In Defense Of The Fear Of Death: Analyzing Socrates Apology

In Defense of the Fear of Death: Analyzing “Socrates’ Apology”

Within “The Apology”, Socrates makes many claims about life and its meaning. One of the most controversial claims he makes is that fearing death is illogical and “amounts simply to thinking one is wise when one is not (40)”. I believe this claim is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, his claim comes from a place of ignorance towards fear and how it works. Also, this claim shows his hypocrisy, as his claim that death is not to be feared shows that he thinks he is wise when he is not. For all of these reasons, I believe that Socrates’s claim is invalid and rooted in ignorance and hypocrisy.

My first claim against him is that he does not understand how fear works and that being against

There is no way of knowing what death is, as he said 6 pages earlier in his speech, but now he says that it is just one thing or another thing. In explaining why the first option would be good, he says “Now if there is, in fact, no awareness in death, but it is like sleep—the kind in which the sleeper does not even dream at all—then death would be a marvellous gain. (46)” I disagree with this entirely, because as much as dreamless sleep leaves one well rested, you only feel that restfulness after you wake up. If death were just dreamless sleep you would never feel any restfulness at all, along with not feeling anything else at all. His reasoning for the second option is solid, saying that being able to meet the greats of the past that have died would be a treasure. But, the basis he is saying this from is wrong, as it assumes that this is one of the two things death could be. Through these two paragraphs talking about the options of death, he shows his hypocrisy towards his own claim which is the main reason why I disagree with

I believe that the way he would defend himself is by first claiming that the fear of the unknown is illogical. His reasoning for this is shown in how he speaks on death versus wickedness, saying that wickedness is faster to catch up to a person and insinuating that it is a worse fate than death. To say this is saying that the known bad is scarier than the unknown, and I believe he would argue this to counter my first claim. To counter my second claim, I believe that he would consider me a hypocrite for how I talk about death. He would say that the way I talk of death assumes that it isn’t one of his good options and that death is a bad thing. He would say that dying would get rid of my troubles, as he says on page 47. These two aspects would be how Socrates would counter my arguments against his