In an era such as ours, characterised by whirlwind changes, the question of education seems to have become both a marginal theme and an insurmountable mountain, constantly and insufficiently bypassed by partial school reforms which mortify teachers and pupils and the very process of knowledge.
With Socrate il soptavvissuto Anagoor enters a classroom in a school just like many others. It does so by following the pages of the novel by Antonio Scurati, Il sopravvissuto, assuming the point of view of those whose place is before a group of youngsters, charged with their education. This is no theatrical representation of the novel: a number of the most emblematic pages of the book intertwine with other stories, other words, other dimensions of time: in this case the final moments of Socrate’s life, surrounded by his disciples before being sentenced to death.
Between the hours preceding the execution of Socrates by order of the city, as told by Plato in the Phaedo, and the moment in which the student Vitaliano Caccia shoots dead the entire matriculation board, sparing only the history and philosophy teacher, as told with brutal clarity in Antonio Scurati’s novel, a veritable battle is waged against western thinking, from its origins to its inevitable and tragic historical outcomes. Thus, two eternal questions are raised: the question of sense, an important doubt presented to the teacher, and the very question of the position of the teacher with regards to knowledge and to their disciples.