Plato's Apology of Socrates

tr. James Redfield
Reading Summary by Adam Kissel
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17a -- Socrates is no orator, unless his accusers mean merely one who speaks the truth, which his accusers have not done.
17b -- One need not embellish the truth or tell "made-up stories"; it stands well enough for itself.
17c -- Natural language may not sound like oratory, but should be accepted for its attempt to tell the truth.

18a-19c -- S must defend himself against the common prejudice against him first, before answering the charges at hand. People have been spreading lies about him for a long time: that he seeks the unseekable and makes weaker arguments defeat stronger ones. [cf. Paradise Lost 3.113-14]
19d-20b -- Neither is S a paid educator, though a good one would be valuable. Evenus, e.g., is paid 5 mnae ($25,000) to educate Callias' sons--is this per year or for the whole education?

20c-20d -- Socrates' wisdom is merely human; this wisdom is what's gotten him into trouble.
20e-21a -- The oracle in Delphi said that none was wiser than Socrates.
21b-21d -- S challenged the oracle, trying to find a wiser man. But his method turned out to be: "it seemed to me that this man seemed wise to many other people, and most of all to himself, but that he was not. So then I tried to show him that he thought he was wise but was not. At that point he became irritated with me, and so did many of those present. So I went away thinking to myself: 'I really am wiser than this person. Probably neither of us knows anything really worth knowing, but this one thinks that he knows, although he doesn't, whereas I, just as I don't know, don't think that I do.'"
21e -- S repeats this and irritates many other so-called wise men. The average people in their humility seem thus to be wiser than the prideful so-called wise.
22a-b -- The poets likewise "do not make their work by wisdom but by some kind of talent and by inspiration," yet think they are wise.
22c-d -- The craftsmen do know their crafts, but pridefully think they know about other things as well, and in this way deceive themselves.
22e-23b -- People therefore think S is wise on all these subjects when really he merely shows his own ignorance as well as that of others. Only God is wise; human wisdom is nearly worthless. Therefore Socrates becomes synonymous with the above process: man is worth nothing in comparison to true wisdom. Socrates has been evangelizing this message for the sake of the god in Delphi.
23c-24a -- Young people enjoy this iconoclasm, and so they follow him around and then emulate his method. The refuted ones then say that S is corrupting the youth--but having nothing to say about what is actually taught, they make up "the usual charges" about falseness and heresy. These charges by the refuted ones have developed into the prejudices which show themselves in the current charges.

24b -- Socrates will examine each charge separately: corrupting the youth, then spiritual beliefs.
24c-25a -- Corrupting the young: S begins a dialogue with Meletus. He gets M to say that it is the whole community which educates the young, suggesting that it is S alone who corrupts the young (which would be true to the extent that S puts himself outside the community teachings).
25b -- Socrates has not let Meletus explain how the community educates the young. Instead Socrates shifts the argument to horses, noting that a horse-trainer is a specialized kind of person--but this is dissimulation, for horses best teach other horses how to be a horse (not the kind of horse that people want).
25c-d -- S shows that someone would not rationally corrupt others, because they would become more likely to harm him, so that S could not rationally be intentionally corrupting the young. So if S is unintentionally corrupting the young, he would be glad to be shown his error. So why is S not being taught, but persecuted?
26a -- Meletus is brought to say that the charge is that S is teaching youth not to believe in the community's gods but in other spiritual things.
26b-c -- M is brought to say that S also is an atheist.
26d-27d -- Another dialogue with Socrates, showing that Socrates cannot both be an atheist and also teach spiritual things.
28a -- S claims victory over these charges. But he doesn't let M retract the atheism charge (if M did, M could still charge S with teaching about the wrong spiritual things).

28b-d -- S describes how one ought to follow the truth and divine commands even at peril of death.
29a-30b -- In fact, to fear death is to pretend to an unpossessed wisdom, since nobody knows whether death is actually bad. So Socrates will continue to "philosophize" if he is permitted to live, even if told not to. Again his method is to claim that people are not thinking well about "intelligence and truth and the soul ... And if someone wants to argue with me and say that he does worry about it, I'm not going to release him right off or go away, but I will ask him and I will examine him and I will refute him, and if I think he has not acquired excellence but says he has, I will abuse him because he has his priorities wrong and makes trivialities important." Excellence makes money, not vice versa: one should worry first about the soul, not about the body [is there dualism here?] or about money.
30c-d -- A death sentence will "hurt you more than it hurts me," since S doesn't fear death, while Athens will lose something important. S is like a horsefly that wakes up a sleeping horse.

31a-b -- It is clear that S has never been paid to play the horsefly; his almost supernatural poverty is witness to his veracity. [cf. Jesus to this paragraph]
31c -- S has kept his philosophizing to private company, rather than public teaching. Some supernatural prodding interrupts his action and keeps him out of politics. This is lucky because "anyone who really fights for justice, if he is going to survive any time at all, must necessarily stay in private practice and not become a public figure" [cf. King, Gandhi, Jesus?]. S's method is to show each person his own folly, rather than challenge the whole city at once.
32a-d -- S tells stories to illustrate how he has chosen to face death rather than commit unrighteousness while in public office.
32e-33a -- S has never acted as teacher, only interlocutor, and has always acted in good conscience both in private and in public.
33b-34a -- Some of those young who are said to have been corrupted are in court, and have grown up, yet they in fact support Socrates now.
34b-35d -- It is inexcusable to try to evoke pity from the judges, though S has as much reason as anybody to plead for mercy, for his life and his family's sake. In fact any such mercy-pleading should be chastised; it shows that truth has been put below emotionalism. Teaching and persuading the judges is the right course.

35e-36a -- S interprets his conviction as a victory against Meletus at least (he would have prevailed if he had also challenged Anytus and Lycon, his other accusers).

36b-c -- S would set his penalty not as death, but as appropriate to the good he has done--he should be sentenced "to dine with the government."
37a-d -- But if a "bad" punishment must be chosen, why should S choose something other than death, which may turn out to be good? Exile is no choice, for no society could accept such a one if Athens cannot.
37e -- Keeping quiet is an even worse penalty, for "the greatest good for mankind is this: every day to discuss excellence and all the other things that you hear me discussing, examining myself and others, and that an unexamined life is no kind of human life."
38a-b -- a monetary penalty would be acceptable if S could pay it--possibly one mna ($5,000). Socrates' friends guarantee up to thirty minae, so he proposes a sentence of that amount.

38c-39b -- S accepts his sentence, having been unwilling to commit shameless groveling. His accusers are likewise sentenced "by truth to bad character and vice."
39c-d -- Socrates prophesies that the younger philosophers, who, emulating him, will be even more harsh on the accusers, will make life even more miserable for them.
39e-40b -- From here to the end, Socrates talks to those who voted to acquit him, his true judges, and says that his "prophetic spiritual voice" (his conscience?) did not oppose anything he did or said during the day, and so Socrates believes that what has happened and what is about to happen to him are good.
40c-41b -- Death doesn't seem all that bad. For if it is like a long, trouble-free sleep, it's better than most days that most people have while alive. If it is part of a spiritual transference to another place, where all the other dead humans are, then one can meet all the other dead and compare notes about life, as well as continue philosophizing and inquiring--and it would seem that people are immortal there, too. [This doesn't address other possibilities for the other world; e.g., that it is bad like a hell.]
41c-d -- Although the accusers thought they were harming Socrates with the trial and execution, "it is not possible for anything bad to happen to a good man."
41e -- S. asks to have his sons go through the same interrogations that S. puts others through, to emphasize to them that they ought to put excellence above money and all such petty things, and that they ought to eschew pride.