--- date: '2023-11-09' description: On Plato's Apology. id: Questions about Apology modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:10 GMT-04:00 tags: - philosophy - fruit - philos1aa3 title: Questions about Apology created: '2023-11-09' published: '2023-11-09' pageLayout: default slug: posts/Questions-about-Apology permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/posts/Questions-about-Apology.md generator: quartz: v4.6.0 hostedProvider: Cloudflare baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt --- > \[!question\]- Question > > A voice turned Socrates away from politics. Wisely, as Socrates sees it. “Do you really imagine I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public life?” (42) You cannot serve both justice and the state. “He who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one”—that is, must lead a private, not a public life, if he is to survive. (41) > > 1. Why does Socrates say this? What reasons can you find (whether in Apology or elsewhere) for his position? Summarise and explain in your own words. > 2. Is the idea one you find plausible or implausible? Explain why you take your view. In Plato’s [[thoughts/Plato#Apology|Apology]], Socrates draws a boundary between pursuing a life of justice and engaging in politics. He holds that a life devoted to righteousness is at odds with political office: _“He who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one”_ (32a). Socrates gives two reasons for this, one about survival and one about service. I find the first persuasive for Athens and implausible as a general rule, and the second is what keeps his position from being the selfish withdrawal it can look like. [[thoughts/Socrates|Socrates]] first ascribes his abstention to a divine sign, “a kind of voice” that “always forbids but never commands” and “deters me from being a politician” (31d). He then gives the sign a reason he endorses: “if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself” (31d-e). The reason is general. No man who honestly opposes “the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a state” will save his life (31e). The Athenian assembly decided by majority, and a citizen who stood against the majority in a public role stood against the body that could put him to death. He has evidence from his own life, and the two episodes are what make his rhetorical question, “Do you really imagine I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public life?” (32e), more than a guess. The one time he held office, as a member of the Council in 406 BC, he alone opposed the illegal collective trial of the generals after Arginusae, while the orators threatened to impeach and arrest him (32b-c). Under the Thirty, he was ordered with four others to arrest Leon of Salamis for execution and went home instead; he says he would probably have been killed for it if the Thirty had not fallen soon after (32c-d). In both cases, holding a public role put him where he had to choose between doing injustice and dying. His mission comes from a different source. Socrates recounts the Oracle at Delphi’s answer that “no man \[is\] wiser” than he, and his attempt to refute it by questioning those reputed wise. None could give satisfactory answers, which led him to see that his wisdom lay in recognising his own ignorance (21a-23b). He took up the task of urging others to examine their lives (23b-c), summed up in “the unexamined life is not worth living” (38a). Because “injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonourable” (29b), and because doing injustice harms the soul of the one who does it, he would rather die than compromise (30b-c, 38e-39b). His trial shows this: he would not retract his philosophy to save himself. The second reason answers the charge that this is selfish. Socrates claims his private questioning is the greatest service he can do the city. He is the gadfly that the god attached to Athens, “a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size,” to rouse it (30e), and he spent his life going to each citizen privately to persuade them to care for virtue before possessions (36c). On his account the private station is a public service carried out one conversation at a time, and it is the only kind he could keep doing without being killed. I find the survival claim plausible for Athens and implausible as a rule. It depends on institutions in which the majority could execute a dissenter, as it finally did him. Constitutional states built term limits, independent courts and protections for dissent largely so that a person can oppose the majority from a public role without dying for it. Socrates’ own record also cuts against a strict separation. He did hold office, and his two refusals are acts of a public life lived with integrity; he survived the second by the luck of the Thirty’s fall. What his record shows is that office raises the price of integrity, not that the two are incompatible. The gadfly argument is stronger, but it measures success by the souls improved and the integrity kept, not by what changes in the city’s laws. Martin Luther King Jr. cites Socrates twice in the Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) as his model of creative tension and civil disobedience (Strauss). King held no office either, but he took the gadfly’s questioning into the street and aimed it at the law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlived him. His assassination in 1968 is a reminder that Socrates’ warning about survival was not wrong. It also shows the gadfly can work through politics rather than beside it. [[thoughts/Plato|Plato]]’s Apology makes a persuasive case that a just person in Athens’ public life risked death, and that private questioning can serve the city. It does not show that withdrawal from political life is the only path for a philosopher who wants to keep their integrity. A life worth living, on my view, balances moral integrity with political engagement, and Socrates’ own life, the Council seat and the refusal under the Thirty included, is closer to that balance than his conclusion admits. ### References Plato. (n.d.). Apology. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Retrieved from . Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Background of the trial - Socrates. Retrieved from Strauss, B. (n.d.). Martin Luther King Jr. and Socrates. Retrieved from