SOCRATES (469- 399) BCE
'' I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think'' - SOCRATES
SOCRATES is a very difficult subject for the historian. There are many men concerning whom it is certain that very little is known, and other men concerning whom it is certain that a great deal is known; but in the case of Socrates the uncertainty is as to whether we know very little or a great deal. He was undoubtedly an Athenian citizen of moderate means, who spent his time in disputation, and taught philosophy to the young, but not for money, like the Sophists. He was certainly tried, condemned to Death, and executed in 399 B. C., at about the age of seventy. He was unquestionably a well-known figure in Athens, since But beyond this point we become involved in controversy. As said, Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for corrupting the youth of Athens. Two of his pupils, Xenophon and Plato, wrote voluminously about him, but they said very different things.
most of scholar said as, the probable answer is that Plato’s early dialogues are, to a fairly large extent, representative of the historical Socrates, but by the middle dialogues ‘Socrates’ has become a literary device for the exposition of Plato’s own views.
According to me Socrates is the father of moral
Every one is agreed that Socrates was very ugly. He had a snub nose and a considerable paunch; he was "uglier than all the Silenuses in the Satyric drama"(Xenophon, Symposium). He was always dressed in shabby old clothes, and went barefoot everywhere. His indifference to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, amazed every one. Alcibiades in the Symposium, describing Socrates on military service. he had strange habits such as standing in a trance for entire days, lost in thought. He did not seek public honours or position, though he fought with notable courage alongside his fellows in the wars. He therefore stood out, an anomaly, an eccentric, all the more so for incessantly asking questions and confusing his interlocutors when they tried to answer them.
Socrates said "Athens is a sluggish horse. I am the gadfly trying to sting it back to life."
For Socrates, "Know thyself" means what it is to know yourself. But for the people of Greece it meant something different, you can't change your destiny. These words are also inscribed on Apollo in the Temple of Delphi.
Socrates said "ask question first yourself."
Socrates was brave men. When his friend was badly injured in battlefield then Socrates saved his friend life in war. Socrates carried his friend on his shoulder and brought him in a safe campaign. Socrates served in the Athenian army at Potidaea, Delium and Amphipolis. Socrates pretend to be ignorance person and whoever ask him question he said '' know one thing, that I know nothing.'' Socrates' teaching style is very different. Instead of lecturing students, Socrates discussed in the marketplace. he does not take money for teaching. He made fun of the Sophists. His method of teaching is called dialectics. Socrates never called himself professor. Socrates was not a writer, but a man who confined himself to oral discussion. He figures as the butt of jokes in Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds and in half a dozen other satirical plays.
Three women who influenced Socrates. first his mother, Socrates mother was a midwife. second Diotima of Mantinea, he learned love from her , third Aspasia who thought him recitation.
''Doubt is the origin of the truth." - Socrates
Socrates question is - what is justice, what is courage. Socrates cross-examined moral concept such as wisdom, temperance . what is aim of life, what type of society you want, what is power etc.
Dialectic, that is to say, the method of seeking knowledge by question and answer, was not invented by Socrates. Dialectic, that is to say, the method of seeking knowledge by question and answer, was not invented by Socrates. It seems to have been first practised systematically by Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides. . But there is every reason to suppose that Socrates practised and developed the method. when Socrates is condemned to death he reflects happily that in the next world he can go on asking questions for ever, and cannot be put to death, as he will be immortal. Certainly, if he practised dialectic in the way described in the Apology, the hostility to him is easily explained: all the humbugs in Athens would combine against him.
Socratics method of influence
It was the Socrates of poverty and indifference to worldly things who was imitated by the Cynics later; it was the Socrates of dedication to thought and fidelity to principle who inspired the Stoics later; it was Socrates’ preaching of the ‘considered life’ which inspired Aristotle to see reason as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity, and practical wisdom as the basis of ethics. And of course it was Socrates whom Plato took as his point of departure for a philosophical achievement of enormous range and influence.
About Socrates trial
''The unexamined life is not worth living.'' Socrates.
The prosecutors were Anytus, a democratic politician; Meletus, a tragic poet, "youthful and unknown, with lanky hair, and scanty beard, and a hooked nose"; and Lykon, an obscure rhetorician. (See Burnet, Thales to Plato, p. 180.) They maintained that Socrates was guilty of not worshipping the gods the State worshipped but introducing other new divinities, and further that he was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them accordingly
He points out that among those present are many former pupils of his, and fathers and brothers of pupils; not one of these has been produced by the prosecution to testify that he corrupts the young. (This is almost the only argument in the Apology that a lawyer for the defence would sanction.) He refuses to follow the custom of producing his weeping children in court, to soften the hearts of the judges; such scenes, he says, make the accused and the city alike ridiculous. It is his business to convince the judges, not to ask a favour of them.
After the verdict, and the rejection of the alternative penalty of thirty minae (in connection with which Socrates names Plato as one among his sureties, and present in court), he makes one final speech. And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of death men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you, who are my murderers, that immediately after my departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.
He then turns to those of his judges who have voted for acquittal, and tells them that, in all that he has done that day, his oracle has never opposed him, though on other occasions it has often stopped him in the middle of a speech. This, he says, "is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think death is an evil are in error." For either death is a dreamless sleep-which is plainly good--or the soul migrates to another world. And "what would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die and die again." In the next world, he will converse with others who have suffered death unjustly, and, above all, he will continue his search after knowledge. "In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
when Socrates is asked how he wants to be buried he says, in effect, ‘I am not my body; it is not me who will be buried.’
Socrates had two options either leave the country or drink the hemlock. In Athens gave two type of punishment, One is exile and second drink a poison. Socrates chose hemlock. All of Socrates' disciples were weeping in prison cell.
The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers for many ages. What are we to think of him ethically? (I am concerned only with the man as Plato portrays him.) His merits are obvious. He is indifferent to worldly success, so devoid of fear that he remains calm and urbane and humourous to the last moment, caring more for what he believes to be truth than for anything else whatever. He has, however, some very grave defects. He is dishonest and sophistical in argument, and in his private thinking he uses intellect to prove conclusions that are to him agreeable, rather than in a disinterested search for knowledge. There is something smug and unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad type of cleric. His courage in the face of death would have been more remarkable if he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss in the company of the gods. Unlike some of his predecessors, he was not scientific in his thinking, but was determined to prove the universe agreeable to his ethical standards. This is treachery to truth, and the worst of philosophic sins. As a man, we may believe him admitted to the communion of saints; but as a philosopher he needs a long residence in a scientific purgatory.
