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
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