“IF I CAN IMAGINE MYSELF AS A GOD, I WOULD ALREADY BE A GOD”*
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates defends himself in court, and the crimes against which he is tried are not recognizing the gods recognized by the state, inventing new deities, and corrupting the youth of Athens. A concept called “daimonion” first appears in the Apology, which is what Socrates gave to his inner voice, its example “Oracle at Delphi” is mentioned several times by Socrates (Plato 25). Because of daimonion, Socrates is accused by Meletus of creating new gods. It symbolized Socrates’ mystical nature in harmony with rational thought. Socrates, while making his defense, says that his daimonion did not disturb him in any way and therefore did not interfere with him. The conclusion he reached here is that he did not stray from goodness and righteousness. That is, according to him, the daimonion is closely related to ethics.
The daimonion is just like the “conscience”. For conscience only takes action when someone commits a bad act — or is badly inactive — and waits silently outside of it. Other than that, it does not suggest how a person should behave, it does not force him to act in a particular way. It only makes itself clear whether it acts or does not act, or if it does, it does or does not act in a wrong way, which is exactly what the daimonion is. The daimonion is not a source of information, but a criterion one has from birth on whether an action is right or good. If it was a source of information, it would make a specific suggestion about how one should behave or convey certain information that is good and true about life to the person. But, the daimonion is far from that, it is not a teacher but rather a judge who constantly watches over the actions of others.
According to Socrates, the source of goodness and righteousness is the perfect god, in this case, it is the god himself with whom the daimonion communicates in expressing his conviction that an action is not good or right; because only God knows what is certain, good and true. In this respect, the daimonion is essentially a messenger between man and God. Since Socrates thought that this inner voice was of divine origin, he defined it as “daimonion”, which means divine sign. The reason why those who accuse Socrates say “he makes up god” is that they do not perceive the qualities of this concept as Socrates, because they cannot understand that the “daimonion” is the “messenger”, they thought that Socrates gave the title of god to the daimonion, and therefore accused him of “inventing god”.However, Socrates’ attempt to explain his “conscience” immanently with God, since he thought that this inner voice was divine, was called creating a god for the Athenians, who resented him.
If Socrates had been involved in politics, in his own words, he “should have died a long ago, benefited neither you nor himself.” Socrates may have been worried that if he had entered politics, Socrates would not have been able to achieve this goal, as Socrates had a self-professed sacred purpose of “recollecting” the truth to people in the dialogue of Meno (Plato 70). Because especially politics means that Socrates, who is a “gadfly”, disturbs very large and powerful horses too much (Plato 32). Especially the last sentence tries to explain this (Plato 36). According to Socrates, a person wanting to find the “real” good and tries to achieve justice cannot live in the city neither among the politicians nor among the people who are accustomed to living according to this order. The same idea persists today. Regardless of the political party that has adopted the idea, those who come to power want to play “god”, maybe they want to be. But in the meantime, they only make a certain part of their ego and desires prosper, and many illegal transactions take place. While making this sentence, Socrates said that those who oppose the lawlessness in the city will not go unpunished, and that he is one of them, and with his cynical style stemming from the Socratic method he has used while reaching his goal, he made a statement that will be valid centuries later, even centuries from now. After all, “hard to be a god” for both those who accuse him and himself.
Works Cited
Plato, and Grube G M A. Five Dialogues. Hackett Pub. Co., 2002.
Strugatskij, Arkadij, and Boris Strugatskij. Hard to Be a God. Gollancz, 2015.
