The Greatness of Socrates

The Greatness of Socrates Socrates was born in Athens, Greece 322-399 before the Christian era and was politically indoctrinated under the cultural influences of Athena, Goddess of wisdom, skills, and warfare. (Loomis p. 5) He is well known for his philosophy of the “good life” in which he believes involves the pursuit of intellect as well as morals. His theory in this is to not focus so much on choosing what is always necessarily right in a situation, but to be the kind of individual who refrains from allowing the wrong choice to be an option all together meaning that ultimately there will be no right or wrong because naturally your mind will be in a state that is always right. Socrates promoted that, “knowledge and understanding of life and its values was the very basis of the good life and philosophy.”
He is also known for teaching forms of rhetoric, which the subject itself makes the statement true in that form of rhetoric argument. He used this type of teaching to educate the youth by having them go beyond the obvious appearances and made them explore what they already knew in their own reality. In other words, he didn’t need lesson plans to follow or text books to educate these children. Instead, he made them explore deeper into what they already knew by asking them questions that they could easily answer themselves. Aside from using this tactic to teach, he used it in almost every conversation he was part of. Anyone who held a conversation with him would be bombarded with a series of questions he would mentally conjure up in search of the truth out of any dialect he encountered. He had a distinct way with his words that almost forced others to tell the truth whether they were aware of it or not. He describes this as, “the destructive cross-examination designed to cleanse conversations of lies.” (Jowett, Apology p. 52) Traveling teachers called Sophist rhetoric, the art of public speaking, used words as a powerful weapon that stealthily influenced