“At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things and here I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. From this, it can be deduced that Socrates is expected to defend himself without benefit of counsel to argue on his behalf, preventing him from exacerbating the issue like this.įor his defense, Socrates relies on logic and reasoning to present his case, clearly summarizing his actions and demonstrating them to be neither harmful nor malicious toward the state. “Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this” (Apology: p. He then complicates matters by admitting that he knowingly acted in a way that would make these men dislike him. Constitution, Socrates’ trial is not characterized by having a ‘fair and impartial’ jury of his peers.

He knows that he is facing a jury that has been biased against him from their youth through the mouths of their fathers and it is highly unlikely that they will judge him fairly now. He speaks out against his enemies saying that they have maliciously spoken against him, “telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause” (Apology: p.

In Apology, Socrates reveals his own foreknowledge that he was acting in a way that contradicted the important values of his culture. Although many of the values found in the Apology can also be found in the Crito, there are some troubling differences. Many of these elements are again brought forward when Socrates talks with his friend about why he won’t go along with tradition and simply escape from the Athenian jail after having been sentenced to death as revealed in Plato’s Crito. As he works to argue his case based upon reason alone, he reveals some of the more common elements of Athenian culture and law and the discrepancies that existed between them. Within the text, Socrates continually refers to himself as being the wisest man alive, based upon the words of the Oracle at Delphi, which is known to never speak falsely. In this document, Plato records, to what degree of accuracy is uncertain, the defense presented by Socrates himself at the trial for his life. Some of these writings, such as Plato’s Apology, provide such a degree of firsthand knowledge, though, that we are able to make some characterizations.

This is because Socrates chose not to write anything down in his pursuit of wisdom.

A great deal of what we know about Socrates the man, in fact, all of what we know of him, is what is written about him by others who may or may not have heard him speak.

Plato socrates defense