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PlatoThe Last Days of Socrates
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Plato
An Athenian citizen from an influential aristocratic family, Plato is believed to have lived between approximately 429 and 347 BCE. Stories about his life were told in later ancient sources, but biographical details are disputed and tend not to be taken at face value. Plato is known for composing his philosophical texts as dialogues, featuring a small group of interlocutors, typically historical figures, conversing or debating a topic, almost always with Socrates present.
Plato’s work has been characterized into early, middle, and late periods. Of the texts in The Last Days of Socrates, Euthyphro, the Apology, and Crito are said to belong to Plato’s early period and Phaedo to the middle. Arguably his most famous work is the Republic, a late period work which sets out to describe the ideal city and person.
The foundational contrast at the heart of Plato’s philosophy is that the ideal cannot be accessed by the body; there is a gap between what can be observed and known through the body’s senses and the essence of a thing. The divide between body and soul exemplifies this contrast, as the body is the mutable, destructible part of the human and the soul the immutable, eternal part. The philosopher is one who acknowledges and explores this distinction to understand what is good, wise, and just.
Plato’s use of dialogue embodies the inability to fully access an ideal. The dialogues are exploratory, often ending with lack of resolution. Dialogues characterize philosophy as Plato understands it as a wandering quest that is eternally unfinished and must eternally be pursued. As with the four texts in The Last Days of Socrates, Plato’s dialogues spill over into each other, creating a web of intersecting meanings and questions, with a recurring pattern at the center. As his character Socrates draws on and subverts elements of hero cults in his self-defense and characterization, Plato draws on and subverts the intellectual tools of his time—debate, contests, festivals—and reframes them in pursuit of wisdom and justice.
Socrates
Socrates was a historical figure who is believed to have lived between 469 and 399 BCE. Little can be said with certainty about him. No written works attributed to him survive, and all information about his life comes via secondary sources. In addition to Plato’s dialogues, surviving depictions of Socrates include Xenophon’s dialogues (some surviving in fragments) and the comedies of playwright Aristophanes. Comedic portrayals of Socrates were scathing and inconsistent with the figure presented in Plato and Xenophon. In the Apology, Socrates insists that he is not a teacher and does not charge participants for his conversations. He is the antithesis of the typical Athenian statesman, orator, or educator, as he expresses no interest in power, does not wish to make attractive speeches, only just ones, and does not accept payment for his time. Rather than seek power and influence, Socrates lives in poverty, despised for his relentless pursuit of wisdom.
One detail consistently attributed to Socrates, however, is his physical characteristics. It is suggested that he was unattractive by the conventional standards of the time. In the context of ancient Greece, this may also reflect a pattern of inverting physical characteristics and personal character. For example, there is a trope of portraying those who have access to privileged insight from the gods as blind, e.g., Homer and Tiresias. In the case of Socrates, he sought the good, which was equated at times with beauty, but he was ugly.
Plato’s portrayal of Socrates presents him as the founding hero of philosophy, on par with mythical heroes who receive an insight from an oracle, wander to fulfill a quest, endure hardship and death, and ultimately become a kind of protective talisman to the community. In the case of Socrates, that talisman is the philosophical method that can lift a city out of its moral decay.
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