Essay about Socrates the Greek Philosopher

Submitted By kvallade
Words: 986
Pages: 4
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Kim Vallade
HUMN-211-01, 02
Essay
October 5, 2014

Socrates is an important Greek philosopher known for his teaching method which consists of doing nothing but asking questions, otherwise known as the teaching method to keep people thinking on their own. Socrates is from Athens Greece who actively participated in democracy, which included his military service during the polyponnesian war. He is also not known so much for wrote he wrote due to the fact he never wrote anything down, but more for the subjects of his methods that revolved around justice, virtue, courage and friendship. Under this method Socrates became the student and with those he questioned becoming the teachers. This was successful by them recognizing and learning from their own answers. Socrates questioned other philosophers who practiced “sophistry”, arguments which are somewhat rhetoric. They argued the bigger the argument the truer the statement. Socrates challenged them by using simplified and easy to understand examples. This caused Socrates to have more followers who were impressed with his ideas. Although Socrates dialogue is often sarcastic it is very productive. His thought was individuals having dialogue was much more important than having rhetorical arguments. Socrates was annoyed by the sophists and their tendency to teach logic as a means of achieving self-centered ends. It was the truth he loved and believed in. He said he did not teach, but rather he served and engaged his students. Socrates had a willingness to question and he studied “the art of debate and became a master at cross-examination and irony”. He used these techniques because he believed people should be aware of and gain the knowledge by exposing ignorance and mistaken reasoning. Always beginning with questions helped him in knowing if they understood what they are talking about. Socrates believed knowledge would prevent you from making mistakes or doing things wrong. Socrates isn’t known for writing anything but his dialogues are well known by memorable portraits, written dialogues and a tribute written called “apology”. All of these things were done by one of Socrates famous students, Aristotle’s, also known as Plato. He was a talented and enthusiastic student who did these things that featured his teacher. Much of what we know today about Socrates comes from information given to us by Plato. Anything written by Plato that was said to have come from Socrates himself is sometimes in question because it is all the information we have. This makes it hard to tell if they are things really said by Socrates himself or words put in his mouth by Plato. According to the written dialogues Socrates was known for teaching “what can we know, what do we know and how do we know it”. He had the ability to also create doubt, this making one of his famous quotes: “the unexamined life is not worth living”. A philosopher loves wisdom and Socrates never professed to be a profession of wisdom, by he had a friendship with wisdom. He claimed that as a philosopher he loved wisdom, which was the difference between himself and a professional who would love money rather than wisdom. Wisdom is more than knowledge it is the knowledge of not only facts, but also of values and learned experiences. Knowledge is common, but wisdom is rare. Socrates believed that he who was not wise and knew it was in fact wise. According to Socrates standards, it if we, who are unwise because we worry about many unimportant things: such as whether we will live or die, and if we will do good or evil. Socrates says life cannot be that simple. Socrates was not interested physical science and he was not a skeptic, or cynic. He was not an expert or a lawyer, but these were similar categories that people would put philosophers in from Athens. Socrates was misunderstood because a
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