The Chinese often remark on the ancientness of China. During the two years I was a teacher there, it happened quite often that my students would refer to China’s long history by way of explaining some enigma.

Sometimes I would surprise them by responding, China’s not that old. The United States is much older than China.

What? they would exclaim.

Sure. The United States is 230 some years old, and China is only 50 or so years old, I would reply.

Oh, they’d laugh, you are talking about the People’s Republic of China. We are talking about the Chinese civilization, which goes back in an unbroken line for thousands of years.

Oh, well, I’d reply, that’s different. Civilizationally speaking, we’re almost the same age. Aristotle and Confucius were nearly contemporaries. Aristotle was born less than 100 years after the death of Confucius.

They always seemed sort of surprised by that.

Of course, I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to remind them that Confucius (551-478 BC), the founder of their civilization, stressed reverence for one’s teachers. And to prove to my students it pays to revere one’s teacher, I would tell them about Aristotle’s student, Alexander the Great, who established an empire over the known (by us) world and revered his teacher Aristotle as his own father. For, as he said, if one had given him life, the other had taught him to live well. But he and Aristotle became estranged, and then Alexander died after a night of heavy drinking in 323 BC at the age of 33.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the founder of empiricism, which had a major influence on Christianity in the person of St. Thomas Aquinas. Through Aquinas, who was born in his father’s castle in the kingdom of Naples in 1225 AD, Aristotelian empiricism also became the foundation on which Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) established the modern scientific method. As a teacher, Aristotle had a profound impact on the world in the realms of both science and religion.

As a young man, Aristotle was one of Plato’s students. Plato was also one of the giants of history. Four hundred years after his death, Plato’s philosophy was the intellectual prism through which St. Paul the Apostle interpreted the teachings of another great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth.

As a young man, Plato (428-347 BC) was one of Socrates’ students. Socrates (470-399 BC), the founder of our civilization, was, in my view, the greatest thinker and wisest man who ever lived. When Plato was 30 years old, Socrates was put on trial by the authorities in Athens, the Greek city-state where they lived, and the world’s first democracy. He was accused of corrupting the city’s youth by teaching them to question what they think they know.

“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing,” Socrates taught.

Socrates’ speech in his own defense at his trial was recorded in a Platonic dialogue called Apology. The account of Socrates’ speech by Plato, who was in attendance at the trial, is, by itself, as good an introduction to Western philosophy as anything ever written. But it wasn’t much in the way of a defense, if Socrates was hoping to be found not guilty. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.

One of Plato’s most moving dialogues is Phaedo, an account of Socrates’ drinking of the poison. His friends were gathered in his cell. They had used their influence to arrange for Socrates’ escape, but he refused to violate the laws of his city by taking advantage of their offer. “The hour of departure has arrived,” Socrates said fearlessly to his friends, “and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Only God knows which is better.”

It is clear from Plato’s early writings that he was a Confucian, for he truly revered his great teacher, Socrates.

The Chinese revere Confucius as the greatest teacher who ever lived. When he was asked about death (his came nine years after Socrates was born), Confucius was as indifferent to death as Socrates was, and as truthful about his own ignorance of life. “If we don’t know life,” Confucius responded, “how can we know death?”

Neither Confucius nor Socrates ever wrote down their teachings (nor did Jesus, for that matter), but the two men have been teaching two civilizations for two and a half millennia through the writings of their students privileged to be alive while they were. And though neither had any inkling of the other’s existence, Socrates and Confucius, the founders of the West and of the East, were alive and shared the earth for nearly a decade, 478 BC to 470 BC. Isn’t that something!

Tags:   Alexander the Great · Aristotle · China · Confucius · Greece · Plato · Socrates · St. Paul · the United StatesNo Comments