Socrates and His Escape

Socrates and His Escape

Each one of us has been accused of some kind of act at some point in our lives. Yet those accusations have been terribly mistaken and sometimes there is so little that a person can do to fix that. In this case we are talking about the wonderful philosophist Socrates, a person of many beliefs and ideas. He was a man who dearly believed in justice and doing justice to others. We will examine Socrates' way of thinking and his rationality towards a healthy and logical mind. After reading the Meno, Apology, and Crito I have come to a conclusion that Socrates made the right decision by rejecting Crito's offer of escape and the reasoning behind that will be explained by providing parts of the dialogues and the ideas behind them.

About the year of 470 B.C, a man was born in Athens and his name was Socrates. He was a son of a working sculptor and a midwife. Socrates lived in the greatest and most exciting period of his country's history, when Athens developed from a mere city-state to be the head of an empire. He studied problems of Physics, Biology, and other sciences, and learned the art of making the worse argument appear the better. He could easily be involved in public decisions but he did not enjoy politics so he stuck to his interests and life that consisted the qualities of a thinker. He would constantly be thinking about the "ordinary man" and the interests of an "ordinary man". He had many companions, men of all ages and from all parts of the Greek world. This already tells us that he is very pre-occupied with how other people's minds worked and if he could figure out how to teach them rational thinking. Easily most of his ideas would come from talking to other people

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...stion he was going to be put

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to death and this was the path he chose. He once stated that " If an action is unjust, it should be avoided even if it causes some undesirable side effects. " The reason I refer to this quote is because I think Socrates was trying to say that he must not attempt an escape although an execution was already awaiting for him.

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Bibliography:

References:

Smith, D. N., & Brickhouse C. T. (1989). Socrates On Trial. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Livingstone, R. W. (1979) Portrait of Socrates. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press

Internet:

Socrates/Crito ( 1998, February 18)

Notes/phil271 ( 1997, March )