Socrates is Guilty
...ion to avoid death does Socrates deny his association with the sophists. It is true he has not accepted money for his services, but this only proves that Socrates has darker motives for his teaching. He wishes to override our established beliefs by encouraging curiosity of things beneath the earth and in the heavens. During his testimony, he expressed respect for the sophists’ ways of thinking. From Aristophanes you all have heard of Socrates’ absurd experiments with physical science. He says that the sun is made of rock and the moon of earth. He says that the clouds and the domain of Zeus are actually manipulated by “celestial vortexes.” Socrates even dares to declare that Zeus does not exist! Like an idiot, he reserves his piety for cloud goddesses of his hallucinations. About them he says, “These are the only real divinities, all the rest is bunkum.” How can reasonable people allow such a dangerous man to preach, especially when he is able to manipulate whomever he speaks to? I agree with Alcibiades that Socrates uses his powers of persuasion to entrance and bully others. Sometimes he will mock people to convince them that they are inferior. Other times, he will try to make people feel unhappy and frustrated with the state of their lives. However, his main strategy is to doubt the validity everyone’s knowledge. By tirelessly scrutinizing each assertion, Socrates wears down his opponents to the point of breathlessness and fatigue. Finally he forces people to take his side and is hence able to command them as he wishes. Certainly unparalleled energy cannot defeat cogent reasoning, but Socrates does exactly this. Many professors have noticed his signature scheme. It is obvious that he does not care about finding...