100 Influential Philosophers - Sayed Badar Zaman Shah

7 The 100 Most Influential Philosophers of All Time 7
cross-examining one’s fellow citizens and accepting the
guidance of a divine voice—are nothing like the conventional
forms of piety in ancient Athens. The Athenians
expressed their piety by participating in festivals, making
sacrifices, visiting shrines, and the like. They assumed that
it was the better part of caution to show one’s devotion to
the gods in these public and conventional ways because, if
the gods were not honoured, they could easily harm or
destroy even the best of men and women and their families
and cities as well.
If Plato’s account of his philosophy is accurate, then
Socrates lacked the typical Athenian’s motives for participating
in conventional forms of piety. He cannot believe
that the gods might harm him, because he is confident
that he is a good man and that a good man cannot be harmed.
In effect, then, Socrates admits that his understanding of
piety is radically different from the conventional conception.
But not only does Socrates have an unorthodox
conception of piety and of what the gods want from the
citizens of the city, he also claims to receive infallible
guidance from a voice that does not hesitate to speak to
him about public matters.
If there is any doubt that the unorthodox form of piety
Socrates embodies could have brought him into direct
conflict with the popular will, one need only think of the
portion of Plato’s Apology in which Socrates tells the jurors
that he would obey the god rather than them. Imagining
the possibility that he is acquitted on the condition that he
cease philosophizing in the marketplace, he unequivocally
rejects the terms of this hypothetical offer, precisely
because he believes that his religious duty to call his fellow
citizens to the examined life cannot be made secondary to
any other consideration. It is characteristic of his entire
speech that he brings into the open how contemptuous he
is of Athenian civic life and his fellow citizens. Here, as in
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