Socrates

Who was Socrates?

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.

Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. Plato's Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains a strong foundation for much western philosophy that followed.

Famous Quotes:

• 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.
• See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.
• We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.
• Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
• Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
• Know thyself.
• I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
• The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
• Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.