Socrates
Socrates was born in Athens around 470 BC, the son of a sculptor and a midwife. He was not handsome, dressed poorly, went barefoot and spent his days in the agora debating with anyone: young aristocrats, craftsmen, politicians. He fought as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian War. He wrote nothing: we know him from Plato's dialogues, Xenophon's writings and Aristophanes' caricature in the Clouds.
The method
The oracle at Delphi had said no one was wiser than Socrates. Convinced he knew nothing, he questioned those thought wise and found they did not know either: his superiority lay in knowing that he did not know. His method began with irony, feigning ignorance to unsettle his partner's certainties, and continued with maieutics, the "midwife's art": helping others "give birth" to the truth through questions. For Socrates virtue is knowledge: whoever knows the good cannot do evil.
The trial
In 399 BC, after Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Socrates was charged with not believing in the city's gods, introducing new deities and corrupting the young. It counted against him that his followers had included Alcibiades and Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants. He defended himself proudly, as Plato's Apology recounts, and was sentenced to death. He refused to escape out of respect for the laws and drank hemlock in prison, discussing the immortality of the soul with friends, as the Phaedo tells.
Plato
Plato was born in Athens in 428 or 427 BC to an aristocratic family. As a young man he wanted a political career, but Socrates' execution convinced him the city needed philosophy first. He travelled to Egypt and southern Italy, where he met the Pythagoreans, and went three times to Syracuse hoping to turn the tyrants Dionysius I and II into philosopher-kings, without success. Around 387 BC he founded the Academy in Athens, in the grove of the hero Academus, the first lasting school of philosophy, which endured for centuries.
Main ideas
- Theory of Forms: beyond the changing, imperfect world we see lies a world of eternal, perfect Forms (Beauty, Justice, the Circle), of which things are copies.
- The allegory of the cave: prisoners chained in a cave see only shadows on the wall and take them for reality; the philosopher is the one who breaks free, goes out into the sunlight and returns to free the others.
- The soul is immortal, and learning is remembering what the soul saw before birth.
- The ideal state: in the Republic Plato imagines a city ruled by philosophers, defended by guardians and supported by producers, where each does the work suited to their nature.
| Dialogue | Subject |
|---|---|
| Apology | Socrates' defence at his trial |
| Crito | Why Socrates will not escape from prison |
| Phaedo | The immortality of the soul and Socrates' death |
| Symposium | Love (eros), with Diotima's speech |
| Republic | Justice and the ideal state, with the allegory of the cave |
| Phaedrus | Love, rhetoric and writing |
| Timaeus and Critias | The origin of the cosmos and the myth of Atlantis |
| Laws | The last work, a constitution for a possible city |
Legacy
The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that all European philosophy is "a series of footnotes to Plato". Plato's greatest pupil, Aristotle, criticised his ideas and founded a rival school. In Athens you can visit the remains of the Academy in the Akadimia Platonos district and the prison traditionally attributed to Socrates on Philopappos Hill.
See also Greek philosophy.