Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης)

• Born 469 BC of Sophroniscus, a

stonemason, and Phaenarete, a

midwife

• Became a stonemason; Pausanias

says Socrates sculpted statues of

Graces at Athenian Acropolis

• Served Athens bravely in

Peloponnesian War at Potidaea

(where he saved Alcibiades),

Amphipolis, and Delium.

• As president of Assembly opposed

illegality of prosecution of generals

of Arginusae in 406

• Refused to arrest someone

condemned by the Thirty

• Executed 399 BC by Athenian

democracy •

Socrates’ contribution to philosophy

• Laws of Socrates:

o “The unexamined life is not worth living."

o Never retaliate

• The Socratic method or method of Elenchus

• Socratic dialogue

• The Socratic paradoxes

o No one desires evil.

o No one errs or does wrong willingly/knowingly.

o Virtue - all virtue - is wisdom.

o Virtue is sufficient for happiness.

Passages

1. Socrates … is exactly like the busts of Silenus…` holding pipes and flutes in their

mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and have images of gods inside them. I

say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You yourself will not deny, Socrates, that your

face is like that of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For

example, you are a bully, as I can prove by witnesses, if you will not confess. And are

you not a flute-player? That you are, and a performer far more wonderful than Marsyas.

He indeed with instruments used to charm the souls of men by the powers of his breath,

and the players of his music do so still: for the melodies of Olympus are derived from

Marsyas who taught them, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by a

miserable flute-girl, have a power which no others have; they alone possess the soul and

reveal the wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries, because they are divine.

But you produce the same effect with your words only, and do not require the flute; that

is the difference between you and him. When we hear any other speaker, even very good

one, he produces absolutely no effect upon us, or not much, whereas the mere fragments

of you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze

and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within hearing of them

(Plato, Symposium).

2. Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go

into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in

making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a

disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will

not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to

converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and

others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less

likely to believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to

persuade you (Plato, Apology, 38a).

3. Hence some persons are led to believe that … the whole idea of their lives is that they

ought to increase their money without limit… The origin of this disposition in men is that

they are intent upon living only, and not upon living well; and, as their desires are

unlimited they also desire that the means of gratifying them should be without limit.

…some men turn every quality or art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to

be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think all things must contribute

(Aristotle, Politics i.9)

4. They cross-examine a man's words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is

really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these

they then collect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they

contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the

same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and

thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most

amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the

subject of the

operation. For as the physician

considers that the body will receive

no benefit from taking food until the

internal obstacles have been

removed, so the purifier of the soul

is conscious that his patient will

receive no benefit from the

application of knowledge until he is

refuted, and from refutation learns

modesty; he must be purged of his

prejudices first and made to think

that he knows only what he knows,

and no more (Plato, Sophist 230B).

Below: Crito closing eyes of Socrates

References:

H. Brown, "The Structure of Plato's Crito," Apeiron 25 (1992).

M. Frede. "Plato's arguments and the dialogue form," in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,

Supplementary Volume, Oxford, 1992.

- R. Gallagher (rg19@aub.edu.lb), CVSP 201, 2009