Απολογία Σωκράτους
1885
Απολογία Σωκράτους
1885
Translated by Alexandros Moraitides
In 399 BCE, an elderly Socrates stood before 501 of his fellow Athenians, facing death by hemlock. His crime: asking too many questions. The Apology is his defense speech, a extraordinary document in which a man condemned to die refuses to beg for mercy, refuses to feign remorse, and refuses to stop doing exactly what brought him to trial. It is both a courtroom drama and a philosophical manifesto, the closest we come to hearing the voice of the man who founded Western philosophy on the radical premise that the examined life is the only life worth living. Plato presents Socrates not as a defendant but as an accursor of his accusers, exposing their ignorance while calmly accepting his fate. The text crackles with the tension of a great mind refusing to compromise, offering not just a defense against specific charges but a defense of philosophy itself against a democratic society that deemed it dangerous. Almost twenty-four centuries later, it remains essential reading because it poses a question every generation must answer: when the crowd demands conformity, is there a duty to keep asking what no one wants to hear?
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“I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.””
— Plato
“For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.””
— Plato
“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.””
— Plato
“the unexamined life is not worth living””
— Plato
“Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.””
— Plato
“My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.””
— Plato
“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing'.””
— Plato
“He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse””
— Plato
“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long …arousing and persuading and reproaching…You will not easily find another like me.””
— Plato
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