I really enjoyed Plato’s Apology. Reading it slowly yesterday afternoon helped me comprehend the language. Re-reading it today brought out a much greater meaning from the text.
I was especially surprised on the second reading how much humor was present in the text, such as when Socrates asks for the indulgence of speaking in his “native tongue” as a philosopher because he’s a stranger to being on trial. One crack – Meletus, that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself – wouldn’t have been out of place in a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast.
I think what impacted me the most was Socrates unswerving commitment to continuing his divine mission, even in the face of death: “…I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from this practice and teaching of philosophy…” Passages like that couldn’t help but remind me of Saint Paul’s exclamation to the Corinthians, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16, NIV)
Popular culture, the media, the workplace, and the political parties are always ready to martyr people who don’t declare alliance to “the cause.” I think that the point to Socrates is that you have to be true to who you are and what you’re about. After all, “For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or anything but of disgrace.”
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3 comments:
Where is that last quote from? The last few sentences? Is that from Plato's apology?
Yes, it's from The Apology.
You are the only other person I've ever heard say something like that! When I was taking one of my Greek Lit. courses in college I was struck by the very same thought.
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