Question

Related the first part of Apology by Plato to your own life. Explain one idea, concept, or fact that you learn from the article.

Answer 1

Answer.

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates builds a strong defence in front of the Greek court against his trial for impiety and corrupting youth. While, defending his case in front of the jury, Socrates ironically builds an argument in favour of death over life itself if the latter meant accepting the charges that were made against him. The Apology brings forth a strong and a realistic scenario where even ordinary people like us may be faced with the choice between something which we value and which may get us into trouble with others, or something which we find self deprecating but which would help us gain acceptance from others.

In this regard, I find Socrates’s idea ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ to be personally very relevant as it coincides with my own thoughts about how it is often crucial to stand back and evaluate the consequences of our own actions rather than blindly following the mob mentality. For instance, while it is easier for us adolescents to get into the seduction of dressing according to the latest fashion or eating a particular kind of diet to get acceptance from our peers, such actions become frivolous once we come to focus on more enduring traits such as ‘feeling good’ rather than ‘looking good’. Such personal evaluations lad us to form more positive opinions about ourselves and help to get closer to understanding what do we value more and thus gain a gretaer self awareness. Thus, Socrates’s dictum of the virtue of an examined and a self- reflective orientation are found to be a crucial aspect of the Apology and which holds relevance for our contemporary social lives as well.