Compare And Contrast Socrates And Louis Riel

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Ever since human civilization came into existence, people have been putting rules in place to determine who is behaving according to social norms and moral values and who is not. Because the majority of Western societies have historically been democratic, it makes sense that the public have a say in the enforcement of said rules. It is for this reason that the trial became a popular means of deciding upon punishment for those perceived to have broken the law, while also allowing them an opportunity to testify against their charges. Socrates underwent this process in 399 BC on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth of Athens , as did Louis Riel in 1885 on charges of treason for leading a Métis rebellion . Although they lived during vastly …show more content…

In spite of this, however, Socrates also uses two very obvious fallacies. Firstly, when addressing Meletus – who was among the individuals who accused him of impiety and corruption of the youth – Socrates misrepresents his argument to support his own position. He asks if Meletus is “not ashamed of [his] eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honours as possible, while [he does] not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of [his] soul.” However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Caring about wealth, reputation, and honours do not necessarily entail not caring about wisdom and truth. This is quite a clear example of a straw man fallacy. In addition, Socrates uses appeal to emotion to attempt to manipulate the audience into thinking they are the ones doing wrong. He states that the people of Athens “will acquire the reputation and the guilt, in the eyes of those who want to denigrate the city, of having killed Socrates, a wise man. ” It is clear that by saying this, Socrates’ intention was merely to guilt-trip the audience. In contrast, neither of these fallacies are present in Riel’s speech; in fact, upon reading the transcript of said speech, no clear

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