Sara Ulloa-Alvarez Intro to Philosophy 1000 Socrates Midterm Paper Due: October 10, 2013

Socrates Philosophy Socrates once said, The unexamined life is not worth living. His motto of life was to be Know Thyself. I will be describing to you the teachings that Socrates believed to be the correct ones to exam your life and know yourself. As part of his teachings he talked about the psyche, techne, virtue as excellence of function and his view of intellectualism. After youve read my paper ask yourself, do you know yourself? Have you examined your life? The Unexamined Life if Not Worth Living. Socrates believed that the unexamined life was not worth living. He believed this strongly because in his eyes you could not possibly be excellent at your function without first examining your life. Socrates proved this by going around Athens and engaging in the Socratic dialectic with his fellow Athenians. Socratic dialectic is when two individuals interact to draw out the truth through the process of defining what and how things are. This method of inquiry differs from normal question asking in that Socrates assumed the function of education to draw the truth out of the pupil by guiding them, rather than just filling an empty vessel. An important aspect of Socratic teaching is the active involvement of the students by the use of the questions rather than straight lecture. As his opponent or student attempted to answer the questions, asked by Socrates they began to actually think about what they were talking about and began to examine their responses until they drew out the truth. He believed that the truth was somehow in each

of us we just needed someone to help us draw it out instead of just teaching it to us. He believed that we all just needed help clearing out our confused minds. As he proved the Socratic dialect to be effective our jobs are to ask ourselves questions to draw out truth and help examine our lives to Know Thyself. Know Thyself 1. Psyche To know yourself you must first understand your psyche. Socrates believed that the human psyche is the essence of humanness. The psyche1 was a combination of what we think of as the mind and soul: consciousness, the capacity to reason, and the ability to reflect. Socrates was reputed to be a less than attractive man, but he didnt care because to him the most important part of a human being was their soul. To Socrates your soul truly reflected who you were as a person. Your true beauty is within in your psyche. Others didnt see it that way because they were all too focused on their outer beauty. Socrates demonstrated he didnt care about his appearance by not wearing shoes, not showering or removing his facial hair. He didnt care about his physical appearance, all he cared about was making sure that his soul an mind were beautiful because he knew that would be the only part of him he would take with him the day he died. The psyche is the true beauty, is the beauty of spirit and character.

2. Techne

1 Soccio, Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1995. Print.Page 103

The second thing you must master and understand is your techne. Socrates used this word to describe practical knowledge. 2At various times, techne meant art, skill, craft, technique, trade, system, or method of doing something. Techne is knowledge of what to do and how to do it. For example: the knowledge of a computer technician is to have both theoretical understanding and practical skills. His techne is manifested by the fact that he fixes computer and makes them run to the best of it ability. If he made it worse, he would conclude that he was not really a computer technician, that he lacked computer knowledge. Techne is not just following a step by step manual instruction to fix a computer you must have the skills and the understanding of how each part of a computer plays a big role in a computers ability to function excellently. To truly know yourself you must know your techne. You must know what makes you whole, what makes you happy and drives to continue living. Those with out a techne have not examined their lives; so theyre wasting their time in worthless tasks that really dont mean anything and wont help them reach their true happiness. Living without a techne just makes it harder to living a fulfilled life. Its hard to understand what you want out of life. So, you see without a techne youre living a worthless miserable life that just isnt worth living.

3. Excellence of Function or Virtue Once you have master your techne and discovered the beauty of your psyche you can put them together and perform your function excellently. When you perform excellently you have taken the necessary steps to examine your life and you are on your

2 Soccio, Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1995. Print.Page 108-109

way to a happier and more productive life. Your virtue or excellence of function is what makes an individual happy and whole. Socrates believed that without understanding your psyche and techne you werent living a productive life. He believed you might as well be dead if you werent performing your function excellently. See we were all put here with a purpose. Are job is to find that purpose and perform it to the best of our ability.

As a student you must know what youre going to school for, you must have a major and final goal. If you decide to attend college without a goal or a purpose you might as well just not start school at all. Starting without a goal or purpose with just waste teachers, fellow students and your time. I say that because you would be in class unfocused and just not caring about the lessons being thought. Your careless behaviors would reflect in your papers and in your failure of quizzes and test. This behavior would affect your teacher in a way that your scores would make him/her feel that their teachings would not diverse or understandable, but in all reality it was you just coming to class not paying attention and just wasting time and money for the fun of it. You decided to attend school without a goal or purpose so you failed and your unexamined plan failed and it would just cause you to start from the beginning.

Intellectualism The term intellectualism is used to refer to the claim that behaviors are always controlled by the beliefs about what is good and the means to that good. To Socrates intellectualism was a part of his unusual claim that no one knowingly does wrong. According to Socrates, when we admit (state) that our choices are wrong, we are

playing word games. As an example I would like to use my above example about attending school. According to Socrates a student doesnt intend to go to school just to waste time and money. In his eyes the student is doing this unknowingly. The student wouldnt understand what they were doing until they have fully experience what they did, which would later conclude with them examining their life and planning a better future with their education.

In conclusion, Socrates believed that to Know Thyself you must live a life with virtue by reflecting within your psyche and finding your techne and performing your function excellently. Finding your techne would take some time but is better to find out and live an examined life than to life an unexamined life that would get you nowhere in life. I truly love Socrates philosophy because its a way of life that allows you to ask yourself questions about your future and it helps your answer this questions and as you answer them you draw the truth of what you really want in your life. I know that Socrates used his dialect on others to help them reflect and examine their life, but its a great technique to do to help you reach a better you and truly know yourself from the inside out.