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The historical Socrates has had his detractors, as we well know. But their views vanish almost completely under the force of Plato's admiration. The portrait of Socrates in the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo is, for most, the “real” Socrates, and these documents are the basis for the high reverence he elicits from so many. Karl Jaspers devotes a book to the four men he considers to represent mankind's noblest achievement: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus. Erich Fromm provides a parallel list:
The human reality … underlying the teachings of Buddha, Isaiah, Christ, Socrates, or Spinoza is essentially the same. It is determined by the striving for love, truth, and justice.1
(One wonders which of the several prophets of the Isaiah scroll is meant here, but that would be quibbling.) We need not produce other such fatuous lists. Socrates is on all of them. He is a universal saint.
Although it is recognized that the portrait of Socrates in these three principal dialogues is colored by Plato's admiration and love, it is accepted that these documents are historically reliable. In particular, it is accepted that the Apology represents substantially the content and tone of the actual defense. This would appear to me to be the case: the portrait that emerges from a careful reading of the Apology would not have been invented by a disciple. However, this is not a critical point. Our concern is with the dramatic figure that emerges from its pages.
I suggest that the Apology has been misread in much the same way that Hamlet has been misread until recently. The analogy between