Indeed, Socrates here implicitly answers the question that was left unresolved in the Euthyphro (ch. 23.5*): what is piety for Socrates? To serve the gods seems to imply tending to their needs; but the gods, if they are truly divine, do not have any needs. Now, however, we see that Socrates’ mission consists not of waiting on the gods (who don’t need humans to take care of them), but of his serving his fellow humans (who often do need our care) on behalf of the gods. His examinations aim at turning people away from their focus on material gains and toward the welfare of their souls. If the gods care about humans, they care about their spiritual welfare, and Socrates, by “converting” them to spiritual things, is furthering the work of the gods. In the end, promoting goodness and morality among wayward humans is pious service to the gods.
Socrates goes on to point out that neither Meletus nor Anytus is in a position to harm him. “For I don’t believe it is lawful for a better man to be harmed by a worse. [Meletus] might of course succeed in putting me to death or exiling me or depriving me of my rights. He and others might perhaps think these are great evils, but I don’t think so. It’s much worse to do what he’s now doing, to undertake to put a man to death unjustly.”[3] Socrates consistently holds that it is worse to do than to suffer wrong.[4] He presents this paradoxical view to the court without argument. He warns the jurors that they risk offending the god who has sent him to Athens as a gift. Athens is like a noble horse that grows lazy, and Socrates is the gadfly that stirs it up with his stings. The Athenians could easily kill him, to their own detriment. Socrates points out as evidence of his dedication to the god his neglect of his own affairs. His own poverty bears witness that he has not taken money for his philosophizing or tried to profit from his wisdom.[5]
Socrates now speaks of the voice that sometimes comes to him. “A certain divine sign comes to me, which Meletus referred to mockingly in his accusation. This sign has been with me since childhood, coming as a voice, which, when it comes, always turns me away from what I am about to do, but never turns me toward any action. This is what opposes any political activity on my part, and does so, I believe, for a very good reason.” Socrates would have perished long ago if he had not abstained from politics, particularly because he would have offended the people by standing up against the injustices committed by the state. “It’s necessary for anyone who really wants to fight for justice, if he hopes to survive for even a short time, to work in private rather than in public.”[6] If Socrates had been active in politics, he claims, he would have perished by now.
Socrates presents here a rationale for his relatively private pursuit of justice. He mentions his divine sign, which provides one of the grounds for the accusation of impiety against him: he seems to claim a private source of inspiration that lies outside the recognized deities of the state cult. He assigns to this sign a limited role in his life, but an important one nonetheless. Clearly Meletus had mocked it in his speech. The sign forbids Socrates from active participation in political debates, but seems, by acquiescence, to endorse his philosophical activity. Socrates’ discussion of the danger he would run implies that a good deal of political action in Athens is unjust, and that if Socrates were involved, he would be opposing many of the initiatives brought forward. His political views, in short, are hostile to the desires of the many.
While Socrates makes a kind of virtue of his abstention from politics, the jurors would not necessarily agree. Thucydides reports Pericles, in his great funeral oration for those fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, as praising the universal participation in democracy. “We [Athenians] alone,” he says, “consider the man who abstains from politics not as minding his own business, but as worthless.”[7] Open debate requires broad participation by all citizens. The idea of Socrates’ working for justice in private would suggest to some subversive activities and anti-democratic leanings, with perhaps a touch of religious fanaticism.
[3].Plato Apology 30d.
[4].E.g., Plato Crito 49a-b; Gorgias 475e.
[5].Plato Apology 30d-31b.
[6].Plato Apology 31c-32a.
[7].Thucydides 2.40.2.