Alan Saunders: Hello, I'm Alan Saunders and welcome to the summer season of The Philosopher's Zone, in which we're visiting some thoughtful moments from the last year of zoning.

And we begin with a great speech. Now philosophers are not on the whole great speech makers. Some of them have been great teachers, of course, holding a lecture room in thrall, but I don't think that really counts as making a speech. And a lot of them have spent most of their time just sitting alone in a room, thinking and writing.

But there is at least one great speech in the history of philosophy, and it was delivered in Athens in the year 399 BC.

Reading: The Apology of Socrates

How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was, so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many falsehoods told by them, there was one which quite amazed me; I mean when they said that you should be upon your guard and not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of my eloquence. To say this, when they were certain to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to be anything but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shameless, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for if such is their meaning, I admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs! Well, as I was saying, they have scarcely spoken the truth at all; but from me you shall hear the whole truth: not, however, delivered after their manner in a set oration duly ornamented with words and phrases. No, by heaven! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the moment; for I am confident in the justice of my cause: at my time of life I ought not to be appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator, let no one expect it of me. And I must beg of you to grant me a favour. If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would accuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country. Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good, but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

Alan Saunders: This is how the great philosopher Socrates began the speech that is known as his Apology. We know about it, thanks to his student Plato, but why is it called the Apology? To find out about this and much else, I spoke to Rick Benitez, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, and I began by asking him: This might be called the Apology, but Socrates certainly isn't saying sorry, is he?

Rick Benitez: The word means 'defence'. Sometimes they used to have the old expression 'apologia pro sua vita', and so this is 'in defence of my life'. And Socrates is giving his defence in court; it's a legal term.

Alan Saunders: Now it's a fairly long speech; in the translation from which I've been working it's about 30 pages. Do we really know that that is what he said, because we have this from Plato, his pupil, but presumably Plato wasn't there taking shorthand.

Rick Benitez: Plato was there, so that's one of the important bits of evidence that we have. We know from ancient reports that there were a number of people who wrote versions of the Apology of Socrates, and we have two of them extant, one by Plato and one by Xenophon. Plato was there, and so that gives a certain preference to that version. But Xenophon's version backs up the Platonic version in a number of important respects: it backs up the charges against him, it backs up the dialogue with Meletus, the sort of interrogation of Meletus, or cross-examination; it backs up the views about visiting the Delphic Oracle and whether or not anyone was wiser than Socrates; and it backs up many things about Socrates' ordinary practice of questioning other people and his way of speaking at the trial.

So that gives us some reason in favour of treating the speech as at least faithful to what was said at the trial.

Alan Saunders: OK, we'll go into some of that detail later, but let's just start with the context. What is the political and the juridical situation in which Socrates finds himself? Why is he up before the court?

Rick Benitez: Socrates, in his earlier activity, was very critical of democracy, and he was critical of democracy at a time when Athenian democracy could stand it. But after the capitulation to Sparta, and after a ruthless and bloodthirsty oligarchy was emplaced in Athens—it was so ruthless it only lasted three years—any people who were enemies, or appeared to be enemies of the democracy were in a tricky situation. And when democracy was restored in Athens, Socrates was politically suspect as a critic of democracy, and some of the people that he had associated with were among the actual tyrants in this regime, the oligarchical machine.

Alan Saunders: And we shouldn't assume that he's up there in front of a judge and jury, it's a very different set-up, isn't it?

Rick Benitez: He's in front of a jury, but it's a jury of 500, so the way in which the jury responds to you... first of all also a lot of people by our standards would have been excluded from such a jury, because they know Socrates, they're acquainted with him, they're friends and enemies of him. They're chosen by lot, so it's not as if you can sort of get into the jury just because you dislike or like Socrates, but it's enough people to be swayed one way or another, more like the way the political electorate is swayed.

Alan Saunders: And what's the charge? What is the precise charge?

Rick Benitez: There's a general charge that is brought on which is impiety, and this charge has two specific counts: one of the counts is that he doesn't acknowledge the gods of the state, that is Athens, and he supplants them with other gods of his own devising. The second charge, separate from that, is that he corrupts the young. Both of these are impious activities and they go as counts under the general charge of impiety.

Alan Saunders: How was he corrupting the young? By his teachings, a philosopher?

Rick Benitez: That's the allegation against him. One of the ways it's usually put is that he made the worse argument defeat the better argument, and by that what's means is that he made young people question the received opinions of their fathers, their mothers, the statesmen, the reputable people of Athens, and questioned them in a way that seems to defeat them.

Alan Saunders: That's interesting, because making the worse argument appear the better argument, is what we today call sophistry, and of course there were philosophers called Sophists and he was very opposed to them.

Rick Benitez: Socrates may have been very opposed to them but he was very similar to them in his methods and his approach, in fact that the comic poet, Aristophanes, lampooned him as the lead Sophist in Clouds.

Alan Saunders: OK, so Socrates is up before this very large jury and he's delivering his speech, and he begins with rather elaborate professions of modesty about his lack of eloquence. What's going on there?

Rick Benitez: I think that's one of the really beautiful features of the speech itself. One of the things he wants to show is that he isn't like those people who buy speeches from very polished speechwriters, like Lyceus, to get themselves off in court. So he makes a big pretence of his modesty and his need to speak plainly. But in fact, rhetorically his speech is very powerful, and very styled. What's interesting is that it doesn't get him off. It's not actually designed to get him off the hook, so in one sense he beats the rhetoricians at their own game by showing that he can do what they do, but not merely for the sake of victory.

Alan Saunders: So is he really talking to the jury or is he talking to history?

Rick Benitez: That's a very interesting question. I've actually never thought of it quite that way; I think he must be talking to history in part, yes.

Alan Saunders: Now if we come to the rest of the speech, how does he represent himself in terms of his profession? What does he say he's doing?

Rick Benitez: He actually claims that he doesn't teach people at all, he's not an educator, and he doesn't teach people to make the worse argument appear better. If he does anything wrong, he pleads ignorance about it, and he says, 'Instruct me', or 'Educate me about that.' What he's doing in his activity is trying to understand, he says, a particular claim that was made by the Delphic Oracle about him. His friend Chaerephon visited Delphi and asked the question of the oracle, 'Is anyone wiser than Socrates?' And the oracle replied 'No one.'

Alan Saunders: Now we should explain the Delphic Oracle, explain to us the set-up. If I go to visit the oracle, it's not like dialling a fortune-teller on my mobile; what exactly do I do?

Rick Benitez: It's a very interesting kind of thing. What happens is that there is a priestess who's the priestess of the Pythian Apollo, who prophecies in Sibylline utterances, and then there's also an interpreter, or exegete, who represents what it is that the priestess is saying.

Alan Saunders: And when you say 'Sibylline,' you mean somewhat mysterious and difficult to understand.

Rick Benitez: That's right. The Delphic utterances are notoriously difficult to understand. And they're cryptic. Even when you get them from the exegete— that is, the person who explains what's meant by the priestess— they're hard to understand. And so when the oracle says that no-one is wiser than Socrates, it's not clear what's meant, and Socrates said it certainly wasn't clear to him, because he knew that he wasn't wise at all. And so he thought that what he must do if he was to be pious and to understand the oracle rightly, was to try to see in what sense it was the case that he was wiser.

Alan Saunders: I'm talking to Rick Benitez from the University of Sydney about the Apology: the great speech delivered in 399 BC by Socrates, when he was on trial for his life. So was Socrates the wisest man in Athens? To find out, he investigated all sorts of sectors of Athenian society, from the orators to the craftsmen.

Rick Benitez: He looks at all the kind of people who have a reputation for knowing something. Some of them have lots of knowledge in a very special area—these are the craftsmen particularly—and he admits that they know lots of things that he doesn't know. But he thinks the trouble there is that their wisdom in the smaller area leads them to think they're wise in all of the areas. And so they have a pretence of wisdom. And Socrates thinks, 'Which would I prefer? To be wise with their knowledge, and ignorant with their ignorance, or generally ignorant, as I am, not thinking that I know what I don't know?' And he prefers the latter.

Alan Saunders: So he emerges, does he, agreeing with the oracle?

Rick Benitez: Ultimately he does. But he thinks that the interesting interpretation is... he thinks that the wisdom is a human wisdom. It's the wisdom of modesty—like you said at the beginning of his speech—the wisdom to admit that you don't know.

Alan Saunders: Which is not a good way of making yourself popular, even today.

Rick Benitez: No, it's not.

Alan Saunders: Now there is a scene in the Apology where he, as it were, cross-examines one of his accusers, Meletus. Tell us what's going on there.

Rick Benitez: Well, Meletus is actually bringing the prosecution case in court, and Socrates wants to show, by cross-examination, that Meletus really doesn't understand the charges against Socrates, he really doesn't have a care for them; what's behind it is just a motivation that Athens be rid of this pest. And I think he shows that quite well.

Alan Saunders: And so does Meletus retire defeated?

Rick Benitez: Well, Meletus doesn't admit defeat, and I think that in the eyes of the jurors who don't perhaps understand the cross-examination so well, Socrates comes across as an arrogant questioner, he doesn't show due respect for Meletus' position. So in those ways, he sort of pays out the rope and lets Socrates show the kind of person he is, and hopes that that will be enough to convict him.

Alan Saunders: And in the end, he refuses to entreat the jury. He actually says, 'I'm not going to entreat you.' Why is this?

Rick Benitez: Well he thinks that one of the things that speech-givers generally did was to gratify audiences, and I actually think Socrates was an extremist in this way. I think he thinks that the best way to be a good friend to another person is to pick them up on the things that they do wrong, and to point out their faults and to criticise them when they haven't done enough, and not to gratify them or be polite to them. I think he's too extreme about that, but he simply refuses to gratify the Athenian jury.

Alan Saunders: And he also refuses, as it were, to cop a plea bargain, which he says, 'I don't want you to exile me.'

Rick Benitez: That's right. Well there's a couple of things that are interesting about that. If you read the biography of him in Diogenes Laertius, you see that one of the things that he was reputed to have said about the plea bargain and exile was that he said, 'Well can you exile me to any place where I can escape death?' So he really didn't think that death was necessarily... it's going to come one day or another, and he's already 70 years old when the court case comes against him.

Alan Saunders: So, I asked you earlier whether he was talking to the jury or talking to history, but should we see him as depicting himself as an actor in a vast and important historical drama, and he actually wants to die: that is the conclusion, that is the catastrophe of the drama?

Rick Benitez: I think it's an overstatement that he wants to die. He knows he's going to die; he thinks there are things more valuable than life or death. One of the most beautiful images in the speech that he gives, he says 'From the day that a person is born, he's pursued by two runners: Death and Evil, and no-one can outrun Death forever, but if he's lucky, a man can out-run Evil.' And this is his aim; he especially wants to be able to acquit himself—that is, in his whole life—without having done evil. So it doesn't matter to him so much that he's going to die. He doesn't want to die, but if death comes as a result of his choosing what he thinks is the right path, so be it.

Alan Saunders: He's found guilty. He is sentenced to death. Do we know anything about how the process would have proceeded from there?

Rick Benitez: Oh yes, he was taken to prison, and he was to be executed in a timely manner but we know from Plato's Dialogues, the Phaedo in particular, that there was a delay because the Athenians have an annual voyage to Crete, to Minos, that commemorates the voyage of Theseus. The Athenians used to pay tribute of maidens and young men to Crete, and Theseus rescued them and killed the Minotaur, so there was this commemorative and religious occasion. And no-one was allowed to be executed, and it happened to fall at the time of Socrates' imprisonment. So he could only be executed after those commemorative celebrations were over.

Alan Saunders: So he spends a little while on Death Row, as it were, and then he takes hemlock; was that the standard Athenian method of execution?

Rick Benitez: That was one method of execution, but if the accounts of the way in which Socrates died in Plato's Phaedo were anything like accurate, there must have been other things mixed into the brew as well, because hemlock poisoning is a very convulsive, violent way of dying, and in the story at any rate, Socrates dies quite peacefully.

Alan Saunders: With the final words I think, 'Tell Crito I owe a cock to Asclepius.'

Rick Benitez: That's right.

Alan Saunders: Asclepius being the god of healing, and he has now been healed of what, the disease of life?

Rick Benitez: That's the usual interpretation, indeed, that he thinks life is a bit like a disease, and to die is to go to a better place.

Alan Saunders: Just finally, is it just possible that after all that, Socrates was in fact guilty as charged; they got him bang to rights?

Rick Benitez: You know, it's a perspective issue. We always look at it ourselves from the outside, looking in, and not from the perspective of Athenian life in the 4th century BC. And if you look at what the charges actually were against him, and what Socrates' life was actually like—whether or not there should be a capital offence for this, right—but was he guilty of this, not acknowledging the gods of the state? Well, we have got pretty good evidence that he didn't think that— even where he gave them the same names—he didn't think the Zeus that he believed in was like the Zeus of the Athenians, or the Apollo that he believed in was like an Apollo. And he had a divine sign that visited him and would tell him not to do this or that. So there's some pretty good evidence that he didn't believe in the way in which Athenians believed in the gods, and he certainly did engage in discussions with the young in ways that made them question authority. So if we can look at it from within, it would be a tough call whether to call him guilty or innocent of those charges.

Alan Saunders: Do we have any idea of the effect that his death had on Athens? Because know of course, that a large number of people including most notably, Plato, were writing about it. So did this event cast a long shadow?

Rick Benitez: Well historically it cast a really long shadow. But in the early days there were people like Plato who left Athens for the time being, because the environment was very hostile to philosophers. On some accounts, Socrates was merely the first of many philosophers to be brought on charges of impiety. And there were others on other counts before him there were brought, Protagoras, Anaxagoras. So there was a very hostile mood to philosophers at the time.

Alan Saunders: Well, here on this show at least we're not usually hostile to philosophers.

Rick Benitez: That's good news.

Alan Saunders: Rick Benitez, thanks very much indeed for joining us.

Reading: The Apology of Socrates

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but the greatest king will not find many such days or nights, when compared to the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain, for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgement there ... that pilgrimage will be worth taking. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus, and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again! Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not ... In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will also be immortal, if what is said is true.







Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death: he and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.

Alan Saunders:

Some of the final words of Socrates, addressing the jury in Athens; they were read for us by John Gregg. Thanks to him and to our producer, Polly Rickard, and technical producer, Luke Purse. I'm Alan Saunders, and I'll be back next week.

This program was first broadcast on 17.3.07