Socrates is at the age of seventy and appearing in a law court for the first time. For the people of Socrates time is accusing Socrates, for miss leading the youth corrupting them and boasting about being wise, causing him to become very unpopular. Socrates says to the jury I am going to speak the whole truth, for it is me by myself that I have to defend. He says my accusers are many and I don’t know them, they say, “you should be careful not be deceived by an accomplished speaker like me” (Cohen, Curd, & Reeve, 2000). The accuser goes on to say that Socrates is accomplished speaker; Socrates starts to praise them, because their lies are so good well put together, that Socrates himself is almost convinced but then he says that they do not speak the truth.
Socrates says he has two kinds of accusers, those who just started accusing him and the old ones. Socrates finds himself in a hard place, because when he is telling the jury the story of why he is being accused he finds it very difficult to make a defense for himself. Socrates asks to hear the charges against him, Meletus says Socrates is guilty of boasting about being more knowledge than the rest studying things that no man dares to study; like the earth and what’s under the earth. Socrates says I never said such things if someone has witnessed to hearing me say so then let him come and speak. Socrates states that none of these charges are true.
Socrates proceeds to explain why he is being accused, his longtime childhood friend Chairephon also a friend to many of the accusers, who is now dead. Went to Delphi the god of wisdom, it was Chairephon who asked Delphi is there any man wiser than Socrates. The god Delphi answered nobody was wiser. Socrates thought surely this must be so...
... middle of paper ...
...ise Socrates, that the people vote against him. Socrates was a teacher of knowledge; he didn’t do it to gain wealth. Socrates is clearly now asking what he has done to deserve this. So the jury votes again the punishment is death.
Socrates says I’m not being put to death because of my lack of defense, but my lack of boldness. I think at this point Socrates is trying to be humble because he is seventy years old already close to his death and they are condemning him to death, for what nothing. Socrates prophesies that vengeance will come to you as soon as he is dead. In the end, Socrates is not hurt, he is glad to die because trouble is coming to the city of Athens. He is humbled up to the last moment of his life.
Reference
Cohen, S. M., Curd, P., & Reeve, C. D. (2000). Readings in ancient Greek philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett.
Throughout all the years, he never could find anyone as wise as himself, and all he did was make enemies searching. These enemies are now his accusers, and they accuse him of spreading evil doctrines, corrupting the youth, and not believing in the Gods. Throughout the speech, Socrates continues to shoot down every accuser and it is evident that he has done no wrong. Eventually, one of his accusers states that he must be doing something strange and that he wouldnt be that famous if he were like other men. Socrates did not live a very public life unlike most people at that time.
Plato, when leading up to identify the first of Socrates’ charges, begins by stating such charges stemmed from the belief that Socrates was being condemned for being a “wise man”. Plato seems to rant on about Socrates’ accusers being “circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods.” Plato states (Plato). Continuing, he
In fact, it’s I who can call what I think is a sufficient witness that I’m telling the truth, my poverty.” (Plato 661) Socrates also states “if I really do corrupt the young or have corrupted them in the past, surely if any of them had recognized when they became older that I’d given them bad advice at some point in their youth, they’d now have come forward themselves to accuse me and seek redress. Or else, if they weren’t willing to come themselves, some of their family members…would remember it now and seek redress.” (Plato 663) There was no one in the audience who stepped forward to speak on behalf of his accusers. Socrates consistently proved by words, how the accusations against him were false. In the end, he was accused of all of these things and put to death. This goes to show how much they truly hated Socrates and that no matter what they were told, it wouldn’t have mattered, they would have found a way to punish him in the
Socrates is faced with a death sentence after getting accused of devaluing the Athens religion through his practice of philosophy. Most people will feel outraged and betrayed, but not Socrates. He accepts his punishment and takes it on as faith.
Socrates was not guilty as charged; he had done nothing wrong, as seen in the Apology. Not even a priest could tell Socrates what he had done wrong religiously, Euthyphro wasn’t even able to give Socrates a precise definition of piety. It is then questioned by Crito why Socrates would remain to face a penalty for a crime he did not commit. In the Crito, it is explained why, although innocent, Socrates must accept the penalties his peers have set upon him. It is his peers that will interpret and enforce the laws, not the law which will enforce it. Even if the enforcers don’t deserve attention and respect because they have no real knowledge to the situation, Socrates had put himself under their judgment by going to the trial. Therefore, Socrates must respect the decisions made by the masses because the decisions are made to represent the laws, which demand each citizen’s respect.
Socrates starts by speaking of his first accusers. He speaks of the men that they talked to about his impiety and says that those that they persuaded in that Socrates is impious, that they themselves do not believe in gods (18c2). He tells the court of how long they have been accusing him of impiety. He states that they spoke to others when they were at an impressionable age (18c5). These two reasons alone should have been good enough to refute the first accusers of how they were wrong about him but Socrates went on. He leaves the first accusers alone because since they accused him a long time ago it was not relevant in the current case and began to refute the second accusers. Socrates vindicates his innocence by stating that the many have heard what he has taught in public and that many of those that he taught were present in the court that day.
The Apology is Socrates' defense at his trial. As the dialogue begins, Socrates notes that his accusers have cautioned the jury against Socrates' eloquence, according to Socrates, the difference between him and his accusers is that Socrates speaks the truth. Socrates distinguished two groups of accusers: the earlier and the later accusers. The earlier group is the hardest to defend against, since they do not appear in court. He is all so accused of being a Sophist: that he is a teacher and takes money for his teaching. He attempts to explain why he has attracted such a reputation. The oracle was asked if anyone was wiser than Socrates was. The answer was no, there was no man wiser. Socrates cannot believe this oracle, so he sets out to disprove it by finding someone who is wiser. He goes to a politician, who is thought wise by him self and others. Socrates does not think this man to be wise and tells him so. As a consequence, the politician hated Socrates, as did others who heard the questioning. "I am better off, because while he knows nothing but thinks that he knows, I neither know nor think that I know" (Socrates). He questioned politicians, poets, and artisans. He finds that the poets do not write from wisdom, but by genius and inspiration. Meletus charges Socrates with being "a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the State, and has other new divinities of his own."
The accuser believes that Socrates corrupted the minds of the children by introducing new concepts. Socrates is trying to teach and involve the minds of the youth by getting them to ask questions. It is very important that people are always asking questions about why things are happening. The next question that needs to be addressed is what does not believe in the gods mean? Socrates believes in God, but that is one God that rules the world, not multiple gods who together rule.
In the Apology, Socrates was told by the Delphic Oracle that there was nobody wiser than him. With ancient Greece having been a prominent home of philosophy and art since before Socrates' time, the Athenian court found his proclamation both insulting and hard to believe. Socrates goes through great lengths to find the wisest of men and seeing if their reputations are in fact true. He hoped to find a man wiser than him to prove the oracles prediction was false, even Socrates failed to believe he was the wisest man. He first went to a man that seemed wise. After he spoke with him Plato quotes "I came to see that, though many persons, and chiefly himself, thought that he was wise, yet he was not wise."(77) With his certainty that Socrates was wiser, the man was insulted and hated Socrates for derailing his intelligence. Socrates then goes to another wise man, but is again let down. He still believes he is wiser. Convinced that he would not find a more intelligent man amongst wise men, he then questioned the more "educated people", such as poets and artisans. According to Plato, Socrates says "I imagine, they find a great abundance of men who think that they know a great...
In his defense, Socrates claims over and again that he is innocent and is not at all wise, “…for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great.” Throughout the rest of his oration he seems to act the opposite as if he is better than every man, and later he even claims that, “At any rate, the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men.” This seems to be his greatest mistake, claiming to be greater than even the jury.
Why does Socrates fear the older charges more than the specific ones he is charged with? Socrates fears the old charges more because of all the false accusers. Socrates says, “And first, I
Socrates starts his defense by addressing the jury and telling them that his accusers had a prepared speech, while Socrates' speech will be completely improvised. Socrates continued to further disassociate himself from the opponents by telling the jury to forgive him for his conversational tone in his speech, for that's how he best speaks. He also asks the jury to keep an open mind and not concentrate on how his defense is delivered, but the substance of his defense. Socrates tells the jury that he is not a sophist. Sophists were known for charging fees for their work, and Socrates does not charge a fee for his words. His next decides to cross-examine Meletus. Basically Socrates turns the tables on his accuser and accuses Meletus of "dealing frivolously with serious matters." Socrates says that the youth he supposedly corrupts follows him around on their own free will, because the young men enjoy hearing people and things being questioned. In this line of questioning of Meletus, Socrates makes him look very contradictory to his statements in his affidavit. Socrates then moves on to the second part of his defense. Moving on to the second charge that he does not believe in the Gods accepted ...
The bum, the weird annoying guy, the holy saint figure that is Socrates, wasn’t truly loved by the people of Athens (Class Notes). Although he may have had his enemies, he was lucky enough to have many close friends and acquaintances including a mysterious, unknown wife, who he had the privilege to have a child with (Crito 45c). His close friends are present at his trial to provide financial resources to pay for fines when society vowed to murder him (Apology 38b & Class Notes). As seen in Crito and in the Apology, Socrates could have saved himself from his own death by accepting the generous offers from his close friends; however, through debates with his friends he decides not to and proceeds with imprisonment and prepares for his eventual death. Socrates has a responsibility to respect the opinions of the people in Athens.
In Socrates’ Apology, he is forced to argue charges made against him by a man named Meletus backed up by the Athenian government, claims such as, corrupting the youth, disbelief in the gods of the state, and attempting to spread ‘corrupt’ ideas about society. Socrates defends his claims by bringing out the prosecutors unreliability through asking questions focused on showing how each claim made by Meletus is in itself, contradictory. In this essay, I will assess each statement Socrates made when trying to discredit Meletus, as well as, the specific ways of which Socrates defends himself in front of the jury. Socrates’ core argument relies on his accusers lack of basis and evidence for accusations. First, I will address Socrates’ strategy for
Socrates’ argument was unique in that he tried to convince the jury he was just an average man and not to be feared, but in actuality demonstrated how clever and tenacious he was. He begins with an anecdote of his visit to the Oracle of Delphi, which told him that there was no man smarter than he. He, being as humble as he is, could not take the Oracle’s answer for granted and went about questioning Athenians he felt surpassed his intelligence. However, in questioning politicians, poets, and artisans, he found that they claimed to know of matters they did not know about. Socrates considered this to be a serious flaw, and, as Bill S. Preston, Esq. put it: that “true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.”