Contemporary Inheritance of Greek Political Thought in Plato\'s Apology

Plato

It is possible to read Plato's Apology as the best extant textual representation of the legacy of Athens in the fifth century BCE in law and politics. The fact is that the Athenians, although they voted to put Socrates to death, might very well agree on principle with this evaluation. The Apology is, after all, a representation of the Athenian system of trial by jury, and it is worth recalling that this judicial system was considered to be a founding myth of Athens itself. Earlier in the century, roughly a decade before Socrates was born, the tragedian Aeschylus in the Oresteia would represent the mythological and divinely-sanctioned origins of the Athenian jury trial, as a replacement for the endlessly bloody cycle of the lex talionis, when the goddess Athena invites a group of Athenian citizens to sit in judgment on Orestes, who killed his mother in revenge for her murder of his father, and vote on his guilt or innocence. It is therefore possible to view Plato's Apology as a representation of the process in which Athens regarded with civic pride and even religious reverence, and to view it as a "warts and all"-style portrait of the centerpiece of the Greek political system.

The irony, of course, is that the Apology does not represent the jury trial as perfect: Socrates is convicted. (This seems to have been emphasized even in mythic representations of the jury system: in the Oresteia Aeschylus represents the first trial as having ended in a tie-vote, with the tie broken by the divine intervention of Athena herself.) But we will see through a closer examination of the text that Plato is not calling into question the system itself. It is worth beginning with the charges against Socrates, which he summarizes:

And now I will try to defend myself against them: these new accusers must also have their affidavit read. What do they say? Something of this sort: - That Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and has other new divinities of his own.[footnoteRef:0] [0: Plato. The Apology. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. (MIT: Internet Classics Archive, 2009). http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html]

Although the system of formal charge, and public trial with the defendant present and permitted to speak in his own defense, is entirely familiar in 2014, it is worth noting that the charges against Socrates might not have any precise parallel in a present day democratic government. However, until 2008, the UK did maintain official blasphemy laws, and it might be possible to understand the prosecution of Socrates for some kind of impiety against state-sanctioned religion if one recollects the successful 1977 blasphemous libel lawsuit of Mary Whitehouse against a magazine editor who had published material suggesting Jesus was homosexual. In the trial of Socrates, Meletus and Anytus are playing the role of Mary Whitehouse -- they have officially accused Socrates of an impiety that corrupts the young and that affronts what is held sacred by the state itself.

Socrates is permitted, as in a contemporary jury trial, to cross-examine his accusers. Here, Socrates' defense seems quite successful by our own standards. He asks Meletus whether Meletus thinks that Socrates' corruption of the Athenian youth was intentional -- when Meletus states that he does think so, Socrates follows up by noting that "you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me…but you indicted me in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment," suggesting that the motives for the prosecution may indeed have nothing to do with the welfare of the youth, when Meletus has done nothing in daily life to improve it.[footnoteRef:1] In other words, Socrates implicates Meletus in a passive participation in the same process of corruption, and hopes to demonstrate to the jury the hypocrisy of his accuser. [1: Ibid.]

The additional charge against Socrates occasions further cross-examination, and the reader learns that, in dialogue, what Meletus claims of Socrates is substantially different from the apparent charge: Meletus states in cross examination that he believes Socrates to be "a complete atheist." [footnoteRef:2] Socrates notes the total contradiction here, but defends himself by stating that, as a philosopher, his necessary approach is one of critical examination of received truths. This works up to Socrates's memorable metaphor, offered in his own defense, of his role in Athenian society: [2: Ibid.]

For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the state and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. And as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise you to spare me. I dare say that you may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and you may think that if you were to strike me dead, as Anytus advises, which you easily might, then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives you another gadfly.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Ibid.]

In terms of contemporary resonance, and a demonstration of the inheritance of the Greek tradition in current legal and political trends, we can understand Socrates's "gadfly" metaphor if we consider its relevance to notions of the freedom of the press. After all, the UK's intervention with the Guardian newspaper regarding the documents leaked by Edward Snowden has proceeded in precisely the same way as the trial of Socrates: the charge is that the newspaper is engaged in activity fundamentally harmful to the state, but the defense is that the newspaper serves as a "gadfly" to spur the public to critical examination and debate. Although Socrates will ultimately lose the case, it is worth noting that part of the value of Plato's Apology is that it includes these arguments for the role of a citizen, and implicitly valorizes them as a valuable contribution to the political process.