How To Be An Agnostic
good or even having acted on conscience. It is about being
transformed so as to perceive the good, the beautiful and the
true. The best judge will see a life naked and in its entirety. The
pictures of Socrates serenely drinking the hemlock that artists
have produced down the centuries, can be thought of as reach-
ing back to this aspect of life in the Academy. The iconography
represents the culmination of its way of life as well as a celebra-
tion of Socrates.
Silence may have featured in the academician’s portfolio
too. Silence was probably a state to which the Pythagoreans
aspired – contemplation of the ‘music of the spheres’ propelling
the individual towards a ‘harmonious silence’. And Socrates is
depicted in silence at various points in the dialogues, if often
rather oddly and abruptly – his suddenly standing still, without
speaking, for so long that crowds formed around him. More
spiritually, he explains in the Phaedo, the philosopher’s aim is
the contemplation of divine things that are beyond opinion,
which is to say beyond the grasp of human words. As he is
dying he commends his followers to silence, since it is in silence
that someone has the best chance of discerning the things that
are of heaven.
A question that comes to mind is the extent to which Plato’s
philosophy school was like a religious institution such as a mon-
astery. The comparison is good, but only in part. Although Plato
dedicated a statue of the Muses in the grove that formed part of
the site, and his successors added other devotional objects, the
Academy did not exist to worship gods like a church, or per-
petuate a cult; it aimed at the transformation of the individual
and the development of a philosophical life. But the statues did
remind individuals that there was more at play in their lives
than their own individual wellbeing. So, as a disciplined form of
life, a monastery and the Academy were similar. For one thing,
given that the school was full of disagreements that may easily
have led to permanent factions and splits, there must have been
a very powerful sense of common commitment to its ideals to
hold people together. To attend the Academy was to be in love