The philosophy of Socrates: brief and clear. Socrates: basic ideas of philosophy
Socrates of Athens (470 – 399 BC) is one of the key figures in ancient Greek philosophy. He was born in Athens, the son of a stonemason and a midwife. He himself wrote nothing, and all information about his life and his philosophical views is drawn from the works of his students and contemporaries, primarily Xenophon and Plato. There is a legend that Socrates in his youth visited Delphi, where he was famous temple Apollo, and he was greatly impressed by the inscription in this temple: “Know yourself.” Socrates interpreted this as a call to clarify the paths of knowledge leading to an understanding of one’s essence and one’s place in the world. Man, the values of his existence, the main guidelines of his life become the leading theme of Socrates' thoughts.
The sophists believed that there are no absolute values, everything is conditional. This is why they were criticized. The main goal of Socrates' philosophy is to restore the authority of knowledge, shaken by the sophists. The Sophists neglected the truth, and Socrates made it his beloved. The Sophists did not take the truth into account for the sake of money and wealth, but Socrates remained faithful to the truth and lived in poverty. The Sophists claimed to be omniscient, but Socrates insisted: he only knows that he knows nothing. Socrates was sure that absolute concepts exist. The most important thing for a person is to learn to use his mind, build correct reasoning, and develop well-founded concepts. Socrates' attention is directed not to the observed phenomena themselves, but to the concepts that express their essence. He recognizes as useful knowledge that is expressed in convincing, undeniable concepts. Socrates began a dialectical search. In his research, two stages can be traced: critical and evidentiary. The critical stage was in order to destroy the complacency in which his interlocutors were. Socrates was an outwardly unprepossessing man; he walked in a careless manner, often barefoot, even in winter. He addressed noble people, asking them questions: what is good and evil, love, happiness, politics, state, etc. The main method developed and applied by Socrates is called "mayeutics". The word “maieutica” is translated from ancient Greek as “obstetrics”. In relation to the methodology of cognition, the meaning of this term is that the birth of each time clarified and updated truth must be assisted (like the birth of a child).
This method consisted of the following rules for Socrates’ creative search for renewed and enriched truth. Socrates initially intended to consider any initial concept as a hypothesis. Even well-founded scientific knowledge, which seems absolutely reliable, will subsequently inevitably reveal a certain incompleteness, inaccuracy, abstractness, subjective conceptuality - this is the fundamental epistemological position of the sage from Athens.
Initially, Socrates asked his interlocutors and opponents to formulate a thesis about the problem being solved. He tentatively agreed with the original thesis. Then he accused the opponent of inaccuracies and internal contradictions in certain provisions, demonstrating the incompleteness and imperfection of the point of view.
The critical analysis was deepened through the selection of facts that contradict the formulated point of view, plausible examples that reduced individual provisions or the concept as a whole to absurdity. Often, through critical reasoning, he reduced the original formulation to the opposite meaning. Socrates loved to accompany dialogue or argument with caustic irony and ridicule of skepticism. By doing this, he purposefully put his opponent in a position of misunderstanding, forcing him to think creatively in the process of searching for a more correct (correct) answer. Socrates posed questions in such a way that it became obvious that truth is not given once and for all in a ready-made form, it is developed each time with elements of novelty in the process of individual or collective creative search.
The structure of Socrates' method included improving the definitions of fundamental concepts, theses, and principles in the context of their renewal. In the process of defining concepts, similarities and differences in their scope and content were established in relation to various cases. The technique of clarifying concepts and initial theses contributed to creative work during the discussion.
The final step in the Socratic technology of discussion was the technique of guiding opponents to a generalized answer, more enriched with new content. However, in it Socrates again found aspects of incompleteness, controversial hypotheticalness and inconsistency in relation to new facts. It became obvious that the researcher could not stop at the achieved results and consider the concept revealed in last resort at all times and under all conditions. So he provoked the continuation of creative search. The method involved considering the creative product as conditional and relatively reliably true. Only further study of the problem, according to his teaching, will save the truth from aging and death.
Socrates criticized dogmatism in beliefs. He taught cognizing subjects a continuous, progressive progression towards entities of a deeper order. He understood the purpose of his method in such a way that over time everything should be updated: scientific knowledge, philosophical concepts, legal laws, beliefs, ethical standards.
Socrates' ethics is rigoristic, i.e. acknowledges the existence of prescribed ethical standards. Conditionally ethical views Socrates can be reduced to the following points:
1. ethical rationalism - morality is based on knowledge. If the truth is good, then a person who knows it will not act to the detriment of himself and others;
2. The main virtues are: wisdom, justice, moderation and courage. Courage is a product of human will;
3. unity of morality and law is the basis of the virtue of the polis. “What is lawful is fair.”
The second side of Socrates' ethics is associated with eudaimonism, i.e. teaching about happiness. According to Socrates, happiness is the rational life of a person. The task of ethics is to make a person reasonable. The basis of morality is knowledge. Socrates considered himself a happy man.
Socrates' political views were based on the conviction that power in the state should belong to the “best,” i.e. experienced, honest, fair, decent and certainly possessing the art of public administration. He sharply criticized the shortcomings of contemporary Athenian democracy. From his point of view: “The worst is the majority!” After all, not everyone who elects rulers understands political and state issues and can assess the degree of professionalism of those elected, their moral and intellectual level. Socrates advocated for professionalism in management matters, in deciding who and who can and should be elected to leadership positions.
Socrates had many friends and enemies. The enemies decided to settle scores with him and filed a complaint against him in the Athenian court. He was accused of corrupting youth and planting new gods. As a result of various kinds of intrigues, he was ultimately sentenced to death. Refusing the opportunity provided by his friends to escape, Socrates accepted death by drinking poison (hemlock).
Historical meaning Socrates' activities are that he:
· contributed to the dissemination of knowledge and education of citizens;
· looked for answers to the eternal problems of humanity - good and evil, love, honor, etc.;
· discovered the maieutics method, widely used in modern education;
· introduced a dialogical method of finding truth - by proving it in a free debate, and not by declaring it, as a number of previous philosophers did;
· educated many students who continued his work (for example, Plato), stood at the origins of a number of so-called “Socratic schools”.
Socrates is the first Athenian philosopher and a prominent representative of Attic thought. According to data, he was born in the city of Athens in 470 BC. came from a family of stonemason and midwife. Thanks to his mother, who was a midwife, he created his own style of philosophizing - maieutics - explaining that he helped grains of intelligence to be born in human souls, just as his mother helped human bodies to be born.
He learned his art of philosophizing from the famous master and philosopher Anaxogoras (from Klazomen). Own philosophical views Socrates passed it on orally, leaving no written documents for future generations. Thus, he believed that he was giving up true knowledge and life for the sake of conversations. The conversations were an extraordinary success, moreover, thanks to the atmosphere that reigned at such meetings. Socrates even called his students nothing more than friends. Written references to this great ancient philosopher we can find them in Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Aristotle, Diogenes Laeres.
Thanks to the method of dialogues, Socrates tried to cause the emergence of true knowledge from his interlocutor. In every possible way he led the person himself to the manifestation, to guess the essence of the topic on which they indulged. Socrates dealt with the most daring and unpleasant individuals using irony. It was enough for him to ask one simple question, without in any way hurting or belittling the feelings of the other person, but he felt clearly uncomfortable and understood the stupidity of his behavior. This is another method of dialogue that we can take from Socrates.
Socrates was clear in his philosophical views. He flatly refused to study and discuss the topic of natural philosophy, but in every possible way contributed to the study of religious and moral concepts. He considered nature sacred, bestowed by the gods, and even the most wise man. Any knowledge, according to the teachings of Socrates, comes out of doubt (I know that I know nothing - the key phrase of Socratic philosophy), which in turn leads to self-knowledge. He urged people in every possible way to know their essence (know yourself). Thanks to self-reflection, we can subsequently cognize such areas of knowledge as law, law, justice, good, evil and other categories. Socrates indicated that materialists denied external natural world, therefore, they came to a complete rejection of the divine and moral in the world, while the sophists rejected all concepts. Socrates believed that it was the human spirit and turning inward that could bring a person the desired morality and religiosity.
Socrates was a famous modesty, so he supported such categories in man as moderation, justice and courage. That is, a person must restrain his passions, observe human laws and the laws of the pole (accepting punishment from Athens fully proves the correspondence of the philosopher’s behavior to the presence of his views), and also not be afraid to overcome dangers. Since he was an idealist, he assumed that everything around him was just a projection existing ideas in the world of ideas. And since the soul of a philosopher is especially intelligent and has already known the full depth of wisdom, it is not afraid at this ideal level, it knows that there is life and death, good and evil, therefore submission to its fate should not frighten it, on the contrary, it must accept everything with dignity . Socrates' life ended in Athens, where he took poison as a result of a court decision for allegedly corrupting young minds with his knowledge. Socrates, obeying the will of the polis, accepted his fate with dignity.
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It is he who is credited with the phrase “I know that I know nothing,” which in itself is philosophical treatise in a condensed form. After all, it turns out that already in antiquity the idea of the multidimensionality of the world and the limitations of any knowledge matured, which is relevant to this day. Socrates was destined to give his life for his views, which he did not renounce until his last breath - like many sages, he was far ahead of his time.
No works of Socrates have reached us, and this is explained by his fundamental position - it is in oral form that truth is born, and written speech contributes to the creation of thinking patterns and violates the principle of fluidity and immediacy of thought. That is why the figure of the ancient sage is overgrown with legends, and all that we know about the philosopher is the perception on the part of enemies and students or simply contemporaries. Plato, his student and follower, a prominent representative, wrote a lot about Socrates idealistic philosophy. After the famous trial of Socrates, numerous “Apologies” were created, among which the most significant works were authored not only by Plato, but also by Xenophon. Socrates is mentioned by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. Apparently, the philosopher managed to have a huge influence on his contemporaries: the desire to talk about the highest issues of existence with absolutely any person, the attitude towards dialogue, openness of thinking, admiration for knowledge and at the same time the feeling of the impossibility of achieving it, the unpretentiousness of external life and even his bright appearance made him iconic figure. By 423 BC. e. Socrates becomes so famous that his image is recreated in the comedies of Aristophanes and Ameipsia. But true admirers came to him for wisdom and to learn to think; his dialogues fascinated and temporarily eliminated social differences. And Socrates willingly entered into conversations anywhere: in squares, in gardens, on the streets - anywhere.
Basic facts of the biography of Socrates
The years of Socrates' life are roughly determined by the period from 469 to 399 BC. He was born in Athens, in Ancient Greece, in the family, apparently, of a wealthy citizen Sophronix, who was engaged in either sculpture or the craft of a stonemason. Socrates' mother was called Phenarete.
In the enlightened era of Pericles, Socrates communicated with many intellectuals - the musician Damon, the scientist Archelaus, the sophist Protagoras, and the philosopher Anaxagoras. He was friends with the politicians Theramenes, Charmides, Critias and Alcibiades, which later served him badly, compromising him in court. Zeno of Elea taught Socrates dialectics, Prodicus taught sophistry, Socrates also took part in disputes with Gorgias, Thrasymachus and Antiphon. Socrates took part in the Peloponnesian War, but military affairs turned out to be completely alien to him.
Already in adulthood, Socrates married Xanthippe, who was, perhaps, no less famous for her grumpiness. From this marriage (probably Socrates' second) three children were born.
Features of Socrates' worldview
We are not talking about some established philosophical system, but rather about a set of ideas that became the basis for the perception of the world and Socrates’ way of life.
- Socrates believed that only through dialogue can truth be born. He very wisely believed that he knew nothing about the world, and in order to find out, he entered into dialogue with the most different people. Socrates called this method of obtaining knowledge “maieutics,” comparing cognition with midwifery and believing that true knowledge is born in dialogue. The main methods of Socrates' dialogue are paradoxicality, skillful reduction to contradiction, and irony. Any complete and clearly articulated thought seemed incomplete, very limited, if not absurd knowledge, and the fact that this thought, as a rule, was expressed by Socrates’ interlocutor, added spice to the dialogues and came down to a feeling of the imperfection of human knowledge in comparison with universal wisdom and multidimensionality. It is this ability not to take a single dogma on faith, the desire to rid one’s thinking of templates and stereotypes, that makes Socrates surprisingly modern even now.
- Goodness and knowledge are the unshakable values of the Socratic world. The philosopher believed, for example, that it is impossible to be pious without knowing what it means. The root of all evil is ignorance, an error of reasoning, and if it is clarified, the soul will again come into harmony and love for the world will triumph. According to Socrates, virtue is a state of mind.
- The principle of knowledge “from small to large.” Socrates was one of the first to turn to the world of abstractions (which Aristophanes ridiculed in the comedy “Clouds”), and the basis for thinking about the categories of good and evil, about knowledge, were precisely examples from the surrounding reality.
- Rejection of previous natural philosophical teachings that tried to explain the origin of the world. Disputes with the Sophists. Socrates believed that it was moral and ethical issues that should come to the fore in philosophical systems, because it is this aspect that affects daily life, and therefore is the most important. Socrates sought to identify a clear ethical understanding in each specific case and in each specific person, considering this to be the key to a harmonious life. “Knowledge – benefit – pleasure” - this is the triad that became the basis of Socrates’ anthropology.
Ethics of Socrates
- Socrates considered knowledge to be the highest form of virtue, and in this sense he acted as a consistent rationalist. Most often, Socrates talked about the essence of love and friendship. At the same time, love was inseparable from knowledge - only by loving a person can you constantly want to get to know him better, without losing your disposition and sympathy for him. This is the key to harmony - every soul is a priori good.
- In addition, Socrates was one of the first to extol the value of inner knowledge, calling it the “patron demon” of a person, whose voice should be listened to (there is no mysticism here, the “demon”, according to Socrates, is a mixture of conscience, reason, moral -ethical feeling). It was this postulate that subsequently became the reason for accusing Socrates of impiety. It is interesting that after many centuries, Nietzsche also perceived Socrates as almost denying ethical canons.
- Another “sedition” of Socrates was the doubt that the younger generation should gain life experience by humbly listening to their elders and learning virtue from them. This “exploded” the established tradition of education in Ancient Greece. Socrates saw true piety in self-knowledge and spiritual improvement, which is what the maxim “Know thyself” attributed to him says. At the same time, according to Socrates, a person who acts badly, most likely, simply does not know what good is, or does good anyway.
- Speaking about the state, Socrates emphasized that only the best representatives of society, highly moral and living according to the principle of goodness, should be in power. It is easy to imagine how critically Socrates perceived the current government and how disliked he therefore found himself.
The fate of Socrates
His life was free and bright - too much attention was attracted to the “inconvenient”, independent, talkative eccentric free from the material world, who influenced entire generations of Greeks. In 399 BC. An Athenian court sentenced Socrates on charges of deviating from the religion accepted by the state, undermining the foundations of the state and having a bad influence on the younger generation. Like-minded people of Socrates tried to save him by organizing a prison break, but Socrates refused. He drank hemlock as an acknowledgment of the verdict, and died a few minutes later, remaining conscious. This example of unbending will and absolute consistency, fearlessness and inner strength has become an integral part of the myth of Socrates, which in the 21st century arouses keen interest in the personality of the ancient sage.
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
1. Socratic philosophy.........................…………………………………………… 4
1.1. Becoming philosophical views Socrates……………………………. 4
1.2. Demon of Socrates ……………………………………………………………… 7
1.3. Religious views and concept of afterlife …………………….. 8
1.4. Virtue in the concept of Socrates …………………………………………. eleven
1.5. Self-knowledge in the understanding of Socrates……………………………………..14
1.6. Socrates' concept of knowledge and cognition……………………………. 15
1.7. The question of being in the philosophy of Socrates …………………………………….. 16
1.8. Political and legal views of Socrates …………………………………… 17
2. Philosophical method of Socrates……………………………………………………….. 20
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….. 24
List of sources used ………………………………………… 26
INTRODUCTION
Socrates is the great ancient sage, “the personification of philosophy,” as
named him K. Marx - stands at the origins of the rationalistic and educational traditions of European thought.
The glory that Socrates received during his lifetime easily survived entire eras and, without fading, has reached the present day through the thickness of two and a half millennia. Socrates has been interested and fascinated at all times. From century to century, the audience of his interlocutors changed, but did not decrease. And today it is undoubtedly more crowded than ever before.
Socrates discovered morality. The Athenians before Socrates were moral, not moral; they lived guided by customs and wisely adapting to circumstances. Socrates showed that there is good as such. He equated human perfection, his virtue and knowledge.
The purpose of writing this essay is to consider the basic philosophical views of Socrates and his philosophical method, the purpose of which was to lead the interlocutor to independently find the truth.
In the essay, I consider the religious views of Socrates, his concept of the afterlife, virtue, I consider self-knowledge in the understanding of Socrates, the solution to the question of being in his philosophy, the Socratic concept of knowledge and cognition, his political and legal views. It will be found out that the components of the Socratic method are irony and maieutics.
The themes of Socrates' philosophy were the topical problems of his time, which are still relevant today: good, evil, love, happiness, honesty, etc. Turning to Socrates at all times was an attempt to understand oneself and one’s time. And we, with all the uniqueness of our era and the novelty of our tasks, are no exception.
1. SOCRATES PHILOSOPHY
1.1. The formation of Socrates' philosophical views
Socrates, the great ancient sage, the founder of his own school, was essentially a skeptic, but did not force others to accept his point of view, but in a special way, by asking questions, forced each person to express his own philosophy. Socrates' focus was on man. But he is considered by Socrates as a moral being. Therefore, Socrates' philosophy is ethical anthropologism. Both mythology and physics were alien to Socrates' interests.
It is necessary to say a few words about the time in which Socrates lived. Contemporary Athenian democracy had lost its simple, harsh and beautiful ideals that it had in the first half of the 5th century BC. At this time, Athens lived in predatory wars, and democracy degenerated. Socrates, in the midst of the people, held conversations, and with his seemingly simple questions, he baffled the supporters of the demagogic regime: the aristocrats considered him a commoner who allowed himself a lot, and the democrats were afraid of his biting exposure. However, Socrates was too popular. His endless disputes were tolerated for the time being, but in 399 BC. The “democratic” authorities tried the philosopher and handed down a blatant judicial verdict - the first death sentence in Athens for abstract ideological disagreements.
He has an outstanding place in the history of moral philosophy and ethics, logic, dialectics, political and legal doctrines. About the life and work of Socrates - one of greatest philosophers Ancient Greece - can only be recognized from the works of his contemporaries and students, primarily Plato, because Socrates himself did not leave written sources behind. But the influence he had on the progress of human knowledge is felt to this day. He entered the spiritual culture of humanity forever.
At the center of Socrates' thought is the theme of man, the problems of life and death, good and evil, virtues and vices, law and duty, freedom and responsibility, the individual and society. And Socrates' conversations are an instructive and authoritative example of how one can navigate more often than not these ever-relevant issues. The transition from natural philosophy to moral philosophy, associated with the name of Socrates, did not occur immediately. Initially, as can be seen from Plato’s Phaedo, young Socrates was seized by a real passion for knowledge of nature, for studying the causes of earthly and celestial phenomena, their origin and death.
Socrates really was the thinker who, in the chaotic confusion of sophistry, separated the true from the untrue, light from darkness. The ground on which he stands is common to him and the sophists. And its principle is the negative power of the subjective, not conditioned by any external object, free from the limited and determinate, which are considered the solid reality of immediate consciousness; He also treats a person only to himself; he also, in his opinion, has a criterion of reality in himself. However, Socrates differs significantly from the Sophists in that for him such a criterion is not a separate, but a universal consciousness, the consciousness of the true and good, that he defines a rational, absolute goal, content, although dictated by thinking, but nevertheless existing in itself and for itself, stable, substantial good, as the essence of subjectivity. According to Socrates, the sophists, instead of teaching their students the real knowledge of things, only make fun of people. For example, in a conversation they would use a word in one sense or another, thus confusing a person, putting him in a stupid position and finding amusement in it.
Doubt - “I know that I know nothing” - should, according to the teachings of Socrates, lead to self-knowledge - “know yourself.” Only in such an individualistic way, he taught, can one come to an understanding of justice, right, law, piety, good and evil.
At the center of Socrates' thought is the theme of man, the problems of life and death, good and evil, virtues and prophets, law and duty, freedom and responsibility, society. According to Plutarch, Socrates considered any place suitable for teaching, since the whole world is a school of beneficence.
Socrates saw that man is internally “not empty.” Hence the famous “Know thyself.” The sage Socrates said that stupidity does not lie in knowing little, but in not knowing yourself and thinking that you know what you do not know.
The internal law to which man obeys differs from the laws of nature; it elevates man above his own limitations, makes him think: “God himself obliged man to live by practicing philosophy.” Philosophy is the true path to God. Philosophy is a kind of dying, but dying for earthly life is a preparation for liberation immortal soul from her bodily shell. The spirit and concept of Socrates acquires independent existence. Socrates was not afraid of death, since man is not a simple element of nature. Human existence is not given to a person initially, he can only say “I only know that I know nothing.” A person can independently come to an understanding of his involvement in a common ideal principle that is common to all people. At the center of Socrates' teaching is man, which is why his philosophy is called the beginning of the first anthropological turn in the history of philosophical thought.
Socrates himself did not leave his works, he did not take money from his students, and did not care about his family. He considered the main task of his life to teach a person to think, to find the deep spiritual principle within himself. In his own words, he was assigned to the Athenian people like a gadfly to a horse, so that they would not forget to think about their souls.
Socrates said that the main task of wisdom is to distinguish
good and evil; we, in whose eyes there are no sinless people, must say the same about the ability to distinguish between vices, for without this exact knowledge it is impossible to distinguish a virtuous person from a villain. Among other sins, drunkenness seems to Socrates to be a particularly gross and base vice. He believed that in other vices the mind is more involved; There are even vices in which, so to speak, there is a tinge of nobility, there are vices associated with knowledge, with zeal, with courage, with insight, with dexterity and cunning, but as for drunkenness, this is a thoroughly physical and material vice. Therefore, the most rude of all existing peoples is the one, Socrates believed, in which this vice is especially widespread. Other vices dull the mind, but drunkenness destroys it and affects the body.
1.2. Demon of Socrates.
It is known that Socrates believed that he was accompanied by a certain demon (genius), who, according to Plato, gives him advice, stops him when he wants to commit a “wrong” act, and, according to Xenophon, actively encourages him to act. Some researchers see Socrates' demon as a metaphor with which he ironically covered his own conscience, reason, or common sense; others - enlightened feeling, enlightened gut feeling or instinct; still others are an expression of inner revelation or a manifestation of religious enthusiasm; fourth - a “monstrous” phenomenon in which instinct and consciousness (their function) replace each other; fifths are evidence that the inner world of everyone is inherent in transcendence. Hegel, who paid considerable attention to Socrates' demon, connects it with the inability of the Greeks to make decisions guided by internal motives. An oracle is a way of communicating a decision to an “external fact.” The demon of Socrates, according to Hegel, is “an oracle, which at the same time does not represent something external, but is something subjective, is his oracle.” We are talking about the process of projection outward of an internal decision and at the same time the formation of mental actions and the internal plane of consciousness through the individual’s assimilation of external actions with objects and social forms of communication.
Socrates is the fundamental enemy of the study of nature. He considers the work of the human mind in this direction to be an impious and fruitless intervention in the work of the gods. Socrates recognized the main task of philosophy to substantiate the religious and moral worldview, but he considered knowledge of nature and natural philosophy to be an unnecessary and godless matter. Doubt (“I know that I know nothing”) should, according to the teachings of Socrates, lead to self-knowledge (“know yourself”). Only in such an individualistic way, he taught, can one come to an understanding of justice, right, law, piety, good and evil. Socrates solves the main philosophical question as an idealist: the primary thing for him is the spirit, consciousness, while nature is something secondary and even insignificant, not worthy of the philosopher’s attention. Doubt served as a prerequisite for Socrates to turn to his own Self, to the subjective spirit, for which the further path led to objective spirit- to the divine mind. The idealistic ethics of Socrates develops into theology.
Developing his religious and moral teaching, Socrates refers to a special inner voice that supposedly instructed him on the most important issues - the famous “demon” of Socrates. Socrates opposes the determinism of the ancient Greek materialists and outlines the foundations of a teleological worldview, and here the starting point for him is the subject, for he believes that everything in the world has as its goal the benefit of man. Socrates' teleology appears in an extremely primitive form. The human sense organs, according to this teaching, have as their purpose the accomplishment of certain tasks: the purpose of the eyes is to see, the ears are to listen, the nose is to smell, etc. Likewise, the gods send the light necessary for people to see, the night is intended by the gods for the rest of people, the light of the moon and stars is intended to help determine time. Socrates did not put his philosophical teaching into written form, but disseminated it through oral conversation in the form of a unique, methodologically directed dispute.
The development of idealistic morality constitutes the main core of Socrates' philosophical interests and activities.
Socrates attached particular importance to knowledge of the essence of virtue. A moral person must know what virtue is. Morality and knowledge from this point of view coincide; in order to be virtuous, it is necessary to know virtue as such, as a “universal” that serves as the basis of all particular virtues. The task of finding the “universal,” according to Socrates, should have been facilitated by his special philosophical method. The “Socratic” method, which had as its task the discovery of “truth” through conversation, argument, and polemics, was the source of idealistic “dialectics.” “In ancient times, dialectics was understood as the art of achieving truth by revealing contradictions in the opponent’s judgment and overcoming these contradictions.
Socrates, based on Eleatic school(Zeno) and the sophists (Protagoras), for the first time clearly raised the question of subjective dialectics, of the dialectical way of thinking. The main components of the “Socratic” method: “irony” and “maieutics” - in form, “induction” and “determination” - in content. The “Socratic” method is, first of all, a method of consistently and systematically asking questions, with the goal of leading the interlocutor to contradict himself, to admit his own ignorance. This is the Socratic “irony”. However, Socrates set as his task not only the “ironic” disclosure of contradictions in the statements of his interlocutor, but also overcoming these contradictions in order to achieve “truth”. Therefore, the continuation and addition of “irony” was “maieutics” - the “midwifery art” of Socrates (an allusion to the profession of his mother). Socrates wanted to say by this that he was helping his listeners to be born to a new life, to the knowledge of the “universal” as the basis of true morality.
The main task of the “Socratic” method is to find the “universal” in morality, to establish a universal moral basis for individual, particular virtues. This problem must be solved using a kind of “induction” and “definition”. “Induction” and “determination” in Socrates’ dialectic complement each other. If “induction” is the search for what is common in particular virtues through their analysis and comparison, then “determination” is the establishment of genera and species, their correlation, “subordination.” Truth and morality for Socrates are coinciding concepts. “Socrates did not make a distinction between wisdom and morality: he recognized a person as both intelligent and moral if a person, understanding what is beautiful and good, is guided by this in his actions and, on the contrary, knowing what is morally ugly, avoids it ... True justice, according to Socrates, is the knowledge of what is good and beautiful, at the same time useful to a person, contributes to his bliss, happiness in life.
Socrates considered the three main virtues to be:
1. Moderation (knowing how to curb passions)
2. Bravery (knowing how to overcome dangers)
3. Justice (knowledge of how to observe divine laws and
human)
Only “noble people” can claim knowledge. And “farmers and other workers are very far from knowing themselves... after all, they know only what is related to the body and serves it... And therefore, if knowing oneself is a sign of intelligence, none of these people , cannot be reasonable by virtue of his craft alone.” Socrates was an implacable enemy of the Athenians masses. He was an ideologist of the aristocracy; his doctrine of the inviolability, eternity and immutability of moral norms expresses the ideology of this particular class. Socrates' preaching of virtue had a political purpose. He himself says that he cares to prepare as many people as possible who are capable of taking up political activity. At the same time, he conducted the political education of the Athenian citizen in such a direction as to prepare for the restoration of the political dominance of the aristocracy and to return to the “behests of the fathers.”
Socrates talks about courage, prudence, justice, modesty. He would like to see in the Athenian citizens people who are brave, but modest, not demanding, prudent, fair in their relations with their friends, but not at all with their enemies. A citizen must believe in the gods, make sacrifices to them and generally perform all religious rituals, hope for the mercy of the gods and not allow himself the “audacity” to study the world, the sky, the planets. In a word, a citizen must be a humble, God-fearing, obedient instrument in the hands of “noble masters.”
Socrates was a complete man for whom his own life was philosophical problem, and the most important problem of philosophy was the question of the meaning of life and death. Without separating philosophy from reality, from all other aspects of activity, he is even less guilty of any dismemberment of philosophy itself. His worldview was just as integral, earthly, vital, just as full and deep an expression of spiritual life.
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