Plato’s “Apology” Dialogue 3 – D54

For the Epicycle 1 of this week on Classical Works, we continued reading Apology by Plato. It was very interesting and we discussed important parts of this work. The main questions were, Is Socrates atheist? If not, why and what does he believes? Is virtue a way to improve the soul? In what does he believes to be the ultimate end? Wisdom? Is it doing what’s right? Then, what is to be right? Is it to question and seek for the authentic quest for meaning?

Here are my notes of the dialogue:

Dialogue 3 (3/12/12)

• Of what is Socrates being prosecuted for?
• First charge: of being an atheist.
• Second charge: corrupting the young.

• Euthyphro: what is it that we revere that would be a guide to our action? And how do we know what should be revered?
• Euthyphro has no grounds on what to justify his reverence. That’s the main point of Socrates’ dialogue. 

• What is Socrates doing? (p. 5 - 10)
• Demonstrating Meletus’s contradiction: “He is not an atheist.”
• He is doing the right things.
• Conceit of knowledge
• He is doubting the legitimacy of the procedure, because the people charging him are ignorant at the charges.
• What is God according to Socrates?
• What is to have virtue? To be faithful and true to what they revere. For Socrates is that wisdom, doing the right thing?
• Who has no foundation of the truth, the real atheist?

• Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players?
• He believes in cause and effect. I’m wise enough to realize that I don’t know the cause, and that what differentiates me from you. 

• Demonstrated preferences
• It’s your actions that defines you, not what you claim you do. Foundations of social science.
• Your actions reveal who you really are.
• “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”

• Socrates knows that he doesn’t know, that’s his truth.
• The true, the beautiful, and the good.
• If we don’t cultivate the capacity to recognize it, we would not see it.