Background
Socrates was born about 469 B.C. in Alopeke (an ancient city, which was located exterior to the city wall of Athens), Greece; the son of Sophroniscus, an Athenian stone mason and sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife.
Socrates and Alcibiades, by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Statue of Socrates in front of the Academy of Athens
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
A marble head of Socrates
Cropped image of a Socrates bust for use in philosophy-related templates etc. Bust carved by Victor Wager from a model by Paul Montford, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia.
Statue of Socrates in front of the Academy of Athens (modern).
Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure by Jean-Baptiste Regnault (1791).
Socrates and Alcibiades, by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.
Carnelian gem imprint representing Socrates, Rome, 1st century BC–1st century AD.
Battle of Potidaea (432 BC): Athenians against Corinthians (detail). Scene of Socrates (center) saving Alcibiades. 18th-century engraving.
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787).
Viale Vaticano, 00165 Roma RM, Italy
Bust of Socrates in the Vatican Museum.
Piazza Olivella, 24, 90133 Palermo PA, Italy
Bust of Socrates in the Palermo Archaeological Museum.
Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland
Statue of Socrates in the Irish National Botanic Gardens.
Socrates was born about 469 B.C. in Alopeke (an ancient city, which was located exterior to the city wall of Athens), Greece; the son of Sophroniscus, an Athenian stone mason and sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife.
Socrates was educated at stone masonry, his father's craft, and apparently practiced it for many years before devoting his time almost completely to intellectual interests. Details of his early life are scanty, although he appears to have had no more than an ordinary Greek education. He did, however, take a keen interest in the works of the natural philosophers.
Socrates wrote nothing; therefore evidence for his life and activities must come from the writings of Plato and Xenophon, such as Plato's Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and Symposium, which contain details which must be close to fact.
Socrates was well known around Athens, uncritical thinkers linked him with the rest of the Sophists; he fought in at least three military campaigns for the city, during the Peloponnesian War, at Delium, Amphipolis, and Potidaea, and attracted to his circle large numbers of young men who delighted in seeing their pretentious elders refuted by Socrates. Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society. For Socrates, Athens was a classroom and he went about asking questions of the elite and common man alike, seeking to arrive at political and ethical truths.
While many Athenians admired Socrates's challenges to Greek conventional wisdom and the humorous way he went about it, an equal number grew angry and felt he threatened their way of life and uncertain future. Socrates was brought to trial in 399 B.C., being charged with impiety and with corrupting the youth of the city. Since prosecution and defense speeches were made by the principals in Athenian legal practice, Socrates spoke in his own behalf. It is uncertain if the charges were the result of his associations with the Thirty or resulted from personal pique. Callias, Plato's uncle, had been the leader of the unpopular Thirty, but it is difficult to imagine that Socrates could have been considered a collaborator when in fact he risked death by refusing to be implicated in their crimes. He had, however, made a great number of enemies for himself over the years through his self-appointed role as the "gadfly" of Athens, and it is probable that popular misunderstanding and animosity toward his activities helped lead to his conviction.
His defense speech was not in the least conciliatory. After taking up the charges and showing how they were false, he proposed that the city should honor him as it did Olympic victors. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Plato's Crito tells of Crito's attempts to persuade Socrates to flee the prison (Crito had bribed the jailer, as was customary), but Socrates, in an allegorical dialogue between himself and the Laws of Athens, reveals his devotion to the city and his obligation to obey its decrees even if they lead to his death. In the Phaedo, Plato recounts Socrates's discussion of the immortality of the soul; and at the end of that dialogue, one of the most moving and dramatic scenes in ancient literature, Socrates takes the hemlock prepared for him while his friends sit helplessly by. He died reminding Crito that he owes a cock to Aesculapius.
There was a strong religious side to Socrates's character and thought which constantly revealed itself in spite of his penchant for exposing the ridiculous conclusions to which uncritical acceptance of the ancient myths might lead. His words and actions in the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and Symposium reveal a deep reverence for Athenian religious customs and a sincere regard for divinity. Indeed, it was a divine voice which Socrates claimed to hear within himself on important occasions in his life. It was not a voice which gave him positive instructions, but instead warned him when he was about to go astray.
He recounts, in his defense before the Athenian court, the story of his friend Chaerephon, who was told by the Delphic Oracle that Socrates was the wisest of men. That statement puzzled Socrates, he says, for no one was more aware of the extent of his own ignorance than he himself, but he determined to see the truth of the god's words. After questioning those who had a reputation for wisdom and who considered themselves, wise, he concluded that he was wiser than they because he could recognize his ignorance while they, who were equally ignorant, thought themselves wise. He thus confirmed the truth of the god's statement.
It is believed, that Socrates openly objected to the democracy, as it was far from a perfect regime led by philosophers. However, Socrates's opposition to democracy is often denied, as majority tend to think that the best form of Socrates’ government was neither a tyranny nor a democracy. Instead, government worked best when ruled by individuals who had the greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue and possessed a complete understanding of themselves.
Socrates was famous for his method of argumentation. His "irony" was an important part of that method and surely helped account for the appeal which he had for the young and the disfavor in which he was held by many Athenians. An example comes from the Apology. Meletus had accused Socrates of corrupting the youth. Socrates begins by asking if Meletus considers the improvement of youth important. He replies that he does, whereupon Socrates asks who is capable of improving the young. The laws, says Meletus, and Socrates asks him to name a person who knows the laws. Meletus responds that the judges there present know the laws, whereupon Socrates asks if all who are present are able to instruct and improve youth or whether only a few can. Meletus replies that all of them are capable of such a task, which forces Meletus to confess that other groups of Athenians, such as the Senate and the Assembly, and indeed all Athenians are capable of instructing and improving the youth. All except Socrates, that is. Socrates then starts a parallel set of questions regarding the instruction and improvement of horses and other animals. Is it true that all men are capable of training horses, or only those men with special qualifications and experience? Meletus, realizing the absurdity of his position, does not answer, but Socrates answers for him and asserts that if he does not care enough about the youth of Athens to have given adequate thought to who might instruct and improve them, he has no right to accuse Socrates of corrupting them.
Thus the Socratic method of argumentation begins with commonplace questions which lead the opponent to believe that the questioner is a simpleton, but ends in a complete reversal. It is a method not calculated to win friends, especially when used in public.
Socrates believed that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance, thus the statement "I know that I know nothing" is often attributed to him. He thought that wrongdoing and behaviour that was not virtuous resulted from ignorance, and that those who did wrong knew no better.
Socrates was also sure that the best way for people to live was to focus on the pursuit of virtue – friendship, sense of true community - rather than the pursuit, for instance, of material wealth.
Quotations:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.”
“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
“Every action has its pleasures and its price.”
“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
Socrates’ notoriety in Athens was sufficient for the Athenian comicpoet Aristophanes to lampoon him in The Clouds, although the Socrates who appears there bears little resemblance to the dialectician in Plato's writings.
His endurance and prowess in military campaigns are attested by Alcibiades in the Symposium. He tells of Socrates's valor in battle, which allowed Alcibiades to escape when he was in a perilous situation. He also recounts an incident which reveals Socrates's habit of falling into a kind of trance while thinking. One morning Socrates wandered a short distance off from the other men to concentrate on a problem. By noon a small crowd had gathered, and by evening a group had come with their bedding to spend the night watching him. At the break of day, he offered up a prayer to the sun and went about his usual activities.
He was poor and had only the barest necessities of life. He was not ascetic, however, for he accepted the lavish hospitality of the wealthy on occasion and proved himself capable of besting the others not only at their esoteric and sophistic sport of making impromptu speeches on the god Eros but also in holding his wine.
Alcibiades asserts that Socrates made him feel deep shame and humiliation over his failure to live up to the high standards of justice and truth. He had this same effect on countless others.
Physical Characteristics: Socrates was not the ideal of Athenian masculinity. Short and stocky, with a snub nose and bulging eyes, Socrates always seemed to appear to be staring.
Socrates married Xanthippe, who bore for him three sons, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus.