When we think of Ancient Greece, apart from the myths and architecture, we almost immediately think of the most impactful philosophers of the era. These were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, a most famous lineage of thinkers, each acting as the teacher of the next. Socrates was a bit of a character.
He exhibited eccentric behavior and was generally thought of as enigmatic and irreverent. He produced no written text of his own. Every direct record we have of him is through the works of others, like Plato, his pupil, Aristophanes, a comedic playwright, and Xenophon, a historian.
The Socratic problem in academia refers to the fact that there are several different interpretations of who he was and exactly what his ideas were – not unlike many of his predecessors, and even some more recent thinkers, but undoubtedly none as significant as him. Undisputedly, Socrates was a public figure, in that he not only attended the busiest venues of his hometown, Athens, but he also frequently gave unprompted speeches and interloped experts or prominent figures on the streets for public demonstrations. His method of argumentation was called “Maieutics”, from Greek maieutikos, meaning “midwifery”, in that through fierce questioning of established, commonsensical ideas he would “birth” new and better ones.
This has been disputed however, as in most instances, much like Zeno of Elea, this method was seemingly only focused on reducing the opponent’s perspectives into absurd consequences, known today as the “appeal to extremes”, and not necessarily committed to creating new ideas. Socrates was frequently contrasted by Plato with the Sophists, who would claim great knowledge and charge for it. Rather, Socrates’ goal was to demonstrate the “ignorance”, or the lack of knowledge one would have about matters they’d take for granted, while also acknowledging his own, since this would be the prerequisite for acquiring wisdom – thus his famous phrase “I know that I know nothing.
” He would confront a judge, for example, and inquire over the concept of justice, attempting to refute his response by leading the judge’s response to extreme cases and into contradiction. From there, he would postulate further definitions and repeat the method until a “better” understanding of justice would arise. The examination of life, practices, and virtues would be crucial for him, as knowledge and wisdom would be the only way to achieve true happiness and virtue, or to live in a “good” manner.
Evil and misery, thus, would be connected with ignorance, or lack of knowledge. To know, then, what is good, is to be motivated to act in a good manner. This is one of the first proper ethical systems ever developed, with clear definitions of what is “good” and “bad”, and a reasonably adequate theory of action concerning them.
Whether he had any actual faith is a point of contention, as he believed in an immortal soul akin to the divine, and considered that to know and constantly examine the soul through philosophy would be the best way of worshipping the gods, if they exist. It is this way that he purportedly lived and died, as his notoriety and constant confrontation of influential figures resulted in a trial which led to his demise. He was accused of corrupting the youth, as he frequented popular places with young people and was known for having an entourage around him.
He was accused of impiety against the Athenian gods and religious institutions, and was also considered a threat to democracy, as his practices led him to question nature without relying on gods, and also to question political concepts, thus by proxy important religious figures, and politicians. Because of this, he was sentenced to death – a sentence he embraced. Exile was an option and his followers offered to break him out, but he refused.
He drank hemlock and died in 399 BCE. Let’s now move on to the most famous pupil of Socrates. Plato veered in similar fashion in constructing his ethical, political, and metaphysical conceptions into a unified theory.
He believed, as did his tutor Socrates, that true philosophy was only accessed in debates and conversations, but he manifested this by writing in the form of descriptive dialogues. Whether these truly happened or were an accurate portrayal of real people is up for discussion, but the fact is that they are the first major written source of philosophy from that time and before. As with the works of Aristotle, they are our primary reference to the ideas of these early thinkers, and also played a significant role in shaping what philosophy became.
Plato’s embrace of his teacher’s method was so deep that he even questioned our perception of reality itself. As many other Greeks of his time and before him, he was fascinated with mathematical and geometrical perfection, which led him to notice how the world obtained by the senses, or the “material” world, was always flawed, and our perception never truly reliable. However, the laws of geometry were always constant, unchanging.
This led Plato to believe in a world of pure reason, an abstract reality which underlies all we ever perceive with our faulty senses. From this he made his famous analogy comparing reality to life in a cave: we are held as prisoners since childhood facing moving shadows on a wall cast from a great fire, hearing echoes, all from puppeteers hiding in a wall behind us. We’d see the shadow of a chair and call it a “chair”, hear the sound of a bird and associate it with a bird; but these would be mere illusions.
One could even be freed and made to look at their source, but the sheer brightness of the fire would hurt, and the prisoner would gladly return to their ignorance in the shadows. But if one would strive beyond the light, even against their will, past the brightness of the fire and into the sun, their eyes would eventually adjust to the sight of the actual objects in the real world. However, in attempting to return to free their former fellow prisoners, their eyes would struggle to adjust to the cave’s darkness, and his confused blindness to them would be a sign to not follow his path.
This “world outside the cave” would be the world of the Forms, the perfect, abstract world holding all knowledge in its purest incarnation, and the shadows would represent the limited world of the senses. The puppeteers would be scientists and mathematicians attempting to understand the Forms, and the outside world would be the focus of philosophy. The realm of Forms then would contain not only the pure essences of geometry, for example, but also of the virtues and the Good itself, which would be a “transcendental”, or an “immaterial” property of everything good.
Much like Socrates, good actions would require proper knowledge of good and exercise of virtues for a happy, fruitful life. To break the shackles then, one would need proper education, especially from philosophers, which would not be easy or intuitive, as it would be akin to the Socratic method with a greater focus on discussion – as evident in his manner of writing – and the abstraction into the ideal world of the Forms. He would call this the “Dialectic Method”.
This entire process intertwines with his political ideas, where in his Republic, led of course by a philosopher-king, those which excelled in certain virtues would act in public roles accordingly, and the dialectic method of education would be the standard in order to stimulate everyone into a philosophical life. The most courageous would be soldiers, those with a proper equilibrium of virtues would be a judge, as justice would be a virtue encompassing all others, and so on. Plato already had written on utopias, and this version of government, to him, would be reasonably realistic, even if difficult to achieve.
Although an in-depth analysis of both Socrates and Plato would take a lifetime, hopefully we now have a better grasp of these important, foundational figures for human knowledge. Now let’s move forward and get a sense of what logic was like in this time period.
