Mortal Democracy and Plato’s Apology

• Author: Elizabeth Barringer
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720982950
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720982950

Political Theory

2021, Vol. 49(6) 995 –1020

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591720982950

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Article

Mortal Democracy

and Plato’s Apology

Elizabeth Barringer1

Abstract

The Apology is often read as showing a conflict between democracy and

philosophy. I argue here that Socrates’s defense critically engages deeply

political Athenian conventions of death, showing a mutual entanglement

between Socratic philosophy and democratic practice. I suggest that

Socrates’s aporetic insistence within the Apology that we “do not know if

death is a good or a bad thing” structures a critical space of inquiry that I

term “mortal ignorance;” a space from which Socrates reapproaches settled

questions of death’s appropriate place in political life, ultimately prompting

a partial transformation of Athenian democracy. I argue here that Socratic

mortal ignorance supports a self-reflective politics of death, one which

produces many potential responses and accepts the impossibility of closing

off death’s meaning in any final sense—an aporia suitable for the unending,

precarious work of democratic politics.

Keywords

Plato, democracy, mortality, Athens, Apology

I think, Socrates, as perhaps you do yourself, that it is either impossible or very

difficult to acquire clear knowledge about these matters [of death] in life. And

yet he is a weakling who does not test in every way what is said about them and

persevere until he is worn out by studying them on every side. . . . And so now

I am not ashamed to ask questions, since you encourage me to do so.

—Simmias, Phaedo, 85c–e

1Associate Fellow, Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth Barringer, Associate Fellow, Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College,

1448 Annandale Rd, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000, USA.

Email: ebarringer@bard.edu

982950PTXXXX10.1177/0090591720982950Political TheoryBarringer

research-article2020

996 Political Theory 49(6)

Introduction

Plato’s Apology is traditionally read as opening a “gulf” between democratic

politics and philosophy.1 This reading partly rests on Socrates’s hopeful ori-

entation toward his own death, which seems to reject the shadowy world of

embodied democratic politics in favor of philosophic truth and the immortal

soul. Here, however, I suggest that the discussion of death in the Apology,

rather than turning away from political life in Athens, further “entangles”

Socrates’s defense with the politics of the democratic city.2 I argue that the

Apology presents Socratic philosophic practice as politically ambiguous: its

constant push to examine the core conventions of mortal, democratic Athenian

life threatens polis stability, yet simultaneously engages democratic values of

openness, contest, and critique in uncertain but potentially generative ways.

At the heart of the Apology is a consistent interrogation of Athenian cus-

tomary attitudes toward death and their proper place in political life. Socrates

questions how these conventions, anchored in an unexamined fear of death,

distort democratic ideals of frank speech, sound reasoning, and the justice

garnered through collective judgment. While the Athenians praise a life that

courageously faces death, Socrates admits he does not know whether death is

innately frightening: “as I have no adequate knowledge of things in the

underworld, so I do not think I have. I do know, however, that it is wicked and

shameful to do wrong” (29b–c).3 I thus read Socrates’s treatment of death in

the Apology as part of a deeply political turn, one aimed at transforming the

mortal, democratic city through a reconsideration of its central practices.

As John Seery has argued, a reluctance to speak about death openly in

popular political discourse does not prevent anxieties over death and its

meaning from shaping political behavior.4 Indeed, discomfort over the role

liberal, democratic states play in producing so much death in contemporary

times, disproportionately benefiting some while exposing others to greater

mortal violence and precarity, remains an all-too-present part of contempo-

rary political life and has generated a robust conversation in political theory

about death, mourning, and the dead.5 I suggest here that by viewing our

attitudes toward death as a contingent and contestable part of political life, as

Socrates encourages his fellow Athenians to do, we stand to be more attentive

to background political narratives of legitimation and desire, which these atti-

tudes support; made aware of harmful political dynamics otherwise over-

looked; and invited to imagine alternative ways of being.

I argue Socrates’s insistence that we “do not know if death is a good or bad

thing” provides an aporetic orientation useful for this task, one I call “mortal

ignorance.” I develop this position through a close reading of Socrates’s

interrogation of several competing conventions of death in the Athenian