Fear In Plato's Apology

The Man With Nothing Left to Fear In Plato’s apology he goes over a character that, throughout the dialogue, has been shown as a man with no fear. When he had all of his community turn on him and show a great deal of distaste and loathing from his peers after being accused of crimes which resulted in being put to death he did not fear any of it. Through his ability to reason and argue he found that there was no reason to be afraid of the outcomes that they had given him. Socrates throughout his life showed no signs of fearing the hate that he received from the rest of Athens due to the fact that he had at that point a different way of viewing and way of thinking compared to the common people. A large reason for his lack of fear was his beliefs

With this recount of the words from Apollo, Socrates states why he has no fear from their hate because he knows that his work is that of the gods will and therefore has no reason why he would pay attention to them. He feels he just has to follow his morals and principles which in his eyes has been deemed the work of the gods. During his stand he stated how he was not a nuisance but rather detrimental for the progression of the Athenian way of thinking "I was attached to this city by the god — though it seems a ridiculous thing to say — as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish … and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly." (Apology, 30e). The importance of this statement made by Socrates is concentrated in the last thoughts of his sentence where he compares himself to a

He would never avoid punishment that results from his undertaking the right course of action because what matters to him is his principles and upholding them. "… kill [Socrates], or perhaps banish or disfranchise [Socrates], which [Meletus or Anytus] and maybe others think to be great harm, but [Socrates does] not think so." (Apology, 30d). Socrates has decided to live a life of rationality and to present facts rather than making the attempt to compel people to like him and in turn living life selfishly. He claimed that as a citizen of Athens he had a duty of defending its innocence regardless of the others opinions may be because he knows that he has done no wrong but instead had done them a justice. Socrates claims that with Meletus and the issue that he had with him he could easily solved them himself but instead choose to take extreme measures to deal with an insignificant problem and you see this when he says “You, however have avoided my company and were unwilling to instruct me, but you bring me here, where the law requires one to bring those who are in need of punishment, not of instruction.”(Apology, 26a). In this section of the dialogue he speaks of instruction as apposed to punishment which essentially means that he doesn’t deserve any of the punishments they’re threatening him with but instead would have