The Examined Life - Thoughts on Plato's Apology

Plato's Apology continues the plot line from Euthyphro in following the trial, conviction, and death of Socrates. In Euthyphro, Socrates was at the court of Athens to receive the formal charges for crimes of "corrupting the young" and "not believing in the gods". In Apology, Socrates presents his defense at the trial itself.

I found this text to be rich with ideas, and one overarching theme stood out to me, which I think is best expressed in the following statement by Socrates:

It is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day, for the unexamined life is not worth living.

To be honest, I am still chewing on this statement since it is much more complex than it seems and begs for further thought. What is virtue? What is an unexamined life - and conversely, what is an examined life? What exactly makes life worth living? I don't pretend to know all of the answers to these questions, but I do want to offer my general interpretation of this statement based my readings of Euthyphro and Apology.

Socrates begins his speech by drawing a distinction between what he calls the "newer accusers" and the "older accusers". The newer accusers are the young men Meletus and Anytus who have brought the criminal charges that directly resulted in the trial. The older accusers are the mass of people with whom Socrates has had interactions with throughout his life who do not like him, speak negatively about him behind his back, and spread rumors about him. Socrates feels it is necessary to defend himself against these accusers even though they are not directly bringing charges since their accusations will affect others' judgement about him.

Socrates then tells a story that explains why he behaves the way that he does, seeking out people of the city and questioning them about their knowledge. His motivation in doing so, he claims, is to find out why the oracle at Delphi said that no one was wiser than Socrates. He says that since he does not think himself very wise, he thought that it would not be difficult to find someone that was clearly more wise than he is. However, once he started questioning people, his outlook began to change. After examining a prominent politician who thought himself to be wise but actually was not, Socrates says

So I withdrew and thought to myself: "I am wiser than than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know."

Apart from this being an amusing thought, Socrates is describing a very important realization: It is not wise to believe oneself to know something when you do not actually know it, but it is wise to recognize the things that you do not know. That is, it is wise to be aware of your own ignorance.

Why might this be the case? If you mistakenly believe that you know something when you really don't, then you will be more likely to lead yourself and others astray. On the other hand, if you are able to recognize the things that you do not know - those areas of knowledge in which you are ignorant - then you will be more likely to be able to fill in those gaps and overcome your ignorance.

In my previous post on Euthyphro, I noted that the dialogue seemed to question whether or not religion helped bring a person knowledge because Euthyphro was a priest who failed to provide a satisfactory definition of piety. In retrospect, I do not think that Socrates was questioning the virtues of religion per se, but more generally the class of people who think they know something when they do not. In his story in the Apology, Socrates identifies other people whom he has met that think they are wise when they are not. This includes politicians, whom many other people see as knowledgeable; poets, whose creative output seems to be similar to seers in that they don't seem to understand what they say; and craftsmen, who do have expert knowledge in one field, but as a result think that they have much knowledge about other fields.

Socrates goes on to make a very interesting statement about death:

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

So Socrates puts "people who fear death" in the class of people who "think that they know something when they do not". He claims that since no one knows what it is like to actually be dead, no one can know whether or not it is good or bad.

Earlier in his defense, Socrates speaks about corruption. By corrupting people you make them wicked, and wicked people tend to do harm to themselves and to others. Later, Socrates makes a comparison between death and wickedness:

It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.

I found this statement very profound. To be wicked is to engage in bad or unvirtuous behavior. Despite the fact that every person is going to die at some point, it is virtually impossible to live your entire life without having engaged in bad or unvirtuous behavior. Therefore, in order to avoid becoming wicked, Socrates says that one must "prepare oneself to be as good as possible".

This is where living an "examined life" comes into play. If you don't closely examine your own life and your beliefs and your truth claims, you are living in ignorance of your own faults and weaknesses, and you will likely end up doing harm to yourself and the people about whom you care. However, if you examine yourself and become aware of your own ignorance, you will be better able to avoid harming yourself or others.

A couple of additional thoughts:

Is Socrates defining "good" as "to avoid harming oneself and others"? What does it really mean to "harm" someone?

Socrates makes an amusing yet tragic observation that

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

Does this ultimately imply that the vast majority of people are wicked and will avoid justice?

Thoughts on Plato's Euthyphro

Euthyphro is the first of Plato's Dialogues that I read, and hopefully the beginning of a much longer journey into philosophy. In it, Socrates meets a man named Euthyphro outside of a court in Athens. Socrates is there because a man named Menelus has charged him with "corrupting the youth". He inquires as to why Euthyphro has come to the court. The other man answers that he is there to prosecute his father for murder of one of their servants. The servant himself had killed one of the slaves, so the father had left the man bound in a ditch outside while he sought out advice from seers regarding what to do with the man. However, the man died before the messenger returned from the seers.

Euthyphro says that his family is angry with him. They claim that charging your own father with murder is not just, and moreover the man who died was a murderer anyway. Euthyphro claims that he knows much about piety and is certain that charging his father is the pious thing to do. In response, Socrates questions Euthyphro about what piety is, on the grounds that he can use that knowledge to convince the court that he is a pious man. This begins a series of questions and answers whereby Euthyphro attempts to give various definitions of piety, only to have Socrates reject each one.

Euthyphro's first definition of piety is that prosecuting wrongdoers is pious. Socrates counters that this is an example of piety, but not a definition of piety. Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree that there are many pious actions, and he wants to know what is the "form itself that makes all pious actions pious"? In other words, what are the characteristics of piety that are common to all pious actions, so that one can look at any given action and judge whether or not it is pious. I suspect that the word "form" is important here as it probably relates to the idea of Platonic Forms, but I am as of yet ignorant of that concept.

Euthyphro's grants Socrates's request for a more general definition of piety by stating "what is dear to the gods is pious, and what is not is impious". Socrates counters that this definition doesn't help since (as they established earlier in the conversation) the gods disagree over certain subjects such as justice and beauty. Thus, some actions are loved by some gods and hated by other gods.

Through further discussion a third definition of piety arises: that which all the gods love is pious, and that which all the gods hate is impious. Socrates's response to this is quite interesting. He asks Euthyphro if the gods love something because it is pious, or if it is pious because the gods love it? Euthyphro does not quite understand the question at first, so Socrates clarifies it by analogy by asking whether or not a thing being carried is a carried thing because it is carried, or is it being carried because it is a carried thing? He then states the more general principle that

if anything is being changed or is being affected in any way, it is not being changed because it is something changed, but rather it is something changed because it is being changed; nor is it being affected because it is something affected, but it is something affected because it is being affected.

Euthyphro agrees with this principle, and then agrees that this principle also applies to something loved by the gods. That is, something loved is not being loved by those who love it because it is something loved, but rather it is something loved because it is loved by them. However, Euthyphro does not apply this principle to pious things, agreeing that pious things are loved by the gods because they are pious - and not the other way around.

Socrates then points out that "pious" and "god-loved" cannot be the same thing because there would be a contradiction: If something loved by the gods is god-loved because it is loved by them, then that would mean that it would have to be pious because it is loved by them. On the other hand, if something is loved by the gods because it is pious, then that would mean that it is also loved by the gods because it is god-loved.

Apparently this problem is known as Euthyphro's Dilemma and has implications for modern religions. For now I will have to be content with Plato's formulation and lack of resolution, but I anticipate this question arising again in the future.

Socrates then asks Euthyphro how piety relates to justice. That is, he wishes to know whether everything that is pious is also just, and whether or not everything that is just is also pious. For clarity, he uses a mathematical analogy: All odd numbers are numbers, but not all numbers are odd numbers. Euthyphro indicates that all that is pious is also just, but not all that is just is necessarily pious. Socrates then asks what part of justice makes a thing also pious?

Thus Euthyphro arrives at yet another definition of piety: Piety is the care of the gods. After further questioning by Socrates we find that by "care" here Euthyphro means "service to the Gods" that involves prayer and sacrifice, whereby humans give gifts to the gods and ask favors from them. Socrates asks what gifts are given to the gods, and Euthyphro says that the gifts are "honor" and "reverence" and other such things that please the gods. Socrates then points out that Euthyphro's argument has circled back to "pious things are those things that are dear to the gods" - or in other words, things that the gods love. However, earlier they established that piety and god-loved were not the same thing.

Finally, Euthyphro gives up and indicates that he needs to go, and the dialogue ends without a resolution.

One subtext of this dialogue seems to be "Does religion bring knowledge?" Since priests or seers are presumably some of the most strict adherents of particular faiths - even going so far as to claim direct inspiration from the gods - then it would seem to follow that these men would be among the wisest people. Indeed, Euthyphro claims that he can "foretell the future" and that he has "foretold nothing that did not happen". Euthyphro also suggests that he is "superior to the majority of men" because he has "accurate knowledge" of "the divine, and of piety and impiety". However, since Euthyphro fails to provide Socrates with a satisfactory definition of piety by the end of the dialogue, this suggests that Euthyphro is not as knowledgeable as he claims to be.

Furthermore, the servant who died at the hands of Euthyphro's father in part died because Euthyphro's father was seeking advice from seers and was unable to obtain that advice in a timely manner. One wonders if there would have been a more just outcome if Euthyphro's father had acquired knowledge about justice and piety himself, rather than rely on priests.