The Death of Socrates

by Emily Wilson

Overview

There were heroic lives and deaths before and after, but none quite like Socrates'. He did not die by sword or spear, braving all to defend home and country, but as a condemned criminal, swallowing a painless dose of poison. And yet Socrates' death in 399 BCE has figured large in our world ever since, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom, the distance of intellectual life from daily activity—many of the key coordinates of Western culture. In this book Emily Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power the trial and death of Socrates has exerted over the Western imagination.

Beginning with the accounts of contemporaries like Aristophanes, Xenophon, and, above all, Plato, the book offers a comprehensive look at the death of Socrates as both a historical event and a controversial cultural ideal. Wilson shows how Socrates' death—more than his character, actions, or philosophical beliefs—has played an essential role in his story. She considers literary, philosophical, and artistic works—by Cicero, Erasmus, Milton, Voltaire, Hegel, and Brecht, among others—that used the death of Socrates to discuss power, politics, religion, the life of the mind, and the good life. As highly readable as it is deeply learned, her book combines vivid descriptions, critical insights, and breadth of research to explore how Socrates' death—especially his seeming ability to control it—has mattered so much, for so long, to so many different people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674026834
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2007
Series:	Profiles in History , #8
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	457,876
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania. She is the translator of The Odyssey and author of Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Man Who Drank the Hemlock     1
Socrates' Philosophy     20
Politics and Society     52
Plato and Others: Who Created the Death of Socrates?     89
'A Greek Chatterbox': The Death of Socrates in the Roman Empire     119
Pain and Revelation: The Death of Socrates and the Death of Jesus     141
The Apotheosis of Philosophy: From Enlightenment to Revolution     170
Talk, Truth, Totalitarianism: The Problem of Socrates in Modern Times     192
Further Reading     224
List of Illustrations     237
Acknowledgements     239
Index     241

Editorial Reviews

As imagined by Wilson, The Death of Socrates is therefore very much a story about a life of becoming that compels us, centuries later, to follow the example of Socrates, a philosopher who managed to be mythic and reflective and irritating in almost equal measure.

Bloomsbury Review - Larry T. Shillock

Emily Wilson's The Death of Socrates is an exceptionally lucid introduction to this famous trial and death...Not only does Ms. Wilson carefully reconstruct the circumstances of the philosopher's demise but she also asks, rather refreshingly, the implicitly obvious but mostly overlooked question of "why the death of Socrates has mattered so much, over such an enormously long period of time and to so many different people." The history of the interpretation of Socrates' death, it turns out, is in large part the history of philosophy itself...The man who has been condemned to death for corrupting the sons of the city ends by instructing his executioners about how to raise his own. He goes to his death without the comfort of a Christian afterlife or any promise of a posthumous reputation, but only with faith in his own reason. After 2,400 years, it's still a resounding epitaph.

Wall Street Journal - Thomas Meaney

This book is both scholarly and written with commendable clarity and punch. Professional philosophers and amateurs alike will find in it considerable food for thought.

Philosopher's Magazine - Mark Vernon

This book is both scholarly and written with commendable clarity and punch. Professional philosophers and amateurs alike will find in it considerable food for thought.
— Mark Vernon

Philosopher's Magazine

Emily Wilson's The Death of Socrates is an exceptionally lucid introduction to this famous trial and death...Not only does Ms. Wilson carefully reconstruct the circumstances of the philosopher's demise but she also asks, rather refreshingly, the implicitly obvious but mostly overlooked question of "why the death of Socrates has mattered so much, over such an enormously long period of time and to so many different people." The history of the interpretation of Socrates' death, it turns out, is in large part the history of philosophy itself...The man who has been condemned to death for corrupting the sons of the city ends by instructing his executioners about how to raise his own. He goes to his death without the comfort of a Christian afterlife or any promise of a posthumous reputation, but only with faith in his own reason. After 2,400 years, it's still a resounding epitaph.
— Thomas Meaney

Wall Street Journal

As imagined by Wilson, The Death of Socrates is therefore very much a story about a life of becoming that compels us, centuries later, to follow the example of Socrates, a philosopher who managed to be mythic and reflective and irritating in almost equal measure.
— Larry T. Shillock

Bloomsbury Review