Socrates : Discussion Points

Session 1: Please read: Biography of Socrates and Socrates Quotations

I would like you to consider the following issues. I have pointed out the relevant notes in the text and the numbers of the primary sources that deal with the subject.

(1) The Life and Philosophy of Socrates

It is worth considering the question of how do we know about Socrates. None of his writings have survived. There are four main sources on Socrates.

Plato (c. 425 BC – c. 348 BC) His student who recorded his teachings. Worshipped him and a very biased witness. 25 when Socrates died.

Xenophon (430 BC – 354 BC) 46 when Socrates died. General and Historian. Praised him but did not fully understand him.

Aristophanes (c. 446 BC - 386 BC), In his play, The Clouds (423 BC), Socrates is presented as a figure of fun who helps his students make "the weaker argument defeat the stronger". He claims that Socrates was teaching against Zeus (king of the Gods) as the supreme power of the universe.

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) probably provides the most accurate account of Socrates. Born 16 years after his death.

What problems would this cause modern writers trying to produce a biography of Socrates?

(2) Socrates and Education

What do these quotations from Socrates tell us about his views on education?

(1) One does not actually learn anything new. What we call learning is really nothing but recollecting true knowledge that we already have within us.

(2) True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

(8) Wisdom begins in wonder.

(18) Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

(20) I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

(23) I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

(24) The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

(3) Wealth

What do these quotations from Socrates tell us about his views on wealth?

(5) He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

(12) If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

(27) Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

(4) Love and Marriage

What do these quotations from Socrates tell us about his views on love and marriage?

(10) By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

(11) Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

(30) Those who are hardest to love, need it the most.

(33) Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.

(5) Ethics and Morality

What do these quotations from Socrates tell us about his views on ethics and morality?

(7) The unexamined life is not worth living.

(9) False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

(14) Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

(28) Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

(29) The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.