PHILOSOPHY

Socrates Response to the Arguments of Cleon and Diodotus



Socrates Response to the Arguments of Cleon and Diodotus

Introduction

At the time of classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, democracy was rather unstable. That's when trouble that the trial of Socrates took place. Controversies about the political ideas of Socrates, notably on the question of whether or not opposed to the democracy of Athens, which finally prevailed by limiting the powers of the Areopagus by Ephialtes (462 BC) dominated the extensive Socratic literature. Socrates felt conscious enemy of democracy. Instead, commentators like Theodorakopoulos etc. supported directly or indirectly that this approach was frivolous. The attitude of Socrates towards the regimes of his time, especially towards the democratic, should be explained logically from the analysis of the fundamental concepts of Socratic theory of knowledge (e.g. sense, science), moral (virtue, good, fair) and methodology (Ironically, control, analogy, induction).

Socrates follows an intermediate approach, combining rational analysis with the approach to philosophy of Socrates. Socrates should be seen as a reaction the influence of demagogues, the tendency of the Athenians to the underground, the practice of law by substituting occasionally resolutions (that characterized the Athenian democracy at the end of the century (Woodruff, 1993). The apologetic approach to personality, thought and political ideas of Socrates was very intense and took the form of uncritical idealization today on the occasion of 2400 years since his death. Every Speech, no matter how focused on a single action, tends to couched in universal terms: Cleon and Diodoturs have to give an eider ranging account of Athenian democracy from which it is supposed to follow that the Mytilennean decree is to put into effect or rescinded.

There are two speeches that we are going to focus in this paper; these speeches are corresponding closely in both structure and detail. Especially striking is the attention both speakers pay to the shortcomings of the Athenian assembly, in particular to the pernicious effects of sophisticated rhetoric on political debate. The extreme rhetorical self-consciousness of the two speeches led Gomme to conclude that “the quarrel between Diodotos and Kleon is as much about how to conduct debate in the ekklesia, as about the fate of Mytilene.” Cleon complains that the Athenians' penchant for rhetorical display makes them too credulous; it has blinded them to the practical consequences of the novel and clever arguments by which they are enthralled. Conversely, Diodotus says the Athenians are overly suspicious, too readily inclined to reject a speaker's good counsel because they think he will gain from his success in the assembly.

In response to their speech Socrates could have given following response. Socrates, he says the tech adieu new gods and corrupting the city thinks me think (Cooper, 2001): Other demons and innovation i.e.: they believe in gods that the city does not believe that introduces newcomers gods and goddesses and ideas about them, so under that corrupting young people with new attitudes.

Socrates begins his defense by saying that the accusers told so many falsehoods, ...