Apology by Plato

First transcribed:Apologia Sōkratous, early period, 399-390 b.c.e. (English translation, 1675)

Type of Philosophy: Ethics

Type of Ethics: Classical history; Politico-economic ethics

Significance: In his account of his mentor Socrates’ decision to accept an unjust judicial verdict, Plato portrays a conflict of personal ethical values and the judicial system in the Western world’s first democracy

The Work

Initially, it is important to understand two things about the Apology. First, it is Plato’s dramatic, eyewitness account of the apology of his friend and teacher. Second, this apology is not an expression of regret for an error but a defense of Socrates’ conduct and whole way of life.

Background to the Trial

In 399 b.c.e., a seventy-year-old Athenian citizen named Socrates went on trial for allegedly disrespecting the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens. It is clear from both the text of the Apology itself and from external evidence that Socrates’ real “crime” was severely embarrassing important people in the Greek city-state by his habit of questioning them in public places with respect to matters about which they claimed expertise, exposing their true ignorance, and providing amusement to the onlookers who gathered to see the supposed experts confounded. Socrates regularly insisted that he was merely an earnest philosophical inquirer after truth asking those who presumably knew. In this insistence he was only half sincere. He was pursuing the truth, but he knew that his shallow interlocutors would fall victim to his superior logical and rhetorical skill. He chose the questioning method as an effective way of developing and presenting his own philosophy—a method later adopted in written form by Plato.

Socrates’ Defense

Plato’s account, the first literary “courtroom drama,” purports to be a verbatim record of Socrates’ defense. Far from corrupting youth by promoting atheism or belief in strange gods (for his accusers have vacillated on this point), Socrates explains that he philosophizes in obedience to a divine command. Since he has carried out his divine mission in a quasi-public way, Socrates feels obliged to explain why he has never made an effort to serve the state as an adviser, since the state would seem to need all the wisdom it can find. Here, he raises an ethical issue with which many later thinkers have struggled, including, notably, Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (1516).

Socrates has proclaimed himself a loyal Athenian. Why should not a loyal citizen use his primary talent for the benefit of the state? He argues that if he had gone into political life he would have long since “perished.” The struggle for the right in his mind required “a private station and not a public one.” He once held the office of senator and discovered that his efforts at promoting justice were futile and in fact on one occasion nearly cost him his life. He did not fear death, he explains, but realized that neither he “nor any other man” could effectively fight for the right in a political position. He could do Athens the greatest good in a private effort to inquire into virtue and wisdom. The state would profit most from citizens schooled in this sort of inquiry. He closes his defense by leaving the decision to the jury and to God.

Socrates’ Response

According to the rules of an Athenian trial, the jury of 501 men must decide his guilt or innocence by majority vote. His opponents have taken every advantage possible of the prevailing prejudice against Socrates as a “clever” intellectual skilled in “making the weaker case appear to stronger.” Such prejudice no doubt contributed substantially to what seems in retrospect a misguided verdict. Having been found guilty in a close vote, Socrates exercises his right to propose an alternative to the death penalty requested by the prosecution as a preliminary to the jury’s choice of one of the two proposed punishments. When asked for his counter-sentence, Socrates banteringly suggests that he should be honored, not punished, but finally proposes a token fine that he then raises somewhat at the urging of his friends, whose expressions of dismay actually interrupt the proceedings. They realize that he is in effect condemning himself to death, but Socrates considers that as an unjustly convicted man he should not be punished at all.

To have offered the kind of alternative his enemies undoubtedly expected—exile—would have amounted to a repudiation of his vocation. He is aware that nowhere else would he be free to exercise this vocation as he has been doing in Athens for years before his enemies’ conspiracy to silence him. To save his own life by leaving Athens or by accepting some other compromise such as agreeing to cease philosophizing would contradict the values that he has spent that life to date elucidating. Were he to compromise those values, he would give his shabby accusers a moral victory. Instead, he guarantees that his memory will be revered and—what surely is more important to him—that his work in pursuit of the truth will endure, thanks especially to Plato’s decision to publish it. (Socrates himself never transcribed his dialogues.)

After the jury’s inevitable vote in favor of the prosecution’s request for the death penalty, Socrates rebukes his judges as men more interested in escaping the pressure of the accusers than in giving an account of their own lives. He believes that he is going to “another world where they do not put a man to death for asking questions.” He does have a final request of them, however: that they punish his own still young sons if they show more interest in riches or anything else than in virtue. In this way, the judges can still do him and his sons justice.

Bibliography

Brumbaugh, Robert S. Plato for the Modern Age. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1962. A good introduction to Plato’s thought and the Greek world in which he developed it.

Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy: Greece and Rome. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969. Copleston devotes several clear chapters to a discussion of the full range of Plato’s view.

Cropsey, Joseph. Plato’s World: Man’s Place in the Cosmos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Discusses Plato’s views on human nature with attention to his political theories.

Friedlander, Paul. Plato. Translated by Hans Meyerhoff. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Plato. Apology. Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1981.

Gonzalez, Francisco, ed. The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995. A helpful sampling of late twentieth century research on Plato, his continuing significance, and trends of interpretation in Platonic studies.

Irwin, Terrence. Plato’s Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A thorough study of Plato’s moral philosophy, including its political implications.

Jones, W. T. The Classical Mind. Vol. 1 in A History of Western Philosophy. 2d ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969. A reliable introduction to the main themes and issues on which Plato focused.

Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. A study of Plato’s use of the dialogue form as a means for exploring and developing key philosophical positions and dispositions.

Kraut, Richard, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Eminent Plato scholars analyze and assess key Platonic dialogues and issues in Plato’s thought.

Moravcsik, J. M. E. Plato and Platonism: Plato’s Conception of Appearance and Reality in Ontology, Epistemology, and Ethics and Its Modern Echoes. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992. A scholarly study of Plato’s key distinction between appearance and reality and the continuing impact of that distinction.

Pappas, Nikolas, ed. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Plato and the “Republic.” New York: Routledge, 1995. Helpful articles that clarify key Platonic concepts and theories.

Reeve, C. D. C. Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.

Rutherford, R. B. The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Well-informed essays on key elements of Plato’s theories.

Sayers, Sean. Plato’s “Republic”: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. An accessible commentary on the works of the philosopher.

Shorey, Paul. What Plato Said. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Tarrant, Harold. Plato’s First Interpreters. Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. An examination of the earliest debates about Plato’s ideas.

Taylor, A. E. Plato: The Man and His Work. 7th ed. London: Methuen, 1960.

Tuana, Nancy, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Plato. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1994. Scholarly essays evaluate Plato’s understanding of gender issues and appraise his philosophy from the perspectives of feminist theory.

Williams, Bernard A. O. Plato. New York: Routledge, 1999. An excellent biographical introduction to the thoughts of the philosopher, clearly presented. Bibliography.