A charge, a packed court, and a cup

The Apology, on this page, is the defence Socrates makes when Meletus has brought him to court. He answers the indictment well, the writer says, and is condemned all the same, and dies. Unlike the sophists, who were sure of their knowledge and sold it at a high price, he knew that he did not know, lived at a distance from money, and did not withhold what he knew from anyone who wanted to learn.

In court he calls the claim that he bewitches the young a slander, and argues it properly; the sentence is still death, because, the writer says, the room was packed with sophists already on the accusers’ side, who felt their own standing at risk. After the sentence he says he will not be angry at those who accused him, and he accepts the death. Friends come to the prison to get him out; he refuses, and drinks the cup. In this telling, the Korean saying that even a bad law is still the law arises in that refusal. The essay also notes that he is widely remembered for “know yourself,” and for that saying about the law. The charges and the hatred, the writer holds, came from citizens with power, who had been shown that they were not as wise as they seemed.

An oracle, politicians, poets, and ten generals

In the middle of the trial Socrates tells the story of his friend Chaerephon, who went to Delphi for an oracle. The priestess said that no one was wiser. Socrates thought about that, and went looking for people wiser than himself: politicians, poets, artisans, anyone who had that name. He did not find what the rumour had promised. A well-known politician was only pretending to know. The poets had written their poems, but by a gift and an inspiration more than by a wisdom they could explain. The artisans knew their craft better than he did, and had a wisdom there, but thought themselves wise in other matters as well, and so, for him, they were not wise either. “I am wiser than this man,” he says, in the words the essay gives: the other man thinks he knows what he does not know, and I, not knowing, do not think that I know.

Only a god, he held, is a true knower; no human being reaches that absolute wisdom, and a human wisdom is worth little except in knowing that. He tells the Athenians, as the best-known and strongest citizens of the city, that they should think it wrong not to work on the care of the soul, rather than on how to own more money, or more fame, or a higher office. He speaks of Achilles, who saved a friend even knowing that he would die, and who, Socrates tells Meletus, did not cling to life from a fear of death or of danger.

He had almost never held public office. Once he had sat on the council. While he was on that public work, a vote was taken to try ten generals at once, for failing to rescue men who had gone into the sea in a battle. He alone opposed it, and was nearly accused and arrested by the other members. Even there, he says, he thought he should stand with the law and with justice, rather than follow an unjust vote from fear of prison or of death.

Two indictments, and a question Meletus cannot hold together

Those who have set themselves against him, the defence says, fall into two groups: the people accusing him now, and the people who have been slandering him for a long time. To the older slander he answers first. Their charge is that he investigates things in the heavens and under the earth, makes a bad argument look good, and teaches that habit to others, and that this is a worthless crime. The first person he had gone to was an unnamed politician, already famous and sure of it; there was no wisdom there, only the appearance of it. The poets and the artisans followed, as above.

To those who accuse him now he answers a different charge: that he has a bad influence on the young, that he denies the gods the city recognises, and that he serves other gods, and is therefore guilty. These people, he says, are putting on trial a matter they have never really attended to. He puts many questions to Meletus, in the same vein, and Meletus does not follow. One of them, as the essay gives it, is this: the law commands an answer — is there anyone who wants to be harmed? Meletus says of course there is not. And then Meletus still says that Socrates does harm on purpose.

A reader who will not pick a side

The writer had long been interested in philosophy and in thought, she says, and had not known the Apology well. The book made her think. She will not stand on one side and say that the conduct was simply right or wrong. Socrates lost his life under an unjust verdict, and he kept his conviction and his sense that the work he had done was not wrong; that confidence, she thinks, is what made it possible to accept the death. But the friends, the students, and the family who loved him were left in pain. Looked at another way, a man who will not consider their feeling may seem to have thrown a life away as he pleased, and to have been careless of them.

The freedom to take one attitude or the other, she says, belongs to those who read the defence. She cannot choose either, and will only go on thinking. That people living in this century can still think about a case in ancient Athens is, for her, a proof of what the humanities can widen, and a reason a culture can take another step.

A further question stays with her. If only a god has absolute wisdom, what is the point of comparing one human being with another? Socrates, who says he has no wisdom, still tells the admired knowers of the city that they are less wise than he is. What he seems to press, she thinks, is a habit of remembering one’s own ignorance, as a way of staying clear of an unjust act. And yet he presses that habit so far that he treats it almost as a god’s command, even when he knows it will turn people against him and put him in danger. In a world that speaks of a right not to have one’s view or way of life invaded, that insistence can look like meddling. She leaves the tension there. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Korean essay: a summary of the Apology and a personal response to the defence and the death.
2. The charge brought by Meletus; older slander about things in the heavens and under the earth; the present charge of corrupting the young and of denying the city’s gods.
3. Chaerephon’s visit to Delphi; the search among politicians, poets, and artisans; the council vote on ten generals; Achilles; the refused escape from prison.
4. The saying that even a bad law is still the law, and “know yourself,” as the essay says they are remembered in this telling.

Last updated: 14 November 2026