Socrates and Plato's Apology Topic 1 (REVISED)

Are Socrates’ charges, corrupting the youth, creating new gods and not believing in the old gods legitimate? Is this a fair trial?

 Throughout Plato’s Euthyphro, the characters of Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing, what is good and right and what is simply not. It is because they are concerned with the current charges against Socrates and could possibly happen as well as why he is being charged.

But it is in Apology that the charges of Socrates are put to rest. These charges do not seem to be legitimate or fair because they are based off of accusations and not direct knowledge as to what actually occurred. Before the trial even begins it seems that the accusers, jury and the judge had already had already decided his fate.

The “corrupting of the youth charges” later becomes a more secured offence while his charge about not believing in the gods is clarified when he says “I find it hard to accept [stories] people tell about the gods? I expect that I shall be found at fault because I doubt these stories” (pg 6, section 6). He goes on to explain his doubt about the god’s powers and attributes to society to Euthyphro. Socrates later becomes worried that the gods will fight over disagreements that occur between people and possibly between the gods themselves. An example of this is shown when Socrates says that “some of the gods [may] think one thing [is] just [and] the others another” (pg 8, section 8).

        But in order to answer the original question, which has made me think about the daily choices made by many individuals, Euthyphro’s idea of “righteousness and piety are part of justice which has to do with the careful attention which ought to be paid to the gods” (pg 16, Section 14) is what has clarified my thoughts about this question.

To answer the question, no, I do not think that his charges were fair because, as mentioned earlier, his punishment had already been decided. Socrates believes that Meletus is accusing him on the account of inventing new gods as well as not believing in the old ones and could quite possibly be trying to isolate Socrates because of his beliefs. Unfortunately, putting him to trial and condemning him to death would not be appropriate actions of people in our modern society. Even though, Meletus and the jury think that he was guilt, or possibly just disliked what Socrates was trying to teach, they could have arranged a more appropriate punishment. If they had concluded a different punishment then Socrate’s trial would not cause such a stir among many generations of people.

But the bottom line is it should not be legal or just to take someone to court because they have different beliefs that you. Everyone is entitled to having their own beliefs because if people did not believe in various things, then life would become very boring. Although this was not taken place in this day and age but these charges may have been fair in the time period where they occurred. But overall my concluding thought to this question is that no, the charges are not fair and no matter how their judicial system worked it should not have be a legitimate charge.