Socrates Chapter Summaries
Socrates:
Socrates was born in Athens about 470 BC and lived until 399 BC, he was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher and is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. An accurate picture of the man, his life, and viewpoints are problematic because he did not write any philosophical texts, everything we know is based on writings by his students and contemporaries… this is what is known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was later tried and put to death for “corrupting the youth and impiety”.
Throughout his life Socrates never wrote anything down because he believed knowledge was a living interactive thing and not to be written in a static writing (I bet the internet would have really appealed to his love of interactive discussions), …show more content…
Socrates was unconcerned with physical or metaphysical questions; the issue of primary importance for him was ethics and living a good life. During his trial and written in Plato’s “The Apology” he gave the idea that truth needs to be pursued by changing your position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. It is THIS idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our “Western” philosophical thought …show more content…
Humans live in a world of visible and intelligible things. The visible world surrounds us… what we see, hear and experience, this place is a world of change and uncertainty. The intelligible world is made up of unchanging products of human reason such as mathematics; this is the world of reality. This intelligible world contains eternal “forms” of things. For example the form or idea of a dog is abstract and applies to all dogs; this form never changes. If all the dogs in the world were to vanish the form still would not change. A dog is a physical changing object and can change or easily cease to be, but the “form” or “idea” never
Socrates was born in Athens about 470 BC and lived until 399 BC, he was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher and is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. An accurate picture of the man, his life, and viewpoints are problematic because he did not write any philosophical texts, everything we know is based on writings by his students and contemporaries… this is what is known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was later tried and put to death for “corrupting the youth and impiety”.
Throughout his life Socrates never wrote anything down because he believed knowledge was a living interactive thing and not to be written in a static writing (I bet the internet would have really appealed to his love of interactive discussions), …show more content…
Socrates was unconcerned with physical or metaphysical questions; the issue of primary importance for him was ethics and living a good life. During his trial and written in Plato’s “The Apology” he gave the idea that truth needs to be pursued by changing your position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. It is THIS idea of the truth being pursued, rather than discovered, that characterizes Socratic thought and much of our “Western” philosophical thought …show more content…
Humans live in a world of visible and intelligible things. The visible world surrounds us… what we see, hear and experience, this place is a world of change and uncertainty. The intelligible world is made up of unchanging products of human reason such as mathematics; this is the world of reality. This intelligible world contains eternal “forms” of things. For example the form or idea of a dog is abstract and applies to all dogs; this form never changes. If all the dogs in the world were to vanish the form still would not change. A dog is a physical changing object and can change or easily cease to be, but the “form” or “idea” never