25 Years of Socrates in the City

Something there is that does not love an anniversary. Let us not shrink from it: any stark reminder of the passage of time is at least a little discomfiting, reminding as it does of the sepulcher and grave speeding toward us. Or is that too much? But perhaps this is precisely why we mark  anniversaries— by celebrating them! Nonetheless, that a quarter century has passed since we have been doing Socrates in the City seems genuinely inconceivable. If not wholly preposterous. And yet, there it is. Calendars have no reason to lie. Though they do mutely mock us.

But why be glum? Shall we not celebrate? Do we not have reasons — implicit in the Socratic search for truth — to rejoice? Do we not talk of a Person whom we call Truth, who verily and in every meaningful sense quite overcame the grave? And is not our asking the Big Questions not meant to lead us, by turns and sometimes in fits and starts, to that happiest of happy conclusions? I would certainly aver that it is, and here do just that.

So let us look back and ask: how did it all begin?

It happened in the final months of another century. My wife Susanne and I — and the mewling infant that was our three-month-old daughter Annerose, who, incidentally put this evening together and now runs Socrates in the City, as further astonishing evidence of the passage of such a great epoch of time — had just moved to New York. My friend Bruce Halstead lost no time in asking whether my arrival in the city might cause me to be interested in leading a Manhattan Bible study for upscale “seekers” — as they have been curiously labeled. He would help me pull it all together. I happily assented. But what would it be like, exactly? And why would people not yet convinced of the historicity and validity of the biblical account wish to study such an antique and out-of-fashion book? Our conversations on this subject become more and more baroque.

Then one day I found myself in a vehicle in New England with the great writer and thinker Os Guinness, who graces us with his presence this evening. In the interests of truth I must admit lying brazenly about this episode with Os, claiming he and I were on choppers riding across the American West. In fact we were in the back seat of a car in Vermont. In any case, we had become friends and at some point fell to discussing my friend Bruce’s invitation. Of a sudden, Os brightly suggested that perhaps I should do something different from any “Bible study.” Perhaps I might create some sort of forum in which I simply invited my audiences to explore the Big Questions, with the idea of goading people toward thinking more deeply about the very things most sophisticated people are encouraged to avoid, about what I later came to call questions on “life, God, and other small topics.” Then he generously offered to be my guest in this endeavor, and that we might explore these questions together. How could I refuse?

But what should this forum be called? I remembered that the great philosophy professor and Christian apologist Peter Kreeft had often talked about Socrates as a pre-Christian model for pursuing truth, as someone who dared to ask the Big Questions. Kreeft’s love of C.S. Lewis and his writings on Lewis were also part of the equation, since I thought of Lewis as among the best examples of people who thought along similar lines. But Dr. Kreeft had written a book titled Socrates Meets Jesus, and that’s what really got me thinking.

And so “Socrates in the City” was born.

Over the years the variety and depth of our guests has been astonishing. I’m especially thrilled that some of the very best of these conversations have been captured in our brand new Socrates in the City book, titled Conversations on the Examined Life, which everyone attending this evening has just received. What a treasure lies therein!

In the book we have included my conversation with the feisty and brilliant Dame Alice von Hildebrand — my sole nonagenarian guest over the years — who, when I said how astonished I was to think that her husband, the anti-Nazi hero Dietrich von Hildebrand, was born in 1889, replied: “That’s nothing! My father-in-law was born in 1847!”

Another astonishing conversation was with Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke — who walked on the Moon! Yes, literally. We talked about that, and about his involvement in Apollo 11, too, and at the end of our conversation we talked about what happened to him after he came back down to Earth, literally and figuratively. And it is that final fifteen minutes of the conversation that end up being the most astonishing of all, as I hope you will read for yourself.

Another conversation in the book was the first of several Socrates conversations with my friend Dick Cavett — whose entire life is THE model non pareil of interviewing a vast array of personages in depth, and often with scintillating wit — in which we asked the question: “What’s the Price of Fame?” Anyone unfamiliar with the genius of Dick Cavett owes it to themselves to read that chapter. Prepare yourself to goggle at his myriad talents.

Yet another truly astonishing conversation was with North Korean defector and human rights activist Yeonmi Park, my youngest guest ever, who was in her twenties a year or so ago, and who graces us with her presence in the room this evening. A more harrowing story I have not heard, and you owe it to yourself to read it. It is a sobering story, but one that will embolden you to cherish your hard-fought freedoms, and to join the fight in keeping them.

Over the years we’ve had many top scientists as our guests at Socrates in the City, and I have several times interviewed the great Oxford mathematics don, Dr. John Lennox, whose conversations with me in the south of France five years ago are included in the book, as well. There is not a finer mind in Christendom and I am thrilled to be able to introduce him to you, if you didn’t already have the honor of knowing of him and his work.

And of course the book contains three long conversations I had in Oxford, England, with none other than C.S. Lewis’s secretary and literary executor, the great Walter Hooper. And we mustn’t forget to mention my conversations with the novelist Mark Helprin, who is surely the greatest living fiction writer in our language. All of these are conversations for the ages!

We should say that the fundamental philosophy behind what we do takes its lead from Socrates’ famous maxim that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If there is such a thing as truth, what could be better than asking honest questions as we make our way toward understanding that truth and all that it entails. So we are simply trying to do what Socrates did, who describe himself as “a midwife of ideas.” We are privileged to be attendants at such births, are we not?

Over these many years innumerable souls have approached me across this country and in other countries, too, saying that they had feasted on the videos of many of these conversations, and that they had been encouraged in their faith — or had been encouraged toward the faith. The idea that literally millions have viewed these videos is humbling and of course profoundly gratifying.

But as you surely know it’s because of the generosity of each of you that we are able to do what we do at Socrates in the City. I dare to think that we have only just begun, and that all we have done until now has been mere prelude to what we will do in the years ahead. Is there any reason that the whole world should know about the treasures of these conversations — and might themselves be encouraged in the faith — or toward the faith? Is there any reason not to think that what we are all doing here, in our humble way, might change the world and lead millions toward the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and toward the Author of all that is Good and True and Beautiful? Indeed any reason to think otherwise we must reject. It is our privilege to do what we do, and I hereby salute you in helping us along our way. God bless you.

Eric Metaxas
New York City
December 2024