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INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

SOCRATES

Socrates, perhaps the most famous of all philosophers, lived his entire life in Athens. Unlike Thales and other early thinkers, Socrates was more concerned with the health of the soul, than the nature of reality. Socrates spent his days in the streets of Athens, questioning people about their values. He termed himself a "gadfly" (horsefly) who ceasely irritated his fellow citizens into investigating their beliefs. Making many powerful enemies in the course of his life, Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian Assembly in 399 BC. One of Socrates' wonders is that he invented rigorous, ethical investigation. His conversations with his fellow Athenians, as recorded by Plato, are the first records we have of an individual, by his own careful reasoning, trying to discover the guiding principles of moral choices.

METAPHYSICS

Because Socrates always claimed that his only wisdom was that he knew nothing, it is difficult to determine his metaphysics, his view of reality. However, in some accounts of his conversations, like Plato’s EUTHYPHRO, we may catch glimpse of his beliefs. Socrates seemed to hold that individual entities, like holy actions, have universal characteristics, like Holiness, which can be discovered by the mind after careful investigation. This may mean that he anticipate Plato’s metaphysics that thee is higher, eternal world of truths (like Holiness) which exists independently of this world.

EPISTEMOLOGY

Socrates’s epistemology, his theory of how knowledge is possible, is very difficult to determine because he appears not to have a great deal of interest in the subject. Socrates would much rather have talked about the purpose of life, than the process by which the minds gains knowledge of the purpose of life. His claims that he knew nothing, except that he knew nothing, might make

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