130. THE TRIAL & EXECUTION OF SOCRATES - A guest writer reflects on Socrates and asks: 'is democracy a tyranny'?
Socrates never held a favourable eye on Democracy. He saw it as a system where few thrive while many suffer. Because of abundance of freedom and class dominance, those who are unfit to rule usually climb up to the top and the city degenerates into tyranny. In his own case it was the body of 501 elderly citizens that gave the verdict for his execution without having any assistance from a constitutional body. Such a decision-making process was considered an actual democracy, where society was governed by the majority in its purest form. Impiety was forbidden by law and Socrates had been impious, but the classification of the impious acts and the degree of charges were still undecided. It was flawed and ambiguous in terms of interpretation.
Regardless of the lawful conviction in a democratic setting which claims to deliver justice, the state arguably did injustice to Socrates. Socrates' words "belief may turn out to be true or false but knowledge is always true" become stark. The pursuer and speaker of truth had been struck in the heart by a set of expert rhetoricians who knew how to make people believe what they didn't know.
A fine line of similarity can be drawn to our own democracies where law is designed to be impartial and rational but often the human passion, when overpowered by ego, delivers it unjustly. Law bears the justification of every action taken by the state against the citizens but without agreement on how the law is interpreted or administered the law does not always bring its proposed accountability. A religious or class-based radicalized principal, for example, might become a ruling ideology that is put into law and law would become an accomplisher of its unjust goals, despite being legal, just as we see in the case of Socrates.
"Law rules and everyone must abide" was a socially accepted custom of that time, as it is of the present day. But Socrates' fate was never in the hands of law, it was in the hands of interpreters of the law. The same law which produces justice can be unjust and immoral if interpreted by a tyrant. Tyranny in democracy is almost undetectable because the whole system is depicted to be busy in the service and security of people. But what if the people become a tyranny? Sometimes the fanaticism of the majority, or the sophistry and rhetoric of the minority, can take the shield of law and trample moral codes.
When Crito tries to convince Socrates that the right decision in that situation was to escape the prison, he deems it dishonourable even though the stand he has taken in The Apology says that it was an unjust conviction. In his own opinion, Socrates is a true patriot and somewhat hit by a half rational judgement. A patriot must obey the law of the state because the state has nurtured him from childhood to old age, gave him citizenship and allowed him to settle and live a public life.
It is clearly evident that Socrates upheld the abidance of laws of the state far superior to any other mode of living. Had he been 30 years old instead of 70, we may have seen him resisting the unjust trial he was subjected to, and a greater part of his attentiveness to the decision goes to a divine prophecy that his time has come and he must obey the divine order. But why did a man who regarded moral and just life as the supreme aim of life submit his freedom to an immoral law?
Perhaps it is impossible to avert the will of the majority, especially when it has adapted a tyrannical nature? The majority appears to possess the power, and power of the strong demands obedience and service of the weak. From a higher moral ground and being a practitioner of virtues, Socrates is willing to submit because escaping the judgement may give birth to a new tradition of lawbreaking. As in the Gorgias, we hear Socrates affirming that it is better to suffer than do wrong. However, thishalf-hearted truth fails to recognise that such a proposition will force an individual to bend against his own free will and be submissive to an unjust authority.
Let's bring more clarity to this thought of Socrates by setting a parallel to our own world. On the day of calamity, Crito, desperate to save Socrates from death, tries to persuade him to escape from prison on the grounds that the state has done him evil and it is not a crime to withdraw from an unjust conviction. Socrates tells Crito that he agreed with him on "no man should do evil or return evil for evil" and Crito agrees, then he further asks him "Should these principles be retreated because my circumstances are altered?"
His morality won, and the Athenian law had blood on its hands, but what about justice that the democracy intended to offer. When the majority participates in an inglorious sin, what are the repercussions? Morality deteriorates collectively and a pandemic of injustice spreads out. When the democratic setting becomes a machinery for carrying out the unjust orders of the majority, the law becomes self-righteous and begins to annihilate uncooperative voices. The case of Socrates proves that the law is neither infallible enough nor divine enough that an individual must submit himself to it.
"No man should do evil or return evil for evil" may be a guiding principle for a moral life, but it absolves the immoral system from facing any kind of requital. The law can't rely on the rule of majority to make a decision based on a common perception. In a democracy, as in the trial of Socrates, an individual is free to persuade the majority of his claims. As long as truth is ignored in a democratic society, the lie will have a free play, and some people with adept rhetoric power will make othersbelieve what is untrue.
The defence of Socrates and the counter accusation that he expresses in a noble manner also tells a great deal about what really controls a society. During the trial of Socrates, there was unanimous consent of the majority which appears to be the most sophisticated and rational way to do justice. But what really moulds the opinion of the majority? Athens in that day was a politically motivated city with nationalistic sentiments. Statesmen and generals of the past generations were celebrated heroes. Socrates, at times, argued that those statesmen were not really good men but only pretenders of virtue and knowledge, and the sort of demagogues who knew how to whip the passion of the crowd. His outspokenness would have skewed more conventional minds against him.
We must accept the fact that logical consistency of Socrates' arguments was always accurate to the point and he equally demanded the same logical consistency from the individuals he conversed with. For them, it was a big trouble to invite because they never seriously analysed their own claims, and seeing their reputation of being knowledgeable and expert was in threat, they often quarrelled with Socrates. By the unconquerable flow of his arguments, he made people reveal and admit the fact that they were unknowingly pretentious about their claims. Perhaps, that moulded the general public perception that Socrates was not an amiable person, and perhaps an impious person who is disloyal to his city.
When he was trialled in the court, his accusers were successful in persuading the judges present in the court that Socrates was an impious person and corrupter of the youths. Such an unjust trail could never have proceeded without public protest if Socrates was a publicly appreciated and accepted man. Certainly, the youths were fond of his conversations, but how much they shared in the public decision to prosecute Socrates is unknown to us. The populist democracy had to take guard against the progressive thoughts taking place in the Agora of Athens. The matters of morality, virtue, justice, and temperance bring rationality to the discussion and in a populist democracy, it is perceived as a threat to already established religious and cultural practices they critique.
A flawed democracy has institutions that do the job of making people adhere to established principles. It is either done by force or by oration, those who don't join the mass are presented as ideological opponents of national interest. The message we must learn from the trial of Socrates is that criticism is a necessary function of an evolving democracy. Although being wrongly convicted on the basis of a law that was yet undefined in terms of clearness, Socrates tells Crito that law is superior and he must abide by it. That speaks a great deal about the character of Socrates which rejects doing evil when being devoured by an evil, but darkly and unforgivingly of the irrational will of the majority which devours an opposing voice under the protection of law.
Author: Sarvesh Dwivedi, an independent researcher working in the field of metaphysics and morality
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