Links and Books |
You can find books about the life and the works of Socrates at : |
Socrates |
"The unexamined life is not worth living" |
Socrates (469-399), despite his foundational place in the history of ideas, actually wrote nothing. Most of our knowledge of him comes from the works of Plato (427-347), and since Plato had other concerns in mind than simple historical accuracy it is usually impossible to determine how much of his thinking actually derives from Socrates. The most accurate of Plato's writings on Socrates is probably "The Apology". It is Plato's account of Socrates's defense at his trial in 399 BC (the word "apology" comes from the Greek word for "defense-speech" and does not mean what we would think of as an apology). It is clear, however, that Plato dressed up Socrates's speech to turn it into a justification for Socrates's life and his death. In it, Plato outlines some of Socrates's most famous philosophical ideas: the necessity of doing what one thinks is right even in the face of universal opposition, and the need to pursue knowledge even when opposed. |
Works |
Socrates was born in Athens in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad on the sixth day of the month of Thargelion, when the city is purified, according to Diogenes Laertius' citation of Apollodorus' Chronology. In Plato's account of Socrates' speech in his trial of 399 BC, Socrates said he was seventy years old. Therefore he lived (469-399) during the century, which has been called the golden age of Athens.The Greeks had stopped the Persians at Marathon in 490 and turned them away for good in 480 at Salamis and in 479 at Plataea. |
With security from foreign encroachment, the way was prepared for Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pericles, the sophists, and Socrates. Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and he referred to Daedalus, the traditional founder of sculpting and stone-masonry, as his ancestor.Some sources say that Socrates was employed on the stone-work of the draped figures of the Graces on the Acropolis.This is not unlikely since this work was commissioned by Pericles as a public works project when Socrates was a young man. |
Socrates wrote nothing because he felt that knowledge was a living, interactive thing. Socrates' method of philosophical inquiry consisted in questioning people on the positions they asserted and working them through questions into a contradiction, thus proving to them that their original assertion was wrong. Socrates himself never takes a position; in The Apology he radically and skeptically claims to know nothing at all except that he knows nothing. Socrates and Plato refer to this method of questioning as elenchus , which means something like "cross-examination" The Socratic elenchus eventually gave rise to dialectic, the idea that truth needs to be pursued by modifying one's position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. |
Method |
His mother was Phaenarete, and in Plato's Theaetetus Socrates says she was a midwife. Socrates' wife Xanthippe, well-known as a shrew, bore him a son, Lamprocles; in Plato's Phaedo she says farewell to her husband on the last day of his life with a son in her arms. According to other sources recounted by Diogenes Laertius (including Aristotle), Socrates had a second wife, Myrto, who gave birth to Sophroniscus and Menexenus; some say that both were his wives at the same time, as the Athenians had passed an ordinance encouraging citizens to have children by another woman in order to |
increase the population. If you want to read more about his life click here. |
Biography |
You can find books about the life and the works of Socrates at : |
Links and Books |
It is this idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our world view today. The Western notion of dialectic is somewhat Socratic in nature in that it is conceived of as an ongoing process. Although Socrates in The Apology claims to have discovered no other |
truth than that he knows no truth, the Socrates of Plato's other earlier dialogues is of the opinion that truth is somehow attainable through this process of elenchos. The Athenians, with the exception of Plato, thought of Socrates as a Sophist, a designation he seems to have bitterly resented. He was, however, very similar in thought to the Sophists. Like the Sophists, he was unconcerned with physical or metaphysical questions; the issue of primary importance was ethics, living a good life. He appeared to be a sophist because he seems to tear down every ethical position he's confronted with; he never offers alternatives after he's torn down other people's ideas. |
