Customer Reviews

The Trial of Socrates

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I.F. Stone, one of the few honourable journalists in recent US history, wrote this book in his retirement as an attempt to answer a question that had dogged him for years: How could Athens, a genuine democracy, condemn a man like Socrates to death? I mean, this was Socrates, the first major hero of western philosophy (if you don't count the pre-Socratics), the master of dialectic, the hero of all those who value intellectual independence, right?

Wrong. Stone's initial puzzlement hardens into a damaging case against Socrates. He never defends the Athenians' decision to execute him (because he finds it indefensible), but he produces a case for the prosecution that's hard to answer. If, like me, you'd always vaguely considered Socrates to be a model upholder of free thought, free speech and liberty in general, you're in for a shock. Socrates' contempt for democracy and the democratic process was all but a gauntlet thrown in the Athenians' faces. He claimed at his trial to be a gadfly, a reminder of uncomfortable moral truths which the polis was inclined to forget, but on the occasions when Athens was faced with tough moral decisions, Socrates was nowhere to be seen, and had nothing to say. His favourite disciple, Alcibiades, was a right-wing thug. He never ceased to praise the totalitarian government of Sparta, and to heap contempt on the participatory government of Athens (okay, women and slaves didn't have the vote in Athens, but it would be a couple of thousand years before they got it _anywhere_.) He especially hated Pericles, one of the greatest statesmen of all time, because Pericles was popular, and Socrates hated the power of popular opinion (he considered anybody who didn't have philosophical training to be simply unworthy of having a say in how the state ought to be organised. He was, in short, the first great elitist of western political theory.)

Stone shows how Socratic dialogues are frequently weighted in Socrates' favour - the game is rigged. Socrates is constantly arguing with dimwitted yes-men who can't come up with the obvious counter-arguments. This is a sobering and a sweetly rigorous book; for many years, Stone applied his intelligence to sorting out the manifold lies from the grubby truth in American politics (he was no more a Communist than John Milton) and it's a pleasure to see him apply that intelligence to another great untouchable.

For all the passages of wonderful poetry in Plato, there are times when the Sage comes across as little more than a more intelligent, toga-clad William F. Buckley. Good for Stone, that he told this story.

Read the editorial reviews for books on or by Plato and you will find the fawning hagiolatry that too many professional philosophers have bestowed upon one of their own (comparable only to the scorn heaped upon the Sophists, who demonstrated by example how philosophical methods can lead to absurd conclusions, and are thus suspect). Anyone reading "The Republic" in earnest cannot fail to be horrified by prescriptions that are eerily reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution in China or Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia.

I.F. Stone's book demonstrates how Plato's views were those of a disgruntled aristocrat railing against the (relative) democracy of classical Athens who stripped his class of many of its privileges. Some of his associates went beyond railing and actually committed treason in an attempt at restoring the said privileges.

Unfortunately, Stone misses his target, and actually believes Plato when the latter fraudulently ascribed his own opinions to Socrates. Most of Stone's scathing criticism and debunking of Socrates should really be understood as applying to Plato. There is very little we can know about Socrates himself and his views, as he did not write, and any speculations on the man are likely to be fruitless or unsupported by hard evidence.

A much more rigorous (and devastating) critique of Plato is Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies", but it is certainly less accessible to the layman. For all its flaws, Stone's book is a good read and a first step in reversing centuries of undeserved praise granted to Plato.

It might as well be said right off the top: Stone is clearly not a scholar of classical Greece. Although Stone acknowledges his amateur status, it is clear that it is false modesty: he clearly believes that his lack of formal training in classics is a point in his favour. An enlightened amateurism, supposedly uncorrupted by years of indoctrination into the hagiocracy of accepted scholarship, is a pretension he shares with many journalists, who seem to think that an entertaining and provocative story is more important, interesting and "true" than a complete and accurate story. So much for Stone, but what about his book?

I first read Plato's Apology, Crito, and Phaedo (Plato's description of the trial and death of Socrates) in first or second year university. As it is to many young people, it was a moving experience, and one that set the stage for much of my later interest in Greek history and philosophy. The execution of Socrates has usually been treated as a stain on the otherwise monumental achievements of Athens. The contrast between the Athenians' receptiveness to a multiplicity of ideas has always seemed to me, and to many others, to stand in stark contrast to their handling of Socrates. (This seeming contradiction is a useful one, however, since it reminds us that ancient Greek culture, while incomparably influential on Western civilization, was not a uniformly noble affair). Stone questions this seeming contradiction as a journalist would and finds more worldly reasons for the execution, namely that the Athenians believed Socrates to be an active opponent of the democracy, whose teachings directly counseled his pupils (especially Critias and Alcibiades) to commit treason by siding with the Spartans to install an oligarchy in Athens.

Stone's central premise is not new. Scholars have long called Socrates a scapegoat for the loss of the Peloponessian War. Even ancient sources (e.g., Aeschines in Against Timarchus) acknowledged this, more or less. Stone, however, attempts to reverse our sympathies. To him, Socrates is less a scapegoat than a traitor and an enemy of the people. Unfortunately, the "evidence" for his interpretation is really his perception of human nature as viewed through the lens of the Cold War, rather any actual factual contemporary Greek accounts supporting his point of view. This lack of evidence is why classical scholars have, correctly, been less assertive in their interpretations of Socrates execution. Stone is much too certain, as should be expected from someone who styles himself a "maverick" and "non-conformist".

To his credit, however, he calls on us to remember how turbulent and emotional were the times in Athens following their defeat at the hands of the Spartans and after having endured the tyranny of the Spartan-installed government of the Thirty. He brings this feeling to life for modern readers by imagining how America would react had it lost the Cold War to the Soviet Union, subsequently enduring and then defeating a Soviet-installed tyranny. Might not Americans be forgiven for prosecuting and executing some of the more vocal and influential pro-Soviet academics, especially if their most famous students were active Soviet collaborators?

In summary, then, this book gets low marks for scholarship and style, but high marks for bringing a turbulent period in western civilization to life in terms that the average person can relate to. I give it four stars because it is worth reading.

No, that's not ME being provocative with my review title. I.F. Stone makes the linkage explicit between Critias -- Plato's spokesman in several dialogues and "the most thievish, the most violent, the most murderous" of the Thirty who briefly usurped power in Athens just a few years before the trial of Socrates -- and the several dictators of Latin America history. According to Stone, the oligarchic `clubs' of Athens were "the prototypes of the death squads the military used in Argentina, El Salvador, and Chile in our time." (p. 143). It's a odd irony, says Stone, that Socrates has been the very icon of martyrdom in the cause of free thought, when in fact neither he nor his elitist disciple Plato had anything but contempt for egalitarian values, free speech, or the consent of the governed. Both were persistent admirers of caste-structured repressive Sparta, rather than the Athens which tolerated their disdain. Plato's "philospher king", maintained by a caste of military "guardians", does indeed look a lot like Pinochet, Franco, Duvalier, Salazar, or a certain vice-president of recent memory.

I.F. Stone has the rare distinction of having been castigated as a Marxist or worse by right-tilting readers, yet acclaimed by readers of the same stripe as a `libertarian.' He's a bit of both; his goal, as he says in his preface to this book, is "a liberating synthesis of Marx and Jefferson."

Speaking of Jefferson... Slave-owners of the American South and their literary minions - chiefly lawyers, journalists, and clergymen - delighted in asserting that their `freedom-loving' society was a New Athens. With their stringent repression of any discussion of abolition, their censorship of the mails, their imprisonment and sometime execution of dissidents -- all measures of proper government according to Plato's Republic -- the proper comparison should have been to Sparta, a tyranny based on racial enslavement of the non-Dorian helots, on enforced conformity, and on elitist derogation of labor.

The accusation against Socrates was "corruption of the Youth." Stone's central thesis is that the accusation was accurate, though the trial was both illegal and unjust, and a lamentable violation of the very Athenian values that the Socratics rejected. The youths were such as Critias, Charmides, Alcibiades, the gilded scions of the wealthy oligarchs who were never reconciled to the enfranchisement of the middle and lower classes. As portrayed by Plato, Socrates invariably scoffed at the notion that `ordinary people' - workers, merchants, farmers - could possibly govern themselves as wisely as a caste of `experts' in the guise of philosophers. Stone concludes eventually that the 70-year-old Socrates recalcitrantly sought his own conviction and execution rather than acknowledge any virtues in popular sovereignty. It's a bit of a stretch, but in a sense Socrates, via the literary genius of his student Plato, had the `last laugh' in tricking the Athenians into violating their own commitment to freedom of thought.

Like virtually everyone of my age, I first looked at The Republic in high school, after some desultory fashion, guided by teachers whose insights were equally desultory. I read it again at least twice over the years. I have to confess that I found in it mostly what I'd been led to expect, though each reading has further shaken those expectations and uncovered ambiguities. Stone's reading of Plato and the Socratics has totally revolutionized my interpretations. It's a brilliantly orderly, close reading of the sources -- the dialogues of Plato; the works of Xenophon; pertinent passages from the stage works of Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Eripides; and scattered references to the trial from later Greek and Roman authors as late as Diogenes Laertes. It's plainly, sensibly written, without a touch of academic pomposity. It's as exciting as any detective novel or courtroom drama. I wish I'd read it twenty years ago. Thanks to Egolfur the Floridian for reminding me to do so now!

I think a person would have to dig into many primary and secondary sources to validate or refute I.F. Stone's interpretation of the trial of Socrates. Stone argues that among other things, Socrates was anti-democratic and that he deliberately martyred himself. Stone justifies the Athenian condemnation of Socrates on the basis that Socrates undermined Athens' democratic foundation.

Even if we were to scrutinize this argument with research material, we may never learn more about the trial than what Plato--a biased source--tells us. It is also difficult to judge percisely how democratic Athens really was. One historian has convincingly argued that Athens was democratic in name, but like the U.S., it persued the interests of its elite more than the spirit of its ideology. So was Socrates attacking Athenian democracy or a hypocritical exploitation of democracy by the Athenian elite? It doesn't really matter whether or not Stone provides the right answer because he asks the right question,and that is what makes his book interesting.

Stone also argues that Socrates was a dead beat who refused to work and who placed a heavy burden of responsibility on his wife while he hung out with the boys and dispensed philosophy. I can almost picture a Monty Python skit, but it is an interesting personal examination of an otherwise idealized figure.

I recommend that people read this book for its interesting new interepretation of a hallowed Western thinker. Don't be so quick to condemn it--being right is not always the most important thing.

Even if you don't agree with the conclusions drawn by Stone, you'll enjoy the way he describes the trial of Socrates and the time in which it took place. Stone taught himself Greek so he could learn directly from the original source material that's still extant about the trial and execution of Socrates. It's a brilliant, ambitious work -- the closest thing we have to a journalist being sent back to cover the events. You'd be cheating yourself if you didn't read this based on some people who have criticized his conclusion about Socrates' role in what took place.

This is a compelling account of a confusing question our histories often manage poorly, in the conflict of democratic and philosophic traditions. In a manner not dissimilar to Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies, although an entirely different book and perspective, Stone looks at the context of Socrates' trial in a way often filtered out of introductions to Platonic perspectives. The ambiguity of Socrates, to modern minds, suddenly stands out, although that should not be troubling to anyone iterested in either the birth of grand philosophy or the evolution of democracy. Getting it straight in the who's who of who's for and against what is important. This is a complex scholarly field, and Stone is good at it, but, as some of the other reviews suggest, the final right interpretation of the evidence is not so easily obtained. Superb work from any view, and well worth reading.

Socrates. A name at which we are supposed to bow our heads. The noble Socrates, teacher of the young, noble free thinker, martyr for freedom of speech. The problem is that all of the available evidence shows that he was a lousy husband, a narrow-minded snob, and a facistic hypocrit.

His veneration by philosophers is absurd. Socrates may have never had an honest discussion in his life. Everything recorded in Plato and Xenophon is rigged to come out his way. There is no real free exchange of ideas. Anyone with the sense to have operated outside of his one trick, the negative dialectic, could have blown him away. His own knowlege of his shortcomings might explain why he wasn't too happy with free speech. Maybe the real Socrates had been bested in too many arguments with real thinkers. History bears out that the real Socrates wasn't able to hold his own outside the confines of his inner circle. Despite a lifetime of propaganda he wasn't able to convince many of his fellow Athenians to try out his wacky ideas. They made fun of him as long as he wasn't any real danger to anyone, a stock figure in their comedies. A kind of ancient Greek flat-earther.

That didn't turn out to be the end of things though. Socrates' aristocratic students showed themselves quite willing to put his proto-nazi teachings into practice through murder, treason and theft. I.F. Stone does a very good job of showing why Athens, against its own traditions and customs, might have been driven to get rid of him. If I'd been in Athens at the time and had experienced and witnessed the murders and crimes commited by his students, I might have been willing to try to cut another bloody dictatorship off at the head too. We know that Socrates didn't learn anything from the experience of two bloody (even by modern standards) dictatorships or from his own silencing under The Thirty. We have his own students word on that. After the restoration of democracy when it was again safe for him to spout off he almost certainly kept on longing for the end of the democracy and the establishment of a total dictatorship. The attempted putsch shortly before the trial would have been the last straw. Stone, always true to his basic beliefs, would have let him off on free speech grounds. No doubt he was morally right. But given what they had been through it is understandable that the Athenians didn't think the risk was worth it.

Plato is the creator of Saint Socrates. It is his skill at writing, particularly the dramatic death scene, and not Socrates skill at thinking that has had them roped in for centuries. I've read articles written by opponents of this book, mostly neo-platonists and McCarthyites, and have yet to find one who makes as good a case for veneration as there is for condemnation of Socrates. The final irrationality of the Socrates cult is that it has managed to pass him off as a martyr for free speech while recording that he was throughout his carrear an enemy of free speech.

The red-baiting of I.F. Stone in some of these reviews is probably based on assertions by well-funded, right wing cranks (see Eric Alterman: The Nation April 23, 2001) Anyone who was familar with Stone's huge out-put would know that it is unlikely that anyone of any political establishment would want to encourage him, least of all dictators. It would only be a matter of time before he dug up the dirt on them and exposed it in his Weekly. He was first and always and a democrat and a newspaper man. To call him a Stalinist is a total fabrication.

I.F.Stone (1907-1989)wrote THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES late in life. Stone carefully studied Greek and wrote a thoughtful commentary re The Trial of Socrates, the Peloponnesian War, Athenian polictical and social history, etc. Stone gave readers a solid background of the historical backbround to the trial and Athens at a critically tense time in Ancient Greek History.

Stone began this book with the contradiction of Socrates' dissent and defiance during his trial as reported by Plato (427-347 BC)in Plato's dialogue tited THE APOLOGY. Yet, in the dialogue THE CRITO, Plato reports that Socrates (470-399 BC)passively accepts the verdict in spite of his (Socrates')earlier contempt for Athenian law. A good point is that Socrates/Plato were not consistence,and Socrates rarely asserted a definate proposition. During Socrates' trial, he condemned the Athenian Sophists, but Socrates performed the same philosophical gymnatics himself. For example, Socrates argued that the truest and most honest man was the most dishonest since he (the honest man)knew more about honesty and dishonesty.

Stone showed Socrates' inconsistency in the dialogue MENO when Socrates argued that virtue was not teachable and then claims it is. Stone compared Socrates/Plato to the Late Medieval Nominalists who produced useless arguements over words and names (hence the term Nominalists)rather than serious ideas and concepts.

According the Socrates/Plato, virtue was not teachable. Hence the Guardians and the Philospher Kings were to order the Athenians of what was true and false. Dissenters and those who disagreed were to be purged. Stone cites Aristotle (384-322 BC) who argued that virtue, truth, knowledge,etc. were indeed teachable in spite of what Plato/Socrates had previously taught.

Stone not only critisizes Plato/Socrates for their authortarian views, but Stone used historical analysis to provide a context for Plato's work. The Athenians faced defeat between 415-411 BC. The Spartans took control of Athens who were ruled by what are known as The Thirty Tyrants under the leadership of Critias who was highly praised by Plato in spite of Critias' purges and police state tactics. Socrates claimed to be a gadfly during his trial, but Stone remarked that Socrates was a gadfly without any actual sting. For example, when the Athenians took the island of Milos in 416 BC, they massacred all of the men and abused the women and children who were then sold into slavery. Yet, there was no Socratic protest over this outrage. The citizens on Milos only wanted to remain neutral during the Peloponesian War.

Stone also refuted claims of Plato/Socrates that Socrates had such divine wisdom, he could predict future events. If this were true, Socrates would have warned his friend Alcibiades (450-404 BC)not to invade Sicily and Syracuse in 415 BC which was probably the turning point of the war. Thucydides (c460-c.400BC)had no mention of this Socratic insight in his book titled THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

When the Athenian Democrats regained power, they showed surprising clemency toward those who collaborated with the Spartan tyrants. Aristotle praised the Athenians for showing good sense as did Xenophon (c.430-c.354 BC). Earlier when the Spartans took control of Athens, Socrates/Plato offered no complaint or lament. Stone had an interesting comment that Christ cried over Jerusalem, but Socrates/Plato were at best indifferent to the fate of Athens. Even Xenophon, mentioned above, who was not the most loyal of Athenians, praised Theramenes who showed such mercy once the Thirty Tyrants were ousted from power.

Stone further refutes comments re Plato/Socrates re the dialogue THE REPUBLIC. Alan Bloom stated that THE REPUBLIC is a spoof. However, Stone accurately showed the totalitarian concepts mentioned in THE REPUBLIC are further repeated in subsequent dialogues of Plato such as TIMAEUS,THE LAWS, CRITEUS, THE STATESMEN, etc. In fact, Plato wanted what he called The Nocturnal Council to arrest dissenters and critics in the secrecy of the night to be purged. Another comment that Stone refutes is the canard that the Athenians erected a bronze statue to honor Socrates. No such arifact has been found, and, as Stone mentioned, Plato & co. would have mentioned this. They did not.

Another anecdote that Stone used to critisize Plato/Socrates was the fact that Plato/Socrates chided Pericles (c.470 BC-c,429 BC)for not ending talk and debate in Athens. Stone commented that poor Socrates, who talked and debated all of the time, would have no one with whom to converse and to spread "truth."

Stone's critics have chided him for being a leftest in spite of Stone's condemnation of the Soviet system in 1956. He was scolded for this book by the Ivory Tower Guardians who claim such elite knowledge of Plato and philosophy. Yet, these Ivory Tower Elites do not mention that someone of "conservative" views made the same arguements that Stone mentioned. For example Karl Popper (1902-1994)made similar criticisms of Plato/Socrates in Popper's book titled THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES. Mr. Ball,Esq., a "conservative" made similar comments his book titled MERE CREATURES OF THE STATE.

I.F. Stone did not claim to have the "final word" re Plato/Socrates' thinking. Stone did a careful job of research and thinking to challenge a sacred cow. Those who whine that The Great Books do not get enough attention should appreciate Stone's book titled THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES. Stone revived an interest not only in Plato's dialogues, but Stone also called readers' attention to Homer's ILLIAD/ODYSSEY,Thucydides' THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, Aristophones' comedies, etc. Stone' book is well written and should revive such interest in the Classics.

Stone's book is a well-laid out, prosecution view of the trial of Socrates. Certainly, Stone brings up some very interesting points about whether Socrates "got what he deserved," but some of his evidence is far from compelling. For instance, even those who study Plato for a living have a hard time agreeing on what the "historical" aspects of Socrates are, and which are just Plato's own idealized "fictional" Socrates. In my opinion, Stone uses Plato to support his points when it is convenient for his argument, and draws on other sources when it is not.

I encourage people to read this book, if only to hear the prosecution's possible case against Socrates. Those who love philosophy, especially Plato's works, will find Stone's case interesting, if not necessarily convincing