Influences of socratic philoso
Influences of socratic philosoWESTERN CIVILIZATION
In today's modern world, much of our own culture's beliefs and
morals are directly due to the impact of Socratic philosophy on
European thinkers, and therefore our own in the western world. This
philosophy, was based upon the thoughts of Socrates, who was an
Athenian philosopher and possibly the most enigmatic figure in the
entire history of philosophy.
To begin, after about 450 B.C., Athens was considered the cultural
center of the Greek world, and from then on, Athenian philosophy
took a new direction. In the past, the Greek world had experienced
ideas presented by the natural philosophers (or pre-Socratic, since
they were born before Socrates), which were the earliest Greek
philosophers, and were mainly concerned with the natural or physical
world and it's processes. This concept gives the pre-Socratics a
central position in the history of science.
After the pre-Socratics, emerged the sophists, whose name meant
in definition, "wise and informed people". The sophists were a group
of itinerant teachers and philosophers from the Greek hellas who
flocked to Athens, where they made a living by teaching the citizens
of Athens for money. Socrates himself had long been accused of
being a sophist (a designation he bitterly resented), as his thoughts
were very similar to those of a sophist.
During the age of the sophists, Socrates (470-399 B.C.) became
known as one to talk with the people he met in the marketplaces and
city squares of Athens, and could also have been seen standing lost
in thought for hours on end. Although he never once wrote a line,
Socrates would become one of the philosophers who has had the
greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the
dramatic manner or circumstances of his death, which have been
questioned for 2,400 years. He would however not be the first or last
to have seen things through to the bitter end, and suffer the
punishment of death for the sake of his convictions.
Since Socrates recorded none of his discussions or thoughts on
philosophy, we know of his life mainly through the works of Plato, who
was a pupil of Socrates. Plato used Socrates as his principal
mouthpiece or character in a number of written dramatized
discussions on philosophy, or Dialogues. However, this idea of who
Socrates "really" was is relatively unimportant, because of the fact
that the portrayal of Socrates which Plato portrays is one that has
inspired and shaped the ways of thinkers in the western world for
almost 2,500 years.
The essence of Socrates' method of art, called discourse, was
giving the impression that he did not want to instruct but rather
discuss, like one trying to learn from those he spoke with, instead of
the traditional method of lecturing....
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