Re: Ndeshkimi!
SOCRATES’ APOLOGY
You-all have read Plato’s account of how I defended myself at my trial and the outcome. Since I lost then, I always like to try to get another chance to explain my life and to see if anyone else will judge me differently. The gods have told me that you-all are hear today in order tohear my story once again and judge for yourselves whether I deserved to die for the way I lived. The Athenians thought I was a great threat to their way of life. They blamed me at least partially for the collapse of their democracy and their loss to Sparta. I think I was a great blessing to Athens.
Here you are, living in perhaps the greatest democratic society that has ever existed. You-all are on your high horses these days. It is the beginning of a new milleniuum. Your economy is booming; you have just engaged in a short but successful air strike against a tyrannical leader. You engage in international trade to what I think of as an unimaginable degree. You have material comforts and intellectual opportunities I never believed possible. The internet? My goodness. What next?
But your people have the same kind of spiritual diseases that the Athenians did. From what I see on television and in movies, from what I observe being sold, you seem to believe that lust is a virtue, that pride is a virtue, that greed is a virtue. Many advertisements appeal to envy. You seem to be competing with other people to have the biggest houses, the best looks, the most expensive things. You have a great problem with violence, especially among high-school aged students, not much younger than you are. Why do students bring guns to school?
You’all read about my past. I was just an uneducated stonecutter. But I used to go down to the marketplace after work and talk to people. I had fought in the battle of Marathon and in other campaigns against the Persians and I was happy to have been a part of the conquest of the Persians. They invaded us; they were clearly the aggressors. I fought for the kind of democratic society we had in Athens because I loved it and believed in it. Although I lost my case, I appreciated the Athenian legal system. I think having a trial by a jury of peers is a more likely way to get a just verdict than to have one very powerful person make all the decisions, or a few people who hold all of the power. It was not the situation of having to defend myself to 500-odd peers which bothered me. Rather, it was the fact that they were biased against me before the case even began. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, there were many Athenians who generated false rumors about me and claimed I was a sophist long before I ever went to trial. Most of the people at the trial had made up their minds against me before the trial even began.
It was ironic that I would be accused of being a sophist because I hated the sophists so much and I believed they played an important role in the decline of Athens. They came from abroad with highly trained minds, ready to teach people whatever they were willing to pay for. They did not believe in moral right and wrong or in justice and injustice. Instead, they simply pointed out the difference in customs and habits between the political systems in their own native lands, which I and most other Athenians believed to be better, and claimed that everyone thinks their own habits are best because those are the most familiar. The sophists undermined our belief in the superiority of our society. this would have been alright if it would have stopped us from our imperialism, from our desire to conquer other nations and city-states, but it did not have that effect. Instead, our desire for conquest replaced any belief in the value of democracy and we treated other city-states undemocratically in order to overpower them. The sophists were out for themselves and taught us that everyone is really out for themselves. Its a dog-eat-dog, survival-fo-the-fittest world out there, they usually said. I challenged them at every point. Now, this should have made me a national hero. Here I was, defending Athenian democracy against those who undermined it and exploited it for their own purposes. What got me into trouble was that I also questioned the Athenians, which the sophists did not. The sophists did not question the Athenian’s war with Sparta, they did not tell Athenians they were really power mongers or greedy or proud or impulsive and out of control. They never criticized the Athenians because the Athenians were the source of their revenue. So they flattered them, gave them whatever they wanted, told them what they wanted to hear and collected the profits. I, on the other hand, criticized the Athenians also because I thought they were corrupt. I told them time and time again, “O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and might and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart of let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examinehim, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reprach him...And this I should say to every one whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren.” (30-31).
I believe that this was a mission given to me by the God. You know the story of how I came to believe this. I used to go down to the marketplace after work and ask people questions about their lives. I wanted to know what people were thinking and how they could explain and justify what I considered to be a great deal of corruption. Well, they didn’t have very satisfactory answers to my questions. Some of the sons of the wealthy, even some who were tutored by the well-paid sophists, used to follow me around because they wanted to know if their authority figures could really defend what they were doing. The young men knew they were going to be drafted soon and wanted their elders to explain precisely the reasons behind the war. When the elders could not respond, and when their own teachers could not justify their high salaries, the young men became rebellious. I was blamed for corrupting the youth, but I think it was the truth itself which lead the youth to rebel against their elders.
The reason I thought God sent me on this mission was because I was gaining a reputation for being wise, even when I was not, but just because I exposed those leaders and sophists who had reputations for being wise and not living up to their reputations. People thought that if Socrates could reveal their ignorance, Socrates must be wise. But this is not true. My own exposure of the ignorance of those who are powerful simply points to the real truth: human beings are all extremely ignorant about the most important things in life, about justice and truth and virtue, and none of us should pretend we know much at all about such things.
As I was gaining a ridiculous reputation for wisdom, one of my friends, Chaerephon, went to the oracle of Delphi and asked if there was any person wiser than Socrates. The oracle answered that there was no one wiser. This really disturbed me, so I was much more systematic about going all about Athens, asking anyone with the slightest reputation for wisdom what it was they knew which gave them this reputation. After interviewing many, many people, I had to conclude that they did not know what they thought they knew. I could not find anyone I thought was wise. I then decided that the only reason the oracle said there was no one wiser than I was because I knew I was not wise and that no mere mortal knows much of anything about what matters most. I did not think I was wise while everyone else thought they were. That was the only real difference between us: not what we knew or did not know but, rather, what we thought we knew and did not know. So, the oracle is telling us that no one really knows anything, but I am the only mortal who even knows that much.
Let me give you one example. I knew you talked to Euthyphro yesterday, so I’ll tell you what I think of our conversation. I remember well the day I was going to court to defend myself and I ran into him. I was so shocked when I heard why he was there. Accusing his own father for murder!!! I must admit, I thought he was a classic case of someone who thought he knew more than he really knew about some very important things. He took his father to court for murder because he thought his father had commited an impious act and that as long as he lived with his father he would be polluted and condemned by the gods. But he didn’t think that after accusing his own father for murder his relatives would think they were being polluted by living with him!!!
I disagreed with what Euthyphro was doing, but I didn’t manage to talk him out of it. I think Euthyphro was an arrogant and corrupt religious leader and I’ll tell you why. First, he had no doubts or qualms about what he was doing. But how could he possibly not have doubts and feel remorse about this? I was really suspicious of his motives. I thought he was using the situiation to try and make a reputation for himself as a “holier than thou” type. That is, he used his own father to gain a reputation among the new regime in Athens that he was so pious and holy he would do what no one else would do out of loyalty to the gods. The reason I was suspicious was what he said to me right after he told me the story and I express great surprise at his confidence that he was right. When I asked him how he could know for sure, he said, “The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all these [divine] matters. What should I be good for without that?” (4) I decided Euthyphro was out to gain a public reputation for himself.
So, I questioned him. I wanted to know if his heart was pure and his head clear. I asked him “What is piety?” His first response was, “Piety is prosecuting any onewho is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any other similar crime.” Of course, this answer horrified me, because Meletus and Anytus, the two men who were prosecuting me, were doing it for the same reason. They thought I commited sacrilege because I did not believe in a literal interpretation of Homer and they brought me to court and had me condemned to death for that reason. They, too, were using the courts to gain a public reputation for being holier than the average person. Euthyphro didn’t think about the comparison because he actually liked me. I wish he hadn’t liked me because the very fact he liked me and was an arrogant man made the Athenians think I was also arrogant like him. I, too, had a different way of understanding the gods and what the gods want from us. I my case, I believe the gods wanted me to do what I did--question people--rather than just blindly obey. But I consider myself to have been much more humble than Euthyphro. I would never have taken my father to court for murder, especially under such circumstances. But, unfortunately, the Athenians classified me with the sophists and the arrogant preachers simply because I was off-beat.
In a sense, it is true that I do not believe “int he gods the city believes in,” if that is supposed to mean that I do not believe in a literal interpretation of Homer. Either the stories of Chronos cutting off his father’s genitals or Zeus binding Chronos are intended to explain the disfunctional and power-driven relationships between fathers and sons, and intended to make us look at the ways we destroy each other stop doing it, or else the stories are simply false. If the gods are good, the gods would not do such things to their parents or offspring. It is either metaphor and educational or flat out false. Because I interpreted Homer this way, I was accused of “not believing in the gods the city believes in.” But look at Euthyphro: he supposedly believes every word of Homer literally and look at what he did!!! Does he represent true piety? Most Athenians did not think so. So how could they accuse anyone of “not believing in the city’s gods” and of that being a threat tot he city when Euthyphro does believe and he is also a threat to social order.
In the end, Euthyphro kept going back to the same old definition of piety: piety,to him, is pleasing the gods. He had spent his life memorizeing Homer and Hesiod so he could apply the stories in the books to his own life. Perhaps he was pure in heart when he first started out learning about the gods. Perhaps at some point in this life he really just wanted to do what the gods wanted. But by deciding to become a preacher by profession and by spending many hours memorizing Homer I think he gradually realized he could attain power over other people and a reputation for himself as a holy man by acting in ways which went contrary to standard morality and using the holy books to defend it. I don’t know if he ever admitted it to himself, but I think he was guilty of pride and ambition.
There certain was a good reason to act as he did at the time he did. Athens was demoralized. There was a need for moral revival and respect for authority. The Athenians had to admit they made big mistakes in their attitudes toward Sparta and in their treatment of the other city states, and everyone else they conquerec or tried to conquer. But, of course, they spent more time blaming each other than accepting responsibility. But Euthyphro recognized the need for a religious leaders to reaffirm a strong belief in the gods and in Homer, in the beliefs about the meaning of life represented in those books. So, he brought his father to murder in the name of obedient to the gods. In one part of his mind, he thought he was bringing Athens back to the good old days, to respect for the tradition. He thought this would lead Athens to becoming more stable politically and privately. But many Athenian families had been split apart along political lines. Brothers went against brothers, fathers against sons, in the great battle between Critias’ conservative party and the liberal party. Athens had declared an amnesty so that families could forgive each other and get on with life. The purpose of the amnesty was not to decide there is no right and wrong, no justice and injustice, but to stop accusing and forgive or else the society would never come together. Euthyphro’s case against his father just aggrevated all of these tensions because what Euthyphro’s father did was much less serious than what the liberals and conservatives did to each other. Euthyphro thinks he is going to bring the family and the state back together but really what he did was to tear it apart once again.
I wanted Euthyphro to live a more examined life, to know himself, to examine his real motives and the real consequences of what he was doing. But he could only see it one way. He either was well intentioned and just did not realize that this would tear Athens apart once more or he was conscious of his own ambition to have a reputation as a super-religious person.
But this has always been my problem with people who memorize Homer and recite passages from Homer and Hesiod to justify their actions, especially when their idea of holiness requires that they condemn another person. Some of these people seem to me to be really sincere and want to love the gods and do the god’s will throughout their lives. They just do not understand how difficult and complicated that is, and they judge others without understanding that Homer could be interpreted and applied in more than one way in each case. Some of these people are sincere in their youth but become greedier and more self-righteous as they gain respect, money and power from others. They believe they really do know what the gods want just because they have a reputation for knowing what no one really knows. Some of theses people are vicious right from the start and memorize Homer from the beginning in order to manipulate people. These are the real sophists, the real cynics. I don’t think Euthytphro was that corrupt, but I do think he was either somewhat corrupt or naive.
I love reading Homer and thinking about what Homer is trying to tell us about how we should live. But I realize that Homer can be interpreted and applied in many different ways and I realize that Homer thought so, too. So I began to think for myself about life, I tried to know myself and to live an examined life, and I realized how little we really know about the most important aspects of our lives. I love reading Homer, but I hesitate to think anything in it will lead me to do anything which violates conventional morality too much, especially accusing my father of murder. I think the gods love something or someone because it is pious, a person or action is not pious because the gods love it. That is why I have spent my life asking, “What is piety?” and following what I believed the gods wanted me to do. Only if I come to some conclusions about the nature of piety will I have any idea about what the gods love. Euthyphro, on the other hand, believed something or someone was pious because the gods loved it or him/her. That is why he memorized Homer, to find out what the gods were said to love. We just never agreed on that point.
When Euthyphro defined piety as the care of the gods, I was willing to agree with him as long as I knew what he meant. It turned out that Euthyphro meant something very different from what I mean. First, Euthyphro thought it meant the kind of care slaves give to masters. But that could not be right, because the masters have their needs met by slaves and gods have no needs. Then I asked him if it was care in the sense that the art of medicine cares for a physician to produce health. But I asked Euthyphro a trick question: it isn’t the art of medicine that cares for the physician, but the physician who cares for the art of medicine. I wanted to know if Euthyphro could recognizing who was being cared for and who was doing the caring. I used the example of a shipbuilder who builds ships, because I wanted to know if Euthyphro made any distinction between the product of piety as being something inside of a person, like health or some material thing outside of a person, like ships. I think piety is a quality of the human soul and has not outside reward. I was suspicious that Euthyphro’s proclamation of piety tothe public was done to give him a tangible reward: a reputation and a nice salary. Again, Euthyphro made no distinction. Finally, I got out of Euthyphro what he really thinks. He engages in public displays of piety, in worshipping the gods and giving them some time and money, perhaps, in order to get what he wants: a reputation, a career, and supposedly a stable home and society. Don’t get me wrong. This does not make me cynical or an atheist. I do believe in the gods. My whole life was a response to what I believed the gods wanted from me. I participate in public religious festivals. I do homage to the gods and give time and money to the temples. But I do not expect anything in return for this. I do not think of my religious life as a bargaining chip with the gods. I do not expect a reward, either in this life or the next. My religious duties have kept me poor and hated in this life, and I don’t know nor do I think I know if there will be any reward on the other side. But I do know that if there is any eternal judgment I will be content to go before the gods with the choices I made and the life I lived. I believe it is wrong to be greedy and petty and I tell my fellow citizens that I think it is wrong and not what the gods want. But I would never take them to court for having corrupt souls. The state of one’s soul is between each person and the gods; it should not be dragged into court and made into a political issue. That is why I never went into politics: I did not want to have to engage in unjust acts in order to win an election, or create an image of being just or powerful. I did not care about what people thought of me. I would never have gotten elected, anyway. Instead, I spent my private life in the marketplace, in the public eye, testing the souls of the Athenians because I thought that it does not matter if one has a well-organized democratic political system, it does not matter if one is powerful, when the souls of the people are corrupt everything is bound to fall apart. That is what happened to us.
Now, you-all live in a rich and powerful nation. You probably think you are the greatest. But I expect that if I were down there at the Mall of America, asking people the very questions I asked the Athenians, I would get very similar responses. Your people are probably concerned with money and power and reputation and competing with each other just as much as the Athenians were.
Marriages have fallen apart. People have no idea how to relate to each other in a marriage. Some preachers think the solution is to make women be subservient to their husbands, that this is what God wants. But Jesus himself told Martha to get out of the kitchen and listen to his teachings. Jesus treated women as equals. Paul, on the other hand, told women to be obedient to their husbands. Why is such an intellectually sophisticated society as yours so confused about something so basic? Can you just go back to finding quotes in the Bible, or must each of you think clearly for yourselves and engage in discussion with others about male-female relationships at our time, because the conditions of life are so different than they were?
Families have fallen apart. Children are not being raised to be self-controlled and generous and to love justice and truth. There is intense disagreement about the most basic aspects of childraising. How can people disagree so much about something human beings have been doing,and been writing and talking about doing, for thousands of years. Why are we so ignorant? Are we just ignoring the obvious? Why are your children so violent? Can you just go back to your Bible to figure out how to raise children, or must you read and think and talk to each other in order to apply some ancient insights to the realities of your world. What is going on in the soul of your society?
And, most of all, what good is all the money and power in the world if you can’t relate to another human being? It is in our long-term friendships, our loves and hopes and dreams of a better world that we really develop ourselves as human beings. Has the human race learned anything since I was walking around the marketplace so many centuries ago? What do you think? Did I deserve to be condemned for “not believing in the gods the city believes in” and for “corrupting the youth”? You decide.
:thumbsup:
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