How to judge the death of Socrates?

Historically, the death of Socrates was attributed to the democratic system in Athens, and it was thought that the latter killed the former. However, this may be a matter of opinion.

Let's start with the democracy in Athens. Athens was also a monarchy at first, and then it experienced oligarchy. Later, after Solon's reform (6th century BC) and Christini's reform (506 BC), the democratic system in Athens was finally established. Finally, during the period of Pericles (443- 429 BC), democracy reached its golden stage.

More than 2,000 years ago, Athens had already realized important means to embody democracy, such as decentralization and elections. When we talk about Athens, we must talk about its democratic system. For many years, the academic research on ancient Athens will inevitably be divorced from the democratic system, but in fact, the limitations of the democratic system in Athens are also obvious.

As we all know, the so-called democracy in Athens is actually the democracy of citizens, but the proportion of citizens in Athens city-state is very small, and the vast number of women, slaves, immigrants and minors are excluded from the democratic system, so it has great limitations in terms of the scope of democracy; Secondly, as far as the nature of Greek democracy is concerned, it is a very primitive direct democracy, which is only applicable to small city-states with small population and is not universal;

Thirdly, the democratic way of Athens, the way of drawing lots to take turns to sit in the village, is extremely arbitrary. Who will hold power sometimes depends not on ability or prestige but on the luck of drawing lots, so it is easy to abuse and misuse power.

Therefore, while Athenian democracy was affirmed as the source of western democracy, it was criticized for a long time and even became one of the reasons for the decline of Athens in the later period. In addition, the failure of the Peloponnesian War became an important example of the fragility of Athenian democracy, so that Socrates' death was attributed to the abuse and misuse of Athenian democratic power.

Of course, the reasons mentioned above can certainly make sense in some positions, but things can never be so absolute. Socrates died because different people have different views. It is not necessarily a responsible way to pay for Socrates' death completely from the limitations of democracy.

Among them, Si Tong's views in the United States can be used for reference by interested partners. In his "The Trial of Socrates", he thinks that Socrates' views have always been opposed or even despised, which runs counter to the democratic system. Therefore, after the tyrant politics was overthrown in the 1930s, the democrats saw that Socrates was still preaching his anti-democratic thoughts. They could no longer sit still and filed a lawsuit against him.

Moreover, when the thirty tyrants ruled Athens, Socrates did not flee with democracy, nor did he shout loudly to restore democracy, which made people feel that the most talkative person in Athens kept silent when Athens needed him most. So Nietzsche once said: Jesus wept for Jerusalem, but Socrates never shed a tear for Athens.

Can we guess that Socrates will be unpopular in Athens? Moreover, after Socrates, there were almost no accusations against philosophers in Athens.

In the end, Socrates chose to accept the trial, and then paraphrased Si Tong's words: "A city famous for its freedom of speech actually prosecuted, convicted and executed a philosopher who didn't commit any crime except using his speech, which left an indelible stain on the democracy in Athens. If this is his purpose, Socrates obviously achieved his purpose. "