Lecture Notes: Apology

Homework:
A. Read the Apology.
B. Read these lecture notes.
C. Attend in person class on Monday and Zoom Class on Wednesday.
D. Submit your Discussion Forum Post.

This week, we will be reading and studying Plato’s Apology. You will note straight away
that at no point during the reading does Socrates apologize. The term “apology” comes
from the Greek apologia, and in ancient Greek an apologia is a speech of defense. In this
text, we are reading Plato’s account of the speech that Socrates gives in his own defense
at trial. You may recall that Socrates meets Euthyphro in front of the law courts.
Euthyphro is at the law courts to prosecute his own father for murder. Socrates is there to
defend himself at his own trial. It is interesting that when he meets Euthyphro, he
engages him in dialectical discussion about piety instead of preparing for his own
apologia.

When we read the Euthyphro, we saw that it was a dialogue or dialectical discussion
between Socrates and Euthyphro. The Apology is more of a monologue than a dialogue,
and Socrates even notes a number of times that he is not speaking in his usual way for
much of this speech. He is not comfortable giving a monological speech. He would much
prefer to be having a philosophical conversation than to be giving a speech, though he
does break into dialogue at times even in this text.

So, Socrates is on trial, and as you know from having read the Apology, Socrates does
not successfully defend himself in this trial. The jury finds him guilty and sentences him
to death. What are the specific changes against him. This is interesting because Socrates
says that there are actually two kinds of charges being brought against him: Official
Charges and Unoffical Charges.

The Official Charges are these:

1) Corrupting the youth (of Athens)
2) Beliving in gods that are different than the gods the city believes in (which we might
call impiety. It is interesting to note that Socrates is put to death, in part because he is
found to be impious, even though, as we know, the high priest Euthyphro does not know
how to define piety).

The Unofficial Charges are these:

1) He makes the worse argument into the stronger argument.
2) He studies things in the sky and below the earth.

Socrates says at 18c-d that he is actually more concerned about the unofficial charges
than he is about the official charges. Why is that?
Well, the unofficial charges amount to a kind of rumor that has been developing about
him for years. This means that people have been developing an opinion about Socrates
for many years without really knowing why they have that opinion about him. He says
that it is like fighting shadows. Why is that? Why is fighting a rumor similar to fighting
against shadows?

What is a rumor? A rumor is something that everyone believes and yet no one in
particular believes? If you ask particular people about it, those individuals do not believe
it, and yet somehow, everyone seems to take it to be true. This is why it is so difficult for
Socrates, in particular. He is more comfortable talking to people one on one and cross
examining them. In fighting against a rumor, there is no particular person to cross
examine.

So, Socrates is most worried about his general reputation. People in general have
believed this rumor about Socrates for many years, from when they were children.

One of the unofficial charges is that Socrates makes the worse argument into the stronger
argument. This is another way of calling Socrates a sophist. What is a sophist? A sophist
is someone who uses fallacious arguments (a fallacy is an error in reasoning) with the
intent to deceive. Sophists do not care about the truth. Instead, they just want to win the
argument. They harbor a studied indifference to the truth, using arguments that they
know are invalid in order to deceive people and win arguments. The main subject that
sophists teach is rhetoric. They accepted payment to teach their students how to use
rhetorical language to convince others of their position, regardless of the correctness or
incorrectness of that position. One strategy they used was to travel to different places.
They were very much traveling teachers, who learned what different ideas meant in
different cities. For example, they might learn that justice had a different meaning in
Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Sparta. Then, in a debate, they could employ the different
meanings of justice that they had learned about in different cities.

Is Socrates a sophist? It seems clear even just from what we have read so far that Socrates
is not a sophist, for the following reasons:

1) Socrates does not receive payment. Indeed, Socrates was quite poor. So, one
significant difference between Socrates and the sophists is that the sophists were paid
teachers and Socrates was not.
2) Socrates does not teach rhetoric. Indeed, the Socratic dialogues, like Euthyphro, are
not speeches at all but back and forth dialectic conversations, and they lack anything in
the way of flowery rhetoric.
3) Most importantly, Socrates is not trying to win an argument. On the contrary, he is
searching for truth. Clearly, he does not care if he arrives at the truth or is his dialogue
partners are closer to the truth than he is himself. His goal is not to win the argument but
to find out the truth about particular virtues (piety, virtue, justice, love, etc.) He is quite
willing and even interested in being wrong if others know more than he does.
Why does Socrates have such a bad reputation? We learn the story at 20d – 23d. A man
named Chairephon went to the oracle at Delphi and asked if anyone was wiser than
Socrates. The oracle answers no, there is no one wiser than Socrates. When Socrates
hears this, he does not believe it, so he tests it out. He goes to those in Athens who are
reputed to be wise and asks them about the very thing that they are supposedly wise
about. For example, he asks Euthyphro, a priest, about piety. What Socrates discovers is
that those are supposedly wise are actually not wise at all. He then says to himself that is
wise to this extent, that he knows that he does not know. We might call this Socratic
wisdom: a mixture of knowledge and ignorance. Socrates does know certain things, but
also knows that there are many things that he does not know. So, it is wise to admit when
you do not have knowledge. But people started to dislike Socrates because he showed
them that they did not know what they thought they knew.

This is the reason why Socrates is not afraid of death. No one really knows what wil
happen after they die. To be afraid of death is to think that one does know what will
happen after they die. Socrates says at 28 b “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to
think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows when one does not know.”

One of the key ideas in this text can be found at 29d – 30b. Socrates tells the members of
the just that what they should be concerned about is “the best possible state of your soul”
(29e and 30b). What does this mean? We know that to take care of your body, you need
to exercise and eat healthy foods? But what about your soul? What does it mean to take
care of your soul?

In another text, Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes the soul as having three separate
parts. In fact, the soul has the same three parts as the city. In other words, the structure of
the human soul is identical to the structure of the city. Socrates says that “the city is the
soul writ large,” which means that the city is just like the soul, except we describe the
city using large letters and we describe the soul using small letters.

The best kind of city looks like an equilateral triangle. The smallest group is at the top,
and these are the rulers. Their job is to make wise decisions for the city as a whole.

The next largest group is the soldiers, and they are in the middle. They are also called
auxiliaries. Their role is to help citizens follow along with the wise decisions of the
rulers.

The largest group is at the bottom, and these are the craftspeople. They are artists and
make things for the city as a whole. While they may not understand the decisions made
by the rulers, they obey the wise laws of that the rulers make and that the
soldiers/auxiliaries apply.

It seems pretty clear that Plato’s Republic does not work as a functioning political
organization. Some people have tried to implement it, and they failed remarkably.
But Plato also makes it fairly clear in the Republic that the reason why he is describing
the city in the way that he does is so that we can see more clearly what the human soul
looks like. For Socrates, the best kind of human soul also looks like an equilateral
triangle.

At the top of the triangle is reason/rationality. One should use reason to make good
decisions.

In the middle of triangle is spiritedness. One needs to summon up their courage in order
to follow what reason tells them to do.

At the bottom of the soul is appetite. These are the unruly and unhealthy appetites that
people have, for example, for money, sex, food, and fame.

There are four key virtues for Socrates: Wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

Wisdom resides at the top of the good city and at the top of the good human soul.
Courage resides in the middle of the good city (with the soldiers/auxiliaries) and in the
middle of the good human soul (with spiritedness).

Moderation spreads throughout the whole. If each part is functioning the way that it
should, then the good human soul is using reason to make decision and then summoning
their courage in order to govern their unhealthy appetites and desires. In this way, one
will not succumb to unhealthy desires and appetites.

When each part is doing what it should, then one is a just person. Justice happens when
each part of the human soul is functioning in the best way that it can and doing what it
should.

In an unjust soul, one’s unhealthy appetites and desires are at the top of the soul making
decisions instead of one’s rational nature. In another kind of unjust soul, one’s spirited
nature is making decisions instead of one’s rational nature. We will look at some of these
in class.

But overall, the goal for Socrates is for us to strengthen our reason, to strengthen our
rational nature, so that we can then use our spirited nature to control and govern
unhealthy appetites and desires. If we do so, then we will be able to live a life of harmony
and balance, and for Socrates, a life of harmony and balance is a good life.

As we know, Socrates loses his trial. In the first vote, he is found guilty, and then in the
second vote, he is sentenced to death. Oddly, more people vote to put him to death than
voted to fin him guilty, which means that some people who did not find him guilty then
voted to have him executed.

At the very end of the Apology, Socrates says that a good person cannot be harmed (41d).
This is an interesting thing to say. It seems obvious that if Socrates is going to be
executed, then he is going to be harmed. But what does it mean to be “harmed”? Words
can have multiple meanings. Those meanings can be extremely different or those
meanings can also be subtly different. The equivocal meaning of a word, for example, is
when the word signifies completely different concepts. A “bat” is both an animal and a
piece of sporting equipment (baseball bat). The analogous use of a word is when the word
has meanings that are similar but do not signify the same concept. A “queen” for example
can be a monarch or a chess piece. Similarly, “harm” has analogous meanings. It can
mean physical harm, of course, but it can also mean moral harm or moral injury. When
Socrates says that a good person cannot be harmed, he means moral harm. In this sense
good person could be killed, but not harmed because that person would not have been
made into a morally worse person. There are many martyrs throughout history, such as
Socrates, Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, just to name a few. These people
were killed, but they were not harmed. Another person can cause you physical injury, but
another person cannot make you into a worse person unless you let them.

In his response to the jury after being found guilty, Socrates says that the unexamined life
is not worth living (38a). What does this mean? In a way, one must answer this question
for themselves. For Socrates, what this mean was that the philosophical life was the best
kind of life. The philosophical life is a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom through
philosophical questioning and logical argumentation. If you never reflect on your life,
then you may move through life without asking whether you are living a good life or a
happy life. For Socrates, this is what animals do. They simply live without engaging in
reflection. But humans need to think about their lives. They need to exercise their reason
in order to reflect on their lives and to reflect on the meaning and purpose of human
existence. For him, this is the only kind of life worth living. Do you agree?

Recall that when we first started talking about the Apology, we said that Socrates is
accused of corrupting the youth. But then look at what Socrates has done. Back at 18d,
Socrates had said “these accusers are numerous and have been at it a long time; also, they
spoke to you at an age when you would most readily believe them, some of you being
children and adolescents.” Socrates turns it around and accuses them of corrupting the
youth. He does the same thing at the end of the Apology. At 39b he says, “I leave you
now, condemned to death by you, but they are condemned by truth to wickedness and
injustice.” Again, Socrates turns the whole thing around. They may have found him
guilty according to the unjust laws of Athens. But he then finds his accusers guilty, and
he makes this judgment based on a higher moral law. He also gives them a punishment.
While they punish him with execution. He punishes them, saying “vengeance will come
upon you, immediately after my death, a vengeance much harder to bear than that which
you took in killing me…There will be more people to test you” (39c-d). What he is
saying here is that more people will come along and force them, will force you, “to give
an account of your life” (39c-d). This is his point. You need to give an account of your
life. You need to be able to explain to others what you are doing and why you are doing
it. If you cannot explain to others what you are doing and why you are doing it, then you
should not be doing whatever it is you are doing. Philosophers are those who test others
and ask them to give an account of their life. How can you do this? You can do it by
talking about virtue. Socrates says that it is “the greatest good” to “discuss virtue every
day” (38a). You should try to do this. You should try to discuss virtue on some days, then
on more days, and then every day. If you can discuss virtue every day, then you are on
your way to living a philosophical life.

When you are ready, write up your discussion post.