The defense of socrates: argument analysis

Year 2024, Volume: 12 Issue: 4, 175 - 180

Burcu Çalıkoğlu

Abstract

Socrates lived in Athens between 469 BC and 399 BC. He was a philosopher who led people to question and attracted attention with his courage. Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth by three people: the poet Meletus, the politician Anitus, and the orator Lycheon. The court used democratic means and decided to execute him with 280 votes against 221 in a jury of 501 people. Socrates was 70 years old when he was forced to drink hemlock poison. The book “The Defense of Socrates” by Plato focuses on how Socrates conducted his defense. It aims to analyze how he defends himself against the majority's argument with content and argument analysis techniques and to obtain a visual schema. Content analysis is planned to be interpreted in terms of (a) the sub-issues on the table, (b) discourse style, and (c) intra-textual coherence. As an argument analysis, the maneuvers he uses against the discourse of the majority in the face of authority will be examined. Witnessing how honest Socrates was when he used these maneuvers in his trial is admirable. Considered as a method, the premise of an argument analysis is that there must be disagreement in the argument. Based on this assumption, Toulmin Model, Pragma-Dialectics, Political Discourse Analysis, and Argument Sources Model have been established as the contemporary ones. This study plans to use Frans Van Emerman's pragma-dialectical approach. In this model, argument is defined as defending or rejecting an opinion. It divides the review into four parts: encounter, opening, discussion, and conclusion. Based on this, this study will first (1) reveal the disagreement. In the following, (2) irrelevant topics in the text will be eliminated, (3) implied content will be emphasized, (4) ambiguity will be clarified, and (5) the mess of the text will be rearranged according to logical relationship. The text processed in this way is simplified verbally. The most important feature of this model is that it pays attention to the natural structure of the language. This model was preferred because the discussions can be transferred to the model more easily. It is thought that this study will help our teachers teach thinking education as an elective in primary education and philosophy in high school.

Keywords

Sokrates, critical thinking, argumentation

References

• Burnyeat, M. F. (1977). Socratic midwifery, Platonic inspiration. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, (24), 7-16.
• Corey, D. (2002). The case against teaching virtue for pay: Socrates and the sophists. History of Political Thought, 23(2), 189-210.
• De Vogel, C. J. (1963). Who was Socrates?. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1(2), 143-161.
• Farnsworth, W. (2021). The Socratic method: a practitioner's handbook. Boston: Godine.
• Hansen, M. H. (1995). The Trial of Sokrates--from the Athenian Point of View (Vol. 71). Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.
• Leibowitz, D. M. (2010). The ironic defense of Socrates: Plato's Apology. Cambridge University Press.
• Schwartzberg, M. (2004). Athenian democracy and legal change. American Political Science Review, 98(2), 311-325.
• Sharrock, A., & Ashley, R. (2013). Fifty key classical authors. Routledge.
• Van Eemeren, F. H., Houtlosser, P., & Henkemans, A. F. S. (2008). Dialectical profiles and indicators of argumentative moves. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(3), 475-493
• Waterfield, R. (2009). Why Socrates died: Dispelling the myths. WW Norton & Company.
• Wolfsdorf, D. (2003). Socrates' Pursuit of definitions. Phronesis, 48(4), 271-312.