The Philosophy of Socrates

Socrates : the founder of Western

Philosophy
Often considered as the father of the
Western philosophy, Socrates is as famous as
unknown, but he remains an enigmatic character
because he leftus no writings. The
greek philosopher has been described by its
detractors (Aristophanes) painting him as a ridiculous
or dangerous sophist, or by his enthusiastic followers
(Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle).
Plato, who received his teaching, usually expressed
himself his doctrine through Socrates’mouth, and
make him a major playmaker of most of his
dialogues. Among Plato’s dialogues, the Apology, the
Crito and Phaedo gives us information about his life
and death. Note that at the end of the Symposium,
Alcibiades, between the physical ugliness of Socrates
and in his moral beauty, compared him to the
grotesque statue of a Silenus.
Born in Athens, an event which will bring up
his philosophical vocation: Pythia, oracle of Delphi,
who told a friend that he was the wisest of
men, Socrates, first incredulous, would clarify the
meaning of these words and began a life of surveys
of the Athenians, for discover what lay its superiority.
“All I know is that I know nothing, while others think they
know what they do not know.” But this bothered lucid
intellectual conformism of many, and if the endless
discussions Socrates passionately interested young
people, they are soon to worry about the rich, who
accused him of impiety and corruption of youth. He
was finally sentenced to death after a trial in which he
will deploy in vain for the arguments of his defense
(Apology).
Socrates and Sophists
The philosophy of Socrates is first in one sense a
response to Anaxagoras, who claimed that man is
intelligent because he has hands. In fact the
superiority of the human being is to look smart in his
soul, which governs the body and participates in the
divine. Hence a number of requirements. If man
indeed has a soul of divine origin (as opposed to
established beliefs, Socrates argues that the gods do
not suffer from human passions), we understand the
need for greater awareness and the requirement of
“Know thyself own “formula inscribed on the
pediment of the temple of Delphi. On the other hand,
body control is reinforced by the belief in the
immortality of the soul (cf. Plato’s Phaedo). Add the
example of courage and serenity that gives us
Socrates himself before drinking the hemlock: it
compares the swan which at the time of death, sings,
not of pain but of joy and hope.
Socrates’ Philosophy as a
comprehensive philosophy
But the true dignity of the soul proceeds from the
science, which is its authentic heritage. A science
that does not, as now, the phenomena of the outside
world: Socrates takes the same stance against the
theorists of nature that have no sense of humanity –
and, moreover, against the sophists who do not,
conversely, the meaning of science. By combining
the acceptable principles of physics and
sophisticated – the scientific form of the first and the
concern of human affairs in the second – it is the
wisdom or moral science that is central to his
approach. Renouncing to understand the universe,
the mind must descend himself to clear the truths that
lie dormant within him to the state of potentialities
(Platonic theory of reminiscence), and it will be well
able to master the knowledge without submitting to
external things (as shown in Descartes and Kant).
Rejecting that which emanates from the senses and
passions of individual science will focus on human
nature in what is universal, in a word about the
concepts, which Socrates is the true discoverer. By
induction, we arrive in this way to identify species and
to express them by definitions: thus Socrates –
preparing the Platonic theory of Ideas he tries to
define such courage (Laches) or the friendship
(Lysis), or the art of living that leads to the happiness
(according to ancient tradition, the good is happiness)
depends on the science of the soul which, thwarting
the ability of the sophists, unmasks the blindness of
men, too often preoccupied with useless things
(wealth, reputation, etc.). and losing interest in the
essential thing is to say the truth which carries their
soul. This science begins with a work of purification
(already proposed by the Orphic and Pythagorean),
which is to put off the views received, it then
highlights various qualities (temperance, justice, etc..)
Which will turn into virtues if the we use it properly. In
fact, the exact knowledge of the property (which is
also the benefit) triggers an irresistible tendency to
completion, necessarily leads to virtue: “No one is
voluntarily wicked,” except through ignorance. The
method excludes any extra-intellectual revelation –
the Socratic demon is deterrence, not of creation –
and follows the dialectic. Through its two stages,
irony and midwifery or midwifery minds, the dialectic
allows Socrates to identify – in a climate of friendship
– the points of agreement between partners, that is to
say truths universally acknowledged as the
requirement of reason.
Founder of moral philosophy and the first theorist of
intellectualism (which earned him the hostility
of Nietzsche), an apostle of freedom of decision and
self-reflection, Socrates served as an example to the
whole philosophical tradition.

Plato and Aristotle

Similarities and Differences
Plato vs Aristotle: Compared Phil
osophies
Undeniably, Plato and Aristotle are the two rock stars
of Greek Philosophy. Plato created idealism
and Aristotle, later recuperated by Thomas Aquinas,
became the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.
So, what are the main similarities and differences
between Plato and Aristotle?
Plato’s philosophy
In his early works, that is to say in the
dialogues, Plato is a faithful pupil of Socrates. He
seeks to define morality: the meaning of courage,
wisdom, friendship, piety, virtue, and professes that
virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance. Like
Socrates, Plato believes that wisdom is the supreme
goal of existence. But Plato was too hungry for
knowledge to be limited to the moral teaching of his
teacher. His system far extends that of Socrates and
encompasses a synthesis of all that was known at his
time, especially the doctrines of Socrates, Heraclitus,
Parmenides and the Pythagoreans.
What is the substance and originality of this system is
the theory of ideas, expressed in the allegory of the
cave (Republic, Book VII)? The dialectic is essential: it
begins with a hypothesis about the object studied.
The idea is verified by the conclusions it leads. If
these conclusions are untenable, the assumption is
rejected. Another idea takes its place, to suffer the
same fate until one finds one that stands up to
scrutiny. Each hypothesis is a degree that we rise to
the idea. But the dialectic is not the whole story.
There are secrets impenetrable to reason and of
which the Gods which have retained possession.
They may, indeed, leave something to see for some
men, like poets and seers, for example. Plato did not
disdain to gather the Egyptian and Pythagorean
beliefs in the immortality of the soul, but he is careful
not to give them certainty. What are man’s hopes or
dreams that expose the myths in sublime poetry?
Plato’s Idealism
According to Plato, the soul is eternal. Before being
united to the body, the soul has contemplated the
idea and, through reminiscence, it can recognise
when it is lowered into a body. By living with the
material, the soul loses its purity, and in it there are
three different parts: An upper part, reason, our
contemplative faculty, made to govern and maintain
harmony between it and the lower parts: courage,
noble and generous faculty, which includes both the
desires of our higher nature and will and lastly,
instinct and desire which take man to sensitive
objects and desires. In the Phaedrus, Plato likens the
soul to a driver, who leads a team of two horses, one
obedient and generous, the other stubborn and
rebellious. The weakness of this representation is
made insufficient by the free will. Plato with Socrates
argue that the knowledge of good necessarily entails
membership of the will, which is contrary to
experience. Plato tried to establish the survival of the
soul with a demonstration and dialectic outlined in the
three myths of Gorgias, the Republic and Phaedo
migrations and purifications to which the soul is
subjected, before going on land to enter a new body,
but the detailed descriptions vary from one myth to
another.

Plato and Politics

Plato’s view of politics is modelled on his vision of the
soul, for the manners of a State are necessarily
modelled on those of individuals. The fundamental
basis of government is justice, and it cannot last
without it.
In Plato’s view, justice consists in rendering to each
his own. Via Plato, Socrates rejects this definition in
the first book of the Republic: justice, as he
understands it, comes down to the individual, that
each part of the soul should fulfil its own function, and
that desire be submitted to courage and courage to
reason.
It is the same in the city. It consists of three classes
of citizens for the three parts of the soul:
– Philosophers of judges, representing right;
– Warriors, who represent courage and are
responsible for protecting the state against external
enemies and to reduce citizens to obedience;
– Finally, farmers, artisans and merchants who
represent the instinct and desire.
For these three classes of citizens, justice is, as in
the individual, to perform its functions so that there is
harmony between the three rungs.
In addition, Plato holds that the greatest danger is in
a state of division. As such, Plato does not consider,
as does Xenophon for instant, major States such as
the Persian Empire, he models his own on the small
city which existed across Greece. Also, in order to
avoid division, the city removes the two most
formidable enemies of the unit: self-interest and
family spirit. The first was destroyed by the joint
estate, the second by the community of women and
children, which are to be raised by the state. But this
community of goods, women and children is not for
use by the people. It is governed by the two higher
orders, and is only able to submit to public good.
Marriages, however, will not be left to the discretion
of couples: they are all ephemeral, they will be
solemnly resolved by judges.
However, Plato was under no illusions about the
difficulty of applying his system. He knew that the
doctrine of ideas on which it rests was inaccessible to
the crowd, that therefore the constitution should be
imposed and it could bring a philosopher king in the
manner of Plato.
He hoped to find this man a providential moment in
the person of Dionysius the Younger and in that of
his friend Dion, both dictators. Its failure to the first
and the second assassination took away his illusions.
However, policy had always been one of his
overriding concerns. He did not detach. He took the
pen in his old age to draw another constitution. The
result of which was his writing of “The Rules” towards
the end of his life. It is based on the same principles,
but it is more convenient and gives up the community
property, women and children.
Aristotle is in favor of democracy.
Plato and Morality
The moral character of Plato is both ascetic and
intellectual. Plato recognises many, like Socrates,
that happiness is the natural end of life, but pleasures
follow the same hierarchy as the soul.
The three parts of the soul give us each a particular
pleasure:
– A reason, the pleasure of knowing,
– At heart, the rewards of ambition,
– Instincts, the coarse pleasures that Plato calls the
pleasure of gain (Republic, 580 d).
To find out what is the best of these three pleasures,
one must consult those who experienced it. However,
the artisan, who continues to gain, is completely
foreign to the two other pleasures. The ambitious, in
turn, does not know the joy of science. Only
the philosopher, according to Plato, has experienced
three kinds of pleasure and can give expert advice.
But in his view, the purest and greatest of all
pleasures is that of knowing.. In this endeavour, the
body is a hindrance to the soul: it is like a lead weight
holding back our flight to the upper regions of the
Idea. Thus, it is in the subordination of lower desires
to the desire to know that virtue resides. Once in the
knowledge of the good, man is naturally virtuous,
whereas vice always comes of ignorance. While
ignorance is reduced to a miscalculation, Plato does
not consider less punishable. The wicked, he said,
should afford itself the atonement. If it escapes into
the world, it will not escape the other.

Plato and aesthetics

The aesthetics of Plato depend on his theory of
Ideas, as well as morality and politics that he has
learned. Ideas are immutable and eternal, as are our
arts which remain immutable and fixed forever. Plato
leaves room for no innovation in this field. Ideally,
once reached, it will stick to it or copy it all the time.
In addition, it leaves the artist no freedom to serve
other goals than morality and politics. (Republic, 401
b). Thus, he banished all the musical modes that
could affect the severity of warriors, refused the
tragedy that could soften their heart and condemns
the buffoonery like laughter, which he finds contrary
to the dignity that they should keep. Even though
Plato admired Homer, and knew his tales by heart,
he does not find favour in his eyes: the madman has
indeed had the audacity to depict the gods as
immoral as men! But it is the painters and sculptors
of which he is the least fond of. Indeed, in the eyes of
the philosopher, the artist is and must remain a mere
imitator.
But what is exactly is an imitation?
To reproduce the image of a physical object that is
itself only a copy of an idea. This is why Plato
considers the artist, not only as an impersonator but
more as an imitator in the second degree. For
example, if the craftsman making furniture inspired by
the idea (or form) of this piece, which God is sole
author, the artist who painted just for his copy of the
working artisan.

The supra-sensible in Plato’s work

It is in the Timaeus that one must look for the
explanation that Plato gave of the world in general
and of humans in particular. There is a great God
who made the world in its image. He did not create
anything, as the God of Jews or Christians, for in
Plato’s view there has always coexisted two
substances: the incorporeal and indivisible soul and
the other material and divisible.
This is the recurring theme of the Greeks: the
demiurge was first created the material world. The
principle of one and that the multiple was born a kind
of intermediate substance: the soul of the world. For
Plato, the world was born on time, a measure of the
stars dance. To inhabit the world, the Demiurge was
first created the gods (stars or mythological gods)
and charged to give life to animals, so as not to be
responsible for their imperfections. The gods have a
well-shaped body of beings, including that of the man
they were with a soul. According to his behaviour
(good or bad), the soul of man will return after the
physical death of the star’s envelope in which it
originates or travels from body to body until it is
purified.

Aristotle vs Plato : A critical pupil

Plato owed much to his predecessors. He took on the
definition of being given by the Eleatics: one,
unchanging, free from multiplicity, change (the world
of ideas). At the same time, he recognised with the
multiplicity of things Democritus and Heraclitus with
the reality of becoming (the sensible world). Finally,
he acknowledged the sophists’ claim that all science
is impossible if it is in the sensible world that we seek
in the subject. To establish a science, Plato had to
choose a different starting point: what if the object
was assigned to the intelligible world of science
rather than the physical world? Is science still
impossible? No, says Plato, and who thinks he can,
without sacrificing any of his three postulates
constitute a true science. Aristotle’s argument
against the ideas of Plato is everywhere in his work,
but especially in Metaphysics, I, 9, XIII and XIV. In this
book, Aristotle explains the origin of the Platonic
theory. It on two key principles:
– Plato agreed with Heraclitus that the sensible world
is a perpetual change
– He agreed with Socrates that the general, as a
stable, can alone be the object of science.
Aristotle admits that as Plato: “There is no science to
universal” meaning that for him as for Plato, there
can be no science other than the supra-sensible.
But Plato designed the supra-sensible world as
existing alongside, outside the perceptible world. In
addition, he considers the species or ideas as real
substances (ousia). Finally, not content with the world
of ideas separate from the world of sense, he goes
further still and separates the ideas of each other.
This is what Aristotle does not admit. What he
criticises the Platonism can be reduced to three main
criticisms:
1) The theory of ideas is not justified, and what is to
be achieved by them may well be achieved without
them. Indeed, the content is exactly the same as that
of things. For example, in the idea of man as such,
what is there more than in the real man? Aristotle
sees the ideas as a mere duplicate of sensible things.
2) Taken by itself, this theory is untenable and
contains elements that destroy it. Thus, “it seems
impossible that the substance was separated from
what is substance, then how could ideas, which are
substances of things, would they separate things? “(I
Méta., 9, 991 b 1).
In short: by definition, the substance cannot be
separated from the thing it is in substance. It is as if
my being finally had nothing to do with my body.
3) Suppose, however, that the substance can exist
apart. So there would be ideas for everything, not
only of natural things (the idea of cat) but also all
products of human art (the idea of a table) and
maybe even ideas for negations, that is to say, non-
being, which is absurd.
Similarly, we can infer from Plato’s theory that there
are ideas of things past since we also rehash
memories, and ideas of the relationships we also
believe.
In addition, one wonders if there are fewer ideas than
things, or as many ideas. In fact, there are several
ideas for everything, for each subject can be defined
by several predicates.
To summarise, Aristotle’s philosophy is a theory of
ideas that would simplify everything and complicate
everything … For him, it does not explain the physical
world.
It does not bring final cause. Aristotle criticises
Plato’s conception of the Good, the Agaton, which
sometimes is a cause, sometimes not. Causality is
not essential to the Agaton, as it comes by addition.
For Aristotle, the Platonic idea is simply a formal
cause, not an efficient or final cause. This is not a
physical or metaphysical, but only because of all
logic. The idea does not serve to explain the
production of things which it cannot generate. It
cannot even explain the knowledge we have.
General Summary
– The general cannot be a substance. The
assimilation of a substance is to make it infertile and
unintelligible.
– The general cannot be an efficient cause or final
cause.
– Plato was wrong to grant the sophists that this
world can be known scientifically, it is absolutely
inexplicable. Once this concession is made, there
remained no doubt that, outside of the world of
senses, there lies another world: the world of ideas.
For Aristotle, this assumption was not necessary.
Instead of replacing the material world to another
world, simply determine the point of view one must
consider the world to find it intelligible.
Aristotle, therefore, seeks not another world than the
sensible world, but only a different perspective than
the purely logical.