Socrates: The Greek Philosopher :: essays research papers

The flavour of the Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) marks such a critical point in westward thought that standard histories divide Greek philosophy into pre-Socratic and post-Socratic periods. Socrates leave no writings of his own, and his work has inspired almost as legion(predicate) different interpretations as there have been interpreters. He remains star of the most important and iodin of the most enigmatic figures in Western philosophy. As a young man Socrates became fascinated with the new scientific ideas that Anaxagoras and the latters associate Archelaus had introduced to Athens. He seems for a time to have been the leader of an Athenian research circle--which would explain why the first appearance of Socrates in literary productions is as a villainous, atheistic scientist in The Clouds of Aristophanes. Young Socrates also knew the Sophists and listened to their debates and observation orations. Socrates and the Sophists Neither science nor Sophistry, however, could answer a new philosophic wonder that struck him. The earlier Greek thinkers had been concerned almost wholly with physics and cosmology until the Sophists suggested that what should be done instead was to teach young men skills to satisfy their natural self-interest. Instead, Socrates wondered "What is a self?" Although "Know Thyself" was one of three sayings carven on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the directive proved difficult to offer out. The so-called scientific views of the time, particularly that of atomism, limitd the self as a physical organ that responded to environmental pressure. Socrates felt, however, that the Sophists, for all their talk of self-interest, had little oddness about the status of a self they assumed that it was merely an disjunct center constantly greedy for more pleasure, prestige, and power. The Sophists further thought that the value that pot advocated were all conventional, varying from one culture to another, and that no one would ever act against his or her own interest, regardless of how many people talked as though they would. This complex of ideas offered little to explain human temper and excellence. Socrates Later Life and Thought Socrates, setting about his search for the self, was convinced of the importance of his quest. Until educators and teachers knew what human excellence was, he thought, they were engaging in infatuated pretenses by claiming that they knew how to improve students or societies. Socrates believed that objective patterns, or "forms," exist that define human excellence, that these are neither culturally relative nor subjective, and that philosophic inquiry could discover them.