Joe Dirt
Critical Thinking, PHL 2303 W
Instructor: West smith
April 24, 2012
Socrates Can’t Win After reading Socrates’ part in his own discussion and defense it becomes apparent he is practically standing nearly alone in his opinions and pleads for the majority to feel differently about his stance. Therefore by leading them to change their misconceptions, he is attempting to help his case, and to give himself a chance. He says things like calling his enemies his “dangerous accusers“ then explains their root causes of falsity to discredit them, and he says, “gentlemen, I have no part in it.” trying to get the jury to see his side and for them to take him as he comes, not as how they have perceived him as before he had a chance to speak before them. He knows what kind of challenging situation he is getting himself into saying, “I must surely defend myself and attempt to uproot from your minds in so short a time the slander that has resided there for so long.” Because of this long speech he gives, or main speech as it is referred to, prevails to the reader that he had to spend quite some time on persuading this audience, therefore once again revealing and reestablishing that the cards were not in his favor from the get go. In my own personal opinion, he is trying to squash these old rumors about him that he was a, “student of all things in the sky and below the earth, who makes the worse argument the stronger.” Socrates’ is absolutely trying to change the background information the jury has already heard before his speech, and this is a part of his plan to win his case. They would be the crowd to persuade, seeing that they do determine his guilt or innocence. Other factors driving his persuasion even further would be the fact that the jury and judge were the same crowd as a whole, and there were 501 jury members, making that one body attain both powers of convicting and sentencing. He begins his speech by clearing up his past history, clarifying that at the age of seventy this is the first time he’s been in court despite his many times of being falsely accused by many in the past. He asks the jury, “to concentrate your attention on whether what I say is just or not, for the excellence of a judge lies in this, as that of a speaker lies in telling the truth.” Although Socrates is being honest in his confessions, the jury had their mind made up long before. This is when I feel that media and other medium’s are relevant to this struggle with Socrates and the jury. The jury already has preconceived notions about Socrates because of word of mouth, etc. They have never heard in a courtroom, like they are hearing from him first hand now, him explain his innocence or guilt. But to them it didn’t matter what kinds of things he articulated when he gave his speech because they have already been influenced by the masses, by what they have heard. This fact ties in with George Orwell’s passage in 1984 about “the invention of print… made it easier to manipulate public opinion”. Public influences like this have been happening for years and years before technology, but society has made it easier to become informed, whether it’s rightfully or wrongly and it’s given before anyone has a chance to take a stance on the issue and defend themselves. The public has no way of obtaining the facts of a case that is nowhere near plausible to where they are but if the majority is telling them such “facts”, what else do they have to make an opinion out of? What do we hear in the media that we actually have the means to, if you will, prosecute, or make any real concrete sense of? Not many, to be honest, and the majority of what the public hears about, is individual cases and accusations that, all in all, are quite subjective. It is up to citizens to become informed the best way that they can and seek and find out information the best way they know how, but most information is once again, subjective. What is there to know for fact in history
