The Post-Socratic Method (for Rob Hull)
by Doug Van Gundy
those you love most will fade and it’s only you changing “Salt Water” – Rob Hull
2,400 years ago, Socrates was arrested, tried, convicted and poisoned for corrupting the minds of the youth by teaching them logic and moral philosophy. How things have changed. Today, he would have been granted tenure. And yet, some things are unchanging. In the days and weeks and years after his death, friends and former students of Socrates would fall into solemn silence when they walked past a place where the great man had taught, or burst into peals of laughter recounting some beloved story of his cleverness or idiosyncrasy, or suddenly recall his generosity when they accidentally stepped into the negative space of their own loss. Socrates may have believed all philosophy was a preparation for death, but that didn’t keep him from leaving a man-shaped hole in the hearts and lives of those who loved and respected him, a hole they tried to fill with stories and writing, contemplation and discourse, argument and tears and a rededication to a rigorous questioning of the world, none of which, of course, could replace the man, but nevertheless made them feel a little better in the long days when the absence of Socrates must have been visible everywhere. How much they still have to teach us, those named and nameless Athenians,of how to handle grief.
This was written by Doug Van Gundy, and read at the memorial service for Rob Hull in Feburary, 2019.