Plato&Socrates Excellence in Virtue

Plato & Socrates: Excellence in Virtue introduction “Socrates’ positive influence touches us even today” (May 6) and we can learn a great deal about him from one of his students, Plato. It is in Plato’s report of Socrates’ trial a work entitled, Apology, and a friend’s visit to his jail cell while he is awaiting his death in Crito, that we discover a man like no other. Socrates was a man following a path he felt that the gods had wanted him to follow and made no excuses for his life and they way he lived it. The passage I have chosen from Plato’s Apology is the main passage to which Socrates believed in until his death and gave the basis for his life and they way he chose to live his life. It is this passage that makes clear all of Plato’s writings and perhaps why even in living his own life he chose emulate and follow Socrates and ultimately became one of his better-known students. To prove this, the paper is organized into four sections. In the first section, I will give the key passage, along with some textual context to give background details. In the second section, I will provide some relevant biographical/historical information about the author and the time period for when the text was written. In the third section, I will provide a detailed analysis meaning and arguments of my key passage and in the fourth section; I will explain the meaning of three passages that support the key passage of the paper. However, before we can move any further into this process, I will present my key passage on which this paper is based. key passage “As long as I have breath and strength I will not give up philosophy and exhorting you and declaring the truth to every one of you whom I meet, saying as I am accustomed, ‘My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power-are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think

Cited: Baird, Forrest E. and Kaufmann, Walter. From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. 2008. Print. Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Nicholas D. Smith. Socrates on Trial. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. Print. Dictionary.com. n.d. n pag. Web. 22 Nov. 09. May, Hope. On Socrates. Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2000. Print. Reeve, C.D.C. Socrates in the Apology: An Essay on Plato’s Apology of Socrates. Indianapolis, Indiana, 1989. Print.