In both the Aeschylus and The Trial and Death of Socrates the Greeks define a good death as a just death, and by the same token a good life was a just life. The two parental deaths in Aeschylus display one of each side. The murder of Agamemnon was the more permissible of the two, as Clytemnestra was not Agamemnon’s blood and was seeking her own justice. Her murder, however, is where the murkiness lies. She was also murdered in the name of vigilante justice, but by her own blood. This is an unforgivable injustice. In conveying the judicial struggle in defining that murder as just or unjust serves to show the Greeks understanding of the complicated nature of justice. It also conveys the belief that that which is just for one is not necessarily just for all. In the same way, a just action at one moment of a persons life is not unilaterally just. The Furies at one time were able to execute their unilateral justice in chasing down family killers, but in …show more content…
They are unjust because they were both done out of spite, without the pursuit of justice. A secondary just death would be the death of Socrates in the eyes of the Greek people. After giving him ample time to defend himself, and even allowing him a secondary vote, he still is found guilty by his peers. This speaks to the importance of a “good life” being good for the whole. The Greek people found him to be a corruptor of the minds of the young around him, however Socrates did not see himself that way. Socrates’s beliefs about death are also telling of the Greeks belief system. If it was true that “a good man cannot be harmed in life or in death” (Apology 42) than it is true that by acting justly through the legal system, they will do no harm to the “good man” that Socrates believes himself to be. These coupled together shows the continuous relationship between human and godly decisions set up in
Upon reading Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, Socrates strongly held views on the relationship between morality and laws become apparent to the reader. Equally, Socrates makes clear why laws should be followed and why disobedience to the law is rarely justified.
Living in a democracy, everyone is exposed through television and other various forms of media everyday to numerous trials by jury. Usually they are rarely given a second thought, but every once in a while along comes a specific trial which captures the attention of the entire country. This goes the same for trials throughout centuries in our past. Although they did not have the same forms of media as in this, modern era, there were still specific trials in which everyone knew about. One trial that stands out is the one against the great philosopher Socrates. Accused of corrupting the youth, being an atheist, and believing in other gods, Socrates faced trial by jury. The early forms of democracy
Throughout the history of man there has always existed a sort of rule pertaining to retribution for just and unjust acts. For the just came rewards, and for the unjust came punishments. This has been a law as old as time. One philosophy about the treatment of the unjust is most controversial in modern time and throughout our history; which is is the ethical decision of a death penalty. This controversial issue of punishment by death has been going on for centuries. It dates back to as early as 399 B.C.E., to when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for his “corruption of the youth” and “impiety”.
In the trial of Socrates, I juror number 307, Ryan Callahan vote the defendant is Not Guilty on the first charge of Corrupting the youth. My justifications for this vote are as follows. Socrates didn 't corrupt the youth, he just shared his ideas with them and they in turn chose the path to take these ideas. Part of understanding this case is understand the time in which the case was held. This time being 399 B.C., a time in which Athens was a free democratic city, a town which prided itself at the time on the fact that its citizens had much freedom, particularly freedom of speech. Socrates believed that only people who were educated should rule the people, which meant that people were not capable of government participation
Socrates was a great philosopher of the Greek world. He was quite an atypical and distinctive person. Being different from all the other philosophers of the land, Socrates was teaching his students ideas totally out of the ordinary from what the society believed was right. As a result, he displeased many people so much that they decided to get rid of him. Socrates was put to trial, accused of spoiling the youth of Athens, tried and sentenced to death. His personal defense is described in works two of his students: Xenophon and Plato. Both of them wrote papers called Apology, which is the Greek word for “defense”. In this essay I used Apology by Plato as the main resource, since it contents a more full account of the trial of Socrates and
The portrayal of Socrates, through the book “the trial and death of Socrates” is one that has created a fairly controversial character in Western history. In many ways, Socrates changed the idea of common philosophy in ancient Greece; he transformed their view on philosophy from a study of why the way things are, into a consideration man. Specifically, he analyzed the virtue and health of the human soul. Along side commending Socrates for his strong beliefs, and having the courage to stand by those convictions, Socrates can be commended for many other desirable characteristics. Some of those can include being the first martyr to die for his philosophical beliefs and having the courage to challenge indoctrinated cultural norms is part of
In Plato’s: The Apology Socrates was charged and put on trial for impiety, as well as accused of committing many other crimes. I will first explain the most important issues of why Socrates was sent to death. Then I will argue the position that Socrates is innocent, and should not be have been found guilty.
The execution of Socrates is not justified. The charges that were brought against Socrates had taught all his adult life, without molestation, in a state that was well known for its democracy and fairness. The Athenians were not brutal people and executions were rare. Socrates had to drink a poisonous hemlock in order to die, a non-brutal method of death. We must understand Athens past in order to make judgment. I believe that the form of punishment was very extreme in this impressionable city and very uncommon and unalike the portrayed view of the typical Athenian. Socrates
In order to question and reassess Thrasymachus’ view of justice, in this essay, I will first bring up cases for Thrasymachus being accused of being contradictory and inconsistent in his view for justice. For the second part of the essay, I will provide a counterargument in order to prove Thrasymachus’ consistency followed by a discussion on Socrates’ own contradiction in regards to his account of the city.
Socrates was accused of being a sophist because he was "engaging in inquiries into things beneath the earth and in the heavens, of making the weaker argument appear the stronger," and "teaching others these same things." (Apology, Plato, Philosophic Classics page 21) Socrates is also accused of denying the existence of the gods, and corrupting the youth. Socrates goes about trying to prove his innocence. The jury that Socrates was tried by was made up of 501 Athenian citizens of all classes of society. While he fails to convince the Athenian jury of his innocence, he does a wonderful job in this effort. I personally believe that Socrates is innocent, and that the Athenian jury made the wrong decision.
Socrates was a moral philosopher who was accused of impiety and was about to be tried for a crime, the nature of which no one seemed to understand. The trial and death of Socrates has four dialogs known as the Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo which describes the process of Socrates’ controversial and insightful trial that raises the questions about human morality. Within the story we learned that the relationship between morality and religion might not be as clear-cut as some might think, Socrates forces the witnesses of his trial as well as ourselves to come to conclusions which result in a paradox that conflicts with the individual beliefs of his audience. In the event in which, Socrates poses a question to himself and Euthyphro, an attempt to answer the question "What is piety?" It has a specific tie to the events in “The Trial and Death of Socrates”, for Socrates had been accused of impiety and was about to be tried for the crime of heresy. The Euthyphro dialogue was written twenty-four centuries ago, and its conclusion is devastating for the whole idea that holiness and morality are very well connected. The idea that, “if God does not make something good by commanding it, but rather instead identifies that which is good, what measurement of morality does he use to make this judgment?” If something is right because god commands it, then it follows that something would be just as right if God instructed differently. If god declares that it is right to
In Plato’s works Apology and Crito there is an attempt by Socrates to defend himself in court and defend his choice to receive the death penalty when found guilty. Although he makes very valid and strong arguments throughout one can only wonder why such a wise person would choose death over life. The following essay will analyze three quotes from Apology and Crito, find the correlation between them, and reveal any flaws that may exsist inside these arguments made by Socrates.
In most circumstances ending the life of a criminal as their punishment usually reflects the magnitude of the crimes that they committed, crimes that often involve the deaths of others or equally heinous actions, yet one historical example stands out for not following this rule. In 399 BC, in Athens, Greece, two men put a meek philosopher named Socrates on trial for two crimes he purportedly committed: not following state gods and corrupting the youth. These charges alleged against Socrates reflected the general sentiment of Athenians regarding Socrates; namely that he was an atheistic charlatan. The jury found Socrates guilty of these crimes and executed, a punishment that does not logically befit the supposed crimes that he committed. No sane or logical jury would find him guilty of such vague claims, especially in such a vehemently democratic polis as Athens, and they would never have executed Socrates for such meager offenses, nonetheless he was. Execution was especially unnecessary because Socrates himself was on the verge of death; he was in his seventies in the Greek era, so he was bound to die soon anyways. The central focus, then, is of understanding how on Earth the birthplace of democracy could have gone so awry and when they tried, convicted, and executed Socrates. Athens sentenced Socrates to death because his beliefs were against the flow of the changing Athenian ideological landscape, people regarded him as a pompous, elitist charlatan who impugned their core
Socrates, being known for stirring up arguments amongst the city’s “wisest” men, grew widely unpopular in the community. This unpopularity, and many other troubles led Socrates to be accused and sentenced to trial for corrupting the youth, and of not believing in the Gods of the city. During Socrates’ trial, he brings up arguments about why we should not fear death, just as he does not. In this essay I will cover Socrates’ two arguments about death, their inconsistencies, and explain why Socrates changed his position about death towards the end of the trial. While Socrates is being held
In his Apology, Plato recounted the trial that led to the execution of his friend and mentor, Socrates. The account revealed that values of Socrates’ accusers and his own fundamentally differed, and that they had been angered because he tried to prove that they had misplaced theirs. Those differences created conflict between the two parties that culminated in his trial. With the understanding that a jury condemned Socrates to death and his defense nevertheless pleased him because he gave it truthfully, it is most sensible to call it a good defense because he felt it was the best that he could do.