Sorry, Not Sorry: The Apology

Andrew Santos

Rhetoric 103A

Kwan Hua

10.8.16

Sorry, Not Sorry: The Apology

                        The story of the Socrates’ martyrdom is not the only goal achieved by Plato’s Apology. Ignoring Plato’s syllogisms and Socrates’ use of elenchus, I instead seek to reveal elements of the rhetorical structure of the greater work. I contend that an operation in the Apology’s is that it assaults rhetoric’s merit head on, but by doing this, simultaneously shows how rhetoric is more powerful than truth, thus unraveling (perhaps inadvertently) Socrates’ claims philosophically established claims.

            The apology starts right after Socrates’ crimes are presented to the ‘men of Athens’ by his three accusers, Meletus, Lycon, and Anytus. Plato likely does this as a way to diminish the power of those three speakers. Instead of giving them the floor to directly accuse Socrates, their accusations all come out of Socrates’ mouth, save for a few times he directly interviews his accusers. In this introduction, Socrates immediately assaults the rhetoric of his opposition, “I know their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was – such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth.”[1] Socrates is making an implicit claim here, that rhetoric can be used to construct persuasive arguments without requiring truth. And the three accusers seem to agree, as Socrates describes them as making a defensive argument, saying that he is a wordsmith and a thought weaver, who is capable of casting verbal spells over his audience. It seems that the potential abuse of rhetoric is the only agreement Socrates and his accusers come to, and I contend it is because the work is also assaulting rhetoric throughout its telling.

            So in the rest of the apology, Socrates tactically points out that people tend to interrupt him before he gets to his point.[2] He does this in order to gain a rhetorical advantage over his accusers. Now he can say whatever he might like about any aspect of their character, and challenge them. This is vividly manifested in his third to last usage of this idea of mid-speech interruption, where he gets under Meletus’ skin by coaxing him into interrupting while saying harsh things about Meletus’ state of knowledge. “I wish, men of Athens, that he would answer, and  not be always trying to get up and interruption… No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the court, as you refuse to answer for yourself.” Socrates is just trying to bait Meletus into interrupting his speech, in order to demonstrate how unorderly Meletus is. But this gambit does not pay off. Socrates’ initial claims about the state rhetoric is that eloquence can only be attributed to him if it pertains to the truth. Socrates thinks truth speaks louder than rhetoric.

            Unfortunately for Socrates, this does not end up being the case. Since we are reading from Plato, I grant him the omniscience of the narrator. Thus, Socrates is indeed telling the truth, and his accusers are every bit as devious as he paints them out to be. But if this is the case, and it is the case that truth is the most eloquent operation of persuasion, then it does not logically follow that Socrates should be put to death. The words warning of Socrates’ eloquence, his purported ability to weave and cast spells were taken seriously more than his actual argument. The rhetorical function of the argument of his accusers serves to incriminate him by the very art of sounding convincing.

            Ultimately, this story is one of martyrdom. We can think of a handful of people who were willing to die for their beliefs, and the belief that truth trumps all is the belief that Socrates had to die for. That we are still discussing this great philosopher today shows the power of the truth that he really had, and that things did indeed play out in his favor, even if it was at the expense of his own life. So the rhetoric in the moment got the best of Socrates and won over the people, but the rhetoric of Plato writing the most popular version of Socrates’ defense ends up besting the rhetoric that is devoid of truth. In a way, Socrates was always right, except for in practical terms, which is arguably a common problem amongst philosophers.

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[1] Apology, Plato (classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html)

[2] Plato Apology