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>> Hello and welcome back to the video lecture series
for Philosophy 119, Ethical Leadership,
offered through the Pennsylvania State University.
I'm Dr. William Biem.
Today I'd like to talk about a specific issue
within the context of Plato's Apology,
and this is Socrates' attitude towards death.
Now throughout the dialogue,
it seems that Socrates is offered opportunity
after opportunity to have himself acquitted
of the charges against him.
On the one hand he says specifically
that he could appeal to a motion,
that he could use fancy rhetoric.
We can also surmise that he could have given a more
reasonable kind of defense;
a defense that would have been more appropriate
to the Heliastic court.
When he is convicted, he could have proposed a more
reasonable penalty.
And we know from Plato's later dialogue, the Crito,
that there was a possibility
that Socrates could have been sneaked away,
even after he had been convicted and sentenced.
So he seems willful, he seems like he's trying to get the jury
to sentence him to death.
The reason he does this has to do both
with his philosophical ideas towards death,
but also his goals in arguing in front of the Heliastic court.
He said that his goal is to educate,
to try to improve the wisdom of the community;
specifically the jurors in this case.
And so this is the reason that he doesn't appeal to a motion,
but rather tries to stick to a strict logical argument.
On the other hand, he does have certain attitudes towards death
that make him more willing to embrace death
as a consequence of his actions.
Now after he's been convicted of his crimes Meletus,
his primary accuser, proposes the sentence of death.
Socrates' counter claim, or his counter proposal,
is that he be given free meals for the rest of his life.
This is clearly ridiculous, so he's forcing the jury's hand.
He's making them make a hard decision.
Now Socrates has specifically said that it is worse
to do injustice, than to suffer injustice.
So he's willing to suffer unjustly,
but he won't act unjustly.
And he has already proven that he's willing to risk death
in order to do what he believes is right.
During the time of the tyrants,
Socrates is summoned before representatives
of the government and told to bring back Leon of Salamis.
Leon is an opponent of the current government.
Now Socrates knows that when he brings him back he's going
to be executed.
And so he simply says no, and says I went home.
Socrates is well aware of the fact that it's now his turn
to be executed, not Leon's; that his defiance
of the government means that he's going to be put to death.
And he says that he would have been
if the government hadn't collapsed shortly thereafter.
Again it's OK to suffer an injustice,
but it's not morally acceptable to act unjustly.
But he also says that he specifically doesn't fear death,
for a couple of reasons.
First, he doesn't know if death is good or bad,
and so why should he be afraid of something if he doesn't know
that it's going to be bad?
Secondly, he says that he'd rather die
after making a proper defense; that is to say,
a philosophical defense, than to live by using trickery,
or using rhetoric, or trying to squirm out of his sentence.
He says specifically that his daimon, his conscious
if you will, hasn't opposed him.
And whenever he's going to do something wrong,
his daimon always tells him to stop.
He knows that the dead are either nothing,
or that they'll be rewarded for being just.
There's no notion for Socrates that he could be punished in the
after life, because he's confident in his own virtue.
And he says that there must be true judges in the after life.
And finally he says that he knows
that a good man is ultimately immune to any injury.
There's nothing you can do to a good man that's going
to take his virtue away from him.
The worst you can do is kill him.
He also adds that he's 70 years old.
He's going to die soon anyway,
so he's really just putting off the inevitable if he tries
to weedle out of his sentence.
So what does this say about Socrates as a moral leader?
Well it tells us that he holds as his prime values,
something that's more important than his own physical existence.
And any time we say, or think, that I would die for my country,
for a principal, for my faith, for a cause, for my family,
for my friends - what I'm saying is
that there is something that's more important
than this material in life.
I'm actually saying that there is some kind
of spiritual value that's more important.
And this is precisely the attitude
that Socrates is taking.
There has to be a spiritual value, something like the virtue
of leadership, that transcends simply his continued physical
existence on the Earth.
For this reason he's willing to face even death in order
to keep his virtue intact.
Now we don't generally ask our leaders to die
for what they believe in, but we do want our leaders
to be morallyl just, to have moral integrity,
and to espouse values
that transcend simply the material, or the convenient.
I think that this is an important lesson to take away
from Socrates' attitude towards death in Plato's Apology.