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It's funny, in the version of the story I had heard before, Socrates was tried while the Tyrants were still in power and he was executed because his ideas were
by gweinberg 4y ago
It's funny, in the version of the story I had heard before, Socrates was tried while the Tyrants were still in power and he was executed because his ideas were teaching his students that their rule was unjust. But I also had had the impression that the tyrants were basically just a bunch of looters. If it is true that they were actually idealistic fanatics willing to commit mass murder in order to bring about their utopia, the idea that they were inspired by history's most famous philosopher makes a lot more sense.
- vintermann 4y ago"Idealists" is stretching it, but it seems plausible to me that they shared the extremely authoritarian class/caste-based ideas Plato would later express. And it's not entirely impossible, even, that those ideas really came from Socrates.
- watwut 4y agoYeah, in the story as I was taught as a kid, the thirty tyrants period and Socrates actual ideas gets skipped. It sounds like he was killed over unimportant disagreements. But the fuller story makes so much more sense.