Meaning of Apology

From the Latin apologia, although with a more distant origin in a Greek word, apology is the discourse that is made in defense or praise of something or someone. These are oral, written, or other expressions that are disseminated with the intention of supporting a person, an organization, or a cause.

For example: “I am not interested in what they say in that program: they always defend the interests of businessmen”, “The song is an advocacy of recycling that tries to make people aware of environmental problems”, “The writer He was accused of advocating the drug for his controversial comments about coca cultivation. ”

According to DigoPaul, the apology, in certain cases, can be considered as an illegal act when it incites to commit actions that are contrary to the law. In these cases, there is talk of advocacy of crime, since what the person does is defend and promote criminal behavior.

The apology for crime can be understood as that public praise of an action that has been declared criminal. If a terrorist group kidnaps and shoots a politician and a journalist expresses in a television program that “that is what should be done with all the public officials who have brought ruin to the country”, this press man could be accused of apology for crime.

It should be noted that apology in private is not an illegal act. If, when seeing the same news of the terrorists who kill a politician, a person tells his family that it is an action “worthy of applauding and imitating”, the comment may be repugnant from ethics, but it does not constitute a crime since it was carried out in the private sphere of that group.

Apology of Socrates

Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived between 427 and 347 BC. C., was the author of a work entitled ” Apology for Socrates “, which offers an account of the defense delivered by his also celebrated teacher before the courts of Athens, in a trial in which he received the accusation of having corrupted the young and not professing your faith in the gods of the cops. Although there are no precise references to the date on which Plato wrote this text, experts believe that it may have been his first work or that, at least, he could have written it in his youth.

Broadly speaking, it is possible to distinguish the following structure: the first part, which consists of the introduction, the accusation, the explanation of the charges, his interpretation of the Delphic Oracle, the refutation of the accusations and self-annihilation; the second part, in which the acceptance and indication of the sentence are developed; the third part, which occupies the prophecy.

It is an interesting journey through the mind of the acclaimed thinker, in which, in addition to knowing an important and decisive moment in his life, he encourages readers to reflect and draw their own conclusions. From the beginning, Socrates places himself above his accusers by asking them to plead guilty to themselves for having followed him in many of his speeches in public squares; In addition, he assures that the injuries are not true and that he will use the truth to carry out his defense.

The work, of a moderate length, requires a slow and deep reading, which is obtained without much effort given the intensity of the dialogue between Socrates and his hundreds of accusers, which represents a constant search for truth, as impossible to solve as absurd, as unfair to the philosopher as fair to those who repudiated him and had transmitted their contempt to his descendants.

Apology