Noele asked:

In "The Apology", how well did Socrates defend himself?

============

First of all it is interesting to follow the line of argument — is it convincing? Has Socrates adequately
addressed the charges against him?

Socrates spent considerable time addressing the "old" charges before answering the actual affidavit
against him, and it could be questioned whether he did not make his case worse by doing so.

Defense against the "old" charges

Socrates is able to appeal to the jurors themselves as witnesses that he does not discuss natural
sciences. But he does not directly reply to the charge of making the worse case appear the better. In
fact he could be accused of rhetorical trickery in linking educating people and charging a fee, since
this latter was not part of the accusation (even though it could be understood to distinguish him from
the sophists, the confusion with whom Plato thought instrumental for Socrates' indictment). Basically
he dismisses the "old" charges as a routine charge against anybody who seeks wisdom, and says the
court case really stems from the resentment of the poets, artisans and orators, whose ignorance he
uncovered by his practice of examination. This could have been understood as belittling the charges
and attributing of bias to the jurors, many of who must have belonged to the groups mentioned.

Regarding the actual court case, Socrates sets out to address Meletus' charge, saying he will reply to
the others later (which he doesn't).

Defense against Meletus' charge

Socrates addresses the charge of corrupting the young by trying to demonstrate that Meletus has not
thought a lot about the education of the young, an ad hominem argument, which fails to convince,
since Meletus may be an idiot but he could still be right in claiming that Socrates corrupts the young.
Socrates' arguments: 1) he concludes from the analogy with horse training that it is not the case that
only a minority corrupts but that on the contrary experts are few. Therefore it cannot be the case that
only Socrates corrupts the young. 2) The bad harm everybody who is in contact with them; therefore
Socrates cannot have corrupted anybody intentionally (because they would harm him). Therefore he
either does not corrupt the young or does it unintentionally; in both cases he should not be punished.
3) He points out that Meletus has not called as witnesses for the prosecution the supposedly
corrupted or their relatives and asks what reason they could have for not coming forward other than
that the charge is false.

Regarding his arguments it could be argued that Socrates debates side issues i.e. whether Socrates
is the only one to corrupt the young and whether he does it intentionally or not, but does not really
address the issue of corrupting the young. Also one would have to ask — is education really like
horse training? Do the bad really always harm everybody they are in contact with? Would that not
mean that no one corrupts the young willingly? And could anybody ever be punished for a crime if no
one does evil intentionally? Finally one could think of reasons why the corrupted youths/ their
relatives would not appear as witnesses e.g. because they did not realize they had been harmed, or
because they did not want to make a public spectacle of themselves or be implicated etc.

Regarding atheism Socrates says that 4) Meletus claims both that he does not believe in gods and
that he introduces new gods, which is a contradiction. 5) When Meletus accuses him of teaching the
sun is a stone and the moon a mass of earth he confuses him with Anaxagoras.

Regarding the atheism claim the demonstration of two claims that cannot be jointly true does not rule
out that one is true. It could be true that Socrates does not believe in the City's gods and introduces
instead new ones (his "sign"). It is noteworthy that at no point does Socrates proclaim belief in the
city's gods. Regarding confusion with Anaxagoras: Even if Anaxagoras held these beliefs first it could
still be true that Socrates shares them and/ or teaches them.

His final claim to be pleading in fact on the judges' behalf must have enraged the jury.

In summary a number of problems can be found with the arguments, which in fact failed to convince
the jurors.

One could speculate why Socrates' defence was so curiously ineffective. In the Memorabilia
Xenophon seems to suggest that Socrates (who at the time of trial was 70 years old) felt his time had
come and preferred death to life (i.e. to old age with sickness, senility and a lingering death).
Socrates may therefore have provoked the jury ("assisted suicide") or at least have not thought it
necessary to appease them.

Another interesting speculation has been advanced by I. F. Stone, who claims that the charge
(intentionally misrepresented by Socrates' pupils Plato and Xenophon) actually was a political one —
that Socrates was charged to have continued antidemocratic teaching even after the general amnesty
for the collaborators of the oligarchic rule of terror of the Thirty (404-3 B.C.), and that he was
executed because the democrats feared another anti-democratic coup and held Socrates responsible
for the education of Critias, one of the Thirty.

See STONE, I. F. 'I.F. Stone Breaks the Socrates Story: An old muckraker sheds fresh light on the
2,500-year-old mystery and reveals some Athenian political realities that Plato did his best to hide'
New York Time Magazine, April 8, 1979, pp. 22 ff. The article can be found online at:

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/ifstoneonsocrates.html

Another angle would be to consider whether Socrates wanted to be acquitted at all. In that case the
Apologywould have to be read as addressed to posteriority for which it has proved surprisingly
effective — Socrates as 'philosophy's martyr' — the individual following his conscience over the
secular authorities, and his death as the proof of concept, that nothing — not even death — can harm
the just man, and that the greatest evil is injustice i.e. the evil that we inflict upon ourselves.

Further literature

SUDDUTH, Michael: Arguments in the Apology. 1996. [Plato2]

http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/Plato2.html

SUDDUTH, Michael: Socrates and the Apology. [Plato3]

http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/Plato3.html

N.N.: A Brief Comment on the Query: "Is Socrates Guilty as Charged?" History of Political Thought
47.230 B Mini-Essay for Discussion Group #3

http://www.papercamp.com/phil2.htm

Helene Dumitriu