Geoffrey Bindman reflects on the trial of Socrates & the power of politics to defeat human rights
Politicians who disparage human rights sometimes give the impression they are dealing with an ill-considered invention of modern left-wing ideologues. In truth, the struggle for human rights goes back at least to the 5th century BC, when Socrates dispensed his philosophical wisdom in the city-state of Athens.
Yet, remarkably, in 399 BC the 70-year-old philosopher was put on trial in the birthplace of democracy for what we would regard as human rights violations. There were two charges. The first was that he refused to ‘do reverence to the gods recognised by the city, and introduced new divinities’. The second was that he corrupted his youthful pupils. Following conviction, he accepted the consequence: death. Famously, he ended his life by drinking the prescribed Athenian poison: hemlock.
His second offence is not to be understood in the modern paedophilic sense—paedophilia was not a crime in ancient Athens. Rather, it was his pedagogic activities which got him into trouble. The accusation was that he encouraged his pupils to doubt the existence
