Review of I. F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates

I. F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates is an unsympathetic account of Socrates at his famous trial in ancient Athens in 399 BCE. To any new student of philosophy the trial is one simply where the barbarians of ancient Athens did not understand the profundities of Socratic wisdom, and foolishly ordered the execution of the father of philosophy. To Stone Socrates was not the nice old man who was trying to teach people how to be wise and virtuous.

Stone starts his account by going through the Socratic account of the ideal ruler and specifying that he believed that rule by the best was better than rule by all. This anti-democratic stance sat very poorly with the Athenians who had two tyrannies fresh in their minds. Socrates did not think everyone had the ability and thus the right to rule. And that is ultimately what led to the sentence of death.

Socrates' self-righteousness and condescension likely gave the jury ample reason to want him out of their hair. Stone goes through Socrates' antagonism of the jury, and what he should and could have said, and some ideas of why he did not.

Frankly I hated the book. The whole book sounded like Stone had some personal grudge against Socrates himself, or perhaps it was Socratic theories of best rule that he does not like. I am not too sure I am crazy about them either. However, Stone is often unduly harsh with Socrates. Stone has little sympathy with the methodology, genesis, style, or content of Socratic thought.