ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 10: SOCRATES
The true Socrates is up to question
- A bumbling sophist in Clouds by Aristophanes
- A traditionalist in Xenophon (who is easy to replicate)
- A radical iconoclast in Plato (who is difficult to replicate)
Socratic Method
- His admission of his own un-knowledge made him special
- Question-based education
- Refutation/Elenchos: questioning answers until the interloqutor reaches a contradiction
- Aporia: making the other realize they’re wrong
- Irony: mocking the interlocutors
Beliefs:
- the soul is immortal and rational
- virtue (soul-perfection) is justice
- evil comes about from false beliefs about goodness
- so we need to understood virtues properly to attain them
- thus his method, trying to find something underlying and common in all definitions
- first proper inquiry into the UNIVERSALS
- the dialectic (truth) vs the rethoric (appearances)
Unlike the Sophists, Socrates believed in one truth, and did not persuade, but helped other reach a better position.
- always a movement against a particular justice, towards justice itself, its definition
So, everyone wants to be good, they just need to learn what good is, and they can do it
[Plato’s view of the soul as a composite is more complicated, and means you must also overpower your passions]