Apologia di Socrate
- Lingua:
- inglese
- Stato:
- Opera completa
- Autorialità:
- Scritta dall'autore
- Stato del testo:
- Testo pulito
- Estensione:
- ~15.400 parole · 73 passi
Cita quest'opera
- APAPlatone. (n.d.). Apologia di Socrate. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/plato/apology
- MLAPlatone. "Apologia di Socrate." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/it/works/plato/apology.
- ChicagoPlatone. Apologia di Socrate. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/plato/apology.
Di che cosa tratta
La difesa di Socrate davanti al tribunale di Atene che lo condannò a morte: perché ha passato la vita a interrogare i suoi concittadini e perché non smetterà di farlo nemmeno per salvarsi.
Contesto e storia
Nel 399 a.C. Atene processò Socrate per empietà e per corruzione dei giovani, e lo condannò a bere la cicuta. Platone, presente al processo e sui venticinque anni, scrisse questa versione del discorso pochi anni dopo. Non è un verbale giudiziario: è il ritratto che fissò per sempre la figura del filosofo che preferisce morire piuttosto che tacere. Con questo processo comincia, di fatto, la filosofia come genere letterario: quasi tutto ciò che Platone scrisse in seguito ne discende.
Contesto editoriale, non una fonte citabile: a differenza dei passi dell'opera, questi dati non si possono verificare sul corpus.
In what relation the “Apology” of Plato stands to the real defence of Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the “Memorabilia” that Socrates might have been acquitted “if in any moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;” and who informs us in another passage, on the testimony of Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live; and that the divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also that Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. For the speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance, “_ut non supplex aut reus sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum_” (Cic. “de Orat.” i. 54); and the loose and desultory style is an imitation of the “accustomed manner” in which Socrates spoke in “the _agora_ and among the tables of the money-changers.” The allusion in the “Crito” (45 B) may, perhaps, be adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts (37 C, D). But in the main it must be regarded as the ideal of Socrates, according to Plato’s conception of him, appearing in the greatest and most public scene of his life, and in the height of his triumph, when he is weakest, and yet his mastery over mankind is greatest, and his habitual irony acquires a new meaning and a sort of tragic pathos in the face of death. The facts of his life are summed up, and the features of his character are brought out as if by accident in the course of the defence. The conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the ironical simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which is the portrait of Socrates.…