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Submitted by shawnanigans on October 19, 2005
Category: Philosophy
Words: 1365 | Pages: 6
Views: 268
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Plato's Apology has a many parallels between the courtroom and the democratic process. The courtroom has many things in similar with elections and as such it offers a good look into both Socrates' views on democratic politics, public opinion and truth between both politics and public opinion. Even the size of the jury is similar to the size to the House of Commons. There are 501 jurors, these jurors vote on whether the defendant, Socrates is guilty or not. The jurors came back with a verdict of guilty with 280 men voting against him and 221 voting for him. This means that there is a 59 vote difference between the choices or about 12%. In the legislative branches of most governments it is quite possible to see such division, a case could be made that there are usually even larger divisions. In the courts of most fully industrialised states there needs to be a unanimous verdict to acquit or indict a defendant. The large deciding body in these governments does however function daily with margin even smaller than 12%.
Apology professes to be an actual record of Socrates' speech. This may be hard to actually prove due to the age of the dialogue, but if this is true than this could well be the one of the most important dialogue written for anyone who would like to know about Socrates and his beliefs. Socrates is defending himself against the charges put against him. The first charge is of corrupting the youth of Athens. The Second is the charge of not believing in the gods of the state, and inventing deities. The two charges of course would go together as publicly denouncing gods and inventing new ones would no doubt corrupt the youth were they to hear. There were other "charges" against Socrates which Socrates believed were more dangerous, because they came from years of bad public opinion and gossip. These charges were near impossible to answer too because the jury would have heard about Socrates and this would affect their ruling. The effect it would have...
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