Socrates And Virtue Ethics

Socrates (c. 469 - 399 B.C.) was a major Greek philosopher during the Classical era (often known as the Socratic period in his honour). 

 

•    Unlike most Pre-Socratic philosophers, who were more concerned with establishing how the world worked, Socrates was more concerned with how people should behave, and was thus perhaps the first major philosopher of Ethics.

 

•    He is credited as one of the founders of Western Philosophy, despite only being known to us through other people's accounts (most notably the dialogues of his student Plato). 

 

•    Some see him as the polar opposite of his day's Sophists, who claimed to have knowledge that they could transmit to others (often for a fee), arguing instead that knowledge should be pursued for its own sake, even if one could never fully possess it.

 

•    The term «sophism» comes from the Greek words “Sophos” or “sophia” (meaning «wise» or «wisdom»), and it originally referred to any knowledge or skill in a specific field. 

 

•    After a period when it was primarily used to describe poets, the term came to be used to describe general wisdom, particularly wisdom about human affairs. 

 

•    It became a term for a group of itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in “excellence” or “virtue” (often for a high fee), speculated on the nature of language and culture, and used rhetoric to achieve their goals (which were usually to persuade or convince others).

 

•    In the fields of Ethics, Epistemology, and Logic, he made significant and lasting contributions, particularly in the methodology of philosophy (his Socratic Method or "elenchus"). 

 

•    Many of the major philosophical movements and schools that followed him were influenced by his ideas, including Platonism (and the Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism that it spawned), Cynicism, Stoicism, and Hedonism.

 

•    Socrates' trial and execution are the most well-known aspects of his life.

 

•    Socrates' pursuit of virtue and strict adherence to truth clashed with the course of Athenian politics and society (especially after Athens' humiliating defeats in the Peloponnesian War with Sparta). 

 

•    Socrates not only raised questions about Athenian religion, but also about Athenian democracy, and he praised Athens' arch-rival Sparta, prompting some scholars to interpret his trial as a manifestation of political infighting. It was more likely the result of his self-appointed role as Athens' social and moral critic, as well as his insistence on improving the Athenians' sense of justice (rather than maintaining the status quo and accepting the development of immorality).

•    His "crime" was most likely simply that his par-adoxical wisdom made several prominent Athenians appear foolish in public.

 

•    Whatever his motivation, he was found guilty of immorality and corrupting the minds of Athens' youth by a narrow margin of 30 votes out of 501 jurors in 399 B.C., at the age of 70, and sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock. 

 

•    Despite the fact that he had an apparent opportunity to flee, he declined, believing that a true philosopher should have no fear of death, that it would be against his principles to violate his social contract with the state by evading its justice, and that he would likely fare no better elsewhere even if he were to flee into exile.

 

•    As previously stated, Socrates did not write any philosophical texts, so our understanding of him and his philosophy is based on works by his students and contemporaries, particularly Plato's dialogues, but also Aristotle, Xenophon, and Aristophanes.

 

•    It's difficult to find the "real" Socrates (often referred to as the "Socratic problem") because these are either partisan philosophical texts of his supporters or dramatic rather than historically accurate works.

 

•    It's nearly impossible to tell which of the views of Socrates actually his own view are and which are Plato's own in Plato's Socratic Dialogues.

 

•    Socrates' dialectical method of inquiry, which he referred to as "elenchus" (roughly, "cross-examination") but which has become known as the Socratic Method or Socratic Debate (although some commentators have argued that Protagoras invented the "Socratic" method), is perhaps his most important and enduring single contribution to Western thought. 

 

•    It's been dubbed a negative method of hypothesis elimination because it finds better hypotheses by systematically identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions.

 

•    The Socratic Method is still used in classrooms and law schools today to discuss complex topics in order to expose underlying issues in both the speaker and the subject. 

 

•    Its influence is perhaps most visible today in the application of the Scientific Method, in which hypotheses are only the first step toward proof.

 

•    At its most basic level, the Socratic Method works by breaking down a problem into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually distil better and better solutions. 

 

•    In order to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas, both the questioner and the questioned explore the implications of the other's positions. Socrates would respond to any claim with a counterexample that refuted the claim (or at least shows it to be inadequate).

 

•    This would result in a revised assertion, which Socrates would then put to the test with a new counterexample. The original assertion is continually adjusted and becomes more difficult to refute through several iterations of this kind, which Socrates believed meant it was getting closer to the truth.

 

•    Socrates was a firm believer in the immortality of the soul, and he was convinced that the gods had chosen him as a divine emissary to persuade the people of Athens that their moral values were flawed, and that they should be more concerned with the "welfare of their souls" than with their families, careers, and political responsibilities.

 

•    He did, however, raise the question of whether "arête" (or "virtue") can be taught as the Sophists believed. 

 

•    He noticed that many successful fathers (such as the prominent military general Pericles) did not produce sons of their own calibre, leading him to believe that maternal excellence was more a matter of divine bequest than parental nurture.

 

•    He frequently claimed that his wisdom was limited to a recognition of his own ignorance (though he did claim to know "the art of love"). As a result, he never claimed to be wise, only to comprehend the path that a seeker of wisdom must take. His claim that he only knew one thing, that he didn't know anything, may have influenced later Scepticism.

 

•    According to scepticism, one should avoid making truth claims and postulating ultimate truths. This is not the same as claiming that truth is impossible (which would be a truth claim in and of itself), but it is frequently used to cover the position that there is no such thing as certainty in human knowledge (sometimes referred to as Academic Scepticism).

 

•    He saw himself as a midwife, not a teacher or a theorist, who could bring the theories of others to life, though he would need to have experience and knowledge of what he was talking about to do so. 

 

•    He believed that anyone, not just those with a high level of education and training, could be a philosopher, and that everyone had a responsibility to ask philosophical questions (he is famous for saying that "the unexamined life is not worth living").

 

•    Many of the beliefs attributed to the historical Socrates have been labelled "paradoxical" because they appear to contradict common sense, such as: no one desires evil, no one errs or does wrong willingly or knowingly; all virtue is knowledge; and virtue is sufficient for happiness. 

 

•    He believed that wrongdoing was the result of ignorance, and that those who did wrong had no idea what they were doing (sometimes referred to as Ethical Intellectualism). He believed that focusing on self-development rather than material wealth was the best way for people to live, and he always encouraged others to try to focus more on friendships and a sense of true community. 

 

•    He believed that humans possessed certain virtues (especially important philosophical or intellectual virtues), that virtue was the most valuable of all possessions, and that the ideal life should be spent in pursuit of the Good (an early statement of Eudemonism or Virtue Ethics).

 

•    Socrates' political views, as reflected in Plato's dialogue "The Republic," were strongly opposed to the democracy that had only recently been restored in Athens at the time, and indeed to any form of government that did not conform to his ideal of a perfect republic led by philosophers, whom he claimed to be the only type of person capable of governing others.

 

•    He believed that making decisions based on the will of the majority was not always the best method, and that it was far more important to make decisions that were logical and defensible. These may, however, be more Plato's own views than Socrates', "The Republic" being a "middle period" work that is often considered unrepresentative of the historical Socrates' views.

 

•    Socrates refused to pursue conventional politics in Plato's "early" dialogue, "Apology of Socrates," on the grounds that he couldn't look into the affairs of others (or tell people how to live their lives) because he didn't yet understand how to live his own.

 

•    Some argue that he thought the rule of the "Thirty Tyrants" (led by Critias, a relative of Plato and a former student of Socrates) was even less legitimate than that of the democratic senate that sentenced him to death.

 

•    Similarly, Socrates frequently appears to support a mystical side in Plato's dialogues, discussing reincarnation and mystery religions (popular religious cults of the time, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were restricted to those who had gone through certain secret initiatory rites), but how much of this is attributable to Socrates or to Plato himself is not (and never will be) clear. Socrates frequently alluded to a "daemonic sign," a kind of inner voice he only heard when he was about to make a mistake (such as the sign he claimed prevented him from entering politics). Although we would today call this intuition, Socrates saw it as a form of "divine madness," a type of insanity bestowed by the gods and responsible for the creation of poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy.

 

•    Many of the major philosophical movements and schools that followed him were influenced by Socrates' ideas, particularly the Platonism of his main student Plato (and the Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism that resulted from it). 

 

•    His concept of austerity combined with piety and morality (largely ignored by Plato and Aristotle) became central to later schools such as Cynicism and Stoicism.