I always cover Apology when I teach introduction to philosophy; I like to cover the classics both because I hope it will be good for the students to expose them to the best of the past philosophers and because with the classics, I can still find new things in them even after having looked at them dozens of times before. One issue which I've been thinking about in Apology particularly is how little Socrates talks about other philosophers. There is the discussion of the sophists in the beginning, and a passing reference to Anaxagoras in the short dialogue with Meletus. I guess I'm not inclined to draw the sophist/philosopher line as sharply as some people, and after all Evenus, one of the sophists mentioned by name, is called a philosopher in Phaedo, and Socrates doesn't quibble with that identification. But at the end of Apology, when Socrates talks about all the fascinating people he'd get a chance to talk to in the afterlife, he mentions only poets and heroes, nobody who is even controversially a philosopher.
I assume this is significant. It's also notable that in discussing what happens when people die, he doesn't mention the possibility of reincarnation, though he certainly knew of the Pythagorean doctrine. I assume the lack of mention of philosophers and the lack of mention of reincarnation are related, no doubt both influenced by who the people listening were. But Socrates was willing to say plenty of things that were strange and offensive to his audience in Apology; why avoid these particular subjects? And is there anything else that Plato wanted us to notice had been left out?
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