• An unexamined life is not worth living.

• Socrates on Living the examined life

• By: Ram

• Socrates (470-399 BCE)

• Born nine years after Confucius died

• lived during the Golden era of Greek culture in a city that had become the intellectual and
cultural center of the Mediterranean world.

• Many consider him the father of western philosophy.

• We have inherited contradictory pictures of Socrates. His most famous student and author of
the dialogues in which Socrates starts, portray him as the ideal Philosopher.

• Unlike the Pre-Socratics, Socrates showed little interest in natural philosophy.

• Like the Sophists, he was intensely interested in ethical and political problems.

• To many, he appeared to be just another Sophist, teaching the youth virtue.

• Plato contrasts him with the Sophists, however, claiming that he took no fee for his instruction
and that with the Sophists, however, claiming that he took no fee for his instruction and that his
instruction was not a matter of telling others the truth but, like the activity of a midwife, of
helping others give birth to and critically examine their own ideas.

• Socratic Method- Consisted of asking people question about matters they presumably knew
something about.

• Socrates would usually being by asking for a definition of a concept like justice.

• Once a definition was offered, he analyzed its meaning and critically examined it.

• Some defect was found, and the definition was reformulated to avoid the defect.

• Then this new definition was critically examined until another defect appeared.

• The process went on as long as Socrates could keep the other parties talking.

• The process went on as long as Socrates could keep the other parties talking.

• Let us consider the dialogue called Euthyphro.

• Socrates is at the courthouse in Athens because he has been charged with corrupting the youth
and inventing new gods.

• The latter charge amounts of a charge of impiety, and so he is anxious to talk with Euthyphro,
who has appeared at the courthouse on his way to prosecute his own father for the impious act
of murder.

• He asks Euthyphro, who claims to be something of an expert in these matters, to define piety.
• Euthyphro responds by offering his own action of prosecuting his father for murder as an
example of piety.

• Socrates points out that this is an example of Piety, but it is not the sort of definition he is
seeking.

• He wants to know that essential characteristics of piety.

• So Euthyphro tried again and defines piety as whatever is pleasing to the gods.

• This definition is soon found wanting when Socrates points out that the gods are often pleased
by different things.

• What pleases Zeus does not always please his wife, Hera.

• So Euthyphro amends his definition.

• Piety is what is pleasing to all the gods.

• Socrates responds to this reformulation by asking, “Do the gods love piety because it is pious or
is it pious because the gods love it”?

• What is at issue is whether piety has some intrinsic characteristics that accounts for the fact that
the gods love it, or whether the essential trait that determines piety is simply the fact that the
gods love it. Euthyphro replies that the gods love piety because it is pious.

• Then Socrates shows him that he has not yet offered a good definition of piety itself, but only
stated an effect of piety- namely that, whatever it is essentially, piety has the effect of pleasing
all the gods.

• So Euthyphro, getting rather upset, offers another definition.

• This one, too, proves inadequate, but Euthyphro manages to make an excuse and leave before
Socrates can drag yet another definition from him and demolish it.

• The dialogue ends, as so many do, with the issue of what piety is still up in the air.

• This dialogue not only illustrates the Socratic Method but also probes the interesting and
complex problem of the foundation of ethics.

• If we substitute the word good for the word piety and the word will for the word love, then
following Socrates’ lead , we can ask, “Does God will the good because it is good, or is
something good because God wills it.”?

• In other words, is moral goodness an independent value, or is it something that depends on

something else (like the will or command of God)?

• Some Jewish, Christian, Islamic theologians have argued in favor of the divine command theory
of ethics.

• According to this theory, God’s command or will makes something morally right. Such as theory
implies that the Ten Commandments, for example, are good only because God decreed them.
• Hence murder is not morally wrong in itself, but only if God should happen to forbid it.

• However, this sort of theory appears to make morality a matter of divine whim. If God decides
to command just the opposite of the Ten Commandments, then this new set of commandments
would become morally right.

• Surely we want to say that there is something intrinsically wrong about certain actions like
murder, no matter what God might happen to command.

• Socrates got into trouble with the people of Athens and was brought to trial in 399 bce.

• Three Athenians- Meletus, Anytus and Lycon brought charges. There were 501 citizens on the
jury.

• Socrates’ teaching had always been “not to take thought of yourself or your properties, but to
care about the improvement of your soul.”

• This “Improvement of Soul” is not acquired by money but by the practice of virtue. Indeed, he
claimed that “From virtue come money and every good man, public as well as private.”