Life and Death of Socrates
Socrates is at once the most exemplary and the strangest of the Greek philosophers. He grew up during the golden age of Pericles' Athens, served with distinction as a solider, but became best known as a questioner of everything and everyone. Socrates was born and lived nearly his entire life in Athens. His father, Sophroniscus, was a stonemason and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. Socrates was later accused of corrupting the youth and of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state. Because of that he was punished with a death penalty. Athenian law prescribed death by drinking a cup of poison hemlock. He then drank the cup of brewed hemlock, walked around until his legs grew numb, and waited for the poison to reach his heart. |
Historical SignificanceSocrates was significant for introducing the greek civilization to the practice of Dialectic. The idea of Dialectic was to oppose every belief with a counter-argument to test its authenticity. Socrates death was controversial because he decided to die honorably than to live in shame. Socrates was so influential that every subsequent greek philosophy schools were directly or indirectly based on his teachings.
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Socratic MethodThe Socratic method is one of the most famous, least used, and least understood teaching and conversation practices. It is a system, a spirit, a method, a type of philosophical inquiry an intellectual technique, all rolled into one. The method uses creative questioning to dismantle and discard preexisting ideas and thereby allows the respondent to rethink the primary question under discussion. Gregory Vlastos, a Socrates scholar and professor of philosophy at Princeton, described Socrates’ method of inquiry as "among the greatest achievements of humanity." Why? Because, he says, it makes philosophical inquiry "a common human enterprise, open to every man." Instead of requiring allegiance to a specific philosophical viewpoint or analytic technique or specialized vocabulary, the Socratic method "calls for common sense and common speech." And this, he says, "is as it should be, for how man should live is every man’s business."
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LinksHere are some videos or articles on Socrates.
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