About the work. . .
Plato continues his account of the trial of Socrates. In this, the final part
of The Apology,1 Socrates is found guilty of the charges by a vote of 281
to 220; undoubtedly, the ethical seriousness with which Socrates spent
his final days profoundly affected Plato as the young student. Socrates
now explains why he has nothing to fear from death. Socrates argues that
even if the soul were not immortal, death would be a good. Nevertheless,
Socrates did not doubt the immortality of the soul.
From the reading. . .
“Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to be a politician and
live, I did not go where I could do no good to you or to myself; but
where I could do the greatest good privately to every one of you, thither
I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look
to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private
interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the
state; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his
actions.”
Ideas of Interest from the The Apology , II
1. Why doesn’t Socrates plead for a lesser charge in order to save his
life? Why did he feel that he couldn’t accept exile?
2. Explain how Socrates’ argument that death should not be feared rests
on “the Socratic Paradox.” 2
1.
Plato, The Apology (380 B.C.) in The Dialogues of Plato (2. Vols.) Trans. Benjamin Jowett, New York, Random House, 1937.
2.
Socrates believed that we all seek what we think is most genuinely in our own
interest. If we act with knowledge, then we will obtain what is good for our soul,
but if the consequences of our action are not what is good for our soul, then we
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3. Characterize as clearly as possible Socrates’ conception of the soul.
Does the existence of the soul presuppose an afterlife? Explain why
or why not from a Socratic point of view.
4. In what way do you think Socrates’ defense exhibits irony? How is
his irony related to his being a “gadfly”?
Reading from The Apology , II
[ Socrates Is Found Guilty]
[Response to the Verdict]
There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the
vote of condemnation. I expected it, and am only surprised that the votes
are so nearly equal; for I had thought that the majority against me would
have been far larger; but now, had thirty votes gone over to the other side,
I should have been acquitted. And I may say, I think, that I have escaped
Meletus. I may say more; for without the assistance of Anytus and Lycon,
any one may see that he would not have had a fifth part of the votes, as the
law requires, in which case he would have incurred a fine of a thousand
drachmae.
And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my
part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is my
due? What return shall be made to the man who has never had the wit
to be idle during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many
care for—wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking
in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live, I did not go
where I could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the
greatest good privately to every one of you, thither I went, and sought to
persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek
had to have acted in ignorance. In a sense, for Socrates, there is no ethical good or
evil—instead “knowledge” is logically equivalent to “good,”“excellence,” or “areté,”
and “ignorance” is logically equivalent to “evil” or what is “harmful.” Since we never
intentionally harm ourselves, if harm happens to us, then, at some point, we acted with
a lack of knowledge. In this manner, Socrates concludes we are “morally responsible”
for obtaining knowledge.
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virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the
state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the
order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such an
one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward;
and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a reward
suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, and who desires leisure that
he may instruct you? There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance in
the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more
than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot
race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I
am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of
happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty
fairly, I should say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
The Prison of Socrates and Statue of Pan, Theatre Bacchus, Library of
Congress
[Why Exile Is Not Acceptable]
Perhaps you think that I am braving you in what I am saying now, as in
what I said before about the tears and prayers. But this is not so. I speak
rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged any one,
although I cannot convince you——the time has been too short; if there
were a law at Athens, as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should
not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced you.
But I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am convinced that
I never wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I will not say
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of myself that I deserve any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I?
because I am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus proposes? When
I do not know whether death is a good or an evil, why should I propose
a penalty which would certainly be an evil? Shall I say imprisonment?
And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the
year——of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment
until the fine is paid? There is the same objection. I should have to lie in
prison, for money I have none, and cannot pay. And if I say exile (and
this may possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I must indeed be
blinded by the love of life, if I am so irrational as to expect that when you,
who are my own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and
have found them so grievous and odious that you will have no more of
them, others are likely to endure me. No indeed, men of Athens, that is
not very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age, wandering from
city to city, ever changing my place of exile, and always being driven out!
For I am quite sure that wherever I go, there, as here, the young men will
flock to me; and if I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at their
request; and if I let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out
for their sakes.
From the reading. . .
“I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your
manner and live.. . . The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but
to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”
Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and
then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you?
Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this.
For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God,
and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am
serious; and if I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those
other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the
greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living,
you are still less likely to believe me. Yet I say what is true, although a
thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you. Also, I have never been
accustomed to think that I deserve to suffer any harm. Had I money I
might have estimated the offence at what I was able to pay, and not have
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been much the worse. But I have none, and therefore I must ask you to
proportion the fine to my means. Well, perhaps I could afford a mina, and
therefore I propose that penalty: Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus,
my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Let
thirty minae be the penalty; for which sum they will be ample security to
you. . . .
[Truth, More Important Than Life]
Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name
which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you
killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even although I am
not wise, when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while,
your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am
far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am
speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me
to death. And I have another thing to say to them: you think that I was con-
victed because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my
acquittal—I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid.
Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words—
certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to
address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and
lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been ac-
customed to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of
me. I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean
when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would
rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and
live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way
of escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will
throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may
escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death,
if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is
not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than
death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me,
and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrigh-
teousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by
you to suffer the penalty of death,—they too go their ways condemned by
the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by
my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be
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regarded as fated,—and I think that they are well.
[Socrates’ Advice]
And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you;
for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic
power. And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately
after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me
will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape
the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be
as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of
you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as
they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will
be more offended at them. If you think that by killing men you can prevent
some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a
way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the
noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.
This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who
have condemned me.
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Homer Enshrined, Smith, A History of Greece, 1855
Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you
about the thing which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy, and
before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may
as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my friends, and
I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened
to me. O my judges—for you I may truly call judges—I should like to tell
you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the
internal oracle is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing
me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error in any matter;
and now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought,
and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made
no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving my house in the morning,
or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything
which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle
of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching the matter in
hand has the oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of
this silence? I will tell you. It is an intimation that what has happened to
me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in
error. For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been
going to evil and not to good.
[Argument That Death Is a Good]
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to
hope that death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of
nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change
and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose
that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is
undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a
person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even
by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of
his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed
in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think
that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not
find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if
death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only
a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as
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men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be
greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below,
he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the
true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus
and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous
in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a
man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and
Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall
have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes,
and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered
death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure,
as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall
then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in
this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who
pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to
be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus
or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite de-
light would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions!
In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: as-
suredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal,
if what is said is true.
From the reading. . .
“Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a
certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after
death.”
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a cer-
tainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching
end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived
when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble; wherefore
the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my
condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although
they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame
them.
Still I have a favour to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would
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ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them,
as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more
than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really
nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about
that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something
when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will
have received justice at your hands.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you
to live. Which is better God only knows.
Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Related Ideas
Moral Character (http://plato.stanford.edu/topics/moral-character). Stan-
ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Socrates’ influence on the history of
Western ethics is traced and discussed.
Psychology as Science of Self (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/author.htm).
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Chapter 5. “Seek Truth Rather Than Escape Death,” by Plato
Classics in the History of Psychology. Mary Whiton Calkins’ series of
papers in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods
proposing a psychological approach to the nature of the “self.”
Socrates (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14119a.htm). Catholic Ency-
clopedia . Entry on Socrates’ life and thought from a Catholic point of
view.
From the reading. . .
“. . . the unexamined life is not worth living. . . ”
Topics Worth Investigating
1. Under Athenian law, one could not be prosecuted for a crime if it
could be shown that the action was done unwillingly, under duress, by
threat of force, or from ignorance. If Socrates’ view is correct, how
could anyone be responsible for his or her actions? If one acts under
the influence of passion or other nonrational motives, is one morally
responsible? Can one be “willfully ignorant” of the law?
2. The central tenet of the Socratic ethics is “virtue is knowledge.”
“Virtue” is to be thought of as areté or “the peculiar excellence of a
thing.” In other words, just as we say a tool is useful in virtue of the
way it performs a proper function, so also a person’s virtue is his or
her peculiar excellence or proper function. What, then, is the source
of the lack of excellence or areté in a person? Why is the lack of
areté considered “bad”?
3. Socrates’ argument that even if he left Athens, he would be driven out
of city after city is voiced as a simple constructive dilemma. The ma-
jor premise is a conditional statement with two different antecedents
and two identical consequents (hence, the name “simple”). The mi-
nor premiss affirms (hence the name “constructive”) alternatively the
antecedents of the major premise. The conclusion affirms the conse-
quent. For example, “If I study at the library, I will learn, and if I
study in my room I will learn. But I must study either in the library or
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in my room. Hence, I will learn.” Is Socrates’ dilemma valid? Check
a good logic text in order to evaluate it. Can the dilemma’s conclusion
be avoided by taking the dilemma by the horns, by escaping between
the horns, or by proposing a counterdilemma?
4. Socrates’ argument that death is a good is phrased as a reductio ad
absurdum ( i.e. , an argument often of the form, “If A implies B, and B
is absurd, then A is absurd”). He couples this argument with the argu-
ment by elimination (disjunctive syllogism). A disjunctive syllogism
is of the form, “Either A or B is true, but A is not true, so B must be true.” Consult a good logic text in order to explain, on Socrates’ view,
as it is expressed in these two argument forms, how Hades could not
be a bad place. Hint: you must consider the import of the Socratic
Paradox.
5. Could an indefinitely extended life have meaning? In economics,
value and worth are dependent upon supply; is this true for the length
of life, as well?
6. Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in Notes From Underground:
Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed,
that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own in-
terests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his
real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would
at once become good and noble because, being enli