The great figure of Socrates (you’ll get no irony from me on this point) is known largely for one thing. In philosophy he is famous for his attitude to wisdom, his claim to have only that wisdom that allowed him to see that he lacked wisdom. 

But about Socrates someone has surely made the point that his legendary worry about deep ignorance is a nice luxury, but one that society can ill afford. Maybe a jobless and marginal figure like Socrates could go around proclaiming that he knew nothing important that he was willing to teach (and then win a reputation for this) but the rest of us have decisions to make.

Socrates becomes the community fool – in a way, our appointed conscience regarding wisdom, booted out of the way while we get on with life. His brand of philosophy is useful for that, which is to say, practically useless. We celebrate philosophy and … this is our way of forgetting about it.

But if that was a way to come to terms with Socrates, notice that this barefoot voice of conscience was finally silenced. Token elimination wasn’t enough. The particular doubts that Socrates expressed – that we did not know the things that we claimed were most important (what justice is; what is truly evil, most to be feared; what life is for; what it even means to know) – all of these charges, which we happily ignored, were nevertheless intolerable.

And why this might have been is easy to see. When Socrates was charged with corrupting youth, perhaps the idea was that he was poisoning young minds with the thought that the people in charge did not really know what they were doing. Socrates was poking a particularly sharp stick into the social fabric.

Anyway, here is the point I would like to make. There was a Socrates before Socrates, so why does Socrates get all the credit?

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Centuries before Socrates there was a figure who reached the same conclusion as Socrates, but the implication was strikingly different, because this figure who doubted his own wisdom did not have the luxury of wandering around asking questions. He was on the throne.

Solomon (at the opposite pole on the spectrum of power) has a nation to run, life and death decisions to make – and so is in no position to pretend that he has nothing to teach because everything he does is visible to others and unfailingly teaches. That is, he does what he does, judges as he judges, because that is the thing that he thinks should be done (this is teaching).

Douglas Wilson wrote just this week about Solomon’s doubt (and got me thinking about this):

“When the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and told him to ask for whatever he would have, Solomon’s answer pleased the Lord (1 Kings 3:10). So what did Solomon ask for? He said first that he was ‘but a little child’ (1 Kings 3:7), and so what deficiency did he think needed to be corrected? ‘Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people’ (1 Kings 3:10).”

Solomon, who was the supreme judge over his people, and would decide their guilt and determine their fate in all kinds of other ways, is expressing the view that he was not fit to govern people, because he does not know how to “discern between good and bad.” The reason that Solomon gets no credit for this Socratic insight is that readers of the Old Testament ignore the claim made here that, when later made by Socrates, became legendary. They appear not to believe that Solomon is serious about possessing no more wisdom than the wisdom that pleases God: Solomon does not know how to judge. (The whole thing is a dream, remember.)

Attentive readers read right past dreaming Solomon (in effect, erasing his words) and think, ‘But of course Solomon does have wisdom and wisdom in plenty, because he is the Old Testament wise man!’ 

But if you turn Solomon’s dreamed confession of ignorance into some kind of pretend ignorance, the whole point at issue here is lost. The problem is how to govern, how to rule, what to do, what to teach.

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Can a person who lacks wisdom – truly does not know whether what he thinks is good is good – get wisdom?

“Get wisdom; get insight;….” (Proverbs 4:5 ESV)

The Old Testament scriptures say that he can. A way is in fact proposed in those scriptures, which Solomon, for a time at least, follows; and because he follows that way (and so long as he does) he judges well.

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” (Proverbs 4:7 ESV)

This is the very Socratic insight: you cannot begin until you are aware that you need … to begin. You are at “child” level, says Solomon.

Whatever you may think of your own power to “discern between good and bad,” your judgement must be assessed. Something has to be done to see whether you are dropping the good and the bad into the right baskets; that is, your judging of what is good and what is bad must be compared to the way God judges good and bad.

Is your way, as you may think, good enough (because ‘people under constant pressure to act don’t have the luxury of entertaining serious doubt’)? It might not be good at all when we see God’s ‘Bad’ basket set next to yours: look at what God has dropped into His. (I expect we will see there all your arguments for the practical irrelevance of doubt. There they are, sitting right next to your, in effect, super confidence.)

Any human being who thinks that he does not need to, as Socrates put it, “measure” his discernment by the yardstick of true discernment (and what is that yardstick, Socrates asks), anyone who counts himself exempt from this because he has internalized the divine mind, is not wise but insane. And the need to make this comparison is not in any way dispelled by the problem that is looming here: where can we look at God’s baskets?

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What Solomon’s Socratic doubt manifest itself as was a kind of crisis of need, a heightened consciousness of the need for guidance, as he was helpless. Solomon might have been quite relaxed in this crisis; I am not suggesting that we see traces of his panic in the texts: the panic is philosophical.

Sadly, it is all too easy to read this out of the actual text, to read the text as if it said:

• Solomon doubted his powers, asking God for wisdom;
• then God gave it to him (whump) and Solomon had wisdom.

“‘Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?’

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you’.” (1 Kings 3:9–12 ESV)

This is the Socratic story all over again, except Socrates has not yet been born. God (like the Oracle at Delphi) proclaims this ignorant ‘child’ the wisest of all people.

But no, you say, the stories are different: here God gives Solomon the wisdom he did not have, whereas the oracle could give nothing, merely spoke the truth. But if the oracle spoke the truth (it was true that Socrates was wise) then it was true that he already had “a wise and discerning mind,” since that is wisdom.

It is indeed clear from the text that God gave Solomon wisdom, but it is not clear what the nature of the gift was, or when the gift was given. It is perfectly clear that it allowed Solomon to judge well, but what was it that had that effect?

I am saying that it was the need of the child who knew he was a child – it was the Socratic eros noted in the Symposium: the awareness of the lack, Solomon’s consciousness that he was without this judgement. As per the theme of this blog: there is no better way to be open to light than to notice how dark it is.

Did this keen sense of disability remain after the extraordinary wish granted by God in Solomon’s dream? That it remained may be the gift. The gift of the awareness that on the Hebrew throne sat a child, but a child who had the wisdom not to rule as a child but to be co-regent with the ruler who knew: to turn, therefore, to God and become as familiar with God’s ways, God’s acts, God’s categories, and thus God’s judgement as he could.

In philosophy Socrates is famous for the claim to have only that wisdom that allowed him to see that he lacked wisdom. Before Socrates we have a written expression of this same insight, and more guidance than is offered by Plato (the guidance of not just an individual but a people’s witness) as to what must follow, and testimony to what occurs when a person granted the power “of a wise and discerning mind” ceases to pay attention to the “measure” that his wisdom once made him cling to.