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This was pretty decent. 
While I have written commentaries on collections before I have since tried to steer away from doing that to instead write about the individual pieces contained therein. Okay, in one way it does help to bump up the number of books on my shelf, but then again that is somewhat irrelevant (It's not as if I win a prize if I have the most books on my shelf, or the most reviews). Generally I find it better to comment on the individual pieces because each of those pieces will have their own points and purposes (such as say a collection of Sophoclean plays) and to write on the books (such as Three Theban Plays) ends up detracting from the individual pieces therein. Sometimes I will write a review on a collection (such as with Henry VI and this particular book) namely because the individual pieces share a common theme, or because it is helpful to look at the works as a whole.
The common theme with these particular works of Plato is that they all deal with the trial and death of Socrates. It is believed by some (me included) that three of the pieces are Socratic while the fourth piece (the Phaedo) is clearly Platonic. I will not go into detail with that here as I have done so elsewhere. Anyway, one piece is a discussion Socrates has at the door to the courthouse, one of them involves the trial, and the last two deal with conversations that Socrates had prior to his death. Furthermore of these four, two of them simply have the trial and death as a background to other philosophic discourses.
What I want to look at here is the trail and death itself as a broader picture. Many have said (and I am once again included) that there are similarities between the death of Jesus and the death of Socrates. That in one sense is true but in another sense it isn't. Some of us (not me) believe that Jesus was simply a wise teacher, much like Socrates, however many others believe that he is either God or a representation of God. Taking the second idea, the difference is striking because where as Socrates is simply a martyr, Jesus is much more than a martyr. In fact there is an awful lot of literature outlining the significance of Jesus' death. If Jesus was simply a man who was executed because he said things that upset the ruling class, and gained a following as such, then there is little point in us worshipping him as God (particularly since there isn't a religion based around Socrates as a wise teacher, which no doubt he was).
However, that does not necessarily mean that we should ignore the fact that Jesus, like Socrates, was martyred because of his revolutionary speech. In fact, Jesus was much more of a revolutionary than was Socrates. Socrates simply challenged the traditional thinking of his day and attacked the individualistic and licentious attitudes of the Greeks. Socrates basically stated that there was an absolute morality, and that people should be seeking to discover this absolute. It is clear in two of these texts that he is outlining some form of absolute morality, and further more, accepting the judgement of what was little more than a kangaroo court on the grounds that he had not desire to undermine his teachings.
Jesus is many cases is similar, however he does not use the trial as another venue for his teaching, which is not surprising since, unlike Socrates, Jesus was tried in secret surrounded pretty much by a group of people who had already made up their minds about him. This was not the case with Socrates, since the three hundred members of the jury were present, and a number of them could still be challenged by his views. Granted he was found guilty, and executed, however it is necessary to remember that Socrates did have a fair trial, Jesus did not.
However, Jesus was much more revolutionary than Socrates since Socrates only sought to reform a system that needed reform, whereas Jesus came to pretty much demolish the previous system so as to lay the groundwork of a new system. Okay, he did say that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, but he also indicated that the period of worshipping God in the temple had come to an end, and the priesthood had become obsolete. What Jesus had effectively done was to take access to God out of the hands of the priesthood and to put it into the hands of the people. This is a similar thing that we see with Joan of Arc and with Martin Luther. The people had been oppressed by the Church and the truth of God had been obfuscated by a priesthood who were using religion as a means of oppressing the masses. This was something that Jesus never intended.
So, the question that should be raised is why did it not remain as such after the establishment of the early church, why did we have to go through another, and quite bloody, reformation to be freed from the power of the church, and did the reformation work. The simple answer is that the ruling elite do not like people to think for themselves, and seek to place themselves above and to lord themselves over the masses. Notice that Paul seems to rile against idol worship. The reason for this is that like the Jewish Temple, the pagan temples were also an extension of the government and the ruling elite to oppress the masses. The idols were instruments of oppression and fear, as well as a means of enriching the ruling class through the exploitation of the irrational fears of the populace. However Jesus came along not only the break the rule of the Jewish priestly class, but to also destroy the power that the pagan gods held over the Gentile masses.
That was not to last, and while it did last for about three hundred years, we also see the church being attacked from all quarters. The emperors attacked the church because they could not use the fear of the gods to rule the lives of the Christians. The Christians no longer feared the pagan gods, nor did they fear the emperors, and no matter how hard they tried, they could not scare them. Further, people from within attempted to seduce and confuse many of the followers through teachings that would once again place them under the power of others, such as Gnosticism and Neo-platoism. The Christians had access to the truth through the Gospel, but by adding to the Gospel, they could once again enslave them.
I could write much more upon this subject, but I think I will bring it to an end at this stage, however I will mention that the Catholic Church arose from the period when the government decided that since it could not destroy the church, they would instead take over the church. There were constant battles between the clergy and the emperors, and in the end the emperors lost. However, what happened was that Constantine legitimised the church, and in doing so empowered the leadership of the church. As the saying goes, first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, and then they try to corrupt you (and if you pass through that you have won). However, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so when the church was legitimised by Constantine, the clergy was empowered, and in being empowered, it became corrupt. As for today, while the church has lost a lot of its power from those days, it is still a strong influence over people's lives, and in many cases not a democratic institution. When others begin to believe that they know what is good for us, and begin to bully us and coerce us into a certain direction, then the seduction of power becomes absolute.
This dialogue takes place on the day before Socrate's execution in his cell between Socrates and his friend Crito. This dialogue is about another age old arguments: whether two wrongs go together to make a right. It is Socrates' position that they do not. One of the traditions of Athens was that political prisoners are given the opportunity to escape and live in exile, and even if a price were to be put on their head, the nature of Greek politics at the time meant that one could easily seek asylum in one of the neighbouring cities and not be handed back to the authorities. This was particularly the case at the time as Athens had just emerged as the loser from a rather devastating war, and her friends and allies were few and far between.
Basically Crito tries to argue that it would be wrong, and cowardly, for Socrates not to take the opportunity to escape, but a part of his argument seems to be self serving as it would appear that if his friends did not help him then it would look bad on them. However, he also tries to argue that it is obligatory for a father, who has the opportunity to live, to serve his children by remaining alive. While it is a very noble argument, it is clear, especially in the context of the Apology, that for Socrates to flee death would actually serve to undermine his character. His position is that by accepting the sentence, even though the trial in and of itself was unjust, he is in effect taking the high moral ground. The court voted for death, therefore if Socrates is to remain true to himself, he must accept the sentence of the court.
This is another of those dialogues that seem to have some very notable Christian undertones. It is reflective of Jesus willingly going to his death despite the court being corrupt, the sentence harsh, and the charges in effect bogus. The big difference we see here is that after the sentence was handed down Socrates had an opportunity to escape where as Jesus did not. Jesus was executed within hours of being found guilty. Further, Socrates' friends continued to support him right up until the time of his death whereas Jesus' friends pretty much deserted him the minute he was arrested. I guess the difference was that in 5th Century BC Athens, one was not necessarily going to be found guilty by association whereas this could be the case in 1st Century Palestine.
The main biblical undertone in this dialogue moreso relates to Paul's discussion on our response to government (found in Romans 13). Pretty much if Socrates were to be able to read that passage he would no doubt agree with it because we see the same idea here. It is the question of our obligation to the state and our obligation to obeying the laws of the state. It is in effect what is termed as the Social Contract: the state contracts with us to protect us and provide for us while we contract with the state to live within the boundaries of those laws. The difference between 1st Century Rome and 5th Century BC Athens is that one was a dictatorship and the other was a democracy (if in name only).
What we generally don't understand in relation to Paul's writings is the context of the times. For us living in liberal democracies where were have freedom of speech and association, the idea of obeying the laws of the land is second nature. The laws are hardly oppressive, and if the worse we can complain about is the fact that we cannot drink a beer while driving a car, or smoke in a pub, then we can consider ourselves very lucky indeed. We do not live in a land where the authorities can randomly pull us off the street and shoot us in the head simply because they are bored. This was not the case in Athens either because they still lived under the constitution as set out by Solon, despite the fact that it was seen that Socrates was unjustly tried. However, remember that the trial was conducted according to the Laws of Solon, and as such, for the rule of law to remain true to form it was necessary for Socrates to accept the ruling of the court and go to his death.
This was not the case when Paul was writing to the Romans. While Rome did have a constitution, as enacted by Numa Pompilius, that constitution had been shredded long ago by Augustus. Basically, in Rome of Paul's time, what the emperor said, went, and you did not talk back to him. In fact, as we read the succession of emperor's up to this period we notice that they steadily became more and more insane, right up until the point that Nero was running around lighting the streets with burning Christians and killing people for sport. In fact, it is recorded that one of Nero's hobbies was to wonder through Rome and mug people. Like, seriously, he considered himself to be so above the law that he could pretty much behave in a completely uncivilised manner. This was the world in which Paul wrote 'all governments have been appointed by God'. However, we also note that Nero was eventually removed from power, and not simply because somebody stuck a knife in him (as happened with Calligula). Mind you, after Nero was removed, the entire system shifted towards the point of collapse when Rome once again descended into Civil War, only to be saved by the Flavians.
Obviously none of this means that we should not stand up to unjust governments, or hold them accountable. Jesus did, as did Socrates, and both of them were executed for that. What they are saying is not that we should seek to hold people accountable, but we should not go and break laws to do so. Violent revolution was not in their bag of tricks designed to influence social change, and more so, in these cases, the real social change took a very long time to come into effect. In fact, much of what happened happened very slowly, and for social change to work it has to work slowly, because otherwise it does not allow the seeds to change to take root and grow. Consider the instances of France and Russia, two nations which sort social change through violent revolution. In the end it was a disaster for both cases. Some might argue that it worked in the case of the United States, but my position is that this was not a bottom up revolution, but rather a revolt of the wealthy elite against the British Crown.
It is difficult to put a date of composition to such a text, though internal comments can assist us with determining when it was written. While I do not consider myself an expert on Plato, I would consider this text to be one of his earlier writings as he seems to be recording an earlier conversation as opposed to using Socrates to be a mouthpiece for his own philosophy. A lot have been written on Plato's dialogues, which tend to be philosophical discussions with Socrates as the main speaker. However, Gorgias is a dialogue, as opposed to a single person sprouting philosophy, that is a discussion between a group of people. This, I find, works a lot better for a philosophical treatise as one tends to get a broader view of the argument, and one also gets the opportunity of hearing the other sides of the argument along with objections and counter-arguments. This is not what one tends to get with a single speaker (or even a text book).
Plato's later works tended to be more of a diatribe, where he uses Socrates as a mouthpiece for his philosophy (as can be seen in the Republic) however, there is another text, the Timaeus and the Critias, which seem to fall into the later category, though because Socrates is not the main speaker in these texts, I am loathe to put them into Plato's later category, and consider these texts to be more like the earlier texts where Plato is reporting a conversation that took place years previously (though scholars tend to date them as being one of his much later texts since the Critias is actually incomplete – not that a part of it is lost but rather that Plato never finished it).
Anyway, I am writing on the Gorgias, which is a more simpler text than some of his other writings. The main theme of the Gorgias is morality (which is the theme of a lot of Plato's writings) and explores the question of whether oratory is a useful skill or whether it is just used for harm. The closest that we would get to the Sophists of Ancient Athens (and it is a very close comparison) is that of a lawyer. The job of a lawyer is to argue the client's case to either the other side or an independent third party. The criticisms of lawyers are very similar to the criticisms that Plato lays down with the sophists. One example is that the find sounding speeches of the sophists can easily override the technical knowledge of a doctor (and this can also be seen in today's society).
Then there is the question of injustice and doing wrong to people. The two conclusions that Socrates reaches with his arguments is that nobody willingly does wrong, and it is better be wronged than to do wrong (though his companions in this discussion object quite readily, particularly when they use the example of the Tyrant that does wrong to his subjects, but does not appear to be living a miserable life, though Socrates does manage to convince his audience that the Tyrant's life is in fact miserable, even if he might not know it).
The concept of nobody doing wrong intentionally (which is also something that I disagree with, though there are people that commit a wrong but justify the wrong that they are committing, for instance shop lifting. The store sells the products at outrageous prices, and also rip their customers off, therefore they are right in stealing the pen, or the sales assistant that takes money from the till with the intention of paying it back, but never doing so). The conclusion that Socrates reaches is that people who do wrong are ill (in the same sense of having a cold) and they need to be cured of this ill, and thus Socrates sees punishment as the purpose of curing the person of their wrongdoing.
However, the discussion comes to a conclusion with the exploration of 'heaven and hell'. In the Greek text, Heaven is referred to as the Blessed Isles, and Hell is known as Tartarus. It is interesting that Tartarus was designed to imprison the rebellious Titans, and the Blessed Isles have been set aside for the heroic and the virtuous. However, it is also interesting to note that Odysseus does travel into the underworld in the Odyssey and there meets up with a number of heroes from the Trojan War. It seems like their heroic acts simply were not good enough for them to get to the Blessed Isles (though I suspect that Tartarus and the underworld are two different places). It is also interesting to see how our culture has adopted these ideas, not in the sense of the Jewish idea of Heaven and Hell (with Heaven being God's domain, and Sheol being the abode of the dead), but rather, to an extent, to have merged Greek and Christian Mythology (in that Hell has been set apart as a prison for the Devil and his Angels, which is almost a direct copy of Tartarus, and Heaven as being the destination of the good and virtuous). However, nothing is all that cut and dried, and it appears that this is explained by Socrates in the end. The conclusion, it is better to live the suffering and virtuous life and be rewarded in the afterlife than to live a wicked life committing wrong and thus facing eternal punishment. Ironically, this conclusion seems to have been lifted straight out of the Old Testament.
