Transcript apology - pantherFILE

Plato's Apology
“The unexamined life is
not worth living.”
--Socrates
Content of the work
Socrates’s defense against charges of
impiety before the Athenian court.
Note: “Apology” here means defense
or justification, not expression of
regret for a transgression.
Timeline
469 B.C.: Socrates is born
431 B.C.: Peloponnesian Wars begin
427 B.C.: Plato is born
404 B.C.: Sparta defeats Athens, imposes rule
of “the Thirty” (32c)
403 B.C.: Democracy restored
399 B.C.: Socrates is prosecuted
347 B.C.: Plato dies
Charges against Socrates
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Formal charges: irreligion and corruption of
youth
Earlier, informal charges underlying these
Earlier charges
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Studies things in the sky and below the earth
Makes the worse argument the stronger (like
the Sophists)
Does not believe in the gods
Teaches these things to others (like the
Sophists)
Oracles in classical Greece
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Priests or priestesses who transmit divine
messages
They interpret signs, such as:
–
–
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rustle of leaves or movement of objects cast into a
spring
frenzied, ecstatic cries of enchanted priestesses
Their pronouncements are often cryptic.
Socrates and the oracle at Delphi
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“No one is wiser than Socrates.”
Socrates: He means I avoid claiming to know
what I don’t know.
Socrates: He means I should expose the
false conceit of knowledge by challenging
people to reflective justification.
Appeals to this command in justification of
his conduct.
Divine command theory revisited
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Contradiction with Euthyphro?
Is Socrates defining piety as what the
gods approve of?
Comparison with Abraham
Role of interpretation
Another possibility: ironic interpretation of
Socrates’s appeal (38a)