Socrates

Socrates challenged his students to

think for themselves – to use their minds
to answer questions. He did not reveal
answers. He did not reveal truth.
Many of his questions were quite
simple:
What is courage?
What is virtue?
What is duty?
But what Socrates discovered, and what
he taught his students to discover, was
that most people could not answer these
fundamental questions to his
satisfaction, yet all of them claimed to be
courageous, virtuous and dutiful.
So, what Socrates knew, was that he
knew nothing, upon this sole fact lay the
source of his wisdom.
 Socrates was a philosopher from
Greece, and he lived between the year
469 and 399 BCE. This means he lived to
be about 71 years old. His ideas and
works live on through his dialogues:
written texts that share Socrates’ ideas
and stories.
 Socrates is known for his work with
ethics. One of the most important facts
about Socrates is that he helped to
develop many of the ideas about logic
and morality: what is right and how to help
people deal with their problems in
everyday life.
 Socrates was actually born to a thinker
and a midwife. He is known to have been
fairly short and generally unattractive, but
he did end up marrying a woman named
Xanthippe. He had few children, and
those in the academic world are
generally unsure of exactly how Socrates
worked and what he did to make money
– he might not have had a job and might
have only done philosophical work.
The famous Oracle at Delphi made it
known that Socrates was the wisest
person alive.
Most people are interested to learn
about Socrates’ death. He was put up for
trial because of his loyalty to Sparta
despite the Athenian takeover. He
remained loyal to the idea he wanted to
teach people of Sparta, but the
government thought he was a detriment
to society.
This event is thought of by scholars as
the time when the ability to question
knowledge and thought was under siege.
During his trial, he felt it would be better
to die than to continue to live in a society
where knowledge and questions were
not permitted by the government.
 Socrates sought to discover the truth
and the good life. Knowledge leads to
ethical action. Knowledge and virtue are
one. Thus, a wise man knows what is
right and will also do what is right, i.e. to
live virtuously.
The Ethical Views of Socrates
SOCRATES was stimulated by the
Sophists but was unwilling to go all the
way with them. He, too, was most
interested in the problems related to
living a good life. Thus a great deal of
his teaching dealt with the meaning of
right and wrong.
 It was Socrates' firm belief that there
must be a basic principle of right and
wrong, a measure which would apply far
beyond the beliefs of any one individual.
Thus, he asked time and again:
What is the good?
What is the highest good by which all else
in the universe is measured?
 His answer was that knowledge is the
highest good. If one knows what is
right, he argued, he will do it "No man,
he said, "Is voluntarily bad." When one
knows that a thing is good he will
choose to do that thing. Therefore the
most important endeavor of man is to
discover what is good.
 Socrates spent his life trying to help
men discover what is good. Thus, for
him, a life which is always inquiring and
trying to discover what is good is the
best kind of life, the only life worth
living.
Socrates is considered as the greatest
moral philosopher of Western Civilization.
His philosophy is evidently ethical. His
Epistemology is always geared towards a
moral life, to the effect that whenever he
speaks of truth, he always sees to it that it
is at the same time a discourse of will and
that whenever he speaks of knowledge,
he always makes it a point that his
audience will realize that knowledge is not
an entity for its own sake but a means of
ethical action.
 Socrates taught that knowledge and
truth provoke the will to act for the good
so that the agent can live right or good
moral life.
Socrates posited that knowing what is
right means doing what is right. Thus,
man must liberate himself from
ignorance. Man must be WISE! The
question is: “Who is a wise person?”
 A wise person for Socrates is not a
mentally undisciplined individual but a
well-cultured person. A wise man, having
known what is right, knows how to control
himself; he is just and courageous
individual. A wise person is happy. The
measure for him is not about material
possession but in being moral. For him,
true pleasure (doing what is right) will
offer a person a lasting happiness, which
will make him a moral being.
 Therefore, if one wishes to be happy,
he should be wise, for wisdom itself is its
own reward.
The supreme goal of man is happiness
which can be attained by doing what is
right. This fundamental principle demands
goodness and virtue.
An ethical life is a happy life. It is a
happy life because man does what is right
and good. What enables man to do good
is Virtue which is also synonymous with
knowledge.
Socratic Method
 The Socratic style
Socrates' style was distinctive
– He questioned people through
discussions or dialogues
– He chose people who were experts in
their field and who fully understood the
topic being discussed
– He adopted the role of ignorant
questioner
– Pretended he did not know and wanted
to be educated
 The Socratic style
is an intense line of
questioning aimed at defining
objects and ideas and refining
propositions by considering
their logical outcomes.
The Socratic style
– He asked tactful questions which
would bring the experts to a dead end
– they would run out of answers
– This showed them, and others, that
they did not have all the answers and,
so, were not experts
– Therefore, the aim of this method was
to get to the truth of how a person
could live a good, moral life
 Why the Socratic method?
 Through the dialogues, Socrates wanted to
discover people’s views on living a moral,
just life
 Socrates urged people to question what they
are being told, as well as their beliefs –
question EVERYTHING
 Socrates, himself, learned through this
process and developed his own philosophy
from this method
Socrates:
“the unexamined life is not
worth living,” as he says at his
trial (Plato, Apology 38a).
• What we can be sure about Socrates
was that he was remarkable for living
the life he preached. Taking no fees,
Socrates started and dominated an
argument wherever the young and
intelligent would listen, and people
asked his advice on matters of
practical conduct and educational
problems.
• Socrates was not an attractive man --
he was snub-nosed, prematurely bald,
and overweight. But, he was strong in
body and the intellectual master of
every one with whom he came into
contact. The Athenian youth flocked to
his side as he walked the paths of the
agora. They clung to his every word
and gesture. He was not a Sophist
himself, but a philosopher, a lover of
wisdom.
In 399 B.C., Socrates was charged with
impiety by a jury of five hundred of his
fellow citizens. His most famous
student, Plato, tells us, that he was
charged "as an evil-doer and curious
person, searching into things under the
earth and above the heavens; and
making the worse appear the better
cause, and teaching all this to others.”
 He was convicted to death by a
margin of six votes. Oddly enough, the
jury offered Socrates the chance to
pay a small fine for his impiety. He
rejected it. He also rejected the pleas
of Plato and other students who had a
boat waiting for him at Piraeus that
would take him to freedom. But
Socrates refused to break the law.
What kind of citizen would he be if he
refused to accept the judgment of the
jury? No citizen at all. He spent his last
days with his friends before he drank
the fatal dose of hemlock.