Socrates Virtue

Knowledge is the key to life, as some might say. After all, few people do not get accepted to Harvard College or operate a fruitful business or attain their life goal of ultimately retiring if they do not have some level of knowledge. Yet what does knowledge truly gain us? Is it more just a stepping stone to get to where we want to be, such as getting accepted into Harvard or running a fruitful business or getting to retire? Socrates would say knowledge is goodness, and, when paired with virtue, is necessary for a happy life. If our ultimate goal is be happy, even above circumstance and condition, we have to choose to pursue virtues, like piety, courage, love, and justice. Happiness requires a thorough understanding of these intangible necessities,

The enemy to his good news, as Socrates is well aware, are the material gains people chase after rather than the parts of life that truly matter. These parts—the virtues like piety and justice—are both the stones Socrates’ accusers use against him as well as the supports of his own defense argument. Perhaps the virtue that seems most pertinent to Socrates’ story is justice, in that the convictions brought against him in Plato’s Apology are anything but just. The trial for his life is based on convictions for corrupting youth with his teachings and not believing in the gods of Athens. Socrates is swift to defend himself, not to preserve his life but to preserve justice. Convicting a man for crimes he has not committed would, indeed, be injustice. Yet his defense is not enough to convince his judges, as the result of his trial is still death. Most interesting about Socrates’ trial lies in his response to the verdict ruling the death penalty. Rather than plead for his life as some would, he practically mocks it by noting that his true charges are in

In the case of his trial, his courage over death is perhaps most profound. To preface his reaction in Crito, he first acknowledges the possibility of his death in Apology. After he has been given the verdict, he makes the bold claim that he “would much rather die after this kind of defense than live making the other” and that “neither [he] nor any other man should, on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost” (Apology, 42). Socrates clearly expresses a lack of fear in the face of death, even after receiving the inevitability of it. While most people would have rejected their values to preserve their life, his values give him the peace to surrender his. By the point he reaches the final hours of his life in a jail cell in Crito, Socrates no longer even speaks of death as a matter of personal concern but now addresses it as a matter of the state and the implications of it should he evade it. Towards the end of his conversation with his friend, Socrates speaks for the city when he says that he “will not think it better or more just or more pious here, nor will any one of [his] friends, nor will it be better for [him] when [he arrives] yonder” (57). Socrates acknowledges that nothing will benefit from his escape, and that he would be rejecting goodness by doing so anyway. His knowledge allows him to abide his courage, which in turn prevents him