Socrates Psycho Analysis

Russo starts off by giving a brief overview of the era in which Socrates lived, and how he went through life. Socrates lived in the Golden Age of Athens after the Greeks overcame the Persians, and a new period of arts and culture came into be. In 399 B.C. he was put to trial for not believing in the gods of Athens, and for teaching the youth of Athens to question everything. The verdict was that Socrates would be sentence to death, and even though he had enough time to escape his sentence he refused because it would go against what he stood for. To figure out who Socrates really was is a bit of a challenge because he did not write anything down. The only information we know about him is from people close to him: Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes.
The reason it is a challenge though is because “Aristophanes portrayal of Socrates was of a atheist and the worst kind of Sophist, but on the other hand the other two wrote about him in as a saint and martyr,” Which makes one think who Socrates really was (Russo 2). In the Apology Socrates was told no one was wiser than him, so he set out to prove that statement false and to his surprise he could not do that. He went around asking reputable people for wisdom, and he came to the conclusion that the reason he was wiser is because he was aware of his ignorance whereas the other were not. This idea became the beginnings to his philosophy. In his Discussions he would always show ignorance and always wanted explanation to his question. He believe his “affirmation of ignorance was a form of relativism or skepticism” meaning that nothing was common knowledge and everything need to be explained. By acting ignorant he is able to see how much people knew about the moral claims that they claim to make. In Plato’s early writings Socrates’ methods of argumentation was called elenchus. With this Socrates asks someone who claims to be an expert of a topic then asks for that person to define their topic where then Socrates rebuttals with another definition that contradicts the experts. The point of this method is to give both a negative and positive function. Socrates views on virtues are that if one knows what is good is they will always do well. Episteme is knowing what is good/wrong and bad/virtue. In the end Socrates believes that all everyone desire happiness, and to achieve that Socrates much take away people’s misconceptions about life. My opinion on Socrates’ ideas and methods is that they have some point that I can agree with, but also some points I am not on board with.
When referring to his methods of asking ignorant it makes since to do that to draw out an argument getting someone to really try to understand a topic. On the other hand if Socrates is going to contradict everything or think of a negative example of the definition given then the argument would never end. An example of this would be in the upcoming presidential debates, and in one article a report claim that Trump I planning on using “the Socratic method of peppering questions” making the argument impossible to lost in theory (Rucker). Elenchus could be a fail safe for an argument because in theory if you always have a contradiction you could never lose, but in my opinion it is an easy way out and it is not the strong base for an argument in my eyes. Even though I think it is not the strongest way to build an argument it is “found that 97% of law-school professors use the Socratic method in first-year classes” which means that the Socratic method is still used on all level of education (Paul). Lastly my opinion on Socrates’ “virtue of happiness” is that yes I believe that all humans desire happiness. On a dialogue about gun control it is believe that “If we have lost the meaning of virtue, we have lost the path to happiness” which makes sense because if happiness is a virtue so if lost virtue you lose happiness
(Hockel).