Plato: Apology

This is a study of sophía from the passage 20d-21a in Plato’s Apology. There, Socrates tries to understand what kind of wisdom he would have, since the Oracle of Delphi stated that no one would be wiser than him. An investigation of historical aspects was made to understand the trial of Socrates and conviction, also a mapping of sophía’s main uses through the corpus platonicum was built, as well an overview of the usage of this concept by others greek authors. (...) In addition, a side of the figure of Socrates that has been given little attention was perceived, becoming important to explain the influence of magical thinking on his philosophy and his relationship with shamanism. (shrink)

Socrates ́ thought of justice and obedience to laws is moti- vated by a will to avoid the destructive effects of Sophistic criti- cisms and theories of laws. He thus requires–against theories of natural law–an almost absolute obedience to the law, as far as this law respects the legal system of the city. But, against legal positivism, Socrates would not admit that a law is just simply because it is a law: he is looking for the true Just. However, as (...) often in Socratic philosophy, Socrates cannot accept that two equally justified and legitimate rights or moral values conflict. (shrink)

In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Socrates claims that any just person who becomes involved in politics will be destroyed by the “multitude” and that the philosopher must therefore lead a private life. I argue that Socrates’ elaboration of his relation to the political community, especially in the trial of the generals of Arginusae and the arrest of Leon, raises more questions than a cursory reading can answer both with respect to the logical structure of the argument in the Apology and (...) in comparison with other Socratic formulationsof the relation of philosophy and the city. Far from demonstrating the incompatibility of philosophy and politics, Socrates in the Apology and other dialogues limns the features of a conception of political life that incorporates philosophical principles of moderation anddialectical examination into an understanding of politics directed towards the moral and intellectual development of the citizens. (shrink)

After he has been condemned to death, Socrates spends a few minutes talking to the jurors before he is taken away. First, he rebukes those who voted against him for resorting to using the court to kill him when they could have waited and let nature do the same job very soon anyhow, for Socrates is an old man. He next contrasts the evils to which his accusers have resorted to his own unbending resolve never to resort to shameful actions, (...) even though in this case such things might have saved his life. Then he prophesies to those jurors that younger men will make their lives far more difficult than ever Socrates did, and thus strips from them any notion they may have had that they gained anything by condemning him. (shrink)

In contemporary positive law there are legal institutions, such as conscientious objection in the context of military service or “conscience clauses” in medical law, which for the sake of respect for judgments of conscience aim at restricting legal obligations. Such restrictions are postulated to protect human freedom in general. On the basis of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy, it shall be argued that human dignity, understood as the existential perfection of a human being based on special unity, provides a foundation for imposing (...) limitations on the scope of legal obligations in general. Human freedom plays a crucial role in understanding dignity as perfection based on the special individuality of a personal being, which in turn is based on the free choice to pursue a unique way of life. Therefore, Aquinas’ argumentation is, at its core, liberal – the perfection rather than the imperfection of a human being underlies the requirement to limit legal obligations. Dignity understood as the special unity of a person also provides the basis for limiting obligations in the case of conscientious objection; however, in that case, such limitations aim at safeguarding internal integrity rather than the individualisation of a given way of life. _This project was financed with funds from the National Science Centre allocated on the basis of the decision number DEC-2013/09/B/HS5/04232._. (shrink)

A reply to Melissa Lane's "Antianarchia: interpreting political thought in Plato" In these comments I focus on how to think of antianarchia as an element of Plato's political thought, and in doing so raise some methodological questions about how to read Plato’s dialogues, focusing on what is involved in attributing views to Plato in general.

This paper defends Socrates' argument that death is one of two things against standard objections.

Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes exposed in the Apology. These include the relation of philosophy to democracy, rhetoric, politics, or society in general, and the overarching question of what comprises the philosophic life.

This book is a quest for the real Plato, forever hiding behind the veil of drama. The quest, as the subtitle indicates, is Cartesian in that it looks for Plato independently of the prevailing paradigms on where we are supposed to find him. The result of the quest is a complete pedagogical platform on Plato. This does not mean that the book leaves nothing out, covering all the dialogues and all the themes, but that it provides the full intellectual apparatus (...) for doing just that. It consists of two parts. The first is a general orientation in three chapters, one each pertaining to the life, thought, and works of Plato. The second is a dialogic companion covering the four dialogues built around the last days of Socrates, with a separate chapter devoted to each: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. (shrink)

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal ofApology30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything else good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on εἶναι in Plato and Aristotle (...) to γίγνεσθαι, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completableby adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modern verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use can be said to have existential meaning. (shrink)

A persistent theme in the Vitae of Aesop, Archilochus, and Homer, and in Plato's Apology, is the righteous poet brought to trial by a corrupt society that has found him and his poetry intolerable. As society condemns the poet, it condemns itself, and is punished following the poet's punishment ; often the society then grants a hero cult to the poet.

The Fall 2000 issue of The Owl of Minerva published the papers presented to a Hegel Society of America session at the 1998 World Congress of Philosophy held in Boston. In the “Special Editor’s Introduction” to this issue, I inadvertently failed to give credit where credit was richly due. The topic for the session in question was proposed to the Executive Committee of the Hegel Society of America by Dr. Riccardo Pozzo of the Catholic University of America, and was selected (...) in competition with others. Dr. Pozzo also authored the public call for papers, assembled the committee for blind review, organized, and chaired this very successful session. The Hegel Society is very grateful for his generous contribution and I wish to apologize for my oversight in failing to mention it. (shrink)