Socrates and His Innocence

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Socrates and His Innocence Socrates lived such a private life that it lead to the most important revelation of his entire life. He would go about his life doing nothing but self-examination. In examining his life so strenuously others would come to him to be taught, or to have their children be taught by Socrates. They would offer him money and he would refuse. They would do whatever they could to learn anything Socrates had to teach. What they did not know is that Socrates was not teaching anyone he was simply going about his usual life and people just happened to learn from it. This was also why Socrates was put on trial. He was brought up on two charges, one of impiety and the other of corrupting the youth. These two charges set the course for the last month of his life. Socrates was indicted to a court of law on the charges of impiety, and the corruption of the youth of Athens. Three different men brought these charges upon Socrates. These men represented those that Socrates examined in his search to find out if the Delphic Mission was true. In that search he found that none of the men that promoted what they believed that they knew was true was in fact completely false. This made those men so angry that they band together and indicted Socrates on the charges of impiety and the corruption of the youth. Socrates then went to court and did what he could to refute the charges that were brought against him. Socrates starts by speaking of his first accusers. He speaks of the men that they talked to about his impiety and says that those that they persuaded in that Socrates is impious, that they themselves do not believe in gods (18c2). He tells the court of how long they have been accusing him of impiety. He states that they spoke to others when they were at an impressionable age (18c5). These two reasons alone should have been good enough to refute the first accusers of how they were wrong about him but Socrates went on. He leaves the first accusers alone because since they accused him a long time ago it was not relevant in the current case and began to refute the second accusers. Socrates vindicates his innocence by stating that the many have heard what he has taught in public and that many of those that he taught were present in the court that day.

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