Classical Greek Philosophy: Socrates and Plato

When we think of Ancient Greece, apart from the  myths and architecture, we almost immediately think of the most impactful philosophers of the  era. These were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, a most famous lineage of thinkers, each acting as  the teacher of the next. Socrates was a bit of a character.

He exhibited eccentric behavior and was  generally thought of as enigmatic and irreverent. He produced no written text of his own. Every  direct record we have of him is through the works of others, like Plato, his pupil, Aristophanes,  a comedic playwright, and Xenophon, a historian.

The Socratic problem in academia refers to  the fact that there are several different interpretations of who he was and exactly what his  ideas were – not unlike many of his predecessors, and even some more recent thinkers, but  undoubtedly none as significant as him. Undisputedly, Socrates was a public figure, in  that he not only attended the busiest venues of his hometown, Athens, but he also frequently  gave unprompted speeches and interloped experts or prominent figures on the streets for public  demonstrations. His method of argumentation was called “Maieutics”, from Greek maieutikos, meaning  “midwifery”, in that through fierce questioning of established, commonsensical ideas he would “birth”  new and better ones.

This has been disputed however, as in most instances, much like Zeno  of Elea, this method was seemingly only focused on reducing the opponent’s perspectives into  absurd consequences, known today as the “appeal to extremes”, and not necessarily committed  to creating new ideas. Socrates was frequently contrasted by Plato with the Sophists, who would  claim great knowledge and charge for it. Rather, Socrates’ goal was to demonstrate the “ignorance”,  or the lack of knowledge one would have about matters they’d take for granted, while also  acknowledging his own, since this would be the prerequisite for acquiring wisdom – thus his  famous phrase “I know that I know nothing.

” He would confront a judge, for example, and inquire  over the concept of justice, attempting to refute his response by leading the judge’s response to  extreme cases and into contradiction. From there, he would postulate further definitions and  repeat the method until a “better” understanding of justice would arise. The examination of life,  practices, and virtues would be crucial for him, as knowledge and wisdom would be the only  way to achieve true happiness and virtue, or to live in a “good” manner.

Evil and misery,  thus, would be connected with ignorance, or lack of knowledge. To know, then, what is  good, is to be motivated to act in a good manner. This is one of the first proper ethical systems  ever developed, with clear definitions of what is “good” and “bad”, and a reasonably adequate  theory of action concerning them.

Whether he had any actual faith is a point of contention, as he  believed in an immortal soul akin to the divine, and considered that to know and constantly examine  the soul through philosophy would be the best way of worshipping the gods, if they exist. It is  this way that he purportedly lived and died, as his notoriety and constant confrontation of  influential figures resulted in a trial which led to his demise. He was accused of corrupting  the youth, as he frequented popular places with young people and was known for having an entourage  around him.

He was accused of impiety against the Athenian gods and religious institutions, and  was also considered a threat to democracy, as his practices led him to question nature without  relying on gods, and also to question political concepts, thus by proxy important religious  figures, and politicians. Because of this, he was sentenced to death – a sentence  he embraced. Exile was an option and his followers offered to break him out, but he  refused.

He drank hemlock and died in 399 BCE. Let’s now move on to the most famous pupil  of Socrates. Plato veered in similar fashion in constructing his ethical, political, and  metaphysical conceptions into a unified theory.

He believed, as did his tutor Socrates, that  true philosophy was only accessed in debates and conversations, but he manifested this by  writing in the form of descriptive dialogues. Whether these truly happened or were an accurate  portrayal of real people is up for discussion, but the fact is that they are the first major  written source of philosophy from that time and before. As with the works of Aristotle, they are  our primary reference to the ideas of these early thinkers, and also played a significant  role in shaping what philosophy became.

Plato’s embrace of his teacher’s method was so  deep that he even questioned our perception of reality itself. As many other Greeks of his  time and before him, he was fascinated with mathematical and geometrical perfection, which  led him to notice how the world obtained by the senses, or the “material” world, was always  flawed, and our perception never truly reliable. However, the laws of geometry were always  constant, unchanging.

This led Plato to believe in a world of pure reason, an abstract reality which  underlies all we ever perceive with our faulty senses. From this he made his famous analogy  comparing reality to life in a cave: we are held as prisoners since childhood facing moving shadows  on a wall cast from a great fire, hearing echoes, all from puppeteers hiding in a wall behind  us. We’d see the shadow of a chair and call it a “chair”, hear the sound of a bird and associate  it with a bird; but these would be mere illusions.

One could even be freed and made to look at their  source, but the sheer brightness of the fire would hurt, and the prisoner would gladly return to  their ignorance in the shadows. But if one would strive beyond the light, even against their will,  past the brightness of the fire and into the sun, their eyes would eventually adjust to the sight of  the actual objects in the real world. However, in attempting to return to free their former fellow  prisoners, their eyes would struggle to adjust to the cave’s darkness, and his confused blindness  to them would be a sign to not follow his path.

This “world outside the cave” would be the world  of the Forms, the perfect, abstract world holding all knowledge in its purest incarnation, and the  shadows would represent the limited world of the senses. The puppeteers would be scientists and  mathematicians attempting to understand the Forms, and the outside world would be the focus of  philosophy. The realm of Forms then would contain not only the pure essences of geometry,  for example, but also of the virtues and the Good itself, which would be a “transcendental”,  or an “immaterial” property of everything good.

Much like Socrates, good actions would require  proper knowledge of good and exercise of virtues for a happy, fruitful life. To break the  shackles then, one would need proper education, especially from philosophers, which would not  be easy or intuitive, as it would be akin to the Socratic method with a greater focus on discussion  – as evident in his manner of writing – and the abstraction into the ideal world of the Forms.  He would call this the “Dialectic Method”.

This entire process intertwines with his  political ideas, where in his Republic, led of course by a philosopher-king, those which  excelled in certain virtues would act in public roles accordingly, and the dialectic method  of education would be the standard in order to stimulate everyone into a philosophical  life. The most courageous would be soldiers, those with a proper equilibrium of virtues  would be a judge, as justice would be a virtue encompassing all others, and so on. Plato  already had written on utopias, and this version of government, to him, would be reasonably  realistic, even if difficult to achieve.

Although an in-depth analysis of both  Socrates and Plato would take a lifetime, hopefully we now have a better grasp of  these important, foundational figures for human knowledge. Now let’s move forward and get a  sense of what logic was like in this time period.