Socrates: Biography And Contributions Of The Great Greek Philosopher
“I only know that I know nothing”. In all likelihood, you have heard this phrase countless times. You will also probably meet its author, the great Greek philosopher Socrates, who revolutionized the philosophical landscape of Athens in the 5th century BC and laid the foundations for the later work of Plato and Aristotle. Because, despite not having left anything in writing, Socratic thought is crucial to understanding the evolution of Western philosophy.
In this biography of Socrates we review the life and career of the father of maieutics or inductive method ; the first thinker who based wisdom on internal dialogue and self-knowledge, which, as we will see, brought him many enemies.
Socrates: biography of the philosopher who laid the foundations of Western thought
It may seem like an exaggerated statement, but in reality, it is not so exaggerated. We do not know any writings about Socrates, but his philosophy survived in the work of his disciples, especially in that of Plato (427-347 BC), one of the greatest philosophers of all time who influenced European thought for centuries, even after of the arrival of Christianity. In this sense, we can say that Plato without Socrates would not have existed, and from this we can see that, indeed, it is in Socrates where the germ of Western philosophy is found.
Its inductive method, that is, based on questions and answers, is the root of any scientific thought ; we find it in René Descartes (1596-1650) many centuries later, as well as in medieval scholasticism. And Socrates was a revolutionary; He shook up the foundations on which philosophy was based in Greece, and went beyond the sophists by stating that true knowledge can only lie within oneself.
The midwife’s son who was a soldier before he was a philosopher
It is said that Socrates himself used to joke about his birth. His mother had been a midwife and, therefore, she helped people to be born, just as he helped the truth to be born. The famous philosopher had come into the world on an undetermined date (it is estimated that around 470 BC) in the city of Athens, which at that time was awakening to the heat of the luminous “Age of Pericles”. These are decades marked by the disaster of the Persian Wars, which pitted the various Greek polis against the Persian enemy. The driving force behind these golden years of cultural and political reconstruction was Pericles (495-429 BC), the great Athenian strategist who, with the invaluable help of artists such as Phidias (500-431 BC) raised Athens from its ashes.
After the Persian Wars came the so-called Peloponnesian Wars, which pitted various polis against each other, especially the powerful Athens and Sparta. It was precisely in this conflict that Socrates participated as a hoplite (infantry soldier), a military past that is often forgotten because it does not fully fit with the philosopher’s later life career. We know this episode because Alcibiades, an orator who was rescued by him, mentions Socrates’ bravery on the battlefield.
The philosopher who left nothing written
But Little is known about the life of Socrates, and what is known is through testimonies from third parties, not always flattering In fact, the character aroused admiration and hatred in equal parts, which earned him, as we will see, his death sentence by the government of Athens.
There are three philosophers through whom we can access the teachings of this thinker. The first and most important, of course, is Plato’s disciple, who collects several episodes from his life, especially in the Phaedo and in the Apology of Socrates, where he expresses some considerations about his judgment. Other sources worth mentioning are those of Xenophon and Aristophanes, without forgetting that Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, also mentions it.
Especially in the case of Plato, one must be careful with the sources, since in many cases they represent an idealization of the character, the result of the great admiration that the student felt for the teacher. In any case, these texts are essential to understand the bases of Socratic ideas, a starting point for later philosophy.
Although he is traditionally included as part of sophism (and, in fact, his death sentence valued him as such), in reality Socrates has little or nothing to do with this current of Greek thought. But let’s go in parts; who were the sophists?
Since ancient times, Greek philosophy had been keenly interested in the cosmos and its functioning Later, the sophists, led by Protagoras and Gorgias, placed emphasis on knowledge of the human being and access to knowledge. The intention was good, of course, but these philosophers ended up being mercenaries of words; That is, they used reasoning to win in confrontations and justify their possession of the truth. Furthermore, and this is another important fact, they charged for their services.
Socrates was also interested in access to knowledge, but he did not make a living from it. Faced with the intellectual superiority of the sophists, who claimed to possess the truth, Socrates affirmed that “I only know that I know nothing”, an act of humility that called into question the worth of others as philosophers. On the other hand, Socrates assured that authentic knowledge came from oneself, and that the only way to access it (if it was possible to access the ultimate truth) was through severe introspection.
The philosopher offered his discussions in public places, to the despair of his enemies And in this group were not only the sophists, but also the rulers of Athens, who were not happy that the thinker encouraged people to question things and think for themselves. In essence, Socrates’ speech, based on the famous maieutics, intended for the individual to seek the truth and rise from the particular to the universal.
This maieutics or inductive method based its procedure on questions and answers: to the teacher’s question, the person questioned explained his vision on the matter, and immediately the teacher showed him the contradictions of his idea and asked him more questions, and so on. . As we have already commented in the introduction, this inductive procedure continued to be present during the Middle Ages through scholasticism and continued in the philosophy of modern times.
The sentence that immortalized him
The end of Socrates is quite well known: Accused by the city of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the gods,” he was found guilty and forced to drink the hemlock himself that would lead to his death His disciples and friends offered him help to escape, but he forcefully rejected this solution and stoically accepted the death that had been ordered to him. He spent his last hours chatting with those close to him, until the poison took effect. Plato, in his work Phaedo, recreates these final moments of his beloved teacher.
The death of Socrates inspired the Stoic school and many later philosophical currents. During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, the philosopher’s supreme dignity was seen as a symbol of steadfastness and courage, and his death scene has been endlessly recreated in multiple works of art. Socrates was, in his lifetime, the standard-bearer of critical thinking and individual access to knowledge, and he always advocated this type of education in Athenian youth (although, according to some witnesses, he had almost forgotten his own children). Pedantic and almost rude for some, a true martyr of truth for others. Be that as it may, Socrates is and will be one of the greatest philosophers of Western thought.
