Defense Of Socrates Apology

Socrates Defense and Mission

In 399 bce, Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian jury for supposedly corrupting the youth’s morals and thought patterns. Socrates had spent his life as an Athenian citizen, fighting in the Peloponnesian wars and as he got older, practiced philosophy and critical questioning, teaching other Athenians free of charge. In Plato’s Apology, he records the speech Socrates made to the jury during his trial. Its title Apology in this case, reads the opposite as it would today; his speech is his defense, for he believes he has not done wrong.

To begin his defense Socrates explains to the jury that the men speaking against him, while they are quite persuasive, have not been honest and are simply spreading rumors and lies. While Socrates is being accused of corrupting the youth, he tells the jury of how these men began circulating these rumors by misleading the children. The children were repeatedly told that Socrates was not to be trusted, so as to cement this belief early while the children were not be old enough to question what is being told of them. The aristocrats knew that children would take everything authority said to them as fact.

These men would then try to imitate Socrates and examine other privileged Athenians with his concept of those “who think they know something, know little or nothing”. When the men are examined they then become angry with Socrates and begin to follow the premade convictions already circulating around, for they cannot come up with a real reason to be angry and do not want to prove the point that they do “know little or nothing” (page