Plato’s Apology

9,802 words

Author’s Note:

This is a substantially edited transcript of a 1998 lecture on Plato’s Apology of Socrates. The translation is from Plato and Aristophanes, Four Texts on Socrates: Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito and Aristophanes’ Clouds, trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). Paraphrases are placed in ‘single quotes,’ whereas actual quotes appear in “quotation marks.”

In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Socrates doesn’t say he’s sorry. The word “apology” here means “defense.” Thus a better translation would be Defense of Socrates. The Apology is a defense of Socrates in three senses. First, it is a defense by Socrates. Second, it is a defense of Socrates, a self-defense. But Socrates is not just defending himself. He’s also defending philosophy.

As a self-defense speech, the Apology failed, and Socrates was executed. As we shall see, from a logical point of view, the Apology also fails to defend Socrates. In fact, if read carefully, the Apology is an admission of Socrates’ guilt. We’ll see how the Apology fares as a defense of philosophy.

The Apology is a marvelous text, and there’s good reason to think that the basic arguments were actually made by Socrates, because Plato was present at Socrates’ trial. He wrote and circulated this text not long after Socrates’ death. We would probably have heard from contemporary accounts if it fundamentally falsified what Socrates said. There’s also another Apology of Socrates by Xenophon which has a number of similarities, although it’s a much shorter text, and most of it is a report on Socrates’ trial, not a representation of the speech itself.

The Apology is an artfully crafted text. Like all of Plato’s texts, it has different layers of meaning. The original speech undergoes a kind of poetic transformation or fictionalization. It not only reports the gist of what Socrates said to the jury, it also teaches a larger philosophical lesson about the relationship of philosophy to political life. How does philosophy justify itself to the city, i.e., to the public at large, most of whom are not philosophical?

This is an issue, because philosophy is an unusual thing. Aristophanes’ Clouds shows just how odd and questionable philosophy seems from the point of view of ordinary human beings, how it seems both comical and destructive. Therefore, philosophy needs to give an account of itself. This is especially true in ancient Greece, because the ancient Greeks had a tendency to put philosophers on trial.

Socrates was the third major philosopher who was put on trial by the Athenians. The first was Anaxagoras, who is mentioned in the Apology. Anaxagoras was a teacher of Pericles. He was a foreigner, a political insider, and had a reputation for atheism and impiety. He was brought up on essentially the same charges as Socrates. Anaxagoras, who was from Clazomenae, quit Athens and was not seen there again. The Athenians also ran the great sophist Protagoras out of town. Unfortunately, poor Protagoras died when his ship sank leaving Athens, denying the world of any more Protagorean teachings.

How to Read the Apology

I’ll let you in on the big secret. To the question, “How can philosophy justify itself to the city?” the answer of the Apology is: It can’t. At least, it can’t justify itself as philosophy. The clearest indication of this fact is just how systematically deceptive and sneaky Socrates is in his defense speech. Socrates is lying. But Socrates is forced to lie, given the nature of his audience and the nature of the life that he’s trying to defend.

Socrates was tried before a jury of 500 Athenian citizens chosen by lot. There was no separate judge. There were officials of the court who conducted the proceedings, but judge and jury were one and the same. The jurors could have been just about anybody. They were definitely his peers.

The accusers made their speeches first. There were three accusers: Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon. Then Socrates gave his defense speech. Then the jury voted on whether to convict or not. They voted to convict. Then the leader of the accusers, Meletus, got to propose a penalty. He proposed death. Then Socrates was allowed to propose a counter-penalty. Then the jury voted again on what penalty to accept. Then Socrates got to say a few last words, no matter what the outcome was. We have only Socrates’ portions. None of the accusers’ speeches have come down to us, but we know the gist of their accusations.

At the start, Socrates says that after hearing his accusers, he can’t believe what he has heard. They spoke so persuasively that he didn’t even recognize himself. Yet Socrates knows himself, and he knows that the accusations are completely untrue.

Now Socrates will speak in precisely the opposite way. Instead of speaking falsehoods in a clever way, he’s going to speak nothing but the truth, and he’s going to do it in a way that you would expect from a man who is a foreigner to law courts. He’s going to do it in a bumbling, halting fashion, because he’s not a professional speaker. He’s not a clever speaker at all.

Socrates says of his accusers, “They’re not ashamed that they will be immediately refuted by me in deed” (17b). Socrates is alerting us to the fact that sometimes deeds can refute speeches. This is a general principle for reading all of Plato’s dialogues.

Jacques Derrida accuses Plato of “logocentrism,” which means focusing on words, the Greek word for which is logoi. But actually, if you read Plato’s dialogues, they’re not logocentric at all, because all of the logoi, all of the speeches, have to be read in relation to all of the deeds that are narrated. The meaning of the Platonic text comes about as the total effect of the speeches and the deeds working together. So, you have to look at what’s done as well as what’s said.

Socrates begins by saying that he is not a clever speaker. But in the very act of saying that he’s not a clever speaker, he is demonstrating that he is a master of rhetoric. Imagine Senator Blowhard stands up and gives a long, eloquent, artfully crafted speech. Then Senator Leghorn stands up and says, “Well, you know, I can’t compete with Senator Blowhard’s high-flown phrases and fancy intellectual justifications, so let me tell you what my momma used to say.” Then he presents his argument in a folksy, down-to-earth manner.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the rhetorician’s book: pretending to be a non-clever speaker, just a plain-spoken, ordinary guy speaking from the heart, saying the first things that come into his mind, unfiltered and thus entirely sincere. It’s a kind of jiu-jitsu move, turning your opponents’ strengths into weaknesses and your weaknesses into strengths, throwing him by highlighting how slick and clever he is, making the audience think, “I’m being bamboozled by the first guy, but this clumsy, plain-talking bumpkin’s going to tell it to me straight.”

Socrates portrays himself as naïve. He’s just arrived at the law court. He’s foreign to their ways. By contrast, Strepsiades in the Clouds is quite knowledgeable of the law courts but completely out of place when he arrives at the Thinkery. Socrates is by now an old man like Strepsiades. Just as Strepsiades arrives at the Thinkery and announces himself as he would at the law courts, Socrates arrives at the law court and says, ‘I am foreign to the way of speaking here, and I will speak as I have always spoken.’ Which would be the way of the Thinkery. That’s a nice comic reversal.

The Old & New Accusers

Then Socrates makes a distinction between two sets of accusers: the first accusers and the later accusers. The first accusers are characterized as follows:

They got a hold of the many of you from childhood, and they accuse me of persuading you although it is no more true than the present charge, but there is a certain Socrates, a wise man, a thinker of the things aloft, who has investigated all things under the earth, who makes the weaker speech the stronger. (18b)

This is clearly a reference to the Clouds, where Socrates is introduced floating in a basket, investigates the underworld, and makes the weaker argument the stronger. Later he says, “I don’t know their names unless one of them happens to be a comic poet” (18d). Then, later on, he explicitly refers to Aristophanes and the Clouds (19c). So, the old accusers really are just Aristophanes, although we know of at least two other plays mocking Socrates, one of which premiered at the same time as the Clouds. Socrates is arguing that Aristophanes, not he, has corrupted the youth with the Clouds, giving Socrates a bad reputation entirely unjustifiably.

Socrates will first refute the old accusers, principally Aristophanes. He claims this will be difficult, because he can call no witnesses (18d). Of course, that also makes it impossible for any witnesses to contradict him. Then he’ll refute the new accusers, Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon.

Socrates speaks only to Meletus here, because Meletus was the mouthpiece of Socrates’ accusers. After the Athenians regretted killing Socrates, they put Meletus on trial and executed him. Anytus and Lycon were exiled.

False & True Defenses of Philosophy

Before Socrates begins refuting the old accusers, he says, “let this proceed in whatever way is dear to the god” (19a). Socrates is portraying himself as pious, because he’s been charged with impiety. This brings us back to the Euthyphro. It’s very interesting to compare Socrates’ views in the Euthyphro about piety with his professions of piety here in the Apology.

If you look at the Euthyphro and raise the question “Is Socrates pious?” you can say yes and no. You can say yes, Socrates is pious, in the minimal sense that the Greeks accepted which is that he was orthopractic: he prayed, swore oaths by the gods, and attended the festivals. He went through the motions with everybody else. That was good enough as far as the Greeks were concerned.

One could ask if Socrates was pious by a more rigorous standard, namely: “Did he believe in the gods of the city?” There are some subtle indications that he didn’t. He says that he can’t believe that the gods would do anything bad. But that virtually eliminates all of the stories that the Greeks told about the mischievous Olympians. He also says that we know nothing about the gods, which implies that what we think we know about the gods really isn’t knowledge, which is equivalent to saying that the Greek views of the gods are false. So, he’s very impious in that sense.

But then there’s another sense in which he’s even more pious those who believe in the gods, because he believes that anything divine would have to be good. True divinities would have to measure up to an objective standard of what is right. He believes in an objective, natural right which is above the gods themselves and serves as a criterion by which you can judge them good or ill. Socrates regards what is right by nature as worthy of the highest form of respect or piety. So, in a sense, he’s even more pious than the most pious Greeks, because he believes that no gods can do bad things. He thinks it’s impious to say that the gods do evil.

Socrates is quite quick to reject the notion of piety that Euthyphro offers: the pious is what is dear to the gods. He thinks that’s a preposterous notion. However, in the Apology, Socrates invokes what is “dear to the god” (19a), a standard of piety that we know he himself rejects. Socrates is not being entirely forthright or honest. He is accommodating how he speaks to public opinion.

Now let’s skip forward to after Socrates has been found guilty, but before he’s condemned to death. This is his speech where he proposes a counter-penalty to death. Socrates suggests that his service to Athens be recognized by giving him free meals at public expense for the rest of his life (36d). Such meals were a public honor, so this suggestion predictably outraged many jurors. Socrates could not pay a fine, because he had no money. But some of his friends put up the money for a fine, so that’s the counter-penalty that he ends up actually proposing.

Socrates wouldn’t accept exile. He wouldn’t accept prison. Nor would he accept just remaining silent about philosophy.

Perhaps, then, someone might say, “By staying silent and keeping quiet, Socrates, won’t you be able to live in exile for us?” It is hardest of all to persuade some of you about this. For if I say that this is to disobey the god and that because of this it is impossible to keep quiet, you will not be persuaded by me, on the ground that I am being ironic. And, on the other hand, if I say this even happens to be a very great good for a human being — to make speeches every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me conversing and examining both myself and others — and that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be persuaded by me still less when I say these things. (37e–38a)

This is a rich passage, but what he’s basically saying is this: ‘Look, I’ve tried to persuade you that philosophy is a good thing because it’s dear to the gods.’ Namely, Socrates claimed that he began to philosophize because heard that the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi said no man was wiser than Socrates. Of course, this story presupposes that Socrates already had a reputation for wisdom, so it can’t be the real beginning of his philosophical quest. Moreover, Socrates says he disbelieved the oracle and began to question people philosophically in order to disprove the oracle. Yet he presents this as the height of piety. But wouldn’t true piety lead him to believe the oracle, not try to refute it?

Socratic Irony

Socrates told the jurors that he philosophized in service to the god Apollo. But they didn’t believe him.

Socrates was not believed because he has a reputation for being “ironic.” Now, for the ancient Greeks, irony is a kind of dissimulation, a kind of dishonesty, a kind of phoniness in which a person pretends to be less than he is, or to know less than he does. For a Greek of noble aspirations, irony was considered the only forgivable vice. The highborn cultivate irony to protect the feelings of their inferiors, which lessens resentment between the classes, thus stabilizing the social order. Thus in aristocratic societies, it is considered bad taste to flout one’s superiority in front of one’s inferiors. For instance, one does not flash one’s wealth in front of people whom it might make feel envious.

The same goes for other forms of superiority. If you’re smarter than somebody, you don’t use big words to make him feel inferior. If somebody is uneducated or lacks a certain cultivation of taste, you don’t try to dazzle him by showing that you are more educated or have better taste.

Socrates is ironic in the Greek sense but not to hide his wealth or social superiority, which he lacked. Instead, he tries to hide his intellectual superiority. That means he talks down to people. He pretends to know less than he really knows.

But magnanimity only works if people don’t know you are practicing it. Unfortunately, Socrates has gotten a reputation for irony. Thus the jurors dismiss Socrates’ story about his mission from Apollo as simply a condescending deception. To add insult to injury, if people know that you’re being ironic with them, it implies that you think they are inferior, which they resent.

Socrates has told the jury a story about how philosophy is dear to the gods. We know from the Euthyphro that Socrates rejects that definition of piety. The trouble is, though, that nobody believes it when he says it, because they think he’s being ironic. So at this point Socrates is saying, in effect, ‘Well, you didn’t believe the story about Apollo, so here’s the unvarnished truth: “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” You’ll like that one even less.’

Wisdom Makes Life Worth Living

The real reason Socrates pursues wisdom is that wisdom makes life worth living. None of the good things in life are necessarily good for us unless we have the wisdom to use them properly. Without wisdom, the best you can hope for is to luck out, in other words, to be in a fool’s paradise. But most people have no such luck. Thus most unwise people end up suffering needlessly.

Indeed, for Socrates, one is better off dead than a fool. For Socrates, wisdom is primarily practical wisdom, and practical wisdom dwells in us as virtue, which is the harmonious order of the soul. Folly dwells in us as vice, the corruption of the soul. Socrates famously declared that he would rather suffer wrong — including unjust execution — than to do wrong.

To do wrong corrupts one’s soul, i.e., it makes one vicious. Suffering wrong, however, does not corrupt us. No matter what your enemies do to you, they can’t make you into a bad person. They can kill you, but they can’t make you into a monster. Only you can do that, by doing wrong. For Socrates, there are worse things than death, and one of them is villainy.

Is Socrates sacrificing his life for philosophy? I would say that he’s sacrificing his life for the sake of his soul. He’s willing to die because he’s not willing to live under just any old conditions. He’s not willing to live in a condition where his soul is corrupted.

The only vice Socrates is willing to stoop to is irony. He’s willing to lie. But there are two kinds of lies. One is a lie you tell somebody else, and the other is a lie you tell yourself, which corrupts your soul. Whatever Socrates is willing to do, he’s not willing to lie to himself.

Socrates also believes deception can be used as a tool for helping other people, so he doesn’t necessarily believe that by deceiving people he’s corrupting their souls. For instance, in the Euthyphro, Socrates persuades Euthyphro using false premises: ‘Euthyphro, if you can’t define piety, you don’t know what it is.’ Well, that’s really not true, but Euthyphro believes it, and Euthyphro is better for having been purged of his hubris that he knows what piety is better than anyone else.

This, in a nutshell, is the political predicament of philosophy. Philosophy cannot persuade the vast majority of human beings that it is a worthwhile activity because, in effect, it says their lives aren’t worth living without it. No one wants to hear that. So Socrates is forced to tell a more appealing falsehood about philosophy, namely, that it is dear to the god Apollo. But this isn’t persuasive either, because he has a reputation for irony.

How Socrates Got a Reputation for Irony

How did Socrates get a reputation for being ironic? We have to look back to the Clouds. The Socrates of the Clouds doesn’t have any irony at all. He openly declares that the gods of the city do not exist. Thus when Socrates presents philosophy as a mission from Apollo, many of the jurors simply conclude that he is having them on.

It is ironic (in the modern sense of the word), that Socrates probably learned to be ironic (in the Greek sense) from the Clouds, since the reputation he gained from the Clouds probably made his irony ineffectual.

After Socrates has been condemned, he says, “the sign of the god [his daimonion] did not oppose me when I left my house this morning nor when I came up here to the law court, nor anywhere in the speech when I was about to say anything although in other speeches it has often stopped me in the middle while I was speaking” (40b). So Socrates admits that sometimes he does not say everything that he thinks.

What’s the connection between the daimonion and Socrates’ ability to moderate his speeches?

Socrates has no daimonion in the Clouds. Nor does he exercise moderation in his speeches. But if you look at what he says in the Theages, that his daimonion is identical with his knowledge of eros, and if you look at the Symposium and Phaedrus where the knowledge of erotic things is identified with knowledge of care of the soul and character, then you realize that Socrates’ daimonion refers to his ability to divine the nature of people’s characters and to accommodate what he says to the person he is speaking to, which is a skill he lacks in the Clouds.

Socrates is forced to give a dishonest defense. He’s been accused of being interested in natural philosophy (investigating things below the earth and above the heavens). He’s been accused of teaching how to make the weaker speech the stronger. There’s reason to think that these charges might have been true at one time, but by the time he came to trial, they weren’t true of Socrates anymore. He had changed.

If Socrates were to give an honest defense, he would say, ‘Yes, but.’ ‘Yes, you’re right. The Socrates of the Clouds is a bad guy. But I am no longer the same Socrates. You mistake me for an earlier incarnation of myself.’ But given the way attention spans work, the only thing most people would remember is the frank admission of guilt but not the explanation of why it is no longer the case. They’ll hear the ‘yes,’ but most of them won’t listen to what comes after the ‘but.’

Socrates can’t give an honest defense of his life. So he has to dishonestly defend his entire life against the charges. He just issues a blanket denial that he’s ever investigated nature; he gives a blanket denial of ever teaching the art of speaking. He admits that he makes people angry, but that’s not what he’s on trial for. He’s saying, ‘I haven’t done any of the things you’ve accused me of, but I do realize that I’ve really, really irritated a lot of you, and a lot of you hate me.’

Socrates vs. the New Accusers

Socrates spends a lot of time refuting the charges as they are posed in the Clouds. Then he turns to refuting the present charges, which are not formulated in terms of “he investigates nature and makes the weaker speech the stronger,” but instead formulated as “Socrates does not believe in the gods of the city, he invents new gods, and corrupts the youth.” For his refutation of those charges, he first assimilates those charges to the charges in the Clouds, then he denies them. But when he deals with the charges of the actual indictment, he deals with them in a rather slippery way. He issues a series of “non-denial denials.”

Socrates states Meletus’ accusation:

Socrates does injustice and is meddlesome by investigating the things under the earth and heavenly things, by making the weaker speech the stronger and by teaching others these same things. It is something like this. (19b–c)

Now, that’s not exactly Meletus’ charge. Diogenes Laertius has quoted the actual indictment:

Socrates breaks the law because he does not recognize the gods recognized by the city, and because he introduces other new divinities; and he breaks the law because he corrupts the youth. The penalty is death.[1]

In the Euthyphro, Socrates actually states the indictment more accurately, namely that he is “a maker of gods,” meaning that he brings in new gods, doesn’t believe in the old ones, and thereby corrupts the youth. Socrates is trying to assimilate the new accusations to the old accusations of the Clouds: “For you yourselves used to see these things in the comedy of Aristophanes. A certain Socrates was carried around there claiming that he was treading on air and spouting much other drivel about which I have no expertise either much or little” (19c).

The phrase “much or little” recurs throughout the text, and I don’t like the translation. The Greek is mega and mikron, and you could translate that as “great” and “small.” The reason why I think “great” and “small” are better is that they bring to mind the Clouds where Socrates is shown investigating things great and small: gnats’ anuses and fleas’ feet and also the courses of the heavenly bodies and the whole earth.

But the Socrates of the Clouds doesn’t investigate the middle-sized things, namely the realm of human things about which he’s conspicuously ignorant and in which his behavior is conspicuously foolish. This “much or little” or “great or small” phrase recurs constantly here. Socrates has no expertise “great or small” about these things, which is not to deny that he has any medium-sized expertise.

“And I do not say this to dishonor this sort of knowledge” (19c). He’s not attacking natural philosophy. He just says that he has no share of what they know, the great and the small, and then he says, “I offer the many of you as witnesses and maintain that you should teach and tell each other, those of you who have heard me conversing, and there are many such among you. Tell each other, then, if any of you ever heard me conversing about such things either great or small” (19d). He says, ‘There’s no evidence of this.’

There probably was some evidence, but he’s simply asserting there isn’t. Maybe he’s depending on the fact that those who heard the Socrates of the Clouds more than 20 years before might not all be around anymore. Also, those who are accustomed to listening to him at close quarters might not be inclined to accuse him. But his defense is simply to say, ‘Let somebody come forward and accuse me of this.’ And no one does. It’s a pretty weak defense: ‘I didn’t do it, and let someone accuse me of doing it.’ But that’s not what he’s on trial for. Other accusers have come forward with other accusations, and he needs to deal with them, not Aristophanes.

When Socrates denies the charge of educating people, he is very careful about his formulations. He denies the charge “that I attempt to educate human beings and make money from it” (19d). Well, did he educate anybody for free? That would be the logical question.

Socrates denies that he ever educated anybody, but later he admits “the young follow me of their own accord. Those who have the most leisure, the sons of the wealthiest, enjoy hearing human beings examined” (23c). Of course they do, because it’s comical to see people’s pretensions punctured. “And they themselves often imitate me, and in turn they attempt to examine others” (23c). This is teaching by example, which is a form of education.

Socrates also denies has an “art” (techne) of teaching at a price (20b–c; cf. 31b–c), which is what the sophists did. “As for myself, I would be pluming and priding myself if I had knowledge of these things [namely what the sophists do]. But I do not have knowledge of it, men of Athens” (20c). Socrates denies that he has an educational art, and he denies that he educates for money. However, that’s not equivalent to denying that he educates for free, and it’s not equivalent to denying that he has a non-technical way of educating people.

Socrates also admits he exhorts people to take better care of their souls, to value virtue more than money or reputation (29d–e, 36b). I’d call that education.

When Socrates says he tests people who have a reputation for being wise, that’s also educating them. He is teaching them a lesson. “Okay, Socrates, you didn’t ‘educate’ anybody. Did you teach them any lessons?” Well, yes! He did. He certainly taught them lessons, lessons that they didn’t often want to learn.

Human vs. Divine Wisdom

Then Socrates says, “Perhaps then one of you might retort, ‘Well, Socrates, what is your affair? Where have these slanders against you come from?’” If there’s smoke, there’s fire. What are these slanders based upon?

Now, perhaps I will seem to some of you to be joking. Know well, however, that I will tell you the whole truth. For I, men of Athens, have gotten this name, this reputation, do nothing but a certain wisdom. Just what sort of wisdom is this? That which is perhaps human wisdom; for probably I really am wise in this. But those of whom I just spoke might perhaps be wise in some wisdom greater than human [namely the natural philosophers and the sophists] or else I cannot say what it is. For I, at least, do not have knowledge of it, but whoever asserts that I do lies and speaks in order to slander me. (20d–e)

Socrates is admitting to a human wisdom, anthropine sophia. The wisdom that he denies is a more than human wisdom, an art of producing virtue and knowledge of things great and small. But he doesn’t deny knowledge of the human soul and human character, and he doesn’t deny knowledge of the human world or knowledge of middle-sized things. Not great, not small, but medium-sized things where we live. He actually is claiming that he’s got a certain human wisdom about that.

Socrates vs. the Oracle

Then Socrates offers a witness, namely the god Apollo at Delphi. He tells a story about his friend Chaerephon, who is dead now and can’t be called to testify. That’s convenient, but Socrates does say that Chaerephon’s brother is there to back him up. Chaerephon, of course, is Socrates’ companion in the Clouds. Chaerephon went to the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi and asked, “Is there anyone wiser than Socrates?” And the oracle said, “No.” Socrates was shocked:

When I heard these things, I pondered them like this. “Whatever is the god saying, and what riddle is he posing? For I am conscious that I am not at all wise either much or little.” [I would translate that as “I am not wise in anything great or small.” That would clearly bring in the sense of denial of natural philosophy.] So whatever is he saying when he claims I am the wisest? Surely, he is not saying something false, at least; for that is not sanctioned for him. (21b)

There he goes again. Socrates is getting into trouble by saying that the gods can’t lie. The Greek gods could lie. He’s claiming that Apollo can’t lie, and that itself is a deeply impious claim, because it’s equivalent to saying that the cherished view that the gods are tricky and clever is false and that the gods are subject to some higher power that commands them not to lie.

Socrates continues:

. . . for a long time, I was at a loss about that ever he [the god] was saying, but then very reluctantly I turned to something like the following investigation of it. I went to those reputed to be wise, on the ground that there, if anywhere, I would refute the divination . . . (21b–c)

Then Socrates describes how he sought to refute the oracle. He went to men who were reputed to be wise and questioned them about their wisdom, hoping to discover that they were wiser than him and the oracle was wrong. But how is it pious to disbelieve the god’s oracle and try to refute it? Socrates likens this process to the heroic labors of Heracles (22a).

As we observed in the Euthyphro, Socrates’ method is to ask people to articulate what they know. When they fail to articulate their knowledge, Socrates concludes that they have none. This method hinges on the very dubious assumption that you don’t know what you can’t say.

Socrates spoke first to an unnamed politician:

. . . it seemed to me that this man seemed to be wise, both to many other human beings and most of all to himself, but that he was not. And then I tried to show that that he supposed he was wise, but was not. So from this I became hateful both to him and to may of those present. (21c)

Socrates continues: “After the politicians, I went to the poets, those of the tragedies and dithyrambs, and the others” (22a–b). They too proved to be unwise. Socrates asked the poets to give a rational account of their work and found them incapable of it. Thus he concluded that they based their poetry on inspiration rather than knowledge. It is interesting that Socrates doesn’t mention comedy in particular. It could be included in “the others,” but he leaves open the possibility that some comic poets, such as Aristophanes, could be wise.

Socrates specifically likens poets to diviners and oracles, who also speak based on inspiration rather than knowledge and thus cannot offer a rational account of their supposed superior knowledge. Euthyphro, of course, was a diviner who could not define piety, which he claimed to know better than anybody else.

It is significant that Socrates mentions that oracles also speak from inspiration rather than knowledge, which implies that Socrates can’t take them seriously either. This contradicts Socrates’ backstory, which is premised on taking the oracle of Apollo seriously.

Then Socrates questioned the craftsmen. He discovered that they have genuine knowledge, namely of their arts. But they wrongly thought that their expertise in one area made them wise about all things.

Socrates claims his three accusers represent the three groups whose pretensions of wisdom he punctured: Meletus on behalf of the poets, Anytus on behalf of the craftsmen, and Lycon on behalf of the politicians.

Socrates ends the tale of how he became unpopular by saying, “This is the truth for you, men of Athens. I’m hiding nothing from you either great or small in my speech nor am I holding anything back” (24a). Of course, by saying he’s hiding nothing great or small, that leaves open the possibility that he’s omitting something that falls between the great and small.

Socrates vs. Meletus

Then Socrates begins his attack on the new accusers. As we shall see, his arguments are sophistical and his manner when cross-examining Meletus is arrogant, sarcastic, and badgering.

Socrates first asks Meletus about his accusation that Socrates corrupts the youth. Socrates asks ‘Who benefits the youth?’ Meletus’ answer is the laws. But that seems to imply that everybody in Athens benefits the youth, except for Socrates. Socrates simply laughs off the idea that everybody benefits the youth but him. But he hasn’t refuted the claim that he corrupts the youth.

Socrates asks Meletus if he believes that Socrates corrupts the youth voluntarily or involuntarily. Meletus says voluntarily. To which Socrates replies that he would never corrupt the youth voluntarily, because “if I ever do something wretched to my associates, I will risk getting back something bad from him . . .” (25e). Socrates scoffs at the idea that he’d be so naïve as to corrupt the sons of his neighbors and not expect anything bad to happen to him. But there are people that naïve. One of them is Socrates in the Clouds.

Then Socrates addresses the charge that he brings in new gods and disbelieves in the old gods. First, he gets Meletus to formulate his disbelief in the gods of the city as a disbelief in any gods at all. Then, as soon as Meletus does that, Socrates says, in effect, ‘Well, Meletus, you also assert that I believe in a daimonion, right?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, can you ever have daimonions without daimonia? Aren’t daimonia the offspring of gods? It would be like believing in mules without believing in horses and asses, because mules are the offspring of horses and asses just as daimonia are the offspring of gods and mortals. If I believe in daimonia, I must believe in gods.’

Notice that this doesn’t refute the claim that Socrates disbelieves in the gods of Athens, and that’s really the charge. But by getting Meletus to change the charge to ‘He doesn’t believe in any kind of gods,’ Socrates can then show that Meletus contradicts himself when he says that Socrates brings in new gods, because how can you believe in new gods when you don’t believe in any?

Of course, the natural philosophers did precisely that: They introduced new gods, namely divinized natural phenomena, to conceal the fact that they believed in no gods at all. Moreover, Socrates hasn’t actually refuted the claim that he disbelieves in the gods of the city, because he could believe that his daimonion is the offspring of a foreign god. Socrates actually refers to foreign gods from time to time. For instance, in the Apology itself, he swears an oath “by the dog” (21e), which is an Egyptian god (probably the jackal god Anubis).

Socrates’ defense from the charge of corrupting the youth is similarly weak. He simply states, in effect, ‘If I have corrupted any of the youth, let them come forward to accuse me, or let someone come forward on their behalf’ (cf. 33d). This is absurd for two reasons. First, even if Socrates had corrupted some of the people present, who wants to raise his hand and claim to have been corrupted? So the lack of accusers does not imply the lack of a crime. Second, haven’t Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon already come forward to accuse Socrates on behalf of the people he corrupted? If so, doesn’t Socrates need to respond to their charges, instead of pretending that they don’t exist?

Yet again, Socrates gives the impression of refuting the charges against him, but he hasn’t actually accomplished that. It’s such a systematic pattern throughout the Apology that maybe it is there for a reason. Plato is trying to show us the political predicament of philosophy if hauled before the bar and forced to justify itself publicly. It can’t truthfully justify itself, so it’s forced to be systematically deceptive.

What Is Socrates Defending?

Another way of approaching this issue is with a question: What is Socrates defending in the Apology of Socrates? Is it Socrates’ apology for Socrates, or is it Socrates’ apology for something else, or both? If Socrates is defending himself, he’s doing a pretty lousy job. He makes a show of answering the charges, but his arguments fail, often spectacularly.

Beyond that, Socrates defends himself in a manner guaranteed to anger the jury and prejudice them against him. For instance, before Socrates is convicted, he talks about why he avoided politics. He tells the jurors that they do injustice, and if Socrates were to oppose them, they would destroy him. In short, Socrates is accusing the jurors of being bad men. That’s not designed to ingratiate himself. He says this near the end of the speech, right before they’re going to vote, so it will be fresh in their minds. Then after the jury votes to convict him, Socrates proposes the counter-penalty to death of free meals at public expense, which could only anger the jury still more (36d).

Socrates’ behavior here indicates that whatever he’s defending, he’s not defending himself, because if he is defending himself, then he’s not a very clever speaker. But we know that he’s a very clever speaker.

So, what is Socrates defending? He’s defending philosophy. But he’s defending philosophy in a way that shows the difficulties of defending philosophy in a public context.

Near the end of his initial speech, Socrates says, in effect, ‘I’m not going to flatter you. I’m not going to beg. I’m not going to bring my family out here, and I’m not going to tell you the things you want to hear. Why? Because the person who tells you what you want to hear rather than what’s good for you to hear is a flatterer not a friend, and flatterers are corrupters.’

In the Gorgias, Socrates tells the fate of a wise man who tells people the harsh and unflattering truths they need to hear for the care of their souls. If such a man were put on trial in a democracy like Athens, he would be in the same situation as a doctor prosecuted before a jury of children by a pastry chef. The pastry chef corrupts their health with sugary treats, whereas the doctor improves their health with bitter medicines. But children are too foolish to understand that. Thus, the doctor would be unable to acquit himself.

Socrates would suffer the same fate. As a moral philosopher, Socrates is a doctor of the soul. He’s been accused of dispensing bitter medicine to the people of Athens by those who manufacture mind-candy that flatters the egos but corrupts the souls of the people. Socrates, however, will not further corrupt them by pandering to their already corrupted tastes, even to save his life.

Socrates on the Fear of Death

Having “refuted” the new accusers in the slippery fashion we’ve seen, Socrates then deals with the question “Aren’t you afraid of death?”

Perhaps then someone might say, “Then are you not ashamed, Socrates, of having followed the sort of pursuit from which you now run the risk of dying?”

I would respond to him with a just speech: “What you say is ignoble, fellow, if you suppose that a man who is of even a little benefit should take into account the danger of living or dying, but not rather consider this alone whenever he acts: whether his actions are just or unjust, and the deeds of a good man or bad? For, according to your speech, those of the demigods who met their end at Troy would be paltry, especially the son of Thetis [namely Achilles, who constantly risked death over honor].” (28b–c)

A man who is willing to risk his own physical survival for what he considers to be right is heroic. This is Socrates’ ethic too:

This is the way it is, men of Athens, in truth, whenever someone stations himself, holding that it is best, or whenever he is stationed by a ruler, there he must stay and run the risk, as it seems to me, and not take into account death or anything else compared to what is shameful. (28d)

Then he talks about how when he was sent off to battle for Athens, he did his duty properly:

I stayed where they stationed me and ran the risk of dying like anyone else, but once the gods stationed me, as I supposed and assumed, ordering me to live philosophizing and examining myself and others, I have not then left my station because I fear death or any matter whatever. (28e)

Then Socrates makes some very interesting knowledge claims. He says, first of all, that people who fear death are really pretending to be wiser than they are, because they claim to know that death is a bad thing. Now, that’s really not true. People who fear death can simply fear the fact that they don’t know what death holds. They don’t necessarily fear death because they know that they’re going to be roasted slowly on a spit for all eternity. People fear death because it’s an unknown.

But Socrates apparently doesn’t fear the unknown. This is an aspect of the philosophical temperament. He’s not afraid of the unknown. He’s constantly searching for what’s unknown, what’s unfamiliar. For natural philosophy, that means what lies outside the human realm: nature, both great and small. This is how Socrates began to philosophize, as depicted in the Clouds.

But the philosophical quest is not necessarily for the new, but for the true. Sometimes the true isn’t all that new. Sometimes one discovers truth in the old and familiar. Thus Socrates turned from the non-human to the human realm, from the great and small to the middle, from the unfamiliar to the familiar, which in the light of nature had begun to seem strange and questionable as well.

But then Socrates goes on:

But I, men, am perhaps distinguished from the many human beings also here in this, and if I were to say that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this: that since I don’t know sufficiently about the things in Hades, so also I suppose that I do not know. (29b).

Socrates is saying, ‘I’m just like you. I don’t know anything about the afterlife. But unlike you, I know that I don’t know.’ Saying that one knows nothing about the afterlife is like saying one knows nothing about the gods. For there are gods in the underworld too. It implies disbelief in the gods of the underworld. It implies that what the jurors believe about the afterlife is false or groundless, hence it is not knowledge.

“But I do know,” Socrates says (and here’s a knowledge claim from Socrates who’s supposed to know nothing),

that it is bad and shameful to do injustice and to disobey one’s better, whether god or human being. So compared to the bad things which I know are bad, I will never fear or flee the things about which I do not know whether they even happen to be good. (29b)

In sum: ‘I know that being evil is bad, but I don’t know that being dead is bad. Therefore, given the choice, I’d prefer to die than be evil.’ Death might be a profit. But Socrates is certain that evil is never a profit, which is a strong knowledge claim.

Why Socrates Chose Death Over Evil

Then Socrates deals with the suggestion that he might cease and desist from philosophy in exchange for his life: “Socrates, for now we will not obey Anytus; we will let you go, but on this condition: that you no longer spend time on this investigation or philosophize; and if you are caught still doing this, you will die” (29c). Socrates refuses that deal:

If you would let me go, then, as I said, on these conditions, I would say to you, “I, men of Athens, salute and love you, but I will obey the god rather than you; and as long as I breathe and am able to, I will certainly not stop philosophizing, and I will exhort you and exclaim this to whomever of you I happen to meet, and I will speak just the sorts of things I am accustomed to: “Best of men! You are an Athenian, from the city that is greatest and best reputed for wisdom and strength; are you not ashamed that you care for having as much money as possible, and reputation, and honor, but that you neither care for nor give thought to prudence and truth, and how your soul will be the best possible?” (29d–e)

This is Socrates’ refrain. You’re putting money and reputation ahead of the quality of your own soul, which is not to say that money and reputation are bad but simply that they’re not the highest things to pursue and certainly not things to pursue at the expense of your own moral corruption.

If one of you disputes it and asserts that he does not care, I will not immediately let him go, nor will I go away, but I will speak to him and examine and test him. And if he does not seem to me to possess virtue, but only says he does, then I will reproach him saying that he regards the things worth the most as the least important, and the paltrier things as the more important. I will do this to whoever, younger or older, I happen to meet, both foreigner and townsman, but more so to the townsman inasmuch as you are closer to me in kin. (29e–30a)

Even as a philosopher, Socrates admits to a partiality for Athenians because they are kin. He continues:

Know well, then, that the god orders this. And I suppose that until now no greater good has arisen for you in the city than my service to the god. [In other words, ‘I’m God’s gift to Athens.’] For I go around and do nothing but persuade you, both younger and older, not to care for bodies and money before, nor as vehemently, as how your soul will be the best possible. I say “Not from money does virtue come, but from virtue comes money and all good things for human beings both privately and publicly.” (30a–b)

What about people who prosper from vice? What about the multi-billion-dollar porn industry? What about the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry? What about the multi-billion-dollar alcohol and drug and tobacco trades?

Socrates’ answer is that one might get very rich from vice, exploiting the vices of others being a vice in itself. But without virtue, life is not worth living. Without virtue, all the things that money can buy cannot be used rightly, to make one genuinely happy. Indeed, rich fools have it worse than poor ones, because wealth gives them more opportunities for self-ruin. So as long as they are foolish, they’d be better off poor and homeless.

Rich fools can buy lots of thrills. They might feel good a lot, but happiness for the Greeks does not mean well-feeling but well-being. It means a state of harmony and health in the soul. It’s possible to suffer physical pain while still having harmony and health in your soul, and it’s possible to enjoy physical pleasure and still be in a state of spiritual disharmony and disease.

The question is: Which is the most important? If you could, you’d have both: physical pleasure and spiritual well-being. But if you have to choose, you choose what is the most important: the healthy soul.

Of course, the Athenians don’t like to hear that, so there is an uproar in the court. Socrates says, in effect, ‘If you kill me, this will hurt you more than it hurts me. Why? Because I’ll be dead, but you’ll be villains. You won’t have harmed me spiritually. You’ll merely have killed me. But I’m 70 years old. I’ll be dead soon enough anyway. I’ll die well, whereas you’ll become bad men.’

Socrates the Gadfly

Then Socrates raises the issue of what his defense speech is defending. He admits that he’s not doing a very good job of defending himself, which at this point should be obvious to anyone. Then he makes matters worse by saying that he’s actually speaking in defense of the jurors. His mission is to make the Athenians better men:

So I, men of Athens, am now far from making a defense speech on my own behalf, as someone might suppose. I do it rather on your behalf, so that you do not do something wrong concerning the gift of the god to you by voting to condemn me. (30d)

Socrates then famously likens himself to a stinging pest, the gadfly:

For, if you kill me, you will not easily discover another of my sort, who — even if it is rather ridiculous to say — has simply been set upon the city by the god as though upon a great and well-born horse who is rather sluggish because of his great size and needs to be awakened by some gadfly. Just so, in fact, the god seems to me to have set me upon the city as someone of this sort: I awaken and persuade and reproach each one of you, and I do not stop settling down everywhere upon you the whole day. Someone else of this sort will certainly not easily arise for you, men. Well, if you obey me, you will spare me. But perhaps you will be vexed, like the drowsy when they are awakened, and if you obey Anytus and slap me, you would easily kill me. Then you would spend the rest of your lives asleep, unless the god sends you someone else in his concern for you. (30e–31a)

What Socrates says is intellectually defensible. But, again, he goes out of his way to annoy his audience. Ordinary life really can be likened to sleep, insofar as reality is hidden by falsehoods and half-truths and we are distracted from pursuing genuine well-being by its counterfeits, like pleasure, wealth, and fame. Just as physical health sometimes requires the tough love of the druggist’s purgatives and the surgeon’s knife, spiritual health sometimes requires the tough love of being roused from our slumbers by Socratic questioning, even though it might be humiliating.

But it seems rather perverse and self-defeating for Socrates to liken this process to being stung by a gadfly, which is a disgusting blood-sucking insect.

Maybe there is something to Xenophon’s claim in his Apology that Socrates spoke this way to inflame the jury and guarantee a conviction. Is there a philosophical point to this behavior? Or is Socrates just letting his anger and pride carry him away? Is this reason speaking — or thumos?

One might wonder: Is there really a fundamental incompatibility between philosophy as such and the public at large? Or is there just an incompatibility between Socrates’ prickly personality and the public at large? Could philosophy and the city be harmonized with a suaver and — dare I say it? — more sophisticated rhetoric? Maybe Socrates was just not up to the job. Maybe the problem is not opinion as such, but simply the fact that Socrates had a bad reputation, and not just because of the Clouds but because he was also a bit of an asshole.

I think the Platonic answer to this is that philosophy as such is doomed to a bad reputation because it dissolves conventions which are the cement of society. So the problems faced by Socrates are faced by all philosophers, even the most affable and easygoing ones.

Why Socrates Avoided Politics

At this point in the argument, it is natural to wonder: If Socrates is such a great boon to the city, then why did he not try to lead it? Hence Socrates deals with that question: “It might seem to be strange that I do go around counseling and being a busybody in private, but that in public I do not dare to go up before your multitude to counsel the city” (31c). Then he says that the daimonion began for him in childhood and always counseled him against this. Again, I don’t think it began in childhood. I think that it began after the Clouds. But in any case, prudence dictates that Socrates not get involved in politics because it is too dangerous. Even though he would help his fellow countrymen, they would be ungrateful and repay help with harm:

Now do not be vexed with me when I speak the truth. For there is no human being who will preserve his life if he genuinely opposes either you or any other multitude and prevents many unjust and unlawful things from happening in the city. Rather, if someone who really fights for the just is going to preserve himself even for a short time, it is necessary for him to lead a private rather than a public life. (31e–32a)

As soon as we are born, we fall into illusions and distractions, i.e., false beliefs and trivial pursuits that interfere with what we all really want, namely pursuing well-being. Isn’t it obvious, then, that we should try to wake everyone up?

Plato’s answer is: No, because not everyone is suited for enlightenment. Euthyphro is an example of a man who has been made worse rather than better by popular enlightenment. He would have been a better man if he had clung to the conventional concept of piety that philosophers are quick to dismiss as an illusion.

If not everyone is suited for enlightenment, then it is not responsible to broadcast philosophy to the public at large. One will make people worse off rather than better. And this will provoke the guardians of public order to swat philosophers like flies. Therefore, if you’re going to lead a life pursuing wisdom and perfecting one’s soul, you must do it privately.

To find kindred souls, philosophers must sift and sort humanity one-to-one, face-to-face, privately rather than publicly.

Does this mean that most men are doomed to unhappiness? Not necessarily. Although most people are not benefitted from being deprived of illusions and distractions altogether, they can be benefitted by purging away unhealthy illusions and distractions and replacing them with healthier ones.

True philosophy must always fight a two-front war: against the unhealthy conventions that enslave men and against the unhealthy intellectuals who would liberate us from convention altogether.

How Socrates Served Athens

After Socrates has been condemned, he mentions philosophy’s second front against misguided intellectuals:

I affirm, you men who have condemned me to death, that vengeance will come upon you right after my death, and much harsher, by Zeus, than the sort you give to me by killing me. For you have now done this deed supposing that you will be relieved from giving an account of your life, but it will turn out much the opposite for you as I affirm. There will be more who will refute you, whom I have now been holding back: you did not perceive them. And they will be harsher, inasmuch as they are younger, and you will be more indignant. (39c–d).

Who has Socrates been holding back? People like Euthyphro. People like the Socrates of the Clouds: vain, alienated, intellectuals; father beaters and corrupters of the youth. Socrates has been reining such people in. The jurors don’t understand that, because constructive and destructive philosophy all look pretty much the same to unpracticed eyes. But without Socrates’ moderating influence, bad ideas will be running amok. The Athenians think they are getting rid of a gadfly, but actually he’s been holding back far more insidious forms of philosophizing.

Socrates was a hard friend. But he rendered unique and indispensable benefits to his city. The Athenians may never understand why, but they will be worse off once he is gone.

* * *

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Note

[1] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, II, 40, trans. Pamela Mensch, ed. James Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).