 Now the setting for this work is the law court. Here's a here's a diagram of the archaeological site We're in a law court within a building just off of the main Agra in Athens Now the genre of the work Technically, it's a dialogue a dialogue is where you have named speakers or characters exchanging speeches and that in fact occurs because Melitus and Socrates actually have a kind of conversation or argument or rather cross examination during the trial but the dialogue contains and is named after the fact that it contains a defense speech or Apologia and that's why the work is called the apology of Socrates. It's not Socrates saying. Oh, sorry Sorry, I bumped into you or sorry. I ruined your whole religious moral system It's a defense of his life It's an explanation for his activities and his explanation of what he did And and why what he thinks he did was right not wrong Now Plato is not the only person to have written for us a sample of Socrates defense speech so other Philosophers did and the one another one written by Xenophon Survives and so we can compare it to Plato's version and we find that it in fact differs in certain respects in certain details and So can't emphasize this often enough But keep in mind that the author of these works is Plato not Socrates Socrates wrote nothing He's not an author Okay, he's a character in a fictional dialogue written by Plato and Plato very much has his own Philosophical agenda and in a way uses Socrates and Meletus and other people as puppets for a little show and a little display of what he wants to say and what do you to think about and Keep in mind that Plato was a pupil of Socrates Imagine that you were charged with writing a dialogue about Monty Johnson's interaction with the UCSD administration or something and Then you knew I was going to see it or that people in the administration were going to see it There might be certain details or certain nuances of your characterization that wouldn't exactly be historically Sound you can think of all sorts of motives for that and all of those apply in this case But on the other hand the presence of this alternate version of the dispense defense speech in Xenophon and The similarity of certain arguments that are made in it Indicates some kind of objectivity of it because two sources Hostile to each other both represent the speech as being in certain respects similar and involving the same arguments And so that that there we can kind of triangulate those arguments and establish the kinds of things that Socrates said and so there is some historical versamillitude to it and we certainly know that Socrates was Executed in 399 that there was a trial held that there was a real person named Meletus that charged him and so forth And we also know other details like we As much as anyone now knows that Aristophanes actually did mock Socrates in the clouds a fact that is referred to in Plato's Apology So the philosophical implications of this trial and of Socrates defense can be disputed But the events certainly did happen Now just a couple of philosophical issues and by now these should be familiar to you first of all Socrates Disclaims or denies that he's a good speaker or an orator and he points out This is the first time I've been in court as a defendant and I've never myself brought charges against anyone So don't expect me to be good at this don't expect me to be a polished attorney Also, he was not a pupil of teachers of rhetoric. He didn't go to law school He wasn't a pupil of Gorgias to put it mildly. He was a very a Very annoying student of if he was he was a student that overthrew what his teacher was saying Now the virtue of a good judge is to discern what's true But remember from the Gorgias that there's an issue about whether the virtue of the Retirition is to tell the truth and basically no it's not the virtue of a good attorney or speech writer or Retirition is not to tell the truth but to secure Prosecution or acquittal in court and the truth is of secondary importance or rather It's of no importance except insofar as it serves that end But Socrates is in a situation where he's defending himself and so he cannot Be indifferent to the truth. He says for him the situation and what's actually on trial and Indisputed here is what kind of person he is and what kind of life He lives and what kind of life he thinks other people should live And so one of the most poignant moments of the whole thing is where he offers this Famous quotation the unexamined life isn't worth living for a human being going through life without Examining your life and having self-knowledge isn't one worth living and he's more Concerned with doing that and living an examined life than he is with securing acquittal in the trial and So he's committed to both Living and dying as a philosopher, which makes him a rare Philosopher and arguably it's what makes him a philosopher a lot of people are willing to live as a philosopher And by the way, please don't confuse people that teach academic philosophy with being philosophers Although there's a very annoying and pretentious trend for them to refer to each other as philosophers. They aren't philosophers They're people that study Philosophers Socrates is a philosopher and he not only lived according to philosophical principles but he died according to them and Made a display of dying according to those principles Now let's review the charges against him and some of the responses and there's two sets of charges There's an old set of charges and then a new set of charges that have been added to those by Meletus and the old charges include so-called needless curiosity and meddling Interference inquiring into things beneath the earth and in the sky and Also Making the weak argument stronger and teaching other people how to make weak arguments appear strong Now the first charge seems to be a reference to the kind of caricature of Socrates in Aristophanes clouds and there's actually an Echo of that because this idea of inquiring to things under the earth and in the sky and in Aristophanes He added and things on the surface of the earth which meant the entire universe everything up there Everything on this level and everything beneath us So he investigates every corner and every domain of nature no matter how small So one response we could give to that is that if it was true That should be a good not a bad thing just like natural science and nowadays we think people who do natural science are great In fact, they're the only people should only be doing stem and so forth because that's the real stuff that we need people to know about So why would that be a bad thing? But the fact of the matter is it's not true Socrates does not focus on those kinds of things. He focuses on ethics unlike figures like annex agris and these other Philosophers who we now call pre-socratic philosophers and we call them that because they philosophized according to methods that existed before Socrates came on the scene and transformed philosophical methodology into making ethics Primary and in another dialogue by Plato called the Fido Socrates is depicted as Rejecting that kind of inquiry that annex agris and the pre-socratic philosophers conducted even though he says I had an interest in that when I was young. I ended up moving on to bigger and more important things Now the second charge about making weak arguments appear strong is essentially an accusation that he teaches rhetoric He has two responses to this first that he's not like gorgias or other Sophists and rhetoricians like hippies and prodigies because he doesn't charge fees for teaching He teaches people, but he doesn't charge them for it So he's not trying to make a profit off of it and his motive is not to make a profit off of it And for this he was ridiculed by other people. Oh, you don't charge for your teaching It must not be worth very much. In fact, it must be worthless if you don't charge anything for it, right? You want good teaching you go to an expensive university like Harvard where it costs you a quarter of a million dollars to get that Degree that must be a really a really good solid Education if it costs a lot but socrates says I'm not in this game I don't charge people for teaching my motives for doing it are totally Different so I'm not interested in trying to teach people how to Make weak arguments appear stronger. I'm in fact interested in the truth Also, he may have recommended others to go to teachers like that But he always disclaims that he himself has any kind of knowledge whatsoever not just knowledge of rhetoric But any knowledge the quotation made in the gorgias also repeated in youth the fro Many other dialogues and here in the apology is that all I know is that I don't know anything So you can hardly blame him of teaching something if the only Actual statement you can pin on him is that all I know is that I don't know anything like it's not a very good answer to give in a Hiring context if you're in a job interview to be hired as a teacher and you give the Socratic response Well, I don't actually know anything, but at least I know that they don't tend to think oh, this guy's are gonna be a great teacher So with Socrates Also, he of course wasn't a pupil of office like Gorgias Which he would have had to be in order to be able to teach what they teach In fact, he is portrayed at least by Plato as being vehemently hostile to teachers of rhetoric like Gorgias But that may be an artifact of how Plato is portraying him and a lot of his Contemporaries and successors according to evidence outside of Plato did perceive him as being exactly like a Sophist like prodigies or Gorgias or Protagoras and so on Now if Socrates claims that he doesn't know anything and he doesn't Investigate natural science and he doesn't teach rhetoric then the question arises. Why does he have a reputation for wisdom? And that has to do with a strange event that happened where his friend Carathon once consulted an oracle the oracle at Delphi a prophetic oracle and Who's sitting within this temple in Delphi a Temple which bears the inscription above it know thyself or know yourself Which is called the Delphic Maxim and Cherophon asked the oracle. Is there anyone wiser than Socrates and The oracle gave the very laconic answer no And the question is why the oracle said that So here is the explanation that Socrates gives so when Socrates heard that Supposedly nobody's wiser than him. He thought it was a riddle because he didn't consider himself wise So he went about questioning others to find out Who are thought to be wise to find out what their wisdom consisted in so he started with Politicians because politicians are these big powerful people that everybody looks up to and thinks are wise and Socrates examined some of them Thinking he'd find somebody wiser and then the oracle could be showed to be wrong or some kind of strange riddle But to no avail he came away convinced and you might yourself be convinced if you actually talk to politicians that they merely have a reputation for wisdom but aren't in fact wise and Then he investigated poets and other literary figures He examined them and found that they're like prophets or seers who say things that sound wise But who don't seem to understand the things that they say and that's why they're said to be divinely inspired They don't actually know the reasons for what they're talking about They just have some kind of inspiration that they can't account for and thus it doesn't constitute wisdom and finally ordinary craftsmen people who practice Medicine or architecture or shoe making actual areas where things are produced technologies that work are made and so forth those people think That those people are wise in those specific domains But the problem is you find that they think they're wise in all other domains as well So medical doctors think they know everything about ethics and architects think they know everything about the the Politics and economics of engineering and shoemakers think they know everything about everything and they can't however Defend their views or withstand examination outside of the limited context in which they have some wisdom Now remember that this word for examination Right like mid-term examination final examination Okay, the Greek concept behind all of this is a Lenkus, which means refutation right Where somebody pretends by writing an answer on an exam like they have some kind of knowledge and then we try to examine and try to refute that and see if it's actually true and Socrates exposes the incoherence or Tradition in the views of people like all the kinds that I just reviewed who present themselves and have the pretence of knowing lots of things and he says from this practice of Examining and refuting people a lot of enmity has risen against him So just like students hate it when professors give them exams So do shoe makers politicians poets and so forth when you examine and expose their ignorance tend to be annoyed and irritated by this and I Several of you have told me that you have the experience in reading the youth of Rhodogorgias that you really hate Socrates you read it and you just think God this guy is annoying. I mean not only is he ugly. He's just annoying, right? And that is an accurate portrayal. That is the effect he had on people. This wasn't a warm fuzzy guy Okay, so on every occasion those who see him do those who see him from afar Examining others and leading them into befuddlement and confusion and he's interviewing a professor of religion who can't even define what Holiness is they think oh, okay, that guy Socrates is really wise because he's undermining those people But Socrates himself if you actually listen to what he's saying doesn't claim to have any knowledge or wisdom But only to expose the ignorance of others by bringing out contradictions and inconsistencies in their own views and So he says this is what the oracle was talking about. This is why the oracle considers Socrates wiser than anyone else because he doesn't act like he knows things that he doesn't know And he shows that people who do have that pretense don't actually know what they're talking about and That's what his wisdom Consists in and here's the important point is not only doesn't he claim because it's bad enough to have a pretense To knowledge and act like you're somebody who knows a lot of stuff when you don't what's worse is to act on that To make decisions like political decisions as if you really know that this that such-and-such should happen These people really are invading this country and so this has got to happen or else there's going to be these big problems That's the real problem. I mean just being a pretentious person who who acts like you know Something is annoying, but then it becomes a big problem a problem of like war and peace and Internal political stability and so forth when you actually Act on these kind of things Now the students who follow Socrates imitate what he does and practice the Examination and the refutation the Alancas on other people and So that is where the idea that Socrates corrupts the youth Comes from that he gets other people to go out and do this annoying thing not only does he do it But you can avoid him right you can you can take a left when you see him coming down the street and not run into Socrates not have to talk to him But now he's getting more and more students and you're running into them everywhere you go In fact your own children are starting to do this now Okay, and so these people these people are everywhere and so he's corrupting the whole Youth of this population who now they're going around exposing that all these people talking like they know what they're doing with politics and and these important affairs of war and peace and alliances and revenues and Distributions and so forth don't actually know what they're Doing and so they perceive that the youth are being corrupted and being shown how to make a weak argument stronger Okay, so that explains why he had a reputation for wisdom and why so many people hated him and That addresses those old charges, but now we have a new set of charges coming from This guy who's almost as annoying as Socrates himself called mellitus But but mellitus is annoying for a different reason He's one of these people who really who's like youth of row and acts like he knows stuff that he doesn't know and He is trying to make a big name for himself as a big attorney He's sort of like a Michael Avenatti of the ancient world He wears slick suits and shows up and and Prosecutes people brings charges against people so that by bringing them down. He can get fame for himself and He charges Socrates with corrupting the youth, but also not acknowledging the gods of the city acknowledges, but instead creating new divinities and as For the second charge creating new divinities We've already discussed that in the youth of fro the charges that he's impious or unholy mellitus exactly like youth of fro acts as if he knows about religious matters and charges Socrates with Impiety or unholiness But since we know from that other dialogue that it is not at all clear what holiness or Impiety are then it would be hazardous to charge somebody else on those grounds In fact somebody charging somebody else with being impious may themselves be acting impiously or un Being unholy Now the first charge corrupting the youth resembles the older charges about corrupting the youth and so the earlier Answer or defense against those charges still applies But Socrates makes a new set of arguments against the corrupting the youth charge That come out in the context of a dialogue or a cross examination with mellitus in which Socrates is displayed perhaps unrealistically as having an opportunity to employ his alencus within his own defense speech and So there are something like three different arguments that he makes in here The first one is that the accusation doesn't make any sense Socrates says do we agree that the youth should all be as good as possible Melodists replies of course we do Socrates and so I could he says well who improves them and Melodists examples are judges assemblymen counselors politicians the kind of people he thinks are Good people but basically turns out all Citizens improve the youth because all citizens are judges assemblymen counselors and politicians in a democracy So the charge amounts to saying Everybody in this entire country all of these citizens improve the youth, but some one man Socrates corrupts them all But this would be disanalogous to every other art in which we think that the majority of people aren't capable of Improving their subjects, but only one or a few people for example in horse breeding It's not the case that all of us could improve horses But there's just one of us in here that would make them worse rather all of us would make them worse except for the one person who's actually been trained in horse breeding and Melodists his failure to understand this shows that he hasn't actually given any thought as to how moral improvement or Education actually works in education You have a few people who devote their lives to teaching and those people are able to improve students in some one respect that is the area and domain of their teachers That they teach in and we don't think anyone can teach so We don't think anyone can teach astrophysics and there's just one person who would mislead people about astrophysics Rather we think that the few people who have devoted their lives to studying astrophysics are capable of improving people And so the charge that assumes everyone's Improving everyone except this one person Socrates doesn't make sense in his disanalogous to the way other arts work the second argument is that Essentially there is no motive for Socrates to miseducate people so he asks Melodists Do we agree that everyone wants fellow citizens to be as good as possible and that having bad fellow? Citizens causes one harm and Melodists says yes, of course We agree on that and Socrates says do we agree that no one wants? Voluntarily to be harmed by those with whom one associates and Melodists says yes, of course It follows from that that either Socrates does not corrupt the youth or if he does he must do so involuntarily So either he's not guilty as charge or he's doing something involuntarily But if it's involuntary then it's not a matter for the courts and he shouldn't be punished and said he should be privately Admonished or reformed So again this argument like the previous one shows that Socrates unlike Melodists has given a lot of thought to moral education and Melodists has rashly brought charges against Socrates in order to make a name for himself not out of any actual concern For morality of the young or how young the young are taught As for the charge of impiety Socrates says What are you claiming how why are you claiming that I am impious that I'm unholy that I don't observe these gods Do you say that I deny only some gods or all of them and Melodists says you deny all of them Socrates So the charge amounts to atheism not believing that there is any such thing as God or the gods But Socrates points out I consider the Sun moon and stars to be divine I'm not like annex agorus someone who had this crazy theory that the moon is just a rock like a piece of earth And that the Sun is just a flaming stone that kind of crazy idea. I don't believe that sort of thing Okay, I recognize that those heavenly bodies are divine. So don't don't worry. I'm not I'm not one of these crazy atheists Also, I believe in other gods and I have other forms of religious observance for example I believe in the god Apollo who stands behind the Pythian Oracle at Delphi. That's the one that said no one is wiser than Socrates In fact, I'm defending the pronouncement of the Oracle While you're denying it. So maybe you're the one that's being impious also Socrates has this strange Personal habit where he ten he says I'm following my own divine sign or Dymone which means something like my own Personal destiny, but with a sense that this has kind of agency like a guardian angel I'm following this Dymone of mine And he says that this Dymone or divine sign Comes to him sometimes and prevents him from acting It never tells him what he should do, but sometimes it appears to him and says don't do The following and then he refrains from that action. So that's another kind of religious Observance traditional religious idea that that Socrates makes his own Now if Socrates believes that these they these things pertaining to divinities Diamonds oracles prophecy Astral divinities and so forth then clearly he does believe in some gods So it's not true that he denies that all of them exist and so the charge of Impiety if it is atheism is false now Socrates addresses the the charge that was essentially made in the Gorgias by Calakles that Calakles made it sort of proleptically because remember That was way before any of these charges had been leveled or anything and Calakles says, you know Socrates You spend all your time doing philosophy and you reject the cultivation of rhetoric You might find yourself being charged at some point in your life By a really good attorney who knows rhetoric and then even if it was a false charge you wouldn't be able to defend yourself and Imagine that it was a charge on something like you're really immoral or you're impious or you're corrupting people Wouldn't you be ashamed not to be able to defend yourself and so here? There's a kind of digression in the dialogue where Socrates explains His view about that he says first of all if somebody charged me like that even if they Won a capital case and got me convicted sentenced to death I Don't actually care about living and dying as much as I care about Justice and injustice and doing the right thing and not doing the wrong thing In fact fearing death is cowardly and so it's a vicious thing It's a vice if you're afraid of death then you're a kind of coward Courage requires us to stand up for justice even when doing so is a threat to our lives and so Socrates manifests a Very traditional virtue of being courageous Furthermore Socrates points out to fear death is to pretend like you know something that you don't know and can't possibly know That death is a bad thing Death might be a good thing. We might go on to heaven or something Where is it where things are a lot better than they are in this hellish world or it could just be a neutral thing like a deep sleep? Which is very enjoyable I'm sure some of you would prefer it to what you're doing right now Right having no Impression of anything, but it's just sort of blank So nobody knows what happens after death and so to fear death is to pretend like you know something You don't know exactly the kind of thing Socrates doesn't do And he says suppose you offered to spare me on the condition that I no longer would do philosophy His answer to that is I shall obey the God rather than you And while I have breath and an able I shall not cease to pursue wisdom or to exhort you Charging any of you I happen to meet in my accustomed manner So again presents himself as essentially being more Pious and that I am observing a sort of higher law almost like a natural law as it were instead of this conventional law you're urging against me and I will not stop doing philosophy even if you threaten to put me to death And he turns the table on him and says that it would be shameful to allow the pursuit of money Reputation or honor, which is exactly what Meletus is doing in this case But I have no thought or concern for truth and understanding and the greatest excellence or virtue of the soul That's at 29e If anyone disputes this that it would be better to do those things then Socrates will subject him to in a Lencus a refutation or examination in order to see if their values can withhold scrutiny and So he says at 30a to b for the God commands this be well and assured And I believe that you have yet to gain in this city a greater good than my service to the God I go about doing nothing, but persuading you young and old to care not for body or money in place of or so much as excellence or virtue of the soul So he expresses a willingness to die rather than to stop improving the city in this way and Furthermore he argues that if you convict me you're going to be doing a lot more harm to yourself than you are to me Yeah, you get rid of me and that's that's a problem for me But you're creating a problem for the whole city and Meletus specifically by committing an injustice Would do something much worse than is going to happen to Socrates by dying and Meletus can't harm Socrates since as Socrates puts it here It doesn't accord with divine law that a better man can be harmed by a worse one and Socrates points out it's not going to be easy to replace me I've devoted my whole life to serving and it's interesting how he puts it here as a gadfly that's constantly Waking and bothering the sluggish horse of Athens into becoming better and he Suggests imagery a lot like the gadfly that's constantly bothering IO in the Prometheus bound and Socrates says I'm like that gadfly Constantly bothering people to find out examining their views about what's true and false just and unjust and so on and Socrates points out rightly that the whole city will suffer for condemning a bad a good man to death And for allowing an unjust conviction to take place and so he's unwilling to beg for forgiveness and so as you can see this defense speech comes across as very defiant even strident and Is unlikely to Convince a jury So he is found guilty. They take a vote. There's 500 jurors 280 of them say to convict him 220 he did somehow manage to convince but the majority convict him and that's how it works So then they move on to the sentencing phase or the penalty phase Now the way this usually works as the prosecutor Says well, we'll give you death What do you think we should give you instead and then the defendant is supposed to give some strong? penalty that's As strong as possible, but falling short of death so that they have some other option Oh, I'll take life in prison or I'll take I'll take confiscation of all my property or I'm willing to be banished from the city and Never to come back So what does Socrates say in this case? Socrates says here's what I think my sentence should be I should be given free meals for life in the hall where they give Olympic victors free food Why because I didn't pursue money property honors offices Clubs political parties and so forth instead I Pursued my inquiries privately directed always at individuals I tried to persuade everyone to care about nothing other than becoming as good as possible So while Olympic victors make us think we're happy because we're entertained by them And we like watching their bodies and all these different configurations and so forth Socrates actually gives us a means to become happy by examining oneself and primarily by following the Delphic maxim to know oneself so then he's able to give a speech in this phase and These are these are some of the last words he says The greatest good for man is to fashion arguments each day about virtue and the other things you hear me discussing when I examine myself I Refute myself actually I employ this Alencus against myself and others and And this is where the crucial phrase comes in the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being Death on the other hand who knows again. I don't claim to know could be like a deep dreamless sleep That sounds great Or he says it might be a trip to the underworld where I could encounter Homer and he seed odysseus Achilles your rippities and all those guys and I can start examining them and their views about what's good And bad and figuring out if they're wise and if they're not showing that they're not and refuting their views And so even if you put me to death, I'll just keep doing this Right, you can send me to hell or heaven and either way I'm gonna keep examining whether people have consistent beliefs or they contradict themselves and don't actually Know what they're talking about So then they vote on the penalty and they choose death instead of instead of giving him giving him free lunch now Socrates again says that not only in the underworld But in this world there will come to be more and more people like Socrates and so far from eliminating this threat by getting rid of him They're actually gonna bring on more and more people and the example of his death is gonna inspire other people to practice philosophy and other people to Search for the truth and the difference between right and wrong and try to come up with a consistent and coherent moral theory that makes sense and Socrates life an example has in fact given rise to philosophy and shown how somebody could devote their lives to it and Other people will even be willing to die in order to prevent or show up in justice and the subsequent History after Socrates will actually show that other people willing to die in order to resist injustices and false claims of knowledge and so on and then Socrates employs another one of his Ironic gestures and he implores the jury. Please Subject my children to the kind of examination I've subjected you to and the entire city to and make sure that if they're acting like they know what they're talking about When they don't or they're acting like they're pious and holy when they're not or they act like they know what? Right and wrong and just and unjust is when they don't make sure to refute them Only then will they become better and here we see him really Walking the walk of his argument that it's better to be refuted than it is to refute other people that being refuted leads to an improvement He wants his children to be improved So he wants them to be refuted where they're wrong He doesn't want them to persist in false beliefs Particularly false beliefs that they will act on and thus do harm to themselves or to the rest of society And so it ends with him saying All right, this is over we're gonna leave you will live on I will die, but who's better off? God only knows and that's the end Now anybody have any Actually, that's not the very end because the next the next thing is him in prison and the depiction of Socrates in prison Now what does he do there? That's depicted in another a couple more Dialogues of Plato one called the Crito where some of Socrates friends try to Encourage him to escape and go into exile and not let the death sentence be carried out and Socrates explains why even though He doesn't think that the decision was right that it was justly arrived at through these Democratic processes and through the proper procedures and so he will not do the wrong thing and and Violate the laws and he explains there why one ought to be law abiding and then the Dialogue of Plato that depicts his death is called the Fido and What is he depicted is doing well first of all? He's a lot of his students and other followers are present and it's funny because in the Platonic dialogue It says except Plato wasn't there because he was sick that day But and yet Plato is writing the book that gives a description of everything that was happening and everything that was said there So that's the kind of literary trick that let the Plato likes to play But he's depicted as What does he do in his dying hours? Well, of course he does philosophy he does more philosophy and he keeps examining people