The positing of the oracle in the Apology

At the end of the Apology, Socrates addresses his friends for a final statement, discussing the oracle that had informed him throughout his life and his comfort with his sentencing at the trial and imminent death. In this passage, Socrates posits death as “a good,” speaking with a familiarity and self-assurance towards his friends that aids in this characterization.

                Socrates begins by directing his attention towards his “friends,” specified as those among the audience that had voted to acquit him. This initial statement frames the passage as almost affectionate, in a way that seems more like a communal forum on the nature of his sentencing than an official response. This is emphasized by his call for the audience to “stay then awhile,” to talk “while there is time.” Socrates further specifies his friends as the true judges of the audience, stating, “for you I may truly call judges.” This specification serves to both uplift his supporters and criticize those that have condemned them, highlighting their lack of qualifications to be considered judges in his mindset. These qualifications include the ability to carry out justice within the context of the trial; in doing so, Socrates accentuates his claim of injustice in the decision of the trial, an accentuation that pairs interestingly with the framing of his sentence throughout the rest of the passage. While he recognizes this injustice in the speech, and filters the rest of his statement through this lens, Socrates prioritizes his discussion of his own moral judgments in this passage, in the form of the oracle.

His description of the oracle as “within him” positions the oracle as something inherent to him, and in doing so grants the discussion the legitimacy associated with a supposedly objective oracle while still allowing Socrates to interpret its judgments in a more direct way. In this sense, Socrates seems to establish the oracle as his own moral sense; however, in still referring to it as an independent entity, one that even opposes him on “trifles” and “a slip of error about anything,” he is able to phrase his determination of his death as “a good” as a discovery that he can come to with his audience. In doing so, he furthers the communal tone established by the specification of his audience.

Socrates says that what is generally believed to be the “the last and worst evil” has now “come upon” him, and immediately follows this with a discussion of his day and the lack of warning that he received from the oracle leading up to his sentencing. Describing death as coming upon him makes his demise seem gentle; rather than being forced or inflicted upon him, it is something that has arrived as if to great him, framing the discussion as non-adversarial to begin with. The lack of warning from the oracle alongside this, described after his initial positing of the oracle as an objective, independent portion of himself, helps to establish his argument that death can exist as something better than evil. However, it is here important to consider again his initial framing of the audience as his friends, and the ways in which Socrates brings the issue of injustice back into the conversation at the start of the passage; in doing so, death is presented as a good, but only for those among the audience who are his true judges, who have been deemed as friends by his mindset, guided by the oracle.