The charge of impiety

Socrates’ radical reconception of piety

These two modes of Socrates’ religiosity—serving the god by cross-examining one’s fellow citizens and accepting the guidance of a divine voice—are nothing like the conventional forms of piety with which Socrates’ contemporaries were familiar. The Athenians, like all Greeks in the ancient world, expressed their piety by participating in festivals, making sacrifices, visiting shrines, and the like. They assumed that it was the better part of caution to show one’s devotion to the gods in these public and conventional ways because, if the gods were not honoured, they could easily harm or destroy even the best of men and women and their families and cities as well. The Socrates of Plato’s Apology does not refer to his participation in these ceremonies and rituals. (The Socrates of Xenophon’s Apology does, however, and, in this and many other ways, Plato’s Socrates is the more unconventional and provocative of the two and a figure more likely to be hated and feared.) It is impossible to know whether the historical Socrates participated fully (or at all) in conventional forms of religious observance, but, if Plato’s account of his philosophy is accurate, then Socrates lacked the typical Athenian’s motives for doing so. He cannot believe that the gods might harm him, because he is confident that he is a good man and that a good man cannot be harmed. That is why he has no fear of other human beings. Even if the jury votes to banish him from Athens or to kill him, he will not be worse off, because his peculiar kind of wisdom and virtue—his acknowledgment of his ignorance and commitment to continual self-examination—will remain intact. That is also why he is sure that, when he dies, his affairs will not be neglected by the gods. They must be entirely benign in their attitude toward someone like him, who has served them so well, and so he has no need to offer them gifts, if gifts are a device for incurring their favour or protecting oneself from their destructive power.

In effect, then, Socrates admits that his understanding of piety is radically different from the conventional conception. In keeping with his conception of virtue as a form of knowledge he uses an intellectual test, not merely a ceremonial test, to determine whether someone is pious. You may participate in the conventional practices of civic religion, but can you say what piety is? If you cannot, do you at least admit your ignorance and search constantly for a better understanding of piety, as the god wishes you to do? More generally, though you may think you are a good person, can you say what your virtues consist of? If you cannot, and if you do not spend your life trying, then your goodness is a sham.

Socrates’ reconception of piety must have struck his fellow citizens as all the more bizarre and threatening because it was accompanied by his unapologetic and grateful acceptance of the divine sign, which Meletus ridicules—a voice that has come to him since childhood, warning him away from certain undertakings and in doing so giving him unfailing advice. In Xenophon’s Apology, Socrates seeks to portray the daimon that guides him as a phenomenon akin to others with which his fellow citizens are quite familiar: “Those who rely on bird-calls and the utterances of men are, I suppose, receiving guidance from voices. Can there be any doubt that thunder has a voice or that it is an omen of the greatest significance?” But an Athenian of conventional piety would have been able to spot the weakness of this attempt to assimilate Socrates’ divine voice to the experience of a seer who makes predictions based on the interpretation of natural phenomena. Such seers were appointed and regulated by civic procedures. Socrates was not designated by the city to serve in an official religious capacity, and therefore, in claiming to have experiences that put him directly in touch with the divine, he was circumventing the normal route by which citizens gained access to the sources of religious inspiration. The Socrates of Plato’s Apology, unlike that of Xenophon’s, makes no attempt to portray his divine sign as a phenomenon that can create no rift or distance between himself and others. On the contrary, he attributes his decision not to participate in the political life of the community beyond the minimal duties of citizenship to the influence of his divine sign, and he is confident that his decision to come to court and contest the charges against him (leaving the city and living in exile was an option) was the right one because it was not opposed by the divine sign. The daimon Socrates listens to is a divinity that makes a political difference: it tells him what kind of relationship he should have with his fellow citizens and how he should conduct himself in public affairs. Thus, not only does Socrates have an unorthodox conception of piety and of what the gods want from the citizens of the city, but also he claims to receive infallible guidance from a voice that does not hesitate to speak to him about public matters.

The danger posed by Socrates

An open-minded and conscientious member of the jury could therefore have come to the conclusion that Socrates posed a significant threat to the city and should be found guilty of the charges against him. In a way, Socrates did fail to acknowledge the gods recognized by the city, he did introduce new gods, and, by teaching these things to the young who gathered around him, he did corrupt them. He may have referred to “the god” or “the gods,” but his conception of what is involved in attending to the gods was utterly novel and politically dangerous. The fact that Socrates saw his piety as the genuine article, and the unreflective virtue of his fellow citizens as false virtue, indicates that he took the entire religious life of Athens, no less than its political life, to be unworthy of a good man.

If there is any doubt that the unorthodox form of piety Socrates embodies could have brought him into direct conflict with the popular will, one need only think of the portion of Plato’s Apology in which Socrates tells the jurors that he would obey the god rather than them. Imagining the possibility that he is acquitted on the condition that he cease philosophizing in the marketplace, he unequivocally rejects the terms of this hypothetical offer, precisely because he believes that his religious duty to call his fellow citizens to the examined life cannot be made secondary to any other consideration: “Men of Athens, I salute you and hold you dear, but I will obey the god rather than you, and so long as I take breath and am able, I will never cease philosophizing.” But there was no need for him to have admitted, in such explicit terms, that his conception of piety might require him, in certain circumstances, to disobey a civic order. It is characteristic of his entire speech that he brings into the open how contemptuous he is of Athenian civic life and his fellow citizens. He prides himself on the fact that he will say nothing to curry favour with the jurors or to conceal his attitude of superiority to them—even though he realizes that this is likely to lead some of them to vote against him out of resentment. Others may throw themselves on the pity of the jury or bring their tearful children and friends to court; but these typical modes of behaviour corrupt the legal system, and Socrates will not stoop to such tactics. Here, as in so many parts of his speech, he treats his day in court as an opportunity to counter-indict his accusers and his fellow citizens (those, at any rate, who voted against him) for the way they lead their lives. (Another example: after he has been found guilty and has the opportunity to propose a punishment, he tells the jury that he should receive free meals for the remainder of his life, because this is what he deserves—though in the end he offers to pay one mina of silver, equivalent to about one hundred days’ wages, a penalty that his wealthy friends attending the trial increase to 30 minas.) In effect, Socrates uses the occasion of his trial to put his accusers and the jurors on trial. But this was a natural role for him, because he had done the same thing, day after day, to everyone he met.