Piety, Guilt, Death: Socrates on Trial

The Iliad opens with the anger of Achilles, unjustly stripped of the spoils of war by Agamemnon. He has come to wage war against people he holds no grudge against and for a cause that he does not hold in high regard (Book I 152-160, translation Richmond Lattimore):

I for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan Spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing. Never yet have they driven away my cattle or my horses, never in Phthia where the soil is rich and men grow great did they spoil my harvest, since indeed there is much that lies between us, the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea; but for your sake, O great shamelessness, we followed, to do you favor, you with the dog’s eyes, to win your honor and Menelaos’ from the Trojans.

Paris, the root cause of the war, had chosen Aphrodite as the most beautiful of all goddesses, and Hera rages against this injury. Paris kidnaps Helen, the wife of Menelaus; Menelaus wants her back; he rallies an army; the Trojan war begins.

Achilles thus fights a war that he sees as, if not unjust, at least impersonal, and the root of that war is the intemperate anger of a god.

Hippolytus, son of Theseus, is killed in the crossfire between Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and Aphrodite, goddess of love (Euripides, Hippolytus). Ajax, mighty and honourable, is led into commiting suicide by the goddess Athena because he scorns her help in battle (Sophocles, Ajax, trans. John Moore):

Ajax, even when he first set out from home, proved himself foolish, when his father gave him his good advice at parting. ‘Child,’ he said, ‘Resolve to win, but always with god’s help.’ But Ajax answered with a senseless boast: ‘Father, with god’s help even a worthless man could triumph. I propose without that help to win my prize of fame.’ In such a spirit he boasted. And when once Athena stood beside him in the fight, urging him on to strike the enemy with his deadly hand, he answered then, that second time, with words to shudder at, not speak: ‘Goddess,’ he said, ‘go stand beside the other Greeks; help them. For where I’m stationed, no enemy will break through.’ With such words as these that kept no human measure he won from the goddess hatred and fierce anger.

In tragedy and poetry, the greatest sin man can commit is hubris. Even patricidal and incestuous Oedipus faces punishment for his sins only after he berates a holy man that cautions him against the path he is taking (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex).

With this in mind, let’s return to Socrates and his trial. The charge brought against Socrates is this (Apology, 24b):

Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things. Such is their charge. Let us examine it point by point.

The defense is ostensibly Socrates speaking against the charges, and perhaps that’s how it was in truth. Plato’s rendition, however, tries to establish more, namely: That Socrates is not guilty of the charges leveled against him; that the basis for those charges is itself absurd; and that the only reason this trial is occurring is the corruption of the Athenian legal system.

All very well, so far. It would help if we think ourselves as part of the jury. Certainly, Plato’s dialogue was meant to be read by Athenian citizens, many of whom either were or would have had opportunity to judge Socrates. It’s not hard for us to imagine ourselves as jurymen, but harder to judge ourselves Athenian. Socrates addresses us in second person (“you”). In this regard, the Apology is not like other dialogues: we are allowed to object directly to the arguments Socrates makes in his defense.

However, while it may be easy rhetorically to object to Socrates, it requires going against thousands of years of philosophical tradition that have filtered through culture into law or custom. To imagine yourself Athenian in 400BC is a great leap of the imagination. Try, however.

Socrates discharges himself well on the first point. If we raise an objection it is that Socrates has not proven to us that he does not corrupt the youth. He has proven that, under his notion of corruption, he does not corrupt the youth. Socrates in the dialogues is brash and unrelenting, and no stranger to irony. Many of those on the other end of Socrates’ wit must have felt humiliated, and if this happened in the presence of their children–Socrates is unmoved by circumstance–then you could see Socrates as fostering disrespect from the child to the father. But this is a point I won’t dwell on.

The other charge is more subtle. The claim is that Socrates does not believe in the gods that the city believes in. Socrates never defends against this. His defense is that he certainly believes in gods, and in fact that he believes “in gods as do none of my accusers” (35d). But this is not the question at hand. Let me illustrate this with an example that is more germane to the 21st century: if you were to judge me (someone who lives in the United States) on whether I respect the laws of the United States, and my defense were that I certainly respect laws generically, you would be unsatisfied with my response.

We might think of Meletus’ admission in 26c that what he means by the accusation is that Socrates does not believe in any gods at all to change the nature of the trial:

Socrates: Then by those very gods about whom we are talking, Meletus, make this clearer to me and to these men: I cannot be sure whether you mean that I teach the belief that there are some gods–and therefore I myself believe that there are gods and am not altogether an atheist, nor am I guilty of that–not, however, the gods in whom the city believes, but others, and that this is the charge against me, that they are others. Or whether you mean that I do not believe in gods at all, and that this is what I teach to others.

Meletus: This is what I mean, that you do not believe in gods at all.

But Meletus is not the only one accusing Socrates, and Socrates knows fully well the charges against him, that he corrupts the youth, and that he does not believe in the gods the city believes in. His dialogue with Meletus is a rhetorical flourish meant to confuse the accusation and us.

Socrates is clearly no atheist, but he makes no argument that he believes in the same gods as the city does. He names no god that would be important to Athens, except in commonplace oath (by Zeus), or indirectly, when speaking of the god of the oracle at Delphi (Apollo), whom he names “the god” (ὁ θεὸς). Even if we concede that Socrates believes in gods at all, he does not believe them to be the fountain of wisdom. Recall the Euthyphro dilemma:

Socrates: Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?

Euthyphro concludes without resolution, but it is clear that Socrates believes the gods love the pious because it is pious, and thus that morality does not fall under the purview of the gods. So, Socrates separates the good from the godly. In Republic (Bk. III) he goes farther still and forbids the gods from uttering or doing anything that he could perceive as unjust or immoral:

Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to introduce the gods lamenting and saying,

Alas! my misery! Alas! that I bore the harvest to my sorrow [Iliad, 18]

But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not dare so completely to misrepresent the greatest of the gods, as to make him say—

O heavens! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine chased round and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful [Iliad, 22]

Or again:—

Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, subdued at the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius [Iliad, 16]

For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as they ought, hardly will any of them deem that he himself, being but a man, can be dishonored by similar actions; neither will he rebuke any inclination which may arise in his mind to say and do the like. And instead of having any shame or self-control, he will be always whining and lamenting on slight occasions.

When Socrates denies the gods their right to do evil, he denies them their individuality. Why have multiple gods when they must all act in a certain way? And who determines what the right way is? Socrates, of course. This is the apotheosis of Socrates. Plato sees his mentor as not only unconcerned with the gods, but above them.

How can we not see Socrates as guilty of impiety? Heresy leaves us, 2400 years after Socrates’ death, unmoved, but it was not that long ago that we burned people alive for much less than what Socrates thinks.

When others commit hubris of this magnitude, they suffer greatly. Oedipus, on hearing of his sin, blinds himself and retreats to the woods; Agamemnon is murdered by his wife on return from the war for the sacrifice of their daughter; Medea murders Jason’s children for his infidelity to her.

Does Socrates suffer? His speech in The Apology recalls Achilles in Book XVIII of the Iliad after his mother tells him revenge of Patroclus means death:

I must die soon, then; since I was not to stand by my companion when he was killed. And now, far away from the land of his fathers, he has perished, and lacked my fighting strength to defend him. Now, since I am not going back to the beloved land of my fathers, since I was no light of safety to Patroklos, nor to my other companions, who in their numbers went down before glorious Hektor, but sit here beside my ships, a useless weight on the good land, I, who am such as no other of the bronze-armored Achaians in battle, though there are others also better in council- why, I wish that strife would vanish away from gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man’s heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.

Achilles wishes anger and strife would vanish; Socrates wishes wisdom and justice would flourish. Neither get their wish, but Socrates dies a happier death than godly Achilles, for he dies happily (Phaedo 117d):

“What is this,” he said, “you strange fellows. It is mainly for this reason that I sent the women away, to avoid such unseemliness, for I am told one should die in good omened silence. So keep quiet and control yourselves.”

References

• Burnyeat, M. F., The Impiety of Socrates, Ancient Philosophy, 17(1), 1–12 (1997).
• Bloom, A., & Kirsch, A., The Republic of Plato, Hachette UK, (2016).
• Plato, , Grube, G., & Cooper, J. M., Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, Hackett Publishing (1981).