I do enjoy Socrates's great discipline in order to walk straight into death even with an escape route blatantly present. I would almost say that reading deeply into this, the jury, the people who wanted him there in the first place, would have been greatly pleased if he had just fled and stayed out of the country. They became irritated with Socrates, yes, but I don't believe they truly wanted to kill him. The guards? Not even present because, as you may recall, Socrates was on a sort of "house arrest". At this time there were no tracking bands, no search dogs, no helicopters, no registration papers to be signed. Even if there had been, I don't believe any of these recovery techniques would have been used. These people in Greece just wanted to shoo the gadfly, not squash it. A last thought here: poor Socrates may have been a bit prideful in staying around and giving his life to the law in order to prove a point. Maybe?
I commented on Sara Dye's "Social Contract" post from 10/14/10
I think that is great that Socrates was enough of a man to accept the punishment that was handed down to him from the court. But my question is how is he doing wrong to those who wronged him by leaving? Like you said he was under house arrest. With no way to track him and an escape route present it's almost like they're asking him to leave. I think it wasn't really prideful of him to except his sentence but almost selfish because with Socrates dead who is going to teach the youth the SOCRATIC method?
ReplyDeleteI think the court left it open for him to decide to stay or go because either way they would win. Either Socrates would stay and be killed, or he would run away and the court would be right.
ReplyDeleteHe was accused of breaking the law, but I don't think Socrates would ever break the law because breaking the law was wrong. So really his only choice was to stay and be killed; I think he had accepted his fate. To him, that was the way God wanted it to happen, so that was the way it was going to happen.