WTF Is the Apology? Reading Plato's Apology of Socrates

Read this series in order: plato-the-complete-works

1. What Is Piety? Reading Plato's Euthyphro
2. WTF Is the Apology? Reading Plato's Apology of Socrates (current)
3. WTF Is the Crito? Reading Plato's Crito

The Apology is not an apology. The Greek word apologia means defense speech, and that is exactly what this is. Socrates does not apologize for anything. He stands in front of a jury of 501 Athenians, faces a death sentence, and spends the entire time telling them they are wrong.

He is found guilty and executed.

This is the second dialogue in Plato's complete works, right after the Euthyphro. In the Euthyphro, Socrates was on his way into court. Now we are inside the court, watching the trial happen.

The Setup

Athens, 399 BC. Socrates is 70 years old. Three men have brought charges against him: Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon. The formal charge is impiety, specifically that he does not believe in the gods the city believes in, that he introduces new spiritual beings, and that he corrupts the youth.

The jury is 501 ordinary Athenian citizens, randomly selected. A majority vote determines guilt. Then there is a second vote on the penalty.

Socrates opens by telling the jury that he will speak plainly, the way he talks in the marketplace, and asks them to judge him on what he says and not on how he says it. He warns them not to create a disturbance if his manner seems unusual. This is his first appearance in a lawcourt.

Two Sets of Accusers

Before addressing the formal charges, Socrates says there are actually two sets of accusers he needs to deal with.

The recent accusers are Meletus and his associates. But there are older accusers, people who have been spreading a reputation about him for years. They say he is a wise man who studies things in the sky and below the earth, makes the worse argument the stronger, and teaches these things to others. Socrates says these old accusers are actually the more dangerous ones. They got to the jurors when they were young, when they would most readily believe, and there was no one there to refute them.

He also points to Aristophanes, the comedian, whose play Clouds portrayed a character called Socrates swinging in a basket and talking nonsense about the heavens. That image has stuck in people's minds for years.

So before he even gets to Meletus, Socrates has to fight a reputation built up over decades by people he cannot even identify or cross-examine.

What Actually Caused All This

Socrates says his reputation for wisdom comes from something very specific. Here is the story.

His friend Chaerephon once went to the oracle at Delphi and asked whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The oracle said no. When Socrates heard this, he was puzzled. He knew he had no great wisdom. So why would the god say this?

He decided to investigate by going to people who were considered wise and testing whether they actually were. First he went to politicians. He found that the ones with the greatest reputations were the most deficient, while they themselves thought they knew a great deal. Socrates concluded that he was slightly better off than them, because at least he did not think he knew things he did not know.

Then he went to the poets. He took their best work and asked them what they meant. He found that almost anyone could explain the poems better than the poets themselves. They did not compose from knowledge but from some kind of inspiration, like seers. And yet they thought themselves very wise in all matters because of their poetry.

Finally he went to the craftsmen. They did know things he did not know, and in that they were wiser. But they made the same mistake as the poets: because they were skilled at their craft, they assumed they were wise about everything else too.

After all this investigation, Socrates arrived at an interpretation of the oracle. The god is not saying Socrates is literally the wisest person. He is using Socrates as an example of someone who understands that his wisdom is worthless. Human wisdom is worth little or nothing. The one who is wisest is the one who, like Socrates, knows that he does not know.

This investigation is also why people hate him. The people he exposed in front of bystanders became angry, not with themselves but with Socrates. They started spreading the accusations that Meletus eventually formalized. Meletus speaks for the poets, Anytus for the craftsmen and politicians, Lycon for the orators.

Dismantling Meletus

Socrates now cross-examines Meletus directly, which is where the dialogue gets sharp.

On corrupting the youth. Socrates asks Meletus who improves the youth. Meletus eventually says everyone does: the jurymen, the assembly members, all the Athenians. Socrates uses a horse-breeding example to expose the absurdity. With horses, one person or very few know how to improve them. The majority, if they have horses and use them without knowing what they are doing, corrupt them. Surely the same is true with people. The claim that only one man in all of Athens corrupts the youth while everyone else improves them is not just false, it is incoherent.

He then pushes further. Does Socrates corrupt them deliberately or unwillingly? Meletus says deliberately. Socrates says that cannot be right. If I deliberately make the people around me worse, I risk being harmed by them myself. No one makes others worse on purpose. So either I do not corrupt them, or I do so unwillingly. If unwillingly, the law does not bring people to court for that. It requires you to take them aside privately and instruct them. Meletus never did that.

On not believing in gods. Socrates shows that Meletus has contradicted himself. Meletus says Socrates does not believe in gods at all. But the formal charge also mentions that he introduces new spiritual beings. Does anyone believe in spiritual activities but not in spirits? And if he believes in spirits, which are either gods themselves or the children of gods, how can he simultaneously not believe in gods? Meletus is either saying Socrates is guilty of not believing in gods and of believing in gods, which is a contradiction. He has made this deposition either to test Socrates or because he genuinely could not find any real wrongdoing.

Why He Will Not Stop

Socrates says something important here. Even if the jury offers to acquit him on the condition that he stop doing philosophy, he will refuse. He is not being stubborn. He genuinely believes he cannot stop, because stopping would mean disobeying the god who commanded him to examine himself and others.

And then he says the thing that probably sealed his fate:

The unexamined life is not worth living for men.

He compares himself to a gadfly sent by the god to sting a great but sluggish horse into action. The city is the horse, and he is the gadfly. If they kill him, they will sleep undisturbed. Another gadfly will not easily come along.

He also explains why he never went into public life. His divine sign, a kind of inner voice, has always stopped him from doing things. It always says no, never yes. It stopped him from entering politics. He thinks that is fortunate, because a man who genuinely opposes the crowd on matters of justice does not survive long in public life.

He gives two examples from his own life to prove he has always acted on principle regardless of personal risk. During the trial of the ten generals after the battle of Arginusae, he was the only member of the presiding council to vote against an illegal mass trial. The crowd wanted blood and shouted him down, but he refused to participate. Under the Thirty Tyrants, when they ordered him and four others to go arrest Leon of Salamis for execution, Socrates simply went home. The others obeyed. He did not. He might have been killed for this but the regime fell shortly after.

No Begging, No Dramatics

Socrates explicitly says he will not bring his family into court to cry in front of the jury. He has three sons, one a teenager and two younger children. He will not parade them before the jury to gain sympathy. He thinks this behavior is undignified and inappropriate, especially for someone who has spent his life claiming to care about virtue. If someone with a reputation for wisdom collapses into begging when facing death, it makes the city look bad.

He asks the jury to judge him by the facts of the case, not by pity.

The Verdict and the Penalty

The jury votes guilty. He lost by a relatively narrow margin. He notes that if just 30 votes had gone the other way he would have been acquitted.

Meletus proposes the death penalty. Now Socrates has to propose a counter-penalty.

He starts by saying what he actually deserves: free meals in the Prytaneum, the magistrates' hall where Athenian olympic victors were honored. He genuinely believes he has been doing the city a great service by going around making people examine their lives. An Olympian victor makes you feel happy, he says. He makes you actually be happy.

He knows the jury will take this as arrogance. He is right that they do.

He considers the alternatives. A fine? He has no money. Imprisonment? Why would he want to live in prison? Exile? Wherever he goes, he will do the same thing and end up in the same situation. He eventually offers 30 minas, with his friends Plato, Crito, and others standing as guarantors.

The jury votes for death.

After the Verdict

Socrates speaks to both groups separately. To those who voted against him, he says they have not escaped examination. After he is gone, more questioners will come, younger and harsher, and the jury will resent them even more. You cannot escape being held accountable by silencing the person holding you accountable.

Then he says something remarkable. His divine sign did not stop him at any point during this trial. Not when he left home, not when he entered the court, not at any moment during his speech. He takes this as a sign that what happened was actually good.

He lays out two possibilities for what death is. Either it is complete unconsciousness, like dreamless sleep, in which case it is nothing to fear and may even be pleasant. Or it is a relocation of the soul to another place, where all the famous dead are. In that case it would be an extraordinary opportunity to meet Homer, Hesiod, Odysseus, and the great heroes, and to question them and test whether they are actually wise. Socrates says he would happily die many times over for that chance.

He closes by saying a good man cannot be harmed in life or in death. He is not angry with those who convicted him. He only asks one thing: when his sons grow up, if they care more for money or reputation than for virtue, reproach them the way he reproached the Athenians.

The last line is this:

Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.