Trial And Death Of Socrates Analysis
The Trial and Death of Socrates
The book The Trial and Death of Socrates is all about the famous philosopher Socrates, dealing with the challenges and disputes he encountered. Its told by another famous philosopher Platos’ perspective, who was a pupil of Socrates. The book focuses on 4 main dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. While demonstrating themes of wisdom, existence, and death.
First dialogue of this book is Euthyphro, which contains the characters Socrates, Euthyphro, and Meletus. Inside this dialogue Socrates is being tried in court by Meletus who we don’t actually meet, but just hear his name frequently. While in Athens, Socrates meets Euthyphro, who is bringing his father to court for a murder, and the two begin to talk. Socrates starts to ask Euthyphro about religiousness and holiness to try and possibly help him in his upcoming court case. After hearing some definitions of holiness from Euthyphro, Socrates begin to question him on these theories. Euthyphro’s greatest attempt to explain holiness was, “whatever is holy is approved by all gods.” This led to lots of questioning by Socrates and into an elaborate argument about gods and holiness. After the argument continues and …show more content…
Euthyphro tries to continue to clarify, he finally gets frustrated by Socrates and storms off. My personal opinion after reading this section is you can’t define holiness and religious matters, because every individual can interpret them differently because of their beliefs and culture. I think Plato is also hinting at the same idea, that there is no one thing holiness all has in common.
Plato’s Apology Is an account of Socrates so called “apology” in the court of Athens. The dialogue Apology is actually from the old Greek word apologia, which means defense, so Socrates wasn’t as much apologizing for what he did, but defending himself to the court. Socrates wisdom was in order to be smarter than everyone else you must first realize that you know nothing, and so he taught this weird wisdom to lots of people and youth in the towns. How he would spread this wisdom is by questioning the so called wise men in town, he would then exploit their ignorance and false wisdom. This made youth aspire Socrates, but many elder and grown men weren’t very happy about it. Now in court Socrates cross exams Meletus or at least attempts to by, in this section Socrates refers to Athens as a lazy horse and without him the state of Athens would be nothing. After all this Socrates ends up being found guilty by a small margin and is asked to come up with some sort of penalty. He then jokes about receiving a meal for his great deeds, but in seriousness he requests not to be put into jail or exiled, perhaps just pay a fine. The jury shuts down his proposal and sentences Socrates to death. Personal opinion on this dialogue is just how crazy how much times have changed since back then, Socrates was sentenced to death because he questioned beliefs of wise men and proved their ignorance.
In Crito, the 3rd dialogue, you meet Crito a friend of Socrates as he visits Socrates in prison to attempt an escape.
As they discuss the idea of a possible escape we learn that Socrates isn’t necessarily fond of the idea. Crito starts to tell him about his family who will left behind and all his followers who will be disappointed. This is when we learn that Socrates doesn’t exactly want to break out, his reasoning is the just laws of Athens. He explains that the laws of Athens are an entity, so if you break one you break them all, and Socrates doesn’t want to break the city rule of Athens, a city he has happily lived in for 70 years. Plato the author faces difficulty in this chapter trying to reason why Socrates shouldn’t escape the cell, which is very hard to
do.
In the last dialogue of the book, we go inside the prison cell of Socrates, as many of his close friends visit him on his final hours. Crito was one of the friends inside the cell, as well as two philosophers Simmias and Cebes. It begins by Socrates telling everyone his thoughts on suicide, “although its wrong, a true philosopher should look forward to death.” His reasoning behind this claim is that the soul is immortal and that it should eventually should break away from the body. After Socrates says these things he supports it with 4 arguments; Opposites, recollection, affinity, are 3 he mentions. The 3 friends go back and forth about the myth of death before Socrates finally takes his own life by drinking the poison and concludes the myth.
In conclusion, I believe this book was very interesting, and although it was hard to understand at times the different dialogues tended to help that issue. The reasoning why he was executed is crazy to think about in today’s time and age, but it all adds to the legacy of Socrates.
The book The Trial and Death of Socrates is all about the famous philosopher Socrates, dealing with the challenges and disputes he encountered. Its told by another famous philosopher Platos’ perspective, who was a pupil of Socrates. The book focuses on 4 main dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. While demonstrating themes of wisdom, existence, and death.
First dialogue of this book is Euthyphro, which contains the characters Socrates, Euthyphro, and Meletus. Inside this dialogue Socrates is being tried in court by Meletus who we don’t actually meet, but just hear his name frequently. While in Athens, Socrates meets Euthyphro, who is bringing his father to court for a murder, and the two begin to talk. Socrates starts to ask Euthyphro about religiousness and holiness to try and possibly help him in his upcoming court case. After hearing some definitions of holiness from Euthyphro, Socrates begin to question him on these theories. Euthyphro’s greatest attempt to explain holiness was, “whatever is holy is approved by all gods.” This led to lots of questioning by Socrates and into an elaborate argument about gods and holiness. After the argument continues and …show more content…
Euthyphro tries to continue to clarify, he finally gets frustrated by Socrates and storms off. My personal opinion after reading this section is you can’t define holiness and religious matters, because every individual can interpret them differently because of their beliefs and culture. I think Plato is also hinting at the same idea, that there is no one thing holiness all has in common.
Plato’s Apology Is an account of Socrates so called “apology” in the court of Athens. The dialogue Apology is actually from the old Greek word apologia, which means defense, so Socrates wasn’t as much apologizing for what he did, but defending himself to the court. Socrates wisdom was in order to be smarter than everyone else you must first realize that you know nothing, and so he taught this weird wisdom to lots of people and youth in the towns. How he would spread this wisdom is by questioning the so called wise men in town, he would then exploit their ignorance and false wisdom. This made youth aspire Socrates, but many elder and grown men weren’t very happy about it. Now in court Socrates cross exams Meletus or at least attempts to by, in this section Socrates refers to Athens as a lazy horse and without him the state of Athens would be nothing. After all this Socrates ends up being found guilty by a small margin and is asked to come up with some sort of penalty. He then jokes about receiving a meal for his great deeds, but in seriousness he requests not to be put into jail or exiled, perhaps just pay a fine. The jury shuts down his proposal and sentences Socrates to death. Personal opinion on this dialogue is just how crazy how much times have changed since back then, Socrates was sentenced to death because he questioned beliefs of wise men and proved their ignorance.
In Crito, the 3rd dialogue, you meet Crito a friend of Socrates as he visits Socrates in prison to attempt an escape.
As they discuss the idea of a possible escape we learn that Socrates isn’t necessarily fond of the idea. Crito starts to tell him about his family who will left behind and all his followers who will be disappointed. This is when we learn that Socrates doesn’t exactly want to break out, his reasoning is the just laws of Athens. He explains that the laws of Athens are an entity, so if you break one you break them all, and Socrates doesn’t want to break the city rule of Athens, a city he has happily lived in for 70 years. Plato the author faces difficulty in this chapter trying to reason why Socrates shouldn’t escape the cell, which is very hard to
do.
In the last dialogue of the book, we go inside the prison cell of Socrates, as many of his close friends visit him on his final hours. Crito was one of the friends inside the cell, as well as two philosophers Simmias and Cebes. It begins by Socrates telling everyone his thoughts on suicide, “although its wrong, a true philosopher should look forward to death.” His reasoning behind this claim is that the soul is immortal and that it should eventually should break away from the body. After Socrates says these things he supports it with 4 arguments; Opposites, recollection, affinity, are 3 he mentions. The 3 friends go back and forth about the myth of death before Socrates finally takes his own life by drinking the poison and concludes the myth.
In conclusion, I believe this book was very interesting, and although it was hard to understand at times the different dialogues tended to help that issue. The reasoning why he was executed is crazy to think about in today’s time and age, but it all adds to the legacy of Socrates.