On Plato’s ‘Apology’ — The Subjective Principle
‘Consciousness had reached this point in Greece, when in Athens the great form of Socrates, in whom the subjectivity of thought was brought to consciousness in a more definite and more thorough manner, now appeared. But Socrates did not grow like a mushroom out of the earth, for he stands in continuity with his time, and thus is not only a most important figure in the history of Philosophy — perhaps the most interesting in the philosophy of antiquity — but is also a world-famed personage. For a mental turning-point exhibited itself in him in the form of philosophic thought. If we shortly recall the periods already passed over, we find that the ancient Ionic philosophers certainly thought, but without reflecting on the thought or defining its product as thought … ‘
‘… Of Socrates it is hence said, in the older histories of Philosophy, that his main distinction was having added ethics as a new conception to Philosophy, which formerly only took nature into consideration. Diogenes Laertius, [3rd century AD], in like manner says, that the Ionics founded natural philosophy, Socrates ethics, and Plato added to them dialectic. Now ethics is partly objective, and partly subjective and reflected morality, and the teaching of Socrates is properly subjectively moral, because in it the subjective side, my perception and meaning, is the prevailing moment, although this determination of self-positing is likewise sublated, and the good and eternal is what is in and for itself … ‘
‘… Because Socrates in this way gave rise to moral philosophy, all succeeding babblers about morality and popular philosophy constituted him their patron and object of adoration, and made him into a cloak which should cover all false philosophy. As he treated it, it was undoubtedly popular; and what contributed to make it such was that his death gave him the never-failing interest derived from innocent suffering. Cicero, [106 BC — 43 BC], whose manner of thought was, on the one hand, of the present, and who, on the other hand, had the belief that Philosophy should yield itself up, and hence succeeded in attaining to no content in it, boasted of Socrates (what has often enough been said since) that his most eminent characteristic was to have brought Philosophy from heaven to earth, to the homes and every-day life of men, or, as Diogenes Laertius expresses, ‘into the market place’.’
- Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, (1770- 1831), ‘Lectures on the History of Philosophy’
Most of the significant contributions to moral and political philosophy throughout the history of Western thinking have adopted one stance or another with regard to the trial and conviction of Socrates, understandably enough, for raising questions concerning the accepted foundations of morality and the equating of virtue with self-knowledge certainly put Socrates up there as one of the founders of ethics as a distinct branch of human knowledge. The trial and death of Socrates assumed importance in Hegel’s history of philosophy, for an additional reason however, connected with a fundamental problems emerging from out of Hegel’s descriptive method, and that is, how is the world mediated through the various conceptual frameworks, or shapes of consciousness, which have appeared throughout human history? Or to put it another way, what is the relationship between philosophy and history? In contemporary times the accusations levelled against Socrates have assumed the appearance of triviality and injustice, and yet that which Socrates represented was viewed as a serious threat to what was a quite unstable democracy during a period that oversaw a transformation in political beliefs and moral attitudes. In modern times Plato’s, (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC), account of the trial and death of Socrates has been taken up as a point at which to stir up anti-democratic tendencies and yet while borrowing heavily from Plato and Xenophon, (430–355/354 BC), Hegel offers an interpretation that can be seen as a defence of Athenian democracy while preserving what is correct regarding the Socratic antithesis to it. The disdain for democracy that Plato evinces for democracy is reflected in what Hegel describes as the Socratic principle of subjectivity:
‘The Athenian people were thus, not only justified, but also bound to react against it according to their law, for they regarded this principle as a crime. In general history we find that this is the position of the heroes through whom a new world commences, and whose principle stands in contradiction to what has gone before and disintegrates it; they appear to be violently destroying the laws’.
What is this principle exactly and how did it manifest itself to Socrates? In Plato’s ‘Apology’ it is recounted that subsequent to being condemned to death, Socrates declared that death is nothing to be afraid of given that it is annihilation or it is a change to a better world where one might converse with noble souls. The word apology as it appears in the title of the dialogue means a defense and not a request for forgiveness, for in confronting the accusation that he had invented new gods and corrupted the youth of Athens Socrates does not for one moment assume an apologetic air but rather with a brave and noble faith in the value of philosophy he adduces the principles by which he governs his life. The dialogue is written by someone who had known Socrates and had grown to love him both as a teacher and a person and therefore assumes the worth of Socrates and life and the rightness of his acts, in particular those acts of criticism that aroused the enmity of Socrates’ accusers. The ‘Apology’ is one of three dialogues describing the final days of a great hero in the history of philosophy and one who took philosophy seriously enough to die for it, and it reports the trial and condemnation of Socrates, while the ‘Crito’ focussed upon his reasons for refusing to escape from prison, and the ‘Phaedo’ records his last conversations and his death. To read the dialogues in that order is to attain some understanding of the significance of Socrates’ identification of wisdom with virtue, and some conception of the nobility and worthiness of his character.
The principal ideas forwarded in the ‘Apology’ are as follows:
1. The oracle at Delphi had declared Socrates to be the wisest of all men, and Socrates suggested that if he were superior to other men in wisdom it was merely because he was aware of his own ignorance.
2. Defending himself against the charge of impiety and corrupting the young, Socrates argues that the pretenders to wisdom, whom he exposed by his critical questioning, must have spread rumors about him in order to discredit him.
3. Socrates maintains that it would have been foolish for him to corrupt the very persons with whom he associated, for everyone knows that corrupt and evil persons harm even those who have once befriended them.
4. If to point out the weaknesses in a state is to do the state a service, Socrates contends, then he had better be rewarded for performing this function of gadfly to the state.
As the ‘Apology’ opens the prosecution, for which Meletus, (fl. 5th — 4th century BC), is the spokesman, has already stated its case. Meletus was most likely the spokesman for the principle instigator of the trial, Anytus, (c. 5th — 4th century BC), respected leader of the restored democracy, while the third accuser, Lycon, (c. 5th — 4th century BC), barely gets a mention in the dialogue. Meletus speaks only a few words and the other accusers none at all, but Socrates repeats the charges made against him, beginning by pointing out that almost everything they have said is false, especially their warning to the court implying that Socrates is a persuasive speaker, unless they mean by that one who speaks truth. His words will be unpremeditated but spoken with confidence in the justice of his cause, and it is to truth that the jury should attend, just as it is the speaker’s duty to state only the truth. There are actually two sets of charges against him, Socrates declares, the present ones of impiety and corruption of the young, and some ancient ones his audience heard as children and which should now be refuted. The latter were made by accusers largely unknown, except for Aristophanes, (c. 446 — c. 386 BC), in his burlesque of Socrates in the comedy, ‘The Clouds’ which was written in fun rather than ill will (see below). These accusations were that Socrates had theories about and conducted investigations into the heavens and things below the earth, that is to say, he pursued physical sciences, and that he could make weaker arguments appear to overcome the stronger and taught others to do the same, that is, he was a sophist. Such accusations are dangerous, Socrates contends, in virtue of the fact that uncritical listeners assume that such inquirers must be atheists, but the accusations are false, for Socrates has no knowledge of physics, not from disdain but from lack of interest. Socrates inquires whether anyone present ever heard him discussing these matters, and as far as the charge that he has taught others professionally for fees is concerned, this, too, is false. Socrates professes, ironically of course, to admire Sophists such as Gorgias, (483–375 BC), Prodicus, (c. 465 BC — c. 395 BC), and Hippias, (late 5th century BC), who are able to persuade youths to forsake their usual company, which is free, and come to them for training in social skills, for large fees, but nonetheless people will wonder how Socrates got this reputation if the accusations are false and so he will explain.
Maybe he does possess some degree of human wisdom albeit that of the sophists is without doubt superhuman, and the tale he will now relate concerning the kind of wisdom he does have may seem exaggerated but judgment should be reserved until the end. Chaerephon, (c. 470/460–403/399 BC), an old friend known to all, asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone were wiser than Socrates, and the answer was ‘No!’ Such an answer puzzled Socrates, surely the god was speaking in riddles, for he could not be lying, and therefore Socrates set out to see whether he could disprove the oracle by finding a wiser man. He examined a politician with a great reputation for, and the conceit of, wisdom, only to discover that the man not wise, but he resented Socrates’ attempt to show him that he was not and Socrates came away realizing that at least he was himself wiser in awareness of his own ignorance. Others who heard the politician’s examination resented the inquiry, too, and yet Socrates felt it a religious duty to determine the oracle’s meaning, and upon querying other politicians with the same effect, he then approached the poets and discovered that they could not even expound upon their own works, and so not wisdom but instinct or inspiration must be the source of poetry. Proceeding next to the skilled craftsmen Socrates discovered here a kind of technical knowledge that he did not possess but these men prided themselves so on their special competence that they mistakenly thought themselves expert on everything else. Naturally enough Socrates’ exposé of the ignorance of others made him unpopular with them even though it was in actual fact to their benefit.
Upon bystanders hearing him examine pretenders to wisdom it was supposed that he had the knowledge the lack of which he had uncovered in those questioned even though this was not this case. And yet the real meaning of the oracle and the upshot of Socrates’ search was that God alone is really wise, and human wisdom is of relatively little value, for the oracle had used the name of Socrates simply to make a point: ‘The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless’. We may dispute about Socrates’ actual meaning here, perhaps it is simply that admission of one’s errors and present lack of understanding is a necessary prerequisite of learning, for neither in theory nor in practice does Socrates deny that true wisdom is one of man’s highest goods. Hence in exposing ignorance, Socrates then continues, he obeys a divine command, as he explains to the court that young men of leisure, having heard him questioning their elders to the discomfort of the latter, have attempted to emulate his techniques and have stirred up further hostility which has redounded to Socrates’ discredit. When victims irritated at exposure are asked what Socrates has done or taught to mislead the young, however, they have no specific evidence and so ‘they fall back on the stock charges against any philosopher: that he teaches his pupils about things in the heavens and below the earth, and to disbelieve in gods, and to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger’. Hence it is owing to his revealing the truth about them in plain language that the earlier calumniators have spread these rumours about Socrates which are the underlying causes of the present attack by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon.
According to Professor A. E. Taylor, (1869–1945), the prosecution could not afford to present its real complaint against him and the pretext of corruption of the young concerned his putative influence discouraging unquestioning loyalty to the democracy on former associates (Alcibiades, (c. 450–404 BC), Critias, (c. 460–403 BC), Charmides, (fl. 5th century BC),and others) who had opposed the state. The charge of irreligion was probably related to the mutilation, in 415 B.C., of all the Athenian statues of Hermes on the night before Alcibiades led the military expedition to Sicily, for which Alcibiades was blamed, probably falsely, but such matters were excluded from the jurisdiction of the present court by the Act of Oblivion which Anytus had sponsored. According to this act, offenses occurring under the old democracy had received general amnesty, and during the year of Socrates’ trial, 399 B.C., Anytus defended another person against charges of irreligion, so it is unlikely that he actually held such a grievance against Socrates. For Taylor what ismorelikely is that Anytus looked upon Socrates’ influence as dangerous to the restored democracy and, consequently, as one that had best be removed, hence the trumped-up charges, the use of Meletus as mouthpiece, and the prosecution’s unwillingness and inability to explain or substantiate the accusations made in public.
Now on trial Socrates exercises his argumentative abilities with humour and irony to demonstrate how absurd the prosecution’s case is, turning specifically to the charges of Meletus, stating them as follows: ‘Socrates is guilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the State’. Taylor interprets this passage to mean that Socrates did not worship the official gods rather than that he did not believe in them, and that he practiced unfamiliar rites. Socrates now takes the line that Meletus must be joking about a serious matter in which he really has no interest, for who, he asks, exercises the best influence on the young? Through a series of questions Socrates leads Meletus to say that it is the whole Athenian citizenry, except Socrates, but this is very odd, in fact, it is exactly opposite to the case of training horses, in which the many are incompetent and only a few expert trainers improve the animals. And furthermore, since Meletus must admit that evil people harm their associates, he must also admit that Socrates would be unbelievably stupid not to know that by corrupting his young acquaintances he would only be brewing trouble for himself, and either Socrates has not been a bad influence, or if so, it must have been unintentional, and if it is the latter then what Socrates deserves according to the usual procedure is that he be given private admonition rather than punishment, and yet far from instructing Socrates Meletus has avoided his company until now.
How specifically has Socrates corrupted the young, especially in regard to teaching belief in new deities? Does he believe in gods different from those of the state or in none at all? Meletus takes the latter alternative, and Socrates suggests that Meletus has deliberately and flippantly contradicted himself in order to test Socrates’ logical prowess, for it is charged both that Socrates believes in no gods and that he believes in new deities, that he is an atheist and yet believes in supernatural activities, this latter referring to Socrates’ divine sign, or inner voice. One cannot believe in activities without an actor, and if Socrates believes in supernatural activities, he must believe in supernatural beings, and therefore either Meletus was trying Socrates’ wit or he was desperate for a genuine charge against him. At this point Socrates acknowledges that his destruction will be caused by the general hostility aroused by his conduct, not by these flimsy accusations, but that he has no regret for his behavior, for a good man must not busily calculate the chances of life and death but must concern himself with acting rightly, and it would be most inconsistent if, after loyal military service through several engagements, Socrates were to fail through fear of death an assignment given by God himself to the philosophic life, for to fear death implies knowledge of what occurs afterward, another form of the pretense to know what one does not, but to disobey a superior, human or divine, is a known evil.
Were it suggested that Socrates be acquitted on condition that he desist from his philosophical questionings, he would reply that, much as he appreciates the offer, he must still pursue his duty to God, asking Athenians: ‘Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?’ In actual fact Socrates conceives his divine service as the greatest benefit ever to fall upon Athens, given that he encourages people to put the welfare of their souls above all else, and if the Athenians kill him they will inflict more harm upon themselves, and Socrates believes that divine law prevents injury by an evil to a good man. Of course they can banish or kill his body, but such acts do no harm to the soul, except of course to the soul of the evildoer, and hereupon Socrates introduces his gadfly metaphor, whereby, comical as it may well sounds, he claims: ‘God has appointed me to this city, as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly’, a gadfly a sit appears in the translation. ‘It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office of such a fly; and all day long I never cease to settle here, there, and everywhere, rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you. You will not easily find another like me, gentlemen, and if you take my advice you will spare my life. I suspect, however, that before long you will awake from your drowsing, and in your annoyance you will take Anytus’ advice and finish me off with a single slap; and then you will go on sleeping till the end of your days, unless God in his care for you sends someone to take my place’. While such a description of his mission may be thought a trifle conceited we must study with care its context alongside other Socratic dialogues to see that what we have here is simply the frank self-appraisal of a prophet. Socrates continues that proof of the sincerity of what he has said and done lies in the obvious fact of his poverty; he has neglected his private affairs in order to fulfill his duty.
Should someone ask why Socrates has not addressed himself to the state at large with his advice, the answer is that he has been forbidden to do so by the divine voice to which Meletus’ charge made implicit reference and which comes to him occasionally to warn against a course of action, and in regard to a political career its warning was evidently provident, for otherwise Socrates would have been dead long ago, no man, he says, can conscientiously oppose a government by the masses and champion justice and live long. He would not act wrongly in obedience to any authority, as is evidenced by the few occasions of his public office, as when a member of the Council under the old democracy he singly opposed the unconstitutional trial of ten military commanders en masse thus risking denunciation and arrest, and later, under the oligarchy, he disobeyed an unjust order to participate in the arrest of Leon of Salamis, (c. 5th — 4th century BC), and probably would have been executed had not the government toppled. Toward the end of his defense Socrates repeats that he has never taught professionally nor privately but has allowed rich and poor to exchange questions and answers with him, and consequently cannot be held responsible for the good or bad career of any individual, and if any of those who have listened to his discourse have been corrupted by him, Socrates challenges them to bear witness now, and no one coming forward is ample evidence that Meletus lies. This constitutes Socrates’ defense, he will not appeal, as is usually the case with defendants, to the sympathy of the jury by exhibiting his children and friends, for to do so would be unfitting for one of Socrates’ reputation, besides which, the defendant’s business is to convince the jury by facts and argument rather than by sentiment, and the jury is to decide justly and not hand out verdicts as favours, for were he to ask them to perjure themselves as jurors this in itself would convict him of guilt. Thus Socrates ends his speech and places himself in his judges’ and God’s hands.
When the verdict is brought in, it is guilty, though obtained by a small margin, about 280 to 220. Meletus proposes the death penalty, although scholars believe Socrates accusers did not wish to kill him but only to silence or banish him, since according to current practices several alternatives of escape were open. It was customary for the convicted defendant to propose an alternate penalty and for the jury to choose which one would be enacted, but Socrates will not admit guilt, so what then is his desert? Since he has not cared for money, a comfortable home, high rank, or secret societies, all the things having popular appeal, and has instead devoted himself to his mission to Athens, he says it would therefore be appropriate that he be maintained at state expense as a public benefactor, for certainly he deserves this treatment more than do Olympic horse racers. Of course Socrates does not expect this suggestion to be taken seriously in spite of its justice and so what of other possibilities? He rejects that of imprisonment, which is a known evil compared to death, which is of uncertain value, and as for banishment it is apparent that he would discover no more welcome in other societies than he has in Athens, for his conduct and its consequences would be the same. Furthermore, he cannot give up philosophy and mind his own business, for ‘to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and … life without this sort of examination is not worth living.’ As to a fine, it is not likely that what he could afford would be acceptable, though at this point Plato, Crito, (c. 469–4th century BC), Critobulus, (c. 5th–4th century BC), and Apollodorus, (c. 429–4th century BC), offer to pay a fine thirty times that which Socrates suggests, which offer he transmits to the court.
But the jury decides on the death penalty instead and Socrates makes his final remarks, reminding that part of the jury voting for death that nature would soon have brought about what they wished, but as it is, they will incur blame for having killed a wise man, whether he is one or not, and his condemnation has resulted not from paucity of argument but from his bearing, for he has not been brazen or servile, nor has he catered to their pleasure. The real difficulty is not to elude death but to outrun vice, and Socrates the old man has been caught by the former, but they have been captured by the latter, his condemnation is by the court, but they are convicted of their wickedness by Truth. Hoping to stop his mouth by death, they will find that criticism of their actions will increase, the only escape for them is to become good men, and to those voting for acquittal, he notes that in nothing he has done this day has the inner voice opposed him, whereas in the past it sometimes stopped him in the middle of a sentence. This is clear evidence that the outcome is good and that even death is no evil, for death must be either total annihilation, in which case it is an unbroken rest, or else a change to another world, and if it is true as reported that one can there converse with the great men of time past, how rewarding that will be. To meet Homer, (c. 8th century BC), Hesiod, (active around 750 and 650 BC), or the great heroes of the old days, particularly those similarly condemned to death unjustly, would be worth dying for again and again, and to talk and argue with them would be happiness beyond description and presumably one is not killed there for asking questions.
Socrates concludes by encouraging the friendly jurors with the belief that ‘nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death, and his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods’. He has no ill will for those who condemned him, although they are guilty of intent to harm him,and as a final favour Socrates asks that his hearers treat his sons as he has treated the Athenians, if they put anything before goodness, or are self-deceived about their virtues, he asks that the jurors take their ‘revenge by plaguing them as I plagued you’. So ends Plato’s story of the legal but unjust trial (but see below) of one regarded as philosophy’s first martyr, and while the authenticity of his report has been questioned scholars have pointed out that many people present at the trial, including hostile critics, would have read Plato’s account and detected any substantial deviation from the facts. We may therefore regard it as an essentially accurate record of the serenity, wit, courage, and steadfastness of a philosopher whose justness gave him composure in the face of those who cheated him of life (which is the usual narrative but see below).
A student of Socrates should be familiar with the hypothesis forwarded by John Burnet, (1863–1928), and A. E. Taylor hypothesis. Historians reconstructing the life and work of Socrates must make up their minds concerning the value to be placed upon various sources, Plato, Aristotle, (384 –322 BC), Xenophon, Diogenes Laertius, and others, and Plato certainly impresses though often a question arises as to how far Plato is putting his own thoughts into the mouth of his mentor. John Burnet, (1863–1928), opted for taking Plato’s account of Socrates at face value, not only in the ‘Apology’ but also in all the dialogues, the latter may or may not have taken place but we must assume ‘that they should not misrepresent the personality and beliefs of Socrates’. Accordingly, for Burnet and for Taylor, who adopted the same principle, Socrates was not merely the quiz master of the early dialogues but the author of most of the logical, psychological, and metaphysical doctrines that are usually credited to Plato. Burnet regards the ‘Apology’ as historically accurate, but his thesis also generates implications for interpreting the document, for one of the difficulties in the way of accepting Plato’s account of Socrates’ speech arises from the assumption that Socrates lacked the rhetorical training necessary to put together and deliver the defense with which he is here credited. Burnet, without suggesting that what we have is anything like a word for word report, nonetheless insists that Socrates conducted the argument substantially as Plato represents him as doing, for after all, if Socrates was as familiar with the principles and practice of public speaking as he is represented as being in the ‘Phaedrus’, it is not difficult to imagine his inventing this defense, including the ironic introduction in which he plays with the notion that he is not much of a public speaker.
In Burnet’s opinion it was the case that Socrates in his youth engaged in the physical speculations attributed to him by Aristophanes in ‘The Clouds’:
DISCIPLE: Chaerephon of the deme of Sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through its anus.
STREPSIADES: And what did he say about the gnat?
DISCIPLE: He said that the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump, which was distended like a trumpet, and there it resounded sonorously.
STREPSIADES: So the arse of a gnat is a trumpet. Oh! what a splendid arsevation! Thrice happy Socrates! It would not be difficult to succeed in a law-suit, knowing so much about a gnat’s guts!
………
[The machine swings in SOCRATES in a basket]
STREPSIADES: Socrates! my little Socrates!
SOCRATES: [loftily] Mortal, what do you want with me?
STREPSIADES: First, what are you doing up there? Tell me, I beseech you.
SOCRATES: [pompously] I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.
STREPSIADES: Thus it’s not on the solid ground, but from the height of this basket, that you slight the gods, if indeed….
SOCRATES: I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air, which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven. I should have discovered nothing, had I remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. It’s just the same with the watercress.
STREPSIADES: What? Does the mind attract the sap of the watercress?
- ‘The Clouds’
Closely connected with the society which Anaxagoras had left behind him when he himself was forced to leave Athens, Socrates, it is alleged, must have known all there was to know about such things, only it did not appear to him to be knowledge, hence, all that he meant to deny in the ‘Apology’ is that he ever talked about these matters in public. Anaxagoras, (c. 500 — c. 428 BC), although protected by Pericles, (c. 495–429 BC), and surrounded by such men as Phidias, (c. 480–430 BC), Herodotus, (c. 484 — c. 425 BC), and Euripides, (c. 480 — c. 406 BC), had been charged with impiety for saying that the sun is a fiery stone and that the moon was made of earth and had hills and valleys, and in the popular mind Socrates was saddled with similar views. There was, however, another side to Socrates, for if the opinions expressed in the ‘Phaedo’ and in the ‘Republic’ are to be taken as historical, Socrates steeped himself in the teachings of the Pythagoreans and other Orphics. Indeed, according to Burnet it was this very ascetic and psychical side of Socrates that had attracted young men like Chaerephon, and furthermore this explains what Socrates meant when he talked at the trial about God having assigned him ‘the post of living a life of philosophy’. It is apparent, alleges Burnet, that he did not use the term philosophy in the popular sense but in the deeper sense which it had among the Pythagoreans, and here in Burnet’s opinion is the essential background for understanding the overriding ethical concern which made Socrates cross-examine everyone he met concerning the kind of life he was leading. Socrates, claims Bumet, was the first Greek to speak of the soul, the psyche, as the seat of knowledge and ignorance, goodness and badness’, and to draw the inference that the chief duty of everyone is the care or tendency of his own soul. People pursue wealth or honour rather than following truth and understanding, said Socrates, that is to say, they are ruled by the appetitive and spirited parts of the soul rather than by reason.
But it ought to be otherwise, for goodness does not come from wealth but it is goodness that makes money and everything else good for man, and similarly, in respect to the state, Socrates sought to persuade men to put wisdom and justice before wealth and national glory, and here we have in a nutshell the political theory of Socrates developed in the Republic, according to which the care of the city is in principle the same as the care of oneself.and Burnet in addition alleges that Orphism (a set of religious beliefs and practices associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus who descended into the underworld and returned) provides the basis for understanding Socrates’ conviction that no evil is permitted to happen to the good man and of his hope that death is a good. The view common among the citizens of Athens was that death is annihilation, but, for the benefit of sympathetic hearers whom he addresses in his final speech, Socrates develops the Orphic doctrine that the purified soul, itself divine, departs to be with the gods, and the language which he uses technical where hope is the Orphic equivalent to the Christian faith, and what Socrates says here about death being a change and migration of the soul from this world to another is substantially the same doctrine which in his death-cell he would explain as his personal faith. Burnet concludes: ‘In view of this, I cannot regard the doctrine of the Phaedo as Platonic rather than Socratic’.
Reginald Hackforth, (1887–1957), argued that Plato set out with the intention of giving his readers a substantial reproduction of Socrates’ defense and that, on the whole, he has done so, the main exception coming in the latter half of the long defense speech, where Plato must have thought the actual speech was inadequate to his purpose, namely the presentation of Socrates as he saw him, and decided to give full play to his own feelings, while retaining just enough of the form of apologia to meet the minimum demands of verisimilitude. Hackforth contends that Socrates, in his speech before the court, must have dealt specifically with each charge in the indictment, and in Plato’s account he answers the first charge, that of impiety, but not the second charge, that ofcorrupting the young. Hackforth thinks that Socrates did deal with the corruption charge in the course of interrogating Meletus, and in Xenophon’s ‘Apology’ we are informed that when Meletus mentions that one of the charges is persuading young men to listen to him rather than to their parents, Socrates acknowledges the truth of the charge and proceeds to justify his conduct. Plato maybe saw this as a weakness and for this reason transformed the actual interrogation into a characteristically Socratic dialogue that represents Meletus as not understanding the meaning of corruption, but in doing so Plato made it impossible for himself to return to Socrates’ original line of defense.
The first charge as Hackforth points out had two parts, the negative charge that Socrates did not believe in the gods of the City, and the positive charge that he introduced strange deities, and Socrates’ defense against the charge of unbelief was to repudiate utterly the popular notion which lay behind Aristophanes’ lampoon, that he was a nature philosopher, a sophist, and a disbeliever in the gods. Hackforth explicitly rejects the contention of Burnet and Taylor that Socrates was a speculative philosopher and denies that he made light of the allegations against him in ‘The Clouds’. Burnet has superimposed the Socrates of the ‘Phaedo’ on the ‘Apology’, whereas in Hackforth’s opinion the Socrates of the ‘Apology’ is perfectly convincing so that any evidence that conflicts with his statement that he never had anything to do with physical speculations must not be set aside. Comparing the Socrates of the ‘Apology’ with the Socrates of ‘Phaedo’ Hackforth claimd that if they had not been assigned the same name no one would have suspected they were meant to be the same man.
Hackforth takes the charge of introducing new deities to refer to Socrates’ divine sign and inn contrast to Burnet he contends that the charge was indeed concerned with new gods and not merely with new, Orphic rites. Hackforth denies that Socrates ever believed in any gods other than those of Olympus and holds that he was punctilious in his religious duties, and like his contemporary Euripides, (c. 480 — c. 406 BC), he was a rationalist and was not shackled by popular beliefs, but his humility was incompatible with dogmatic opposition to traditional wisdom. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’, said Socrates, but he also said that ‘human wisdom is worth little or nothing for only God is wise’. What was Socrates’ defense against the charge of introducing new gods? Plato has not told us, and according to Hackforth the explanation may be simply that Socrates convinced his judges on this point and that, by the time the ‘Apology’ was written, the absurdity of supposing that Socrates’ divine voice was incompatible with traditional religion had become apparent. Socrates’ reference to the oracle of Apollo has caused much head scratching among readers of the ‘Apology’, introduced as it is in order to explain Socrates’ practice of interrogating everyone who had any pretension to wisdom. We are told that Socrates undertook this practice with a view to refuting the oracle, elsewhere, however, Socrates says that in interrogating his fellow citizens he is obeying the god’s bidding, that he is helping the god, that he is performing a divine service. Hackforth claims that Plato himself is responsible for the confusion, for given that Socrates took the oracle seriously it was Plato who invented the connection between the oracle and Socrates’ sense of mission, and presumably Socrates had never explained his conviction that he would be disobeying God if he ceased his practice of questioning himself and others, and Plato, convinced that it originated with the oracle, believed that introducing this information into the ‘Apology’ could not fail to put Socrates’ practice in a favourable light. Hackforth does not doubt that the story of Chaerephon and the oracle is true and that it was connected with the practice of cross-examining public figures which had brought so much enmity on his head, and according to Hackforth’s reconstruction, there was a period when, having abandoned his brief interest in natural philosophy, Socrates gathered a small group with whom he discussed moral and religious questions. It was Socrates’ insights that led Chaerephon to ask the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and puzzled by the answer, Socrates began examining reputedly wise men. Then came a break in his practice, caused partly by the war and partly by doubts as to whether his practice might not be doing more harm than good, but after the war, and after the presentation of Aristophanes’ ‘The Clouds’, he resumed his public mission, this time talking with everyone who was interested and approaching moral questions in a more positive fashion than before. This outline, claims Hackforth, accounts for the connection between the oracle and the destructive side of Socrates’ practice without making the oracle the real fount and origin of his mission.
In the two brief speeches that follow the defense, Plato’s report is substantially true, and the note of arrogance in the way Socrates spoke of himself as too honest to be a politician and said that instead of being fined he should be given a pension must be historical because it puzzled Xenophon. How, he asks, could Socrates have ruined his defense by taunting his judges in this way? And he can think of no other reply than that Socrates must have decided that by being put to death he would avoid the ills of old age. Plato saw deeper into Socrates’ motives, recognizing that although an acquittal would have been welcome Socrates did not wish it at the expense of compromising his life work. According to Hackforth, Socrates was agnostic concerning man’s prospects after death and he challenges Taylor’s contention that Socrates clearly attested his belief in immortality, citing earlier passages in which Socrates says ‘no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good’, and contrasting the reticent tone of the Apology with that of the ‘Phaedo’ in which the Platonic Socrates speaks of ‘the good hope that there is a future … a far better future for the good than for the evil’.
Well, that was all rather interesting albeit largely beside the point, time to go in deeper. We need to say more on Socrates’ inner voice, for the principle of subjectivity that Hegel refers to manifests itself to Socrates in this form of his own daemon or genius that Hegel characterise as a ‘double of consciousness’ not unconnected with its ‘public manifestations of trances and catalepsy’. A majority of scholars interpret the Socratic daemon in terms of the individual’s conscience and reason, and then conclude that the suppression of the Socratic daemon is equivalent to the suppression of the voice of reason as it has allegedly been suppressed in ages less enlightened than the present, but such a view disregards the fact that every age has its criterion for determining what shall count as the voice of reason and conscience, and what shall distinguish it from subversion, and as Hegel notes the very precariousness of the Athenian framework of morality at the time of Socrates’ trial has to be taken into consideration, indeed Hegel is the first philosopher to take a serious look at the way the Socratic daemon appeared to the Athenians, and he saw the introduction of the Socratic principle as representing a movement from immediacy to mediacy in the Greek mind. In Hegel mediation is connecting link or relationship between two things, and the thing that something is linked to may be called a mediation, so if x is related to y and y is related to c, then b is a mediation between a and v. In the internal relations point of view, something is constituted partly or fully by the totality of its mediations. And immediate, that is, direct, having no mediations, a relationship having no intermediate links, something merely given, rather than being a result. Simple immediacy is pure being but immediacy is not necessarily simple, for it can be the result of mediation that results in sublation (overcoming): ‘… the third is the immediate, but the immediate resulting from the sublation of differenc…. It is equally immediacy and mediation’, and this sort of immediacy is an original starting point, analogous to the immediate being of the first stages of a dialectic, illusory being is immediate in such a sense.
And so, the principle which Socrates articulated, says Hegel, was that ‘man has to find from himself both the end of his actions and the end of the world, and must attain to truth himself. True thought thinks in such a way that its import is as truly objective as subjective’. The objectivity of Divine command, for instance, is so only because it is mediated through a system of rules and training which governs religious practices and within these practices there is room for subjective interpretation. ‘The animal’, says Hegel, ‘has no religion because it only feels; but what is spiritual rests on the mediation of thought, and pertains to man’. The Socratic position as characterised by Hegel re-emerges in Karl Marx, (1818–1883), and Ludwig Wittgenstein, (1889–1951). What seems to be natural and objective is derived from a process of training that suppresses some attitudes and reactions and encourages others, a standpoint that finds expression in Marx’s assertion in the ‘German Ideology’ that supposed eternal laws are merely a reflection of the social base: ‘in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law’.’
The Socratic principle assailed the supposed eternal laws peculiar to fifth century Athens, and in virtue of that very reason it was interpreted as a sacrilegious onslaught upon those very practices and truths that were claimed to stand in an immediate relation to human consciousness, and furthermore, the uniqueness of Socrates is further emphasised by the fact that he introduced morality as a product of mediations, neither subjective in the sense of personal interests nor objective in the way the Athenians held their moral principles to be when they ‘acted rationally in their relations without knowing that they were particularly excellent’. Morality, being reflective, was neither exclusively natural, arbitrary, nor prudential, and whilst his attitude towards the Gods revealed his piety, his philosophical reasoning called into question their alleged objectivity, for such an attitude towards naturalistic beliefs in a transcendental Divinity amounts to a rejection of a hierarchical doctrine of reality whereby if, for instance, we are told to do something because God commands us to do so we can immediately ask why we should do what God commands, and any reasonable and thoughtful response will bring us back to human relationships, to the struggle between opposing movements, and to understand Hegel’s take upon the application of the Socratic principle to morality one must understand that, for Hegel, ethics is characterised by a tension between Ethical Life (Sittlichkeit) and Subjective Morality (Moralität). Within Socratic teaching we discover a move away from the natural standpoint of Ethical Life towards a more rational Subjective Morality, but these terms have meaning in relation to each other. In the ‘Philosophy of Right’, for instance, Subjective Morality is best understood as an abstract and one-sided standpoint bereft of any concrete social background or moral traditions, and when Ethical Life transcends Subjective Morality it fulfills a need for a rational social order whereby rational institutions and laws are providing the content for conscientious conviction. However, with the emphasis placed upon Subjective Morality in the ‘Lectures on the History of Philosophy’ Socrates is portrayed in opposition to a form of Ethical Life which had no provisions for subjective approval, being characterised as a natural, half-instinctive virtue that rests upon obedience to established custom.
It follows then that the one-sidedness in the Socratic principle would be overcome only in a higher level of Ethical Life, the rational state, in which the rational individual would find reconciliation with its laws and customs, and this, of course, was not be be attained in the Greek world, which is one reason why Hegel sees the personal tragedy of Socrates as a reflection of the tragic decline of Greek culture, and the effects of the Socratic principle can be recognised via another pair of Hegelian relative notions, as already outlined above, the mediate and the immediate. Particular moral principles that are held to be immediate and natural become mediated and reflected when a new shape of consciousness comes upon the scene, for which reason it is important to eschew drawing a rigid line between immediate and mediated, for what is immediate at one moment may prove to be mediated from another moment, and what is perfectly natural and obvious from one standpoint may be conventional and arbitrary from another. Hegel’s point is that nothing is absolutely immediate in the sense that its presentation can be external to a system of mediations and, conversely, nothing is mediated such that it cannot be immediate, and to the extent that a philosopher questions the immediacy of certain principles the touch of philosophy leaves a permanent mark, most certainly everything is not just left as it was before, for once immediacy has been brought into question the principle can never be the same again.
It is clear enough that damage was inflicted upon the naturalness of Greek immediacy by the rational Socrates, and from the Athenian perspective the rational morality of Socrates was viewed as destructive of moral standards, indeed, Socrates may well be portrayed as a pious but rational piety was quite foreign to the Greek spirit. The Socratic dialectic readily disposes of the alleged foundations of Athenian morality, but an inability to provide a formal defence of a set of beliefs does not necessarily indicate their lack of significance, and religious faiths, political creeds, and so on, do not passively wait for a philosopher to equip them with rational foundations, just witness in our own times the dismal efforts of Christian apologists like William Lane Craig, (1949 — ), to do just that through promoting reasonable faith as he happily and oxymoronically terms it. Their strength of religious beliefs lies frequently in their un-reflected immediacy, and the sharpness of the wits in questioning beliefs does not bear testimony to their weakness, but more often to a lack of understanding on the part of the quick-witted sceptic. Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844–1900), whose standard for evaluating the stage of consciousness associated with the Socratic principle was the decadence it reflected within the Athenian culture. The popularity of Socratic questioning amongst the young Athenian aristocracy, claims Nietzsche in ‘Twilight of the Idols’, discloses their decadence, for by answering to their demand to be taught virtue in terms of the Socratic equation whereby virtue equals reason and reason equals happiness Socrates laid bare their lack of natural morality, and when people demand a better morality, claims Nietzsche, they reveal the decadence of the old order: ‘It is self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to imagine that by making war on decadence they therewith elude decadence themselves’. One cannot assume a morality of improvement: ‘the entire morality of improvement, the Christian included, has been a misunderstanding’. Morality can only be natural: ‘to have to combat one’s instincts — that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending happiness and instinct are one’. One cannot provide a rational foundation for morality, even less improve upon the existing morality by providing rational grounds for its axioms and principles. Consider, for instance, Socrates’ questioning of the pious Euthyphro which I discuss in my article On Plato’s Euthyphro — A Dilemma where I neglect to mention the important question as to whether or not Euthyphro’s lack of dialectical skill undermines his piety or whether it reflects more upon Socrates’ misunderstanding of the nature of piety.
The very real question arises as to whether it was a victory for Socrates or a victory for simple piety over sophistical tricks. In diurnal life an inability to provide a justification for one’s principles, or the unintelligibility of questioning them, is frequently a measure of their strength, as Nietzsche recognised and like Hegel demonstrated how Socrates can be criticised in accordance the Athenian standards, an interpretation of the trial of Socrates that has real advantages over the ahistorical version that presents Socrates as a liberal reformer persecuted by conservative dogmatists. Hegel’s account of the accusations made against Socrates is seen through the eyes of those whose standards were offended, and yet insofar as Hegel perceives an ultimate unity in competing shapes of consciousness his interpretation is more comprehensive than Nietzsche’s for the latter was merely concerned with the standpoint that Socrates had offended while Hegel was concerned with both and he takes into account the fact that the Socratic principle itself, when it replaced the old morality, was to provide the correct framework for the evaluation of human activity. Nietzsche may well be correct when they portray Socrates as a decadent type but according to Hegel Socrates reflected a new standard for determining decadence.
The Socratic principle cut very deeply into the foundations of the Athenian way of life which is not easily seen from Plato’s ‘Apology’, for in depicting Socrates as being too good to be true Plato obscures the threat that Socrates was seen to present to the old order, for his offence was not against a ruling clique with whom he had fallen into disfavour, rather it was against the whole framework of Athenian knowledge and morality, as Hegel explains: ‘The spirit of the people in itself, its constitution, its whole life, rested, however, on a moral ground, on religion, and could not exist without this absolutely secure basis. Thus because Socrates makes the truth rest on the judgment of inward consciousness, he enters upon a struggle with the Athenian people as to what is right and true. His accusation was therefore just, and we have to consider this accusation as also the end of his career’.
Following on from these observations Hegel then describes how the charges against Socrates were expressed on two fronts, informally by Aristophanes in ‘The Clouds’ and formally by the people of Athens. The informal accusation, ‘The Clouds’, may well be satire but it was not a piece of idle lampooning but was putting forth serious issues of fundamental social importance at the time. Indeed, an accomplished satirist must be able to understand and be capable of taking seriously the standpoint that he or she wishes to satirise, one must be able to recognise a reflection of the truth in the satirist’s description, and in many ways Aristophanes is a dialectician in the Hegelian sense for the Hegelian dialectic is to a great extent a satirical description of the various shapes of consciousness that have appeared throughout history and only by taking a standpoint seriously can one see its full implications. Aristophanes therefore depicts albeit in an exaggerated sense how Socrates and his followers discover the ‘nullity of the laws of the determinate good as it is to the natural consciousness’. And Aristophanes is depicting the Socratic standpoint as it would appear to the Greeks at that time, albeit in a necessarily exaggerated sense. In ‘The Clouds’ the story is related of Strepsiades and his son (see the passageabove), Strepsiades having been educated in the ways of Socrates, the philosopher who runs The Thinkery, and learnt how to employ the Socratic dialectic to avoid the· payment of his debts. Becoming successful in this art, Strepsiades meets his creditors and puts them off with excellent reasons, even mocking them, and is very glad to have learned all this from Socrates, so glad, in fact, that he sends his son to be educated in the same tradition. Unfortunately for Strepsiades his son returns from his period of Socratic enlightenment only to behave in a very unseemly way towards his father and eventually gives him a thorough whopping. This proves too much for Strepsiades who, says Hegel, ‘cries to the supreme power, as if this were the last indignity, but the son shows him, with equally good reasons, obtained by the method derived from Socrates, that he had a perfect right to strike him’. By this stage Strepsiades has finished with Socratic wisdom and returned to the old ways, taking revenge by setting fire to the house of Socrates.
The serious point in Aristophanes’ tale is thus brought to the fore in an exaggerated sense whereby Aristophanes had indicated the fundamental flaw in the Socratic method, that is to say, it is negative, its power rests mainly on the subject’s criticism of existing institutions, which in certain circumstances can be highly commendable especially if the subject happens to be morally perfect as we are led to believe in the case of Socrates, but there is nothing in the dialectic itself to prevent it from being employed with a bad conscience, which demonstrates, at the very least, that there is nothing morally superior about the Socratic method. When the conscience is bad, rather than positing values primarily aimed at the fullest expression of life but positing values to inhibit or repress those ways of life it despises, the tale of Strepsiades must repeat itself.
As for the formal and public accusation no few philosophers have viewed Socrates as a virtuous man unjustly sentenced by evil men as though it were some kind of witch-hunt, a very misleading take upon the whole affair akin to the media today focussing upon individuals and groups defying a democratically taken decision to engage in industrial action or protests as though they were heroes and martyrs without presenting the other side of the story, for instance statue topplers, following in the footsteps of Alcibiades as it happens (see above) where no democratic decision has been taken to remove the statues but the nature of the case being what it is they are acquitted even though guilty of criminal damage because ideology is allowed to enter the courtroom, a very worrying development in a liberal democracy. In such instances the individual’s stand against the majority is lauded more for partisan reasons than for any liberal sentiment concerning the right to express unpopular opinions, and it is quite apparent that the trial of Socrates has, for similar reasons, been often cited as an argument against the spread of democratic institutions. Hegel opposes very strongly such an approach, you will find him several times rebuking his anti-democratic contemporaries, but his apparent sympathy towards the accusers of Socrates is bound up with his endeavour to present Athenian democracy on its own terms and to reveal how the repudiation of democratic principles by Socrates and Plato must have appeared to the Athenians. To such an end Hegel examines the trial of Socrates in two aspects, first, the relationship of the accused to the charge, and second, the competency of the prosecution to try him and the defendant’s attitude towards that competency. Hegel claims that Socrates was found guilty with respect to the content of the accusations but was condemned to death because he refused to recognise the competency of the prosecution and the legitimacy of the sovereign will of the people from which the prosecution derived its powers.
The accusation brought against Socrates consisted of two charges, first that Socrates did not consider as Gods those who were held as such by the Athenian people, but introduced new ones, and second that he also led young men astray by casting doubt upon what was regarded as immediate truth. Both charges have the same foundation, which is to say the way in which doubt has been cast on the immediacy of morality and religious truth. For the Greeks, individual conscience was inward and contingent, so for more definite advice they turned to external advice from oracles, soothsayers and so on, and in appealing to his own daemon or inner voice Socrates appeared to be rejecting the public religion. And yet as Plato points out in the ‘Republic’ and in the ‘Phaedo’ Socrates in actual fact sacrificed and worshipped as others did, indeed he was no atheist like Anaxagoras and so one wonders about the force of the charge, well, mayhap it lay in his insistence that the will of the Gods need not be expressed in the commonly accepted ways, which is to say, the position of entrails, thunder and lightning, and so on, need not in themselves reveal the immediate signs of the Divine will, and though a thunderstorm as a sign from the Gods may not be disputed by Socrates but what he implied was that it is a matter of human convention as to how that sign is read, and given that the power of the Gods is infinite power they were quite capable of revealing themselves in many different ways, one of them being the rational conscience of Socrates. Some of Socrates’ defenders were therefore close to the truth when they said that amongst the prosecution were men who were jealous because Socrates was more favoured by the Gods but they failed to get to the heart of the matter which is that it is a curious fact about religious practices that no one is willing to believe one who claims to have Divine knowledge by any other than the conventional ways, for in every religious practice are established norms for the expression of Divine will and these norms entail a means of distinguishing between valid and bogus claims for the possession of Divine truth. Herein lies the necessary conservativism of religion an many a saints has spent his or her earthly existence at odds with the established orthodoxy in virtue of their communication with the Deity being not in conformity with the established pattern. In principle there is no reason why a God should not manifest himself to a fisherman and as long as the distance in time is great enough one can believe that once it really happened but this is never believed by the establishment at the time the claim is made. It is not settled in a general way that God foreknows everything or that God can make revelations to individuals, this may be admitted as an abstract fact but not in actuality, and it is believed in no individual cases for people do not believe that to him or to her, to this individual, there has been a revelation, for why him or her more than to others? Such objections are brought against prophets and charlatans alike but there were even more fundamental reasons for rejecting the Socratic daemon, as a genuine expression of the Divine will, for the Socratic daemon, as Hegel explains: ‘was a medium of a different kind to any formerly respected in the Greek religion… This inward certainty, however, was undoubtedly a new God, and not the God of the Athenians existing hitherto, and thus the accusation of Socrates was quite just’. The substitution of the Socratic daemon for other contingencies appeared as a rejection of all established religious customs, threatening the power of the priests and the existing morality, which were bound up with the religious practices of the time, and it was not the case that the existing religious institutions were corrupt, for they had their own standards for distinguishing between the corrupt and the sincere, but Socrates’ new standard was judged correctly by criteria internal to the old standard and was held to have violated the religious beliefs of the Athenians.
The verdict on the first charge was just, and as for the charge of misleading the youth in reply to this were many witnesses willing to testify to the extent of Socrates’ virtue, just as others had testified to his piety, and the defence’s case rested upon the fact that Socrates sought only to teach young men who came under his influence none but the highest virtues. When accused of inciting sons into disobedience of their parents, Socrates responded by asking whether it was a crime that those seeking the highest good should prefer his advice to that of their parents, a reply, as Hegel points out, that may have been just but was not exhaustive, the real issue being ‘the intrusion of a third into the absolute relation between parents and children’. The actual case cited was that of Anytus’ son who, having been influenced by Socrates, it was alleged, then took to drinking and evil ways rather than follow the respectable profession of his father. Anytus’ son was a very intelligent young man and was recognised as such by Socrates, who believed that the youth was intellectually equipped for a higher calling than his father’s tannery, but Anytus forbad him to quit his trade and Socrates then foretold of the youth not resting content in the profession his father had chosen and, lacking the guidance of a more rational person, his dissatisfaction would turn into self-destruction, which indeed is what transpired.
So what exactly was Socrates’ transgression in all of this? Perhaps he was perfectly correct in telling the youth that his talents were suited to greater things, but did he, within the moral framework of the time, have the moral right to tell him so? It is perfectly correct to say that, given time, Anytus’ son would find his work uncongenial and frustrating, but it is a different matter when this dislike is brought about by an outsider, and by telling him that he was fitted for something better, Socrates had planted the seed of dissatisfaction, for no one wished to deny that the youth had talent, or that his dissatisfaction would eventually find expression, the pivotal issue was that Socrates, an acknowledged Sophist it isalleged whose opinions were respected amongst the youth had directly contributed to the youth’s dissatisfaction and by doing so had increased the son’s contempt for his father. It was this intervention between parent and offspring that Hegel cites as a justification of the charge of misleading the youth, a charge that was further substantiated when it was pointed out that two of the youths that Socrates had influenced, Critias and Alcibiades, had been responsible for bringing Athens to the brink of ruin. By contemporary standards the charges brought against Socrates seem trumped up and trivial but they were made at a time when the Athenians saw many of their fundamental institutions under attack. Today here in the UK we are at present tolerating critiques of our treasured institutions by individuals and groups with a quite breathtaking ignorance of history because this state of ours is secure and yet were a national crisis to ensue that would soon change. Hegel was alert to one of the most distasteful aspects of political life, that is, under threatened conditions, freedom of opinion, even when no physical threat is intended, is seen to constitute a very real threat to the social order, and the view that absolutely free opinion is harmless is only true in part, for with the populace the eloquence of sophistry stirs up the passions. It may also be claimed that this is only theoretical, no action follows., but the state really rests upon thought, and its existence depends upon the sentiments of men and women, for it is a conceptual and not a physical domain and hence it has particular maxims and principles that constitute its support, and if these are attacked the Government must intervene. Socrates had attacked the maxims and principles of Athenian life in their two most important areas, by the introduction of new Gods who sanctioned disobedience, and family piety which was the moral foundation of the Athenian state. The charges against Socrates were therefore substantiated and Socrates was justly found guilty.
‘Search after God’
by Thomas Heywood (early 1570s — 1641)
I sought Thee round about, O Thou my God,
In thine abode;
I said unto the earth, ‘Speak, art Thou He?’
She answered me,
‘I am not’. I enquired of creatures all
In general,
Contained therein; they with one voice proclaim
That none amongst them challenged such a name.
I asked the Heavens, sun, moon, and stars, but they
Said, ‘We obey
The God thou seek’st’. I asked what eye or ear
Could see or hear,
What in the world I might descry or know
Above below;
With a unanimous voice all these things said,
‘We are not God, but we by Him were made’.
I asked the world’s great universal mass
If that God was?
Which with a mighty and strong voice, replied
As stupefied,
‘I am not He, O man, for know that I
By Him on high
Was fashioned first of nothing, thus instated,
And swayed by Him, by whom I was created’.
I asked myself what this great God might be
That fashioned me?
I answered, ‘the all-potent, sole immense
Surpassing sense;
Unspeakable, inscrutable, eternal,
Lord over all;
The only terrible, strong, just, and true,
Which hath no end, and no beginning knew’.
O make us apt to seek, and quick to find,
Thee God, most kind!
Give us love, hope, and faith, in Thee to trust,
Thee God, most just!
Remit all our offences, we entreat,
Most good, most great!
Grant that our willing, though unworthy quest,
May, through thy grace, admit us ‘mongst the blest.
‘Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ’.
- ‘Colossians’ 2:7–8
