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The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Plato
Creators: Harold Tarrant, Hugh Tredennick
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy Used: $2.87
You Save: $10.13 (78%)
New (72) Used (78) from $2.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 30007
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140449280
Dewey Decimal Number: 184
EAN: 9780140449280
ASIN: 0140449280
Publication Date: April 29, 2003
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Condition: This book has writing and/or highlighting - in some cases a lot, sometimes just a few pages* If you can deal with the writing/markings, this is a great deal! * If this does not have writing and highlighting, it is probably a former library book * We carefully inspected this * Great customer service * Satisfaction Guaranteed!
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Product Description
The trial and condemnation of Socrates on charges of heresy and corrupting young minds is a defining moment in the history of Classical Athens. In tracing these events through four dialogues, Plato also developed his own philosophy, based on Socrates' manifesto for a life guided by self-responsibility. Euthyphro finds Socrates outside the court-house, debating the nature of piety, while The Apology is his robust rebuttal of the charges of impiety and a defence of the philosopher's life. In the Crito, while awaiting execution in prison, Socrates counters the arguments of friends urging him to escape. Finally, in the Phaedo, he is shown calmly confident in the face of death, skilfully arguing the case for the immortality of the soul.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Yawn October 24, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am probably alone in thinking that Socrates was a pompous windbag and that the citizens of Athens deserve a small award for putting and end to his tedious speeches. This book is pure propaganda suggesting that Socrates was a saintly figure martyred by the evil mob. They had concocted ridiculous charges of corrupting the youth of Athens and then had him convicted in a kangaroo court.
The truth is of course more complex. Athens had been a democracy. Socrates and Plato were enemies of the democracy believing in rule by the rich. After the defeat of Athens by Sparta the democratic government was replaced by an oligarchy who used repression to maintain control. It was this government that was supported by Plato and Socrates. Both were in reality traitors to their country in much the same way that Pinochet was a traitor to Chile. After the corrupt rule of Plato's friends was overthrown democracy was re-instituted and Socrates was put on trial for his role in forming the views of those who destroyed the democratic system.
Plato spent his life writing crude anti-democratic propaganda such as this book. His philosophical system of government was that of a totalitarian society run by un-elected guardians. Popper the famous 20th Century Philosopher saw him as one of the forebears of the closed society along with Marx and Lennin.
If this book is to be believed and there is no particular reason to see it as accurate or truthful then Socrates bought his own fate upon himself. He had the chance of exile and he also had the chance to suggest an alternative punishment.
Despite his role as a traitor surely Socrates deserved death because of his life spent as a tedious bore. One cannot read any of the dialogues featuring his alleged sayings without seeing contrivance and he mis-recording of his opponents. At the conclusion of this book one can put it aside and feel a certain sense of satisfaction that the people of Athens did the right thing.
 Philosopher at bay May 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Athens, during the fifth century B.C., the Sophists were wise men. They were not philosophers, or scientists, they were itinerant teachers. Socrates was a moralist and a religious man. Plato was forty years younger than Socrates. THE APOLOGY and the CRITO are founded on fact, shaped by Plato's artistry, (he was a poet, also).
Socrates was indicted for impiety. A public action was brought against him as a menace to society. Orators and poets disliked Socrates's influence on the young. He asserted in THE APOLOGY that the true champion of justice must confine himself to private life. Socrates received the death penalty. He did not think he should stoop to servility because he was in danger.
Death is either annihilation or migration of the soul. Crito visited Socrates in prison. Crito urged him to escape. He claimed that Socrates was throwing away his life when he might save it. Socrates argued with Crito that he had no problem with the laws and, thus, he had a duty to be law-biding. Aiding Socrates's escape would be a breach of faith.
PHAEDO is the last conversation. Socrates believed a man should be cheerful in the face of death. A love of wisdom, not the body, makes a person cheerful. Soul resembles the divine, body resembles what is mortal. No soul which has not practiced philosophy may attain the divine nature. Pythagoreans have a theory of the soul. The soul is imperishable. Friends were admonished by Socrates to just be themselves. The philosopher faced death handily.
Amazing and wonderful, the three titles are a compelling work.
How is one to rate... February 20, 2008
...a 2400 year old work of philosophy? The question, itself, is not without philosophic interest.
Rather than presume to judge Plato, or Socrates, or Plato-as-Socrates, I will simply add my own voice to the chorus of general opinion and say: TLDoS is as resonant and, in its way, relevant, today as it was so many aeons ago. Though hardly a work of unassailable logic it is, nonetheless, a deeply thoughtful, imaginative, and passionately argued one. As I made my way through it, I had to remind myself, from time to time, that what I had before me was a work of ancient literature. Tredennick and Tarrant are to be commended for their eminently readable translation. As I am not a classicist, I cannot speak to the quality of the translation, but if the quality of the endnotes serves as any indication, I would venture to guess that the translation is first-rate.
A very complex Socrates -- as remembered, as imagined, and perhaps also as invented -- emerges from the four dialogues in TSDoS. That this same Socrates still has power to reach across the ages to confound, inspire, frustrate, entertain, and teach is as sure a testament to his legacy, and to the legacy of classical Greek philosophy, as any.
Read and learn.
THE INDIVIDUAL AGAINST THE STATE December 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
THE DEATH OF SOCRATES is a very inspiring book to read, especially now, when many of us may be facing the same situation he faced--though with a crucial difference. Whatever distortion of the real Socrates may have been introduced by Plato or other writers, enough comes through to paint a portrait of the first true individual in history-- the first person to be guided by his own individual conscience to do what is right, regardless of the consequences. Reading the Apology, one thrills to Socrates intransigence in the face of the Athenian jury which sentenced him to death. CRITO presents the best argument for government under law ever offered, and thus the beginning of the tradition of civil disobedience later taken up by Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. When Socrates' friend Crito urges him to flee, saying that most people will think he was really guilty if he does not, Socrates says, "Why should we pay so much attention to what most people think?" Then he engages in a symbolic dialogue with the Law of Athens, which can be thought of as comparable to the US Constitution. It is clear that he is grateful to the Laws for having given him the opportunity to be a dissenter. The crucial fact is that they have permitted him the right to attempt to persuade his fellow citizens by permitting him free speech. Even when he was arrested for his teachings, he was allowed to speak in his own defense. Although the verdict was unjust, he was a victim not of the Laws but of his fellow men. (p. 95)
However, the tradition of civil disobedience which Socrates founded is only meaningful in a democracy, where people have the right to dissent and to have a fair and public trial. And it is rapidly becoming obsolete. For on October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, initiating the gravest crisis in US history, not excepting the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 itself. Congress has had over a year to repeal or amend that act but has failed to do so. Now it is up for review by the Supreme Court. If that body, now nearly half-filled with "rubber stamp" justices, fails to strike down the law as unconstitutional we shall have to resort to a very different tradition than that of Socrates, one which has its roots in medieval England, and was transformed in the 17th century into John Locke's social contract theory. Jefferson expressed it in the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: speaking of the American colonists, he wrote, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them to absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security." Faced with the prospect of living in a society which would have made his dissenting individualism impossible, I'm sure Socrates would have agreed.
 The Last Days of Socrates. Plato. (Penguin) November 13, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Although many accounts of Socrates' trial are known to have existed for some time after the actual events described by Plato, only Plato's and Xenophon's accounts survive. Both writers were sympathetic to Socrates, and so are somewhat suspect as to whether they adequately and accurately describe the full nature of the charges against Socrates. Plato, a 27-year-old admirer of Socrates at the time of the trial, describes the charges as being impiety (questioning the state sanctioned [poly]theology) and, thereby supposedly corrupting the minds of Athens' youth. A similar charge had, years earlier, driven Anaxagoras from Athens, but many scholars believe there were probably other factors involved in the case against Socrates. Here we find an intractable mystery (and some unwarranted speculations that are merely libelous)*.
Plato's telling of Socrates' last days consists in four parts:
(1.) Euthyphro: Socrates in Action. (2.) The Apology: Socrates on Trial. (3.) Crito: Socrates in Prison. (4.) Phaedo: The Last Conversation.
Euthyphro, The Apology, and Crito are better paced and more interesting than Phaedo, which is a long Socratic argument that the soul must possess some extra-material existence, which continues, or is somehow renewed, beyond corporeal death. I suspect that most readers will enjoy the first three sections of this text, but find the last (and longest) more of a chore; at least that is my opinion. Throughout the text, Plato presents Socrates as a man of both relentless curiosity and an admirable ethical heroism.
* As to the rather facile side bar discussion that seems to have been present in earlier reviews in this forum (while noting the forensic evidence indicating that the worst of these comments was deleted): Given the full weight of the available evidence, Socrates' supposed bisexuality can add up to nothing more than idle speculation. As to his relationships with young men, it cannot be confirmed that they involved males that were considered to be below an age at which they could accountably assent--and even more importantly, IF any such relationships were of a sexual nature at all. Given the available accounts, arguments that these were NOT sexual relationships seem clearly more defensible than (slanderous?) accusations that they were. In other words, as regards this charge, we simply enter an arena of irresolvable facts and potential slander. Why go there?! What we CAN glean from the only extant accounts of Socrates' character is that he considered himself to be one who strove to consistently abide by the highest ethical standards, and that this is consistent with Plato's account here. As cited in Phaedo, these comments of Socrates' seem particularly relevant to this [particular slander]: ". . . true philosophers abstain from all bodily desires and withstand them and do not yield to them. . . those who care about their souls and do not subordinate them to the body dissociate themselves firmly from these others and refuse to accompany them on their haphazard journey; and, believing that it is wrong to oppose philosophy with her offer of liberation and purification, they turn and follow her wherever she leads."
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