Do you think these charges are legitimate? Is this a fair trial?
The charges laid on Socrates for corrupting the young by corrupting the youth, introducing new gods and denying old ones and being impiety is clearly a illegitimate charge seeing it from the perspective from a student growing up in the 21st century. However for the people back in around 400 BC, religion was something that they believed in with no doubt. If this case was in the 21st century, this charge would not even make it to the courts with all the laws that ensure the freedom of speech and opinion. In comparison to the people of the 400BC, they believed that doubting the gods was a very serious offense and would cause them trouble with the gods and for that the person must be punished.
Meletus claims that “[Socrates] invent new gods and deny the existence of old ones” ("Euthyphro" 1-15), however this is highly questionable. “Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to Cronos or Uranus, and what is acceptable to Hephaestus but unacceptable to Here, and there may be other gods who have similar differences of opinion.”("Euthyphro" 1-15) , from this we can see that Socrates does in fact, respect the old gods. In some cases he does indeed make reference to a new god, but that is only to make sense of the flaws of the old gods. Meletus also claims that Socrates was “corrupting his young friends “, once again, this claim is questionable as this is a highly bias claim. Indeed Socrates was most likely distracting the young people with his endless and confusing conversations from their proper work and corrupting, however in no way is distracting a person from their work a crime.
There trial was not fair in anyway as everyone at the time of this trial was heavily religious. The people of the court believe that they are serving under the gods in order to punish those who are impiet, and with the charge that Socrates is charged with, the people of the court would without a doubt form a bias judgement and punish Socrates for such a crime.
In my opinion, the charges laid on Socrates was in no way legitimate, to judge someone for thinking differently and questioning the unknown is just unreasonable in the perspective of someone from the 21st century where people are encouraged to do such a thing. In a way the arrogance of the people in the past was what delayed the advancement of humanity and if people like Socrates had not existed we might still be worshipping the Greek gods and punishing people that have committed “crimes” because they did something that the people think the gods will not like.
Euthyphro. 1-15. Web. <http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/lange/ch201/Texts/Euthyphro.pdf>.
Great work, Alex! You make a compelling argument about the illegitimacy of the trial, but also show how the case may have been seen as legitimate within another cultural context. To improve this response, I would focus specifically on the problems inherent in the claim that Socrates corrupts the youth. How does the Socratic method work? Is it a form of direct corruption?
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