Apology
The Apology of Socrates
“Apology” is an example of Plato’s method of talking through the character of Socrates. In the essay itself, he examines what philosophy is, attempting to define it through abstract means, parables spoken by Socrates, and appeals made to the people of Athens. His claims of philosophy are made to the Athenians, defending it against their seemingly one-track minds. Socrates must please the crowd and those voting upon his punishment by defending his position, his actions, and his entire mindset, but instead of doing what most would advise him to do and promising to stop his offensive actions, he makes a case for philosophy itself and defends his actions as being a mission from god.
In this essay, we see Plato’s idea of philosophy, the backbone of his entire teachings and writings on truth. It is interesting to notice that he presents his own philosophies through Socrates, and it is uncertain whether this particular trial of Socrates ever existed or happened in such a way as Plato depicts. Socrates speaks for Plato’s way of thinking, his philosophy, by claiming the ignorance of man. .
The idea that man is nothing compared to the higher, divine truth is something that Plato is known for advocating as his character of Socrates does. In this vision that Socrates dictates to his fellow Athenians, Plato’s view that the material is short from truth is clearly evident and important to the argument. Socrates claims to test the wisdom of man, doing so as an agent of god. In this way, god represents the Intelligible Realm, believed by Plato to contain all truth. Socrates realizes why the people of Athena are angry at him, for he has denounced their views that they are wise, and claimed himself to be the wisest of all. The Athenians don’t understand the position of Socrates as a metaphor for a higher understanding given to him by the absolute. The absolute is truth, and therefore, truth is not known to man.
Of all the sorts of people that Socrates interviews, they all rely on their senses in order to explain their wisdom. He first interviews a politician who is acclaimed for being a very wise man, and finds him to be, in fact, unwise. The reason why this politician is unwise is the mere idea that he thinks himself to be wise. Socrates openly chastises the man for believing he is wise, stating the idea that man does not contain the knowledge that this man claims to have. He states his revolutionary finding: that those who think themselves wise are unwise, and those that are ignorant are wise.
Socrates examines poets as well, and it seems as though they get closer to containing wisdom, because clearly their poetical works are the works of wisdom. However, as soon as the poets and the people around them speak, Socrates realizes his mistake. The poets, he claims, are not wise in themselves, but perhaps they contain an inspiration that is not of themselves. Whenever Socrates comes upon a man or group of men who think themselves to be wise, he claims that they are not so.
In the last interview, Socrates gets closer to the meaning of wisdom, and the definition of philosophy in accordance with the teachings of Plato, his pupil. He interviews the artisans as he does the poets, and finds them to be unwise, but in this instance, he reveals the truth of wisdom and the reason why none of the men he has interviewed thus far can rightfully claim wisdom. Socrates claims that the people that he has interviewed have thought themselves to be wise only because they are wise in what they do specifically. This, to both Plato and his characterization of Socrates, is against philosophy: philosophy and wisdom being the very realization that man is not wise and that all wisdom and truth is contained in an intelligible realm of the absolute.
Unfortunately, Plato’s view of the empirical realm is an underestimation of the wisdom that it can and does contain. Through observations of the senses, we know that men have gained wisdom of not only empirical nature, but explained some things that Plato would have viewed as residing in the absolute realm. Through senses and resources gained upon this Earth, man has explained what makes a body move, what makes the Earth spin, what makes stars shine bright in the sky, and what causes the sun to warm our skin. Man has discovered all of this through the empirical realm of observation.
Granted, there are certain things that are contained in an absolute realm. These are those things which cannot be known to man, and may never be known. The questions of religion, of man’s origin, of the unexplained can barely be guessed upon through anything but the logic we already know, through philosophy or physics, through simple guesses and discussions involving the product of elimination coupled with scientific comparisons with truths known to us.
However, the existence of a realm that men do not fully understand does not support the assumption of Plato that everything empirical is simply a copy of the absolute realm. Why can the absolute realm not exist within the empirical? Although not visible to man, the absolute realm breathes in the wind that shakes the leaves of trees; it makes itself known through the forces of nature, those explained to us by science, but of unknown origin. The realm that we cannot understand is all around us, therefore, that which we perceive with our senses is, for the most part, trustworthy and reliable as known truth. For if the empirical articles we encounter in our everyday lives originate from the Intelligible Realm, who is to rightly say that our senses lie to us? What originates from truth is not merely a copy of the truth, but a product of the truth. Therefore, the wisdom that man comes upon through his own experiences, his own field of study, and his own observations through his God given senses are the truth, backed up by the divine realm in which they originated.
