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Socrates Guilty Analysis

669 Words3 Pages

Is Socrates Guilty In my essay I will guide a reader to the period in which Socrates was accused and sentenced to death penalty and together we will endeavour to answer the question whether he was or he was not guilty. Although the topic is to enomoursly extent controversial and a lot of similar works were written, I will do my best to present consistent and logical judgement of Socrates. 399 BC was a year when Socrates had a defending speech in front of the judges, his accusers and the jury. Athenian Law being democratic provides such a posibility for the accused one to have a chance to point out on inconsitencies in accusation or give evidences in one’s own defence. Socrates was speaking in an accustommed manner: asking provoking questions, …show more content…

So I asked myself if it was really so dangerous for the citizen of Ancient Athens to have divinities of your own. And the brief paper of John A. Scott “Why Meletus Demanded the Death Penalty for Socrates” where he investigates the same issue helped me to clear it out. In his work, he has a sentance from Professor Wheeler’ Alexander the Great:” Religion simply was the state, and the state was religion. Impiety was treason, and all treason involved impiety…” So in what way Socrates did not comply with the state’s gods he was supposed to believe in? Originally, what gave rise to his activity of walking around the city with a purpose of finding someone who possess wisdom greater than he had himself, was the provision of the oracle of Apollo that ‘there is no one wiser than Socrates’. Socrates hastened to interprete that as he is the wisest, however different interpretetions of oracle’s could have been done. Interpretations Socrates did not consider are: if there were no one wiser than Socrates that could mean that a) all man are equally wise, and, b) undefined number are as wise as Socrates. Anyway, Socrates endeavoured to challenge Pythian prophecy, which already could have been considered as an act of impiety by the common people. Additionaly, Socrates claimed to have been possessing the divine providence that restrained him from perfoming certain actions but never urged him to do anything, and that same voice did not restrain him from questening people and pointing out they know

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