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Lec 9 Socrates
Lec 9 Socrates
Lec 9 Socrates
SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
SOCRATES
• Socrates, who claimed to know nothing and
probably wrote nothing, is nonetheless the first
to see the connections between the
philosopher's search for truth and the world of
politics.
• Socrates was the first philosopher to turn away
from the study of nature to exclusive concern
with human affairs, and began a long tradition
of reflection on the encounter between the
philosopher's love of wisdom and the
established conventions of political society.
• The political outcome of this first encounter
between philosophy and political society in the
history of political thought is the trial and
death of Socrates. The Vlastos school holds
that the philosophical outcome of this is a
rational theory of morality embodying the
Socratic technique of elenchus, the method of
question and answer, and which unites
knowledge with virtue.
• Socrates’ conception of virtue, the so-called
Socratic paradoxes, the method of question
and answer (the elenchus), and the use of the
craft analogies are among the ideas to define
the unique role of the philosopher in relation
to 'the many' in society.
• Socrates’ trial and death, is examined through
Plato's dialogues the Apology and Crito.
Socrates shows here how the quest for
wisdom challenges the acknowledged
experts and leaders in society, but at the
same time looks for points of reconciliation so
that politics will not be wholly devoid of
contact with truth and justice.
Socrates Life & key texts:
• Socrates was born in 470 or 469 BC and was
executed, following his trial, in 399 at the age
of 70. His father was a stonemason or possibly
a sculptor, and his mother was a midwife.
• He was married to Xanthippe, whose name
became a byword for bad temper and
shrewishness.
• Socrates lived in very difficult times, and was
unfairly associated with the rule of the Thirty
Tyrants because of his earlier association with
Critias and Alcibiades. He was brought to trial
by the restored democracy, accused of impiety
(a capital crime) and corrupting the young.
The vote against Socrates was fairly close at
approximately 280 votes for conviction and
220 for acquittal.
• Key texts
• Aristophanes, The Clouds
• Plato, Apology. Crito, Gorgias, Protagoras
• Xenophon, Apology of Socrates, Memorabilia
• Socrates like Sophists is studied mainly through the
surviving writings of others, particularly Plato.
• He is unique in the history of political thought in
having written nothing and in claiming to know
nothing.
• More than the difficulty of interpreting texts in terms of
various contexts, there are additional difficulties when
one comes to determine what Socrates thought.
• Socrates is known through the contemporaries of
Socrates.
• The writings of Leo Strauss and Gregory
Vlastos by no means exhaust the range of
interpretations that has developed over the last
200 years on Socrates. There are several main
contemporary sources for our knowledge of
Socrates. In Aristophanes' comedy The
Clouds he features him as a Sophist, a student
of nature, and is ridiculed as a dubious teacher
and an atheist.
• From the perspective of traditional Athenian
values, Socrates is portrayed as a poor, needy
person lacking in prudence. At the time of his
trial Socrates was well aware of the
importance of Aristophanes' work. In Plato's
Apology of Socrates, he refers to Aristophanes
as the old accuser, who had poisoned the
atmosphere and turned Athenian opinion
against him over several decades.
• Xenophon refers to Socrates as not lacking in
prudence and taught injustice by portraying him in a
number of works, such as the Oeconomiecus,
Apology of Socrates, Symposium, and
Memorabilia, as the ideal citizen and statesman, and
a political educator of the highest rank. Although he
is also portrayed by Xenophon as a critic of
Athenian democracy, he is represented as a good
and just person in his dealings with Athens
generally.
• It is important to appreciate how textual
considerations affect, if not determine, the
philosophical and political doctrines which are
nowadays ascribed to Socrates. The numerous
scholars who accept the approach of Vlastos
simply assume that whatever speeches Plato
puts into the mouth of Socrates in certain
dialogues is an authentic Socratic doctrine.
• Socrates is well known for setting forth in his various
conversations a series of related paradoxes:
1. (a) virtue is knowledge,
2. (b) no one does wrong voluntarily, (wrong acts must spring
from ignorance rather than from a will which intends evil;
3. (e) the unity of virtue,
• that is, if the various virtues are, in effect, knowledge, then any
virtue, say courage, is equivalent to any other, e.g. moderation.
The wise person is necessarily courageous and it follows that
he or she is also necessarily moderate and just.
Criticism: