Socrates - Father of Western Philosophy Documentary

The man known to history as Socrates, or Socratis in Greek, was born between 470 and 468 BC in the village of Alopi, a suburb of the Greek city-state of Athens, which lay just to the southeast of the city walls. Despite the fact that he is one of the undisputed intellectual fathers of Western civilization and one of the most consequential philosophers and thinkers in history, scholars actually know shockingly few biographical details about Socrates for certain. His father, Sofronis, was described in some sources as a stonemason or sculptor, and his mother, Fite, was said to have

been a midwife. At first glance, these details seem to suggest that Socrates had a working-class upbringing, which was probably not the case. As one of the most famous public educators in Athens during his time, Socrates almost certainly received an elite education as a young man. Furthermore, his close friends and colleagues were some of Athens' wealthiest, most prominent, and most influential citizens—something that sounds particularly unlikely for the son of a low-status, working-class family even at the dawn of Athenian democracy. This set of suppositions is just one example of the primary means by which modern scholars have

attempted to construct a biography of the historical Socrates. This task has proven difficult and endlessly frustrating for historians because of the relative lack of reliable sources. A major barrier to our understanding of Socrates is that he left behind no writings of his own; all we know of him is what other ancient scholars and chroniclers wrote about him. Some of these sources are considered more reliable than others, although virtually none of them can be considered conclusively authoritative by modern standards. For various reasons, a majority of historians tend to treat with greater acceptance the biographical details about

Socrates which appear in the dialogues written by Plato and Xenophon, because both of these writers were pupils and friends of Socrates himself. Memories of Socrates would have still been relatively fresh for the people of Athens when dialogues like Plato's "Apology" and "Crito," or Xenophon's "Memorabilia," were first published roughly 10 to 20 years after his death. It stands to reason that if the biographical accounts of Plato and Xenophon had diverged dramatically from what Athenians remembered of Socrates' conduct, his teachings, or his trial and execution, rebuttals likely would have appeared in the literary and historical record. Plato

and Xenophon, therefore, may more accurately represent the historical Socrates than other sources, most of which were written many more decades or even centuries after Socrates died by ancient scholars such as Aristotle, Diogenes Laërtius, and Plutarch. Have you ever wondered what consciousness is and how it came into being? These questions are among the greatest unsolved mysteries of science. For centuries, scientists and philosophers have been mystified by the connection between mind and matter. In his groundbreaking new book, "The Dawn of Mind," Dr. James Cook, an Oxford-trained neuroscientist and friend of this channel, offers a compelling and bold

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interested in discovering the nature of your own mind, follow the link in the video description and pre-order "The Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive" by Dr. James Cook, coming 3rd of December 2024. All this being said, there is still reason to read the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon with a certain amount of skepticism regarding just how accurately they may have depicted or quoted Socrates. Both writers would have been subject to bias because he was their beloved teacher and mentor, and indeed their reverence for Socrates' wit and wisdom is readily apparent in these

texts. However, it is also possible that these authors may have shaped the words and actions of Socrates for their own rhetorical or literary purposes. This is not to say that either Plato or Xenophon, or any other ancient writer, historian, or chronicler, might have done so with malicious or particularly fraudulent intent. Some historians have noted that it was common in the literature of the ancient world to pay tribute to important people, either by crediting them with heroic acts or admirable ideas or even by writing something in their name. Some writers might even have put their own

words into the mouths of more famous, respected, or beloved figures in order to lend legitimacy to their own theses and ideas, which many scholars believe both Plato and Xenophon did in some of their dialogues about Socrates. With all these considerations in mind, attempting to reconstruct the historical Socrates might seem to some like an exercise in futility, since none of the extant sources can be considered reliable by modern standards. Yet this certainly hasn't hindered historians from trying, and numerous writers and researchers throughout the last two and a half millennia have continued, in spite of these challenges,

to pursue a clearer picture of Socrates. Very little is known about his early life and adolescence, but historians have attempted to reconstruct a picture of it with the scant few details available in the Socratic canon, combined with our historical knowledge of the lives of boys and men in classical Athens. The village of Alopi, where Socrates was born, was home to roughly 3,000 people, a little more than a third of whom were Athenian citizens. Only freeborn Athenian men were eligible for citizenship; the rest of the population of the... Dee, or the Village of Alip, would have

been represented by slaves, women, children, and non-Athenian foreigners, none of whom were eligible for citizenship. The life experiences of Socrates that are known to us indicate that he himself was almost certainly an Athenian citizen. That he attained citizenship himself likely means that his father, Sophroniscus, was also an Athenian citizen. Now, that said, Sophroniscus, as a skilled tradesman, probably did not come from a particularly affluent or aristocratic background. The relatively privileged youth that his son Socrates seems to have enjoyed, however, suggests that he had achieved some financial success in his profession and had attained some social

standing in his community. Sophroniscus counted highly influential and wealthy Athenians among his friends, such as Lmenus, the son of the Athenian statesman Aristides the Just. If Sophroniscus was indeed a stonemason or sculptor, he was probably not a lowly artisan or laborer, but perhaps the foreman of his own shop or quarry. The master mason descriptions of Socrates' mother, Fite, suggest that she was better born than Sophroniscus—another factor which points to the probable professional and social success of her husband. We know even less about Fite than we do about Sophroniscus. In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates referred

to her as a "maya," or midwife, but it is unclear if this was meant in a literal professional sense. Some scholars wonder if Socrates was not speaking metaphorically and referring instead to a matronly or nurturing quality in his mother. Athenian married women, even those of high social standing, had numerous domestic duties, which suggests that such women might not have had much time to dedicate themselves to pursuing a profession. However, according to one study of a small sample of ancient inscriptions, the majority of the professional midwives identified in Classical Greece were freeborn women of respectable status,

if not high social status. Such women even published medical texts and lectured publicly in their area of expertise, so it's possible that Fite might have been a legitimately practicing midwife at one point or another in her life. There was no such thing as organized public education in Athens in Socrates' day. He would have learned to read and write at home with a tutor, most likely an enslaved non-Athenian Greek or other foreigner taken captive in war. Almost all Athenian families of middle-class or upper-class status owned at least a few slaves, and some of these individuals were

tasked with educating the family's children until the age of 12, teaching them primarily to read and write and perhaps also to do basic arithmetic. The male children of freeborn and affluent Athenians during the fifth century BC seemed to enjoy a good deal of freedom and stimulation, while they were expected to be silent and docile in adult company. Boys, nonetheless, often accompanied their fathers into public spaces and adult forums. Young Socrates likely attended theatrical productions, religious festivals, athletic contests, informal public debates, or even banquets at the homes of family friends with his father. Athenian culture also

placed marked emphasis on physical health and leisure, and thus games, sports, and exercise would have been valued and were encouraged for boys of all ages. Athenian boys learned to swim and to wrestle; they played games of chance against one another with knuckle bones, much like dice games. By the age of 12, Athenian boys of middle to high social status usually began attending lessons in gymnastics and music. Training at the gymnasia was emphasized as necessary not only for personal health, but to build strength and fitness among young up-and-coming male citizens who would be required to serve

in the military. Music studies in classical Athens were far more comprehensive as a subject area than they are today. Not only did the study of music involve learning to play an instrument such as the lyre, the flute, or the aulos, a double reed pipe, but it also involved the study of dance and poetry under the tutelage of the famed music master Lampos. Young Socrates learned to play the lyre, lessons which he resumed once again in middle age when the musician Konos began to instruct him in the newer, more innovative playing techniques. In his youth, Socrates

would have been taught to sing and to dance, to memorize and recite poetry by Pindar, Sappho, Anacreon, and other lyric poets. As we see, music studies encompassed not only music and dance, but also literature, since much lyric poetry was set to music. Interestingly, music in classical Athens offered a good deal of history study and religious education in addition to education in the artistic disciplines of music and dance. This is because the poets were not just poets, but also often historians and documentarians of the legends of the gods, and music and dance were often instrumental in

classical Greek religious rites. This period of musical and gymnastic education in Socrates' young life probably lasted for two to four years. It is also possible that Socrates might have begun apprenticing to his father's trade sometime during his teenage years or early 20s. Athenian law required that fathers secure a professional livelihood for their sons by the time they came of age, and it was fairly common for boys to pursue the same professions that their fathers had. Socrates may have spent any number of months or years working as a mason or a sculptor in his father's shop.

Yet even if he did, it may not have been something demanded of him, but perhaps something he pursued merely to keep himself busy and fit until he came of age and qualified for military service—something that was demanded of every young Athenian male citizen in Socrates' day. In 454 BC, when Socrates was about 15 years old, the Athenian assembly voted to remove the treasury of the Delian League from the island of Delos to… Athens was supposedly to protect it from potential incursions by the Persians, whom the Greek member states of the Delian League had together defeated

just a few decades before. While this immense war chest, filled with gold and silver, had been constituted for all of the League's member states, who all contributed to it annually for their mutual defense, the rulers of Athens—Heracles and the assembly—evidently decided that it was more a suggestion than a requirement. This was the beginning of a series of developments which eventually led to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles used the Delian treasury to benefit and beautify the city of Athens, which still bore the scars of the Persian invasion. He embarked on an ambitious building program,

which included impressive public edifices and spaces. The crowning glory of this revitalization project was the Parthenon, the exquisite temple of white marble built atop the Acropolis, with a magnificent ivory and gold statue of the goddess Athena within. In the temple sanctuary, no doubt the masons, sculptors, and other stone workers in Athens—perhaps even Socrates’s father, Sophroniscus—received many commissions and benefited handsomely from Pericles’s building program. The Delian League soon began to break down as its member states grew more and more outraged that their annual tributes, intended for the defense of all, seemed instead to be simply enriching

the city of Athens. Pericles soon began to launch military actions against these so-called rogue states, who refused to continue paying tribute. Rather than being a member state in a confederacy of equals, Athens was beginning to conduct itself more and more like an imperialist power, and other Greek states, such as Sparta and Corinth, began to mobilize against Athens and her remaining allies. By the time Socrates came of age, Athens would need every available citizen soldier ready to face a series of armed conflicts, which would continue intermittently for more than 30 years. In the meantime, Socrates was

still completing his education. At some point in his mid to late teens, the philosopher Archelaus became a tutor and mentor to Socrates. Archelaus was a student of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras, who was one of the first thinkers to attribute the workings of the cosmos to natural rather than divine phenomena. Having examined a fallen meteorite, Anaxagoras theorized that the sun was a fiery rock rather than the god Helios, as the Greeks believed. He further posited, correctly as it turned out, that moonlight was merely reflected sunlight. He similarly sought to explain phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and

rainbows as likewise arising from natural processes rather than the divine wrath or benevolence of the gods. In his travel journal, a contemporary scholar, Ion of Chios, reported that in 451 BC, Socrates visited the island of Samos with his tutor Archelaus. It is likely that Archelaus wanted to introduce his young pupil to another one of his own teachers, fellow natural philosopher Melissus of Samos. This trip represents one of the few instances in Socrates's life when he was said to have left his home city-state of Athens and may have been comparable to a modern post-graduation tour. In

Plato's "Apology," Socrates speaks of the fascination he held in his youth for the study of the natural world, although he eventually came to view the dawning field of natural science as less useful and less relevant to society than other philosophical pursuits and concerns. Having mentors and teachers like Archelaus doubtless helped awaken and foster in Socrates an empirical bent of mind, which would prove crucial to the later development of his own philosophical framework. At the beginning of the Greek New Year, after Socrates reached the age of 18, he would have presented himself before the Council of

his Demos, where he would have attained his citizenship and independence. He would have been eligible to claim any property or wealth held in trust for him, eligible to submit for election by lot to public office—for example, as a magistrate or justice of the peace—and eligible to attend and vote in the Athenian assembly. At this point in his life, an Athenian citizen was mostly free to do as he pleased in a professional and personal sense. In Pericles’s Athens, however, the growing need for a robust military force meant that most young men and citizens of Socrates’s age

were called up for military training. The fact that Socrates seems to have become a career soldier for much of his life also attests to his family's comparatively high status; the expense of outfitting a hoplite soldier for a military career would have been nearly unattainable to a working-class Athenian, who probably made no more than one drachma a day, if that. The entire panoply of weapons and armor for a hoplite warrior could cost several hundred drachmas to make, unless one's father handed down his own armor and weapons to his son. New recruits in Athens began their military

training with tours of duty around the Attica peninsula, where they might patrol the outlying villages and Athenian frontier while engaging in regular training exercises, learning and building discipline as a unit. This method of training allowed recruits to build knowledge while keeping them close to home and relatively safe. No sources report whether or not Socrates fought in the Battle of Corona, which was the first major conflict of the Peloponnesian War; he would have been about 22 at the time and of an age most likely to be called up. In the literature of the Socratic canon, Socrates

is only explicitly mentioned as fighting in two particular battles: the Battle of Potidaea and the Battle of Delium. However, these two battles are spaced out over more than a decade, and it might therefore be reasonable to assume that Socrates spent a good portion of his life as a career soldier. Socrates was 38 years old when the three-year campaign of Potidaea began. ...and 46 years old when the Battle of Delium occurred. Athenian troops were rarely required to serve so long, especially at so advanced an age, which might suggest that Socrates served voluntarily in these campaigns. If

he served throughout such a length of time voluntarily and during middle age, it might also be reasonable to assume that he had also spent much of his younger life in his 20s or early 30s becoming an adept and seasoned soldier. The image of the warrior poet is probably not one that many novice students of Socrates would expect to encounter, considering his more famous reputation in history as the barefooted, shabby-dressed, witty, and good-humored old intellectual. Socrates, however, seems to have had an impressive martial reputation on the battlefield. Interestingly, the name Socrates translates to "Safe in strength."

His tolerance for discomfort, pain, and extreme temperatures was remarked upon by his fellow troops and friends. He was said to have marched barefoot and uncomplaining through ice and snow, with little more than a light cloak to cover his armor and keep him warm. At the Battle of Potidaea in 432 BC, he performed a daring rescue of his young protégé Alcibiades, who had foolishly broken ranks and charged the battlefield in pursuit of the fleeing Corinthians. When Alcibiades impetuously charged forward, he did so alone, and the rest of his hoplite unit quickly closed up the gap their

comrade had left, as they had been trained to do. Not one of his unit followed him forward. Breaking ranks in this fashion was ill-advised indeed and could perhaps land a soldier in hot water with his superiors, for the shield of each soldier in the line helped guard the body of the man next to him and enhanced the strength of the line itself against attack. Breaking ranks put one's fellow troops in real and immediate danger. When he saw his young friend fall before a reformed onslaught by the Corinthians, Socrates made the decision to break ranks himself.

He rushed across the battlefield, through the chaos of men hacking each other to bits, before he reached Alcibiades. Carefully and gently, he bore the young man away along with his armor and fallen weapons off the battlefield to safety. Consistent with Socrates' reputation for eschewing ambitions for glory, fame, or preferment, Plato recorded that Socrates insisted that Alcibiades, not himself, should be decorated for bravery. One historian has posited that perhaps Socrates also avoided the adulation because he had, in fact, put his own unit in danger to save his young friend's life. Like the image of the warrior,

the image of the strong, daring, able, and well-built young Socrates sits incongruously apart from our usual image of him as old, bearded, and fat with a receding hairline, as he appears in his portraits and busts. Contemporaries of the elder Socrates, even his friends, described him as famously ugly: a short, balding man with a paunchy middle, a broad snub nose, thick lips, and white, wildly spaced eyes that appeared to bulge. However, in the first bloom of youth as a career soldier, Socrates probably looked very different. Years of gymnastics, military training, if not slinging heavy stones in

his father's workshop, would have given him a straight and well-built figure. His shortness would have appeared as stockiness and solid strength; he might even have been perceived as handsome with his widely spaced eyes, broad nose, and very full lips situated in a younger face, and with what was likely an excellent physique. One is tempted to imagine someone akin to a young Marlon Brando. Although more than one biographer has sought to explore the figure of Socrates in love, we actually know very little about Socrates' personal or romantic life; although, again, that certainly hasn’t stopped historians from

speculating and theorizing. One recent biography posits that as a young man, Socrates might have fallen in love with the famed intellectual Aspasia, a philosopher herself and the de facto wife of Pericles. The textual evidence for this is rather thin; it involves accepting that a female figure named Diotima, whom Socrates mentions in Plato's Symposium as having been his instructress in all matters of love, is in fact Aspasia. The author points out that only one other woman who appears in any of Plato's other 30 dialogues as instructing any of her male contemporaries, including Socrates, is Aspasia herself.

In Plato's Menexenus, she is also depicted as leading philosophical discussions about love. While some historians might find this textual evidence a bit of a stretch, the circumstantial evidence is somewhat more interesting and perhaps slightly more compelling. Sometime in his mid-30s or early 40s, Socrates became a tutor and mentor to the young Alcibiades. The young man he rescued from the battlefield in 432 BC was, in fact, the ward of Pericles himself, who had become Alcibiades' guardian upon the death of his friend Cleiteas, the boy's father, years before. It is unclear whether Socrates took Alcibiades under his

wing before or after the Battle of Potidaea, but Plato records that the two were posted together as tent mates and messmates throughout the campaign. Alcibiades was not only Pericles’ ward; he was also a relation of Aspasia by marriage, probably about the same age as Socrates. Aspasia arrived in Athens in the early to mid-450s, at which time her sister was married to Alcibiades the Elder, the grandfather of the younger Alcibiades. Aspasia lived in Athens for two years before she settled down with Pericles, who was twice her age, and had a son with him, Pericles the Younger.

During her early years in Athens, Aspasia quickly developed a reputation for her impressive education, intelligence, aristocratic bearing, and beauty, and her banquets and symposia were attended by some of Athens's most prominent citizens and thinkers, even Socrates himself, if Plato is correct. With all this in mind, it becomes more difficult to believe... That Socrates did not run in the same social circles as Pericles and Aspasia, and yet, if they were friends or at least social contemporaries, why is Plato so sparing in his references to Aspasia? Why is Pericles, who at some point entrusted his ward and

the son of his old friend to the care and mentorship of Socrates, mentioned only once in any Socratic writings as having known or interacted with the famous philosopher? A branch of Pericles' family, the Outmayon, even came from the same village as Socrates. Xanthe, whom Socrates married in his elderly years, is believed by some scholars to have been Pericles' cousin. Considering all of these connections, one is tempted to view the virtual absence of both Pericles and Aspasia from Plato and Xenophon as deliberate. Perhaps it had more to do with the widespread unpopularity that Pericles suffered from

later on, or the public hostility and resentment towards Aspasia, who was labeled a harlot among many Athenians for her influence over Pericles. Perhaps neither Plato nor Xenophon wanted Socrates tainted by association with these unpopular figures. Then again, a love affair between Socrates and Aspasia in their early 20s, before she married Pericles, might help explain why there are so many apparent connections between the three but almost no recorded interactions between them in the Socratic canon. While this is all largely speculation, it is nonetheless quite interesting new scholarship for us to mull over. What is significantly more

certain is that Socrates was married twice throughout his lifetime. His first wife was named Myto, the daughter of his father's wealthy friend Lysimachus and the granddaughter of Aristides the Just. Socrates is said to have refused to accept a dowry from Myto's father, another factor which argues for his high status, for it likely suggests he did not need it. Very little is known about Myto, but she was likely quite a few years younger than Socrates. Plato records that when Socrates died at 70 years old, he had two sons approaching manhood. This suggests that Socrates' eldest son

was born when he was in his late 40s or early 50s, implying that Myto was probably at least a decade younger than her husband, if not younger. Myto and Socrates had two sons, Menexenus and Sophroniscus. At some point during his 50s, Socrates took a young woman named Xanthe into his household as his mistress. When his wife Myto later died, Socrates married Xanthe, and they had a son named Lles, who was apparently still a child of indeterminate age when Socrates was executed in 399 BC. All of this being said, the details of Socrates' marriages are unclear,

and different accounts suggest Socrates was married exclusively to Xanthe in between his military tours of duty. Months or even years on campaign, Socrates pursued his ongoing study and development of philosophy in his beloved Athens. Socrates famously eschewed the pursuit of wealth and never accepted money from the students he taught. Some historians believe that Socrates inherited several rental properties from which he derived his income, and he would also have been paid a salary and pension for his military service, which puts a dent in his reputation as the impoverished intellectual. Still, the image of Socrates with which

we are most familiar is the shabby, barefooted, gregarious, and urbane sage about town who walked every day to the Athenian agora, or public square, to frequent the booksellers, converse with his friends, argue good-naturedly with acquaintances, or take the time to answer the questions of his pupils. Here he would not only have kept abreast of all developments in the city, but he would also have become known to all Athens, from political elites, priests, and shopkeepers to artists, artisans, laborers, and his fellow citizens, young and old. Socrates regularly attended philosophical symposia at the homes of his wealthy

friends, some of which are documented in the writings of Plato and Xenophon. These gatherings were essentially the ancient Greek equivalent of the 18th-century French literary salon, in which aristocratic, educated, intellectually accomplished, and avant-garde members of society met to undertake serious examination and discussion of a particular point of philosophical inquiry, as well as to dine and drink together. Throughout his career as a public intellectual known to all citizens of Athens and willing to engage in dialogue with all, Socrates developed a body of beliefs and a method of inquiry that became part of the very bedrock of

modern Western civilization. By the time he reached adulthood, Socrates was disillusioned by the natural philosophy that had so fascinated him as a younger man. The fields of physics and natural science were in their infancy at the time, and the few questions they could claim to answer did not seem to hold much practical or social utility. What was the point, he wondered, of understanding the inner workings of the natural world if they could not answer the universal "why" of human existence? Instead, he turned his mind towards epistemological and moral philosophy, two areas of inquiry that he

believed were far more consequential to human improvement, happiness, and social cohesion. Epistemology is the study of the nature and origin of knowledge, of which Socrates is one of the principal pioneers. What is knowledge, Socrates wondered? How is it gained? How do we know that the knowledge we possess is true? For Socrates, knowledge and an understanding of it was essential for the attainment of virtue, which in turn he believed was essential for individual human happiness and broader social harmony. Ultimately, the acquisition of knowledge and virtues like justice, wisdom, courage, piety, and temperate living would produce individuals

who behaved according to what was right and avoided doing what was wrong. People who lived their lives in a morally incorrect way were invariably wretched and miserable, Socrates believed, while those who lived their lives according to moral principles flourished. And ethical standards were invariably happy for Socrates. The continuous search for self-knowledge was paramount; the unexamined life, he is famously believed to have remarked, is not worth living. Alongside self-knowledge, Socrates believed that moral improvement and the cultivation of the soul were equally important goals for all people, as individuals and as members of their communities. In addition

to the fields of epistemology and ethics, Socrates also pioneered the techniques known to philosophers as the elenchos, the dialectic, and what teachers called the Socratic method. This is essentially a question-and-answer style of conversation. The elenchos is a process of cross-examination designed to expose the inaccuracy of another's belief or hypothesis, while the dialectic is a more collaborative question-and-answer exchange intended to encourage reasoned conclusions or knowledge to emerge. The dialectic approach is akin to what Socrates pursued during symposia and what teachers who today embrace the Socratic method do in their own classrooms when they use a guided

question-and-answer approach to help the class reach conclusions as a group. According to Socrates himself, it may have been the use of his elenchos technique that caused significant dislike of him to grow among his fellow Athenians. After all, few of us find it easy to like people who seem determined to show us that we're not as smart as we think we are. While defending himself at his own trial in Plato's Apology, Socrates narrated a series of events which, when they occurred, could not have failed to spark public resentment against him for what was probably perceived as

self-aggrandizement. This episode he describes also appears in Xenophon's Memorabilia, albeit with slight embellishments. So the story goes: a friend of Socrates and fellow philosopher by the name of Chiron visited the Oracle at Delphi and asked her, "Who is wiser than Socrates?" To the surprise and perplexity of both men, the Oracle replied, "No one is wiser than Socrates." This response utterly perplexed Socrates, whose first instinct was to reject the notion that he might be the wisest of all men. In Xenophon's version, Socrates was present when the Oracle made her famous pronouncement, and he was said to

have dwelt long and thoughtfully upon the inscription etched above the entrance to Apollo's Temple: "Know thyself." This experience, Socrates said, spurred him to investigate the Oracle's claim as thoroughly as he could, believing that he would eventually prove her wrong. He described approaching and conversing with many of his fellow Athenians, beginning with those generally considered to be the most knowledgeable and accomplished in the city. Some, such as politicians and scholars, he observed, however, that all of those whom others believed to be the most wise and who believed themselves to be so were invariably unable to conclusively

defend their claims to superior knowledge. He then turned to the artisans and skilled tradesmen who were indeed wise and competent in their own particular craft pursuits but held little knowledge or wisdom about higher concerns. Though many of them also believed themselves to be wise, the difference between Socrates and the individuals he questioned was that he made no claims to the superiority of his wisdom. "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing," he famously remarked. For Socrates, the near impossibility of ensuring that any knowledge constitutes an ultimate and verifiable truth should encourage intellectual

humility. The part that he left unsaid was that perhaps this was precisely what the Delphic Oracle meant when she said that "no one is wiser than Socrates." No doubt Socrates used his elenchos method in interrogating his fellow Athenians' claims to wisdom. This technique often ends in what is known as aporia, which is an unresolvable logical impasse or dead end in an argument. As a man who openly claimed he didn't have all the answers, Socrates was not out to tell people the right ones; he was merely to show that through the acquisition of knowledge and the

use of reason, one could expose the wrongheaded beliefs of those who thought themselves wise. His ultimate lesson was to question everything, even supposedly settled knowledge, and to be aware that no matter how impressive one's intellectual attainments might be, one always finds oneself once again on the frontier of knowledge. Unfortunately, but quite predictably, many of his fellow Athenians took offense at his deconstruction of their beliefs and claims to wisdom, and Socrates' reduction of their arguments to a state of aporia surely made him many enemies, some of whom would eventually put him on trial for his life.

The reputation and fame that Socrates attained during his life in Athens is apparent in the works of not only scholars but artists too. He was caricatured in the works of Athenian playwrights, most notably by Aristophanes in his comedy "The Clouds," which premiered in Athens in 423 BC. This play lampooned Socrates as a skinny, half-mad, stringy-haired aesthetic with absurdly high-flown ideas about the nature and workings of the heavens and the Earth. His character was depicted floating above the stage in a basket suspended by ropes and pulleys, in which the old philosopher's own flatulence appeared to propel

him here and there. In some respects, we must admit that comedy hasn't changed much in more than 2,000 years. Socrates' discussion and description of Aristophanes' play in Plato's Apology suggests that Socrates might have seen the comedy himself when it was performed in Athens. Aristophanes and Socrates were at least friendly acquaintances, if not friends, if the text in Plato's Symposium is to be believed. This text, and many others which Plato wrote, illustrate that Socrates had a playful, easygoing nature and a great sense of humor. Socrates may have even thought that Aristophanes' play was quite funny at

the time. Sadly, the attributions made to him in such public forums that he claimed superior knowledge of the heavens and the Earth would come back to bite. him. Later on, several more public marks against Socrates' reputation appeared over the next 15 years. Throughout this period, two of his former pupils were involved in political and military developments considered both reprehensible and treasonous by many Athenians. Beginning with Socrates' beloved young pupil and friend, Alcibiades, elected general at just 30 years old, the handsome, dashing, and boastful Alcibiades convinced the Athenian assembly to undertake and give him command of

the Sicilian campaign of 415 to 413 BC. He persuaded them to commission hundreds of ships, the deployment of 10,000 hoplite soldiers, and 30,000 naval men. It was by far the largest and most expensive force Athens had ever assembled. The day after it launched, political foes of Alcibiades leveled charges against him for profaning the Mysteries. He was accused of vandalizing numerous shrines to the god Hermes and for making light of the gods in public at a masquerade. The Athenian authorities sent troops to Sicily to arrest Alcibiades, who then escaped and defected to the side of the

Spartans. Alcibiades' betrayal brought significant intelligence advantages to the Spartans and utter disaster to the Sicilian campaign, resulting in the biggest military loss in troops and ships in Athenian history up until that point. This was a financial disaster, which many Athenians blamed for the weakening of their military strength at a particularly crucial juncture of the Peloponnesian War. Athens was defeated in 404 BC, at which time the Spartans installed an oppressive oligarchic council to rule the formerly democratic Athens. This body became known as the 30 Tyrants, who ruled over Athens until 403 BC, when they were overthrown

by pro-democracy Athenians and the previous regime was restored. Prominent among the 30 Tyrants was a man called Critias, another former pupil of Socrates. When he and the rest of the Spartan junta were finally removed from power, pro-democracy Athenians remembered the old association between the know-it-all philosopher and his authoritarian pupil. The anger against the two young men, who many viewed as arch-traitors to Athens, made Socrates seem guilty by association rather than by any action of his own. His enemies also noted that Socrates was not censured or punished by Critias or the 30 for refusing to arrest

a man he knew to be innocent, Leon of Salamis, whom the oligarchs wanted to execute. This is the only instance in which Socrates was known to serve in public office; he served a one-year term from 404 to 403 BC, and it was likely only the fall of the Tyrants that saved him from their wrath. Still, after all of the upheaval that had been wrought by two traitors to Athens, many continued to mutter darkly about Socrates and to wonder if his pupils' actions were the fault of their mentor. In 399 BC, three men of Athens—Melitus, Anitus,

and Lycon—laid charges against Socrates for impiety and for corrupting the city's youth. They claimed that Socrates had denied the existence of the gods of Athens, invented new gods, claimed to understand the workings of the heavens and the earth, and that he used his talent for rhetoric to corrupt and lead young people astray. To the modern ear, few, if any, of these charges sound like prosecutable crimes. However, the justice system of classical Athens featured no official prosecutors or defense attorneys. All prosecutorial actions were initiated by private citizens. The accusers and accused were each given an equal

amount of time to present their case; this time limit was determined by a water clock, which applied only to the speeches of the accuser and accused. The clock was stopped temporarily whenever a witness was called. Cases were heard by the laws or judges of Athens, and verdicts were decided by a jury of 500 Athenians selected by lot. The rationale for impaneling such large juries was that it would make bribery nearly impossible. Socrates used his allotted time and verbal skills to defend himself as thoroughly as possible. His defense forms the full text of Plato's "Apology," an

ironic title given that there is nothing apologetic about it. Socrates took his time addressing and deconstructing each charge, demonstrating that none were founded in fact. He pointed out that he had inadvertently made enemies of his accusers in the past by showing their pretensions of wisdom to be false. Incensed, his accusers now leveled charges against him that were based on unfounded rumors, suppositions, and public propaganda, which had been spoken about Socrates at various times over the years. The jury found Socrates guilty nonetheless by a slim margin of just 30 votes. When his time came to be

sentenced, his accusers demanded the death penalty. Athenian justice provided that a defendant who was found guilty might propose their own punishment, which a jury might accept since it showed remorse and an attempt at restitution. It was also a chance for the jury to use their judgment as to whether the harsher punishment often demanded by accusers was merited. Socrates seemed to have shot himself in the foot, so to speak, at this stage of the trial, but his reasoning was clear. Since he said he was not guilty of the crimes of which he was accused, to volunteer

himself to be punished would be to concede that he had done something wrong, which he had not. He had dedicated his life to the cultivation and improvement of his beloved city, giving freely of his knowledge and instruction to anyone who sought it, for which he never charged any fees. His shabby clothes, bare feet, and temperate habits could clearly testify to his poverty, as he described it, which he gladly endured since he viewed all ambitions for wealth and glory as leading to unhappiness and corruption. In fact, Socrates asserted that instead of being punished, he ought to

be rewarded and requested that the city of Athens offer him free meals for life as... Public benefactors and victorious Olympians received this suggestion: it may well have been a joke, but it likely didn't go over well. Socrates concluded with an offer to pay a fine of 100 drachmas, which amounted to about a fifth of his estate. If this were unacceptable, he said, four friends of his who were present at the trial—Plato himself, Crito, his son Critobulus, and Apollodorus—were prepared to pay a fine of 3,000 drachmas on Socrates' behalf. The jury sentenced Socrates to death, strangely

by a larger margin than the verdict that convicted him. When asked if he had anything to say, Socrates spoke directly to the jury. To those who had seen the justice in his defense, he offered thanks and praise for their civic and judicial integrity. Those who had condemned him, he stated, had ultimately condemned themselves in the eyes of history, and he prophesied that men would always speak of their actions as deliberately dishonorable. Still, as a loyal Athenian committed to the rule of law, he accepted the verdict and his sentence. Socrates spent about a month in jail

prior to his execution, which was a rare occurrence indeed, since sentences were normally carried out within a day or two. However, the day before Socrates' trial, the annual religious pilgrimage to the island of Delos began. The pilgrimage commemorated Theseus' defeat of the Minotaur; according to tradition, until the ship returned to Athens, no criminals could be executed in the city. Socrates therefore had to wait several weeks for his sentence to be carried out. This was a luxury that few condemned people in the ancient world enjoyed. Socrates spent the time putting his affairs in order, spending time

with his family, and receiving visits from his friends. He was well cared for by his jailer, who evidently liked him and dreaded having to administer the execution. Plato's "Crito" and "Phaedo" document the last few days of Socrates' life. His friends, most notably his friend Crito, urged him to escape from prison, arguing that he had clearly been unjustly condemned. Crito and others pointed out that even his jailer had offered to let him escape; but Socrates refused to do so. He had lived in Athens all his life, he said; it had given him a life he valued

enough to remain there and raise his children. In doing so, he had tacitly agreed to accept the laws and the judgments of Athenian institutions. Despite the fact that justice had failed him, that was no reason to become a lawbreaker himself, by which means he would forfeit all of his integrity and endanger his soul. For Socrates, two wrongs did not make a right. On his last day, Socrates spent some private time with his sons and his wife, Xanthippe. He sent them away as the day wore on to spare them from having to witness his execution, which

was to take place at sunset. He spent his remaining hours on Earth conversing with his friends on the nature of life and death, his beliefs about the immortality of the soul, and his conviction that death is not the end. He comforted them when some of them began to cry. As sunset approached, "Who can say for sure?" he asked, "whether death is not better than life?" When his jailer arrived with a draft of hemlock, Socrates bid them all farewell before drinking the poison and laying down on his bed to await the end. He spoke his last

words to his friend Crito before covering his face with a piece of cloth: "I owe a debt to Asclepius; don't forget to pay the debt." Scholars have endlessly debated the meaning of these words. Asclepius was a deified cult hero whom worshippers believed could prevent or cure illness if they made sacrifices to him. Did Socrates have an actual debt to pay to a deity he believed had previously interceded for him? Did he perhaps see life as the illness of which he was being cured and ask Crito to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving for him? The debate

goes on, as do many other questions relating to the life of Socrates. Despite the numerous questions still surrounding him, Socrates has achieved a level of lasting fame and immortality that one can only compare to religious figures in history, such as the Buddha, Jesus, or Laozi. All four of them were teachers who placed marked emphasis on self-knowledge and the cultivation of the soul for moral improvement, but alone among them, Socrates was never deified. This is not to say that Socrates had no influence on religion; nothing could be further from the truth. Socrates' ideas on the nature

and immortality of the soul, as well as his views on ethics, had incalculable influence on the early fathers of the Christian Church. The Socratic canon remains a mainstay in the libraries of Christian theology. Scholars today, furthermore, find his impact on education, law, and politics to be strikingly evident. Socratic teaching methods are standard in Western classrooms at all levels of education, while political and legal scholars continue to argue about exactly where Socrates landed when it comes to democracy versus oligarchy or social contract theory versus civil disobedience. Of course, not every subsequent philosopher or writer liked or

agreed with Socrates' ideas, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously savaged the beliefs of Socrates in his 19th-century works, "Twilight of the Idols" and "The Antichrist." Socrates' greatest gift to us is considered by many to be his championing of empiricism and reason. Despite his rejection of natural philosophy, Socrates never reached any conclusion—even those concerning metaphysical phenomena such as the soul—without employing a reasoned and logical approach, which was always open to question and criticism. His epistemological framework for establishing what is true according to what is readily observable would eventually be developed by Aristotle into the first incarnation

of the scientific method. Finally, Socrates' doctrine of superior authority... Helped establish for the first time that there was a higher authority other than the political or the legal, which only offer the threat of force to compel compliance. For Socrates, the higher authority might be divine, or his own moral conscience, or perhaps reason itself. There is cause to believe that he viewed these entities as quite intimately connected, though he refused to escape from an unjust imprisonment and execution. And while ultimately his enemies got their own share of flesh, Socrates was ultimately triumphant. Plato, Xenophon, and other

writers immortalized him as a martyr to reason and integrity. The ongoing search for the historical Socrates continues, and while some might call the quest futile considering the scarcity of sources available and the doubts surrounding their potential authenticity, many historians take their cue from Socrates himself. Even if one of his dialectics ended in an irresolvable aporia, with the sense that the answer might never be known or settled, that was no justification to cease questioning. Though a clear picture of the historical Socrates has largely remained stubbornly out of reach, scholars will likely still continue to pursue this

most elusive figure, who paradoxically looms larger than almost anyone in the history of Western civilization. What do you think of Socrates? Does he deserve the title "the father of Western philosophy"? Please let us know in the comment section. In the meantime, thank you very much for watching. Thank you for watching People Profiles documentaries! Please subscribe if you haven't already, and don't forget to hit the bell icon to get notifications so you never miss an upload. If you would like to watch our videos with no adverts of any kind, listen to audio podcast versions of our

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