Setting: Let’s Review the Movement of the Dialogue
What is the starting point?
“[C]oncentrate your attention on whether what I say is XXXX or not, for the excellence of a judge lies in this, as that of a speaker lies in telling XXX XXXXX.”
The old accusations
I went to the Politicians; then the poets; then the craftsmen.
What makes Socrates the wisest? His awareness that human wisdom is XXXXXXXXX.
The new accusations
“Socrates is guilty of corrupting XXX XXXXX and not believing in the XXXX in whom the city believes but in other new spiritual things.”
Socrates does not believe in gods. (Hypothetical syllogism at 27d convertible to Modus ponens)
“Someone might say: ‘Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to have followed the kind of occupation that has led to your being now in danger of death?'” What is his occupation?
Verdict of guilty and the proposal of death by Meletus
Socrates’ counter proposal
The final vote on the sentencing of Socrates
” . . . [T]he unexamined life is not worth living for men . . . . .”
The prophesy of Socrates
“[A] good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death . . . . .”
What to do for the sons of Socrates
Philosophical Topics:
Self-knowledge
Philosopher vs Sophist
Right Values / Wrong Values
Socrates’s “Guiding Spirit” (daimon)
Divine Commands / Human Commands
Rhetoric vs Truth
Socrates’s Uncontrolled Freedom and the Fear of Death (and other things)
Freedom and morality in face of evil
Divinity and the Transcendence of Mind / Soul
Socrates and the rejection of body
Socrates and the transcendence of human nature and morality
Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) Freedom and Respect for Self and Others
A Theological Moment: Christological parallels