...Writing Prompt : Socrates and “True Knowledge” With the notion of philosophy and the studying of philosophy it is well known that it is powerful and dangerous. Philosophy has many reasons for its importance such as how to understand your ideas, the origin of your ideas, how to contrast arguments. Philosophy can also help you defend arguments, read it, build your position and understand it. Philosophy is used for the betterment of the world, gender, race, civilization, town, state, country, etc. But in order to practice philosophy you need parrhesia and you need philosophy to practice parrhesia, they come hand in hand with each other. There have been many imperative philosophers that gave us the knowledge and foundation for our study of philosophy today, such as Plato, Aristotle, and among them Socrates. Socrates was an interesting philosopher and his main focus before his death was to find true knowledge and he believed that there was only certain acts of statements that qualified as such. In Socrates work, parrhesia worked as a big role in his work as parrhesia is also known as fearless speech. This form is merged with the courage to face danger in circumstances of life or death. Parrhesia consists of the individual to speak the truth courageously in spite of danger and in its extreme form in life or death. It creates the chance to take the form of criticism to another or oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker is in a position of inferiority. Socrates fits the character...
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...Socrates’ account of knowledge was illustrated in the standard definitions of epistemology and its ideas of justification and the difference between whether something is truth or belief. Understanding knowledge as Socrates’ describes this concept can be seen several places. The first is when he compares himself to a midwife of truth, which is an odd saying, but it is to portray that Socrates doesn’t create true ideas, but works to deliver them, examining the world for truth, which must be done through an analytical viewpoint of society and humanity itself. As seen through his actions of interviewing the people of Athens, the way to truth though his methods can’t be done through introspection and contemplation, but through question and answer...
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...An Analysis of Concepts for the Origins of Our Knowledge Set Forth by Socrates and Locke In Socrates' discussion with Meno, he puts forth the idea that knowledge is innate. He is of the opinion that each of us has all the knowledge of the world because we have been reborn over and over again. In each life, we have gained knowledge and now the only thing we have to do is recall that knowledge. To prove his point, he takes one of Meno's slaves and puts forth a mathematical problem that the boy must solve. He uses the slave boy because he was not educated and would not know how to solve the problem through methods learned in a school setting. Socrates, through a series of questions, gets the boy to arrive at the correct answer. Because he never actually taught the boy the basic mathematical principles that he would have needed to solve the problem, Socrates says that this proves that the boy must have had that knowledge inside of him all along. I am going to be quite honest and say that I was not the least bit convinced by Socrates’ argument or example and I take great pleasure in poking holes in this theory. Firstly, the boy does not live in a box. Yes it is true that he did not have access to a formal education like Meno or Socrates did but evidently he had basic mathematical skills. He knows numbers and in his day to day tasks, it is very likely that he would have, at some point, been exposed to the concept of basic mathematical operations such as adding, subtracting, etc. Perhaps...
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...All his life Socrates was a man of subtle persuasion. He could do this by using the simplest metaphors to sway his colleagues, acting as a “torpedo fish”, leaving them stumped with a transformed state of mind. There are countless works that could be used to exemplify the seemingly general, logical intelligence that Socrates possesses, but I will only introduce a few. In the work of the Crito, which was written/reported by Plato whom was Socrates student, Socrates is in prison awaiting his death for speaking his mind and spreading his word to those who were interested in listening. He states the he does not follow popular opinion, but on the contrary does things in compliance as so to be true to himself. In the work of Meno, also written by...
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...conversation that Takes place between Socrates and Meno, a young aristocrat from Thessaly. Meno asks Socrates whether or not virtue can be taught, or if people are born with virtue. In turn Socrates states that they cannot investigate how one comes to be virtuous if they do not have a definition for virtue. After unsuccessfully finding a definition searching for a virtue, Socrates asks one of Meno’s slaves to figure solve a geometry problem. Though the slave has never studied geometry, Socrates is able to show that the slave simply recollected information to solve the problem. Antony's happens upon Socrates and Meno and fails to persuade Socrates and Meno that virtue can be taught. It is then that Socrates realizes that good men only come to...
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...human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. Socrates discusses this many times in his teachings, specifically in the readings, Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo. Socrates’ main question was “What is the good life?” and his pursuit was to find out how to live this “good life”. Socrates’ pursuit of the “good life” helped him to identify knowledge with virtue. He equated knowledge with good or virtue and ignorance with bad or evil. Since no one would knowingly harm themselves, if harm came to a person, then that person must have acted in ignorance. This led him to the thought that if knowledge could be learned, so could virtue. This meant that virtue could be taught, so Socrates had conversations with anyone who boasted about being an expert of a certain subject. This would lead him to gain more knowledge (virtue), which in turn would help him in his goal to lead and teach “the good life”. In the Euthyphro, Socrates starts chatting with a man who is in court to prosecute his father for murder. This man, Euthyphro, claims to be an expert on piety (an expert of religious knowledge), and since Socrates is being prosecuted for impiety, he thinks he will learn how to escape prosecution from this expert. Socrates asks Euthyphro for a universal definition of piety, both for his own personal gain (for his defense against the charge of impiety) and also for the...
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...to understand reality and answer fundamental questions about knowledge, life, morality, virtue, and human nature. The original word for philosophy comes from the ancient Greek word philosopha, which means love of wisdom. Although Socrates himself never claimed to have any answers to the questions he raised, his views and methods of philosophy became the foundations of what philosophy is today. Socrates actually wrote nothing, because he felt that knowledge was something to be gained by living and interacting in the world. So most of what we do know about Socrates comes from the writings of another very important person in Greek history, Plato. Socrates’ philosophy was based on pursuit of truth through the questioning of beliefs, virtue being defined as knowledge and talking about the elements that make up a good life. Greek philosophy before Socrates is called Pre-Socratic philosophy and the origin of western philosophy can be found early Greek thinkers of the 6th and 7th century BC. The Pre-Socratic philosophers were called physiologoi; physical or natural philosophers and they lived and taught in Asia Minor, Thrace, Sicily and south Italy. The Pre-Socratic philosophy is a philosophy of nature. The Pre-Socratic combined Greek mythology with rational thinking and sought all the forces which compose nature. Socrates grew up in the atmosphere of the Pre-Socratic thought and explored their knowledge and wisdom. Socrates gave philosophy for the first time an anthropocentric character...
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...1101-002 25 February 2013 Plato’s View on Life and How One Acquires Knowledge Plato is a well-known, intellectual Athenian philosopher that was born into an aristocratic family. Due to his family’s wealth, Plato was able to receive some of best education available to Athenians. When Plato was a pupil, he became infatuated with his Sophist Socrates. Socrates was a Greek philosopher and he was known to preach endlessly about his ideas and theories to anyone that would listen. Plato’s most renowned work comes from his Five Dialogues. In two of Plato’s dialogues, Meno and Phaedo, Socrates is the protagonist and Plato uses his character to portray his philosophical views of life and how one can go about acquiring knowledge. The Meno consists of a discussion between Socrates and his companion, Meno, in which Meno is trying to inquire information on whether “virtue can be taught? Or is it not teachable but the result of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way” (70a). In the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates asks Meno to define what virtue is and after numerous attempts, Socrates comes to realize that he himself is unclear on whether or not virtue can be taught so he suggests that they can seek out the answer together. Meno is puzzled because he doesn’t know how the two of them will search and acquire knowledge on virtue if they are both unfamiliar with the subject. Socrates’ responds with a debate he once heard from some priests and priestesses...
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...In Plato’s “Euthyphro,” Socrates questions a man outside of the courthouse who is turning his father in for illegal activity. Socrates asks him a series of questions that tests Euthyphro’s understanding actions, but moreover Socrates attempts to discover the true meaning of piety, or justice, from what Euthyphro tells him. The line of questioning never really concludes satisfactorily, as Euthyphro excuses himself before Socrates finishes. To many people in this time, this questioning would not only be redundant and ridiculous, but it would also seem ungodly, as if Socrates was questioning the gods themselves when he was dissecting Euthyphro’s understanding of piety. In reality, the reason for Socrates’ questioning was to bring Euthyphro down a peg. Many of the rich, white landowning voters had very self-inflate views of themselves and their understandings of the world. Socrates questioned these inflated men to disrupt their...
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...believing in the concept. In his attack on the rhetoric as unreal art, Socrates uses cosmetics as an example of rhetoric that depicts flattery. He argues that cosmetics take the form of gymnastics, and that it works in a deceitful manner through the help of lines, colors, enamels, and garments in order to create a false beauty that tends to neglect the true beauty and fitness, which is provided by the gymnastic. Therefore, he refers to cosmetics as the art of gymnastic cookery, which is the art of medicine sophistry, legislation rhetoric, or jurisprudence (Harold 4). If the body presides over itself without the guidance of the soul, then cookery, health, and medicine will mingle in indiscriminate. Socrates tends to argue that cosmetics are used to create a beauty that does not last. It is not inherent beauty of the human being, but a flattery meant to convince people that cosmetics make people to achieve beauty. In the Gorgias and Socrates discussion with other scholars, the superior nature of...
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...Socrates Paper The goal of this paper is to discern and construct the world views of Socrates through the various readings, lectures and videos that we have seen in class. Some of these sources include: Socrates by G. Rudebusch; excerpts from The Last Days of Socrates by Plato; and The Allegory of a Cave. Of the nine world views covered in class, I will delve into my interpretation of four of them as seen through the various sources that we have been exposed to in class. These four world views will include Death, Condition, Solution and Morality. Finally, I will use my understanding of the world *views assessment to critique Socrates’ view of morality. Death The first and most obvious worldview that I wanted to cover is Socrates’ view of death. That is, what really happens to us when we die? This was such an evident topic to me because throughout a majority of our readings, Socrates was being faced with death, so what better time to discuss one’s thoughts for what is to come in the afterlife than when they are staring death in the face. Socrates first brings to light his view of death in the Apology when he states, “Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another.” (Apology 40c). At this point, Socrates does not give any definitive answer as to whether death is annihilation or the migration of the soul; rather, he argues that...
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...youth will be making the decisions later on down the road after all of the elders die off. This is the reason why the citizens are very concerned about Socrates. The elders believe that Socrates is going to be the reason why the youth will be corrupted. But Socrates does not see how he could be the reason for the corruption of the youth because he always claims to not have any knowledge of anything. In Plato’s The Euthyphro, Socrates has a conversation with Euthyphro about what piety and impiety is. Socrates wanted Euthyphro to be his teacher and teach him everything he knows because he claims that he knows all there is to be known about what piety and impiety is. Therefore, Euthyphro teaches him everything that he knows about what it means to be pious and impious. After he starts to explain everything to him Socrates is not satisfied with any of his definitions that he has proposed to him, so Socrates starts to question him even more, and ask for a better definition. This back and forth conversation goes on for a while, and from Socrates questioning Euthyphro so much, Euthyphro himself starts to question everything that he knows about what it means to be pious and impious. Euthyphro was going to prosecute his very own father for unintentionally killed Euthyphro’s slave that killed one of his father’s slaves. After Socrates questioned him so many different times about what it means to be pious impious it seems that Euthyphro has come to the understanding of how prosecuting...
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...In the Phaedo Socrates is waiting in jail for the poison that will fulfil his death sentence. On the day of his execution he has been talking with his friends about his expectations and their fears about his death. Socrates tries to prove that the soul is immortal to his friends in order for them to see that he is content and not unhappy about his death. Nevertheless, the Phaedo fails at proving the immortality of the soul because Socrates assumes that the soul exist and doesn’t clearly define what a soul is. So the arguments that follow like the philosophy is the practice for death, the soul is not likely to be scattered fail, and the proof that opposites come from opposites fail. The arguments work only if the soul exists, and since the soul is only assumed the arguments are unsuccessful at proving the souls immortality. One of the arguments that Socrates uses to prove the immortality of the soul is that philosophy is the practice for death. There are three premises that are implied in order for the argument to succeed. One is that the soul exists, the second is that there is such a thing as death, and the third is that death is the separation of the soul from the body. Yet the argument is circular and does not work because Socrates did not prove what he had assumed. According to Socrates the philosopher...
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...particular circumstances. Ethics may be divided into three major areas of study: * Meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how their truth values (if any) may be determined * Normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action * Applied ethics draws upon ethical theory in order to ask what a person is obligated to do in some very specific situation, or within some particular domain of action (such as business) Related fields are moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Ethics seeks to resolve questions dealing with human morality—concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. II. PHILOSOPHIES A. SOCRATES Socratic method Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic method or method of "elenchus", which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato in the...
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...Socrates, seen to be the father of Greek Philosophy, and his unjust death have influenced Western Philosophy greatly, allowing him to appear as something resembling a hero today. Socrates was put on trial in 399BC in Athens, Greece for impiety (asebeia) and for corrupting the youth. Some suppose Socrates’ death, at age 70, was politically motivated as Athens was trying to disassociate itself with those involved with the Thirty Tyrants, led by Critias who was a student of Socrates. Also, before being put on trial Socrates had aggravated many powerful politicians by exposing their ignorance, so his death may be seen as revenge. Socrates’ friend, Chaerephon, asked the omniscient Oracle of Delphi if there was any man wiser than Socrates and when the priestess replied that there wasn’t, Socrates made it his mission to prove the Oracle wrong. Socrates was puzzled as to why the Oracle had said he was the wisest man as he knew that she could not lie, but according to...
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