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Innocence Of Socrates Research Paper

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The Innocence of Socrates All who study Philosophy and more specifically Classical Philosophy know of the great philosopher Socrates. Studying Socrates through the dialogues of Plato provide us with an explanation to modern philosophy and its beginnings. Plato wrote many dialogues concerning Socrates life and his teachings with the Athenian population. The teachings that Socrates orated at the time were considered antithetical to the Athenian way of life. Socrates was tried in a court of Athens for impiety, corrupting the youth of Athens, and for studying the things under the earth and in the Heavens. Of his accusers Meletus, Lycon, and Anytus, Socrates fears none of them. Socrates is most concerned with the oldest accuser, Aristophanes who …show more content…

Socrates asks the crowd of jurors, especially the ones who have heard his lectures whether he has taught such things out loud. Today we would refer to this sort of defense as anecdotal. Socrates does not outright claim that he does not teach these things, only that he has no knowledge of them. In Clouds, Socrates is portrayed as accepting money for spouting his nonsense. Socrates refutes this claim by simply saying that he has nothing to teach that would require money. Socrates is often compared with sophists who were teachers in Greece who taught the youth of Athens the art of flowery rhetoric. The plaintiffs in this case are angry that Socrates has taught the youth of Athens to think for themselves. Socrates draws an example in an exchange with Meletus. The example Socrates uses is that of a horse trainer. A horse trainer has extensive knowledge of the well-being of horses, Socrates also mentions in line 24b that he believes in daimonia which are novel. Meletus brings up the charge that Socrates does not believe in the gods. Rather than addressing this again as Socrates has already proven that he believes in the religion of Athens by his reaction to the Oracle at Delphi’s prophecy; Socrates takes another approach to the subject matter. He tells the jury the Meletus is doing them an injustice since Meletus does not really care whether …show more content…

In fact, Socrates thought very little of the politicians as he thought they had very little to offer in the realm of knowledge. Socrates should see the state of contemporary American politics. Socrates went on to the poets in attempt to find one wiser than himself. Socrates found that the poets can create masterpieces of literature and art, but were unable to explain them. Line 22b “I soon recognized that they do not make what they make by wisdom, but by some sort of nature and while inspired, like the diviners and those who deliver oracles… but they know nothing of what they speak”. This leads Socrates to believe that these works were not inspired by wisdom, but of some other source. Socrates does not distinguish what this source is. Socrates continues under line 22c “I perceived that they supposed, on account of their poetry, that they were the wisest of human beings also in the other things, in which they were not”. Socrates findings concerning the artisans were that they had detailed knowledge of their

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Socrates defended himself well during the trial. I do not think that Socrates was guilty for anything. He was accused by Meletus for "corrupting the young”. However, there was no evidence of this. Socrates mentioned that there was no youth to testify that they were corrupted by him.

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653 Words | 3 Pages

Metelus accuses him for corrupting the minds of the young and for not believing in the gods. Socrates defends himself against the charges very efficiently. He is a wise man. When he proves himself innocent; he completely deconstructs the basis of the offenses. In they play by Aristophanes, Socrates is portrayed as a man who is “proclaiming that he is walking on air, and uttering a great deal of other nonsense” [19c].

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1605 Words | 7 Pages

In Plato’s writing “Apology” Socrates is in court, facing his accusers, Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, who have made several claims against him. These accusations include that he is an “evildoer, a curious person who searches into things under the earth and in the heavens. He makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger and he teaches these doctrines to others”. He also accuses that Socrates is a corrupter of the youth and he does not believe in the gods of the state. He has other new divinities of his own.”

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1641 Words | 7 Pages

(Modus Ponens) Socrates is like Jesus: both of them did not believe in gods of that time and both were just speaking to society, but in those speeches were hidden the great idea. Like Jesus, Socrates chose to die for his idea, not surrender norms of the society. Both men had their students, who recorded their words during their life or after death. (Analogy) Rejection of civic life in democratic

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1743 Words | 7 Pages

Initially, these two men gained friction through their teachings which led them to their trials and executions. Furthermore, Socrates was placed on trial, on his own will, at the age of 70 with four main charges. The accusations that were placed upon the father of philosophy were investigation, corruption, atheism, and education which he proclaimed was the will of the Delphic Oracle. Socrates pinned his charges upon the divination and his sacrifice to the polytheistic Gods, but this was Socrates being a clever speaker. Thus, his trail became the basis of his infamous contradictions and subtle Socratic pleas to die because he fantasized about being executed to be commemorated.

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961 Words | 4 Pages

In the Apology Socrates defends himself against the charges brought against him by his prosecutor Meletus in two ways. In the first way Socrates describes his method and

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Socrates was a man that was in search of the truth about wisdom. However, it became more then just a search when it brought him to trail of accusations. As a philosopher Socrates was known to overdrawn ideas and to frustrate anyone he was talking to. He is always in search of a better idea and for anyone who has experienced Socrates could assume he is making up his own actualities. This becomes evident in “ Apology” written by Plato, where Socrates was brought in charges for corrupting the minds of the youth and not believing in the Gods.

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He tasked himself with finding a man more wiser than himself and in doing so, he made enemies with Athenians by encountering men that were highly regarded, and exposing them as fakes. This is evident in the passage: " And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish;". During the trial, Socrates brings forth and cross examines his accusers, revealing that they no concrete evidence of him committing the crimes that they had charged him with, also bringing shame to them. He was found guilty of crimes he actually did not commit and then boldly told the courts, in a satirical way, to charge him a small fine as his punishment. He does this partly because he does not believe that he has committed a crime, and he was a man of simple means, he did not have much money.

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“Plato Apology” relates the trial of Socrates (469-399) B.C.E known as the father of Western Philosophy. Socrates, a son of sculpture and the midwife had a queer with most Athenians due to his point of view on values and beliefs. Charged with impiety and corrupting the Youth, Socrates’ defends himself by persuading the jury of his innocence with tangible reasons which made his arguments effective.

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740 Words | 3 Pages

He attempts this by trying to appeal to their sense of duty to the state. Socrates explains that what he does, teaching without charge and questioning so-called wise men and pretenders of knowledge, is his duty to the state, keeping it from becoming stagnant. Socrates reminds the court, that even though he is a wise man, he is “of flesh and blood” (Plato). He mentions his sons, stating he has three of them and that two of them are still young. He tells the court “I will not bring any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal” (Plato) yet his simple mentioning of them is an effort to play on the emotions of the

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912 Words | 4 Pages

Making enemies and becoming the topic of conversation, the Athenians began to view Socrates as a threat to their beliefs and way of life and sought to end it. In order to end this, Socrates was accused of blasphemy (Mod1SlideC7). Socrates’s accusers took him to court and after Socrates did not play their game by asking to be sent into exile, and in the end, he was sentenced to death. After reading the textbook and Plato’s writing influenced by Socrates, I realized that in the period of his life Socrates was indeed truly a threat to the Athens society, because he looked for answers that no one else bothered to find which challenged their culture.

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767 Words | 4 Pages

Part A- Socrates In thinking of Socrates we must recognize that what we have is four secondhand sources depicting him. That of Plato, Xenophanes, Aristophanes, and Aristotle. All having radically different accounts on Socrates and his views. Out of all them we consider Plato’s to be the most possible account, even though we face a problem of different versions of Socrates.

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908 Words | 4 Pages

“Such, then, is the charge. Let us e amine each point in this charge. Meletus says, then, that I commit injustice by corrupting the young. But I, men of Athens, reply that ids Meletus who is guilty of playing around with serious matters, of lightly bringing people to trial, and of professing to be seriously concerned about things he has never cared about at all-and I’ll try to prove this” (Page 654). Socrates question Meletus personal thoughts of him; by bringing evidence of the memories the two men shared with each other.

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713 Words | 3 Pages

Further elaborating on Meletus the claim, Socrates explains how Meletus is wrong by doing a comparison to horses. Socrates point consists of the idea that in order to improve a horse, a specialized person like a horse-trainer, is the only kind of people that have a positive influence on horses. Therefore comparing such idea to people where not everyone can improve the youth. Socrates finishes that stamen with "you make it perfectly clear that you have never paid the slightest attention to the matters over which you are now indicting me" (Apology

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969 Words | 4 Pages

Philosophical thinking uses three acts of the mind: understanding, judgement, and reason. In order to have a sound argument all of the concepts must be applied. Socrates didn’t want to please the people by saying or doing what they wanted him to say or do. Socrates thought it was not important to seek wealth or fame; he was concerned with truth and virtue. He wanted to create an impact on humanity by relying on the truth and shining a light in people’s lives, even if they put him on trial.

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