C Although many of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem unfair, Socrates…

C Although many of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem unfair, Socrates…

Although many of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem unfair, Socrates cut a strange figure in Athens, going about barefoot, long-haired and unwashed in a society with incredibly refined standards of beauty. It didn’t help that he was by all accounts physically ugly, with an upturned nose and bulging eyes. Despite his intellect and connections, he rejected the sort of fame and power that Athenians were expected to strive for. His lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied his spirit of questioning every assumption about virtue, wisdom and the good life.

Two of his younger students, the historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato, recorded the most significant accounts of Socrates’ life and philosophy. For both, the Socrates that appears bears the mark of the writer. Thus, Xenophon’s Socrates is more straightforward, willing to offer advice rather than simply asking more questions. In Plato’s later works, Socrates speaks with what seem to be largely Plato’s ideas. In the earliest of Plato’s “Dialogues”—considered by historians to be the most accurate portrayal—Socrates rarely reveals any opinions of his own as he brilliantly helps his interlocutors dissect their thoughts and motives in Socratic dialogue, a form of literature in which two or more characters (in this case, one of them Socrates) discuss moral and philosophical issues,

 

One of the greatest paradoxes that Socrates helped his students explore was whether weakness of will—doing wrong when you genuinely knew what was right—ever truly existed. He seemed to think otherwise: people only did wrong when at the moment the perceived benefits seemed to outweigh the costs. Thus the development of personal ethics is a matter of mastering what he called “the art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that skew one’s analyses of benefit and cost.Socrates was also deeply interested in understanding the limits of human knowledge. When he was told that the had declared that he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates balked until he realized that, although he knew nothing, he was (unlike his fellow citizens) keenly aware of his own ignorance.

Socrates is unique among the great philosophers in that he is portrayed and remembered as a quasi-saint or religious figure. Indeed, nearly every school of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the Skeptics to the Stoics to the Cynics, desired to claim him as one of their own (only the Epicurians dismissed him, calling him “the Athenian buffoon”). Since all that is known of his philosophy is based on the writing of others, the Socratic problem, or Socratic question-reconstructing the philosopher’s beliefs in full and exploring any contradictions in second-hand accounts of them-remains an open question facing scholars today.

 

 

 

1.      “Is there anything you would be willing to die for?” is a philosophical question insofar as:

 

2.      One of the aims of philosophy is to think critically about whether there are good reasons for adopting our beliefs. Reasons are considered “good reasons” if they are consistent with everyday experience and:

 

3.       If the world that we individually perceive is limited to an internal perspective, then there is no way that we could determine whether our own perspective is useful, true, or valuable because:

 

4.       Philosophy is concerned primarily with identifying beliefs about human existence and evaluating arguments that support those beliefs. These activities can be summarized in two questions that drive philosophical investigations:

 

5.      One of the tasks of philosophy is to test conceptual frameworks for depth and consistency. It does this through (1) expressing our ideas in clear, concise language and (2) supporting those ideas with reasons and with overcoming objections to them. Philosophy thus emphasizes the need to:

 

6.      The philosophic insistence on providing a logos for the world and our experience of it might itself rely ultimately on adopting a certain mythos, insofar as:

 

 

7.       “There is no rationale for myth because it is through myth that reason itself is defined.” This means that:

 

8.      Whereas the social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics) ask questions about how people think and act, philosophy is the study of:

 

9.      To say that “philosophy” (like “love” or “art”) is not a closed concept means that we cannot state the necessary and sufficient conditions by which it is defined. Rather, philosophic issues are identifiable as having “family resemblances” with one another. In other words:

 

10.  According to Socrates, just as there is a difference between what an ironic statement says and its true meaning, so also appearances differ from reality. Even though societies or individuals appear to differ about what is required for the good life, that in no way contradicts the fact that: