Socrates assumes an epistemology and employs a method by which he induces his companions to begin the critical and self-critical process of philosophical inquiry, not ignoring conventional wisdom, but thinking through and reinterpreting it as they make constructive progress towards the truth. He provides conclusive and convincing arguments in support of controversial answers to some of the most important moral questions he poses.
Download Readings In Classical Political Thought books , From Homer to Machiavelli, this reader is designed for an undergraduate course in classical Western political thought. Almost half of the work is devoted to Plato and Aristotle with selections by the former including the Crito, the Republic, and Laws and from the latter, the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc. Powered by WordPress.
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The second jfffrey is devoted to Clouds, Waspsand Peacein that order, although the Clouds that we have is the incomplete revision of c. Translating comedy is no easy matter, for both audience and country must be kept in mind. Here we have been spoiled by Rogers with his rhyming anapests and internal echoes: Jeffrey Henderson, clohds may fairly be considered the leading Aristophanic scholar in North America, has now filled the gap admirably, and has provided us with both a useful text and idiomatic, if prosaic, translation.
Three Plays by Aristophanes: To add more books, click here. There was Chaos at first, and Darkness and Night, and Tartarus vasty and dismal, But the Earth was not there, nor the Sky, nor the Air, till at length in the bosom abysmal, and recent translators have fallen short of that standard.
Categories: Love. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly, and you are lying in either case.
Now if I corrupt them unwillingly, the law does not require you to bring people to court for such unwilling wrongdoings, but to get hold of them privately, to instruct them and exhort them; for clearly, if I learn better, I shall cease to do what I am doing unwillingly.
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. And so, men of Athens, what I said is clearly true: Meletus has never been at all concerned with these matters.
Nonetheless tell us, Meletus, how you say that I corrupt the young; or is it obvious from your deposition that it is by teaching them not to believe in the gods in whom the city believes but in other new spiritual things?
Is this not what you say I teach and so corrupt them? Then by those very gods about whom we are talking, Meletus, make this clearer to me and to these men: I cannot be sure whether you APOLOGY 31 mean that I teach the belief that there are some gods—and therefore I myself believe that there are gods and am not altogether an atheist, nor am I guilty of that—not, however, the gods in whom the city believes, but others, and that this is the charge against me, that they are others.
Or whether you mean that I do not believe in gods at all, and that this is what I teach to others. You are a strange fellow, Meletus. Why do you say this? Do I not believe, as other men do, that the sun and the moon are gods? My dear Meletus, do you think you are prosecuting Anaxagoras? Are you so contemptuous of these men and think them so ignorant of letters as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras11 of Clazomenae are full of those theories, and further, that the young men learn from me what they can buy from time to time for a drachma, at most, in the bookshops, and ridicule Socrates if he pretends that these theories are his own, especially as they are so absurd?
Is that, by Zeus, what you think of me, Meletus, that I do not believe that there are any gods? You cannot be believed, Meletus, even, I think, by yourself. The man appears to me, men of Athens, highly insolent and uncontrolled. He seems to have made this deposition out of insolence, violence, and youthful zeal. Examine with me, gentlemen, how he appears to contradict himself, and you, Meletus, answer us. Remember, gentlemen, what I asked you when I began, not to create a disturbance if I proceed in my usual manner.
Does any man, Meletus, believe in human activities who does not believe in humans? Make him answer, and not again and again create He claimed that the universe was directed by Nous Mind and that matter was indestructible but always combining in various ways. He left Athens after being prosecuted for impiety. No, my good sir, no man could. If you are not willing to answer, I will tell you and these men. Answer the next question, however. Does any man believe in spiritual activities who does not believe in spirits?
Thank you for answering, if reluctantly, when these gentlemen made you. Now you say that I believe in spiritual things and teach about them, whether new or old, but at any rate spiritual things according to what you say, and to this you have sworn in your deposition.
But if I believe in spiritual things I must quite inevitably believe in spirits. It is indeed. I shall assume that you agree, as you do not answer. Do we not believe spirits to be either gods or the children of gods? Yes or no? Then since I do believe in spirits, as you admit, if spirits are gods, this is what I mean when I say you speak in riddles and in jest, as you state that I do not believe in gods and then again that I do, since I do believe in spirits.
If, on the other hand, the spirits are children of the gods, bastard children of the gods by nymphs or some other mothers, as they are said to be, what man would believe children of the gods to exist, but not gods?
That would be just as absurd as to believe the young of horses and asses, namely mules, to exist, but not to believe in the existence of horses and asses. There is no way in which you could persuade anyone of even small intelligence that it is possible for one and the same man to believe in spiritual but not also in divine things, and then again for that same man to believe neither in spirits nor in gods nor in heroes.
On the other hand, you know that what I said earlier is true, that I am very unpopular with many people. This will be my undoing, if I am undone, not Meletus or Anytus but the slanders and envy of many people. This has destroyed many other good men and will, I think, continue to do so.
There is no danger that it will stop at me. This is the truth of the matter, men of Athens: wherever a man has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace.
It would have been a dreadful way to behave, men of Athens, if, at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium, I had, at the risk of death, like anyone else, remained at my post where those you had elected to command had ordered me, and then, when the god ordered me, as I thought and believed, to live the life of a philosopher, to examine myself and others, I had abandoned my post for fear of death or anything else.
That would have been a dreadful thing, and then I might truly have justly been brought here for not believing that there are gods, disobeying the oracle, fearing death, and thinking I was wise when I was not. To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.
No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know. It is perhaps on this point and in this respect, gentlemen, that I differ from the majority of men, and if I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have.
I shall never fear or avoid things of which I do not know, whether they may not be good rather than things that The scene between Thetis and Achilles is from the Iliad xviii. I shall treat in this way anyone I happen to meet, young and old, citizen and stranger, and more so the citizens because you are more kindred to me. Be sure that this is what the god orders me to do, and I think there is no greater blessing for the city than my service to the god. For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.
By no means do this. Be sure that if you kill the sort of man I say I am, you will not harm me more than yourselves. Neither Meletus nor Anytus can harm me in any way; he could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse; certainly he might kill me, or perhaps banish or disfranchise me, which he and maybe others think to be great harm, but I do not think so. I think he is doing himself much greater harm doing what he is doing now, attempting to have a man executed unjustly.
Another such man will not easily come to be among you, gentlemen, and if you believe me you will spare me. You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me; if convinced by Anytus you could easily kill me, and then you could sleep on for the rest of your days, unless the god, in his care for you, sent you someone else. That I am the kind of person to be a gift of the god to the city you might realize from the fact that it does not seem like human nature for me to have neglected all my own affairs and to have tolerated this neglect now for so many years while I was always concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue.
I, on the other hand, have a convincing witness that I speak the truth, my poverty. It may seem strange that while I go around and give this advice privately and interfere in private affairs, I do not venture to go to the assembly and there advise the city. I have a divine or spiritual sign which Meletus has ridiculed in his deposition. This began when I was a child. It is a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything.
This is what has prevented me from taking part in public affairs, and I think it was quite right to prevent me. Do not be angry with me for speaking the truth; no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city.
I shall give you great proofs of this, not words but what you esteem, deeds. Listen to what happened to me, that you may know that I will not yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding. The things I shall tell you are commonplace and smack of the lawcourts, but they are true. I was the only member of the presiding committee to oppose your doing something contrary to the laws, and I voted against it.
The orators were ready to prosecute me and take me away, and your shouts were egging them on, but I thought I should run any risk on the side of law and justice rather than join you, for fear of prison or death, when you were engaged in an unjust course.
This happened when the city was still a democracy. When the oligarchy was established, the Thirty15 summoned me to the Hall, along This was the battle of Arginusae south of Lesbos in B.
A violent storm prevented the Athenian generals from rescuing their survivors. For this they were tried in Athens and sentenced to death by the assembly. He obstinately persisted in his opposition, in which he stood alone, and was overruled by the majority. Six generals who were in Athens were executed. They gave many such orders to many people, in order to implicate as many as possible in their guilt. That government, powerful as it was, did not frighten me into any wrongdoing.
When we left the Hall, the other four went to Salamis and brought in Leon, but I went home. I might have been put to death for this, had not the government fallen shortly afterwards. There are many who will witness to these events.
Do you think I would have survived all these years if I were engaged in public affairs and, acting as a good man must, came to the help of justice and considered this the most important thing? Far from it, men of Athens, nor would any other man. Throughout my life, in any public activity I may have engaged in, I am the same man as I am in private life.
I have never come to an agreement with anyone to act unjustly, neither with anyone else nor with any one of those who they slanderously say are my pupils. If anyone, young or old, desires to listen to me when I am talking and dealing with my own concerns, I have never begrudged this to anyone, but I do not converse when I receive a fee and not when I do not.
I am equally ready to question the rich and the poor if anyone is willing to answer my questions and listen to what I say. And I cannot justly be held responsible for the good or bad conduct of these people, as I never promised to teach them anything and have not done so. If anyone says that he has learned anything from me, or that he heard anything privately that the others did not hear, be assured that he is not telling the truth.
Why then do some people enjoy spending considerable time in my company? You have heard why, men of Athens; I have told you the whole truth.
They enjoy hearing those being questioned who think they are wise, but are not. And this is not unpleasant. To do this has, as I say, been enjoined upon me by the god, by means of oracles and dreams, and in every other way that a divine manifestation has ever ordered a man to do anything. This is true, gentlemen, and can easily be established. If I corrupt some young men and have corrupted others, then surely some of them who have grown older and realized that I gave them bad advice when they were young should now themselves come up here to accuse me and avenge themselves.
If they were unwilling to do so themselves, then some of their kindred, their fathers or brothers or d e 33 b c d 38 e 34 b c d e 35 PLATO other relations should recall it now if their family had been harmed by me. I could mention many others, some one of whom surely Meletus should have brought in as witness in his own speech. If he forgot to do so, then let him do it now; I will yield time if he has anything of the kind to say.
These men are all ready to come to the help of the corruptor, the man who has harmed their kindred, as Meletus and Anytus say. Now those who were corrupted might well have reason to help me, but the uncorrupted, their kindred who are older men, have no reason to help me except the right and proper one, that they know that Meletus is lying and that I am telling the truth. Very well, gentlemen. This, and maybe other similar things, is what I have to say in my defense.
Perhaps one of you might be angry as he recalls that when he himself stood trial on a less dangerous charge, he begged and implored the jurymen with many tears, that he brought his children and many of his friends and family into court to arouse as much pity as he could, but that I do none of these things, even though I may seem to be running the ultimate risk.
Thinking of this, he might feel resentful towards me and, angry about this, cast his vote in anger. Nevertheless, I will not beg you to acquit me by bringing them here.
Why do I do none of these things? Not through arrogance, gentlemen, nor through lack of respect for you. Whether I am brave in the face of death is another matter, but with regard to my reputation and yours and that of the whole city, it does not seem right to me to do these things, especially at my age and with my reputation.
Now if those of you who are considered superior, be it in wisdom or courage or whatever other virtue makes them so, are seen behaving like that, it would be a disgrace. Yet I have often seen them do this sort of thing when standing trial, men who are thought to be somebody, doing amazing things as if they thought it a terrible thing to die, and as if they were to be immortal if you did not execute them.
You should not act like that, men of Athens, those of you who have any reputation at all, and if we do, you should not allow it. You should make it very clear that you will more readily convict a man who performs these pitiful dramatics in court and so makes the city a laughingstock, than a man who keeps quiet. Quite apart from the question of reputation, gentlemen, I do not think it right to supplicate the jury and to be acquitted because of this, but to teach and persuade them.
We should not accustom you to perjure yourselves, nor should you make a habit of it. This is irreverent conduct for either of us.
This is far from being the case, gentlemen, for I do believe in them as none of my accusers do. I leave it to you and the god to judge me in the way that will be best for me and for you. I am much more surprised at the number of votes cast on each side, for I did not think the decision would be by so few votes but by a great many.
As it is, a switch of only thirty votes would have acquitted me. He assesses the penalty at death. So be it. What counter-assessment should I propose to you, men of Athens? I thought myself too honest to survive if I occupied myself with those things. What do I deserve for being such a man? Some good, men of Athens, if I must truly make an assessment according to my deserts, and something suitable. What is suitable for a poor benefactor who needs leisure to exhort you?
Nothing is more suitable, gentlemen, than for such a man to be fed in the Prytaneum16—much more suitable for him than for any one of you who has won a victory at Olympia with a pair or a team of horses.
The Olympian victor makes you think yourself happy; I make you be happy. Besides, he does not need food, but I do. So if I must make a just assessment of what I deserve, I assess it as this: free meals in the Prytaneum.
When I say this you may think, as when I spoke of appeals to pity and entreaties, that I speak arrogantly, but that is not the case, men of Athens; rather it is like this: I am convinced that I never willingly wrong anyone, but I am not convincing you of this, for we have talked together but a short time.
If it were the law with us, as it is elsewhere, that a trial for life should not last one but many days, you would be convinced, but now it is not easy to dispel great slanders in a short time. Since I am convinced that I wrong no one, I am not likely to wrong myself, to say that I deserve some evil and to make some such assessment against myself.
What should I fear? That I should suffer the penalty Am I then to choose in preference to this something that I know very well to be an evil and assess the penalty at that? Why should I live in prison, always subjected to the ruling magistrates, the Eleven? That would be the same thing for me, as I have no money.
For perhaps you might accept that assessment. I should have to be inordinately fond of life, men of Athens, to be so unreasonable as to suppose that other men will easily tolerate my company and conversation when you, my fellow citizens, have been unable to endure them, but found them a burden and resented them so that you are now seeking to get rid of them.
Far from it, gentlemen. If I drive them away, they will themselves persuade their elders to drive me out; if I do not drive them away, their fathers and relations will drive me out on their behalf. Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical.
On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less.
What I say is true, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. At the same time, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any penalty. If I had money, I would assess the penalty at the amount I could pay, for that would not hurt me, but I have none, unless you are willing to set the penalty at the amount I can pay, and perhaps I could pay you one mina of silver. So that is my assessment. Plato here, men of Athens, and Crito and Critobulus and Apollodorus bid me put the penalty at thirty minas, and they will stand surety for the money.
If you had waited but a little while, this would have happened of its own accord. You see my age, that I am already advanced in years and close to death. I am saying this not to all of you but to those who condemned me to death, and to these same ones I say: Perhaps you think that I was convicted for lack of such words as might have convinced you, if I thought I should say or do all I could to avoid my sentence. Far from it.
I was convicted because I lacked not words but boldness and shamelessness and the willingness to say to you what you would most gladly have heard from me, lamentations and tears and my saying and doing many things that I say are unworthy of me but that you are accustomed to hear from others. I did not think then that the danger I ran should make me do anything mean, nor do I now regret the nature of my defense.
I would much rather die after this kind of defense than live after making the other kind. Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost. Slow and elderly as I am, I have been caught by the slower pursuer, whereas my accusers, being clever and sharp, have been caught by the quicker, wickedness. I leave you now, condemned to death by you, but they are condemned by truth to wickedness and injustice. So I maintain my assessment, and they maintain theirs.
This perhaps had to happen, and I think it is as it should be. Now I want to prophesy to those who convicted me, for I am at the point when men prophesy most, when they are about to die. I say, gentlemen, to those who voted to kill me, that vengeance will come upon you immediately after my death, a vengeance much harder to bear than that which you took in killing me.
You did this in the belief that you would avoid giving an account of your life, but I maintain that quite the opposite will happen to you. There will be more people to test you, whom I now held back, but you did not notice it. You are wrong if you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way.
To escape such tests is neither possible nor good, but it is APOLOGY 43 best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible. With this prophecy to you who convicted me, I part from you.
So, gentlemen, stay with me awhile, for nothing prevents us from talking to each other while it is allowed. To you, as being my friends, I want to show the meaning of what has occurred.
A surprising thing has happened to me, jurymen— you I would rightly call jurymen. At all previous times my familiar prophetic power, my spiritual manifestation, frequently opposed me, even in small matters, when I was about to do something wrong, but now that, as you can see for yourselves, I was faced with what one might think, and what is generally thought to be, the worst of evils, my divine sign has not opposed me, either when I left home at dawn, or when I came into court, or at any time that I was about to say something during my speech.
Yet in other talks it often held me back in the middle of my speaking, but now it has opposed no word or deed of mine. What do I think is the reason for this? I will tell you.
What has happened to me may well be a good thing, and those of us who believe death to be an evil are certainly mistaken. I have convincing proof of this, for it is impossible that my familiar sign did not oppose me if I was not about to do what was right. If it is complete lack of perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage.
If death is like this I say it is an advantage, for all eternity would then seem to be no more than a single night. If, on the other hand, death is a change from here to another place, and what we are told is true and all who have died are there, what greater blessing could there be, gentlemen of the jury?
Again, what would one of you give to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die many times if that is true. It would be a wonderful way for me to spend my time whenever I met Palamedes and Ajax, the son of Telamon, and any other of the men of old who died through an unjust conviction, to compare my experience with theirs. I think it would be pleasant. Most important, I could spend my time testing and examining people there, as I do here, as to who among them is wise, and who thinks he is, but is not.
What would one not give, gentlemen of the jury, for the opportunity to examine the man who led the great expedition against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, and innumerable other men and women one could mention? It would be an extraordinary happiness to talk with them, to keep company with them and examine them. In any case, they would certainly not put one to death for doing so.
They are happier there than we are here in other respects, and for the rest of time they are deathless, if indeed what we are told is true. You too must be of good hope as regards death, gentlemen of the jury, and keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods. What has happened to me now has not happened of itself, but it is clear to me that it was better for me to die now and to escape from trouble.
That is why my divine sign did not oppose me at any point. Princeton: Princeton University Press, , p. Linden 10 into the core of his existence. The new principle must content; world history needs an accoucheur [obstetrician]. Socrates fills this place. He himself was not the one who was to bring the new principle in its fullness; in him it was only.
But this intermediate stage, which is not the new principle and yet is that. But irony, in turn, is the glaive, the two-edged sword that he swung like an avenging angel over Greece. In Socrates, one process ends and with him a new one begins. It is also crucial to emphasize that Socrates was swinging from above, and thus that irony speaks from a position outside the polis, detached from anything concrete CI Linden 11 [I]t would be a great lack if we did not have the Aristophanic appraisal of Socrates; for just as every process usually ends with a parodying of itself, and such a parody is an assurance that this process has outlived its day, so the comic view is an element, in many ways a perpetually corrective element, in making a personality or an enterprise completely intelligible.
The Clouds parodies both Socrates and the decadent Greek society against which he protested, both of which Aristophanes rendered, in a certain sense, obsolete. As it does for Hegel, comedy thus comes for Kierkegaard at the end. But what Kierkegaard brings into greater relief than Hegel is how this play stages a conflict, or, at the very least, a relationship between Aristophanes the comedian-satirist and Socrates the ironist par excellence.
In a certain sense, then, Kierkegaard argues that Aristophanes does not ridicule Socrates at all, but simply presents the purest image of his most salient characteristic. Aristophanes, in other words, adequately grasped the distinction between Socrates and the sophists; his concern is whether everyone else could make that distinction, too.
Georgia: Mercer University Press, , pp. Linden 12 cannot be tethered to any substantial conclusion, since it is mired in negativity. Aristophanes provided visible contours to the negativity of the ironist; he did not necessarily disagree with Socrates. In the case of Socrates, this meant that the empty substantiality of the Greeks was ready to be negated and replaced by the dawning subjectivity inaugurated by Socrates and his ironic interrogations.
That this Socratic conception is negative is obvious; it expressly denies life, development—in short, history in its most universal and widest sense. The Sophist denies the original presence; Socrates denies the subsequent history. Linden 13 during a moment of transition.
Without passing ultimate judgment on whether Aristophanes was justified in his lampoon of the philosopher or on whether the play, indeed, constitutes as a polemic against Socrates at all , Kierkegaard shows us how the Clouds continues to function as much a dramatic parody as it does a political document.
Strauss presumes from the outset that Aristophanes was a thoroughly political thinker. Aristophanes, for Strauss, avoids depicting Socrates as a resolute atheist one of the official charges that would be leveled against him , since Socrates does indeed offer up new gods the Clouds in place of the old.
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