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(out of stock until March 2006)
Though
Socrates left no written works, there were many ancient
accounts of his life and his philosophy. The most important
of the surviving accounts are from three contemporaries (the
comic poet Aristophanes, the historian Xenophon,
and the philosopher Plato)
along with two later Greek biographers: Plutarch (1st
cent. AD) and Diogenes Laertius (3rd cent. AD).
The "Socratic Problem" is to determine from those varying accounts
what Socrates actually said and believed.
We
know that Socrates was an eccentric and often irritating gadfly,
who went about Athens engaging others in philosophical conversation.
He rolled his eyes and cocked his head backwards as he walked,
usually barefoot and in tattered clothes; his persistent questioning
exposed the contradictions in people's claims of knowledge.
Socrates himself never claimed definitive knowledge, but he
made many enemies among those he refuted and embarrassed. His
careful, logical questioning has become known as the "Socratic
method of teaching," and it later became a major alternative
to the traditional lecture method.
Socrates
believed that even when we strive to lead the "examined life,"
we cannot definitively establish truth or absolute knowledge;
we can only refute wrong thinking. He was interested in religion
as it applies to moral virtue, affirming that the condition
of one's soul is related to the "most important things" (such
as justice, truth, and piety). Socrates said we must simply
live a life of reason in an effort to determine which views
are better than others.
In
399 BC, Socrates was brought to trial on a charge of impiety.
He was sentenced to death, which he accepted in obedience to
the rule of law. Socrates spent his last day in philosophical
conversation with friends before carrying out his sentence by
drinking extract of hemlock.
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