Why Was Socrates' Final Speech So Ineffective?

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Socrates: Why was his final speech so ineffective? Although the Platonic dialogue chronicling Socrates' death is called the Apology, many critics have noted that Socrates seems notably unapologetic throughout the speech, thus raising the ire of his Athenian listeners. Socrates is openly confrontational in his address to an Athenian jury of his peers, and his philosophical elitism seems designed to confirm, rather than disprove the image the prosecution had created of an unstable, dangerous, and impious man intent upon corrupting the young. The only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn is that, rather than trying to defend himself against the charges, Socrates was committing a kind of state-sanctioned suicide. His refusal to flee Athens after he received a death sentence lends credence to this charge. In the trial, Socrates was being charged with corrupting the young and impiety. To defend himself, he interrogated one of his accusers, Meletus, who claimed that Socrates had intentionally corrupted the minds of the young. Socrates said that this was absurd: "Now is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him, and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too; - that is what you are saying, and of that you will never persuade me or any other human being." In other words, if 'the young'

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