Did Socrates Want to Die?
I. Some Opinions
A. Elaine Wilson:
“Socrates died for truth, perhaps. But he also died in obedience to his own personal diety…I am suspicious…”
B. Karl Popper
“It is now generally recognized that Anytus…did not intend to make a martyr of Socrates. The aim was to exile him. But this plan was defeated by Socrates’ refusal to compromise his principles. That he wanted to die, or that he enjoyed the role of martyr, I do not believe. He simply fought for what he believe to be right, and for his life’s work…He even may have welcomed the trial as an opportunity to prove his loyalty to his city was unbounded. Socrates explained this attitude most carefully when he was given an opportunity to escape. Had he seized it, and become an exile, everyone would have thought him an opponent of democracy. So he stayed, and stated his reasons.”
C. R. Waterfield
“I like to think that Socrates…accepted his death as a voluntary scapegoat. He had failed to see his vision for Athens become a reality…If, in a temporary fit of post-war zeal, the Athenians thought that it would take the death of a troublesome thinker to heal the rifts of the city and to create the concord that all politicians appeared to support, and that he had worked for in his own way, so be it. Rather than escape…he let himself be killed.”
II. His Death Was Consistent with his view of virtue
A. In the Apology, he says he won’t abandon philosophy for fear of death, because we don’t know what death is. But in the Crito, he suggests that he has enough evidence to prefer death to living with a ‘worn out and ruined body. Death may usu. Be preferable, but some lives are still worth living. He counts none of these beliefs about the afterlife as real “knowledge”.
B. Nothing can make the good person suffer the most extreme wretchedness (ie, make his soul worse) BUT circumstances can make his life no longer worth living- can’t perform good acts
C. In the Apology: consider only whether the action is just or unjust, not fear death. Same in Crito, when considering whether to flee from his prison. Virtue being the sovereign good, its claim is final. Virtue over death.
D. In the Apology: they do him an evil in condemning him, but no great evil. Life is a nice to have, not a have-to-have. Value is far below the perfection of the soul in virtue.
III. His Death Was Consistent with His Larger Mission.
A. “Socrates died in complete control, and his death fitted perfectly with his life.”
B. His death at this time was good: had lived a good life, conscious of his virtue, can exchange the worst part of his life for glory and a painless death
C. Death as a supreme example of a good man who is not afraid to die
D. An ideal death- in control, surrounded by friends
E. Knows that the soul is immortal, and goes to a better place
F. Death can be tamed and understood by reason