Virtual Socrates Colloquium – Sara S. Monoson: “Summoning Socrates: On Plato’s Apology 38c-42a”

The International Society for Socratic Studies is pleased to announce the schedule for the Virtual Socrates Colloquium 2025-2026.
You can see the schedule HERE

Notice that there is no need to register and all you need to do is join the following Zoom link: https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/63132371340?pwd=nQwGxammbjajdzRSM9ZQXsCLoqfS2C.1
Meeting ID: 631 3237 1340
Passcode: 088283

The International Society for Socratic Studies is pleased to invite you to a lecture by S. Sara Monoson from the Northwestern University, US, on the 22nd of January at 18:00 (Rome Time), entitled

Summoning Socrates: On Plato’s Apology 38c-42a

Abstract:
My comments on Apology 38c-42a for ISSS are drawn from a recently completed larger project entitled, Summoning Socrates. The larger project is a creative re-telling of the trial and death of Socrates in the form a script suitable for reading and reader’s theater (but not performance). It follows Plato’s account of Socrates’ behavior on the days surrounding the pretrial hearing (drawing on Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist and Statesman), the frantic interest in gossip about Socrates in the weeks between the hearing and trial (found in Symposium) and the actions of Socrates at trial, in prison and in the face of execution (the action of the Apology, Crito and Phaedo). Also woven into this retelling is a granular account of the perspective of jurors. I depict the experiences of citizens going through the complex jury selection and trial administration processes (drawing on scholarship across fields on the records of Athenian legal procedures). The re-telling also nods to some details from other sources (e.g., Aristophanes, Xenophon, Diogenes Laertius) but does not integrate their of alternative substantive arguments. My aim is to illuminate Plato’s depiction, not recover a historical Socrates. For example, I end the re-telling with a portrayal of citizens pondering the statue of Socrates in the Pompeion in central Athens by Lysippus commissioned by the Athenians some years after the execution – a detail based on testimony in Diogenes. In general, my project investigates how far a very thick historical context that includes close attention to legal proceedings (e.g., it depicts the conduct of random selection using the kleroterion) can illuminate the practice of philosophy enacted by Socrates in Plato’s texts.
Producing this dramatized re-telling forced attention to some issues that I suggest should shape interpretation of key elements of Plato’s account of Socratic philosophy. For the ISSS meeting, I will report on one such example. I will address how this perspective can color the way we read Socrates’ third “speech” in Plato’s Apology, that is, the words Plato gives him after the sentencing decision. Is it a “speech” like the two previous addresses (in his defense and regarding the sentencing proposal) as most assume, or a depiction of some other act?

Bio:
S. Sara Monoson is Professor of Political Science, Classics and Philosophy at Northwestern University. She was chair of classics for more than ten years. She holds degrees from Brandeis, the LSE and Princeton and has been a faculty fellow at ICS and CHS. Her long-standing interest is in investigating how thick historical contextualization can impact our understanding of the philosophical arguments. She is the author of the prize-winning book, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy, and articles on, for example, trauma and resilience in Plato’s thought, Socrates’s military service, and the place of empirical observation in Aristotle’s theory of slavery. She also works in classical reception studies and has publications on, for example, Socrates as a democratic symbol in the 20th century, American proslavery theorists’ use of Aristotle’s Politics, a radical American visual artist’s use of Aesop in the 1930s. A methodological study of the attractions of “summoning” as a metaphor for reception will appear in a forthcoming edited volume on the receptions of Aristotle.