Socrates and Democratic Athens

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by Josiah Ober, Stanford University
published on 07 November 2011

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Socrates was both a loyal citizen (by his own lights) and a critic of the democratic community’s way of doing things. This led to a crisis in 339 B.C. In order to understand Socrates’ and the Athenian community’s actions (as reported by Plato and Xenophon) it is necessary to understand the historical and legal contexts, the democratic state’s commitment to the notion that citizens are resonsible for the effects of their actions, and Socrates’ reasons for preferring to live in Athens rather than in states that might (by his lights) have had substantively better legal systems. Written for the Cambridge Companion to Socrates.

Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.

Written by Josiah Ober, Stanford University, linked by Jan van der Crabben, published 07 November 2011. Source URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/ober/070602.pdf.

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APA Style

University, J. O. S. (2011, November 07). Socrates and Democratic Athens. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/article/267/

Chicago Style

University, Josiah O. S. "Socrates and Democratic Athens." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified November 07, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/article/267/.

MLA Style

University, Josiah O. S. "Socrates and Democratic Athens." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 07 Nov 2011. Web. 20 Jan 2021.

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Original article by Josiah Ober, Stanford University. Submitted by Jan van der Crabben, published on 07 November 2011 under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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