socrates
At the elderly age of seventy, Socrates found himself fighting against an indictment of impiety. He was unsuccessful at trial in the year 399 B.C. The charges were corrupting the youth of Athens, not believing in the traditional gods in whom the city believed, and finally, that he believed in other new divinities. In Plato's Apology, Socrates defends himself against these charges. He claims that the jurors' opinions are biased because they had probably all seen Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds. The Socrates portrayed in Aristophanes' Clouds is an altogether different character than that of the Apology. The two different impressions of Socrates lead to quite opposite opinions with regard to his guilt. In The Clouds, Socrates' actions provide evidence of his guilt on all three charges. However, in the Apology, Socrates is fairly convincing in defending his innocence on the first two charges, but falls short on the third charge. Socrates, in The Clouds, is portrayed as an idiot who thinks he's walking on air and is interested primarily in gnats' rumps. He is delineated as a natural philosopher/sophist. He is hired to teach Pheidippides to make the "worse argument", the argument that is really incorrect and unjust the "better"-to
The claim that Socrates believed in new divinities, the third charge, is clearly seen when he "enter (s) into communion with the clouds, who are our deities" (lines 253-254). Socrates proves methodically how it could not be Zeus who causes phenomena such as rain, thunder, and lightening, but rather is merely the work of the Clouds. For, if it were indeed the work of Zeus, then he would bring rain in absence of any clouds. The fact that the clouds are always present during precipitation attests to their power as opposed to that of Zeus. As the Clouds were not traditional gods, Socrates' guilt on this charge is rather evident. Even as Socrates is presented as a blabbering fool, full of hubris, in the Clouds, an entirely different perspective on this alleged sophist is given to us in the Apology. Throughout Plato's works including the Clouds, Socrates himself claims not to have any wisdom (he did not have any knowledge of 'arete') so he could not possibly have been a sophist. In terms of the charges he seems to absolve himself of the first two charges of corrupting the youth of Athens, and not believing in the traditional gods; though he is less convincing in his claim that he has no allegiance to other gods. Believing in new divinities, though, the third charge, is perhaps legitimate. Socrates claims to get a divine sign every once in a while and says "whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything" (31d2-3). This goes against the prevailing notion that the gods control the behavior of mortals like puppeteers as was often espoused in Greek lore. But rather, that gods are benevolent towards their human subjects. Thus, Socrates seems to have conjured up a new kind of divinity, thereby making him guilty of Meletus' thi
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1209
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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