An Analysis Of Socrates's Speech In 'The Apology'

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The speech title may be deceiving to the eye, this speech isn’t even an apology, and it’s more of defense speech. Socrates uses the speech to defend his accusations against him. In the story, “The Apology” Socrates is on trial for accusation like, “corrupting the youth” and “impiety.” Through this following essay, I would like to convey the following: what Socrates means by knowledge or wisdom and why he thought that knowledge/wisdom was the best means of happiness and perfecting the soul, what kind of knowledge is the best, how did he react to the oracle, and what we thought about his accusations in the court and do we think he deserved his punishment.
Socrates defines knowledge as, acknowledging the limits of one’s own knowledge. In “the Apology”, Socrates …show more content…

Socrates interprets this statement as indicating any such purported wisdom is simply his own knowledge that he was not wise. Socrates claims to have been bemused by this statement, since he always claimed that he knew nothing. He understood himself as an example of an average man, which was used by the oracle, to be somewhat better than the others, because he only knows, that he don’t know anything. Socrates went on a “divine mission” to solve the paradox and to clarify the meaning of the Oracles’ words. He systematically interrogated the politicians, poets and craftsman. Towards the end of all the interrogation, Socrates tells the jury that he would rather be himself than anyone else. Towards the end, Socrates realized the Oracle was correct; while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all, which paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. Socrates’ paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of

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