The Socratic Question

The trial of Socrates is a story familiar throughout the western world:  Socrates, a philosopher, pointed out the follies of important Athenian leaders and taught Athenian youths to question their elders.  He was brought to trial on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, found guilty, and sentenced to commit suicide.  Despite his death, his work lived on in his students, and the story of his trial and the record of the defense he offered has become a cornerstone of how we understand freedom of thought in the modern world.

Or, at least, that’s the story of his trial as most people learn it in school.  Behind this story, though, there is a lot more at work– an ancient proto-World War I, conspiracy, coup d’etat, a fight to preserve one of the world’s first democracies and a question that we still struggle with today:  how do we handle dangerous ideas and the dangerous people that think them?