Apology - Plato
The Apology is Plato's account of Socrates' defense at his trial where he faced charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. The most important thing to understand going into reading this is the historical context of Athens oratory culture. This was a culture that heavily valued rhetorical and oratory ability in the art of defense. Socrates values his own beliefs more. He attempts to expose, through questioning, the false certainty of his prosecutors. He describes this as a divine mission assigned to him by Delphi. Jury is unpersuaded, and he ends up being convicted by a narrow margin. When given the opportunity to propose his own penalty, he suggests the city should reward him with free meals. The jury then sentences him to death. Socrates addresses the court and reasons that death is not something to be fearful of.
The Apology is Plato's account of Socrates' defense at his trial where he faced charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. The most important thing to understand going into reading this is the historical context of Athens oratory culture. This was a culture that heavily valued rhetorical and oratory ability in the art of defense. Socrates values his own beliefs more. He attempts to expose, through questioning, the false certainty of his prosecutors. He describes this as a divine mission assigned to him by Delphi. Jury is unpersuaded, and he ends up being convicted by a narrow margin. When given the opportunity to propose his own penalty, he suggests the city should reward him with free meals. The jury then sentences him to death. Socrates addresses the court and reasons that death is not something to be fearful of.
I am writing this after having read Phaedo as well. On first reading, this read more as a stoic accepting death and the unknowing that comes with it. The Phaedo, which takes place in Socrates' final hours sort of reveals something that changes my understanding of this text. In Phaedo Socrates welcomes death, constructing a convoluted philosophical argument for why the soul survives the body, why afterlive > emodied life, and why a philosopher of all people should greet death as a homecoming.
This changed my perception of the argument in Apology. Socrates is not simply a man who has made peace with uncertainty. He seems to have placed great confidence in a particular metaphysical account of the soul. His courage before death seems to depend on knowing death is good.
When Socrates enters the courthouse he essentially charges the jury and prosecutors with a simple failure: To fear death is to claim knowledge you do not have. We do not know what comes after death. Therefore the fear of death is a pretense of wisdome rather than real wisdom. Similar to Euthyphro, you cannot claim you know what piety is without being able to define it.
But the Phaedo shows that Socrates is not neutral about death. He is not a stoic declining to feath the unknown. He is convinced that what awaits him is good - the soul is immortal, and that his of all is purified. This ruined my perception of the argument. This is not a man who has made peace with uncertainty, it is one who has bet everything on a particular metaphysical argument that even in his last hours was still open to criticism. This could easily fall the other way, one could rationalize a reason to fear death and have reason to do so. He is of the pretense of any other religious individual assuming a life worth living awaits after death. The epistemic position is the same.
I finished Phaedo, but I felt that it was a much tougher text. Not sure if I will make a post
"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have"
says this
immediately spends 200 pages arguing for a specific view of the soul
"Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."
says this
immediately says we should never disobey laws because we could have left whenever wanted in Crito