The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone
London: Pimlico, 1997 (First published 1988) ISBN 0712673148
This book was nothing like the book I expected it to be, which was an accounting of the trial and subsequent execution of Socrates. While it does deal with that event, this book is itself a re-trial of Socrates, undertaken by Stone, who comes down with a verdict of guilty. The Trial of Socrates is also a polemic against both Socrates and Plato, and a spirited defence of democracy and the Athenian republic.
Stone - an investigative journalist who ran his own paper in the US and then turned to classical studies in his retirement - was intrigued by the trial and death of Socrates and so went back to the sources that have come down to us to try and reconstruct why it was that he was found guilty of the charges laid against him, and why it could be that Athens would execute one of its most famous sons.
Stone was not a philosopher, frequently becoming frustrated with Socrates' questioning and theorizing, and forcefully putting the notion that he should have spent more time working within Athens' institutions, rather than pointing out their flaws. Stone was also a fierce democrat, and had very little time for Socrates' and Plato's denigration of this model, and their praise of an enlightened ruler.
While Stone writes interestingly and with vigor on democratic Athens, his treatment of Plato and Socrates, and the story of his trial is, to me, unsatisfactory. Using his skill as an investigative journalist, he looks at the sources to try to reconstruct what happened. The problem that I have in his use of such sources is that he relies far too much on Plato, who used the life of Socrates and the story of his trial to advance his own philosophical teachings, which means that, as a factual source of events, his writings should be taken with some caution. Stone is too quick to take Plato's writings at face value, especially when they confirm Stone's opinions. Plato had an agenda, and so while we know from his works the outline of the trial, and no doubt some of the the things Socrates may have said in his defence, it is certain that Plato doesn't give us the whole story.
The most interesting chapter of the book for me deals with why the Athenians decided to try Socrates when they did - he was seventy years old, and had been philosophizing in his own way for nearly a lifetime before he was hauled before a jury. Stone has much to say of interest here, to do with the rule of the Four Hundred and the rule of the Thirty causing upheavals in the stability of Athens that led to the populace placing some of the blame for the uprisings on Socrates, especially given his connexion to Critias, the leader of the Thirty. Of course there is no proof that this is the case, but I think Stone has proposed an argument that makes some sense.
On reflection it seems to me that Stone may have spent his life thinking that Plato and Socrates were part of the greatness of Athenian democracy, and was shocked on reading their works that in fact they were highly critical of Greek and Athenian society, politics and religion. His shock has led him to write this book, in which he writes as a journalist rather than a true historian or philosopher. His approach means that while there is much of interest in the book, ultimately the reader leaves the work with a one-sided view of the philosophy of Plato and Socrates, and with the ultimate mysteries of the trial (why was he charged when he was? why did he prefer to die than flee?) unresolved.
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