The Trial of Socrates

The work makes perfect sense when the whole of Stones journalistic output is considered; it is on par with his usual political zeal. A curiosity though, and I am not happy to say this, that in spite of all the "research" he did before writing the book (he was aware of the basic historical background) he came away without a serviceable grasp of the philosophy and concepts of his subject, though he managed typical laymen sentiment. His philistine claim to an understanding of the attic grants himself an authority which is clearly overestimated. The book is an odd punctuation on such a storied career.

It should be clear by now that I'm not recommending this book for advanced students of philosophy, history, or literature. A paradox, in fact! For I would not recommend this book to undergrad students either, lest they are ready for the unnecessary difficulty of misinformation and prejudice before the study begins. In summary: though the book is misdirected from the beginning (and therefore of little intellectual value) it is a rousing pledge to the cockeyed love of political rhetoric... and if this is your forte, then bump the rating up to four stars.


Socrates the upsetter.   January 26, 2002
 4 out of 8 found this review helpful

This story from ancient Greece, a prime point in the history of philosophy, is told with a very thorough knowledge of journalistic points of view, expressing the kind of optimism about possible results that overlooks how readily legal proceedings can operate like secret military tribunals in coming up with the result desired most by whatever power can manipulate the proceedings most easily to favor itself. I.F. Stone tells this story so well, people who base their understanding of our political world on what they might learn from this book could expect to see more on such matters, especially if they are expecting the upcoming proceedings against the current enemies of democracy to fill their morning newspapers with the issues encountered in this book, if only there were newspapers which dared to raise any issues. Socrates is the issue-oriented person in THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES, and Stone is wise enough to notice that getting into an argument is not the same as winning the case in a proceeding of this nature.

Philosophically, democracy has a tendency to adopt itself as an ideology, claimed by whatever faction is most adept at Schmittian politics, the nature of which is explained in great detail in THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL by Carl Schmitt {the comments by Leo Strauss contained in the currently available translation into English includes the observation, "It is nonetheless true that the polemic against liberalism very often seems to be Schmitt's last word, that he very often gets entangled in the polemic against liberalism, and that he thus gets diverted from his real intention and is detained on the level staked out by liberalism. This entanglement is no accidental failure but the necessary result . . ." (Tracy B. Strong edition, p. 106)} and the very existence of Socrates as a person who is intentionally unprofessional, willingly associated with people who are as guilty as hell of malingering when called upon to perform the duties and civic obligations of people who think up charges to be brought as the best way of overcoming whoever might wonder who performed their work in a more religious manner, officials clouded in secrecy, or people who try to talk about what is going on. I'm sure I liked this book more than Socrates liked hemlock.


The Hemlock Drinker   November 7, 2001
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Did Socrates have a death wish? I. F. Stone succeeds in making two basic points about the grand old man. First, that from the (very) limited Socratic sources, we know precious little about what he actually stood FOR. Most of his pronouncements stand AGAINST something: he is, after all, virtually the inventor of deconstruction. A Great Asker, Stone seems to say, but not necessarily a Great Thinker. Second, the evidence is fairly supportive of Stone's theory that, once convicted of treason, Socrates ratcheted up the stakes, inflaming the passions of the jury rather than throwing himself on his fellow Athenians' mercy. Aside from this I'm not convinced that Socrates was AS unattractive as Stone would have it. Stone is doggedly determined to portray classical Athens in a sympathetic light, but for myself I've read enough Thucydides to know what sort of murderous antics they were often capable of perpetrating. That they killed off one of their leading philosophic lights is hardly out of character.


One of the best books about the period   September 1, 2001
 15 out of 20 found this review helpful

Socrates. A name at which we are supposed to bow our heads. The noble Socrates, teacher of the young, noble free thinker, martyr for freedom of speech. The problem is that all of the available evidence shows that he was a lousy husband, a narrow-minded snob, and a facistic hypocrit.

His veneration by philosophers is absurd. Socrates may have never had an honest discussion in his life. Everything recorded in Plato and Xenophon is rigged to come out his way. There is no real free exchange of ideas. Anyone with the sense to have operated outside of his one trick, the negative dialectic, could have blown him away. His own knowlege of his shortcomings might explain why he wasn't too happy with free speech. Maybe the real Socrates had been bested in too many arguments with real thinkers. History bears out that the real Socrates wasn't able to hold his own outside the confines of his inner circle. Despite a lifetime of propaganda he wasn't able to convince many of his fellow Athenians to try out his wacky ideas. They made fun of him as long as he wasn't any real danger to anyone, a stock figure in their comedies. A kind of ancient Greek flat-earther.

That didn't turn out to be the end of things though. Socrates' aristocratic students showed themselves quite willing to put his proto-nazi teachings into practice through murder, treason and theft. I.F. Stone does a very good job of showing why Athens, against its own traditions and customs, might have been driven to get rid of him. If I'd been in Athens at the time and had experienced and witnessed the murders and crimes commited by his students, I might have been willing to try to cut another bloody dictatorship off at the head too. We know that Socrates didn't learn anything from the experience of two bloody (even by modern standards) dictatorships or from his own silencing under The Thirty. We have his own students word on that. After the restoration of democracy when it was again safe for him to spout off he almost certainly kept on longing for the end of the democracy and the establishment of a total dictatorship. The attempted putsch shortly before the trial would have been the last straw. Stone, always true to his basic beliefs, would have let him off on free speech grounds. No doubt he was morally right. But given what they had been through it is understandable that the Athenians didn't think the risk was worth it.

Plato is the creator of Saint Socrates. It is his skill at writing, particularly the dramatic death scene, and not Socrates skill at thinking that has had them roped in for centuries. I've read articles written by opponents of this book, mostly neo-platonists and McCarthyites, and have yet to find one who makes as good a case for veneration as there is for condemnation of Socrates. The final irrationality of the Socrates cult is that it has managed to pass him off as a martyr for free speech while recording that he was throughout his carrear an enemy of free speech.

The red-baiting of I.F. Stone in some of these reviews is probably based on assertions by well-funded, right wing cranks (see Eric Alterman: The Nation April 23, 2001) Anyone who was familar with Stone's huge out-put would know that it is unlikely that anyone of any political establishment would want to encourage him, least of all dictators. It would only be a matter of time before he dug up the dirt on them and exposed it in his Weekly. He was first and always and a democrat and a newspaper man. To call him a Stalinist is a total fabrication.