Throughout
my reading of The Trials of Socrates I
have scaled the spectrum of emotions all the way from a state of irritation, to
sympathetic, to understanding and appreciative.
This text, although a smooth and easy read, has challenged my mind to
pay close attention to the smallest of details in making sense of the
philosophes messages while still trying to uncover its relevance to our current
unit of community. The most striking
portion of the text to me was certainly Plato’s descriptions of Socrates’ apology
to the jury and assembled Athenians. At
first glance of the title of the story I was surprised to see that Socrates,
who in our prior readings had so staunchly denied any accountability and showed
no guilt for any of the crimes he had been accused of, would be making a public
apology for such things. It soon became
clear that the word apology did not have the same meaning during these times in
ancient Greece, and that Socrates in fact would be presenting a personal
defense of himself to the people assembled in the court. Much as I did when I read the discourse
between Socrates and Euthyphro at the beginning of the book, I started out with
an intense sense of annoyance with Socrates’ words and his inability to take
any responsibility for even the slightest of charges that were brought against
him. There is no doubt that he is in
fact very wise, but the reality that he attempts to use his cunning and often
condescending words in his own defense against that very thing was bothersome
to read and left me initially frustrated at Socrates. Quite frankly, at the beginning of this
reading his word games and puzzles made me wish for the maximum punishment for
him. I was especially taken aback by his
ideas that the youth of Athens were attempting to embody him by trying to
question the wisdom of other individuals as Socrates had once done. I viewed this as an extremely self centered
and ridiculous concept for him to say because I thought this only spoke to the
accusers’ convictions that Socrates viewed his own wisdom as much greater than
that of any other and that he was trying to dominate society with his
blasphemous views. As I fought to get
through this portion of the reading, my opinions finally began to change when
Socrates began to attack the integrity of Meletus and the rest of the
accusers. I was so focused on the
extremely self-righteous manner in which Socrates presented his defense that I
never took the time to truly evaluate the case that the Athenians had brought
against him. I think this speaks to a
general bias of character that is present in any individual when reading a
text, and in hindsight I am glad that I fought through my distaste of the text
log enough to get to this point of Socrates actually speaking ideas that
appealed and made sense to me.
Ultimately, I believe that although the thoughts and ideas presented in
this text were sometimes frustrating to me, they do represent a very eloquent
and important philosophical account of human ethics and the pursuit of them
that is used even in modern times. These
thoughts and accounts have helped to shape the structure of many important
practices and institutions in the educational, social, and even governmental
spheres, and they have contributed immensely to the vast intellectual community
that shapes our world today.
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