The Trial of Socrates

by I.F. Stone

Book Overview

In unraveling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316817589
• ISBN13: 9780316817585
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 22.9" x 15.0" x 15.0"

Customer Reviews

One of the best books about the period

Socrates. A name at which we are supposed to bow our heads. The noble Socrates, teacher of the young, noble free thinker, martyr for freedom of speech. The problem is that all of the available evidence shows that he was a lousy husband, a narrow-minded snob, and a facistic hypocrit. His veneration by philosophers is absurd. Socrates may have never had an honest discussion in his life. Everything recorded in Plato and Xenophon is rigged to come out his way. There is no real free exchange of ideas. Anyone with the sense to have operated outside of his one trick, the negative dialectic, could have blown him away. His own knowlege of his shortcomings might explain why he wasn't too happy with free speech. Maybe the real Socrates had been bested in too many arguments with real thinkers. History bears out that the real Socrates wasn't able to hold his own outside the confines of his inner circle. Despite a lifetime of propaganda he wasn't able to convince many of his fellow Athenians to try out his wacky ideas. They made fun of him as long as he wasn't any real danger to anyone, a stock figure in their comedies. A kind of ancient Greek flat-earther. That didn't turn out to be the end of things though. Socrates' aristocratic students showed themselves quite willing to put his proto-nazi teachings into practice through murder, treason and theft. I.F. Stone does a very good job of showing why Athens, against its own traditions and customs, might have been driven to get rid of him. If I'd been in Athens at the time and had experienced and witnessed the murders and crimes commited by his students, I might have been willing to try to cut another bloody dictatorship off at the head too. We know that Socrates didn't learn anything from the experience of two bloody (even by modern standards) dictatorships or from his own silencing under The Thirty. We have his own students word on that. After the restoration of democracy when it was again safe for him to spout off he almost certainly kept on longing for the end of the democracy and the establishment of a total dictatorship. The attempted putsch shortly before the trial would have been the last straw. Stone, always true to his basic beliefs, would have let him off on free speech grounds. No doubt he was morally right. But given what they had been through it is understandable that the Athenians didn't think the risk was worth it.Plato is the creator of Saint Socrates. It is his skill at writing, particularly the dramatic death scene, and not Socrates skill at thinking that has had them roped in for centuries. I've read articles written by opponents of this book, mostly neo-platonists and McCarthyites, and have yet to find one who makes as good a case for veneration as there is for condemnation of Socrates. The final irrationality of the Socrates cult is that it has managed to pass him off as a martyr for free speech while recording that he was throughout his ca

I.F. Stone's Weekly reaches the Greeks

This is a compelling account of a confusing question our histories often manage poorly, in the conflict of democratic and philosophic traditions. In a manner not dissimilar to Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies, although an entirely different book and perspective, Stone looks at the context of Socrates' trial in a way often filtered out of introductions to Platonic perspectives. The ambiguity of Socrates, to modern minds, suddenly stands out, although that should not be troubling to anyone iterested in either the birth of grand philosophy or the evolution of democracy. Getting it straight in the who's who of who's for and against what is important. This is a complex scholarly field, and Stone is good at it, but, as some of the other reviews suggest, the final right interpretation of the evidence is not so easily obtained. Superb work from any view, and well worth reading.

This is an important book

I think that it is very hard for anyone who is informed about Platonic philosophy to accept this argument completely at face value. Nonetheless, it is an excellent book because it presents us with a new perspective on that old treasure of Western Civ and intro to philosophy classes, Plato's presentation of the death of Socrates. Stone argues that Athens was justified in its execution of Socrates because Socrates demonstrated himself in these texts to be an opponent of Athenian democracy and values; this is in contrast to the interpretation that Socrates was such a defender of democracy that he was willing to obey it even when it appeared to deal unjustly with him. Discussing this thesis in my intro to Western Civ classes offers my students a valuable entry into a fundamental task of historical scholarship: the comparison of a primary text or source to interpretations that are given to that text or source. In fact, most of my students agree with Stone (without having read him) that Socrates is an egotistical pain in the a** and most of them are able to find evidence in the text for Stone's arguments (particularly Socrates' remarks on horses and horse trainers). Of course, there is also evidence (particularly Socrates' representation of the Laws of Athens) for the opposing thesis. Consequently, when I present Stone's argument in class, there is never silence, but a great debate typically breaks out--which is what I want to happen in my classes. A text never admits of only one interpretation, and the ideas presented in this book help students to see that. Although the ideas of the book clearly contradict some of the central scholarship on the primary text, most readers won't be interested in going that far anyway. This books revives an old text and makes it interesting and controversial; consequently I recommended it despite its somewhat obvious exaggeration of some of its points.

This is a great book

Even if you don't agree with the conclusions drawn by Stone, you'll enjoy the way he describes the trial of Socrates and the time in which it took place. Stone taught himself Greek so he could learn directly from the original source material that's still extant about the trial and execution of Socrates. It's a brilliant, ambitious work -- the closest thing we have to a journalist being sent back to cover the events. You'd be cheating yourself if you didn't read this based on some people who have criticized his conclusion about Socrates' role in what took place.