Ambivalence and the Apology

Charles Platter (University of Georgia)

James Riddell’s 1867 commentary on the Apology is a fine work full of shrewd observations and good sense. Early on Riddell makes the following remark, later quoted by Burnet in his commentary:

The exordium may be completely paralleled, piece by piece, from the Orators. The imputation of conjoint falsity and plausibility, the denial of being δεινὸς λέγειν, the plea of unfamiliarity with the law courts, the begging of an impartial hearing, the deprecation of θορυβός, the disclaiming a style unbefitting an old man—these topics, of which the exordium of the Apology is wholly made up, occur continually in the Orators (pp. 66-67).

Of this Burnet remarks that

the exordium is, amongst other things, a parody, and the very disclaimer of all knowledge of forensic diction is itself a parody. It is also, of course, a piece of Socratic εἰρωνία, and, like most disclaimers made by Socrates, to be taken cum grano salis” (p. 67).

Several scholars have developed Burnet’s remarks further to argue that the Apology is a parody of Gorgias’ Palamedes, an observation plausible on the surface, given the fact that Socrates cites conversation with Palamedes and others convicted unjustly as one of the drawing points for life in Hades. Others have formulated the problem differently, citing in particular the idea of a philosophical rhetoric developed by Socrates in the Gorgias as the Apology’s goal.

Much of this comment has taken Burnet as its point of departure, but it is striking just how uncharacteristically vague he is here, particularly his lumping together of parody, which demands a visible target, and εἰρωνεία, which presumes a certain opacity between what is said and what is meant. As a result, not much gets expressed concretely. But even so little as that, Burnet says, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I propose in the paper to reframe Burnet’s observation, and question of Plato’s supposed parody, within a model that is broadly intertextual. My goal will be to attempt to show how Socrates’ approach to the clichés of the orators, his engagement with the epic, and his citation of works like the Palamedes of Gorgias, both in the exordium and in the Apology as a whole, mark the text as ambivalent to the core. Plato’s Socrates reformulates Athenian practices and cultural attitudes in order to lay out the conditions for an Athenian way of life consistent with philosophy. Within the context of an ultimately unsuccessful speech, such an effort can only be represented as heuristic; as a monument to Socrates, however, it emphasizes the truly revolutionary character of Socrates’ exhortation to value nothing higher than the care of the self.