The Complete Works from the Greatest Greek Philosopher

by Plato

Socrates' Defence

Year 1 The first time, ~1995 spring, I read this essay I completely missed the commentary on society that is as relevant now as then. Why did I miss it? I believe I had the attitude that I was simply reading an assignment (that I had given myself). This caused me to bring an attitude of lets get this done. Now I am reading with an attitude of how does this relate to the Great Conversation? It makes a huge difference, adding richness of connection and integration to my knowledge.

But far more dangerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. 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. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the days when you were more impressible than you are now—in childhood, or it may have been in youth—and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer.

We hear similar concerns now for lack of education threatens or federated democracy.

my opponents are of two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope that you will see the propriety of my answering the latter first, for these accusations you heard long before the others, and much oftener.

if a man were really able to instruct mankind, to receive money for giving instruction would, in my opinion, be an honour to him.

Is there any one who understands human and political virtue? You must have thought about the matter, for you have sons;

you may think that I am joking,

Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser.

[than Socrates]

And yet he is a god, and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After

Apollo

I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,— for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.

Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

How, true. I have suspected this since jr. high but I hoped it wasn't true.

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 if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.

Interesting.

what evil does he practise or teach? they do not know, and cannot tell;

they repeat the ready-made charges which are used against all philosophers

for they do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been detected— which is the truth;

poets;

politicians;

rhetori...

I have said enough in my defence against the first class of my accusers; I turn to the second class.

Meletus is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest,

Poet

I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.

Can a man

believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?

a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what he does not know?

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

Note the parallel to Howard Roark's trial! => Much value can be had from philosophers, Plato, whom we disagree with.

while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy,

are you not ashamed of

caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul,

I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.

first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.

All good comes from virtue.

honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a state,

I made up my mind that I would run the risk, having law and justice with me, rather than take part in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death.

Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public life, supposing that like a good man I had always maintained the right and had made justice, as I ought, the first thing? No indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other man.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live,

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.

the unexamined life is not worth living,

The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

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.

Crito

Year 1

why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many? Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering,

the opinion of the many must be regarded, as is evident in your own case, because they can do the very greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion?

But the truth is, that they can do neither good nor evil: they cannot make a man wise or make him foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.

For I am and always have been one of those natures who must be guided by reason, whatever the reason may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the best; and now that this fortune has come upon me, I cannot put away the reasons which I have before given: the principles which I have hitherto honored and revered I still honor, and unless we can find other and better principles on the instant, I am certain not to agree with you; no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many more imprisonments, confiscations, deaths, frightening us like children with hobgoblin terrors.

Tell me, then, whether I am right in saying that some opinions, and the opinions of some men only, are to be valued, and other opinions, and the opinions of other men, are not to be valued.

Was the disciple in gymnastics supposed to attend to the praise and blame and opinion of every man, or of one man only— his physician or trainer, whoever that was?

The other considerations which you mention, of money and loss of character, and the duty of educating children, are, I fear, only the doctrines of the multitude, who would be as ready to call people to life, if they were able, as they are to put them to death—and with as little reason.

my first principle, that neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right.

unjust sentence."

Consider that Socrates did no violence, hence there was no crime!

In the first place did we not bring you into existence? Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you.

Sounds like Barack Obama's claim that you did not do this. Your government make it possible.