Socrates: Offering Legal Counsel Socrates, the charges that you face are serious ones. For many years, you were allowed to wander the streets of Athens, advocating your moral philosophy of ideal governance. Your concept of 'philosopher kings' having the right to rule, versus the ordinary populace, was profoundly at odds with the ideology commonly espoused in democratic Athens. For many years, you were allowed to speak as you wished. But gradually,

Civil Disobedience The Trial of Socrates The Athenians suffered a crushing defeat in 404 B.C.E. with the end of the Peloponnesian War. A Spartan occupation force controlled the city, and instituted the rule of the Thirty Tyrants to replace Athenian democracy. While a form of democracy was reinstated it lacked the acceptance of ideas and freedom of speech that had been such an integral part of Athenian society (Rogers). In Athens at this

The Defense of Socrates Plato’s Apology also known as the part of the sequence of the Trial of Socrates scenes shows the famous philosopher pleading his defense before the committee of Athens that has decided it is his fate to die for corrupting the youth. His sentence does not bother him and he respects the decision of the state, acknowledging that it has the right to decide these matters. He objects,

Socrates Was Not an Enemy to the State Was Socrates an enemy of the state? There are two appropriate answers -- "yes" and "no." But first a definition of "enemy" is needed. In Mark Twain's short story "The Mysterious Stranger," Satan explains why there will always be war. It is because "a loud little handful" at first instigates it then, "…the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its

Socrates Argument Against Charges The Apology: The horse-breaker analogy The trial of Socrates came about because he was the teacher of several radical aristocrats who attempted to overthrow Athenian democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. Socrates had taught many of these men philosophy, and he advocated a philosophical kingdom ruled by elite philosophers as the ideal form of government. Socrates believed that just as the people most suited to make shoes

Death Penalty Capital punishment, also known as the Death Penalty, is a legal penalty enacted against a person who has been found guilty, via the judicial process, of committing a capital offense. This paper seeks to briefly introduce the history of the death penalty, and introduce current thought for and against the use of the death penalty in the United States. The earliest record of an established death penalty law is found