In the Apology, there are mainly two major charges against Socrates, corrupting the youth of Athens and not believing in the gods of the State. This paper will try to analyze Socrates’ response (24c3-25c4) to the first accusation made by Meletus (24b8) by reconstructing and evaluating his major arguments. I will argue that although Socrates’ overall argument against Meletus is valid, it is not sound and therefore not effective because not all his premises are correct.
Since Socrates does not have any written work, the Apology was written by his student Plato as a record of what happened at his death trial. As one of the smartest people in Athenian time, Socrates’ view on education can surely be considered radical at that time. By teaching his students how to question the world around them, Socrates believes that people can benefit greatly from it and step closer to wisdom. Unlike what most people might think, the “apology” here actually means explanation rather than apologizing for one’s wrongdoings, so Socrates’ main purpose here is to confront the charges and prove himself innocent in front of the public.
In my opinion, Socrates’ response to Meletus’ accusation regarding corrupting the young(24c3-25c4) can be summarized into the following two arguments, where the conclusion of the first argument is being used as the premise of the second argument. With these two arguments working together, Socrates then goes on to prove Meletus’s claim that he is corrupting the young is incorrect.
First argument:
P1: If improving the young is like breeding horses, then only very few people know how to improve them. (25b)
P2: Improving the young is like breeding horses. (25b)
C1: So only very few people know how to improve the young.
This reconstruction of the first argument used the Modus ponens argument form and can be considered valid.
Second argument:
P1: If Socrates is the one corrupting the young, then all the other Athenian people know how to improve the young. (25a7-25a8)
P2(C1): Only very few people know how to improve the young.
C2: Socrates is not the one corrupting the young.
This reconstruction of the second argument used the Modus tollens argument form and can be considered valid.
Although both of the arguments can be considered to be valid arguments, I personally do not believe all of the premises within are true and therefore, I do not think Socrates’ overall argument is sound. In the following, I will try to critically evaluate all his premises according to their respective order of appearance in the book.
At the beginning of Socrates’ response, Socrates asks Meletus to clarify his accusation, mainly about if he is the one corrupting the young, then who knows how to improve the young. After a few exchanges, Meletus finds himself not only claiming that Socrates is corrupting the youth of Athens but also all the other Athenians know how to improve the young. (25a7-25a8) Here, Socrates gets his first premise for the second argument, “If Socrates is the one corrupting the young, then all the other Athenian people know how to improve the young.”.
Then to refute Meletus’s accusation, Socrates claims that teaching and improving the young is just like breeding horses, thus, only very few people have that ability and most other people will only damage them. (25b3-25b5) This analogy is very important to Socrates’ overall argument as it is the building block of his later logic inference, however, I do not believe it is a convincing analogy and there are two reasons for that.
First of all, keeping horses fit and healthy is related to activities on a physical level while improving the youth of Athens is related to the mental level. Since they are not causing effects on the same level, even if it is true that only very few professional people know how to breed great horses, there is not enough reason to imply it will be the same for educating human beings. What’s more, it seems to me that if we agree to Socrates’ claim here which does not have any further explanation, we are also agreeing that improving the young is like doing any other professional jobs since it is always the case that only a small number of people can practice certain professional skills.
After concluding that only very few people know how to improve the young, Socrates uses that conclusion as the second premise of the second argument to prove his innocence, namely “Socrates is not the one corrupting the young.
Looking back on all Socrates’ premises, I think his unexplained analogy is the key issue in his response to Meletus. In order to fix that problem, Socrates may choose to further explain and justify his analogy by comparing their respective end goal. For horse breeders, their goal is to help their horses become better horses; for Socrates, his goal is to help the young become better humans. In this sense, even they are helping their subjects on two different levels (one on the physical level, and the other on the mental level), their end goal is the same. Thus, “Improving the young is like breeding horses” can be treated as a reasonable analogy and therefore making the overall argument sound.
In my opinion, this possible response to my objection not only gives further explanation of Socrates’ horse breeder analogy but also addresses the second issue with the analogy by pointing out the uniqueness of the horse breeder profession. However, it still does not properly explain its first issue regarding the differences in nature of two activities. Just like how although both bodybuilding and studying philosophy can lead to personal improvements, the activities involved in meeting these goals can be vastly different. Therefore, simply pointing out the similarities in their end goals is not sufficient to fix both issues with his analogy.
All in all, from the logos Socrates presents in response to Meletus’ first accusation against him, we can tell that Socrates does not believe Meletus is a worthy opponent at all. By pushing Meletus to answer continuous questions one after another, Socrates successfully establishes all the premises he needs to claim his innocence. However, although Meletus fails to point out the flaw during his confrontation with Socrates, the dubious horse breeder analogy opens a hole in the otherwise rigorous logic of Socrates’. Even Socrates may argue that because the end cause of the two subjects in the analogy is similar, the analogy still does not solve the problem that horse breeders improve horses on a physical level while the young get improved on an intellectual level. Thus, I think it is safe to conclude that although Socrates’ overall argument against Meletus is valid, it is not sound because not all of his premises are correct.
References:
Plato: Complete Works. Edited by Cooper (1997: Hackett)