Tissue In Socrates's Apology

The Apology was supposed to represent Socrates' trial for his being a busybody and corrupting the youth. Socrates defended himself by saying that he was merely performing service to the god that said that he waswiser than anyone else. Socratesremained defiant during the sentencing portion of the trial, which led to him besentenced to death, and as such he had to face his mortality. In this paper, I will explain how he came to this conclusion,and show why this conclusion is false. At many points throughout the Apology, Socrates insists that death is not bad. As he says, "The fear of death amounts to simply thinking one is wise when oneis not. However, it is not until page 35 when he begins his discussion of theissue in depth by saying,"And

If death is to be nonexistent, Socrates thinks it would be like a long sleep without dreaming: "Now if there is no awareness in death, but it is like sleep thekind in which the sleeper does not even dream at all then death would seem to bea marvelous gain. Socrates would like this, as he prefers not having dreams,and thinks it would seem like only a night:"because on that assumption the whole of time would seem no longer than a single night. This is how Socrates seesthe first possibility of death as being good. If deathwere like dreamless sleep, it would not seem like a single night because there is nowaking up afterwards. The actual experience of sleeping, or even dreamlesssleeping, is not actually good per se, because we are not conscious during it, whichrenders us unable to gain pleasure from it during it. We only consider it good oncewe wake up afterwards and feel rested

Socrates thinks that there is only one place forsouls to go after death, but there could be multiple places they could go. InChristianity, the souls of the dead go to either Heaven or Hell, and it would be bad togo to Hell. There could possibly be different versions of Hell for different people, andSocrates' personal version of Hell could be isolation where he does not get to meet all the people he said he wanted to meet. There are also many other possibilities of what could happen to the soul after death, which Socrates does not consider. Whilethe good one that Socrates posited is a possibility, there are many other possibilitiesthat are not necessarily good. Now that the "Death as nonexistence possibility has been found to be bad,and the"death as something happening to the soul possibility has been found to not necessarily be good, it no longer follows that death is not a bad thing; on thecontrary, death seems very likely to be a bad thing. Socrates should have consideredthis, too, as a man who purports to be wise by realizing he knows