A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
Author(s): James Redfield
Source: The Journal of General Education , July 1963, Vol. 15, No. 2 (July 1963), pp. 93108
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27795866
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A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
James Redfield
Note: This lecture was delivered to a second-year
course in the Humanities at the College of the Univer
sity of Chicago. This course explores various literary
modes ? in particular history, philosophy, and rhetoric.
In my lecture I tried to do two things at once: to suggest
a possible reading of the text before the students, and,
further, to encourage the students to question the modal
categories of the course.
I am going to talk to you today about Plato's Apology of Socra
tes. In this course you read the Apology as an example of a
literary mode, an example of rhetoric as distinguished from his
tory and philosophy. I think we all know what history and
philosophy are ? history is what is written by historians, philoso
phy what is written by philosophers. But we do not have, in
our world, people called rhetoricians, and so it is difficult to say
at a na?ve level what we mean by rhetoric. Sometimes we mean
by rhetoric simply the way in which a man makes persuasive
whatever he has to say; we can speak of the rhetoric of an his
torian, a philosopher, a novelist, or even of a poet. Or else we
restrict rhetoric to a few kinds of speeches ? to cases in court
or political speeches; we speak of Clarence Darrow or Winston
Churchill as great rhetoricians. In either case, while rhetoric may
be useful at certain moments and to certain professions, it is not
a profession in itself. The primary skill of the lawyer lies in his
knowledge of the law, of the statesman in his judgment of politi
cal situations; good rhetoric helps, but it helps men who are pro
fessionally something else; it is an instrument to their real skill.
In fifth-century Athens, on the other hand, in the world of the
Apology, there were professional rhetoricians just as today there
are philosophers and historians; rhetoric was a special profession.
It was, in fact, one of the most distinguished professions. A pro
fessional man serves his community; communities produce the
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THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION
professions they require. So the Athenian rhetorician was a prod
uct of the special structure of the Athenian political community.
Athens, as you know, was a direct democracy. Athens was
like our democracy in that final authority belonged to the ma
jority of citizens; Athens was unlike our democracy in that im
mediate authority also belonged directly to the people. The
Athenian system was democracy without representation and
without bureaucracy. We elect a congress to pass our laws and
a president to carry them out; our president appoints subordi
nate administrators and a judiciary. The Athenian people was its
own congress and judiciary, and to a large extent its own ad
ministration. It is hard for us to imagine just how direct this
system was. The whole people, or as many as turned up in the
assembly on any given day, voted on each law, as if we should
be governed by daily referendums. There was no general budget;
each expenditure was introduced as a separate bill and had to be
approved by a majority of the assembly. There were, of course,
officials, both elected and chosen by lot, but they had very little
authority. Hardly any official act could be performed without a
special vote by the people. Details too minor to be discussed be
fore the assembly came up before the law courts, which were as
much an administrative as a judicial branch. Officials usually
had power only to initiate a case before the courts; the authority
of a popular vote was required for any proceeding.
Athenian politics, then, was radically democratic; but it was
not equalitarian. All Greek political thought begins with the
assumption that society is divided into two classes: variously
called the rich and the poor, the few and the many, or the good
and the bad. The Greek tradition treats this division as a fact of
nature; no one ever proposes to alter it. There will always be a
few people with money and influence and many people without.
For this reason, oligarchy is, for the main Greek tradition,
the natural constitution. Even many Athenians looked upon
democracy as a highly unnatural form of government. Democ
racy hardly existed outside of Athens. Most Greek cities were
run by a few wealthy families who shared the offices between
them and made decisions by mutual agreement, without reference
to the people. These cities were divided into a political and a
nonpolitical class. The many were not expected to concern them
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A LECTURE ON PLATO's APOLOGY
selves with the affairs of the community, and on the whole they
did not. Politics was the birthright of the men who belonged to
the great houses.
Athens became a democracy without any radical change in
its social structure. The political class continued to exist in
Athens, and it continued to be the political class. There is no
known case in which a poor man was elected to a high office of
the fifth-century Athenian government. The men who held the
offices of honor and responsibility ? who became generals, am
bassadors, treasurers ? were members of the great houses. But
they held office without authority; they had responsibility with
out power. Any official ? this happened even to Pericles ?
could be removed from office by popular vote, at any time.
Furthermore, an official could not take any important step with
out the authorization of a popular vote. Political leaders carried
on their policy by constant reference to the assembly; administra
tors had constantly to secure decisions in the popular courts.
Athens, then, was a democracy based on inequality. The re
sult was a certain kind of balance of power. To the political class
belonged initiative; to the many belonged authority. All the
citizens could vote in the assembly, but they voted on the issues
as defined by the speakers in debate, and the speakers were
usually rich men. In the law courts the people decided the cases,
but the litigants were again usually rich men. The democratic
institutions regulated relations between the classes.
This arrangement was, I think, accepted by both sides. Per
haps the best proof of this is that the system was continued for
more than a century without ever being written into law. In
theory anyone could be elected to office, anyone could propose
motions in the assembly, anyone could prosecute a statesman for
corruption. If all these things remained the privilege of a limited
class it was because nearly everyone approved of the arrange
ment. The class division was not constitutional but customary;
those who attempted to cross the class line were restrained with
the usual sanctions of custom: ridicule and contempt.
In fact, during the best years of the democracy, the arrange
ment was beneficial to both sides. The people had their affairs
managed for them by men who were raised for politics ? whose
main occupation, in fact, was, after business, politics ? while the
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THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION
rich received the honor and sometimes the more material privi
leges which come to men in office. Politics was carried on by
means of a constantly re-created agreement between the few and
the many.
This system, I think, explains the importance of rhetoric in
Athenian society. Rhetoric was the mode of reference, of com
munication between the few and the many. Only the few were
actually in touch with affairs ? this was a society without news
papers or any form of mass communications. Only the few dealt
with facts. Before the people could vote, everything had to be
turned into words; events had to be, as it were, translated into
speeches. The many did not really decide between policy and
policy, but between speech and speech. Rhetoric was the funda
mental weapon of politics, and therefore the primary skill of the
politician. Nearly all political questions were decided by a de
bate, speech against speech, and the best speech usually won;
without the power of speech a statesman could do nothing. In
our society rhetoric is seldom more than an ornament on the
serious business of things; in Athens it was at the heart of the
operation of the society.
The ordinary Athenian gentleman felt the need for rhetoric
not so much in the assembly as in the law courts. Not every rich
man took part in politics, and it was a full-time career only for a
few, but any rich man could expect to come before the courts
at one time or another. Because the courts handled, not only
crimes and suits for damages, but the kind of administrative de
tail which in our society is controlled by civil servants, an ap
pearance in court was a normal part of everyday life. In the
popular courts a man contested his tax liabilities, claimed an ex
emption from military service, argued his right to a pension from
the state treasury. And in the courts rhetoric was more than ever
a necessity. These courts were without judges and without pro
fessional lawyers, which is almost to say, without law. There
were written laws, but as there were no courts of appeal the
panel was not bound to abide by them; they decided on facts and
law at once. There was no judge to enforce rules of relevance or
discipline of argument; the issues in the case were defined by the
parties as they went along. A man's whole career was likely to
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A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
be put on trial in the course of a prosecution for some trivial
offense.
A lawsuit, then, was man against man and speech against
speech. There was no notion of "the state of Illinois vs Mr. Peter
Jones." As there were no official prosecutors, all prosecutions,
even for murder or treason, were private. A law suit was a con
test between two men, with the panel of jurors as umpire; which
ever man made the greater impression would emerge the victor.
Since not everyone has the power of words, a professional
class of speech-writers grew up. A man had to speak for him
self, but no one could prevent him from getting someone else to
write his speech for him; he would then commit it to memory
and deliver it as well as he could. A number of men made a
good living by writing these speeches for considerable fees.
These men were the professional rhetoricians. They were not
lawyers; they had no special skill in the law; their profession de
manded the pure skill of speech. The Apology is written in the
tradition of these professional law court speeches.
Plato is the greatest Greek stylist, and the speech he wrote
is the greatest of all law court speeches. But it is not a new kind
of speech. Plato was a virtuoso; he loved to write in the style of
other men, or according to the rules of some traditional pattern;
the Apology follows the classic pattern of the Athenian court
speech. Through the years the rhetoricians had developed a vari
ety of technical devices which turn up in one speech after an
other. They had developed, for instance, a standard form. It was
systematized and elaborated centuries later by the rhetorical
teachers of the Roman empire, but in the early speeches, those
contemporary with Socrates, the form is quite simple; there are
four parts. First there is an introduction in which the speaker
introduces himself and defines the issue between himself and his
opponents; then there is a narration in which he relates the facts
of the case in a way favorable to himself. Following this comes
the refutation, in which the speaker answers the arguments of
his opponents ? if he is the first speaker he will try to anticipate
his opponent's line of defense. Finally there is a peroration in
which the speaker appeals to the emotions of the jury and to the
Gods.
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Socrates' speech follows this four part form exactly. (Please
notice, by the way, that when I speak of the Apology as a classic
law court speech I mean only the long first section, which con
cludes with the vote of the jury condemning Socrates. The second
section, in which Socrates proposes his punishment, and the
third part, spoken after he has been condemned to death, have
no parallel in the literature of the courts; we will have to con
sider them later.)
Socrates' speech, then, follows the classic four part form.
Each part, however, is subtly transformed, turned to a different
purpose from that of an ordinary defense speech. Socrates begins
by saying that he has no skill in speech, that in the skill of rhet
oric he is absolutely outclassed by his adversaries, that he is a
poor man who has no experience of public life. These remarks
are commonplaces of the introduction; a gentleman will try for
sympathy of the democratic jurors by claiming to be a simple
man very much like themselves. In Socrates' mouth, however,
these commonplaces have a new meaning. Socrates defines rhet
oric, for instance, as the art of lying; when he says he is no
rhetorician he is also saying that he is a better man than those
who are. If he is a poor man it is not because he is ordinary but
because he has adopted an extraordinary kind of holy poverty;
if he has taken no part in politics it is because his life is devoted
to something more important than politics.
In the same way when Socrates comes to define the issues in
the case he redefines them. He says that he has to answer, not
one indictment, but two; the formal prosecution lodged against
him is only the shadow of an informal prosecution which has
been going on for years. The real charge against him has been
lodged by the comic poets, and through them by the community
as a whole. His real accusers are not present, or, if they are, they
are not at the prosecutor's table but in the jury box; the real is
sue is not between Socrates and Meletus but between Socrates
and Athens.
Socrates proposes in the introduction to defend his whole
way of life. So when he turns to the narration he does not talk
about particular offenses; he tells the story of his life. This again
is not unusual; a man will often ask that a long career of public
service be weighed in his favor against some particular offense,
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A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
and speakers sometimes take the opportunity of defending their
whole careers in connection with some trivial case. Socrates,
however, turns the narration also to a new purpose. Instead of
contrasting his supposed offenses with the rest of his life he as
serts that his life, offenses and all, is part of a single and neces
sary pattern. If the effect he had on the young men was unfor
tunate, if he questioned traditional beliefs about the Gods, it was
not his fault; these things were made necessary by his whole
pattern of life, and that pattern was imposed upon him by God.
He does not exactly deny the offense charged; he justifies it as a
part of his whole career, and he demands that the career be
judged as a whole. An ordinary speaker says: if my life as a
whole has been virtuous you should forgive those parts of it
which are not. Socrates says: if the whole is virtuous, the parts
are virtuous also. And this is in keeping with the Socratic
idea of ethics. Ethics, for him, is not a matter of particular moral
or immoral acts; it is a matter of living well, of the development
of the soul toward virtue in a complete life of learning and doing.
There is no valid moral question except the question of a man s
whole character.
So in the refutation Socrates makes no attempt to argue
particular points of fact or of law. Instead he puts his prosecutor
on the stand and subjects him to a brief Socratic dialogue. Soc
rates' refutation is not addressed to the question: is the charge
true? but to the question: what does the charge mean? He asks
of Meletus a reasoned explanation of the indictment, and has no
difficulty in reducing everything Meletus says to nonsense. Soc
rates does not answer the charge; he makes it disappear. His
refutation is a reflection of the whole character of the Socratic
quest, which is not so much a quest for truth as a quest for mean
ing. In the Republic, for instance, Socrates does not try to show
that Polemarchus is wrong about justice; he tries to show that he
has no real idea about it at all. So in the Apology he does not try
to show that Meletus is wrong about the impiety of Socrates; he
demonstrates that Meletus has no solid idea of impiety in gen
eral. And in so doing he excludes the prosecution from the case;
the real issues lie between Socrates and the jury, and only Socra
tes can tell his judges the real meaning of the trial.
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Well then, men of Athens, I am not guilty according to the
indictment of Meletus, I dont need much of a defense; what
I have said is enough. As I said before the hatred against
me is felt by many people and has been for a long time; you
all know that. This it is that will convict me, and not Mele
tus or Any tus. . . . (28a)
So Socrates' real task is not the refutation of Meletus, but the
refutation of Athens. The clearest reversal of the traditional form,
however, comes after this in the peroration. A plea for justice is
normally followed by a plea for mercy; in the peroration the de
fendant appeals to the jury to remember his innocent children,
and, in the name of the Gods, to spare him. Socrates devotes his
peroration to an attack on perorations. He does not appeal to the
jury; he instructs them in their obligations.
There is no justice, gentlemen, in making an appeal to the
jury to go against its judgment; nor in getting free by such
an appeal. Justice is to teach and to persuade. Nor is the
juror supposed to give judgment according to his pleasure;
he is supposed to decide. He has given his oath not to favor
those who appeal to him, but to judge according to the laws.
We ought not to accustom you to break your oaths, nor
ought you to accustom yourselves; for neither of us would
be pious that way. Do not think, men of Athens, that I
ought to do things here before you which I do not believe to
be noble or just or pious, especially, by Zeus, when I am de
fending myself against a charge of impiety. . . . Obviously
if I were to persuade you and shift you from your oaths I
would demonstrate that I do not believe in the existence of
Gods, and in a peculiar way I would accuse myself by my
defense. . . . But I do believe in them, men of Athens, as do
none of my accusers, and I commit my case to you and to
God to judge me as will be best for me and for you. (35b-d)
Throughout the Apology Socrates refuses to accept the nor
mal limitations of the case. He dismisses the formal indictment
and addresses his defense to a different charge. He dismisses his
accusers ? suggesting that they are playing some kind of un
happy practical joke ? and speaks directly to the many. And in
the peroration he denies the whole validity of Athenian trial by
rhetoric.
Rhetoric is an instrument, a tool for attaining a practical
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A LECTURE ON PLATo's APOLOGY
end. The purpose of the rhetorician is to persuade ? to win his
case, to pass his law, to carry his point. The language of the
rhetorician is a means; good rhetoric is rhetoric which attains the
end. A rhetorician can be judged only in terms of his success.
Socrates rejects this notion of rhetoric from beginning to end ?
from the beginning of his speech, where he says that the function
of a good rhetorician should be to tell the truth, to the end, where
he refuses to appeal to the emotions of the jury. Later, Socrates
says that if he had wept and begged he would have been acquit
ted. To have done so, then, would have been good rhetoric; Soc
rates is convicted because his speech is governed by another
standard; this standard, he says, makes rhetoric irrelevant.
Socrates' attitude toward rhetoric is a part of his whole atti
tude toward the community. The Socratic attitude toward the
community, in fact, is at the heart of the speech, and we will
have to consider it in some detail. The best place to begin, I
think, is with Socrates' examination of Meletus.
Come here Meletus and tell me this. What is it you
think so much about; isn't it the excellence of the young?
Certainly.
Well then, tell the jury; who makes them better? You
must know, since you worry about it. You are the one, after
all, who found me out, their corruptor, as you say; you
brought me here and are prosecuting me. Come on, now,
tell us, who makes them better? . . . You see, Meletus, you
are silent, you have nothing to say? . . . Tell us, my friend,
who makes them better?
The laws.
That's not what I asked you; what man, who knows
these laws?
These gentlemen here, Socrates, the jury.
What do you mean, Meletus? Are these men able to
educate the young and make them better?
Certainly.
D'you mean all of them, or can some of them, and
others cannot?
All of them.
Good news, by Hera; there is a great surplus of im
provers. But what about the men in the gallery? Do they
improve the young or not?
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They too.
What about the council . . . and the assembly ? do
those men corrupt the youth? Or do they also make them
better?
Those too.
Evidently every Athenian produces decent young men
except me; I alone corrupt them. It that what you mean?
That's just what I do mean.
Surely I must be the unhappiest of men. But answer
me this. Is that the way it is with horses ? men at large im
prove them, and only one man corrupts them? Or isn't it
just the opposite; there is only one man who makes them
better, or very few, men who are skilled in horsemanship?
And most people, if they have to do with horses, corrupt
them? Isn't that true about horses and about any other kind
of animal? Yes it is true whether you and Anytus admit it or
not. It would certainly be a great stroke of good luck for the
young, if one man only corrupted them while all the rest im
proved them. But you have made it perfectly clear, Mele
tus, that you have never thought a bit about the young. . . .
(24c-25c)
It is impossible to sympathize with Meletus; he is a fool and
Socrates makes short work of him. Personalities aside, however,
it has always seemed to me that Meletus has the best of the case.
After all, how do people become virtuous or vicious? In our
society this question comes up in relation to the sources of crime
and delinquency. We usually assume that people go wrong be
cause of their environment, their upbringing. The Athenians
asked the same kind of question, but they more often asked it
about the virtuous. According to their view of human nature
criminals required no explanation; man is naturally disposed to
aggression and deceit. How, then, do men become virtuous? No
one teaches them, as horses are taught and broken to the bit.
Evidently virtue is something one acquires from environment, as
a result of living in a community; it is not taught by anybody;
in a sense it is taught by everybody. Ordinary decent behavior,
as opposed to the virtue of the saint or the prophets, is a function
of life in an ordinary civilized community. Meletus is fuzzily
groping toward the position given a full and explicit statement
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A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
by Protagoras in Plato's dialogue the Protagoras. Protagoras de
fines virtue as those qualities which men must possess to be mem
bers of a community; therefore virtue belongs to all the members
of the community, and they all teach it to one another. Men are
virtuous, in fact, as the result of the formal and informal pres
sures of the community; their acts are restrained by the law and
their private opinions are shaped by public opinion. We cannot,
therefore, pick out particular teachers of virtue; everyone teaches
it to his neighbor in the course of living a civilized life. The
standards of virtue are produced by a kind of unspoken agree
ment of all with all.
When Socrates asks Meletus about men who break horses,
he evidently means that it would be as reasonable to find ex
perts in the raising of men as in the raising of horses. By this he
implies that the community is not a reliable guide to virtue. In a
sense, "he accuses himself by his defense;" by showing that Mele
tus does not know anything about justice he implies that the
jury does not know anything about it either. If the many cannot
produce virtue in the young they probably cannot recognize it in
Socrates; Socrates, as it were, rejects their verdict in advance. So
Socrates proves himself a dangerous man.
In the whole length of his speech Socrates never tries to
prove any loyalty to the community. Instead he appeals to a
higher authority; his way of life, he says, was sent him by God.
The Delphic oracle had said that he was the wisest of men. This
oracle puzzled Socrates, who never had any pretensions to wis
dom; he then set out to examine his neighbors, to search for
wisdom ? but he found them all wanting. The oracle ? the
voice of God ? set Socrates upon his quest for meaning; as with
Meletus so with every man he met; none of them could tell him
why they did anything, or what they meant by goodness.
The Socratic examination is the most radical form of rejec
tion of the community. The community lays down the standards
of action; given the community standard of value the only rele
vant questions are questions of fact. The community says that
murder is wrong; the only question asked in court is: did this
man commit murder? Socrates asks: why is murder wrong?
What is wrongness? He rejects the whole fabric of opinions that
the community had gradually built up; he demands, in its place,
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a rational standard of action, a rational understanding of moral
ity. Socrates was not particularly antidemocratic; he denied the
authority of government altogether. So he is careful to point out
that he opposed both the democracy and the tyranny which suc
ceeded it. He was careful to fulfill the formal obligations which
the community laid upon him ? service in the army, for in
stance ? for he looked upon such things as a debt which must
be paid, but he rejects the moral authority of the city. "I am
fond of you, men of Athens, I even love you, but I shall obey the
God rather than you, and as long as I draw breath I shall never
leave off my philosophy, admonishing you and showing you to
yourselves." (29d) His mission is not obedience to the city, but
its moral reformation.
Socrates presents himself as a man of humility, but the
power of his personality comes from his demonic pride. He says
that he knows nothing except his own ignorance, but he claims
to be able to judge the ignorance of others, and judge it worse
than his own. He, who is on trial for impiety, claims to be the
only really pious man in the city. He mentions the young men
who so loved to watch him make fools of the most respectable
citizens; but he refuses to take any responsibility for the effect
his methods might have on those less gifted by nature than him
self. Throughout the Apology his defense is that he could not
have done otherwise, and that, if his disruption of the community
did harm, it is the community which is at fault.
Socrates' remarks on the fear of death are, I think, the final
touch in his rejection of the community. Death, he says, is not
necessarily a bad thing; it may even be the greatest human good.
In any case he is not to be deterred by death, about which he is
ignorant, from obedience to the God, which he knows is his duty.
By saying this Socrates implicitly says that he is beyond the
power of the community. He is not afraid of the strongest sanc
tion which the community can impose; if they kill him they, not
he, will be the loser.
The Apology, then, is not rhetoric but anti-rhetoric; Socrates
does not try to persuade the community of his loyalty; he de
fines the distance between himself and the community. He does
not try to win the case; he tries to lose it with honor. To me
there is something suicidal about the Apology ? or perhaps that
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A LECTURE ON PLATo's APOLOGY
is too strong; but one can see, I think, that Socrates is resigned.
That the vote was so close, he says, surprised him. It would have
been unreasonable if the case had turned out any other way.
When we talk about Socrates and his community we must
remember that the community was something very different for
him from what it is for us. For an Athenian gentleman like Soc
rates (and he was born to money and power, even if he gave
them up) the community was not the whole city; the many made
the decisions and passed the laws; in a sense they and they only
were the community. It was the agreement of the many, all with
all, which produced legality and justice; the few rich men were
governed by this community, but did not belong to it. The com
munity mediates between opposing rich men; community stand
ards are not self-generated by the community; the community
develops them by choosing between this rich man and that.
Under these circumstances, the idea of virtue which we
found implicit in Meletus and explicit in Protagoras looks very
different. Since the rich do not belong to the class which makes
the decisions, they do not participate in the moral community;
the decisions of the many are imposed on the few. Or else, by
force of rhetoric, the few manipulate the many. The many, as I
said, are dependent on the few for their whole picture of the
world around them; the issues are defined by the rhetoric of the
few. Under these conditions the relation between a gentleman
and the community to which he is supposed to be loyal becomes
more and more artificial. He is tied to the community without
being a member of it; to some extent, with the skill of rhetoric,
he himself can modify the terms of the relation.
For Socrates such a situation is totally irrational. Only an
individual can be rational; a body of men, never. When two in
dividuals appeal to a mass of men, the rational appeals to the ir
rational. Socrates, I think, is certainly undemocratic, but not be
cause of class prejudice. The few are no better than the many;
all parts of the city are equally responsible for this absurd situa
tion. Only Socrates, trying to turn men away from the opinion
of the many to a consideration of the nature of the good, is a
true statesman.
The Apology, then, is anti-rhetoric in two senses. It does not
ask for the consent of the many; it demands their agreement; the
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THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION
function of a speaker, says Socrates, is "to teach and to persuade."
And the foundation of the Socratic teaching is a distrust of rhet
oric and of the kind of community that sets rhetoric at the center
of its affairs.
What then is Socrates' aim? Certainly not acquittal; a Soc
rates before a popular court is sure to be convicted. An acquit
tal would have been a terrible anticlimax, almost a disaster. Soc
rates tells us the real meaning of the case only after he has been
condemned, in the second and third parts of the Apology.
These speeches, as I said, have no parallel in the literature;
the last part, in fact, is not in the strict sense rhetoric at all; since
the case has already been decided, it has no practical function.
At the end of his speech Socrates explains to the jury that con
demned him the meaning of his condemnation. He presents them
with his death as a kind of legacy, a memorial to the claim of
the man of reason to be superior to the opinions of the many.
The community drops away from him gradually; in the little
speech on the punishment he says that he is the most valuable
member of the community, that he should be rewarded; in his
final speech he says that he is more important than the whole
city put together. At the end Socrates says that he has, in fact,
won his case, that men will remember, not Socrates as a man
who lived in Athens, but Athens as the city which killed Socrates.
And in that, at least, he was right.
What, then, do we mean when we call the Apology a great
work of rhetoric? As a law court speech it was a failure; Socra
tes lost. In any case this is not a law court speech; it is not by
Socrates; it is by Plato. No one knows how close the Apology
comes to the speech which Socrates actually gave. It might be a
verbatim record; it might be free invention. Probably it is some
where between the two. Even if it were a verbatim record, how
ever, Plato's purpose in publishing it could not be, in the strict
sense, rhetorical; Socrates was already dead, beyond the reach
of law or politics.
We could consider the Apology a work of philosophy. It is
not only the defense of a particular philosopher; it is the defense
of the life of philosophy in general. I have talked about the im
plications of the Apology for the relation between the life of rea
son and the community, for the relation between a single act and
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A LECTURE ON PLATO'S APOLOGY
a whole life; those are philosophical implications. As a matter of
fact, since Plato was the sort of philosopher he was, his philoso
phy shows through every line of this speech. Consider, for ex
ample, the implications I found in Socrates' brief exchange with
Meletus. I would not have seen these implications if I had not
read the Protagoras. And, in a sense, the Apology is both an in
troduction to and a summary of the whole of Plato's philosophy.
I am inclined, however, to think of the Apology more as
history than philosophy. The trial of Socrates is an unexplained
historical event; it is not at all clear why Socrates was prosecuted
or why he was convicted. In any case the trial is, as an historical
event, too good to be true. Anyone who handles historical ma
terials over a period of time develops a sense for incidents which
are too dramatic or which fit together too neatly; these are the
incidents most likely to have been invented. The trial of Socrates
is exactly such an incident; if the evidence for it were not ex
ceptionally good I would be convinced that it was a legend fabri
cated by Plato's academy. The Apology shows the old philoso
pher, who has spent his life in the service of the state and of his
fellow man, abruptly and irrationally prosecuted for impiety
before a popular court incapable of understanding him, and go
ing calmly to his death; his martyrdom is the capstone to his
whole career. As Socrates says, it is not much life they have de
prived him of, and they have given him in exchange the im
mortality of a sacrifice.
If we see the case that way, however, it is because of Plato.
Socrates must have been prosecuted by those prosecutors in that
year for some reasons belonging to that time and those men.
But these particular reasons never appear in the Apology; they
are, for Plato, trivial. The real cause of Socrates' death is Socra
tes' life; the opinions of particular prosecutors and a particular
jury are insignificant in comparison to the catastrophic failure
which is the central fact of Athenian history: Athens' failure to
accept Socrates. So particular times and men disappear from
view; in the Apology the trial of Socrates is a dramatic expression
of the universal issue of politics: the confrontation of philosopher
and community.
And this, in turn, is consistent with the Platonic view of
history. Nothing for Plato can be learned from the particular;
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THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL EDUCATION
what is important is the universal latent in particular events. Not
Socrates and Anytus, but philosopher and politician; this is the
real confrontation. So the Platonic Apology is the truest history
of the trial ? much truer than any verbatim account ? because
it shows us the true meaning of the case. That Plato has imposed
upon the world his view of the case so completely that it is now
impossible to construct any other, is in itself a triumph of a cer
tain kind of rhetoric: the rhetoric of a philosopher writing history.
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