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Answering the Socratic Question
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14119 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1988 |
3,661 Words |
| Author
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Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American
Culture and author of The Politics of Human Nature. |
THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES
I.F. Stone
Boston: Little, Brown, 1988
267 pp., $18.95
The trial and execution of Socrates has provided material for countless legends, paintings, and dramatic re-creations of the historical events. Since most of what we know is derived from two of the martyr's disciples, Plato and Xenophon--both remarkably gifted storytellers--Socrates has gone down in history as the innocent victim of ignorance and bigotry. Simultaneously, of course, the Athenian people who condemned him to death have also been immortalized as the most civilized and enlightened community of the ancient world, the creators of art and philosophy, and the first nation to experiment seriously with democracy.
In the other great "witch hunts" of human history, modern spectators chose their sides. At Salem and Boston, we are either for the Mathers and their allies or we are against them; at Dayton, Tennessee, we support either the biology teacher or the people who tried him; in the 1950s, we line up with either the liberal defenders of civil liberties or the junior senator from Wisconsin who uncovered a massive conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. Supporters of McCarthy or Cotton Mather may choose to deplore their excesses or take issue with some of their methods, but they will not go so far as to declare the innocence of the witches or the patriotism of communists. In the case of Socrates, however, even serious scholars (to say nothing of run-of-the-mill professors and journalists) are quite content to lionize both Socrates and his
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