The Willful Death Of An Outrageous Genius

Socrates has a death wish. Older age has rendered him mad, and when he speaks before the court in Xenophon's Socrates' Defense before the Jury, he is seeking out death. It is clear that "Socrates had already come to consider death preferable to life," but what the reader may overlook is the controlled zeal with which he addresses the subject of his passing. Because his growing psychosis is such a well-kept secret, as well as how intelligent we know him to be, Socrates comes off to most people as normal; however, his rationalizations leave many things unexplained Ð'- such as why a man of such free thought would succumb to the will of others. It is extraordinarily evident that Socrates is, in fact, in search of death, and that the reasons he argues for its occurrence are false justification for his real motive.

Socrates' mind has spent a lifetime in deep contemplation of the world, and is sure to have been strained and tested to the maximum possible capacity over time. This mind of his is indeed a highly overworked tool, and the effect of the over-analytical nature of Socrates' being has caused him to start inventing rationalizations for the unanswerable life questions he has demanded of himself. Suggestion of this fact is Socrates' constant attempts to provoke the intellectual inquisitiveness of those around him in all areas of speculation: "[W]ould you prefer to see me die justly?" and his conclusion that "[he] would prefer to die rather than to live without freedom." Instead of laying things out for people, he asks questions and makes statements that require thought Ð'- leading those to whom he speaks to aporia. On the question of death and the afterlife Ð'- the ultimate unknown Ð'- Socrates has been, of course, unable to draw conclusions, and he seizes the opportunity to experience it. This is implied in the statement that he "received death cheerfully," as well as his knowledge of men on the verge of death and his envy of their speculated "power to know the future." Socrates plainly states that "[he],