The Apology

The craftsmen, unlike the politicians and poets, genuinely know things. Socrates grants this without hesitation. They can build and create and repair what he cannot — and in this they are plainly wiser than he is. But they fall into the identical error as the poets: because they are good workmen, they assume they are also wise in high matters far beyond their craft. This defect, Socrates decides, overshadows their real knowledge. He asks himself on behalf of the oracle: would he rather be as he is — knowing nothing but also claiming nothing — or like them, possessing both their knowledge and their ignorance? His answer is that he is better off as he is. At this point Socrates pauses to offer the interpretation of the oracle he has arrived at through all these wanderings. It is not flattering to mankind. God alone is truly wise, he says. What the oracle was communicating, through the name of Socrates as mere illustration, is this: the wisest man is the one who knows, as Socrates does, that his wisdom is worth nothing. The oracle was not praising Socrates. It was using him as an example. So he continues his mission — going about the world, questioning citizens and strangers alike who appear wise, and demonstrating to them that they are not. The work has consumed him entirely. He has had no time for public affairs or his own concerns. He has been reduced to utter poverty by his devotion to the god. The consequences are predictable. Young men from wealthy families — with time and curiosity — gather to watch him at work. They enjoy it. They begin to imitate him, going off to examine others. And when those others are exposed as knowing less than they pretend, they do not direct their anger at themselves. They direct it at Socrates. "This confounded Socrates," they say; "this villainous misleader of youth." When asked to name a specific evil he teaches, they cannot. So they fall back on the ready-made charges stock-leveled at any philosopher: he teaches things under the earth and in the clouds, he denies the gods, he makes the worse appear the better cause. These men are numerous, energetic, and persuasive. They have filled the jury's ears with inveterate calumny over many years. This is the origin of the three formal accusers: Meletus, acting on behalf of the poets; Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians; Lycon, on behalf of the rhetoricians. Each has a personal grievance. None, Socrates insists, has a genuine concern for the city. He closes with a line of compressed defiance: his plainness of speech is what makes them hate him, and their hatred is itself proof that he is speaking the truth.