Here the alternative to fear of death may seem like blind obedience to political or military leaders or to the gods.  But Socrates’ obedience is never blind, as his examination of the oracle indicates.  He has thought long and deeply about the meaning of the revelation, and conducted an exhaustive examination of his own to determine its message for him.  His views of political responsibility are complex but have some simple implications (see ch. 26*). 

            How does Socrates know certain actions to be right or wrong?  He comes close to telling us in his examination of justice (ch. 20.4*).  To the popular understanding of justice as doing good to friends and bad to enemies, he points out that to harm someone is to make that person worse.  To make that person worse is to make him more unjust.  But it can never be the work of justice to promote injustice.  There is something deeply contradictory about doing harm, inflicting evil.  The only consistent, and rational, action is to make people better, which means: to do good to every person, whether friend or enemy. 

            In light of these views, Socrates’ exchange with Meletus makes sense at a theoretical level.  If Socrates (on purpose) made his followers worse, he would (on purpose) be making them more unjust and hence more likely to harm him in return.  His behavior would be self-defeating and irrational.  On the positive side—which he does not communicate to Meletus or the jury here (though he will bring it up later)—his code of conduct requires him to make everyone he associates with better, to the best of his ability.  He must even try to make Meletus better.

            But it appears that Socrates does just the opposite in his everyday interviews with others: he often embarrasses his interlocutors in public, exposing their inconsistent beliefs, refuting them, holding them up to ridicule.  How can he say that he is trying to make his interlocutors better?  Yet for all that, he has given us at least a glimpse of how theory connects with practice, how a life of examination might lead to a life of virtuous behavior.  And he has given a hint of how refutation might as be beneficial for the person refuted as it is for as the refuter.