Despite what little is known of him directly, and the fact he wrote no works, Socrates is easily the most influential philosopher of the Western tradition and the model of a philosopher: one who prioritizes reason, and who idolizes virtue. Not least of his achievements were his tutorship of Plato, and thus his indirect influence on Aristotle — probably the two other most influential Western philosophers. Socrates is also well-known for his assertion that virtue is knowledge. Socrates likened himself to a gadfly, attached to the city of Athens that he may sting it and prevent its people from becoming complacent — and indeed, he stung it so much that the city had him put to death in fear.

Table of Contents

His Life

I thank God that I was born Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave, man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates. — Plato

Socrates was born to a working-class family in Athens. While he was not poor, he was cursed in another regard: he was very ugly. This was a bit of an issue in Greece, which valued male beauty quite highly. It would also pop up frequently in discussions of him, say, in Plato. Regardless, Socrates early life largely involved his education — which his parents put effort into — and a later stint in the military, where he served with distinction as observed by Alcibiades.

For most of his time in Athens, Socrates wandered about the marketplace and made conversation with his students. He had a family — which some say he neglected — but he lived as a vagabond. He rarely indulged in luxury, except at the behest of his (wealthy and influential) students.

At the time, the Athenians were at constant loggerheads with the Spartans. Socrates and his students, Alcibiades amongst them, were suspected of — and often actually engaged in — treachery against Athens and its democracy. There is no evidence that Socrates himself was involved, but his students were rich members of the Athenian elite, and often admired the elitism and rigid structure of Spartan society, as opposed to chaotic and base Athenian democracy.

These associations would become an issue later in his life. The Spartans succeeded in their conquest of Athens, and installed a clique — the Thirty — at its head. These Thirty functioned as political commissars, and hollowed out what was left of Athenian democracy through purges and violence. At the head of these Thirty were an even more notorious Five, and one of Socrates’ pupils Critias numbered amongst them. Though he expressed his opposition to Critias’ conduct, a population already incensed by his unorthodox teachings and sophistic methods put him to death, in his infamous Trial.

Right after the jury convicted him, with a sentence to death, Socrates reaffirmed his love for philosophy in the most famous of his quotes: ‘ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ’ or ’the unexamined life is not worth living’. He could not stay silent, be an ‘ordinary’ citizen, because he did not seek to violate this principle. He could not live in ignorance and call it a life worth living. Thus, one last time, he ‘stings’ the people of Athens:

If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.

Many of his associates and friends asked Socrates to flee Athens instead of facing death, but he stayed. Some say it was because of his opposition to Athenian democracy: he took the hemlock and was martyred by democracy, staining the ideology forever. Others say it was because of his commitment to democracy. The simplest explanation might simply be that the philosopher was living his thought — Socrates always encouraged civic obedience to the law. Regardless, he died by drinking a poisonous drink made of hemlock, which he downed as if it were wine.

Such was the end of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, the justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known. — Plato

His Thought

Socratic Ignorance

The famous anecdote goes that Socrates’ friend Chaerephon went to the Oracle of Delphi with a question: ‘Is anyone wiser than Socrates?’. The Oracle replied, ‘No man is wiser than Socrates’. To begin, this was a cryptic statement; the Oracle spoke on behalf of the Gods, allegedly, so by specifying ‘man’ he obviously meant that he was not as wise as the Gods. Socrates was a humble man, and he certainly didn’t take offense to this. His issue was the opposite, in fact! He knew that ‘I have no wisdom, small or great. What then can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men?’

To try the God’s answer, Socrates decided to seek out another man — one wiser than he, and present him to the gods. “Here is a man wiser than I am; but you said I was the wisest.” Socrates decided to interview a famous politician for this purpose, but in the process of interrogation he found that… this politician wasn’t really that smart. Now, Socrates was humble, but he knew that this politician was not smarter than him. “I am better off than he is — for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this … , then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him.” And this is the origin of one of his most famous sayings:

All I know is that I know nothing

This concept is referred to Socratic ignorance. Knowing that you know nothing and coming to terms with that fact, as opposed to double ignorance — knowing nothing, but thinking that you do. This can be considered a foundational view of any philosopher, as Plato points out, ’the philosopher knows nothing, but he is conscious of this ignorance’. The Socratic method can be considered a derivative of these views. This view also captures Socrates opposition to his predecessors: the pre-Socratics, who spoke of creation as if they were there; and the Sophists, who sold knowledge as if it were their property. Socrates, however, understood knowledge was something he completely lacked.

The Psyche

Socrates famously compared himself to a gadfly. Stuck to Athens to keep its people from growing complacent, and to make them change their ways. Without this gadfly, democracy would grow stagnant and collapse. The biggest issue that Socrates perceived in Athenian society was naked materialism, to the detriment of the psyche. Men pursued wealth, power, and gratification, at great cost to their soul. His views are summed up in this passage in Plato’s Apology:

Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend — a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens — are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? […] And I shall repeat the same words to everyone I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens. […] For know that this is the command of the god; and I believe no greater good has happened to this state than my service to the god. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of your soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching.

Socrates also often emphasized that, more important than acquiring knowledge, was acting upon that knowledge. The Sophists valued knowledge either for its value as a trade, or for itself. Socrates, however, understood knowledge as a tool for self-improvement: a man who thinks all day of philosophical matters, but does not act upon his thoughts is no philosopher. Here, he echoes Thoreau: ‘Nowadays, there are philosophy professors, but no philosophers’.

Ethics

Socratic thought on ethics, which inspired the Stoics among others, are referred to by the umbrella term moral intellectualism. These ethics rests on a few axioms:

1. Every human seeks to maximize the beneficial and minimize the harmful. In so doing, he acts solely in a way that is for the good of himself i.e. no human would do something that would bring harm unto himself.
2. Men who are ignorant of what is good, will not do good.
3. If men know what is good, they will do what is good.

From these axioms come the basis of Socratic, and Western, thought: that all virtue is knowledge. If men seek to maximize the beneficial in their lives, they must know what is beneficial, and that only comes from knowledge. Therefore, men with knowledge are the only ones who shall act with virtue. We can also infer from this that no man wrongs willingly. When a man commits a vice, it is only because he is not wise enough to know that it is such, or does not know the virtuous alternative.

Socrates rejects, also, the idea of akrasia, or weakness of the will: that humans may do vices even when they know the virtuous alternative. He thought that it was better to suffer an injustice than to commit one. After all, committing injustice actively corrupts the psyche, so it is better to suffer a physical or emotional harm — affecting us only materially, for instance — than debase our psyche, which is greater than our body or our possessions.