socrates

dates and biographical points

• Lived: 469–399 BCE.

• Military Service: Fought in the Peloponnesian War.

• Never wrote: Known mainly through Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes.

• Appearance / Habits: Often depicted barefoot, wearing simple clothes (symbol of his poverty).

• relations: apprentice, plato, had a wife who was a midwife and was called a nagger

why is socrates not a sophist

• Sophists charge fees; Socrates does not (he claims poverty).

• Sophists teach rhetoric; Socrates seeks truth and moral definitions.

• Socrates claims an internal divine sign, not rhetorical craft.Socratic Poverty / Contempt for Wealth

Socratic Poverty / Contempt for Wealth

• Sees material wealth as a distraction from virtue and genuine knowledge.

• Repeatedly emphasizes care for the soul over money or reputation.

Central Concern / Question

• “How should one live?”

• “What is virtue?” (Moral and ethical focus).

• He tries to define piety, justice, courage, etc.

The Oracle at Delphi & Socrates

• Oracle’s pronouncement: “No one is wiser than Socrates.”

• Motivates Socrates to test supposedly “wise” men, finding they lack genuine wisdom.

• Leads to Socratic mission: questioning fellow citizens to expose ignorance.

Socratic Method = Intellectual Midwifery

• Elenchus: A style of questioning that draws out contradictions in the interlocutor’s beliefs.

• Called “midwifery” because Socrates helps others “birth” correct insight by discarding flawed opinions.

Charges Against Socrates

By Meletus, Anytus, Lycon:

1. Corrupting the youth

2. not believing in the city’s gods but introducing new deities

• “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (the apology)

• Also: “I know that I know nothing” (or “I neither know nor think I know”). (the apology)

Crito & Socrates’s Reasoning for Not Escaping

• Social Contract: Having agreed to live under Athens’s laws, fleeing would be unjust.

• Belief that it’s better to suffer injustice than to commit it

• socrates belives that philosophy is putting the body to death so he doesnt really care what happens to this body