Socrates

Editors: Edward I. Bleiberg , James Allan Evans , Kristen Mossler Figg , Philip M. Soergel ,
and John Block Friedman
Date: 2005

From: Arts and Humanities Through the Eras(Vol. 2: Ancient Greece and Rome 1200 B.C.E.-476
C.E.. )
Publisher: Gale

Document Type: Biography

Length: 2,568 words
Content Level: (Level 4)
Lexile Measure: 1260L

About this Person

Born: c. 470 BC in Athens, Greece

Died: 399? BC in Athens, Greece
Nationality: Greek
Occupation: Philosopher

Full Text:
SOCRATES
CONSTRUCTING SOCRATES.

Often called the "father of philosophy," Socrates (470–399 B.C.E.) is known to modern
readers only through the written works of other philosophers and historians. It is unclear
whether Socrates himself ever wrote down any of his philosophical

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views, but it is certain that any of his works that were created have since been lost.
Fortunately, a good deal was written about Socrates both before and after his death. The
main source of the philosophical viewpoints of Socrates comes from his disciple Plato, who
first recorded the dialogues of Socrates and later used the persona of Socrates in his
writing to promote his own philosophy. Three of Plato's most famous dialogues—the
Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo—recreate Socrates' last days before he was put to death
on charges of impiety and corrupting the young. All three works focus on different areas of
philosophy: the Phaedo discuss death, life, and the morality of suicide; the Apology
constructs a defense of philosophy in general and an attack on the Sophists' way of
thinking; and the Crito focuses on justice and issues of good versus evil even in the face of
injustice. In Plato's earlier dialogues, such as the Apology and the Euthyphro, Socrates
appears as a personality in his own right, but in later works, such as the Republic—Plato's
dialogue that has had the greatest influence of anything he wrote—Socrates has become a
spokesman for Plato's own philosophy. Yet the personality of Socrates recognized by
modern scholars as most authentic is Socrates as portrayed by Plato. Numerous other
accounts of Socrates—such as the comical character Socrates in Aristophanes' play Clouds
and the day-to-day advisor that appears in the works of the historian Xenophon—survive,
yet these accounts are considered to be minor sources in comparison to Plato.

THE IDENTITY OF SOCRATES.

Socrates was probably born in Athens in the spring of 468 B.C.E., and he lived there all his
life. He was reportedly the son of a stonemason and a midwife, and he had three sons of
his own—two of whom were still small children at the time of his death. His wife Xanthippe
was famously ill-tempered; stories about Socrates, recorded in the works of Xenophon,
include episodes of public fights between the two which often included acts of violence.
(Despite the marital discord, Plato's dialogue the Phaedo describes a tearful Xanthippe
leaving Socrates' prison cell the day before his death in 399 B.C.E., indicating the presence
of genuine feelings between the two.) Socrates was a contemporary of the Sophists, and
talked and argued with many of them, but the Sophists were itinerant teachers who
charged tuition fees, whereas Socrates never left Athens and did not charge his disciples
tuition. He originally was attracted to the doctrine of Anaxagoras, and tradition made him a
pupil of Anaxagoras' disciple, Archelaus, who kept a school in Athens; after Archelaus left
Athens, Socrates probably took over as headmaster of the school. For the last twenty or 25
years of his life,

Marble bust of Socrates. © GIANNI DAGLI

ORTI/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

he was a familiar figure on the Athenian scene, always barefoot, discussing and debating
the important questions of philosophy.

SOCRATES' MISSION.

Socrates' mission in life was to expose the lack of wisdom in the world, a purpose that had
its origins in a statement by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi that there was no one wiser than
Socrates. According to Plato's Apology Socrates did not believe the oracle, for he did not
consider himself wise, so he began a quest to prove that the oracle was wrong. He
encountered a man with a reputation for wisdom—Socrates did not name him—and after
questioning him, he concluded that though many people, including the man himself,
considered him wise, he really was not. He then examined another man who was
considered wise, with the same result. He tried the politicians, then the poets and finally
the skilled craftsmen, and concluded that though they might possess expertise in their own
area, they were not truly wise, though they thought they were. These investigations did not
make Socrates popular, as he readily admitted. Finally Socrates concluded that what the
oracle meant was that he was not wise, for real wisdom belonged to God, but that he
recognized his lack of wisdom and this self-recognition was what impressed the oracle. So
Socrates made it his mission to seek out persons who thought they were wise and to prove
to them

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that they were not. It was a mission that made him many enemies.

WHAT DID SOCRATES BELIEVE?

With the exception of the comic poet Aristophanes who mocked Socrates in his comedy,
the Clouds, produced in 423 B.C.E., all the authors who wrote about Socrates did so after
his death, and if he had any clear and coherent body of doctrine, we can discern it only
dimly now. He was a traditonalist in religion insofar as he held that gods do exist and
promote the welfare of mortals, and that they communicate their wishes by oracles,
dreams, and other similar methods. On the other hand, he thought that all conventional
beliefs needed rigorous examination, and hence he was a severe critic of Greek religion as
it was practiced in the Athens that he knew. He claimed to possess a kind of inner self—a
daimonion (spirit)—which guided him and warned him at times against an action he was
contemplating, but nowhere do we have any explanation of what this daimonion was. He
was a master of dialectic—that is, the art of investigating or debating the truth of general
opinions—and his great contributions to dialectic were definition and inductive logic. He
held that before any opinion can be debated, it has to be carefully defined so that there is a
basis for argument. Then the argument can proceed by induction—that is, drawing general
conclusions from particular facts or examples—and thus the definition can be tested and
examined. Socrates was a masterful critic of irrational thought, but his philosophy is less
clear since Plato used him as a mouthpiece for his own thought. It is impossible to
distinguish between the philosophies of Socrates and Plato in Plato's writings. In Plato's
Seventh Letter, so-called because it is the seventh in a collection of thirteen letters
attributed him, he calls Socrates the wisest and most just man of his day, but the historical
Socrates emerges from the mists of the past as a great personality and a master of rational
argument rather than as the teacher of a philosophical system.

SOCRATES RECRUITS XENOPHON

INTRODUCTION: Philosophers in ancient Greece attracted disciples

who desired to learn their ideas. Such was the popularity of some
philosophers that they established schools to facilitate the teaching
of their students, sometimes charging fees for their educational
services. According to ancient sources, the eminent philosopher
Socrates did not charge tuition fees to his disciples, although he did
actively recruit promising young men. The following excerpt from
History of Philosophy, or On the Lives, Opinions and Apophthegms of
Famous Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, who wrote in the first half
of the third century C.E., provides a glimpse into the recruitment of
Xenophon by Socrates as one of his disciples.

Xenophon, son of Gryllus, was an Athenian citizen and came from

the "deme" (borough) of Erchia. He was a man of great decency, and
handsome beyond anyone's imagination.

The story goes that Socrates encountered him in a narrow lane, and
put his stick across it, barring him from getting past, and he asked
him where men might find a market where foodstuffs necessary for
life were sold. When Xenophon replied, Socrates asked him again
where men could find goodness and virtue. Xenophon did not know,
and so Socrates said, "Follow me, then, and find out." So from that
time on, Xenophon became a disciple of Socrates.

Xenophon was the first person who took down dialogues as they
occurred, and made them available to the public, calling them
Memorabilia. He was also the first man to write a history of
philosophers.

SOURCE: Diogenes Laertius, "Life of Xenophon," in The Lives and

Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Trans. C. D. Yonge (London: Henry
G. Bohn, 1853): 75.

SOCRATES AS A REBEL.

Socrates was a magnet for the bright, well-to-do young men of Athens who honed their
debating techniques by matching their wits with his own. Some of these pupils used the
skills they learned in ways that Socrates did not intend, however, and it led to serious
charges against the philosopher. It cannot be denied that Socrates taught his Athenian
disciples to question the basis of the democratic constitution of Athens. The underlying
assumption of democracy as it was practiced in Athens was not that all men were born
equal, but that every man was capable of performing the functions that public office
required, provided that he was honest. It was not necessary to have professional training to
hold a government post. Hence citizens were chosen by lot to hold important public offices;
the chief exceptions were the ten generals who commanded the army and navy, who were
elected each year. Socrates was fond of pointing out that a person would go to a cobbler
skilled at shoemaking to have his shoes made, or to a doctor trained in medicine if he was
ill, but if he wanted someone to hold high office in the state, he chose a man on the street.
Socrates' logic was sound enough, but its inevitable conclusion was that cities should be
governed by officials with training in government. That principle lay behind the work for
which his disciple Plato is best

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known, the Republic, which outlines an ideal constitution for a state where those that
govern are trained in the art of governing. The same theme lay behind most of the
speculation about the art of government in the ancient world after Socrates. Among
philosophers, democracy had, at best, lukewarm defenders. It can be argued that Socrates
was the intellectual great-grandfather of the totalitarian governments of the twentieth
century, but it was the unintended consequence of his teaching.

THE EXECUTION OF SOCRATES.

In 399 B.C.E., Socrates was brought to trial on a charge of heresy—not believing in the gods
in which the other Greeks believed—and of corrupting the young. These charges against
Socrates were less about morality and more likely the result of a political upheaval in
Athens following Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War five years earlier. Socrates was
known to associate with men who had seized power after the war and launched a reign of
terror on Athens before the democratic process could be reinstated. Socrates was also a
good friend of Alcibiades, a politician who many blamed for the loss of the Peloponnesian
war. Socrates was arrested and tried before 501 jurymen and, like all Athenians arraigned
before the lawcourts, he was given the opportunity to speak in his own defense; no
defendant could hire a lawyer to speak for him. Socrates' defense is the basis of Plato's
Apology, which may be an accurate reconstruction of what Socrates actually did say, for
Plato witnessed the trial. Though Plato portrays Socrates as speaking eloquently and
convincingly to the jury, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was confined to
the state prison until the day came for him to drink the hemlock-juice, a poison made from
a weed of the carrot family that the Athenians used to execute malefactors. His last words
were a reminder to his friends that he owed the sacrifice of a rooster to Asclepius, the god
of healing, implying, perhaps, that death was a cure for life.

SOCRATES' DOMESTIC LIFE

 INTRODUCTION: Although revered as one of the greatest Greek
philosophers, Socrates had a tempestuous domestic life with his
wife Xanthippe, by whom he had a son named Lamprocles.
Xanthippe seems to have found Socrates an exasperating husband,
and she did not hesitate to voice her frustration with Socrates in
public or to attack him physically. In the passage below, Diogenes
Laertius, writing in the early third century C.E., describes scenes
from Socrates' domestic life.

Socrates once said to Xanthippe, who scolded him and then threw a
pot of water over him, "Didn't I say that Xanthippe was thundering
just now, and there would soon be a downpour?"

When Alcibiades said to him, "Xanthippe's shrewish moods are

intolerable!", he replied, "Yet I'm used to it, just as I would be if I
were always hearing the screech of a pulley—and you yourself put
up with the noise of geese honking." "Yes," replied Alcibiades, "but
they bring me eggs and goslings." "Well, yes, so they do," replied
Socrates, "and Xanthippe brings me children."

Once when Xanthippe assaulted him in the market-place and ripped

off his cloak, his friends urged him to ward her off with his fists. "Yes,
by Zeus," said he, "and while we are pummeling each other, you can
all cry out, "Good jab, Socrates! Nice blow, Xanthippe!"

He used to say that a man should live with a recalcitrant woman in

the same way as men handle violent-tempered horses, and when
they have mastered them, managing every other sort of horse is
effortless. "Thus," he said, "after managing Xanthippe, I will find it a
simple matter to live with any other woman."

SOURCE: Diogenes Laertius, "Socrates," in The Lives and Opinions of

Eminent Philosophers. Trans. C. D. Yonge (London: Henry G. Bohn,
1853): 70–71.

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCRATES.

Many of Greece's famous philosophers had their roots in Socrates. Antisthenes (c. 455–360
B.C.E.), considered the founder of the Cynic sect, was a devoted follower, and he in turn
influenced Diogenes of Sinope, the most famous of the Cynics. Antisthenes taught that
happiness was based on virtue, and virtue is based on knowledge and consequently can be
taught. Aristippus of Cyrene, famous for his love of luxury, was a companion of Socrates.
He was considered the forefather of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy that taught that the
pleasures of the senses were the chief end of life. The Cyrenaics were to influence the
Epicureans, one of the important schools of thought in the Greek world after Alexander the
Great. Eucleides of Megara, another of Socrates' pupils, established a school of philosophy
in Megara on the Isthmus of Corinth, between Athens and Corinth, where he tried to
combine the teaching of Socrates on ethics with the doctrine of Parmenides on the nature
of the universe. Greatest of all Socrates' pupils, however, was Plato whose

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works had a lasting influence on the intellectual traditions of the world.

SOURCES

John Ferguson, Socrates: A Sourcebook (London, England: Macmillan, 1967).

Norman Gulley, The Philosophy of Socrates (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968).

Eric A. Havelock, "The Socratic Self as It is Parodied in Aristophanes' Clouds," Yale Classical
Studies 22 (1972): 1–18.

Mark L. McPherran, The Religion of Socrates (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1997).

Socrates: Critical Assessments. Ed. William J. Prior (London, England: Routledge, 1996).

Socrates, The Wisest and Most Just?. Ed. Meg Parker (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1979).

I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates (Boston: Little Brown, 1988).

Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

A. E. Taylor, Socrates (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1952).

C. C. W. Taylor, Socrates (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)

"Socrates." Arts and Humanities Through the Eras, edited by Edward I. Bleiberg, et al., vol. 2:
Ancient Greece and Rome 1200 B.C.E.-476 C.E. Gale, 2005, pp. 250-254. Gale In Context: High
School,
link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3427400293/SUIC?u=j101921&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=2e2627a
f. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.
Gale Document Number: GALE|CX3427400293

Highlighted Passages:
Text: comes from his disciple Plato

Notes: even though socrates said that writing things on scrolls for future generations to
learn would make them dumb.

Text: general and an attack on the Sophists ' way of thinking;

Notes: the sophists were not real philosophers.

Text: still small children at the time of his death.

Notes: thats so sad!

Text: Socrates never left Athens and did not charge his disciples tuition

Notes: good dude

Text: Socrates ' mission in life was to expose the lack of wisdom in the world,

Notes: good mission. also his purpose

Text: all conventional beliefs needed rigorous examination,

Notes: still ture today

Text: Socrates was a magnet for the bright, well-to-do young men of Athens who honed their
debating techniques by matching their wits with his own.

Notes: socratic method

 Text: In 399 B.C.E. , Socrates was brought to trial on a charge of heresy

Notes: BALONEY!

Text: Epicureans

Notes: they only want pleasure