Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 48  
The Trial of Socrates:
Plato’s Crito, Part 2 of 2

Jacque-Louis David, "The Death of Socrates," detail [1]

Jacques-Louis David, “The Death of Socrates,” detail

35:07 / 428 words

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This is the second of two parts of a lecture on the Platonic dialogue Crito, which I interpret in the light of Plato’s Euthyphro and Apology and Aristophanes’ Clouds.

There are a couple of “jumps” in the lecture where I removed inaudible portions of the discussion but left in my answers. The questions can be inferred from the answers.

The very last words, unfortunately, were cut off, but they were to the effect that Socrates chose to stay and die due to his commitment to the transpolitical values of the philosophical life.

The Source of the Lecture

In September and October of 1998, I gave a course of eight, two-hour lectures on “The Trial of Socrates.” We covered the following topics and texts:

The whole class was taped, but the tapes of the first lecture, which was an introduction to the whole course, and the last lecture, on the Phaedo, have disappeared. Nevertheless, the six remaining lectures, which I will release in 12 separate parts, contain a lot of useful material.

The books for the class are:

If anyone is interested in producing a transcript of this lecture, we will gladly publish it. Ideally, we would like one person to do a draft transcription and then place it online to allow other listeners to offer corrections. Please contact Greg Johnson at mailto://[email protected] [7] before starting work, so we can prevent wasteful duplication of efforts.

Greg Johnson
Editor-in-Chief