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Post by Mariana Castro on Apr 24, 2015 19:04:46 GMT
According to the book, "How Socrates Died" Socrates was sentenced to death for two reasons. First, he was charged with not believing in the Gods and religion of the state. His second charge was brought on by a young Meletus who accused Socrates of corrupting the youth. At his trial, Socrates failed to defense himself appropriately and therefore sentence to death. Considering that Socrates was the wisest of men and perfectly capable of talking his way out of a death sentence, it can be stated that he might have wanted to die. Mostly likely however he just refused to break his virtues and wanted to at least die with integrity. He was against manipulation and lying, so he probably preferred to die an honest man than to defend himself in a dishonest way.
In essence, Socrates was sentenced to death because he knew what future phycisist, mathematicians and other scientists have discovered in recent decades: that our knowledge is limited. He knew that anyone who claimed knowledge was a fool because the only truth was that no one knows anything. This is why he questioned everything and encouraged the people of Athens to question everything, even the gods. To question the gods, and the rules of government was to provoke rebellion and civil disobedience; two things that were a threat to power. Socrates was sentence to death for the same reason that Jesus was crucified and Martin Luther King was assasinated, for trying to disrupt the status quo and influence the evolution of civilizatoin.
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Post by April Johnson on Apr 25, 2015 22:28:52 GMT
At first glance, I wasn’t sure the connection between Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Socrates was viable due to the marked contradictions in the lives of the three people. While Jesus was a man who was asserting his divinity as the son of God while Martin Luther King was fighting for the social causes of African Americans. Jesus espoused himself as the savior of mankind while Socrates and MLK did not. Both Jesus and Socrates were put on trial while Martin Luther King was assassinated. They lived in different times and places and their motivations were not similar on a surface level. But after rereading your post I do agree that all three did die premature deaths for disrupting the status quo. I appreciate your ability to draw correlation between vastly different external situations to investigate internal conflicts.
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