Socrates's strangeness 2. His accuser, Meletus, claims he is doing so by teaching the youth of Athens of a separate spirituality from that which was widely accepted. Clearly that which is my due. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. 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 thingseither 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. Had I the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind. Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with the exception of myself; and I alone am their corrupter? Why should they too support me with their testimony? But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by you: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I do not believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods. Many people associate Plato with a few central doctrines that are advocated in his writings: The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled with error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities (called "forms" or "ideas") that are eternal, changeless, and in some sense paradigmatic for the structure and . And to you and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best for you and me. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one likes to come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he is not excluded. Part of what makes his Apology so complex and gripping is that it is not a one-sided encomium that conceals the features of the Socratic way of life that lay behind the anxiety and resentment felt by many of his fellow citizens. Indeed, you can see them for yourselves, enacted in Aristophanes' . apo-logia. And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are:that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. I will tell you why. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what he does not know? Downloads. Defense of Socrates By Reggie Hawkins fAthenian Definition of Apology The Apology is the actual speech delivered by Socrates during his death trial. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does not appear in any of his writings to have aimed at literal accuracy. And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?Hence has arisen the prejudice against me; and this is the reason of it, as you will find out either in this or in any future enquiry. How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I wasso persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. Shall I say imprisonment? Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you to make trial of me. But perhaps the members of the assembly corrupt them?or do they too improve them? Then I went to another who had still higher pretensions to wisdom, and my conclusion was exactly the same. Why Believe? This is true, O Athenians, or, if not true, would be soon refuted. The Project Gutenberg eBook of APOLOGY, CRITO AND PHDO OF SOCRATES, by Plato's Defense of Socrates is his account of the trial of Socrates for crimes of corrupting the youth of Athens and failing to believe in the gods. The disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the Herculean labours, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. He says that no master of the art of philosophizing has ever been more simple, clear, and accessible to beginners as has Socrates. Plato's Apology: Defense of Socrates [PDF] - Docslib.org Why Believe? John Burnet (1924) And therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my wordsif you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you shall die;if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honour 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, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend,a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? No indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely. What then can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? The speech was Socrates defending himself at the trial. Remember, Socrates never wrote anything himself. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three parts: 1st. 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. But in any case, some of the words used by him must have been remembered, and some of the facts recorded must have actually occurred. What, all of them, or some only and not others? For his duty is, not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment; and he has sworn that he will judge according to the laws, and not according to his own good pleasure; and we ought not to encourage you, nor should you allow yourselves to be encouraged, in this habit of perjurythere can be no piety in that. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of themthinking that they would teach me something. 14 day loan required to access EPUB and PDF files. 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. To say this, when they were certain to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to be anything but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shamelessunless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for is such is their meaning, I admit that I am eloquent. Perhaps there may be some one who is offended at me, when he calls to mind how he himself on a similar, or even a less serious occasion, prayed and entreated the judges with many tears, and how he produced his children in court, which was a moving spectacle, together with a host of relations and friends; whereas I, who am probably in danger of my life, will do none of these things. The Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said, but an elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact as one of the Dialogues. When I say that I am given to you by God, the proof of my mission is this:if I had been like other men, I should not have neglected all my own concerns or patiently seen the neglect of them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming to you individually like a father or elder brother, exhorting you to regard virtue; such conduct, I say, would be unlike human nature. 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. I speak rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged any one, although I cannot convince youthe 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. An "apology" is a speech of defense against an accusation of injustice. But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbours good, and the evil do them evil. I have seen men of reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in the strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they were going to suffer something dreadful if they died, and that they could be immortal if you only allowed them to live; and I think that such are a dishonour to the state, and that any stranger coming in would have said of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honour and command, are no better than women. Socrates versus Plato. They form a dramatic and thematic sequence, raising fundamental questions about the basis of moral, religious, legal, and political obligation. The word. Plato, Defense of Socrates - Political Philosophy But suppose I ask you a question: How about horses? And I must beg of you to grant me a favour:If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. Ethics and politics in Socrates' defense of justice (Chapter 4) - Plato You must have thought about the matter, for you have sons; is there any one? There is, he said. The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three parts: 1st. No, by heaven! 500 A). PDF Plato's Apology of Socrates - Hillsdale College Most readers of Plato's. Apology of Socrates. And why not? I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated,and I think that they are well. 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. Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good. Defense of Socrates | PDF | Apology (Plato) | Socrates - Scribd Let me relate to you a passage of my own life which will prove to you that I should never have yielded to injustice from any fear of death, and that as I should have refused to yield I must have died at once. 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? But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets;because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and to the oracle that I was better off as I was. And let him say, if he has any testimony of the sort which he can produce. THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES BY PLATO TRANSLATED BY HENRY CARY EDITED, ANNOTATED, AND COMPILED BY RHONDA L. KELLEY FIGURE 1 PORTRAIT OF SOCRATES. The Apology Now if there be such a person among you,mind, I do not say that there is,to him I may fairly reply: My friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of wood or stone, as Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and sons, O Athenians, three in number, one almost a man, and two others who are still young; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal. Had I money I might have estimated the offence at what I was able to pay, and not have been much the worse. It certainly agrees in tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the Memorabilia (iv. You have heard me speak at sundry times and in divers places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. In the Defence of Socrates, Plato seeks not only to clear his master's name, but also to defend the whole Socratic way of life, and therefore philosophy itself. He says that I am a doer of evil, and corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest, and is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he really never had the smallest interest. He is not therefore to be supplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium of Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely different class of writers. More suspicious is the statement that Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite calling of cross-examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell, i. p. xvi), and the story is of a kind which is very likely to have been invented. So in the Apology there is an ideal rather than a literal truth; much is said which was not said, and is only Platos view of the situation. 23,038. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? Kreeft uses the dialogues of Socrates to help the reader grow in that love. I will tell you a tale of the courts, not very interesting perhaps, but nevertheless true. But you, Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the young: your carelessness is seen in your not caring about the very things which you bring against me. (PDF) ARISTOTLE, PLATO, AND SOCRATES: ANCIENT GREEK - ResearchGate . He cannot. Are they not either gods or the sons of gods? PDF Defence of Socrates But in how different a way from theirs! Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an understanding between us that you should hear me to the end: I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out. for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the politicians. I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining what I conceive to be his inconsistency; and do you, Meletus, answer. de Orat. Apology by Plato Plot Summary | LitCharts 'Socrates is guilty of being a busybody, in that he in-quires into what is beneath the earth and in the sky, turns 5 the weaker argument into the stronger, and teaches others c to do the same.' The charges would run something like that. It is significant that Plato is said to have been present at the defence (Apol. The conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the ironical simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is the portrait of Socrates. There is Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis, who go the round of the cities, and are able to persuade the young men to leave their own citizens by whom they might be taught for nothing, and come to them whom they not only pay, but are thankful if they may be allowed to pay them. Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you.

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