Biography and Autobiography

Socrates

Socrates (469-399 BC)

Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the twinkling half of the fifth century BC, wrote no scholarly works but was uniquely influential in the later intelligence of philosophy. His philosophical interests were restricted to ethics and the deport of life, topics which thereafter became central to philosophy. He discussed these in common places in Athens, sometimes with other prominent intellectuals or administrative leaders, sometimes with young men, who gathered round him in beneficent numbers, and other admirers. Among these young men was Plato. Socrates’ reflective ideas and - equally important for his philosophical alter - his personality and methods as a ‘teacher’ were handed on to issue in the ‘dialogues’ that several of his friends wrote after his decease, depicting such discussions. Only those of Xenophon (Memorabilia, Apology, Symposium) and the beginning dialogues of Plato survive (for example Euthyphro, Apology, Crito). Later Asexual dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium and Republic do not immediate the historical Socrates’ ideas; the ‘Socrates’ appearing in them is a spokesman for Plato’s own ideas.

Socrates’ discussions took the condition of face-to-face interrogations of another person. Most often they involved the nature of some moral virtue, such as courage or detention. Socrates asked what the respondent thought these qualities of persuasion and character amounted to, what their value was, how they were acquired. He would then trial their ideas for logical consistency with other highly imaginable general views about morality and goodness that the respondent also agreed to admit, once Socrates presented them. He succeeded in showing, to his pleasure and that of the respondent and any bystanders, that the respondent’s ideas were not accordant. By this practice of ‘elenchus’ or refutation he was competent to prove that politicians and others who claimed to have ‘perspicacity’ about human affairs in fact lacked it, and to shrink from attention to at least apparent errors in their thinking. He wanted to onwards them and others to think harder and to improve their ideas about the virtues and about how to direction a good human life. He never argued later on for ideas of his own, but always questioned those of others. None the less, one can infer, from the questions he asks and his attitudes to the answers he receives, something about his own views.

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