Socrates, the great mind-philosopher who we recognize today as a legendary Athenian, was one such figure who was able to usher in era of philosophical inquiry that still lingers in our present day. Enriched in his own hidden wisdom and in logic of common sense, Socrates was a man in search of factual logic, truth and reasoning about wisdom. His life-long mission became more than just a simple search; rather it turned into a path of complex missions where answers of true wisdom lead him to face charges of corrupting society. Despite all circumstances of his philosophical life, Socrates remains one of the most significant and enigmatic figures in the world of Western philosophy. As a remarkable and influential thinker, Socrates’ devotion in seeking wisdom and thorough reasoning transformed the entire world of philosophical establishment.
Throughout his philosophical years, Socrates pursued genuine knowledge rather than ordinary victory over his challenger; and in the mean time Socrates employed logical tactics of “the pursuit of truth” which was developed by the Sophists. Socrates’ fearless ability, purpose and willingness to call everything into question, and to accept nothing less than an satisfactory justification of the nature of things, made him the first and valid advocate of critical philosophy. For example, his unique situational approach, use of methods and the ability to solve problems came into play by breaking down the problem into a series of questions, where answers gradually distilled better solutions while the challenger and the challenged explore the position implications that carefully triggers and stimulate illume ideas and rational and possibly unintentional critical thinking. Consequently, Socrates would disprove and challenge any given contradictory claim with a counterexample that would lead to a modified assertion closer to the truth, which Socrates would then challenge again.
In “Apology” the Athenian democracy put Socrates on trial and charged him with crippling state religion and corrupting the youth. In his defense, his speech consisted of his approach to philosophy by exposing and connecting its relations to real life. Socrates’ commitment to mindful reasoning and genuine knowledge was what individualized him from the rest. To call everything into question and justify claims logically and rationally.
In contrast to Socrates method, Sophists were offering an alternative in education that claimed to be able to teach anything which was particularly attractive for wealthy families, their teaching was controversial and touched on important philosophical themes where they advocated a naturalistic worldview in place of the traditional and older mythological worldview, which served to undermined traditional moral and religious values of the children they were instructing. Additionally their teachings included an technique called anti-logic, which involved arguing both sides of a case as strongly as possible where as a result of those teachings was that Sophists were accused of undermining the very notion of facts and truth by making the weaker argument appear stronger. Moreover, there was an ongoing debate among the Pre-Socratic philosophers whether so-called facts about the world are simply matters of human convention or matters of nature (custom versus nature) where Sophists repeatedly defended the “custom” position, especially in matters of political systems and ethics.
Evidently, Socrates’ philosophical mission was based on: “He asked the oracle to tell him whether anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser” (Apology, pg 2). Having that thought, Socrates led his effort to refute the oracle by communicating with notable and honorable Athenians who he believed were wiser. No matter how the conversation would end, Socrates concluded that he has an awareness of his own ignorance, the very principle that each of them lacked. His questioning tactics were his main weapon where he helped individuals to achieve genuine self-knowledge (simply made them think outside of the box) even if it often turns out to be undesirable in its nature. His remarkable devotion to truth left his loved ones and close friends puzzled after being convicted by the jury and by refusing to accept exile to silence as his penalty. Instead, Socrates upholds his public discussion of the great issues of life, wisdom and virtue that is the most essential part of any valuable human which leads us to his philosophical argument of “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Base on Plato's life representation of Socrates, we see that he is willing to die for this principles rather than abandon his loyalty to philosophy. Perhaps now, Socratic model and tactics of philosophical thinking can be applied today, where many of us are presented with the same or similar inevitable self-conflict between philosophy, life, and death while many of us everyday faced with great opportunities to decide between one’s loyalty to the truth, reasoning and wisdom.
For Socrates, the search for knowledge, truth and wisdom begins with an attempt to actually understand the nature of who we truly are as human beings. Socrates believed that before one can presume to understand the world as whole, he/she must begin by understanding the reality of his/hers own consciousness. I believe that Socratic point of view is that the world is exclusively reduced to the human world and everything else being inconsequential. The nature of his philosophic views focused on the strength of the soul, virtue, as the knowledge and quest for truth through the questioning of beliefs. Socrates believed in the search for wisdom is understood in terms of ones need to understand precisely who he/she is.
In “Meno” by Plato introduces us to the metaphysical and epistemological themes that portrays Socrates's fate and focuses on the general question of virtue and the origin of our moral knowledge. Witnessing Socratic opinion through out the readings, it is evident that the focus of his discussion from morality to epistemology is focused on how we possibly identify what virtue is.
The Greek’s belief of virtue states that it is the ability/skill in some particular respect. Based on the definition of virtue is a moral excellence. It is a quality that is seen to be morally good and is therefore valued as the building blocks of principle and good moral being. Socrates sees and understands true virtue from the perspective of knowledge, wisdom, courage and moderation. He argues that humans are very different from one another and unequal in virtue. Interestingly, Socrates claims that virtue “is something” (puzzling ingredient) that varies among those humans, but desire for one's belief to be good is perfectly universal since no human being ever knowingly desires what is bad: “Then the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue than the non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is accompanied by justice or honesty is virtue, and whatever is devoid of justice is vice” (Plato, Meno pg 6). Interestingly, Socrates’ statement highlights one’s moral experience, where possible realization of what is right spontaneously results in the need to experience it, despite the fact that one’s moral experience can possibly be mistrusted or misunderstood.
In “Meno” the dialog portrays some melodramatic scene where Socrates challenges Meno into a debate of truth, where Meno (self-confidently) assumes his knowledge of virtue where as a result he’ll find himself in a state of confusion and hostile position by Meno suggesting that virtue is simply the desire for good things. As the debate unfolds between Socrates and Meno, Socrates asks: “What is the nature of the bee? and you answer that there are many kinds of bees, and I reply: But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape?” (Plato, Meno pg 2). Also, we may say that, the virtue is the gardener who cares for his garden all his life, by doing hard work gains intrinsic and extrinsic awards: personal satisfaction and fresh produce. Due to Meno’s inability to give a true definition of virtue, Socrates was sure that Meno would be able to understand that a virtue is particularly different from function to function, from goal to goal and defiantly from person to person.
The great foundation of virtue raised a puzzling question on ability to learn about what we do not know. Socrates’ believed that: " The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection, all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive” (Plato, Meno p8). On that note, this argumental statement brings us to the assumption or possibility of either we already know and/or aware of (hidden unknown knowledge) what we are looking for or we simply don't know what we're looking; which brings us to the irony of our knowledge that arises from the (back to our minds) past eternal soul experiences.
The irony of knowledge raised the questions about our own unique nature and function that as projected by Socrates highlights the fact of the ability of acknowledging that we already know for a fact of what we need to know, but the question still remains whether or not virtue can be taught (Plato, Meno pg 19). With that being said, argument remains that virtue is a form of wisdom that is acquirable and benefits our education which leads to another Socratic point of: “if virtue could be possibly taught than we should be able to identify both those who teach it and those who learn from them, which case its impossible” (Plato, Meno p19). By stating this, Socrates overwrites the Sophists approach/methods by challenging those who claimed that they were successful educators of virtue. Perhaps the best way to understand Socrates would be to suppose that virtue is a genuine opinion that simply happens to lack of “possible rational justification” which today we understand as “intuition” thinking which leads us to conclude that the difference between genuine knowledge and the plain opinion is of the greatest importance and it is not enough to accept true opinions or beliefs in order to be right, but we must have logical reasons that adequately and accurately justifies them.
In the “Euthyphro”, a sharply critical conversation unfolds where Socrates becomes engaged with a conceited young man who is absolutely aware of his own ethical correctness. The challenge begins where Socrates asks him to identify and explain what is "piety” (moral duty) and its actual purpose (Euthyphro pg 3). The answer Socrates was looking for was more than just a list of applied actions, interestingly enough he was seeking for more virtuous answer. Remarkably, Euthyphros response of what makes “right actions right” is just a justification of the gods’ approval or it’s a gods’ love, which unleashed the subjected to the full force of Socrates's critical and intellectual view.
The question of right vs wrong creates a never-ending debate among people, and most likely extends to the gods as well as they too disagree among themselves on moral issues. Evidently in the faced dilemma, Socrates somehow agrees with Euthypro’s point: “But I believe, Socrates, that all the gods would be agreed as to the propriety of punishing a murderer: there would be no difference of opinion about that” (Euthypro, pg 4). For the purpose of the discussion that the gods possibly to seamlessly agree with each other. The argument takes significant turn when Euthypro states: “I should say that what all the gods love is pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious,” where Socrates response was: “We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The point, which I should first wish to understand, is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (Euthypro, pg 5). Evidently, Socrates created an official dilemma from a (misleading) question on pious and god’s love where Euthyphro had no legitimate explanation. Supposedly, if the right act is pious because the gods love, then moral correctness is simply arbitrary, which simply depends on the sudden mind change of the gods. But then, if the gods approve or love right actions (because they are truly right), then it is a possibility of some kind hidden extraordinary values, which people might come to know independently.
Dilemma becomes significant difficult by defining morality by reference to an external authority where actions become right or wrong only because of the authority's approval or/and disapproval, where as a result it is impossible to attribute a moral wisdom to the authority itself. Even though, humans have a code of morality, which is a principle used to distinguish what we consider right from what we consider wrong.
But, if the authority approves or disapproves certain actions, those decisions must be available to all. So based on “Euthyphro” we can conclude that Socrates' approach of persistent questioning guides us to eliminate one incorrect answer that avoids unnecessary questioning which navigates us toward a significant degree of intellectual independence. The Socratic method resulted in a impartial victory even though they did not produce an evident conviction in those who were involved.
To conclude, Socrates became known for his great tactics in logical arguments where as a result society has accepted philosophical approach of questioning. His tactics of critical thinking, question examining, wise analysis of given conversations opened up the door to logic and wisdom to confront the challenges of the truths in the modern philosophical world. Socrates’ ability to challenge people in becoming open minded was the primary goal of his life where his complex, proactive, elusive and philosophical personality left many to search for a truth, morals and wisdoms of life. Although Socrates is no longer alive, his tactics are greatly valued and used today. We learn and teach others to question, to explore and to analyze because of Socrates’ long life contribution to the world, and his challenging life in search of truth, knowledge, wisdom and beliefs that left a mark on the brains of philosopher in our world.