Socrates was born 469 BC. He bounced between two branches of philosophy, ethics and epistemology. Ethics is the philosophy that tries to understand the nature of morality basically, good and evil. Descartes was born in 1596. He was a mathematician and philosopher. Socrates and Descartes were two great minds in very different periods in our history. The differences do not only exist in time, but …show more content…
also in thought. Their methods of reason and analysis were used to study different branches of philosophy like metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that seeks to identify the "first principles" the Who we are. Socrates was a philosopher of ethics. He studied human behavior to extract an answer of morality. Even with his life at risk, his quest to reveal the nature of morality persisted.
On one hand, Socrates was a Greek philosopher considered the father of philosophy; he knew how to awaken the spirits through the use of irony and his art of dialogue. The aim of teaching was to get to know yourself and answer the questions by yourself. On the other hand, With Descartes, it's not religion that dictates to man what to think, but the man himself; he wanted to so put people at the center of his system and he studied the rational method applicable to all areas of knowledge. Both are similar and different in many shapes of ways.
First of all, the work of Descartes resulted in some differences with Socrates. First, the method in which his ideas were recorded, Descartes wrote and documented his findings and these remained virtually spotless. However, the work of Socrates was exposed as a result of the writings of his followers especially Plato. Second, the main branch of the philosophy of Descartes was metaphysics, in connection with the study and identification of the "first principle" the being.
Likewise, Socrates audaciously asserts that a man who has value only considers one thing; its present action is good or bad. This differs from Descartes work in many ways, but the biggest difference is prominently displayed in Socrates passionate speech on ethics and morality aimed at an audience, as the work of Descartes takes a very personal tone.
In addition, in Descartes' Discourse on Method, Descartes concludes that since he's thinking he must exist, Descartes feels that thought is the evidence of existence as his metaphysics is the study of the being.
Unlike Socrates, whose philosophy of ethics attempts to understand how man interacts with others, a person, place or thing.
In contrast, there is a branch of philosophy that both Socrates and Descartes share and that epistemology search of the origin, nature and the realization of knowledge. Both came to the same conclusion about the origin of knowledge, which is the source of knowledge and all things that come forth of knowledge resides in God. Descartes attributed all existence, knowledge and everything else as God's creation. Both Descartes and Socrates are seekers equally, but ultimately they claim not to knowledge anything, but owing their progress and achievements to the grace of …show more content…
God.
Moreover, Socrates felt a commitment to the truth when he was appointed as the wisest man by the Oracle of Delphi. Therefore, to check if it was true, he started to converse with people asking questions and waiting for truths, when he realized that the people who were considered the wisest were not wiser than him because they never reached one truth but a lot of different truths, thus making truth something subjective rather than objective. An example of that was the Sophists, Socrates nemesis, they proposed that each truth that a person considers truth is the truth, so they have many truths, subjective, dependent on the particular case. This made Socrates refuse their teachings because he always searched one truth that is an objective truth that applies to all cases. Socrates tried to teach people by not giving them the answer, but by letting them discover it throughout their mistakes.
Also, Descartes works similarly like Socrates.
Descartes declined to accept the authority of previous philosophers, and he refused to trust their own senses. With a fixed frequency point of view, aside from the one of its predecessors; in the opening section of the passions of the soul, a treatise on the modern version of what is now commonly referred emotions, Descartes goes so far as to say that going to write about this topic, "as if no one had written about these matters before. He used the methodical doubt to find the truth of the existence of the being. First Descartes rejects any questionable knowledge, which are any subjective knowledge or things that are not always true. He was able to conclude that all knowledge can be questioned. There is one certain and evident truth, which is that which survives all doubts, meaning some knowledge which is doubted and still cannot contradict, is an objective and accurate truth. Thus, stating "I think therefore I am" he proposes that the only truth that cannot be doubt is the fact that we exist. Because if we are able to put knowledge into question, means we can think, and if we think means that we
exist.
To conclude, it seems that the differences of Socrates and Descartes are more mundane realities to which each belongs. Periods and philosophical schools to which each belongs are the ones that create the Difference. However, it is in a deeper faculty of their work where the similarities exist. Both philosophers admitted that they did not have any knowledge that was owned by them, but God or gods in Socrates’ case as the sole owner of the knowledge. Also, in epistemology, they both agree that the origin of knowledge is God.