Socrates
 Socrates
was the first of the three great Greek philosophers (the other
two are Plato and Aristotle). Socrates was born in Athens in 469
BC, so he lived through the time of Pericles and the Athenian Empire,
though he was too young to remember Marathon or Salamis . He was
not from a wealthy family. It seems that his father was a stone-carver,
and Socrates also worked in stone; however, he was not a very good
sculptor. Socrates' mother was a midwife (delivered babies). When
the Peloponnesian War began, Socrates fought bravely for Athens .
We do not have any surviving pictures of Socrates that were made
while he was alive, or by anyone who ever saw him, but he is supposed
to have been ugly.
However, when Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to
feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to
answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What is wisdom?" and "What
is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?” He
knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it
would be better to have a lot of people discuss the answers together,
so that they might come up with more ideas. So
he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, "What
is wisdom?” "What is piety?” and so forth. Sometimes
the people just said they were busy, but sometimes they would try
to answer him. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better
by asking them more questions, which showed them the problems in
their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even
tried to beat him up. 
The picture to the left is what is left of the Painted Stoa,
or Porch, where Socrates used to teach, in Athens .
Socrates soon had a group of young men who listened to him and
learned from him how to think. Plato was one of these young men.
Socrates never charged them any money. But in 399 BC, some of the
Athenians got mad at Socrates for what he was teaching the young
men. They charged him in court with impiety (not respecting the gods)
and corrupting the youth (teaching young men bad things). People
thought he was against democracy, and he probably was - he thought
the smartest people should make the decisions for everyone. In
fact, he thought there should be “philosopher kings” to
rule over the people. Socrates had a big trial in front of an Athenian
jury. He was convicted of these charges and sentenced to death,
and he died soon afterwards, when the guards gave him a cup of
hemlock (a poisonous plant) to drink. Socrates never wrote down any of his ideas while he was alive.
But after he died, his student, Plato, did write down some of what
Socrates had said. You can read Plato's version of what Socrates
said online, or you can buy copies of these conversations as a book
(it's only like $5.00).
”The Ring” from Plato’s Republic
Socrates enters into a conversation with a man named Glaucon about
government and justice (laws and rules). Glaucon argues that justice
(law) was invented because people are afraid of being hurt more than
they fear hurting others. So, to keep from being hurt, people make
an agreement not to hurt each other (in other words, they form a
social contract). Glaucon tells a story to explain that people only do good things
because they are afraid of being caught for doing bad things:
A man named Gyges was a shepherd in the service
of the king of Lydia . One day, there
was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening
in the earth at the place where he was feeding
his flock.
Amazed at the sight, he went down into the opening,
where, among other amazing things, he saw a hollow bronze
horse with doors. Looking inside the horse, the shepherd
saw a
very large dead body. It looked to the shepherd to be more
than human. The body had nothing on but a gold ring. He took
the ring from the finger of the dead man and climbed up out
of the hole in the ground.
Now all the shepherds met together,
according to their custom, so they might send their monthly
report about
the flocks of sheep to their king. Gyges joined the other
shepherds having the ring on his finger; and, as
he was sitting with them, he twisted the ring on his
finger, and instantly he became invisible to
the rest of the shepherds.
The other shepherds began talking about him
as if he were no
longer with them. He was astonished at this. He again twisted
the ring around his finger and reappeared. He tested
the ring over and over, and always found the same result.
Whenever he twisted the ring so that the collet (the thick,
decorated part of the ring) was facing inward, he
became invisible. When he twisted the ring so that the
collet faced outwards, he reappeared.
This gave him an idea. He used his invisibility
to gain entrance to the palace of the king and queen.
Once inside, he seduced the queen, making her fall in love
with him. And, with her help, he plotted against the
king and killed him, taking over the kingdom.
Suppose now that there were two
such magic rings, and a just man (someone who does what
is right) put on one of them and an unjust man (someone who
does what is best for himself, not caring about others)
put on the other ring.
It’s human nature for both men to act the same. No
man would keep his hands off what was not his own
when he could safely take what he liked out of the market,
or go into houses
and sleep with any one he wanted, or kill or release from
prison anyone he chose. Someone with such power would be
like a god among men. In this situation, a good man and a
bad man would both come at
last to the same point. They both would do the wrong thing
because they could get away with it.
This proves that people are just (good),
not because they want to be, but because they are afraid
of being caught. Whenever a person thinks he can be unjust
(bad) without being caught, he will, because all people
believe in their hearts that being bad is far more profitable
than being good. Can you imagine anyone finding this power
of becoming invisible, and never doing
any wrong? The temptation would be too great. And besides,
anyone who has such a great opportunity to do whatever his
heart desires without having to worry about the consequences,
and does not take the opportunity, would be thought of as
a great idiot. Publicly, he might be praised for being such
a good man, but privately, everyone would think that he is
an idiot for letting a great opportunity pass him by.
What do you think? Socrates thinks about this dilemma and tells Glaucon to look at
the larger picture to figure out what justice really is. Socrates
believes that justice is good not only for its results (keeping people
safe) but for its own sake (doing the right thing is best no matter
what is gained from it). Being a just man may not have immediate
satisfaction, but will have better results in the long-run. Therefore,
it is better to be just (good) than unjust (bad).
Plato
Plato is known today as one of the greatest philosophers of all
time. He was born about 429 BC, close to the time when Pericles died.
Plato died in 347 BC, just after the birth of Alexander the Great.
Plato was born in Athens , to a very wealthy and aristocratic family.
Many of his relatives were involved with Athenian politics, though
Plato himself was not. When Plato was a young man, he went to listen to Socrates, and learned a lot
from Socrates about how to think, and what sort of questions to think about.
When Socrates was killed in 399 BC, Plato was very upset (he was 30 years
old when Socrates died). Plato began to write down some of the conversations
he had heard Socrates have. Practically everything we know about Socrates
comes from what Plato wrote down. After a while, though, Plato began to write down his own ideas
about philosophy instead of just writing down Socrates' ideas. One
of his earlier works is the Republic, which describes what
Plato thought would be a better form of government than the government
of Athens . Plato thought that most people were pretty stupid, and
so they should not be voting about what to do. Instead, the best
people should be chosen to be the Guardians of the rest. (Remember
Plato was from a rich aristocratic family so he probably considered
himself among the best people!). Plato also thought
a lot about the natural world and how it works. He thought that
everything had a sort of ideal form, like the idea of a chair,
and then an actual chair was a sort of poor imitation of the
ideal chair that exists only in your mind. One of the ways Plato
tried to explain one of his ideas was with the famous metaphor
of the cave. He said, "Suppose there is a cave, and inside
the cave there are some men chained up to a wall, so that they
can only see the back wall of the cave and nothing else. These
men can't see anything outside of the cave, or even see each other
clearly, but they can see shadows of what is going on outside the
cave. Wouldn't these prisoners come to think that the shadows were
real, and that was what things really looked like?”
Aristotle
Aristotle's father was Nicomachus, a doctor who lived near Macedon,
in the north of Greece . So unlike Socrates and Plato, Aristotle
was not originally from Athens . He was not from a rich family like
Plato, though his father was not poor either. When Aristotle was a young man, about 350 BC, he went to study at Plato's Academy.
Plato was already pretty old then. Aristotle did very well at the Academy.
But he never got to be among its leaders, and when Plato died, Aristotle
was not chosen to lead the Academy after him. Soon afterwards, Aristotle
left Athens and went to Macedon to be the tutor of the young prince Alexander,
who grew up to be Alexander the Great. As far as we can tell, Alexander was
not at all interested in learning anything from Aristotle, but they did become
friends. When Alexander grew up and became king, Aristotle went back to
Athens and opened his own school there, the Lyceum (lie-SAY-um),
in competition with Plato's Academy. Both schools were successful
for hundreds of years. Aristotle was more interested in science than Socrates or Plato,
maybe because his father was a doctor. He wanted to use Socrates'
logical methods to figure out how the real world worked; therefore
Aristotle is really the father of today's scientific method. Aristotle
was especially interested in biology, in classifying plants and animals
in a way that would make sense. This is part of the Greek impulse
to make order out of chaos: to take the chaotic natural world and
impose a man-made order on it. When Alexander was traveling all over
Western Asia , he had his messengers bring strange plants back to
Aristotle for his studies. Aristotle also made efforts to create
order in peoples' governments. He created a classification system
of monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies, democracies and republics
which we still use today. When Alexander died in 323 BC, though, there were revolts against
Macedonian rule in Athens . People accused Aristotle of being secretly
on the side of the Macedonians (and maybe he was; he was certainly,
like Plato, no democrat). He left town quickly, and spent the last
years of his life back in the north again where he had been born. |
