COMMENTARY: SOCRATES' TRIAL, THE
APOLOGY
(all quotations from Plato's
Dialogues are taken from the translation of W.H.D. Rouse (© John
Cline Graves Rouse), published as a Signet Classic, Great Dialogues of Plato;
quotations from Thucydides' History
of the Peloponnesian War are taken from the translation of Rex
Warner ©, published in a revised edition by
Penguin Classics in 1972)
THE SETTING FOR THE TRIAL:
MILITARY
DEFEAT, POLITICAL STRIFE, AND MORAL CRISIS
In 404 B.C., Athens capitulated to Sparta and
her allies to end the long Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). The last
decade of war had seen the catastrophic defeat of a huge Athenian
expedition to Sicily with the loss of thousands of men, and growing
civil strife in Athens between the partisans of OLIGARCHY (a form of government in
which
power is concentrated in the few, typically through institutions
dominated by the wealthy citizens) and the
advocates of more democratic government in which power was exercised by
a
broad-based assembly of male citizens. As a result of the Athenian
defeat, the city’s fortifications were dismantled, the Athenian fleet
drastically reduced in size, and former allies linked to victorious
Sparta through the establishment of oligarchic governments dominated by
Spartan sympathizers. In Athens itself, a board of thirty,
wealthy citizens came to power with Spartan support and abolished
institutions of the Athenian democracy. Although their regime, known as
the THIRTY TYRANTS, lasted
barely a year, it represented a reign of
terror with the execution of hundreds of political opponents, the
banishment or self-exile of many others, and widespread confiscation
of properties. In 403 B.C., the Thirty Tyrants were deposed by an
army of exiles, and, through Spartan intervention and mediation, an
amnesty was declared, and democracy restored to Athens.
The trial of Socrates, before a jury of 501
citizens chosen by lot, took place in 399 B.C., when Athenians were
looking for the causes of their military and
political failures. Socrates had close ties to individuals
who had played a key part in the dramatic defeat of Athens and the
political upheavals that followed. One follower, ALCIBIADES,
had been the principal advocate of the Sicilian expedition, later
joined the Spartan side, and meddled in the factional strife
within the city to secure his own temporary return. CRITIAS, a relative
of Plato, had been one of the most zealous - and hated - of the Thirty
Tyrants,
responsible for condemning and executing numerous political opponents.
Questions about Socrates’ political leanings
and doubts about his loyalty to the democratic regime help to explain
why he
mentions his military service to Athens at the battles of Poteidaia,
Amphipolis, and Delion (p. 434), his conscientious and consistent
refusal to carry out unjust and illegal orders issued by Athenian
governments of both the democratic and oligarchic parties (p. 438), and
his own relationships with members of the “people’s party”, those who
supported the democracy. He describes his lifelong friend,
CHAIREPHON, for example, as “a
friend of your people’s party,” and he
reminds the jury of citizens that Chairephon had been banished with
many of them, when the Thirty Tyrants ruled (p. 427).
These narrower partisan concerns were only a
part of Socrates’ problem, and, in any event, the amnesty declared
after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants prevented his enemies from
directly charging him with treason. Instead, the formal indictment
(p.
430) said that “he corrupted the young, did not believe in the gods
whom the state believed in, but in other new spiritual things instead.”
Socrates rightly understood that these charges were motivated by deeply
felt grievances
against him and what he represented to the Athenian public, most
notably his association - real or alleged - with those intellectuals
whose teachings were believed to have contributed to the collapse of
Athens. Therefore, he begins by highlighting what he
describes as the earlier and false accusations of those who had gotten
hold of the citizens when they were
young, and he formulated those older charges as
a “pretended affidavit” (p.
425):
“Socrates is a criminal and a busybody, prying into things under the
earth and up in the heavens, and making the weaker argument the
stronger, and teaching these same things to others.”
PLATO'S APOLOGY: HISTORICAL
ACCOUNT OR FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION?
Before examining what lay behind these charges
and the formal
indictment, why both were so dangerous, and how
Socrates sought to
address them, it is worth considering the nature of this account of
Socrates’ trial. It is written by his pupil, the philosopher, PLATO, who is named among those
attending the trial (p. 439),
when Socrates points out members of the audience who had listened to
him, and who could attest that he was not a “corrupter
of youth”. Plato includes only part of the trial: he omits the speeches
of the three prosecutors, MELETOS,
ANYTOS, and LYCON, which Socrates refers to at
the beginning of his defense. Not an account of the trial, this is
essentially a defense of Socrates, and the term, apology, must be
understood in its ancient sense of a refutation or defense, with none
of its modern connotations of repentance or remorse.
The key question is whether this is a
historical record of Socrates' speeches or just Plato's
own retrospective defense of his much admired mentor. In Plato's later
dialogues, like the Republic,
he freely uses Socrates as a character, whose ideas, more often than
not, are Plato's own, and one may remember Thucydides' remarks on the
speeches in his History
of the Peloponnesian War:
"I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the
speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have
experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping
as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were
actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called
for by each situation" (I.22; p. 47)
Those comments have sparked much discussion over the latitude that the
ancient historian allowed himself in reporting - or interpreting -
historical events. In addition, public life in Athens - from the
courtroom to the theatrical stage - provided numerous models for
speeches, the art of rhetoric was widely taught, and the genre of
writing rhetorical defenses flourished in pieces like the Praise of
Helen composed by the sophist, Gorgias of Leontini. The picture
is
complicated by another account of Socrates' trial, written by the
soldier, XENOPHON, who was not
an eyewitness. In it, Socrates' defense is far less sophisticated,
but that may reflect Xenophon's distance from the event and his limited
grasp of Socrates' philosophical methods and arguments. The
extent to which Plato accurately renders the
substance - and style - of Socrates’ actual defense is debatable. Even
if embellished, the Apology
certainly captures key elements of Socrates’ method and
teaching, as we know them from Plato's early dialogues - those most
reflective of the historical Socrates - and other
ancient sources. And, Plato was describing a public event which many
contemporaries would have witnessed or heard about. Surely that would
have limited his
ability to invent or alter Socrates’ defense.
SOCRATES' RHETORIC
What is clear is that Plato presents us with a
masterfully crafted speech, addressing the charges - old and new - and
offering a broader defense of Socrates' philosophical mission and
service to the Athenian people. At the outset, Socrates claims that he
is “not
a bit of a clever speaker” (p. 423), and that the jury will hear him
speak only the plain, unadorned truth in the everyday language he is
accustomed to use in the streets of Athens. This denial of rhetorical
sophistication is, itself, a clever rhetorical ploy, and his opening
lines are full of conventional strategies to win the sympathy and trust
of his listeners. He reminds the court that, at seventy years old, he
is
“an old man” (p. 424). He notes that many in the audience have heard
him speak in
the public places of Athens, and he mentions that this is
the first time he has been brought before a court. He cites these facts
to excuse his own plain style of speaking, but, actually, he is
beginning to argue his case in a powerful way, implicitly
undermining the accusations against him: if his activity has been
public for so long, why is he now being brought into
court for the first time? What sense does it make to prosecute him at
this age?
Even more cleverly, Socrates uses his opening
remarks to turn the charges upon his accusers. The indictment accuses
him of corrupting the young, but he describes how they got hold of
the
citizens from when
they were boys:
“Indeed I have had many accusers complaining to you, and for a long
time, for many years now, and with not a word of truth to say; these I
fear, rather than Anytos and his friends, although they, too, are
dangerous; but the others are more dangerous, gentlemen, who got hold
of most of you while you were boys, and persuaded you, and accused me
falsely.” (p. 424)
Among these false accusations is the charge that he "makes the weaker
argument the stronger", in other words, that he makes
the worse case appear better through rhetoric. This, too, he had
directed against his accusers in his opening words when he attacked the
prosecutors, suggesting that
they were the ones who used persuasive rhetoric to support arguments
with
“not one word of truth”.
THE "PRETENDED AFFIDAVIT" OR "OLD
CHARGES": SCIENTISTS AND SOPHISTS
When Socrates describes the older - and more
dangerous - charges against him,
he formulates them as a “pretended affidavit”:
“Socrates is a criminal and a busybody, prying into things under the
earth and up in the heavens, and making the weaker argument the
stronger, and teaching these same things to others.” (p. 425)
While he attributes these charges to many anonymous accusers, he does
name one person, the comic poet, ARISTOPHANES,
who spread these opinions. Aristophanes' play, THE CLOUDS, presented in 423 B.C.,
caricatured Socrates as running a school for the teaching of
rhetoric in which he and his students investigate the heavens and the
things under the earth. There, Socrates presents debates between
characters representing the "Better" and "Worse" arguments, and the
better argument is roundly defeated by the worse. Eventually, his
teaching led the young man, Pheidippides, to beat his own father, to
threaten to beat his mother, and to use his training in rhetoric to
justify both. The play concludes with the youth's father, Strepsiades,
burning Socrates' school to the ground.
In the Apology, Socrates has little trouble
refuting these charges and dismissing the caricature that lies behind
them. They show, however,
how he was associated in the Athenian mind with ideas and groups of
people who were blamed for the disastrous
policies that had led Athens to war, defeat and political upheaval. The
first charge ("prying into things under the earth and up in the
heavens") suggests an interest in the
natural world. The accusation linked Socrates with philosophers who
sought natural
explanations for natural phenomena that, in the popular view, were in
the realm of the gods. The gods, after all,
dwelt in the heavens, the heavenly bodies were associated with them,
and the
things under the earth belonged to the Underworld, the sacred realm of
the dead. In fact, there
is little evidence that Socrates concerned himself greatly with natural
phenomena. Nonetheless, he clearly
appreciated the dangerous implications of this accusation, for, as he
says, "those who hear it believe that anyone who is a student of that
sort of lore must be an atheist as well (p. 424). Thus, an alleged
interest in natural science could easily lead to the charge of atheism
(not believing in "the gods whom the state believes in") included in
the formal indictment. In fact, when Meletos accuses him of atheism and
claims that he "says the sun is a stone and the moon is earth" (p.
432), Socrates immediately attributes these beliefs to the natural
philosopher, ANAXAGORAS of
Clazomenae, and distances himself from these teachings.
Socrates' inquiries were more
squarely focused on man and society, and, in this respect, he was
linked with a diverse group of itinerant teachers known as the SOPHISTS
who typically took handsome fees for educating the sons of wealthy
citizens in
the arts of rhetoric that would bring success in politics. In fact, the
charge that he makes "the weaker argument the stronger", "teaching
these same things to others", is a way of describing him as one of the
Sophists. In his defense, Socrates names several well-known Sophists:
Gorgias of
Leontini, Prodicos of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis (pp. 425-36). He
contrasts himself with these men and easily refutes the charge, for his
evident poverty made clear that he did not collect fees for teaching.
Reciting these familiar names also
reminded the audience that many individuals openly taught
rhetoric for fees, without being hauled into court.
While Socrates may convince his audience that
he was neither a natural scientist nor a paid teacher, the seriousness
of these accusations is clear. First, they lay the groundwork for the
formal charges of atheism and corrupting the youth. A generation
earlier, Anaxagoras' speculation about the natural world had made him
the target of legislation against impiety, forcing him to flee the
city. The teaching of rhetoric was more than a path to political
success. For some of the Sophists, an emphasis on verbal dexterity and
persuasive oratory went hand-in-hand with moral relativism, a denial of
objective truth, and a cynical desire to prevail in a debate, whatever
the merits of the position advocated. Young men used the rhetorical
skills they learned to challenge and refute long-established moral
principles, codes of conduct, and beliefs about the gods. As the
Athenians reflected on the political and moral crises that had
accompanied the war and their eventual defeat, they turned against the
intellectuals who had weakened faith in the gods through their
scientific speculation, and undermined moral standards through their
wordplay. What's more, political leaders had used their rhetorical
abilities to persuade the multitude to endorse policies that,
eventually, led to disaster. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War
and the plays of EURIPIDES are
full of
examples of the misuses of rhetoric that the Athenians regarded with
suspicion, and accused Socrates of practicing and teaching.
SOCRATES' METHOD: THE ELENCHUS
AND THE SEARCH FOR VIRTUE AND KNOWLEDGE
Socrates frees himself of the charge of being
a natural scientist or paid teacher of rhetoric, and, in fact, his own
views on virtue and knowledge could hardly be further from the moral
relativism espoused by some of the Sophists. In answering these
accusations,
Socrates explains why he believes that he aroused the hostility of so
many people. He tells (pp. 426-27) how a friend had gone to
Delphi to ask whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the priestess
answered that no one was wiser. Socrates found this to be a
riddle: “What in the world does the god mean? What in the world
is his riddle?” To try to understand what the riddle meant,
he began to question those who appeared to be wise - statesmen, poets
and craftsmen - and, to his surprise, he found, over and over again,
that he was wiser in one small respect: that what he did not know, he
did not think he knew. In other words, he was wise in that he
knew his own ignorance, while others thought themselves - wrongly - to
be wise about things of which they knew little. Not surprisingly,
Socrates made many enemies as he publicly exposed the ignorance of
those
who thought themselves to be wise.
What Socrates is describing is his
characteristic question and answer method of cross-examination, known
as the ELENCHUS. Plato's
earliest dialogues provide several examples of this method, portraying
Socrates testing definitions of moral terms like piety or courage, and
it is well-illustrated by the discussion of the definition of justice
in the first book of the Republic.
Typically, speakers propose simple, commonsense definitions, only to be
forced into contradictions and refuted. By the end of the discussion,
several definitions have been discarded, and the question remains
unanswered. In short, it is an essentially negative method that leads
to questions rather than answers, revealing a person's ignorance and
highlighting the gap between commonplace opinions and true knowledge.
As Socrates says at the end of the Euthyphro,
a dialogue dedicated to the question, "What is piety?", "So we must
investigate again from the beginning what piety is..."
Socrates provides an example of the ELENCHUS in the trial itself, when
he addresses the formal indictment and
cross-examines Meletos, one of his accusers, concerning the charge that
he has corrupted the youth (pp. 430-31). After he led an obliging
Meletos to the absurd conclusion that all the Athenians improve the
youth and only he, Socrates, corrupts them, he shifted to an analogy -
a common Socratic tactic used in the first book of the Republic as
well. He compared the education of youth with the training of
horses, and he concluded that, just as only a small number of experts
could train horses successfully, only a small number of experts could
truly improve the youth. This, of course, is another rhetorical
ploy: it doesn’t address Meletos’ charge at all - he doesn’t
answer the question of whether he has, in fact, corrupted the
youth. Instead, he attacks the credibility of his accuser by exposing
him as ignorant of all matters concerning the education of
youth, the very issue around which he had framed his indictment. In
this, Socrates demonstrates the activities
he had engaged in after hearing of the Delphic oracle:
he questioned individuals to prove them ignorant of precisely the
matters in which they claim expertise.
This short exchange, however, also reveals key
elements of Socrates’ thought that would have an impact upon Plato. The
education of the youth which he describes involves their education in
virtue, a good upbringing in sound moral principles. This moral
knowledge, the knowledge of
right and wrong, is like any other kind of knowledge for Socrates:
despite his repeated protestations of ignorance, he evidently believes
that there can be certainty about moral principles and that this
knowledge can be acquired and taught by experts. Nor is this certainty
the
product of divine revelation or inspiration, it is something that can
be explained, argued and demonstrated rationally. What's more, virtuous
behavior or good conduct is fundamentally a question of knowledge: if
we properly knew what was good, we would act accordingly. This
conviction underlies one of the "Socratic paradoxes": no one does wrong
willingly, we only do wrong out of ignorance of what is right.
These ideas are further developed by Plato,
and their implications are explored in some of the discussions in the Republic. The belief that virtue is
a matter of knowledge underlies his contention "that cities will have
no end to their miseries until philosophers rule in them" (p. 284), and
it leads to Plato's description of the SHIP
OF STATE, a parody of democratic government (p. 285). On this
ship, "everyone thinks he ought to be pilot, although he knows nothing
of the art, and cannot tell us who taught him or where he learnt
it...They fail to understand that (the true pilot) must devote his
attention to year and seasons, sky and stars and winds, and all that
belongs to his art, if he is really to be anything like a ruler of the
ship." It is no wonder, perhaps, that views like these would have
brought Socrates into conflict with a state in which laws and political
decisions were made by a broad assembly of citizens. If, like horses
trained by expert horse-trainers, the youth are to be made good
citizens by experts in virtue, can we trust the citizens of a democracy
to make laws? Can we trust parents to raise their children well? The
implications of Socrates' views strike at the heart of the basic
institutions of the family and city, and they lay the foundation for
the radical reconstruction of society that Plato undertakes in the Republic.