Why is Socrates considered a great philosopher?

Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens, the founder of Western philosophy, An enigmatic figure among philosophers, the Socratic approach to philosophical topics such as rationalism and ethics. The Platonic Socrates (Plato was his student) lends his name to the concept of the Socratic method and also to Socratic irony. Socrates exerted a strong influence on philosophers in later antiquity and has continued to do so in the modern era.

There had been philosophers before Socrates: strong men like Thales and Heraclitus, subtle men like Parmenides and Zeno, and seers like Pythagoras and Empedocles. But what Socrates did make special for the world. Why does he stand out from others? Why are philosophers before Socrates called pre-Socraterian philosophers?

They were physical philosophers. They sought physical phenomena, physis, or the nature of external things. They focused on the laws and constituents of the material and measurable worlds. Socrates said, "All these are very good," but there are infinitely worthier things than all these. There is the mind of man. What is a man and what can he become? Socrates asked. So, he prayed for the human soul. For instance, if men too discoursed about justice, he asked, "What is it?"

People easily settle the problems of life and death with a few abstract words. He asked, "What do you mean by these abstract words: honour, virtue, morality, patriotism?"

Socrates loved to deal with the above questions, and he also questioned this.

He asked more than he answered.

So, no topic could have been more relevant than this for his disciples, the young Athenians of that generation. What was happening? The faith of those youths had been destroyed. They are no more faithful to the goddesses of Olympus, the moral code, which they believed as morality had broken.  Fear of man to the innumerable deities had lost.

The government of Athens executed him by forcing him to commit suicide by poisoning.

"I know that I know nothing." - Socrates.

Sileesh Mullasseri

Did Athens have a democracy or an oligarchy?

 

In ancient philosophy, there were two schools of thought that were popular. One was most similar to Rousseau (Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher). The school argued that nature is good and civilization is bad. Naturally, all men are equal; civilization has made them into classes. Another school, most like Nietzsche (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher), claimed that all men are unequal, contrary to the previous one. Morality was an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong. That power is the supreme virtue and the supreme desire of man. Of all the forms of government, the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.

Obviously, the latter had an attack on democracy, which was the rise of the wealthy minority in Athens. It was called the Oligarchical Party. How it can be considered a democracy is not clear. There was not much democracy to denounce in Athens. Aristocracy was the symbol of power and government. Athens had 400,000 citizens, and about 250,000 were slaves, without any political rights. Only a few of the 150,000 free citizens are represented in Ecclesia, Athens' general assembly or parliament, where state policies are debated and decided. The Dikasteria, the supreme court of Athens, consisted of over a thousand members to make bribery expensive, selected through alphabetical root among the free citizens. However, no institution has ever been democratic, the meaning that we have assigned to democracy.

Philosophy started with astronomy or material science?

Philosophy probably started with astronomy, because the first Greek philosophers were astronomers. Primarily, this knowledge is used to navigate; the stars become their guides for navigation. With philosophy, men grew bold enough to attempt explaining processes before attributing them to supernatural agencies and powers.

But first, this philosophy was physical. Ancient people looked at the material world and asked questions about what was the final constituent of things, which resulted in Democritus' thought of materialism. He was an ancient pre-Socratic philosopher who lived in Greece between 460 and 370 BC. He is remembered for developing the atomic theory of the universe.

Leucippus, another pre-Socratic philosopher, was the mentor of Democritus, credited as the first philosopher to develop a theory of atomism. Democritus's speculation of atoms was taken from his mentor Leucippus. Their contribution has a partial resemblance to the atomic theory of the nineteenth century. So, some consider Democritus more of a scientist than a philosopher. Even though none of his writings have survived, many considered him the "father of modern science."