Socrates...

Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher connected to the aristocratic party who from as far as I can tell studied mainly Greek ethics. He was born in 469 BC, was an Athenian citizen and he taught philosophy to a multitude of people including Xenophon and Plato from which a lot of knowledge about him was derived from. Bertrand Russell’s brief chapter on Socrates is incredibly vague so I have only been able to extract a small amount of knowledge of him, some of which could well be lies. One of the main things Bertrand Russell writes about is the apology.

The apology was the speech written by Socrates before he was condemned to death and executed in 399 BC. He was accused of introducing other new divinities opposed to worshipping the gods, and teaching these to the young.

 From this speech you can learn a lot about what kind of person Socrates was. Firstly he did not believe in death as a bad thing. Obviously he was aware of the initial physical pain but he believes whatever came after was nothing to fear. The men responsible for his death however will invoke more pain in themselves than Socrates will receive because ‘a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself’ and they will have to live with the sleepless nights and torment created from the act of execution. He had a somewhat delusional egotistical view of himself as being more intelligent and generally a better person than most around him.  ‘Clear thinking is the most important requisite for living.’ He appeared to resent a lot of people for their lack of knowledge.

Bertrand Russell brings up a very interesting point when he talks about Socrates being liable to cataleptic trances. He also confesses in the speech to being ‘guided by a divine voice’, and believing that the voice is god speaking to him. Maybe in ancient Greece this was not considered ‘crazy’ but anyone in the present century surely would start to think that he was a bit insane. Russell says that Socrates would just stop in ‘a fit of abstraction’, on his own even when walking alongside others lost in his mind for hours.

Socrates made many enemies by searching for genuine intelligence in the various types of supposedly intellectual men. He approached politicians, poets and artisans to finally conclude that only god has true intelligence, and ’the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.’ Socrates concluded from this that he knows absolutely nothing. Therefore the only reason he is wiser than others is the fact that he knows he knows nothing. When expressing these views to other people it instilled hatred for him for obvious reasons. He still believes the Search for knowledge is important and not impossible.

He focused more on Ethical philosophy, opposed to scientific philosophy, ‘I have nothing to do with physical speculations.’ He believed that knowledge is the reason for all sins, and purely that once that knowledge is attained; a person will learn why it is wrong and why they shouldn’t sin. ‘No man sins wittingly and therefore only knowledge is needed to make all men perfectly virtuous.’  Russell writes that most of his Platonic dialogues are all ethically focused e.g. the charmides which focused on temperance or moderation, the lysis, which focused on friendship and the laches which focused on courage.

The last unusual thing to note about Socrates was his astounding ability to cope with his senses. Whilst attending military service he was supposed to of dealt very comfortably with lack of food or the cold. ‘He was the perfect orphic saint: in the dualism of heavenly soul and earthly body. He had achieved complete mastery of the soul over the body’. I don’t believe that he had this mastery over his senses and was merely a kind of ancient Greek propaganda about Socrates. I definitely believe it was more fiction than fact in order to ascend him into some kind of immortal being who spoke on behalf of the gods.