Socrates
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Though the Clouds was not successful when it was first performed in 423, many Athenians would have seen this play; Socrates assumes that his jurors are familiar with it. For some, it may have been the source of their ideas of who Socrates was. It was not the only source: Socrates must have been a public figure in 423 or Aristophanes would not have bothered to write a play about him, and Socrates says his first accusers were numerous. Still, Aristophanes’ portrait of Socrates may well have been influential with many jurors, as Plato thought it was, and Aristophanes’ Socrates is certainly a disbeliever in the gods of the state and an introducer of new divinities.
Plato believes that a major reason behind Socrates’ prosecution was Socrates’ philosophical activity. Socrates says that he has caused trouble for himself by examining the leading political figures in Athens. Not only did they come to dislike him, but so did many of their followers. “I realized,” he states, “to my sorrow and alarm, that I was getting unpopular” (21e). A page later he restates the point: “as a result of this investigation, men of Athens, I acquired much unpopularity, of a kind that is hard to deal with and is a heavy burden” (22e–23a). Socrates’ suggestion is that this unpopularity contributed to his trial. It may be that the leading politicians of the state, men like Anytus, felt that they had endured enough of his questions and decided to silence him. It was not just that Socrates was a critic of democracy; he was a critic of them.
How did this examination of others contribute to the charge of corrupting the youth? As Socrates notes, “young men who follow me around of their own free will, those who have most leisure, the sons of the very rich, take pleasure in hearing people questioned; they themselves often imitate me and try to question others” (23c). Though Socrates denied that he was a teacher, he admits that these young men learned their practice of questioning others from him. One can only imagine the trouble these young people would have caused if they took their new-found Socratic techniques of investigation home to practice on their parents. To a proponent of traditional Athenian values, such young people might well seem to have been corrupted by Socrates. It is tempting to speculate that Anytus himself may have been one of the political leaders examined by Socrates and shown up in the presence of his followers. It is also tempting to speculate that his son, whom Socrates admits in Xenophon's Apology that he knew, may have brought Socrates’ method of questioning into his own household. Anytus may have had personal reasons for holding a grudge against Socrates.
Was Socrates Guilty?
There is no reason to think that there were any procedural irregularities in the trial of Socrates. Socrates was convicted in accordance with Athenian law. There were several features of that law that would seem today to offer insufficient protection to defendants charged with capital crimes: the trial had to be completed in a single day, the scope of the charge of impiety was not specified precisely in Athenian law, and there was no appeal from the verdict of the jury. The defendant was not allowed to have legal counsel; he might hire a speechwriter, but he had to read his defense speech himself. There is a story that the speechwriter Lysias wrote a speech on Socrates’ behalf, which he declined to give. The fact that a simple majority of the jury was sufficient to convict Socrates and put him to death seems unjust to us today. The jurors were not allowed to discuss the trial with each other before voting: they cast their votes after the prosecutors and the defendant made their speeches. These differences between Athenian law and ours make it extremely unlikely that Socrates would have been brought to trial, let alone convicted, in a modern court of justice, at least in a democracy. Be that as it may, however, Socrates’ conviction was in accordance with the laws in place in Athens at the time.
If one were to look only at Aristophanes’ Clouds, one would conclude that Socrates was guilty of the charge of impiety, for rejecting the traditional gods and introducing strange new ones. Since Socrates also in the play turns Strepsiades’ son Pheidippides into a tradition-bashing scoffer who beats his father, one could conclude that he was guilty of the charge of corrupting the youth as well. Though the Clouds was not the only source of Socrates’ bad reputation, it may have been an accurate portrait of how Socrates was seen by the majority of Athenians at the time of his trial. For Xenophon, on the other hand, the charges against Socrates were preposterous. He summarizes his view by asking:
How then could he be guilty of the charges? For so far was he from “rejecting the gods,” as charged in the indictment, that no man was more conspicuous for his devotion to the service of the gods: so far from “corrupting the youth,” as his accuser actually charged against him, that if any among his companions had evil desires, he openly tried to reform them and exhorted them to desire the fairest and noblest virtue, by which men prosper in public life and in their homes. By this conduct did he not deserve high honour from the State?
(Mem. I.II.64)
For Plato, matters are not so simple. Unquestionably, Plato believed in Socrates’ innocence, and wrote his Apology to show this. Still, the defense of Socrates that Plato attributes to him leaves two questions open. First, Socrates argues that he believes in the gods, “as none of my accusers do” (35d). There is no question that Socrates asserts his belief in “the gods”; but are they the gods the city believes in? Some recent interpreters have argued that they are not. Socrates’ gods are not the gods of Homer and the Greek religious tradition, gods who quarreled with each other and who were not generally on friendly terms with humans. His gods agreed, especially about questions of value: they had the knowledge for which Socrates searched. They were also beneficial toward humans. Socrates’ gods are morally perfect; the traditional gods are anything but that. Moreover, though Socrates describes himself as a servant of “the god” and on occasion “the god at Delphi,” Apollo, he rarely refers to any god by name. This has made some interpreters question whether he believes in the gods of the city, as opposed to gods of his own devising. As one interpreter notes, Socrates “might almost be a monotheist.”7 Plato addresses this question of Socrates’ religious beliefs in the Euthyphro, which we shall consider in Chapter 4.
Second, consider the charge of corrupting the youth. Suppose Socrates taught the young people who followed him around to believe in the kind of gods he believed in, who at least had different characteristics from the gods of traditional Greek theology. Would this have constituted corruption, in the eyes of the jury? Suppose Socrates had taught the youth, as Xenophon admits, to question the Athenian principle of electing most officials by lot, which was a fundamental practice of Athenian democracy. Would this questioning have constituted corruption? Suppose Socrates had taught the youth to raise basic questions about the meaning of terms that ordinary Athenians thought they understood quite well, terms such as justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom. Suppose Socrates’ inquiries had led, not to new conceptions of these terms, but to perplexity. Suppose Socrates taught the youth who followed him not to be good, loyal Athenians but skeptics. Would this have been corruption? Plato's dialogues raise a fundamental question about the aim of liberal education. Is it to produce good citizens, with faith in democracy and its institutions, or is it to produce critical minds? Plato was not a friend of democracy. One of the reasons for this is certainly that it was Athenian democracy that put Socrates to death. But Plato may have accepted and developed for his own purposes the Socratic view that the government of the state was best left not in the hands of the people but in the hands of an expert ruler, who becomes in Plato's Republic a philosopher-king, whose absolute power is based on absolute wisdom. Plato certainly approved of Socrates’ attempt to make his young associates question the basic principles of democratic government. Practical democratic politicians like Anytus would have surely disapproved. They would have considered Socrates’ raising of these questions to be corruption of the youth. The question of Socrates’ political beliefs will be discussed in Chapter 7.
The Death Penalty
Socrates’ trial had two phases, as do many trials today.
In the first phase the guilt or innocence of the defendant is decided. In the second, if the defendant is found guilty, the prosecution and defense each get to propose a penalty, and the jury must decide between them. Socrates’ accusers proposed death as the penalty for his impiety and corruption of the youth. To readers today this seems an impossibly severe penalty. It is sometimes said that his prosecutors did not desire Socrates’ death, but rather hoped that he might propose exile as an alternative, which would have been within his rights. Socrates even mentions the possibility of exile when considering what punishment to propose. Yet this suggestion has problems, not the least of which is that, had the prosecutors wished to exile Socrates, they might simply have proposed that. Perhaps his accusers thought that death was the only way to silence Socrates’ voice. But why would the jury agree to the death penalty? For one thing, as noted above, impiety was considered a very serious matter in ancient Athens, a threat to the foundation of the state, something akin to treason. To be impious was to risk the anger and disfavor of the gods, and the consequences of that could be disastrous. Socrates may have seemed to a majority of the jurors to be a serious threat to the well-being, even the survival, of the state.
In addition, Socrates no doubt angered the jurors by the way in which he dealt with the question of his penalty. According to Plato, Socrates’ initial choice of a “penalty” is that he be given free meals in the Prytaneum, the city hall, a reward reserved for Olympic victors and other heroes. Socrates’ reasoning is that he has done nothing wrong but, on the contrary, has devoted his life to the service of Athens by trying to persuade individual Athenians to care for virtue and wisdom above all else. “The Olympian victor,” Socrates says, “makes you think yourself happy; I make you be happy” (36d–e). “Besides,” he adds, “he does not need food, but I do.” Eventually Socrates proposed a fine of thirty minae, a sizeable amount, funded by his associates, but the damage had been done. Xenophon had asked the rhetorical question whether Socrates did not deserve honor from the state in the passage from the Memorabilia quoted above; but it is one thing for a third party, a known follower of Socrates, to make this suggestion and another for Socrates himself to make it. Socrates’ proposal would have seemed insufferably arrogant to many of the jurors. Nor was this the only occasion, according to Plato, in which he angered the jurors by what Xenophon called his haughty and arrogant remarks. He notes that the oracle of Apollo at Delphi declared that no one was wiser than he. He dismisses fear of death as unsuitable for him, and in the process he compares himself to the great heroes of Homer, including Homer's greatest hero, Achilles. He describes himself as the god's gift to Athens, like a stinging fly sent to arouse a “great and noble,” but “somewhat sluggish” horse (30e). He refuses to bring his family before the jury to plead for mercy on their behalf, but instead lectures the jurors on their duty to judge his case in accordance with the law, following their oath as jurors. Throughout the trial Socrates refuses to do what jurors had been accustomed to see from a defendant: to show fear for what they might do to him. Near the very end of Plato's Apology, when Socrates is addressing the jurors who voted for his acquittal, he says that he believes that a good man cannot be harmed. Clearly, he thinks of himself as a good man. This complete lack of fear in the face of a guilty verdict would certainly have angered many jurors. This no doubt made it easier for them to vote for the death penalty.
The Trial: Conclusion
Socrates’ trial was a “perfect storm” of circumstances that made his conviction seem inevitable. It occurred at a time when Athens was trying to recover from a devastating defeat, in a climate of recrimination concerning loss of the war, a loss for which some Athenians thought the leaders of the intellectual revolution were at least partially responsible. It followed the production of a play that made Socrates seem to be a denier of the traditional gods and a religious innovator. Socrates was a public figure, and his notoriety was enhanced by Aristophanes’ play. Part of Socrates’ reputation was that of a critic of Athenian democracy, which was in a fragile condition. Socrates’ own practice of examining people who claimed to possess wisdom about what he called the “most important pursuits” made him unpopular with those in power. Finally, Socrates’ own conduct at the trial was of such a nature as to anger members of the jury and enhance the likelihood of his conviction and death sentence.
The trial, conviction, and death of Socrates are major events in the history of philosophy and the history of Western civilization. The questions raised by the trial concerning, for instance, the nature of Socrates’ religious belief and his relation to the city of Athens, reverberate through Plato's dialogues. When Plato thought of Socrates, which is constantly, he thought of him as a martyr who died for the sake of philosophy. Socrates’ piety is a theme of the Euthyphro, which we shall examine in Chapter 4; his relation to Athens and its democratic government is a theme of the Crito, which we shall examine in Chapter 7. His defense of the philosophical life is a theme of the Gorgias, which we shall examine in Chapter 6. Even when Plato is not focusing directly on the issues that arise from the trial, however, his portrait of Socrates is influenced by Socrates’ account of his practice of philosophy and by the character that he showed in his conduct at the trial. Plato's Apology may or may not be a historical document, an account of what Socrates said at the trial; but even if it is not it is a very important document for our understanding of Socrates as Plato saw him.
Socrates the Man: Conclusion
What emerges from these unfavorable circumstances is a portrait of a man who is less concerned with his own survival than prudence might dictate. But this fact is what makes Socrates a hero to his followers. Socrates pursued philosophical inquiry no matter what the cost. He saw himself, according to Plato, as a servant of “the god at Delphi,” but he also saw himself as a pursuer of wisdom. In one of the most famous passages of Plato's Apology, Socrates states that “it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men” (38a). He admits that those he is trying to convince won't believe this, but it is the code by which he lives. Earlier in the Apology he asks himself what he would say if the jury acquitted him on the condition that he give up the practice of philosophy, and he answers, “men of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy” (29d). The practice of philosophy was more important to Socrates than the continuation of his own life. At the very end of the Apology, when Socrates is considering his fate after death, he imagines himself in the underworld, examining the heroes of the Trojan War and the great poets, to discover who is wise and who merely thinks he is. This activity he describes as “extraordinary happiness” (41c). The practice of philosophical inquiry gave meaning to Socrates’ life, made him happy. He thought that it would do the same for others who practiced it and that without it life was unworthy of human beings.
Plato and Xenophon see in Socrates a man of unequaled character. He was, as a character in Xenophon's Symposium states, “an admirable and good man” (IX.1: my translation).8 At the conclusion of Plato's dialogue the Phaedo the narrator, Phaedo, describes Socrates as “of all those we knew the best, and also the wisest and most upright” (118a). Xenophon and Plato give us portraits of Socrates as they understand him. When we talk about Socrates’ character, we are discussing his character as they understood it. For Plato and Xenophon, Socrates’ character was not something that was separate from his practice of philosophy; it was in the practice of philosophy that Socrates showed his character. Socrates was, for Plato and Xenophon, in his essence a philosopher, a man who lived a philosophical life. His virtue, his wisdom, and uprightness, were the result of his philosophical inquiry, and it was displayed in the process of that inquiry. When we turn, as we shall in the next chapter, from an examination of Socrates the man to an examination of
his philosophy, we need to remember that for Plato as for Xenophon Socrates was not just a practitioner of a certain philosophical method or a defender of certain philosophical views, but a man who lived by the philosophy he preached. Philosophy was, for Socrates, as for Plato, not just an intellectual discipline but a way of life. When we consider, as we shall, what Socrates says about virtue, we need to keep in mind the fact that for Plato as well as for Xenophon, Socrates was a virtuous man. Plato's dialogues do not simply offer us a set of abstract arguments; they put those arguments in the mouth of someone who exemplifies the virtue that he discusses. In Plato's Laches the title character describes himself as someone who both loves and hates discussion:
Whenever I hear a man discussing virtue or some kind of wisdom, then, if he really is a man and worthy of the words he utters, I am completely delighted to see the appropriateness and harmony existing between the speaker and his words. And such a man seems to me to be genuinely musical, producing the most beautiful harmony, not on the lyre or some other pleasurable instrument, but actually rendering his own life harmonious by fitting his deeds to his words … The discourse of such a man gladdens my heart …
(188c–e).
Plato's Socrates was such a man.