Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: Socrates got what he deserved.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
ER — (archived)

It's a long story, too long to go into here, so let me give you a link summarizing modern scholarship in this area:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/socrates.HTM

If you want a more detailed and highly entertaining account, I highly recommend I.F Stone's "The Trial of Socrates". After he retired, Stone learned ancient Greek and went back to the original texts and reconstructed what we actually know and don't know about Socrates. Remember, the accounts we rely on were written solely by his personal friends and political allies. Socrates' students included Critias the Tyrant and Alcibiades, the architect of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition (Athens' own little Iraq), the Donald Rumsfeld of his time.

Yes, his death was unfortunate, but it was not extreme by the standards of his time and place. He had a fair trial under Athenian law, was convicted by a majority of his fellow citizens, and had the chance to defend himself and confront his accusers, which he chose not to do. He was also given every opportunity by his prosecutors to be quiet, recant, accept exile, and even escape from what appears to have been a very generous house arrest. By Plato's account, he chose the hemlock out of sheer orneriness, just as he deliberately provoked his accusers during the trial. Socrates may have been an authoritarian sycophant, but he was no coward, as his military service testifies.

It might also be worthwhile re-reading Plato's "Republic". It is one of the most fascist, anti-democratic, elitest documents ever written, in spite of the beautiful prose--William F Buckley is a good writer, too. I read it as a kid and it struck me that way even then. I couldn't understand why this guy was such a hero to grownups.

Finally, remember the times. Athens had just lost a long and brutal war, and endured two coups d'etat and tyrannies by the oligarchs and their subsequent overthrows at great cost in blood to the democrats. It was a bloody and treacherous recent past that the new democracy was determined not to endure again.

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