Plato's Apology, Summary of First Speech

(Read the whole at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html or on this site at www.humboldt.edu/~jwp2/apology.htm )

These remarks are my summary, keeping the first-person voice, of Socrates' first speech in his own defense, up to the vote of the jury. I do this hoping that it will help us think about the main moves in this part of Plato's dialogue, the Apology. (By moves, I mean points and arguments including the support in arguments.)

Here are some of his moves: (Italics are direct quotes, mostly from the Jowett translation.) Curly brackets {} contain faster-moving summaries of material not quoted.

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I'm just a elderly, simple guy, telling the truth without a lot of fancy rhetoric. This is in contrast to the polished rhetoric of the lawyers who have been speaking.

There's a background to these charges, and the older stuff needs to be taken up.

They say I'm an astronomer and scientist like some other people. Not so at all. I've never pretended to any understanding of science.

They say I take money for teaching. God forbid. (Not to take away from those who do--it's just I have nothing to teach)

So, why, you must be wondering, would people make these charges that I lack piety and am corrupting the youth? Well, there is something which I do which causes trouble, because there is, after all, a kind of wisdom I have, though it is a plain and ordinary kind of wisdom, unlike the wisdom for which teachers charge and unlike the wisdom that perhaps is derived from doing science. There's a story connected with it, some of which may seem extravagant.

Chaerophon went to a god [to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi] and was told by the god that no human is wiser than I.

I thought, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I puzzled. I decided to ask some people who actually do claim to be wise. When I did, and sometimes their friends and other people were standing around, it became clear that they did not know the things they thought they knew, and sometimes I would press questions and the result was that they were humiliated in front of their friends and my friends would laugh and point at them. I kept doing this. It's not that I like it--I've been upset by the result, but it came to seem like a duty to find out what the God meant. It's caused no end of trouble, since I keep making enemies of people who set themselves up as wise men. I worked with politicians first, and then went to the great artists and poets, who made clear that they did not know what the passages in their own poems meant (so I've decided they must work by some kind of divine inspiration, though they do not realize this and try to take credit for themselves when the god who inspires them should have the credit). Then I went to the craftsmen, contractors and shipwrights and electricians, and found that they too, though they do have knowledge of a great many things about which I do not, --they too think they know about a lot more, and I would ask about that and it would become clear that they did not know about these other things, though they thought they did. Everybody got pissed, except for the people who used to follow me around because of the show--the entertainment value of having authority figures made to look like fools.

A quote: This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies, and I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who claims or appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.

Now, let's ask Meletus some questions:

{Here follows a demonstration, omitted here, of what Socrates does, consistent with what he said he did with these other politicians and poets and craftspersons.} Meletus claims to be concerned about the corruption of the youth, but he says stupid things about who does that. Meletus claims I do this corruption intentionally, though it is clear even to the oldest and most stupid of men that corrupting the youth harms me too, since I am likely to be harmed (cheated, mugged, robbed, my life made less) by them in turn, and yet he agrees that no one would intentionally harm himself. Meletus claims I am an utter atheist, but it would be unthinkable that I would not regard some of the wonders around us to be of divine origin, and he admits I believe in the children of the gods but thinks I must not believe in the parents of the children of the gods. Look, Meletus, did ever anyone believe in swords and chariots and flute-playing and other human things but not believe in human beings? It's absurd.

Meletus then looks like the others who set themselves up as wise and also looks like someone who cannot be serious in these charges--and so there really must be a hidden agenda that has to do with the older enemies I have made that I told you about just now.

I'll remind all of you too of my behavior in the past, in wartime and in political affairs, in which I showed independence but also integrity. When assigned a dangerous post, each time I stuck to that post and did not abandon it. We have been taught to do this, and in a way what I am doing now is a similar assignment.

You might say, Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? But I have to make the answer which is correct, which is that there you are mistaken; a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing what he does, he is doing right or wrong, acting as a good person or a bad one.

After all, fear of death is a mistake, since it has to be based on pretending to know what we do not know, that death is something to fear. It may not be that at all.

If you jurors consider letting me off this once with a warning and tell me to stop my enquiries, I would have to tell you that I love you but I will not obey you, preferring instead to obey the god and to be a philosopher in that obedience. I shall never stop. I shall stop any of you in turn and ask, You, my friend--a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,--are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? And if you tell me you do care then we will continue and investigate and find whether it is true that you care, and if you do not I will expose you and rebuke you. That's what I'll do if I live, and that's what I would do even if I had to die many times.

There's something more, that you might like even less. If you kill me, you harm yourselves more than you do me. A bad person like Anytus or Meletus cannot harm a good soul, a good person. It is impossible. Whatever harm they could cause my soul would be nothing, and the evil they do is a huge harm to themselves.

So, oddly, I'm not really arguing for myself. I'm arguing on your behalf, trying to save you from harm, the harm that you will do to yourselves if you kill me. You need such as me and I am not easy to replace. I am like a gadfly [a biting fly like a horsefly that annoys cattle or livestock] given to Athens by a god. You are like cattle who have been roused and annoyed by me and you would like to go back to sleep, and if you do away with me perhaps you will be able to do so, unless some god cares for you enough to send another. You can tell I'm on some kind of work for god because it's easy to see I've made no profit for myself and that I've neglected all opportunities to follow up my own interests. Not even my accusers would dare to say I've profited from any of this.

I also hear voices, or rather a voice, which has been with me since youth, and this voice has warned me away from politics or else you would have killed me long ago. If that had happened you would not have had the benefit of my inquiries. You can tell this from my putting my life in danger during the tyranny of the Thirty, when they ordered me illegally to help bring Leon of Salaminius to put him to death and I refused. And I think that all of you know that anyone who has integrity has to live a private life, not a life in politics.

I talk the same in private as I talk in public, and I share what I have to say with anyone who will converse with me, and I have never asked nor have I accepted money for any of my conversations or investigations. Anyone who says they have heard anything from me that I kept special for them is lying.

Why is such a strange enterprise as mine of any interest to others? I've told you, the only interest for the people who are curious about my work is a kind of entertainment value. They enjoy the cross-examination of people who pretend they are wise. I don't do it for that reason, I do it because of the duty to do so imposed on me by God. But still you might want to check to see whether those who have been watching me for years were corrupted, as my accusers claim. For there are many, and they go back for many years, and some of them are in this court. If they have been led astray by me when they were young, surely now in their old age some of them will have detected the mistakes I led them into. Now I ask them to stand up, to talk to those standing near, and tell them whether they now think that I was corrupting them in their youth. [Pause, while those who have known Socrates for years talk to those around them.] I can name some others who are now respected men in Athens, and remind you that they too were young people who participated in these inquiries of mine [there follow a list of names]. And I invite Anytus and Meletus to call those up and ask them whether I corrupt the youth, or indeed to call up any of those who have participated as witnesses in many of these conversations and inquiries of mine, and he can cross-examine them and ask either whether they now think I was a corrupting influence--or show you in his questioning them that they have been corrupted. But of course he won't, because there aren't any who will support his case, and all he would call who have worked with me would support mine.

Maybe some of you might be offended by my lack of proper attitude. You might think I ought to beg and I ought to parade my wife and children in front of you, as perhaps some of you have done yourselves in the past. You might be angered that I do not. You know that I could if I choose do this, since after all I do have a wife and children who would obligingly weep and look pathetic and arouse your sympathy. Why don't I? The answer is that I think such a thing demeans you and me and the state, and brings in matters which have no place here, where we should be following the good arguments where ever they will lead us. Besides, the idea that this prospect of death is some great harm or something to fear or to become a crybaby over is just inexplicable to me; I don't get it at all. It is built on this same pretense to know which I have been exposing for decades now, because after all we do not know what comes after death. And besides, this whole business of tugging heartstrings is like asking a favor of the judge instead of standing up to the reasons and the evidence. You are sworn to pass judgment by law and by evidence, and it would be impious of me and of you if you were to be swayed by emotion. Here I am being accused of lack of piety, and to do such a thing would make me guilty of it. Of course if it worked (as I have been told it has worked in the past) it would make you guilty too. Here then is another bit of evidence that I do believe in piety, more than my accusers do, a higher kind of piety than my accusers even understand. In the spirit of that piety do I conclude and hand over my case to the path of events, to what will come to pass.

(The vote is to convict, 280 to 220.)

[Please note that there are still two sections not summarized here, one proposing a penalty, and one responding to the sentence of death.]

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