Commentaries on Plato's Apology

In their book on Plato's Apology, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith suggest that commentaries on this dialogue "are strikingly similar in their defense of the general thesis that Socrates' speech was not intended to be a serious response to his accusers. Instead, we are told, Socrates was primarily interested in proclaiming the paramount importance of the philosophical way of life and cared little or nothing about securing his own acquittal" (Brickhouse and Smith 37-38). The implication of this point of view would be that Socrates was not trying to defend himself but only to challenge some of the wrong assumptions of his accusers. It also would indicate that the trial was, from his point of view, a foregone conclusion so that he saw no need to raise a real defense because he knew he was a condemned man; as a result, he took the opportunity to speak in public and to disseminate his views to a wider audience at the last opportunity he would have. A related view is that Socrates made himself into a martyr by refusing to mount an effective defense. Brickhouse and Smith deny the validity of this interpretation and suggest instead that this point of view is actually a misinterpretation of the power and importance of Socratic irony.

Brickhouse and Smith cite several commentators who hold the view that Socrates was not mounting a real defense, and there are others as well who display this same attitude. George Grote analyzes the speech and says that it "foreg

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n the individual and society--even an unjust society--in the form of the statement of Socrates to the court that finally sentences him to death. The speech represents the conflict between the power of the state and the integrity of the individual. The court gives Socrates an out if he recants his teachings, and he will not do it. Socrates represents the primary social value of inquiry, of the pursuit of philosophy, of the examination of the meaning of life. He also represents integrity, for when we inquire into the meaning of existence and develop a set of beliefs, we must live up to those beliefs: Do you suppose that I should have lived as long as I have if I had moved in the sphere of public life, and conducting myself in that sphere like an honorable man, had always upheld the cause of right, and conscientiously set this end above all other things? (Apology, 33c). Socrates does not plead for his life and does not accept the exile that could be his punishment for to do so would be to admit that he had done something wrong. The fact that Socrates is offered exile as a punishment shows that he judges do not want to sentence him to death, but Socrates does not want to give them this out: "I should have to be desperately in

Category: Philosophy - C