Ke Zhan 詹可
Philosophy 120
J. Gentzler
Summer 2016/5/31
Arguments of The impiety of Socrates In the “Apology” written by Plato, Socrates is charged of impiety that he teaches students not to believe in the gods in whom the city believes but in other new spiritual things (Plato, Apology,25b). Socrates argues that he is not guilty of impiety and he believes in the god. Perhaps the strongest argument that Socrates gives for this claim relies on the claim that the new spiritual things he believes are also belong to the extent of god. In this paper, I will argue that this argument fails because Socrates doesn’t have enough powerful evidences to prove that the thoughts he believes are the parts of scope that Athenian believes.
In “Apology”, Melutus charges that Socrates teaches his students to believe new spirituals things. Facing to Meletus’s charges, Socrates defends himself from different aspects. Firstly, Socrates raises doubts about the Meletus’s real meaning of the charge. He corrects the accusation should be he doesn’t believe in gods at all. Let’s see how he gets the conclusion. From Melutus deposition, Socrates is charged of teaching his students to believe different spiritual thinking which didn’t admitted in Authens. Socrates argues that he doesn’t understand Meletus original thoughts. Because Meletus said that the sun is stone, and the moon earth, Sacrates indicates Meletus is antitheist. What’s more, according to Socrates’s sayings, because Meletus doesn’t believe in gods, so Socrates concludes that Meletus’s original meaning of deposition isn’t that Socrates teaches students to believe new spiritual ideas, but Socrates doesn’t believe in god at all. However, Socrates’s conclusion seems like far-fetched and is where I disagree. His premises are Meletus says that the sun is stone and moon is earth; Meletus doesn’t believe in gods at all, and he leads a conclusion that Meletus charges Socrates as he doesn’t believe in gods at all like himself. Socrates’s argument fails because if his premises are true, we cannot obtain the conclusion. For example, if my friends don’t like math, I can’t deduce that he thinks I didn’t like math too. The validity fails and soundness isn’t valid too.
Later, Socrates defends himself based on the accusation that he doesn’t believe in any gods. Socrates says that Meletus accusation fails because he contradicts himself. If Socrates believes in spirituals, he must quite inevitably believe in spirits, thus he must believe gods or the children of the god. Since the spirituals are part of gods or gods derivatives, so Socrates is not guilty of impiety. We can make the structure of the argument explicit as follows:
(P1) If a person who believe in human activities, thus he must believe in humans.
(P2) If a person who believe in horses, thus he must believe in horsemen’s activities.
(IC) Socrates believe in spiritual activities, thus he must believe in spirituals.
(C) Socrates is not guilty of impiety. However, this line of reasoning is mistaken, I will accept (P1) and (p2) as true for the sake of argument. My disagreement is instead with (IC). I claim that even if p1 and P2 are true, this would not deduce the conclusion. This is because P1 and P2 are specific examples which can’t represent the everything in the world. P1 and P2 have a similar feature that they have a solid relationship between it. For P1, human activities are accomplished by human, without human, the activity cannot be done. For P2, without horsemen’s activities, horse cannot be existed. For both of the examples, they are attached to each other. Conversely, in IC, the two things are totally independent and they don’t have inherent relationship. For instance, you cannot say people who believe in Christianity also believe in Catholicism, the two religions are substantially different. If they are similar, then it would not have numerous wars between different religions in all ages. What’s more, we cannot get the (IC) through the premises because the validity can’t be established. Therefore, (IC) is false: we can’t get the conclusion through the two premises both from validity and soundness. So Socrates doesn’t have enough evidences to prove himself not guilty of impiety.
In conclusion, I have argued that Socrates’s argument is a bad argument towards the deposition of impiety. He defends himself based on the charge which he changes through his own thoughts. What’s more, in order to prove himself that he not guilty of impiety, Socrates uses the examples of human activities and horse activities. However, both of the premises are not persuasive and fail to lead the conclusion. Therefore, the strongest of Socrates argument against Meletus’s charge fails.