key character moment / speaker identity Flashcards
(9 cards)
Apology 29a: “To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not… I do not possess it.”
1. How does he continue to build a moral identity in contrast to the jury?
Apology 29d: “So long as I draw breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practising philosophy and exhorting you and indicating the truth for everyone that I meet.”
1. What persona does Socrates adopt here?
Apology 32c: “When the oligarchy came into power, the Thirty Commissioners in their turn summoned me and four others… instructed us to go and fetch Leon of Salamis from his home for execution… I went home.”
1. How does this moment define Socrates’ identity as a moral agent?
Apology 25a: “Take the case of horses; do you believe that those who improve them make up the whole of mankind, and that there is only one person who has a bad effect on them?”
1. What identity is Socrates crafting for himself through this comparison?
Apology 24c: “I shall now try to defend myself against Meletus… It runs something like this: ‘Socrates is guilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in supernatural things of his own invention instead of the gods recognised by the State.’”
1. How does Socrates begin to frame his identity as religious, not atheistic?
Apology 30b-c: “I am not going to alter my conduct, not even if I have to die a hundred deaths.”
1. How does Socrates portray his personal integrity?
Apology 38a: “…life without this sort of examination is not worth living”
1. How does this reinforce Socrates’ moral identity?
