3
In this paper I will deal exclusively with Plato’s Apology of Socrates, because it is so
often thought of as an expression of the “authentic” Socrates, as an almost “minimalist” Platonic
philosophical program of inquiry ion “form”, without the later philosophical directions, or
“answers,” that Plato was eventually to provide as “substance”. Yet I will have nothing at all to
say about the debate over the historical Socrates, for my subject is a way of thinking, whether it
is Socratic or Platonic in origin.
2
At the same time, the complex structures of Athenian society
and discourse in the period before and after Socrates’ death are an essential object of my
investigation.
I
The Life without Examination
2
For a collection of some brief articles on the “problem of Socrates,” see William J.
Prior, ed., Socrates. Critical Assessments, volume I: The Socratic Problem and Socratic
Ignorance (London: Routledge, 1996). Other volumes in the four-volume collection are
subtitled: “Issues Arising from the Trial of Socrates”; “Socratic Method”; and “Happiness and
Virtue.”
Convention