree, for he considers the usurpation illegitimate. In accordance with Crito, Socrates wants to carry out what the law has condemned him to do, and so he drinks the cup of poison and falls dead.

Hence, the comedy has become a true tragedy, showing what democracy can do to people who oppose to the system. An evolution is certainly evident, throughout the play, in Socrates’ attitude to democracy. While Socrates’ criticism of democracy is light at the beginning of the play, the piece progressively acquires a more bitter tone. The play ends with Socrates’ determined opposition to the democratic system. The play thus develops from what first seems a mere comedy towards a tragedy, in which the dangerous sides of democracy are emphasized.

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Amazon blurb from Publisher’s Weekly:

In this light, engaging time-travel yarn, Levinson (The Silk Code) ponders the problem of saving someone who refuses to be saved, in this case Socrates, the Athenian philosopher condemned to death in a shameful moment for democracy. Inspired by a newly discovered dialogue of Socrates in which he’s offered escape by time travel, Sierra Waters, classics grad student in 2042, joins her professor, Thomas O’Leary, in a quest to return to the past.

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