He believed that all vice is the result of ignorance, and that no person is willingly bad; correspondingly, virtue is knowledge, and those who know the right will act rightly. His logic placed particular emphasis on rational argument and the quest for general definitions, as evidenced in the writings of his younger contemporary and pupil, Plato, and of Plato’s pupil, Aristotle.
Another thinker befriended and influenced by Socrates. Was Antisthenes, the founder of the Cynic school of philosophy? Socrates was also the teacher of Aristippus, who founded the Cyrenaic philosophy of experience and pleasure, from which developed the more lefty philosophy of Epicures. To such Stoics as the Greek philosopher Epictetus, the Roman philosopher Seneca the Elder, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, Socrates appeared as the very embodiment and guide of the higher life.
Although a patriot and a man of deep religious conviction, Socrates was nonetheless regarded with suspicion by many of his contemporaries, who disliked his attitude toward the Athenian state and the established religion. He was charged in 399BC. With neglecting the gods of the state and introducing new divinities, a reference to the daemon ion, or mystical inner voice, to which Socrates often referred. He was also charged with corrupting the morals of the young, leading them away from the principles of democracy; and he was wrongly identified with the Sophists. This was possibly because he had been ridiculed by the comic poet Aristophanes in his play The Clouds as the master of “thinking” where young men were taught to make the worse reason appear the better reason.
Plato’s Apology gives the substance of the defense made by rates at his trial; it was a bold vindication of his whole life. He condemned to die even though only a small majority carried the e. When, according to Athenian legal practice, Socrates made an iron counter-proposition to the court’s death sentence, proposing to pay a small fine because of his value to the state as a man h a philosophic mission, the jury was so angered by this offer that I voted by an increased majority for the death penalty.
Socrates’ friends planned his escape from prison, but he preferred to comply with the law and die for his cause. His last day was spent with his friends and admirers, and in the evening he calmly fulfilled his sentence by drinking a cup of hemlock according the customary procedure of execution. Plato described the trial and death of Socrates in the Apology; the Cerrito, and the Phaedo.
Because of his political associations with an earlier regime, e Athenian democracy put Socrates on trial, charging him with demining state religion and corrupting young people. The speech offered in his own defense, as reported in Plato’s (Apology), ovides us with many reminder of the central features of Socrates’ roach to philosophy and its relation to practical life.
Explaining his mission as a philosopher, Socrates reports oracular message telling him “No one is wiser than you.” (Apology), 21a) He then proceeds through a series of ironic descriptions of his s to disprove the oracle by conversing with notable Athenians must surely be wiser. In each case, in each case, however, Socrates concludes that he has a kind of
wisdom that each of them namely, an open awareness of his own ignorance.
The goal of Socratic interrogation, then, is to help individual’s naive genuine self-knowledge, even if it often turns out to be you in character. As his cross-examination of Miletus shows, test means to turn the methods of the Sophists inside out, using nit picking to expose (rather than to create) illusions about If the method rarely succeeds with interlocutors, it can nevertheless be effectively internalized as a dialectical mode- of reasoning in an effort to understand everything.
Even after the jury has convicted him, Socrates declines to n his pursuit of the truth in all matters. Refusing to accept exile from Athens or a commitment to silence as his penalty, he maintains that public discussion of the great issues of life and virtue is a necessary part of any valuable human life. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Apology 38a) Socrates would rather die the give up philosophy, and the jury seems happy to grant him that wish even when the jury has sentenced him to death, Socrates calmly delivers his final public words, a speculation about what the future holds. Disclaiming any certainty about the fate of a human being after death, he nevertheless expresses a continued confidenci
in the power of reason, which he has exhibited (while the jury ha not). Who really wins will remain unclear Plato’s dramatic picture of a man willing to face death rather than abandoning his commitment to philosophical inquiry offers Socrates as a model for all future philosophers. Perhaps few of are presented with the same stark choice between philosophy and death, but all of us are daily faced with opportunities to decide .