Jr.×Socrates

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Martin Luther King Jr. and Socrates. They take up On a love affair history doesn't know about.
2. 00:10
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   You know, Socrates, there's a question that's been on my mind since I learned about you in seminary. The historians tell us about your trial, your dialogues, your death. But they say almost nothing about what it was like when you went home at night. When you closed the door. When you were just a man.
3. 00:26
   Socratesshare moment

   Ah, but King, when you say they tell us 'almost nothing,' you've already admitted they tell us something. What is it they do tell us? And more importantly, why do you assume that what happens when a door closes is more true than what happens when it opens?
4. 00:42
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   I'm talking about Xanthippe. Your wife. The woman history has turned into a joke, a shrew, a footnote. But she lived with you for decades. She bore your children. She was there.
5. 00:54
   Socratesshare moment

   You speak as though 'being there' is self-explanatory. Was she there when I spoke in the agora? When I questioned Euthyphro about piety? If she was in the house and I was in the street, were we together or apart?
6. 01:08
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   Don't do that. Don't hide behind a question. I'm asking you about love. Did you love her?
7. 01:14
   Socratesshare moment

   And I'm asking you what you mean by love. Because I notice you speak of it as though everyone at this table knows what the word points to. Do you mean the love you speak of in your speeches? The agape that embraces even the oppressor? Or do you mean something else entirely?
8. 01:33
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   I mean the love between a man and a woman. The kind that shares a bed and a table and a whole life. The kind that doesn't make it into the public record but makes the public record possible.
9. 01:44
   Socratesshare moment

   Then let me ask you this. You were away from home often, yes? Traveling, organizing, speaking, sitting in jail cells. When you were in those cells, was Coretta less your wife than when you sat beside her at dinner?
10. 01:59
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's different. She knew what I was fighting for. She believed in the cause. We had an understanding.
11. 02:04
    Socratesshare moment

    An understanding. How interesting. So love, then, requires mutual comprehension of purpose? If one partner fails to understand the other's calling, can love exist?
12. 02:17
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I think love requires respect. It requires seeing the other person as fully human, as equal in dignity. And I think history has robbed Xanthippe of that respect. They've made her into a caricature. The nagging wife who dumped water on the philosopher's head.
13. 02:33
    Socratesshare moment

    She did dump water on my head. That part is true. Though it was a hot day and I'd been talking for hours. But tell me, King, why do you assume that story is an insult to her? Perhaps it's the most honest thing ever recorded about our marriage.
14. 02:51
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Because it makes her look petty. It makes her look like she couldn't appreciate your work.
15. 02:56
    Socratesshare moment

    Or it makes her look like someone who knew me well enough to know when I was being insufferable. Who else had that intimacy? My students hung on every word. My rivals wanted me dead. But Xanthippe? She had the authority to pour water on a philosopher's head precisely because she loved me enough to see me clearly.
16. 03:16
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's a generous reading. But did you see her clearly? Did you ask her about her dreams? Did you come home and listen to what she'd been thinking about all day while you were out questioning the youth of Athens?
17. 03:28
    Socratesshare moment

    I don't know. Did you ask Coretta what she dreamed about before she fell asleep? Or did you assume that because she stood beside you on platforms and smiled for cameras, you knew her inner life?
18. 03:41
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's not fair.
19. 03:42
    Socratesshare moment

    Fairness is a diversion. I'm trying to understand what you're really asking me. You want to know if I loved Xanthippe. But I think what you're actually asking is whether it's possible to love someone and still fail them. Whether devotion to a cause can coexist with devotion to a person.
20. 04:02
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Yes. That's exactly what I'm asking.
21. 04:05
    Socratesshare moment

    Then I'll tell you what I know. I know that when the jury condemned me, I asked them to care for my sons. Not to educate them in my method, but just to care for them. I know that Xanthippe came to the prison, and I sent her away because I didn't want her to see me die. I told Crito it was for her sake. Perhaps it was for mine.
22. 04:28
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You sent her away.
23. 04:29
    Socratesshare moment

    I did. Was that love or cowardice? You tell me. You're the one who preaches about love.
24. 04:36
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I think it might have been both. I think we can fail the people we love even as we're trying to protect them. I think we can wound them with our nobility.
25. 04:44
    Socratesshare moment

    Go on.
26. 04:45
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Coretta told me once that she felt like she was married to a movement more than a man. She said it kindly, you understand. She wasn't complaining. But I heard what she wasn't saying. That there were nights when I was there in body but absent in spirit. That the cause asked everything and left crumbs for the table at home.
27. 05:04
    Socratesshare moment

    And what did you say to her?
28. 05:05
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I told her she was right. I told her I didn't know how to be both the man the movement needed and the man she needed. I told her I was trying.
29. 05:13
    Socratesshare moment

    That's more honesty than most philosophers manage. Did it help?
30. 05:18
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I don't know. Maybe love isn't about helping. Maybe it's about staying in the room even when you don't have answers.
31. 05:24
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you sent her to that room alone, many nights. As I sent Xanthippe home from the prison. We both chose something over someone. Or do you disagree?
32. 05:36
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    No, I don't disagree. But I wonder if that's the whole truth. Because Xanthippe chose you, too. She could have left. She could have divorced you, by whatever means your culture allowed. She stayed. That says something.
33. 05:49
    Socratesshare moment

    Or it says that women in Athens had few choices. You can't deduce love from constraint.
34. 05:55
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    But you can't deduce its absence, either. And here's what I believe, Socrates. I believe that history doesn't know about your love affair because it wasn't looking. Because the men who wrote your story down cared about your ideas, not your marriage. They cared about the trial, not the morning you woke up beside her and decided to keep asking questions even though it might kill you.
35. 06:17
    Socratesshare moment

    You're claiming that the love was there but unrecorded. That's possible. But isn't it equally possible that what we call a love affair is itself a story we tell, after the fact, to make sense of two people sharing a life? Maybe Xanthippe and I were just two people in proximity, doing what was expected, occasionally annoying each other, occasionally not.
36. 06:43
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I don't believe that. I can't believe that. Because if that's all it was, then what are we doing? What is any of this for?
37. 06:50
    Socratesshare moment

    Ah. Now we've arrived somewhere. You need it to be more than proximity. You need love to be real and deep and world-sustaining. Because if it isn't, then the sacrifices you made, the nights Coretta spent alone, the danger you put your family in, it all collapses into mere selfishness.
38. 07:11
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Yes.
39. 07:12
    Socratesshare moment

    Then I'll tell you what I think, though I'm usually more comfortable with questions. I think that on my last day, when I drank the hemlock and my legs grew cold and my friends wept, I thought about her. Not about the forms, not about the immortal soul. Her. I thought about the first time she laughed at something I said. I thought about her hand on my shoulder when our first son was born. I thought about the fact that she would wake up the next morning in a world without me and have to explain it to our children.
40. 07:48
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Did you tell her that? Before you sent her away?
41. 07:51
    Socratesshare moment

    No. I told her to be strong. I told her the soul is immortal. I told her everything except what I felt.
42. 07:59
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Why?
43. 08:00
    Socratesshare moment

    Because I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop. I was afraid I'd beg her to help me escape. I was afraid I'd choose her over the truth I'd spent my life pursuing. So I sent her home. I chose philosophy.
44. 08:16
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    And do you think that was the right choice?
45. 08:18
    Socratesshare moment

    I don't know. That's the most honest answer I've ever given. I don't know.
46. 08:23
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    History doesn't know about your love affair, Socrates, but I think I'm starting to. It was real. It was complicated. It was probably never enough, for either of you. And it mattered more than the dialogues will ever say.
47. 08:37
    Socratesshare moment

    And yours? With Coretta?
48. 08:39
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    The same. Exactly the same. We loved each other in the margins of history. In the moments too small for monuments. And maybe that's where all real love lives. In the spaces the record-keepers ignore.
49. 08:53
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps the historians did know about it, after all. They just didn't know how to write it down. Love doesn't survive in arguments or speeches. It survives in silence. In what gets sent away. In what endures despite everything.
50. 09:11
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You know, that's the closest thing to an answer I've ever heard from you.
51. 09:14
    Socratesshare moment

    Don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to protect.