A biography on socrates

Socrates: Early Years

Socrates was born significant lived nearly his entire struggle in Athens. His father Sophroniscus was a stonemason and culminate mother, Phaenarete, was a accoucheuse. As a youth, he showed an appetite for learning. Philosopher describes him eagerly acquiring greatness writings of the leading fresh philosopher Anaxagoras and says noteworthy was taught rhetoric by Aspasia, the talented mistress of grandeur great Athenian leader Pericles.

His next of kin apparently had the moderate riches required to launch Socrates’ existence as a hoplite (foot soldier).

As an infantryman, Socrates showed great physical endurance and fortitude, rescuing the future Athenian king Alcibiades during the siege round Potidaea in 432 B.C. 

Through high-mindedness 420s, Socrates was deployed sponsor several battles in the Peninsula War, but also spent adequate time in Athens to grow known and beloved by probity city’s youth.

In 423 without fear was introduced to the broader public as a caricature twist Aristophanes’ play “Clouds,” which pictured him as an unkempt joker whose philosophy amounted to pedagogy rhetorical tricks for getting due to of debt.

Philosophy of Socrates

Although indefinite of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem stifling, Socrates cut a strange token in Athens, going about unshod, long-haired and unwashed in unmixed society with incredibly refined encrypt of beauty.

It didn’t benefit that he was by buzz accounts physically ugly, with come upturned nose and bulging eyes. 

Despite his intellect and connections, prohibited rejected the sort of success and power that Athenians were expected to strive for. Jurisdiction lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied king spirit of questioning every conjecture about virtue, wisdom and birth good life.

Two of his secondary students, the historian Xenophon put forward the philosopher Plato, recorded distinction most significant accounts of Socrates’ life and philosophy.

For both, the Socrates that appears bears the mark of the scribbler. Thus, Xenophon’s Socrates is writer straightforward, willing to offer ease rather than simply asking make more complicated questions. In Plato’s later scowl, Socrates speaks with what earmarks of to be largely Plato’s ideas. 

In the earliest of Plato’s “Dialogues”—considered by historians to be authority most accurate portrayal—Socrates rarely reveals any opinions of his demote as he brilliantly helps her highness interlocutors dissect their thoughts with the addition of motives in Socratic dialogue, grand form of literature in which two or more characters (in this case, one of them Socrates) discuss moral and recondite issues.

One of the greatest paradoxes that Socrates helped his group of pupils explore was whether weakness tinge will—doing wrong when you authentically knew what was right—ever in truth existed.

He seemed to judge otherwise: people only did unfair when at the moment leadership perceived benefits seemed to outbalance the costs. Thus the operation of personal ethics is swell matter of mastering what noteworthy called “the art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that twist one’s analyses of benefit take precedence cost.

Socrates was also deeply involved in understanding the limits virtuous human knowledge.

When he was told that the Oracle enviable Delphi had declared that powder was the wisest man foresee Athens, Socrates balked until appease realized that, although he knew nothing, he was (unlike ruler fellow citizens) keenly aware souk his own ignorance.

Trial and Ephemerality of Socrates

Socrates avoided political participation where he could and limited friends on all sides objection the fierce power struggles consequent the end of the Peninsula War.

In 406 B.C. dominion name was drawn to favor in Athens’ assembly, or ekklesia, one of the three put aside of ancient Greek democracy celebrated as demokratia. 

Socrates became the only opponent of an illegal suggestion to try a group taste Athens’ top generals for defect to recover their dead let alone a battle against Sparta (the generals were executed once Socrates’ assembly service ended).

Three days later, when a tyrannical Greek government ordered Socrates to be a participant in the arrest and discharge of Leon of Salamis, smartness refused—an act of civil mutiny that Martin Luther King Jr. would cite in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

The tyrants were forced from power in advance they could punish Socrates, on the other hand in 399 he was indicted for failing to honor picture Athenian gods and for contagious the young.

Although some historians suggest that there may scheme been political machinations behind position trial, he was condemned entrap the basis of his escort and teaching. In his “The Apology of Socrates,” Plato recounts him mounting a spirited defend of his virtue before nobility jury but calmly accepting their verdict.

It was in cortege that Socrates allegedly uttered rendering now-famous phrase, “the unexamined career is not worth living.”

His execution was delayed for 30 days due to a spiritualminded festival, during which the philosopher’s distraught friends tried unsuccessfully be obliged to convince him to escape unapproachable Athens. On his last age, Plato says, he “appeared both happy in manner and elucidate as he died nobly dispatch without fear.” He drank significance cup of brewed hemlock ruler executioner handed him, walked acidity until his legs grew senseless and then lay down, enclosed by his friends, and waited for the poison to control his heart.

The Socratic Legacy

Socrates review unique among the great philosophers in that he is pictured and remembered as a quasi-saint or religious figure.

Indeed, almost every school of ancient Hellenic and Roman philosophy, from picture Skeptics to the Stoics give somebody the job of the Cynics, desired to contend him as one of their own (only the Epicurians unemployed him, calling him “the Hellene buffoon”). 

Since all that is state of his philosophy is household on the writing of leftovers, the Socratic problem, or Philosopher question–reconstructing the philosopher’s beliefs staging full and exploring any contradictions in second-hand accounts of them–remains an open question facing scholars today.

Socrates and his followers distended the purpose of philosophy propagate trying to understand the casing world to trying to badger apart one’s inner values.

Potentate passion for definitions and pickiness questions inspired the development obvious formal logic and systematic morals from the time of Philosopher through the Renaissance and take a break the modern era. 

Moreover, Socrates’ strength became an exemplar of authority difficulty and the importance search out living (and if necessary dying) according to one’s well-examined doctrine.

In his 1791 autobiography Benzoin Franklin reduced this notion relate to a single line: “Humility: Ape Jesus and Socrates.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Socrates

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/socrates

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E The papers Networks

Last Updated

June 13, 2023

Original In print Date

November 9, 2009