Outline Socrates Earlier Charges. Why did he need to deal with these charges before the actual ones
Uploaded by cute_wee_hippo on May 18, 2004
At the age of seventy Socrates was before five hundred Athenians in the court of law. Over his seventy years this was his first appearance in court. However, Socrates had allegations against him earlier in his life of being a Sophist. According to ‘The Concise Oxford Dictionary’, Sophist is defined as; a paid teacher of the Ancient-Greek philosophy and rhetoric (public speaking); meaning a human being who interrogates others tending to discover imperfection and formulate insignificant and extreme criticism . Two other earlier charges Socrates was accused of was aggravating citizens with his continuous cross examination of people who thought they held wisdom, to establish their ignorance and teaching the young men of Athens because they copied his form of method known to the Greek as elenchus. Elenchus is defined as being the technique of Socrates ‘questioning in a series of questions and answers by which the conversation can be controlled’ . Although, there was no truth in these allegations to prosecute him, those who accused him won by default because Socrates had no one to defend him. Socrates came up with a solution while in front of the jury to solve the problems of his earlier charges by addressing the allegations before the actual charges were introduced.
Being accused of performing a sophist technique ‘because he devoted his time to showing people the limitations of their knowledge’ amongst his community, was one of the reasons why Socrates’ earlier charges formed. He admitted a fee was never charged for his wisdom and declared he was not an expert of knowledge. ‘The fact was that there was nothing in any of these charges; and if it was heard that anyone had said he tried to educate people and charge a fee, there was no truth in that’. Although, Socrates did believe ‘that it was a fine thing if a man had the ability to teach, as in the case of Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos and Hippias of Elis’ . Socrates confessed he was not capable of sharing his wisdom to the privilege level of receiving money for his educating. In addition to his confession Evenus of Paros, a true sophist was introduced. Socrates was fascinated by this man’s wisdom that it gave him the sense of understanding his own ignorance of not knowing how...