Socrates

Introduction

Socrates was one of the greatest philosophers of the Ancient Greece. Indeed, he is also credited as the founders of the field of philosophy. Socrates was born in 470 B.C. He grew up during the Golden Age of Athens. This was a time period when Greece was very powerful. His family lived near Athens. The philosophy before Socrates was primarily concerned with matters relating to the existence of the world and what it is. The Socrates believed that the sins are only a result of ignorance. He is a mysterious person, known by the later writings of classical writer, most notably the writing of his deciples, Plato and Xenophon.

Significance of the study

The paper accentuates the contribution of Socrates to the philosophy and extends the discussion to his quest for virtue, the pre-socratics i.e. naturalist philosophist scenario. In addition to this, the paper will highlight arguments from different academic papers and presents my own arguments based on the papers discussed.

Discussion

Source 1

Marrow, in his paper discussed about the defense of Socrates. Socrates was tried at the Peoples' Court at Agora within Athens. He was charged with inciting revolt against the state through his teachings. In addition, he was charged with misleading and depraving the youth of Greece by teaching those ways contrary to the state policy. Also, he was accused of rejecting the deities that were accepted by the Greek city-states (Marrow, 2012). Furthermore, he was accused of introducing more deities. Finally, he was declared as a criminal

Analysis of Socrates' Defense

Socrates claimed that no harm could be brought to a person who was good and fair and that, accordingly, he would be safe and secure and free from any harm. Although this appears true, but the fact cannot be gainsaid, that even the truthful person is required to defend himself in order to escape fatal harm, which Socrates completely failed to do. Socrates claimed that Meletus had brought the accusation against him of promoting the wrong argument in philosophy. However, Socrates rebuffed these claims and vouched that he had no knowledge of any such thing. Furthermore, Socrates argued that he was not doing that for the sake of making money, unlike others. Further, he pointed out that the politician Anytus and others were his enemy due to sheer envy.

Socrates further argued that he was being accused of atheism and that those jealous souls would continue to blame him anyway. He further argued that he was free from the malice of those envious people and that death was inevitable and not to be worried about. And that it was even possible that those same accusers freed him and found no accusation against him. Further, he claimed that he was independent of those false accusations.

Finally, he believed that no harm could be brought to him even if he was killed or liberated. Further, he avers that there was no replacement for him if he was killed as he had been bestowed to the city by the god. His poverty was ...