Who is socrates and what did he do

This conception of divinity, however, dispenses with the traditional conception of prayer and sacrifice as motivated by hopes for material payoff. Jurors at his trial might have thought that, without the expectation of material reward or protection from the gods, Socrates was disconnecting religion from its practical roots and its connection with the civic identity of the city.

While Socrates was critical of blind acceptance of the gods and the myths we find in Hesiod and Homer, this in itself was not unheard of in Athens at the time. Solon, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Euripides had all spoken against the capriciousness and excesses of the gods without incurring penalty. Though it has become customary to think of a daimon as a spirit or quasi-divinity for example, Symposium ea , in ancient Greek religion it was not solely a specific class of divine being but rather a mode of activity, a force that drives a person when no particular divine agent can be named Burkett, Socrates claimed to have heard a sign or voice from his days as a child that accompanied him and forbid him to pursue certain courses of action Plato, Apology 31c-d, 40a-b, Euthydemus ea, Euthyphro 3b, Phaedrus b, Theages a, Theaetetus cb, Rep c; Xenophon, Apology 12, Memorabilia 1.

Xenophon adds that the sign also issued positive commands Memorablia 1. This sign was accessible only to Socrates, private and internal to his own mind. For all the jurors knew, the deity could have been hostile to Athenian interests. However, Socrates had no officially sanctioned religious role in the city.

As such, his attempt to assimilate himself to a seer or necromancer appointed by the city to interpret divine signs actually may have undermined his innocence, rather than help to establish it. His insistence that he had direct, personal access to the divine made him appear guilty to enough jurors that he was sentenced to death.

The Socratic problem is the problem faced by historians of philosophy when attempting to reconstruct the ideas of the original Socrates as distinct from his literary representations.

Because he wrote nothing, what we know of his ideas and methods comes to us mainly from his contemporaries and disciples. These works are what are known as the logoi sokratikoi , or Socratic accounts. Aside from Plato and Xenophon, most of these dialogues have not survived.

What we know of them comes to us from other sources. Diogenes Laertius 6. Aeschines of Sphettus wrote seven dialogues, all of which have been lost. Phaedo of Elis wrote two dialogues.

His central use of Socrates is to show that philosophy can improve anyone regardless of his social class or natural talents. Euclides of Megara wrote six dialogues, about which we know only their titles. Diogenes Laertius reports that he held that the good is one, that insight and prudence are different names for the good, and that what is opposed to the good does not exist. All three are Socratic themes. Lastly, Aristippus of Cyrene wrote no Socratic dialogues but is alleged to have written a work entitled To Socrates.

The two Socratics on whom most of our philosophical understanding of Socrates depends are Plato and Xenophon. The Socratic problem first became pronounced in the early 19 th century with the influential work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Until this point, scholars had largely turned to Xenophon to identify what the historical Socrates thought.

Schleiermacher argued that Xenophon was not a philosopher but rather a simple citizen-soldier, and that his Socrates was so dull and philosophically uninteresting that, reading Xenophon alone, it would be difficult to understand the reputation accorded Socrates by so many of his contemporaries and nearly all the schools of philosophy that followed him.

The better portrait of Socrates, Schleiermacher claimed, comes to us from Plato. Though many scholars have since jettisoned Xenophon as a legitimate source for representing the philosophical views of the historical Socrates, they remain divided over the reliability of the other three sources. For one thing, Aristophanes was a comic playwright, and therefore took considerable poetic license when scripting his characters. Plato himself wrote dialogues or philosophical dramas, and thus cannot be understood to be presenting his readers with exact replicas or transcriptions of conversations that Socrates actually had.

What we are left with, instead, is a composite picture assembled from various literary and philosophical components that give us what we might think of as Socratic themes or motifs. Born in B. His Clouds B. Aristophanes was much closer in age to Socrates than Plato and Xenophon, and as such is the only one of our sources exposed to Socrates in his younger years.

Socrates appears in a swing high above the stage, purportedly to better study the heavens. His patron deities, the clouds, represent his interest in meteorology and may also symbolize the lofty nature of reasoning that may take either side of an argument.

The main plot of the play centers on an indebted man called Strepsiades, whose son Phidippides ends up in the school to learn how to help his father avoid paying off his debts. By the end of the play, Phidippides has beaten his father, arguing that it is perfectly reasonable to do so on the grounds that, just as it is acceptable for a father to spank his son for his own good, so it is acceptable for a son to hit a father for his own good.

In addition to the theme that Socrates corrupts the youth, we therefore also find in the Clouds the origin of the rumor that Socrates makes the stronger argument the weaker and the weaker argument the stronger. Indeed, the play features a personification of the Stronger Argument—which represents traditional education and values—attacked by the Weaker Argument—which advocates a life of pleasure.

In the Birds B. We find a number of such themes prevalent in Presocratic philosophy and the teachings of the Sophists, including those about natural science, mathematics, social science, ethics, political philosophy, and the art of words. Amongst other things, Aristophanes was troubled by the displacement of the divine through scientific explanations of the world and the undermining of traditional morality and custom by explanations of cultural life that appealed to nature instead of the gods.

Additionally, he was reticent about teaching skill in disputation, for fear that a clever speaker could just as easily argue for the truth as argue against it. Athens, for which the Aristophanic Socrates is the iconic symbol. Born in the same decade as Plato B. Though he knew Socrates he would not have had as much contact with him as Plato did. His depiction of Socrates is found principally in four works: Apology —in which Socrates gives a defense of his life before his jurors— Memorabilia —in which Xenophon himself explicates the charges against Socrates and tries to defend him— Symposium —a conversation between Socrates and his friends at a drinking party—and Oeconomicus —a Socratic discourse on estate management.

Following Schleiermacher, many argued that Xenophon himself was either a bad philosopher who did not understand Socrates, or not a philosopher at all, more concerned with practical, everyday matters like economics.

However, recent scholarship has sought to challenge this interpretation, arguing that it assumes an understanding of philosophy as an exclusively speculative and critical endeavor that does not attend to the ancient conception of philosophy as a comprehensive way of life.

He emphasizes the values of self-mastery enkrateia , endurance of physical pain karteria , and self-sufficiency autarkeia. Oeconomicus One can be rich even with very little on the condition that one has limited his needs, for wealth is just the excess of what one has over what one requires.

Socrates is rich because what he has is sufficient for what he needs Memorabilia 1. We also find Xenophon attributing to Socrates a proof of the existence of God. God creates a systematically ordered universe and governs it in the way our minds govern our bodies Memorabilia 1.

Indeed, Socrates speaks only sparingly at the beginning of the dialogue, and most scholars do not count as Socratic the cosmological arguments therein. Plato was born to one of the wealthiest and politically influential families in Athens in B. Though Socrates is not present in every Platonic dialogue, he is in the majority of them, often acting as the main interlocutor who drives the conversation. In other words, anything Socrates says in the dialogues is what Plato thought at the time he wrote the dialogue.

This view, put forth by the famous Plato scholar Gregory Vlastos, has been challenged in recent years, with some scholars arguing that Plato has no mouthpiece in the dialogues see Cooper xxi-xxiii. While we can attribute to Plato certain doctrines that are consistent throughout his corpus, there is no reason to think that Socrates, or any other speaker, always and consistently espouses these doctrines.

The main interpretive obstacle for those seeking the views of Socrates from Plato is the question of the order of the dialogues. Thrasyllus, the 1 st century C. Platonist who was the first to arrange the dialogues according to a specific paradigm, organized the dialogues into nine tetralogies, or groups of four, on the basis of the order in which he believed they should be read. Another approach, customary for most scholars by the late 20 th century, groups the dialogues into three categories on the basis of the order in which Plato composed them.

Plato begins his career, so the narrative goes, representing his teacher Socrates in typically short conversations about ethics, virtue, and the best human life. Only subsequently does Plato develop his own philosophical views—the most famous of which is the doctrine of the Forms or Ideas—that Socrates defends.

Finally, towards the end of his life, Plato composes dialogues in which Socrates typically either hardly features at all or is altogether absent. There are a number of complications with this interpretive thesis, and many of them focus on the portrayal of Socrates.

Though the Parmenides is a middle dialogue, the younger Socrates speaks only at the beginning before Parmenides alone speaks for the remainder of the dialogue. While the Philebus is a late dialogue, Socrates is the main speaker. The rest of the dialogue they claim, with its emphasis on the division of the soul and the metaphysics of the Forms, is Platonic. To discern a consistent Socrates in Plato is therefore a difficult task.

Instead of speaking about chronology of composition, contemporary scholars searching for views that are likely to have been associated with the historical Socrates generally focus on a group of dialogues that are united by topical similarity. Some of the more famous positions Socrates defends in these dialogues are covered in the content section.

Aristotle was born in B. Given the likelihood that Aristotle heard about Socrates from Plato and those at his Academy, it is not surprising that most of what he says about Socrates follows the depiction of him in the Platonic dialogues.

Aristotle related four concrete points about Socrates. The first is that Socrates asked questions without supplying an answer of his own, because he claimed to know nothing De Elenchis Sophisticus b Second, Aristotle claims that Socrates never asked questions about nature, but concerned himself only with ethical questions.

The term better indicates that Socrates was fond or arguing via the use of analogy. For instance, just as a doctor does not practice medicine for himself but for the best interest of his patient, so the ruler in the city takes no account of his own personal profit, but is rather interested in caring for his citizens Republic d-e.

The fourth and final claim Aristotle makes about Socrates itself has two parts. First, Socrates was the first to ask the question, ti esti : what is it? For example, if someone were to suggest to Socrates that our children should grow up to be courageous, he would ask, what is courage?

That is, what is the universal definition or nature that holds for all examples of courage? Second, as distinguished from Plato, Socrates did not separate universals from their particular instantiations. For Plato, the noetic object, the knowable thing, is the separate universal, not the particular. Given the nature of these sources, the task of recounting what Socrates thought is not an easy one. Socrates opens his defense speech by defending himself against his older accusers Apology 18a , claiming they have poisoned the minds of his jurors since they were all young men.

Amongst these accusers was Aristophanes. In addition to the claim that Socrates makes the worse argument into the stronger, there is a rumor that Socrates idles the day away talking about things in the sky and below the earth. His reply is that he never discusses such topics Apology 18a-c. Socrates is distinguishing himself here not just from the sophists and their alleged ability to invert the strength of arguments, but from those we have now come to call the Presocratic philosophers.

The Presocratics were not just those who came before Socrates, for there are some Presocratic philosophers who were his contemporaries. The term is sometimes used to suggest that, while Socrates cared about ethics, the Presocratic philosophers did not. This is misleading, for we have evidence that a number of Presocratics explored ethical issues.

The term is best used to refer to the group of thinkers whom Socrates did not influence and whose fundamental uniting characteristic was that they sought to explain the world in terms of its own inherent principles. The 6 th cn. Milesian Thales, for instance, believed that the fundamental principle of all things was water. Anaximander believed the principle was the indefinite apeiron , and for Anaxamines it was air. Socrates suggests that he does not engage in the same sort of cosmological inquiries that were the main focus of many Presocratics.

The other group against which Socrates compares himself is the Sophists, learned men who travelled from city to city offering to teach the youth for a fee. While he claims he thinks it an admirable thing to teach as Gorgias, Prodicus, or Hippias claim they can Apology 20a , he argues that he himself does not have knowledge of human excellence or virtue Apology 20b-c. Though Socrates inquires after the nature of virtue, he does not claim to know it, and certainly does not ask to be paid for his conversations.

Socrates explains that he was not aware of any wisdom he had, and so set out to find someone who had wisdom in order to demonstrate that the oracle was mistaken. He first went to the politicians but found them lacking wisdom. He next visited the poets and found that, though they spoke in beautiful verses, they did so through divine inspiration, not because they had wisdom of any kind. Finally, Socrates found that the craftsmen had knowledge of their own craft, but that they subsequently believed themselves to know much more than they actually did.

Socrates concluded that he was better off than his fellow citizens because, while they thought they knew something and did not, he was aware of his own ignorance. The god who speaks through the oracle, he says, is truly wise, whereas human wisdom is worth little or nothing Apology 23a.

Socrates excoriated the Sophists for their pay-to-play philosophy. Things soon came crashing down to earth for the philosopher. Political fortunes had changed dramatically in Athens. Socrates became suspect, not only for the actions of some of his associates but because his concepts of individualism seemed too revolutionary in the politically fraught times.

In B. Rather than fleeing or renouncing his beliefs, Socrates accepted the death sentence he was given. He spent his final days visiting with friends before drinking a cup of poisonous hemlock. All rights reserved. Culture Reference. Who was Socrates? Socrates was put to death in B. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London.

Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets. He was not the ideal of Athenian masculinity. Short and stocky, with a snub nose and bulging eyes, Socrates always seemed to appear to be staring. However, Plato pointed out that in the eyes of his students, Socrates possessed a different kind of attractiveness, not based on a physical ideal but on his brilliant debates and penetrating thought.

Socrates always emphasized the importance of the mind over the relative unimportance of the human body. Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society. He attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological doctrine. Socrates pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself.

The more a person knows, the greater his or her ability to reason and make choices that will bring true happiness. Socrates believed that this translated into politics with the best form of government being neither a tyranny nor a democracy.

Instead, government worked best when ruled by individuals who had the greatest ability, knowledge and virtue, and possessed a complete understanding of themselves. For Socrates, Athens was a classroom and he went about asking questions of the elite and common man alike, seeking to arrive at political and ethical truths. In fact, he claimed to be ignorant because he had no ideas, but wise because he recognized his own ignorance.

He asked questions of his fellow Athenians in a dialectic method — the Socratic Method — which compelled the audience to think through a problem to a logical conclusion.

Sometimes the answer seemed so obvious, it made Socrates' opponents look foolish. For this, his Socratic Method was admired by some and vilified by others. During Socrates' life, Athens was going through a dramatic transition from hegemony in the classical world to its decline after a humiliating defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

Athenians entered a period of instability and doubt about their identity and place in the world. I had better Remain that which I am. In contemporary political life, and internationally, Socrates is invoked for widely variant purposes.

Equally contemporary, but contemptuous of Socrates, is the introduction of the Al Qaeda Training Manual Department of Justice translation, ellipses in original :. The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates …, Platonic ideals …, nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun.

Philosophers and students of philosophy with a desire to see how Socrates is viewed outside the discipline might wish to consult the following supplementary document:.

Plato Plato: shorter ethical works. The Socratic problem: Who was Socrates really? Three centuries of efforts to solve the Socratic problem are summarized in the following supplementary document: Early Attempts to Solve the Socratic Problem Contemporary efforts recycle bits and pieces—including the failures—of these older attempts. The Twentieth Century Until relatively recently in modern times, it was hoped that confident elimination of what could be ascribed purely to Socrates would leave standing a coherent set of doctrines attributable to Plato who appears nowhere in the dialogues as a speaker.

Analytic developmentalism [ 6 ] Beginning in the s, Vlastos , 45—80 recommended a set of mutually supportive premises that together provide a plausible framework in the analytic tradition for Socratic philosophy as a pursuit distinct from Platonic philosophy. Finally, Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates only what Plato himself believes at the time he writes each dialogue. When Socrates was born in , a Persian invasion had been decisively repulsed at Plataea, and the Delian League that would grow into the Athenian empire had already been formed.

After an initial battle, a long siege reduced the population to cannibalism before it surrendered Thucydides 2. As the army made its way home, it engaged in battle near Spartolus and suffered heavy losses Thucydides 2.

Socrates distinguished himself there by saving the life and armor of the wounded Alcibiades Plato, Symposium d—e. When the army finally returned to Athens in May of , nearly three years had elapsed since its deployment. Soon after his return, Socrates was accused by a comic playwright of helping Euripides to write his tragedies, a claim that was to be repeated at least twice more, by other comedy writers, on the Athenian stage.

This was another defeat for the Athenian army which, while already under attack from Boeotian footsoldiers, was surprised by a troop of cavalry. Any anonymity Socrates may have enjoyed came to an abrupt end at the annual Dionysian festival in the spring of Plato sets a dialogue about the etymologies of words [ Cratylus ] upon his return. Socrates, so far as we know, did not return to war again. Athens and Sparta entered into a treaty named for Nicias that—while never completely effective—allowed Attica to remain free of Spartan invasion and crop-burnings for several years.

Again education is a central theme, but so are the democracy and Eleusinian Mystery religion. From the fact that they named their first son Lamprocles, it has been assumed both that her father was named Lamprocles and that her dowry was enough to provide for her needs.

Meanwhile, Alcibiades persuaded the Assembly, over prescient objections from Nicias Thucydides 6. Both Nicias and Alcibiades, along with Lamachus, were elected to command. Since Hermes was the god of travel, the city feared a conspiracy against the democracy.

A commission was formed to investigate not only the herm-smashing, but all crimes of irreverence asebeia that could be discovered, offering rewards for information. In a climate of near-hysteria over three months, accusations led to executions including summary executions , exile, torture, and imprisonment affecting hundreds of people, some of whom were close to Socrates Alcibiades, Phaedrus, Charmides, Critias, Eryximachus, and others.

He was not relieved, but reinforcements were sent—too few, too late. The war in Sicily ended in complete and humiliating defeat. Spring brought a new attack on Socrates by Aristophanes Birds , lines —3, —5.

Plato sets a dialogue between Socrates and a rhapsode before the news of the defeat reached Athens [ Ion ] , while the city—short of military leaders—was trying to attract foreign generals to help with the war. The treasury was spent, and the citizenry demoralized. Under his leadership, Athens began scoring victories, and morale improved. Democracy was restored, peace offers from Sparta were again rebuffed, and Athens established a commission to rewrite all the existing laws.

One of the Lysis characters, Ctesippus, was present again two years later for a display by two sophists former generals [ Euthydemus ]. Athens won the sea battle of Arginusae, but at such cost that the city never recovered: in barest outline, what happened was this. With thousands dead, and damage to the fleet, two captains were sent to collect the casualties; a storm prevented their doing so, while the generals hastened to give relief at Mytilene.

When news of the battle hit Athens, there was outrage at the failure to save the wounded and collect the corpses for burial. The board of ten generals was charged, but two fled and two were still in Mytilene , so six returned to Athens for trial in October of Lang By luck of the lottery, Socrates was serving on the Prytanes, the presiding committee of Council Plato, Apology 32b; Xenophon, Hellenica 1.

Some in the Assembly opposed the illegality, but the opposition so incensed the majority that it overwhelmingly approved a motion to subject the opposition to the same vote as would decide the fate of the generals. Socrates alone among the Prytanes was left standing for the law and the generals; his refusal to allow the vote had the effect of allowing one last, eloquent speech from the floor that proposed a preliminary vote to decide between sentencing the group and permitting separate trials Xenophon, Hellenica 1.

The Assembly approved separate trials, but a parliamentary maneuver invalidated the vote. When the Assembly voted again, it was to decide the lives of the generals up or down.

All were condemned. The Athenians were soon to regret having executed their remaining military leaders. The Athenians, recalling their own treatment of the Melians, expected to be slaughtered when the siege inevitably ended, but nothing of the sort occurred.

None of the contemporaneous sources, no matter how hostile to the rule of the Thirty—Isocrates, Lysias, Plato, and Xenophon—denies the legitimacy of their election. That they formed a government that abused and exceeded its authority no one could reasonably deny, but it is against just such governments that acts of civil disobedience must sometimes be directed. Undermining a corrupt government by refusing to harm a good man might be unlawful, but not unjust.

Critias and Charicles, two leaders of the Thirty, sought to intimidate Socrates by forbidding him, unsuccessfully, to speak to men under thirty Xenophon, Memorabilia 1. Socrates, and two young men with him, were said to have attempted to intervene unarmed against the Scythian guards, stopped only when Theramenes himself implored them to desist Diodorus Siculus The Thirty, now increasingly viewed as tyrannical, were also making contingency plans: they sent forces to secure the deme of Eleusis for themselves by putting to death the population on charges of supporting democracy Xenophon, Hellenica 2.

Socrates remained in the city. The Thirty attempted to implicate him in their executions by ordering him to join others in going to Salamis to fetch the former democratic general, Leon. Luckily for Socrates, before the Thirty could exact revenge, the democrats from Phyle entered the city through the Piraeus and met the forces of the Thirty in a battle where both Critias and Charmides were killed.

Remnants of the Thirty returned to the city to consider their options. The Three Thousand, increasingly suspicious of one another, deposed the Thirty and replaced them with a Board of Ten that was elected one per tribe Xenophon, Hellenica 2. The Thirty began abandoning the city for Eleusis as the board called for Spartan help. The Spartans arrived, led by Lysander and by one of their two kings, Pausanias.