Socrates was a popular Greek philosopher considered to be one of the most important of the Western and world philosophy, the originator of moral philosophy. He was Plato’s teacher, who had Aristotle as his disciple, being the three fundamental representatives of the philosophy of Ancient Greece. He was born in Alopece, Athens (Ancient Greece), between the years 470 and 469 a. C. Although Socrates did not leave any written literature and the ideas that can be well connected to him are limited, he is undoubtedly an important figure of ancient times thought to the point that the top philosophers who came before him were called pre-Socratic.
Socrates parents
His parents called: Sofronisco by profession sculptor and Fainarate midwife. They were related with Aristides the Just. Few things are known with certainty of the life of Socrates, apart from that Socrates participated as an infantry veteran in the battles of Samos (in 440), Potidea (in 432), Delio (in 424) and Amphipolis (in 422) BC.
Socrates received a traditional education: gymnastics, literature, music, He became very intimate with the dialectics and rhetoric of the philosophers. At the beginning, Socrates continued with the work of his dad made a set of figures: “the three graces,” which was then placed at the entrance of the Acropolis of Athens, till the second century BC He had as a teacher the philosopher Archelaus who put him in the reflections on physics and morals.
Socrates was of small stature, a prominent belly, chameleon eyes, and an exaggerated nose, for this reason, it was a joke. Alcibiades compared it to the Silence. He appreciated life very much and achieved social following because of his active intelligence and a razor-sharp sense of amusement devoid of satire or cynicism.
Socrates Family-wife and children
He married at an advanced age with Xantipa, a noble family with which he had a boy and two daughters. A tradition has preserved the topic of the scornful wife before the activity of the spouse and prone to behave crudely and coarsely. Although Plato exhibits (when narrating the death of Socrates in the Phaedo) a normal and even good relationship between two.
From a young age, the philosopher drew the attention of those around him by the sharpness and knowledge of his reasoning and his ease of expression. The ethical question of the understanding of the good was at the heart of the teachings of Socrates, with which he himself printed a major turn in the history of the famous Greek philosopher.
Socrates didn’t write any books since he believed that everyone should acquire their own unique ideas, what is identified with certainty is the writings of his two most important disciples Plato who assigned his own ideas to his supervisor and the historian Xenophon, a prosaic author who possibly failed to understand a lot of his teacher’s beliefs.
WHAT WAS IT THAT SOCRATES RAISED?
Regarding his Dialectic was a true initiator of philosophy gave his main goal of being the science that seeks within the human being. His method was dialectical, which was that after proposing a proposal analyzed the questions and answers raised by it. This makes him an extraordinary and decisive figure; represents the resistance against Relativism and even the sophistical Subjectivism, being a unique example of the unity between theory and people’s behavior, between the thought of mind and action.
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Obviously a good part of his life, Socrates spent roaming the squares and markets of Athens and took merchants, the peasants or artisans as examiners with whom he held long discussions, this behavior related to the essence of his teaching practice. “Mayéutica.” Socrates compared this method with the job of a midwife who exercised his mother: Socrates tried to take the interviewer to the birth of the truth, to the development of his own truths.
The Mayéutica was his greatest merit, an inductive approach that enabled him to lead his several students to the resolution of the difficulties that were posted by means of skillful questions whose logic illuminated the understanding.
JUDGMENT AND DEATH OF SOCRATES
In the year 399 BC Socrates was accused of introducing some new gods and contaminating the morals of the youth, away from the postulates of Athenian democracy at that time.
According to Xenophon, the primary underlying cause to bring philosopher Socrates to trial was that he presented his doors as a disciple critias (dialogue), who integrated the Spartan political-military body called the thirty (30) tyrants, who took on power from Athens following the war of Peloponnese, exposing the police to a gruesome slaughter and commercial emptying, for a year’s time.
It is further mentioned that Socrates asked jokingly that he could just be condemned: “inviting him to eat at the communal banquets,” also alluding to the fact that these were just deplorable. This provoked the jury and repeatedly voted for the death penalty. His friends proposed that he pay the bail, and even planned his escape from the prison, but he favored to abide by the Law dying for it.
Socrates was tried, convicted and killed by poisoning by hemlock in 399 BC in Athens (Ancient Greece), at the age of 70 years.
Later, in his honor as a recognition, the Modern Academy of Athens, placed a statue of him at the entrance of the Institution.
Socrates Infographics
PHRASES AND FAMOUS QUOTES OF SOCRATES
- The friend must be Just like money, that before you want it, you know the value it has.
- Youthful people today are dictators. They devour their food, contradict their parents, and also disrespect their very teachers.
- The true knowledge is in recognizing one’s ignorance.
- I only know that I do not know anything.
- Speak so that I know you.
- The mean souls are only allowed to conquer with presents.
- Pride engenders the tyrant. Pride, when uselessly has accumulated recklessness and excesses, rising above the highest pinnacle, plunges into an abyss of evils, from which there is no possibility of leaving.
