greetings welcome back everyone we're going to continue with our discussion of the apology um in the the previous video I introduced you to some of the background on the topic at hand philosophy in general but more particularly Plato and this dialogue the apology which we're we're things off with I talked a little bit about the figure of Socrates who as you now know is the main protagonist really of the early dialogues of PL and as we we came to understand Socrates is actually at the end of his uh philosophical career as it were as he is on trial for life for um all kinds of possible accusations which we're going to try to sort out a little bit today further um so I would like to dive in in uh a little bit greater detail with you today uh regarding some of the finer points of the text and and try to reach some conclusions um about what Socratic wisdom uh in particular means I think we'll see that ultimately uh this is a dialogue about philosophy as a particular kind of Life embodied by this main character of Socrates okay um so as as we know um Socrates um begins with uh in a way a justification of his behavior uh as as a philosopher so the first thing we've come to know is that Socrates is not apologizing really for anything he's done in the traditional sense he's actually defending his his behavior as a thinker as an independent uh practitioner of philosophy and critical thinking um now there's a lot of uh controversy over what exactly Socrates is meant to have done wrong according to the prosecutors meatus and anitus and um we we'll have to try to see what is really motivating the um the worry that Socrates perhaps poses some kind of a threat to to the city state of Athens all right um so I I believe in this is I think a good way of interpreting the text is that Socrates is most of all interested in what it means to live a good life um he has a lot of different views about uh the nature of reality the nature of the afterlife as we'll come to see when we read a dialogue called the fedo but I think really Socrates is above all famous for as as it's sometimes described bringing philosophy down to earth so many of the um philosophers who came before him philosophers that are now known as the presocratic philosophers were deeply metaphysical and deeply speculative people um but they perhaps were a little bit head in the clouds they did not necessarily think about everyday practical issues like virtue ethics and human knowing in the sense that Socrates does all right so that's kind of an innovation of Socratic philosophy and very early on in the dialogue we we come to this um idea or this sort of um reputation I suppose of Socrates being um referred to or known as the wisest person in Athens so um what is what is this supposed to mean is he the smartest person in Athens is he the is the best at is he the best at argumentation does he know more than other people there's a lot that is packed into this idea of wisdom and early on Socrates comes to this kind of um somewhat peculiar definition of wisdom uh which maybe stood out for you which is that uh he is wise or wiser than everyone because he admits he knows nothing uh so I want you to think about why this might be something to Value this idea of not knowing um usually when we think of wisdom or or perhaps intelligence we think it means knowing all kinds of stuff uh or at the very least one thing very well if you're a professor you're supposed to at least have a specialty uh Socrates probably wouldn't do very well today in the modern University because uh his entire reputation is staked on the idea that he knows nothing so what exactly is good about not knowing nothing what is what is meant by this why can he be the wisest person when he admits to know nothing all right so in order to unpack this idea a little bit more um there's kind of a a recollection of sorts uh from an earlier time in his life when his friend chaffron went to this figure of the Oracle of Deli in ancient Greece which is an element of ancient Greek mythology and the Del the the Oracle was known to give prophecies um that were meant to be uh essentially the word of God they're meant to be absolutely true all right so um chaffron goes to the Oracle to in a sense um you know hear the verdict on socrates's wisdom and you know the word of God if it's coming from Delphia or any other Greek figure at the time was meant to be absolutely true it's meant to be true in a unquestionable unconditioned way so I want you to think a little bit about what it means to receive divine revelation I.E in the form of Socrates being told he's the wisest person but then kind of having this little bit of um skepticism as we as we talked about his approach to philosophy is skeptical um in in as much as he um doesn't really take for granted that this is actually a true statement so um there is a little bit of a difficulty here from Sak's point of view because part of the reason he is being accused of corrupting the youth perhaps in Ence is that he might be some kind of an atheus right I think that's an idea that's in free circulation throughout the piece so actually if he is being skeptical about the word of God it might actually be true that there is something to his atheism or maybe his disbelief or lack in faith in the gods so I just want you to hold that in your mind as a question as we work through this component of of the piece um so Socrates does this little word of God testing as it were and so what he does is he goes out into the aora into Athens and he he gets into conversations again as his is his habit um with essentially different experts in in the city different professionals who have different ranks and he tries to see if there's anyone around who's wiser than he is basically is there anyone who is uh knows more than he does and we come to an interesting thing I just want to um pull up the text here uh and look at the details so you can mark it for yourself um in this this sort of back and forth okay um so how does the encounter go um Socrates uh runs into um essentially um the most prominent people in in ancient Athens right uh and each one of these classes of people he finds are in some sense inadequate in terms of their knowledge all right and all of them will have a very similar pattern okay so if you just turn with me and look at 26 uh this this is where the the kind of testing of his wisdom starts to happen uh Plato writes after that I proceed systematically uh I realized to my sorrow and alarm that I was getting unpopular but I thought that I must attach the greatest importance to the gods of Oracle so I must go to all those who had any reputation for knowledge to examine its meaning and by the dog men of Athens for I must tell you the truth I experienced something like this in my investigation in the service of the God I found that those who had the highest reputation uh right so the most kind of esteemed people were nearly the most deficient while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable all right so it's almost as though things are totally upside down the people who are thought to be the most expert the smartest are actually the most deficient and those who are deemed inferior are are much better than than assumed I must giving you an account of my journeyings uh if they were labors I had undertaken to prove the Oracle irrefutable after the politicians okay so he goes to politicians first I went to The Poets writers of tragedies and diams and the others intending in their case to catch myself being more ignorant than they uh I should just say as an aside that um The Poets the word poetry uh in this context has a much bigger meaning encompasses many more things than we we mean it in contemporary English poetry really means art in general uh it's a huge kind of category poesis of artistic making and here he's speaking specifically about the authors of great tragedies which was a very important aspect of ancient uh Athenian culture tragedies were a place where everyone from uh the polus the community would gather and experience a kind of collective understanding of itself okay so uh The Poets were not marginal figures at all they were very important figures in this in this particular time the writers of tragedies and dith Rams and the others intending in their case to catch myself being more ignorant than they so I took up those poems with which they seem to have taken most trouble and asked them what they meant in order that I might at the same time learn something from them I'm ashamed to tell you the truth gentlemen but I must almost all the banders might have explained the poems better than the authors could I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems from knowledge but by some inborn talent and inspiration like seers and Prophets who also say many F things and without any understanding of what they say the poets seem to have had a similar experience at the same time I saw that because of their poetry they thought themselves very wise men in other respects which they were not so there again I withdrew thinking that I had the same advantage over them as I had over the politicians all right so what's happening here uh Socrates is saying that the poets while Geniuses in a way they are divinely inspired they have this great uh creative expression they actually don't have knowledge of what they're doing and I think this is actually true if you ever watch interviews with contemp artists or musicians or painters um they're they're kind of working from Instinct really uh it's it's not particularly uh thought out what they're doing and they have a hard time sometimes explaining uh what it is that is going into their great their great work um I think Socrates is right about this um but I'm not sure I agree and I ask you to think about whether or not you agree that that's a problem uh so clearly socer is prioritizing knowledge over creativity uh he he seems to be giving pride of place at least here to knowledge and the problem with poetic knowing is that it actually doesn't know that much but it thinks it does so this is really the pattern that each one of these classes of experts uh will fall into they will somehow all not be aware of the limits of their own knowledge and they will be uh in their ignorance of that limit um in a way a little fool hearty or a little bit um too too arrogant in in their own kind of knowledge or wisdom okay so he then goes to Craftsman and Craftsman here in this context also just means people who can um they're kind of like Engineers basically anyone who can build right so I went to the Craftsman for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing and I knew that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things all right so they have knowledge about all kinds of stuff how to build you know houses and Furniture Etc uh in this I was not mistaken they knew things I did not know and to that extent they were wiser than I but men of anthan the good Craftsmen seemed to me to have the same faults as The Poets each of them because of his success of this craft thought himself very wise uh in other most important Pursuits and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had so that I asked myself on behalf of the or whether I should prefer to be as I am with neither their wisdom nor their ignorance or to have both the answer I gave myself in the Oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am okay so what's the contrast Socrates is strong between himself and the Craftsman the Craftsman do indeed have some knowledge but it's a very narrow knowledge it's narrow in the sense that it's specific it's very technical it's very refined but if you ask a Craftsman what is the meaning of life or uh how can they prove God they're very ignorant now the problem is and it's okay to have limits to your knowledge uh the Craftsmen don't know what those limits are and so Socrates says uh actually it's better to be me who knows nothing about anything than to be someone who knows a lot about very little but thinks they know everything all right so it it's this point of being in a position of knowing that you know nothing that Socrates will continuously uphold as the standard of rationality and skepticism because philosophical wisdom has to start from a standpoint that doesn't take things for granted all right that is in a standpoint of almost childish curiosity about the nature of things as we lose that Curiosity through knowledge and training and overtraining um we start to get a little bit too uh too arrogant a little bit too quick to think we know or to presume that we know when in fact we might be very wrong all right and so Socrates essentially runs this um this investigation through so many different people uh in the city and sees that all of them are in one way or another falling prey to the same the same fate okay so um the full catalog of people he talks to uh just to rehash here and get a little systematic about it is politicians poets Craftsmen and this office this category of people we talked about uh in the last uh in the last class sophists were rhetoricians and practitioners of of argument speech and the sophists similarly are very good at having uh kind of a bag of tricks for uh emotional speaking and and manipulation really but actually aren't aware of um very much else their knowledge is a kind of a superficial knowledge all right so because no one in town seems to be aware of the limits of their knowledge Socrates is the only one who is therefore he is the wisest person indeed he has proven that the Oracle is true um he's not the wisest because he knows more than anyone it's not as though if you were to appearer inside socrates's brain or something you would see more facts and and data or and stuff swirling around in there it's actually his wisdom comes from a willingness to suspend belief about what people believe to be true um so the the skeptical Socratic method um holds that investigation into the truth of something should begin from not knowing and from an awareness of that not knowing when we take for granted things in the world and we we fall victim to the ideas that are in circulation what Socrates calls opinion or doca um that's often the the road to philosophical ignorance or philosophical error right um a lot of the ideas we have about the world have to do with just tradition and custom that is what our parents taught us is true what our church maybe taught us is true what our schools taught us is true uh and as you move through life you you come to recognize that a lot of those ideas are actually really wrong and misguided um but it's actually hard to to pry ourself loose from these prejudices because um we're not really in the habit of testing them very often we're in the habit of living in them comfortably so Socrates is is is a real irritant and he'll call himself a gadfly gadfly it's like a little um little fly that stings stings a horse and leaves you know kind of an uncomfortable Mark and Socrates says I Am The Godly of of Athens I am this irritant that is constantly questioning constantly unsettling pre uh preconceived notion and uh and this is really where philosophy has has to has to begin so Socrates knows that he does not know and his wisdom uh is based precisely on the recognition of his own his own limits all right so um whether or not we agree that Socrates is the wisest this is kind of his reputation and this is where he he sees himself in terms of terms of philosophical argumentation and in every dialogue we read um the conversations between him and his opponent or his friend as it were will often take the form what is x in other words uh a topic will be proposed like the nature of Justice or the nature of beauty and Socrates will say well what is Justice or what is beauty and it will often be uh proposed different definitions that are pretty conventional and pretty pretty ordinary in every day and Socrates will then chip away at those definitions and they'll say well hey um Can Justice really mean this actually are we are we serious about that definition maybe there's a contradiction or something internally incoherent about that definition and if we unpack it and sustain our belief our disbelief about it we can actually come to perhaps a higher understanding of the meaning so um Socrates uh you know in the apology of course famously has all these charges leveled against him by malus the state prosecutor and the big one is this idea that he's corrupting the youth right we talked about this a little bit and uh this is his famous sort of reputation or maybe like rebellious badge of honor as it were right so Socrates famously has a circle of students young men who are really um inspired by him and his practice as a philosopher um but the the city authorities are not at all pleased by this this development right um and they're not at all pleased by the um phenomenon of Socrates as someone who is turning upside down uh the order of the city and the stability of the ideas that are meant to to make the city work so we have to think a little bit about whether or not he is corrupting the youth because um uh you know as I raised as a as a question last time uh it's not obviously the case that he's not uh it could true that he's somehow corrupting them if corruption is meant if by corruption it is meant that he is filling them with dangerous ideas um it could be that being a philosopher is dangerous for the smooth functioning of society it could be the case that um actually it's not very healthy to question everything all the time um that is something that you know I want you to think about uh is it true as Socrates puts it at the end of the text that um the unexamined life is not worth knowing uh not worth living uh he makes this very famous uh Proclamation that to return to that uh actually a life without self investigation and and critical thinking is in fact a wasted life um I think many people would actually be a little resistant to that idea I think that actually there is happiness in Bliss and there is happiness in ignorance um but it seems to me that that socrates's position position as a philosopher and as a lover of wisdom um is completely opposed to this idea of of of a lack of reflection the lack of critical thought all right so I want to turn now um to the main um kind of Confrontation between Socrates and mettus uh in in the piece this is sort of the um the climax of the apology really uh this is where Socrates applies his method of skepticism and malus's own argument and we will see I think um that Socrates does a pretty good job of showing that mettus can't possibly know what he is talking about when it comes to saying that Socrates corrupts the youth all right um I want you to think about the strategy that Socrates uses um in unpacking and dismantling ultimately molet is's train of thought and what he's really going to try to do is show that malus's definition of corruption is founded upon a contradiction which means that it can't possibly logically be true it is an invalid definition all right so let's just look at the text a little bit here and I I do want you to to sort of flag it for yourself in the piece and notice here um in the dialogue it's a it can be a little bit hard to follow uh because um this is a sort of a back and forth right it's a conversation um between uh between Socrates and mleta at this point and um well it's hard to follow who's who but mostly Socrates is going to do most of the talking and he is going to enlist he's going to sort of enjoin mettus to provide answers and you will see that Socrates very cleverly sort of traps mettus into an answer that isn't very good all right so this is really the Crux of Socratic skepticism okay so turn to the bottom with me um of yes page 29 here this is kind of where the rubber starts to hit the road really as it were Socrates says you condemn me to a great Misfortune um let me try to use a highlighter here maybe so I can point this out here um okay yeah right here so you condemn me to a great Misfortune uh tell me does this also apply uh to horses do you think that all men improve them and one individual corrupts them or quite the contrary true one individual is able to improve them or very few namely the horse beers whereas the majority if they have horses and use corrupt them is that not the case leus both with horses and other animals uh I should just point out socres is in this kind of funny habit of creating comparisons or analogies with other professionals things like horse breeders sometimes he'll talk about doctors and you know practitioners of medicine and really he's just trying to um construct an analogy a comparison with another kind of practical action right so it can be a little sort of fuzzy what it is he's really talking about all right but he's talking about himself it is whether you and anst say so or not it would be a very happy State of Affairs if only one person corrupted our youth while the others improved them you've made it sufficiently obvious melus that you've never had any concern for our youth you show your indifference clearly that you have given no thought to the subjects about which you bring me to trial ah okay so Socrates getting a little bit bold here you have no idea what you're talking about saying and by Zeus should also say you'll notice that this expression is coming up by Zeus Zeus was the chief god of the ancient Athenian world and that was a common um a common expression to say buus right it's kind of like saying dear Lord right uh madus tell us also whether it is better for a man to live among good or Wicked fellow citizens answer my good man for I'm not asking a difficult question do not the wicked do some harm to those who are ever closest to them whereas good people benefit them and mleta says certainly all right so let's try to pause for a moment what does that mean that's kind of a question along the lines of wouldn't you say that Wicked people or evil people harm those around them and good people benefit those around them okay so that's essentially the first premise it's the first position that we are going to assume for the sake of argument is true all right so notice Socrates is billing a logical argument with premises premises are statements that we are going to assume for the sake of the argument are true and we will see what follows from those premises all right what actually logically unfolds in relation to those premises all right so the next little bit uh and does the Man exist who would rather be harmed than benefit bened by his associates answer my good sir for the law orders you to answer is there any man who wants to be harmed of course not all right so second premise is there anyone who wants to be harmed in the world and Mela says no there's not everyone wants to be improved everyone wants to be benefited right so that would be a premise that now they can agree to all right so moving on come now do you accuse me here of corrupting the youth and making them worse deliberately or unwill willingly and Mela says deliberately this is really a premise about the intention of the action so mlus has to prove that Socrates is deliberately that is with the kind of um premeditation as it might be put today corrupting people he's not just doing so accidentally or by happen stance right he has intention in foresight in his corruption right melus is saying um that the kind of corruption he's talking about is is malevolent and with comes with foresite all right so they've agreed to that what follows mes are you so much wiser at your age than I am at mine that you understand that Wicked people always do some harm to their closest neighbors while good people do them good but I've reached such a pitch of ignorance that I do not realize this namely that if I make one of my associates Wicked I run the risk of being harmed by him so that I do such a great evil deliberately uh as you say I do not believe you mous and I do not think anyone else will either I do not corrupt the young or if I do it is unwillingly and you are lying in either case now if I corrupt them unwillingly the law does not require you to bring people to court for such unwilling wrongdoing but to get hold of them privately to instruct them and exhort them for clearly if I learn better I shall cease to do what I doing unwillingly you however have avoided my company and were unwilling to instruct me me but you bring me here where the law requires one to bring those who are in need of punishment not of instruction now there's a couple things happening in this paragraph I want you to sort of be be keyed into here first is the use of what is called Socratic irony Socrates is being very ironic and irony is a rhetorical device that means that you are saying the exact opposite thing of what you intend and he's doing this specifically when he refers to malus's wisdom right uh Socrates does not actually think mlus is wise at all right he thinks he is frapped in Prejudice and ignorance but he's kind of calling him uh very wise right so Socrates will often do this with his opponents he'll say come on you're so wise tell me what the truth of justice is right and so clearly this is almost a kind of teasing uh so there is a little bit of Socrates the bully here emerging as a as a practitioner of of of skepticism all right so Socratic irony is a very um uh frequent uh sort of rhetorical device in his in his train of thinking uh the rest of the per is really an elaboration of this idea that Socrates must be uh if he is guilty it must be proven that he's doing so he is C corrupting the youth deliberately and with with intent all right and so men of Athens what I say is clearly true melus has never been at all concerned with these matters nevertheless nonetheless tell us madus how do you say that I corrupt the young or is it obvious from your deposition that it is by teaching them not to believe in the Gods in whom the city believes but in other new spiritual things is this what you say I teach and so corrupt them that is most certainly what I do say so Socrates is kind of asking so what's this corruption about are you saying that I in effect am telling the young not to believe in the gods of the city right I.E I'm teaching them some kind of religious uh sacrilege or you know some kind of atheism maybe right and Lea says yeah that's pretty much what I'm saying you're you're telling the your students to disbelieve in the gods of the city right so that's sort of the the next line of thinking here then by those very Gods about whom we are talking mettus make this clear to me and to these men can I be sure whether you are concerned with things about n of which has never cared and I shall try to prove that this is so so come here and tell me m this surely you consider it the greatest importance that our young men be as good as possible indeed I do okay next premise you agree that the task of teaching in a way the task of philosophy should be to improve these men these students right so they've agreed to that come then tell these men who improves them you obviously know in view of your concern you say you've discovered the one who corrupts them namely me and you bring me here and accuse me to to these men come inform these men and tell them who it is who improves them you see mettus that you are silent and they're not what you say does this seem shameful to you and a sufficient proof of what I say that you have not been concerned with any of this tell me my good sir who improves our young men the laws okay so Socrates says what is it really that improves the men of the city he say says the law the law of the city is the source of of political virtue essentially this is what is being established so that is not what I'm asking but what person who has knowledge of the laws to begin with and he says these jury men so Socrates says wait let's back up it doesn't make sense to say it's the law that improves but rather the author of the law so who is that author and mes essentially says the jury the citizens of the city are the author of the law and how do youan mean melus are these able to educate the young and improve them certainly okay so the authors of the law the jury have the capacity to improve and educate the young all of them are some but not others all of them okay so all of the jury who represent the city of Athens have the capacity to improve the young through law very good by Hera you mentioned a great abundance of benefactors but what about the audience did they improve the young or not they do too and what about the members of council counselors also but mettus what about the assembly do members of the assembly corrupt the young or do they improve them they improve them okay so we're listing other members of the city that are involved in this Improvement through the authorship of the law the counselors and the members of the the assembly the ecasia um but melenas uh sorry all the Athenians it seems make the young and to find good men except me and I alone corrupt them is that what you mean that is most definitely what I mean okay so what has Socrates done here he's pointing at something that you know he's getting mettus into a position that's becoming a little absur right he's saying that literally everyone in the city improves the men of the city through being responsible for the laws that are written in the city literally everyone is doing a good job basically except for Socrates who's this one of corruption um Socrates isn't kind of pursued this line of argumentation too much but he is kind of dangling a bit of irony in front of uh in front of the audience because Socrates is of course part of this very society that has authored the law so by virtue of what difference what origin would Socrates not belong to the very society that is producing these virtuous laws it doesn't seem to be given as an explanation right and so he continues you condemn me to a great Misfortune tell me does this also apply to horses do you think that all men improve them and one individual corrupts them or is quite the contrary true one individual is able to improve them or very few namely the horse breeders whereas the majority if they have horses and use them corrupt them is that not the case melus both with horses and all other animals of course it is whoops whether you and anst say so or not be a very happy State of Affairs if only one person corrupted the our youth while the others improved them so what's he saying here he's creating a disanalogy to show the lack of logic in mlet is's thinking uh in other words in the first case it seems to be a majority of people that improve the youth while minority hurts them but in the case of horse breeders it's a minority of Specialists namely the horse breeders that improve the object of their agency the horse so how can both be true there seems to be a slippage between the the majority as improver and the minority as corruptor and the minority as improver and the majority as improver uh corruptor right so there's this kind of strange structural lack of consistency that Socrates is unpacking in a very very formal way so he says you have made it sufficiently obvious mlas that you've never had any concern for our youth you show their indifference clearly that you have given no thought to the subject about which you bring to trial right so Socrates is kind of he believes he's proven his point we'll have to think about you know whether or not he really has but he says okay you can't possibly know what you're talking about when you use this term corruption because your argumentation is slippery it's sliding all over the place it's not consistent it doesn't seem to really up you know withstand the kind of skepticism kind of scrutiny bringing to bear on it right uh so he says and bces mlus tell us also whether it is better for a man to live among good or Wicked fellow citizens answer my good man for I'm not asking a difficult question do not the wicked do some harm to those who are closest to them whereas good people benefit them certainly okay so let's parch this premise uh the good do good to those around good people who are virtuous prove those around them the wicked harm those around them right so that seems like a straightforward prise that can be agreed to let us read to it and does the Man exist who would rather be harmed than benefited by his associates answer my good sir for the law orders you to answer is there any man who wants to be harmed of course no all right second premise of this part of the argument no one exists who wants to be harmed there is not no such thing as a person who wants harm um notice this one's a little slippery may not be true actually there might be people out there who want to be harmed but Socrates is trapped meenus now he's gotten into to age to a premise uh which holds that there is no such thing as a man who wants to be harmed all right so pay close attention this is where the contradiction and the argument is going to to emerge from uh so come now do you accuse me here of corrupting the Young and making them worse deliberately or unwilling deliberately all right so this is just a repetition of the idea that socrates's corruption is intentional comes with Foreside uh so what follows mes are you so much wiser at your age that I am at mine that you understand that Wicked people always do some harm to their closest neighbors while good people do them good but I've reached such a pitch of ignorance that I do not realize this namely that if I make one of my associates Wicked I run the the risk of being harmed by him so that I do such a great evil deliberately as you say I do not believe you mettus and I do not think anyone else will either I do not corrupt the young or if I do it is unwillingly you are lying in either case now if I corrupt them unwilling the law does not require you to bring people to court for such unwill and wrongdoings but to get hold of them privately to instruct them and exhort them okay um so what's the argument here uh just to get into uh the details to kind of parse it out a little bit we have this claim evil people or Wicked people harm those around them right that's the first premise and that seems to be pretty agreeable or pretty pretty much true like you know um it seems to be in the nature of the evil to damage those and like drag them down and you know get fill them with toxic ideas right so that seems okay uh and the second premise if I corrupt the youth I'm either doing it intentionally or unintentionally if I corrupt the youth intentionally then I must want to be harmed right so think about this how's this following from the the previous premises it's following because we've agreed that the wicked harm those around them and in doing so they're kind of increasing the likelihood that they too will be harmed right because to be associated with the wicked and the tox and the evil is to damage oneself so it's kind of like saying well if I'm corrupting the youth I must be a self Haring type of guy uh because that's really the only thing that follows from corruption is to pollute the water as it were and uh if I'm doing that with intent I must sort of have some desire to be damaged but the problem is as we've agreed from the previous premise there is no such thing as a person who wants to be harmed is there any man who wants to be harmed of course not right Socrates is trapped mettus here in a contradiction in which he's saying two things at the same time he is saying that uh socrates's Behavior seems to have the trait of deliberately harming those in a manner that will harm himself but he is also said that no one wants harm so how can both things be true right they can't be therefore if I corrupt the young I do not do it intentionally so Socrates is sort of providing a caveat here and saying well maybe there is some harm that has come about from my practice but it can't be with the kind of intention and Foreside that you're saying because that would mean I'm the type of person who wants to escalate the risk of my own harm and we've agreed that there is no such person right so uh Socrates kind of concludes if I've corrupted the youth I've only done so unintentionally and therefore my by harm is is not the kind of evil you're talking about and is certainly not worthy of the punishment that that you're you're bringing forth right um so Socrates believes he has kind of Trapped uh meletus in a in a real in his armor that his argument has sort of degenerated by pointing to in Greek what's called nenus or kind of point of contradiction or nonsense in the argument um and you know it's a sort of a complex maneuver he's done here through these these cycles of of dialogue so I want you to to read over them again and and you know really make sure you understand how Socrates has sort of trapped meenus here um now the atheism stuff um it is given a little bit less attention to in the piece um I'll just simply point out that Socrates um will point to the existence of what is called a d a spirit Guardian that he listens to uh and this is another aspect of the ancient Greek Mythos that is sort of uh coloring the the piece and uh Socrates simply says look daon Dion is the child of the Gods and I listen to a child of the god so if I'm I'm doing that I can't really be an atheist um I seem to practice Divine rituals and I seem to Bel you know I've done this stuff with the Oracle of Deli um how plausible is really that I'm just an absolute disbeliever in the gods so um I don't know I don't really find socrates's arguments about that stuff here too strong uh simply for the reason that you know as I pointed out he he is skeptical in his relationship to the word of God specifically with the Oracle of deline so um you know that's a question that that we can uh talk about further and you know I think we'll see he has a little bit richer ver version of the afterlife in God in in the fedo and the eloor of the cave other pieces will explore together but suffice it to say for the moment he believes that there isn't uh enough proof that he's an atheist to to Warrant the the death penalty right uh so H referred to spiritual activities and the activities of his Spirit guardian and so if he's sort of um plugged into those spiritual activities um it can't really be proof that that he's an atheist now notice it's kind of a hard thing to have to prove in trial that you believe in God right we we wouldn't um you know really um hold someone up for such a crime today and so uh this is a very different world of course with a different worldview and a different relationship between the rule of God and the rule of of the state of the of the people and you know there's less of this idea of separation of church and state right in fact there's meant to be a tight Unity of the Divine and the law in in ancient Athens and so you know actually in a way it's it's worth uh remarking on the fact that socrates's position here is almost impossible right even though he provides a lot of good arguments um the the game is a bit rigged against him right it doesn't seem like there's some proof that he could really bring forth It's what is he gonna do is there some video of him talking to God of course not um is there evidence that he believes well what would count as evidence um other than these interactions with the Oracle of Dela uh one can only really take in his word right um I don't think Socrates does reject the gods actually I think he is a Believer uh in the gods of the city if you if you look closely and I think more more evidence of this will unfold as we we come to know him a little bit better um but you know I do think this is still a question whether or not he's corrupting the youth um depends on how we Define the term corruption right um if corruption means harm the youth damage them yeah probably he's innocent but if corruption means teaching them stuff that you know is a little bit um volatile or a little bit dangerous to the rule of the city um maybe he is guilty actually on some some some bare level so um uh I think you know I want you to just sustain this as a question as we continue to read the dialogues whether or not SOC his conception of a philosophical life and philosophical wisdom does come with this risk of if not corruption at least some kind of rebellion some kind of political hostility to the prevailing order of the of the day of the status quo let's say right all right um that is uh pretty much the the main um set of arguments and the apology I just want to look to the end of the of the text before we we finish up here there's a few uh lingering things to look at um you will notice in the dialogue that despite socrates's excellent job of making his apology making his defense he does not win right the jury votes against him uh and he gets the verdict of guilty sadly and the penalty is death Socrates will have to drink this Hemlock poison that kills him uh and we will we'll have to read the whole dialogue called the feda that will think a lot more about what death means in this piece um we get the impression that Socrates could have gotten out of this Jam if he had just sort of copped to the things that he was being accused of of corruption and maybe atheism and said he was sorry and he would have walked away um there's good evidence to believe that that that is the situation here but Socrates didn't want to do that I think he he felt that that would be a betrayal of his philosophical and ethical commitments and those commitments really do come to a head here uh towards the end of the the apology on page 41 in this paragraph where I think he kind of um distills his commitment as a thinker a freethinker uh and a practitioner of skepticism so just read along here perhaps someone might say but Socrates if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly without talking now this is the most difficult point in which to convince some of you if I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god you will not believe me and will think I'm being ironical on the other hand if I say that it is the greatest good for men to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others for the unexamined life is not worth living for men you will believe me even less so I want you to think about that on your own the unexamined life is not worth living uh and he kind of says the best kind of life is the life that he has led that is every day get into an argument about a big idea what is virtue what is Justice what is beauty what is the good life and hash it out have an argument and try to come to some independent conclusions about those things and Socrates is saying you know by implication if you don't do that you've wasted your life you've taken for granted truths that you should not have taken for granted and often an unhappy life will emerge from Simply going through the motions and kind of um falling into a sort of automatic pilot where you do what other people tell you to do um and I want you to think about for yourself whether or not Socrates is true about that uh is is it correct to say that a non-examined life is not worth living or is there a virtue in not skeptically challenging everything um because actually after all it is pretty exhausting and uh Troublesome as you can see for Socrates to constantly criticize and challenge everything so is there a limit to this this conception of a good life right um so uh this this kind of is going to conclude things for us um for the apology you'll notice right here uh on the same page Socrates does get the death penalty so this is pretty uh pretty serious stuff um and the rest of the trial CES will unpack further elements as he faces um his final his final hour really um in the feda where he he will have to face his death um so for the next uh uh reading I want you to uh look at the most famous piece in in all of Plato's philosophy arguably all of philosophy in the history of the West and it's a small dialogue from another m in another book called The Republic called the allegory of the cave right it's one small section of the allegory of the cave and I will provide that readings for you and we will um consider it together in in in the next video okay so feel free to reach out if you have questions I encourage you to look over some of the the major ideas in the apology again specifically the main takeaways are the idea of Socratic wisdom the method of SK skepticism of critically investigation critically investigating uh opinion uh I want you to look at the details of the argument between him and mentus again and try to parse out how Socrates traps mentus in a position that is contradictory and then again I want you to think about this idea of the highest kind of life that Socrates has a philosophical all right so those are the main takeaways of of the apology all right thank you everyone stay in touch with me and continue to keep up with the readings I will make them available for you on blackb thank you