Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T21:34:51.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Epilogue: Socrates and Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2009

Gregory Vlastos
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Myles Burnyeat
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

The lines that close the death-scene in the Phaedo are well known:

“Such, Echecrates, was the end of our companion – a man, we might say, who of all those we came to know was the best and, in any case, the wisest and the most just.”

Was Socrates really as good as that? I have never seen this question raised anywhere in the vast literature on him. I raise it in full view of the fact that throughout his corpus Plato presents his teacher as a man without a peer in three of the virtues most honored among the Greeks – courage, sophrosyne, and piety. Plato is as emphatic on the third as on the other two, making it the crux of the defense against the charge of impiety on which Socrates was to be condemned to death: Socrates' practice of philosophy had been itself a lifelong exercise of piety, obedience to the god of Delphi who had “ordered him to philosophize, examining himself and others.” Plato makes it clear that it was just because of unflinching obedience to that divine command that Socrates had been convicted: had he been willing to propose self-muzzlement as an alternative he could have been acquitted.

So in the case of those three qualities Socrates' character is flawless, granite-solid in Plato's portrait of him. But what of the one that forms the punch-word in the epitaph: “and most just”? Plato feels so sure that on this score too the record is perfect that he has Socrates say he will face divine judgment in the nether world confident that he “had never wronged anyone, man or god.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Socratic Studies , pp. 127 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×