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Thor Church Teresa Welch PHIL 1000-022 26 April 2014 Socrates and Hume: How They Compare and Contrast This paper is going to show some similarities and some great differences between two of the greatest thinkers that ever existed. Both men had a love of seeking and sharing knowledge and arguably had the most impact on philosophy as it is today. They were also two of the only philosophers that we have studied who truly lived their beliefs regardless of their criticisms or the consequences. I will start with Socrates insomuch as he was first chronologically and in my opinion, even helped shape the beliefs of Hume and arguably society as we know it. Socrates lived from 470 BC to 399 BC. Sadly all of what we know about his philosophy comes from second hand accounts from his student Plato, and others since he did not personally write any of his teachings. Although he was a pagan many religious leaders saw him as a great thinker and a man of god. (Soccio 90) During his time the Sophists were teaching current philosophy for pay, similar to the lobbyists that are selling their ideas to congress today. Socrates spent his days around Athens teaching or more to the point questioning those who were around him, in what became known as the Socratic dialectic or a conversation where he would ask a question and further refine each answer into another question, in order to make others involved in the conversation logically analyze their own beliefs and come to a new understanding of the truth. He believed the function of education was to not to fill an empty vessel, but to draw the truth out of the pupil. (Soccio 100) That way, the student will come to an

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understanding through a logical thought process that they can understand. In other words, he helps the student come to their own understanding and knowledge by forcing them to question their own perceptions of currently held beliefs. If nothing else this simple approach to educating others was one of the greatest contributions to our society that has ever been made. Socrates believed that the soul or psyche was the most important thing, and that the unexamined life is not is not worth living. (Soccio 106) By this he meant that to simply live a life following the norms of society and not really looking into ones own beliefs for guidance, or even looking into why one believes what they do is not really living but merely existing. He himself questioned societys beliefs of what was important by living a life devoid of extravagance, much of the time barefoot and wearing tattered clothing. Even though he could have easily been seen as a beggar or undesirable to those in high society, he was not only one of the most respected men in Athens, but his influence was so profound that it eventually caused him to be put on trial for rejecting the gods, acknowledged by the state and bringing in strange deities; and also of corrupting the youth, (Soccio 103) for which he was convicted and eventually put to death. One of his key beliefs was that knowledge would make us live good lives and never chose bad or harmful actions. Sadly this is one of the places that his beliefs fall short of what we know as the human experience. Just because someone knows right from wrong does not account for personal will or lack of moral character. The thief knows that stealing is wrong but justifies his or her actions by one of many excuses and the adulterer knows it is wrong but choses to indulge in hedonistic pleasure regardless of their understanding of the subject. This is but one of the many things that cannot be explained by Socrates simple philosophy of life.

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It must be said that even in his death he was true to his beliefs since when given the chance to escape, he chose to proudly live as he saw was the correct moral life and accept his sentence with dignity, drinking the hemlock and showing all of those around him that he truly believed that death was nothing to fear. The second of the great thinkers that I have chosen to examine is David Hume. He was born in 1711 and although 2000 years had passed since Socrates had given us the Socratic method of questioning beliefs, David came along and reinserted his own new version of skepticism into the world of philosophy. Much like Socrates he was despised by the philosophical community for turning it on its head and causing so many to question knowledge and wisdom in general, only in Humes case it was to the point that is has been said we may never recover. He was raised a very religious Presbyterian in Scotland, however he decided to devote his studies to philosophy. He was influenced by certain philosophers and said he never again entertained any belief in religion. (Soccio 293) Having enough income to live he was able to spend his younger years studying many things including the law, and it was these influences that created the skeptical man that would impact the world of philosophy so much. By the age of 27 he had written his two-volume Treatise of Human Nature but it was so controversial that in order to get it published he had to edit much of the most critical points in the books, but he kept the original manuscripts which would eventually be published after his death. He was the most skeptical of all of the philosophers and created the empirical criterion of meaning that essentially said that any meaningful idea can be reduced or traced back to sensory experience, and that since beliefs do not fit this criteria, they are meaningless utterances. (Soccio 293)

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His questioning of science was so great that it can be seen still today in the statement, we accept that which we have yet to find a way to disprove. This is a simple way of saying that we have no real knowledge of science but only inferences from what we perceive at the time. Another way to put it is that just because we have seen the same thing time and time again, it does not prove that it will always happen or that it will even happen again at all. His criticisms of religion were just as brutal and logical. His analysis of all of the negative things that an all-knowing, omnipotent God has allowed to happen led him to say, Based solely on our observations of human experience we find insufficient evidence to assume the existence of a good, all-wise, all-powerful God. (Soccio 305) Even in his death he was defiant in the belief of a god at least not in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic (Soccio 305) sense of a god. He tore down almost every currently believed idea that existed in his time. Hume teaches us that neither the scientist, nor the philosopher, nor the priest has the method and the answer to timeless questions. (Soccio 311) Much like the Asian sages see the Tao as an allencompassing thing that can never be described without necessarily limiting its greatness, Hume sees the human experience as something that will always be more than can ever be answered by any of these methods and as such, we can never truly have a full understanding or true knowledge. Much like Cogito ergo sum, all we can really know is that we think therefore we exist; everything else is merely our interpretation of sensory experience. Hume decided to live out his life as a socialite, indulging in lifes pleasures much like a hedonist, but was truly devoted to finding an impartial, personal understanding of life rather than accepting someone elses interpretations as a fact. In the end he said basically that nobody has ever proven anything and quite frankly, never will.

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I chose to refer to both of these men as great thinkers rather than philosophers, because neither of them taught a certain philosophy. Instead, they both strongly advocated for a complete analysis of data and ideas for truth and following them to their natural conclusions. As such they did not espouse a certain philosophy but rather taught rational analysis of every aspect of society and life. Both believed in complete and neutral criticism of current beliefs and teachings as the only way to ever find truth. The biggest difference in this aspect of their lives was that David Hume ultimately said we can never truly come up with a definitive knowledge of anything but merely our own personal perception, which is more accurate than accepting the ideas of another person. Socrates never took it to this extreme but his teachings did agree that coming to ones own understanding is the most important thing. Both men were highly criticized by their peers and much of society as a whole. While Socrates was eventually executed for his corruption of the current norms, Hume was eventually accepted into the high society and lived among the most influential of his time. While much of what we know about Socrates was written by his students and as such we may never know the extent of his ideas, Hume wrote many books and even became one of the most celebrated historians of his time. Although much of his critical writing was greatly edited to make them more acceptable in current society and it wasnt until after his death that the unedited versions were published and we eventually gained the full knowledge of his ideas. These men could be considered the polar opposites when it came to the way they lived their lives. Socrates was a very humble man and chose to live a life of poverty, challenging the material ideas of society. Hume on the other hand worked until he was able to live what some would consider an extremely extravagant lifestyle, including food, wine women and parties at his home. Neither was known as

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a very religious person and although Socrates was not known for speaking out against religion, Hume was known for directly attacking theology. I chose these two men for their dedication to seeking out the truth by means of logical analysis rather than simply accepting the current beliefs and understanding of the world. Much of the differences between these two great thinkers can be attributed to the 2000 years between them and the influences of society, but there can be no argument that they will forever go on in history as two of the fathers of rational thought in every aspect of society. They lived in deference to society regardless as to how it affected their lives. Luckily for Hume he was eventually accepted into society rather than being killed for it, which may simply be attributed to a more progressively tolerant society.

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Works Cited Soccio, Douglas j. Archetypes of wisdom: an itroduction to philosophy. 8th. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.