Like the Pre-Socratics Committed to Knowledge, a Wise One

Socrates (ca 470-399)

Like the Pre-Socratics – committed to knowledge, a “wise one” Like the Sophists, he searches for knowledge in relation to human (political) society Unlike the Sophists, he searches for consistent “methods” of explanation & understanding (epistemology) Unlike the Sophists, he rejects the idea that there can be no universal foundations or answers

-- Emphasizes our capacity to know, to communicate -- Responded to the sophists in the context of rise & fall of Athens’ Golden Age -- Guides the new secular humanism away from the path of the Sophists

Most of what we know of Socrates comes through Plato (428-348), Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Aristotle.

-- Plato uses Socrates’ voice to respond to the Sophists

Socrates argues through dialogue, face to face and in the moment. He eschewed writing, which he viewed as a kind of dead speech.

Socrates represented a turn away from the study of nature, towards the study of human life. How can one live a Good or Virtuous Life? What is virtue, or courage, or temperance, or justice?

Socrates stands for the belief that the contingent versions of a truth we find in the actual world can be underpinned by a universal understanding of a truth.

Contra Protagoras & Thrasymachus, Socrates affirms a philosophy of universalism, rather than relativism.

In Book I of Republic, Socrates rejects the merely contingent answers of the Sophist Thrasymachus, who argues that Justice can be defined as Might Makes Right, and who changes his answer when it suits him.

While Socrates believed, contra the Sophists, in knowable universal knowledge, he didn’t claim to actually possess all this knowledge. Socrates’ Methods

I. Socrates uses the method of dialectic -- communicative exchange to work through the answer to a question.

II Socrates asks “What Is It” Type of Questions. Asking “what is it” as the starting point for dialectical, step-by-step reasoning. Used to great effect in Books I & II of The Republic.

III Socrates uses the elenchus to show that others, especially the Sophists, didn’t have the clear and definitive answer they claimed to have. The elenchus is the continued interrogation of the conversation to the point where the interlocutor eventually had to admit his vacillation and change of tack.

In The Republic, Socrates asks the simple question, What is Justice? The dialog searches for a universal account or foundation of Justice.