Apology Blog Topic Number Two

Last year in my Law 12 class my teacher told us about a group of animal rights activists who were willing to die for their personal and philosophical beliefs. What they would do was break in to horse slaughter farms with a video camera, and film the horses being killed and tortured, because the only way to charge the perpetrators of any crime would be to have all of this on film as proof. This was extremely dangerous as they would often be shot at, and if any of them had been caught they would certainly have been killed. If we apply what this group does to Apple’s definition of a martyr-figure as “a person who displays or exaggerates their discomfort or distress in order to obtain sympathy or admiration,” we can clearly see that they are not a group of martyrs. It is true that they display their discomfort or distress by “taking a stand”, but in no way do I feel that they do it to obtain sympathy or admiration on their part. They do it because they love horses, and because they want people to know what injustices occur, and because they want them to stop. To put it plainly, they do it because of their personal and philosophical beliefs.

Part of the blog topic is asking if it possible to separate somebody who is willing to die for their personal and philosophical beliefs from a martyr, and in the case above I think that the two are separate. Are they separate in the case of Socrates, though? While on trial, Socrates philosophizes that some may ask him, “ Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of leading a life which is very likely now to cause your death?” to which he would answer, “ My friend, if you think that a man of any worth at all ought to reckon the chances of life and death when he acts, or that he ought to think of anything but whether he is acting justly or unjustly, and as a good or a bad man would act, then you are mistaken.” (Plato 34). When I think of a martyr, I think of somebody who wants to be seen, and maybe only superficially. I don’t feel that Socrates’ answer supports that, because he’s saying that the only thing he takes into consideration when he acts is whether or not it is just or right for himself. He doesn’t want sympathy or admiration; he just wants to do what is right, similar to the animal rights activists. In “Crito”, Socrates even declines Crito’s offer to break him out of the prison, saying that you cannot solve one unjust action with another unjust action. (Plato 59). Socrates declines Crito’s offer even though he has young children who are inevitably going to be left fatherless, and you would have to have pretty strong personal convictions to do that, in my opinion. That is not the action of somebody with shallow beliefs; somebody who only wants sympathy or admiration. That is the action of somebody who is willing to die for their personal and philosophical beliefs.

Work Cited: Plato. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:  Prentice Hall, 1948. Print.