Socrates

(470-399 B.C.)

“The unexamined life is not

worth living.”
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 Socrates was the son of Phaenarete, a
midwife, and Sophroniscus, a stone-carver. He
served as a hoplite (heavily armored
infantryman) in the Athenian army during the
Peloponnesian War with Sparta.

He often went barefoot, seldom bathed, and

wore the same thin cloak winter and summer.

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 He was the head of the phrontisterion, a
school, where one can learn the just logic,
which represents traditional Aristocratic
values; and also the unjust logic, which
represents the new values of the sophists
(teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, and art of
successful living).
He was an ascetic high priest of a mystery
religion (who teaches a variety of sciences,
which denies the existence of Zeus and the
other gods) worshipping the various forms of
air, including clouds. 3
 He was brought to trial in 399 BCE on a
charge of corrupting the youth by teaching
them not to believe in the gods.

He was found guilty, and condemned by a

close vote to death by hemlock poisoning.

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 Some Significant Ideas:

(1) Knowledge or theory is important for virtue

(a good/moral quality);

(2) Virtue is important for happiness;

(3) Self-mastery, self-sufficiency, and moral

toughness are important for happiness;

(4) The use of questioning based on epagoge

(induction) is important with regard to the
possession of knowledge, and so of virtue;
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 (5) Eros (erotic/sexual love) and friendship have
important roles to play in philosophy, and
philosophy in life;

(6) The traditional teachers of virtue (the poets),

as well as the alleged embodiments of wisdom (the
politicians), are deficient in various ways that
questioning reveals.

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 Socratic philosophy consists almost
exclusively in questioning people about the
conventionally recognized ethical virtues:

"What is justice? Or piety/faith? Or

courage? Or wisdom?" Socratic way of
questioning people is now called an elenchus
(from the Greek verb elegchein, to examine
or refute).
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 Socrates asks what some virtues are. The
interlocutor (person with whom one is
having a conversation) gives a definition he
sincerely believes to be correct.

Socrates then refutes this definition by

showing that it conflicts with other beliefs.

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 This process continues until a satisfactory
definition emerges, one that is not inconsistent
with other held beliefs.

Socrates' use of the elenchus seems to

presuppose that some sincerely held beliefs
are in fact true.

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 Three Famous Socratic "Paradoxes":

(1) The conventionally distinguished virtues are

all identical to wisdom or knowledge;

(2) This knowledge is necessary and sufficient

for happiness or perhaps even identical to it;

(3) No one ever acts contrary to what he knows

or believes to be best.

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 Together these three doctrines constitute a
very strict kind of ethical intellectualism: they
imply that all we need in order to be
virtuous and happy is knowledge.

Socrates believes that leading the

examined life makes people happier and
more virtuous.

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 People thought Socrates was a sophist, but
in fact he was their bitterest opponent. He
wrote nothing himself, but from the general
Xenophon and philosopher Plato we get a
very real picture of the man.

Shabbily dressed, always barefoot,

physically tough, and with a record of courage
in battle, he loved to spend his days arguing in
the market-place.
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 He was deeply concerned with morality,
with discovering the just, the true, and the
good. For Socrates, philosophy was not a
profession, as with the sophists, but a way of
life.

He argued that what makes a man sin is

lack of knowledge. If only he knew, he would
not sin. Therefore, knowledge is virtue. The
one overriding cause of evil was ignorance.
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Socrates’ Dialectics:
Socrates’ method of enquiry was one of a
question and answer. He saw himself as midwife to
the truth, which he would draw logically, and often
ironically, little by little from his opponent.

Charged with corrupting the youth of Athens,

Socrates deigned to buy himself off with a fine, but
accepted the death sentence resolutely. He spent his
last hours discussing immortality. His last words
before drinking hemlock, were to remind a friend
of an outstanding debt.
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REFERENCE:

The Committee on the Humanities (n.d.). The development of western thought: Readings in
the arts, philosophy, and literature from the ancient times to the medieval period
(volume 1). Philippines: Technology Supply, Inc.

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THE END !

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