For George Miller: good friend, mentor, and who used to remind me, “In the event you haven’t learn it thrice, you haven’t learn it.”
This essay will try and summarize Plato’s Apology and spotlight a number of the key factors within the dialogue. It’s one among my all-time favourite works of philosophy, and all my college students learn it out loud in school. For these seeking to navigate the waters of philosophy, I like to recommend it as a primary port of name.
Within the preface of Bettany Hughes’s glorious biography on Socrates entitled The Hemlock Cup, she shares an amusing anecdote. Upon embarking on the venture, a good friend of Hughes’s advised her the topic of her analysis was the outlet in a doughnut. In different phrases, the very best she may do was describe the doughnut. We have no idea a lot concerning the historic Socrates. Our principal sources are the biographer of antiquity, Xenophon, and Plato. Some main students are dismissive of Xenophon, which mainly leaves us with Plato.
The Apology is a piece by Plato. Nevertheless, it’s distinctive within the works of Plato attributable to its context. Within the Apology, Plato is kind of appearing as a court docket reporter or a journalist of types. The scene of this work is the trial of Socrates, and it options Socrates’s protection (apologia) in opposition to the spurious expenses introduced in opposition to him.
But, we are able to safely assume Plato was shut in his description of the proceedings, as a result of: (1) Plato knew Socrates; they had been pals; (2) Plato was a juror on the trial and was in attendance; (3) Plato was a reasonably vivid bulb and certain had an honest reminiscence; and (4) most of the 501 jurors who had been there that day would have learn the Apology when it got here out, and if Plato produced a fantastic account, it will have tarnished his popularity as a public mental.
So, for these causes, we are able to make a robust, inductive inference that, though that is Plato’s writing, he most likely at the least captured the flavour of the listening to, together with Socrates’s character. I additionally are inclined to consider, for what it’s value, that it’s peppered with verbatim wording that Socrates truly used — or tended to make use of.
Plato positioned Socrates in a lot of his dialogues as a personality, and supposedly we get a glimpse into Socrates’s character and method of working in what are thought of the early dialogues – which embody the Apology.
The Apology, as talked about, is the trial of the accused Socrates. The setting is a big, open-air courtyard. The trial’s 501 Athenian jurors — chosen by lot — are gathered across the sq.’s perimeter. There’s a water-clock to maintain time. The yr is 399 BC. Socrates has determined to forgo authorized illustration; all he has to do is communicate the reality.
Athens is in a bitter temper. First off, it simply misplaced an extended and nasty warfare with Sparta referred to as the Peloponnesian Conflict (431-404 BC), the latter of whom subjected the Athenians to overseas management within the type of a shopper regime known as the “30 Tyrants.” Athens additionally suffered a plague throughout the warfare. And now this eccentric previous man goes round embarrassing the very best and the brightest of Athenian society.
I say “eccentric,” as a result of by all accounts, for a begin, Socrates isn’t a lot to take a look at: his hair is unkempt; he wears the identical gown on a regular basis, and it has not seen the dry cleaners in an extended whereas; he doesn’t put on sneakers; he’s obtained a reasonably massive stomach; and a bulbous misshapen nostril. When one photos the Historical Greek excellent — younger, sun-tanned boys throwing the discus and reciting poetry — Socrates cuts throughout that excellent.
It’s identified by Socrates early within the Apology (starting at 21a), his good and longtime good friend Chaerephon consulted the Oracle at Delphi, on the temple constructed to Apollo. The oracle was the god Apollo, who it was believed lived within the mountain, talking by an middleman referred to as the Pythia.
The Pythia was a priestess who acquired the phrase of Apollo; it has been concluded that the Pythia positioned her chair over a crack within the flooring of the temple. And this crack vented hydrocarbon gasoline, which the Pythia was inhaling. Thus, the Pythia was normally smashed when she delivered the phrase of Apollo. Generally, a priest was readily available to interpret her intoxicated gibberish — and this was Apollo primarily talking to you. Anybody may go to the oracle: politicians, farmers, newlyweds — anyone.
The Dying of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David, 1787. Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, New York. Supply: Wikimedia.
Chaerephon, throughout his go to, requested if there was anybody in Athens wiser than Socrates. Chaerephon was notified that Socrates was certainly the wisest man in all of Athens. The elites in Athens weren’t amused. Athens felt a particular bond with Apollo, and donated a good amount of money to his temple. This Socrates enterprise added insult to damage — and one other straw to the camel’s again.
Socrates at first is puzzled:
“No matter does the god [Apollo] imply? What’s his riddle? I’m very acutely aware that I’m not smart in any respect; what then does he imply by saying that I’m the wisest?” (21b)
So, Socrates units to in search of out wiser people: politicians, poets, writers, craftsmen. However, he can not discover any which can be actually smart — knowledgable, certain, however not smart. The people who find themselves deemed smart and sensible, Socrates finds missing:
“In my investigation [doing philosophy in the marketplace] within the service of the god I’ve discovered that those that had the very best popularity had been practically essentially the most poor, whereas those that had been considered inferior had been extra knowledgable” (22a)
Due to this fact, Socrates concludes that Apollo has judged him the wisest in all of Athens, as a result of, whereas the so-called “wisest” consider they’re smart, he, Socrates, doesn’t. So, this should make him the wisest: as a result of he is aware of that he doesn’t know.
Socrates subsequently lived out the remainder of his days doing philosophy, irritating shopkeepers within the market, or agora, and questioning the so-called sensible individuals in the event that they knew what, for instance, justice or magnificence was. (They didn’t.)
Socrates is doing philosophy, and his interlocutors are themselves sophists or had been educated by sophists. Sophists had been itinerant students who would train the kids of the well-heeled rhetoric and public talking, how you can use huge phrases and outwit their opponents. They primarily taught careerism. So, after they face off with Socrates, who’s analytical and logically rigorous, they’re at a loss. They’re uneducated. They appear like dolts. Socrates is embarrassing them together with puncturing the parable of how sensible they’re. This bizarre previous man within the soiled gown goes to make Athens’ finest and brightest look silly? And after a army defeat and a plague and that nonsense from Apollo? He’s obtained to go.
Socrates is arrested, introduced up on expenses, and is wanting down the barrel of capital punishment. Plato is there. Many there know Socrates.
As Socrates is fast to level out:
Because of this investigation, males of Athens [members of the jury], I acquired a lot unpopularity… (22e-23a)
This unpopularity led to what we are able to name the “previous expenses.” As Socrates cultivated this unpopularity, his fellow Athenians started making accusations. The “slanders” go one thing like this:
“Socrates is responsible of wrongdoing in that he busies himself learning issues within the sky and under the earth; he makes the more serious into the stronger argument.” (19b)
The assertion is that Socrates speaks about topics he doesn’t perceive and that he twists logic and arguments right into a pretzel. He’s mainly a know-it-all and a charlatan.
However, there are the “new expenses” he now has to cope with, expenses leveled at him by his accusers: Anytus (a politician), Meletus (a poet), and Lycon (an orator).
Socrates cites the deposition:
“Socrates is responsible of corrupting the younger and of not believing within the gods in whom town believes.” (24b)
So, Socrates is filling the heads of Athens’ youth with fancy notions, in the identical method that universities in the present day indoctrinate their college students to suppose like liberals and develop into homosexual.
The second cost is mainly a heresy cost. The man who has devoted the remainder of his life to working within the service of Apollo in some way doesn’t consider within the gods. Socrates handily discusses these absurdities immediately with Meletus (24d-27d).
It’s essential to remember that all through the Apology, Socrates is on the job. He’s doing what he did within the agora. And he reminds his accusers and the jury that it’s to his benefit “to be as I’m.” (22e) His accusers are usually not impressed. Is Socrates making a joke of the Athenian justice system?
Nothing of the kind—his accusers would disagree. He intends on:
… persuading each younger and previous amongst you to not care in your physique and your wealth as opposed to or as strongly as for the very best situation of your soul. As I say to you: Wealth doesn’t result in excellence, however excellence makes wealth and all the pieces else good for males, each individually and collectively (30a-b)
Socrates isn’t apologizing. Not even shut. In quite a few cases, he refers to himself as “no higher blessing for town” (30a), and “god’s present to you.” (30e) One can simply image the accusers’ faces and doubtless quite a lot of faces within the jury.
Socrates adopts the mantle of the “gadfly.” (30e) He’s the big fly that bites the horse and wakes it up. That is what Socrates is doing for Athens. He’s rousing town from its “doze.” (31a) He’s waking it up, educating it, encouraging it to suppose extra critically — to do philosophy.
Socrates lets his accuser know that this trial is a sham. At one level (33d-34a), Socrates explicitly names quite a few individuals within the jury. He makes the purpose that if what his accusers are saying is true, then he will need to have performed these households hurt. If he was pouring poison within the ears of all these younger boys for all these years, he will need to have performed some harm. Through which case, members of the jury needs to be lined up, able to testify as to this harm. Nevertheless, all they hear is crickets. Nobody is coming as much as testify:
“… they know Meletus is mendacity and that I’m telling the reality.” (34b)
As for his emotions concerning the Athenian justice system, he takes the place that it’s the court docket that has made a mockery of itself. Socrates factors out to the jury and his accusers that he is not going to interact in attraction to pity (34b-35c). He is not going to carry out his spouse and youngsters and inform a story of woe. He is not going to interact in these “pitiful dramatics.” (35b)
Socrates is aware of he may most likely get himself out of this; he want solely interact in a little bit of theater, and they might most likely let him off with a warning. However, no. This sort of habits has nothing to do with justice; and he has seen it on this court docket earlier than. No, he’s going to play it straight — proper to the bitter finish. He thinks too extremely of the Athenian justice system to have his accusers make “town a laughingstock.” (35b)
The jury votes, and the vote involves roughly 220 to 280 (35d-e). It was shut. Socrates feels vindicated:
As it’s, a change of solely thirty votes would have acquitted me. I believe myself that I’ve been cleared of Meletus’ expenses. (36a)
For my cash, the pièce de résistance of the Apology is 36d-37a. On this passage, Socrates decides what his punishment needs to be:
What do I deserve for being such a person? Some good, males of Athens, if I need to actually make an evaluation based on my deserts, and one thing appropriate. What’s appropriate for a poor benefactor who wants leisure to exhort you? Nothing is extra appropriate, gents, than for such a person to be fed within the Prytaneum, rather more appropriate for him than for any one among you who has gained a victory at Olympia with a pair or a crew of horses. The Olympian victor makes you suppose your self glad; I make you be glad. Apart from, he doesn’t want meals, however I do. So if I need to make a simply evaluation of what I deserve, I assess it as this: free meals within the Prytaneum. (36d-37a)
Sure, you learn that proper. Socrates is saying that he ought to dwell at public expense and take his meals within the Justice of the Peace’s corridor the place Olympian celebrities had been fêted. In different phrases, free meals. Are you able to think about his accusers’ faces now?
He’s making one other essential level: we dwell in a extremely distracted tradition. I remind my college students that Socrates is speaking to you as properly; there’s a cause we’re studying this 2,500 years later. It reaches throughout the centuries. These themes are common. A distracted tradition or society is in peril of itself. It’s an uneducated society, which may be manipulated by energy—very simply. An informed society has extra management. It’s in possession of the state. A distracted society is on the mercy of the whims of these in energy. A distracted society is weak.
Socrates poses a menace. For this reason he’s on trial within the first place. This was by no means going to finish properly. And it doesn’t. The jury sentences Socrates to demise. He doesn’t care. He goes to his grave, head held excessive. The jury goes to dwell out their lives in disgrace.
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Gregory Harms is the creator of No Politics, No Faith? How America’s Code of Conduct Conceals Our Unity.
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