Socrates

The Great Western Philosopher

The life of Socrates

You are about to meet one of the most powerful, intriguing, annoying, inspiring, widely known and yet misunderstood figures in the history of philosophy.

He has been called the greatest of philosophers and also the cleverest of the Sophists. He was a pagan who is seen by many Jews as a man of God.

He attracted young and faithful admirers, although he wrote no philosophy, he taught and inspire one of the two most influential philosophers in Western history, who in turn taught the other one: Plato and Aristotle.

According to legend the life of Socrates was portrayed through the plays of Aristophanes the great playwright. His father was Sophroniscus and his mother was Panaretos. He married a short woman named Xanthippe and they had 3 sons. They were Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Maecenas.

( we don’t know if any of this was true about Socrates life)

The General Character of Socrates

Plato presents Socrtes as an integrated individual, who stood clearly for some values and clearly against others. Then as now, such personal clarity, strong sense of direction and purpose, were attractive to young people.

Socrates` guiding motto of “Know thyself”, has been challenging to people all over the world and in all historical periods, he struggle with some of the greatest problems of our time: Who am I? How can I discover my true identity? How shall I live?

Against the popular notion of his time Socrates taught that beauty and goodness should be determined by usefulness and fitness of function, rather than by mere appearance or personal feelings of delight.

An interesting illustration of this was his own appearance, Socrates was universally acknowledge to be extraordinary ugly, so ugly in fact that he fascinated people. His most notable features were a broad, flat, turned up nose, protruding staring eyes, thick, fleshy lips, and a belly that he characterized as a stomach rather too large for convenience.

Socrates made his appearance serve him well. His humorous references to it reflect his good nature and modesty.

He said the true self is not the body but the soul (psyche), and if virtue implies excellence of function, then the appearance of the body is less important than how well it functions. True beauty is inner beauty, beauty of spirit and character.

Socrates says that we cannot know whether a person is happy just because his external condition is attractive to us. He insists that happiness, like goodness, is a matter of inner qualities.

Barefoot in Athens

Socrates was usually barefoot and apparently had only one tattered coat, about which his friends joke. His enemies accused him of being unwashed, and said it was a surprised to see him bathed. One of his most noted characteristics was hardiness, reflected in remarkable self-control or temperance, this means indifference to both the presence and absence of material pleasures; it does not mean total abstinence from pleasure.

Socrates` self control included indifference to fear. During a battle, heis said to have been the last Athenian soldier to give way before the advancing Spartans.

Socrates is reported to have walked about barefoot on the icy Winter ground of Thrace, this irritated the other soldiers, they thought Socrates was trying to humiliate them.

Socrates talked about self-control and self-discipline, he believed that if we don`t have self control, weakness will lead us to pleasure.

Lack of self-control, he asserts, prevents us from the finest expressions of pleasure in eating, drinking, and resting.

He believed that if we gratify every urge as soon as it arises , we must often settle for fast food, cheap drink, sleep all day etc. We would be little more than animals. Without self-control we have no hope of learning how to moderate our lives.

Socrates