Apology of Socrates (Plato)

Why it’s on the list: Plato’s dramatization of Socrates’ defence at his trial in Athens in 399 BCE, where he refuses to plead on the jury’s terms, insists that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and turns the trial into a contest between the philosophical life and the city’s authority over what may be questioned — the founding text of the quarrel between the philosopher and the political community.

Where I heard about it

• Spotted at Pioneer Book, Provo — May 2022 (Books photo album)

• Brendan McCord — the first entry on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in Classical Greek Political Philosophy; his framing is that the competing Greek city-states were an early case of competing jurisdictions, March 2026. Full list: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

About this edition

McCord’s list prints the entry as “Plato/Aristophanes” and links it to Four Texts on Socrates — the teaching volume that pairs Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology and Crito with Aristophanes’ Clouds, translated by Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West. Aristophanes wrote the companion play in that edition; he is not a translator or editor of the Apology. The dialogue was composed in the decade after the trial, so there is no meaningful single publication date.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this card came from.
• Plato — the author.
• Socrates — the defendant, and the subject of the dialogue.
• Apology of Socrates — the existing concept page for the dialogue in this wiki.