Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is known for his Socratic method of questioning, which was used to stimulate critical thinking and to expose the contradictions in someone's beliefs. Socrates was an influential figure in Athenian society and his teachings had a profound impact on later philosophical movements. He was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens and was sentenced to death by drinking a cup of poison hemlock. Despite his controversial end, Socrates remains an iconic figure in the history of philosophy.Socrates did not document his teachings. All that is known about him comes from the accounts of others: mainly the philosopher Plato and the historian Xenophon, who were both his pupils; the Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes (Socrates's contemporary); and Plato's pupil Aristotle, who was born after Socrates's death. The often contradictory stories from these ancient accounts only serve to complicate scholars' ability to reconstruct Socrates's true thoughts reliably, a predicament known as the Socratic problem. The works of Plato, Xenophon, and other authors who use the character of Socrates as an investigative tool, are written in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and his interlocutors and provide the main source of information on Socrates's life and thought. Socratic dialogues (logos sokratikos) was a term coined by Aristotle to describe this newly formed literary genre. While the exact dates of their composition are unknown, some were probably written after Socrates's death. As Aristotle first noted, the extent to which the dialogues portray Socrates authentically is a matter of some debate. An honest man, Xenophon was no trained philosopher.[6] He could neither fully conceptualize nor articulate Socrates's arguments.[7] He admired Socrates for his intelligence, patriotism, and courage on the battlefield.[7] He discusses Socrates in four works: the Memorabilia, the Oeconomicus, the Symposium, and the Apology of Socrates. He also mentions a story featuring Socrates in his Anabasis.[8] Oeconomicus recounts a discussion on practical agricultural issues.[9] Like Plato's Apology, Xenophon's Apologia describes the trial of Socrates, but the works diverge substantially and, according to W. K. C. Guthrie, Xenophon's account portrays a Socrates of "intolerable smugness and complacency".[10] Symposium is a dialogue of Socrates with other prominent Athenians during an after-dinner discussion, but is quite different from Plato's Symposium: there is no overlap in the guest list.[11] In Memorabilia, he defends Socrates from the accusations of corrupting the youth and being against the gods; essentially, it is a collection of various stories gathered together to construct a new apology for Socrates.[12] Plato's representation of Socrates is not straightforward.[13] Plato was a pupil of Socrates and outlived him by five decades.[14] How trustworthy Plato is in representing the attributes of Socrates is a matter of debate; the view that he did not represent views other than Socrates's own is not shared by many contemporary scholars.[15] A driver of this doubt is the inconsistency of the character of Socrates that he presents.[16] One common explanation of this inconsistency is that Plato initially tried to accurately represent the historical Socrates, while later in his writings he was happy to insert his own views into Socrates's words. Under this understanding, there is a distinction between the Socratic Socrates of Plato's earlier works and the Platonic Socrates of Plato's later writings, although the boundary between the two seems blurred.[17] Xenophon's and Plato's accounts differ in their presentations of Socrates as a person. Xenophon's Socrates is duller, less humorous and less ironic than Plato's.[7][18] Xenophon's Socrates also lacks the philosophical features of Plato's Socrates—ignorance, the Socratic method or elenchus—and thinks enkrateia (self-control) is of pivotal importance, which is not the case with Plato's Socrates.[19] Generally, logoi Sokratikoi cannot help us to reconstruct the historical Socrates even in cases where their narratives overlap, as authors may have influenced each other's accounts