Defense Of Socrates

After reading The Defense of Socrates, many may question the premises on which Socrates’s argument rests. However, I believe there is a more important matter to consider—one that lies not within his words, but within his rash deductive reasoning and its unstated conclusion.

The cornerstone of Socrates’s dashing defense is simple: one should value tr¬¬uth, wisdom, and self-worth over superficial gains and reputation. However, in making this case he also poses a potentially controversial claim: that the best life is one in which man ignores his reputation and superficial desires. While reputation and materialism are not the crux of Socrates’s argument—they are really just asides he brushes off—they are an aspect of it nonetheless. And, in more

Essentially, Socrates is saying the equivalence of the famous idiom, “You can't have your cake and eat it, too.” While this idiom might apply aptly to material goods, it does not transfer well into the realm of values, as it shuns any modicum of complexity. According to Socrates, you can’t follow truth and wisdom and care about reputation and materialism: they are incompatible values. There is no room for nuance. Caring about reputation means sacrificing the first premise. Socrates never even briefly speaks of circumstances that warrant compromise (that is, cases in which the first premise would fail to apply), such as helping someone without a logical reason to do so. Instead, Socrates falls on his strict adherence to the truth, logic, and reason. In repeatedly using this same resource as justification, he fails to acknowledge that men are fallible and sometimes logic cannot explain life’s events. Sometimes, one has to examine problems through a lens wider than the tight scope of

Someone might argue that Socrates did not directly say that he wants people to disregard their reputations. To that, I would counter that he comes extremely close to saying exactly that—one only has to look at the analogies he employs. Moreover, the recurring scorn he casts upon those who care about their reputation suggests that stressing over one’s reputation is ignoble. So yes, Socrates might not directly say that caring about reputation is terrible, but he certainly is not advocating for caring about one’s reputation. Another individual may comment that Socrates meant reputation, but only meaningless reputation. To this, I would counter that Socrates is not a foolish man (and based off the topics he philosophized, I doubt many could believe otherwise) —meaning that he almost certainly knew the conventional definition of reputation and was referring to said definition in his speech. Lastly, one may say that this critique is purposeless, as it does not really diminish Socrates’s main argument. I would argue that finding a flaw in others’ logic is a useful skill in itself, and that said flaw need not always be big enough to dismantle their argument. It is my hope that, in discussing rash reasoning that leads to overly broad conclusions, I have made my reader at least temporally more cognizant of this dangerous error.

Although I am critical of Socrates’s reasoning, I categorize it as a flaw, but not a fatal