Socrates Biography

Socrates was a Greek philosopher considered one of the most important of Western and world philosophy, and founder of moral philosophy. He was a teacher of Plato, who had Aristotle as a disciple, being the three fundamental representatives of the philosophy of Ancient Greece.

Socrates was born in Alopece, Athens (Ancient Greece), between 470 and 469 b. C. Although he did not leave any written work and the ideas that can be attributed to him are scarce, he is surely a capital figure of the ancient thought to the point that the philosophers before him were called pre-Socratic.

His parents, Sophroniscus by profession sculptor and Fainarate midwife. Related to Aristides the Just. Few things are known with certainty about Socrates, apart from that he participated as an infantry soldier in the battles of Samos (440), Potidea (432), Delio (424) and Amphipolis (422) a.C.

He received a traditional education: literature, music, gymnastics and became familiar with the dialectics and rhetoric of the sophists. At first, Socrates continued with the work of his father made a set of statues: “the three graces” which placed at the entrance to the Acropolis of Athens, until the second-century b.C. Also, he had as a teacher the philosopher Arquelao who put him in the reflections on physics and morals.

Socrates was of small stature, prominent belly, chameleon eyes and exaggeratedly turned nose. He greatly appreciated life and achieved social popularity because of his lively intelligence and a sharp sense of humor devoid of satire or cynicism.

He married Xantipa, a noble family with whom he had two daughters and a boy. A tradition has perpetuated the topic of the contemptuous wife before the husband’s activity and prone to behaving in a brutal and coarse manner. Although Plato shows (when narrates the death of Socrates in the Phaedo) a normal and even good relationship between the two.

Since a young age, he drew the attention of those around him by the sharpness of his reasoning and his ease of speech.

The moral question of the knowledge of the good was at the center of the teachings of Socrates, with which he printed a fundamental turn in the history of Greek philosophy.

He did not write any books because he believed that everyone should develop their own ideas, what is known with certainty is the writings of his two most notable disciples Plato who attributed his own ideas to his teacher and the historian Xenophon, a prosaic writer that perhaps failed to understand many of his teacher’s doctrines.

Regarding his Dialectic, he was a true initiator of philosophy and gave its main goal to be the science that seeks within the human being. His method was dialectical which consisted in that after proposing a proposition he analyzed the questions and answers raised by it. This made him an extraordinary and decisive figure; it represents the reaction against Relativism and sophistical Subjectivism, being a special example of unity between theory and behavior, between thought and action.

Apparently a good part of his life, Socrates spent wandering the squares and markets of Athens and took the merchants, peasants or artisans as interlocutors with whom he held long conversations, this behavior belonged to the essence of his teaching system the “Maieutic.” Socrates compared this method with the tasks of a midwife like his mother: he tried to take the interlocutor to the birth of the truth, to the discovery of his own truths.

The Maieutic was his greatest merit, an inductive method that allowed him to lead his students to the resolution of the problems that were posed by means of skillful questions whose logic illuminated the understanding.

 

JUDGMENT AND DEATH

In the year 399 b.C., Socrates was accused of introducing new gods and corrupting the morals of youth, away from the principles of Athenian democracy.

According to Xenophon, the underlying cause to bring Socrates to trial was that he opened his doors as a disciple Critias (dialogue), who integrated the Spartan politico-military body called the thirty tyrants, who took power from Athens after the war of Peloponnese, subjecting the police to a terrible slaughter and economic emptying, for a year’s time.

It is also mentioned that he asked jokingly that he could be condemned simply: “inviting him to eat at communal banquets” alluding to the fact that these were deplorable. This angered the jury and again voted for the death penalty. His friends proposed to him to pay bail and even planned his escape from prison, but he preferred to abide by the law dying for it.

He was sentenced, convicted and killed for poisoning by hemlock in 399 b.C. in Athens (Ancient Greece), at the age of 70 years.

Subsequently, in his honor, and as a recognition, the Modern Academy of Athens, placed a statue of him at the entrance of the Institution.

 

QUOTES

• The friend must be like money, that before you need it, you know the value it has.
• Young people today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, devour their food, and disrespect their teachers.
• The true wisdom is in recognizing one’s ignorance.
• I know that I know nothing.
• Speak to me to know you.
• Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
• An unexamined life is not worth living.