Plato’s Apology of Socrates purports to be a record of Socrates’ defense speech at his trial in 399 BCE. Written by Plato, it is the only work of his in which he represents himself as being present as an eyewitness at an occasion when Socrates was speaking. It is the only detailed account of the trial to survive. Another of Socrates’ followers, Xenophon, published his own Apology, but he was not in Athens at the time and can offer only a second-hand report, and a sketchy one at that. For obvious reasons, then, Plato’s Apology is the starting point and source for our knowledge of the sensational trial.
Many scholars trust Plato’s account implicitly, while others recognize it as authoritative, however much Plato may have embellished or revised its contents. Some scholars, however, see it as Plato’s invention rather than a document based, however tenuously, on Socrates’ actual speech.
David Leibowitz has offered a revisionary account of Socrates’ defense speech in his book, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology (Cambridge, 2010). Like many commentators, he holds that “… the Apology is the key to the Platonic Corpus, indicating how many of the disparate themes and apparently contradictory conclusions of the other dialogues fit together” (1). But unlike many other commentators, he does not see the speech as a straightforward defense of Socrates’ life and thought, but as an ironic statement. According to Leibowitz, “Plato does not guarantee the historical accuracy, the historicity, of the Apology. But … he goes out of his way to create the impression of historicity …” (6). Since Plato is the inventor of Socrates’ speech, Leibowitz explains that his “commentary will discuss Plato’s purpose or rhetorical intention along with that of his Socrates” (7, emphasis added).
Leibowitz rejects the widely-held view (which I share), of a difference between the Socrates of Plato’s early or Socratic dialogues (including the Apology) and the Socrates of the middle dialogues (including the Phaedo and Republic). Allegedly, the former disavows any special knowledge and holds views and practices methods compatible with those of the historical Socrates; the latter is a know-it-all who holds views and practices methods best attributed to Plato (e.g., by Aristotle, Plato’s student). In expounding Socrates’ views, Leibowitz draws on middle dialogues including the Phaedo and Republic. Whatever advantages Leibowitz’s “unitarian” view of (Plato’s) Socrates has, it has the serious disadvantage of make Socrates inconsistent with himself. For instance, the Socrates of the Apology is agnostic about an afterlife; the Socrates of the Phaedo argues at length for immortality of soul and reincarnation.
Leibowitz offers many insightful readings of passages in the Apology. But in the end, his portrayal of Socrates seems problematic. He sees Socrates as working to sacrifice himself to protect his followers (156). “To accomplish his goal,” Leibowitz explains, “Socrates must walk a very fine line: he wants the city to execute him, but he also wants the execution to leave a bad taste in its mouth. … He needs just the right balance of supermoralism and high-minded insolence” (157, emphasis added). Here, surprisingly, Plato’s Socrates, no less than Xenophon’s, seeks suicide by jury. Leibowitz’s Socrates does this for an altruistic motive, rather than, as Xenophon has it, to spare himself the miseries of old age.
Here Leibowitz seems to be reading Socrates’ mind; but his Socrates is allegedly a literary invention, not a flesh-and-blood human. Perhaps we are supposed to be reading Plato’s mind through his character’s (unexpressed) thoughts. But how does this further Plato’s agenda?
Perhaps there is an unresolved tension here. Is Plato’s Socrates, according to Leibowitz, a literary invention made to inspire his readers? Or is he Plato’s best attempt to understand his mentor—is he the historical Socrates according to Plato? On many occasions, Leibowitz seems to speak as if the protagonist of the Apology represented the real Socrates, even if the speech Plato puts in his mouth was invented by Plato.
To be sure, in attributing irony to Plato’s Apology, Leibowitz wants to distinguish between the superficial message Socrates’ speech will have for the Many, and the deeper message it will have for the Few (17-18). But in this case the deeper message seems to reveal a Socrates who is not so much a victim as a provocateur. “Strange as it may seem,” Leibowitz observes, “Socrates apparently contrived to bring about his own prosecution …” (114). But if he made himself a target in the first place, how is he being virtuous in protecting his followers from his own folly?
At some level, Leibowitz recognizes that Socrates was up against the political establishment in Athens. But if that was a fact, it was a historical fact, not a literary fiction. Anytus was one of the two most powerful men in Athens at the time, as Leibowitz acknowledges (114-15).[1] The fact that he was present provides historical evidence that the trial was a political prosecution, dressed up as a religious accusation. Meletus, a political nobody, was the front man for Anytus (as Socrates implies).[2] This fact exploded into public awareness when Polycrates the Sophist wrote a display speech, The Accusation of Socrates, featuring Anytus as the main speaker against Socrates, sometime around 390 BCE. This publication was met with several refutations, chiefly that of Plato’s Gorgias, with its violent rhetoric against the sophist and his school (which included Polycrates).[3]
All of this indicated that even after his death, Socrates needed real defenders who would vindicate his legacy, not fiction-writers playing literary games.
[1] As Plato’s contemporary Isocrates asserts, Against Callimachus 23, pairing him with Thrasybulus, the rebel who overthrew the Thirty Tyrants.
[2] Plato Apology 29b-c, 30b-c, 31a, with Leibowitz 115; more significantly, 18b shows Anytus to be the ringleader and Euthyphro 2b shows Meletus to be a nobody.
[3] See A.-H. Chroust, Socrates: Man and Myth (Notra Dame, IN, 1957), 69-100.