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Manila Bulletin devider devider Reading Socrates in the age of social media followers

Reading Socrates in the age of social media followers

Published Jun 9, 2018 04:05 pm
SCHOOL OF ATHENS (1509-1511?) by Raphael SCHOOL OF ATHENS (1509-1511?) by Raphael Socrates, are you (for) real?   By Socratic method, may I challenge your truth Like the truth of a star burning billions of light years away For I have no more proof than the dialogues of Plato Or the words of Xenophon Or the writings of Aristotle in defence of you Just as I have no evidence that the faraway star exists Other than that I see it ablaze in the dark sky As far as I can trust my eyes, the Athenians fed you hemlock They watched you walk to your death They laughed when your knees began to buckle As the poison claimed your body and released your soul The law of retaliation, eye for an eye They poisoned you for poisoning the minds of the youth For speculating about the heaven above For searching into the earth beneath Yet in your wisdom you denied all knowledge Scio me nihil scire I know I know nothing But the knowledge of nothing is knowledge itself or the illusion thereof That drives the philosopher and the mathematician to a search That drives the poets and the painters to the path of discovery That drives people to follow the (social media) stars In the hope of uncovering the secrets of the universe   Socrates, are you (for) real?   As epistemology is your lasting contribution, how do I know that I know you? You who said what you didn’t know you didn’t think you knew What of God and our ignorance of Him What of death and our ignorance of it What of empirical and sensorial truth and all that contradicts it What of the truth of ourselves as opposed to our beliefs and justifications of it And what of you and what we do not know of you Beyond the words of your protégés Plato or Xenophon Of whom you might be a mere invention Aristophanes cooked up The Clouds to see beyond their idealized versions Such sceptics say they might have only put words in your mouth Borrowing your wisdom to give weight to their own The Socratic problem lies in the many contradictions to the truth Why did you not write it all down for posterity Did you not know you will live on to this day Novels echo words you might not have uttered Theater satirizes philosophies you might not have espoused Thoughts rid of contradictions in a process you might not have introduced Ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpô The unexamined life is no life for any human But what of the life we live now, whose only evidence is an Instagram post But what of truths that seek followers by way of Vsco cam filters A life like yours but shrouded in the mysteries of X-pro II, its legacies secondhand Maybe a life liked once and then completely forgotten   Are you (for) real, Socrates?
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