socrates on persuasion, truth, and courtroom argumentation in plato.docx

Title:Socrates on Persuasion, Truth, and Courtroom Argumentation in Plato's ApologyAuthor:Dale JacquetteCommentary: C.W. Tindale© 2003 Dale Jacquette1. Socrates9 TrialOn trial fbr his life, as portrayed in Plato's Apology, Socrates appears to sharply divide philosophy from rhetoric. He articulates a preference for philosophy as the pursuit of truth over and above the sophistry of rhetorical devices that can be used to persuade an audience without regard for the truth. Closer examination, however, reveals that Socrates9 juridical arguments, including his efforts to justify the philosophical quest for truth, can be understood as constituting a complex polemical strategy.The conflict between philosophy and rhetoric remains as pertinent today as in Socrates5 time, and has particular significance for contemporary argumentation theory. We should ask, even as we hear echoes of the same problem in the Athenian courtroom where Socrates defended the practice of philosophy, how best to define the concept of a good argument. The problem posed by Socrates back in 350 BCE can be described in these terms: Is a good argument one that effectively persuades an audience regardless of its truth, or one that logically entails true conclusions, regardless of its persuasiveness or lack thereof? Truth and persuasion need not always conflict, and the force of truth is often a key element in persuading an audience. The question nevertheless remains, since truth and persuasion also sometimes stand at odds, whether the primary purpose of argument is persuasion or truth. What makes for a good argument when truth and persuasion do not happily go hand in hand?Socrates, in the end, does not persuade enough of the jurors at his trial to save himself from the fatal cup of hemlock. Let us leave aside the possibility that a significant number of the jurors were cynically prepared to condemn Socrates regardless of the evidence and argument they were presented, and assume that all made up their open minds on the basis of what they heard from the prosecution and defense. Most impartial readers of Plato5 s dialogue and Xenophon's independently confirming reportage maintain that his arguments were brilliant, powerful rebuttals of the charges raised against him, elegant, incisive, and penetrating. Nor does it matter with respect to the truth-persuasion dichotomy in argumentation theory that we today are more persuaded by Socrates, apologia than were his fellow Athenians who voted for his death. Socrates was undoubtedly speaking not only to the members of the jury but to future generations including ourselves who are witness to the injustice to which he was subjected. The immediate audience fbr which Socrates' reasoning was intended was not swayed by his dialectic, when, so to speak, it would have made a difference. Are proponents of the definition of a good argument as persuasive regardless of its truth prepared to say that the very same argument is both good and not good depending on its reception by different audiences at different times and under different circumstances? If we are tallying up advantages and disadvantages of alternative ways of characterizing a good argument, we might observe that no highest flights of rhetoric. For evidence of this we need look no further than the internal content of the speech he makes in his own defense. He is anything but disorganized, his remarks are not offered at random, as he warns, but follow a well-structured plan of attack directed toward systematically refuting the offenses with which he is baselessly charged. He makes subtle almost subliminal use of the same kinds of rhetorical devices that he supposedly renounces. Without ringing his hands or bringing in his wife and children to weep before the jury and plead indecorously for clemency, Socrates nevertheless makes it understood that he is married with young children, that despite his vigor he is an old man who ought to command respect rather than suffer humiliation, that he has had a distinguished military career in the service of the city, that far from being an atheist he has acted always in obedience to Apollo and has followed the expected religious observances, and finally that he has benefited rather than harmed his fellow citizens.The accusations raised against him, moreover, are confused, self-contradictory, and unfounded in fact. What, we must still ask after all these years, is he supposed to have done? Did he murder someone or cut their purse, or rape or break into a home or bear false testimony? Of course, he did none of these things. His only crime was to discuss philosophy freely, in both senses of the word, with persons who chose to hear him speak, in which he tried always to let the better argument prevail, and in which the pursuit of truth led him to conclude among other things that democracy was not the best form of government for the ideal city-state. In the end, he mounts a stunning defense not only of his own conduct but of the philosophical way of life.Yet, predictably, from his standpoint, the arguments he offers, as sound and irrefutable as they may appear to us today, are simply not good enough. If the fix was in from the beginning, as Stone suggests, then it is unclear that any of the courtroom theatrics in which Socrates refuses to engage would have made any difference anyway. In that case, he was doomed from before the moment he was summoned to the lawcourt.As the jurors prepare to drop their ostraka or pottery shards with their names etched on them into the urns to be counted for or against the accused, Socrates indicates again that he will not resort to the usual methods of pleading for mercy:This, and maybe other similar things, is what I have to say in my defense.Perhaps one of you might be angry as he recalls that when he himself stood trial on a less dangerous charge, he begged and implored the jury with many tears, that he brought his children and many of his friends and family into court to arouse as much pity as he could, but that I do none of these things, even though I may seem to be running the ultimate risk. Thinking of this, he might feel resentful toward me and, angry about this, cast his vote in anger. If there is such a one among you 一 I do not deem there is, but if there is - I think it would be right to say in reply: My good sir, I too have a household and, in Homer's phrase, I am not bom “from oak or rock“ but from men, so that I have a family, indeed three sons, gentlemen of the jury, of whom one is an adolescent while two are children.Nevertheless, I will not beg you to acquit me by bringing them here. Why do I do none of these things? Not through arrogance, gentlemen, nor through lack of respect for you. Whether I am brave in the face of death is another matter, but with regard to my reputation and yours and that of the whole city, it does not seem right to me to do these things, especially at my age and with my reputation (34b6-e4).If Stone is right, it would not have mattered no matter how logically sound, evidentially well-supported or rhetorically persuasive his defense had been. For the offenses with which he is charged, of corrupting the youth and dishonoring the city's gods, are in that case a mere smokescreen fbr the real danger that Socrates may have been thought to represent to the city's tenuous and only recently reinstated democracy. Socrates would need to have been punished, and, better, sent away, not as a rebuke to philosophy, but more particularly as a caution to those who found in his teaching an ideological foundation for their opposition to democratic institutions by which the city hoped to be governed.5. What Defines a Good Argument?The trial of Socrates offers an instructive window on Socrates9 and Plato's understanding of argumentation and the requirements of philosophical argument. In light of Socratic opposition to sophism, it is easy, too easy, perhaps, to conclude that Plato and Socrates would reject contemporary efforts to define a good argument as one that persuades an audience or contributes in one way or another to that end. If we judge by Socrates9 reported practice in Plato's Apology, however, we see that the picture is much more complicated. In addressing the audience after he has been found guilty of the charges but before he has been sentenced, Socrates explicitly declares his intention to persuade the jury of his innocence. Thus, he maintains:Quite apart from the question of reputation, gentlemen, I do not think it right to supplicate the jury and to be acquitted because of this, but to teach and persuade them (35b9-10).It is one thing to persuade an audience by logic, evidence, and appeal to facts, and quite another to seek to persuade by any means at one's disposal, playing on emotions, or using rhetorical tricks, as Socrates mentions he is sometimes accused of doing. Socrates must persuade the jury if he is to save his life. But the manner and means by which he is prepared to try to persuade them are limited by his concern above all for the truth and his desire to persuade only by convincing the jury of the relevant facts. Anything that obscures or degrades the truth on which the jury9s judgment should alone depend is rejected by Socrates as a potential technique of persuasion of which he refuses to avail himself.The difference is fine-grained but extremely important. In adopting his somewhat disingenuous stance as an ineloquent speaker fixed only on the truth, in making a point of refusing to adopt courtroom theatrics and playing on the jury5s sympathy by emotional appeal, Socrates underscores his firm commitment to the position that he does not need to avail himself of such tactics in order to succeed. This approach powerfully reinforces the claim, toward which Socrates' entire plan of argument tends, that logic and the facts of the case imply his innocence and justify his acquittal as the only responsible decision for the jury. He would weaken his position, even from a purely polemical point of view, if he were to engage in emotional display. To do so would demonstrate a lack of confidence in the merits of his case on grounds of truth in the application of the law. Does this not suggest that by refraining from such actions, given the strategy he has chosen, that Socrates is as much concerned with the rhetorical effectiveness of his argument from the standpoint of considerations that go beyond the plain and simple truth of the matter as would the opposite choice not to refrain from but to make a direct emotional appeal?There is yet a vital difference. For Socrates it is not merely a strategic option in this situation and under these circumstances to follow a defense based on reason and truth rather than emotion or other polemical devices. We have every reason to believe that Socrates would in any case pursue what he believes to be the right course of argument regardless of its persuasive effectiveness or ineffectiveness, because we have the indisputable testimony of his own unflinching acceptance of the death sentence as the jury shifts from the guilt to the penalty phase of their proceedings, when he claims to know that he might have averted the outcome by compromising his principles. There is no contradiction in the concept of a good argument as inference dedicated to logically supporting the truth that also has rhetorical force if its primary purpose and the basis forjudging its correctness is based entirely on criteria of logic and truth, deductive validity and soundness, regardless of an argument's persuasiveness or lack thereof. Such a definition of good argument, and of the proper purpose of argument, is the polar opposite of the concept of argument as meant to be judged in terms of its effectiveness in persuading an audience regardless of its contributions to the discovery or expression of the truth. Socrates, as an impassioned advocate of truth and of argument as an instrument of truth, regardless of its persuasive consequences, pays the ultimate price for making truth prevail over persuasion, and placing philosophy above sophism.Finally, there is an epistemic consideration that erodes the distinction between reason and rhetoric. It is one thing to extol the virtues of truth over persuasion in the abstract. But how do we know when we are presented with the truth in an argument except when we are persuaded of its validity and the truth of its assumptions and conclusions. Socrates does not merely offer a handful of syllogisms, but spins his arguments from within a rhetorical framework and gives us reasons to believe that the arguments are correct and that we should accept their implications. Imagine that you are one of the jurors at Socrates9 trial and that you have not yet made up your mind as to his guilt or innocence. The trial as an adversarial situation is a microcosm of the epistemic condition in its most general terms that we all find ourselves in as we try to decide what is true and what is false, which propositions we will accept and which we will reject or about which we must at least temporarily suspend judgment. We are presented with arguments and evidence in support of the assumptions of arguments or in independent corroboration of an argument's conclusions, and we must decide on the basis of what we are told by our own lights, weighing and evaluating every bit as completely and impartially as we can. In the end, what we come to understand as the truth is whatever we have been persuaded is true; persuasion is therefore not the enemy of truth, nor is rhetoric the enemy of philosophy, nor advocacy of discovery. These are rather two complementary poles of a seamless ongoing epistemic activity in which we try practically to acquire knowledge in the best and ultimately the only way we can. The philosophically objectionable opposition between truth and persuasion occurs only, as Socrates9 trial timelessly illustrates, when persuasion is not a sincere adjunct to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge, but employed for other purposes that are indifferent or even hostile to knowledge and truth.Notes,All quotations from the Apology appear in Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo2LF. Stone, The Trial of Socrates. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Another invaluable source for understanding the complications of Socrates' defense is Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies. New York:Oxford University Press, 2002.such relativization of an argument's quality is necessary on the interpretation of a good argument as the logically valid derivation of truth, although opinions about whether an argument is sound can obviously differ.There nevertheless remain subtleties in this ongoing dispute that are dramatized by Socrates9 legal predicament many centuries ago, and there is much to learn from his trial that is relevant to the stu