Socrates (c. 470–399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as a founder of Western philosophy and the first moral philosopher of the ethical tradition of thought. Listen to a Socrates audiobook for free: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&tag=tra0c7-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=72cf442f293aa9c43f5d1803934cd95a&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&keywords=socrates%20audiobook
An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of the history of his life nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of corrupting the youth and failing to acknowledge the city’s official gods. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing to escape.
Plato’s dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, from which Socrates has become renowned for his contributions to the fields of rationalism and ethics. This Platonic Socrates lends his name to the concept of the Socratic method, and also to Socratic irony. The Socratic method of questioning, or elenchus, takes shape in dialogue using short questions and answers, epitomized by those Platonic texts in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine various aspects of an issue or an abstract meaning, usually relating to one of the virtues, and find themselves completely unable to define what they thought they understood. Socrates is known for proclaiming his total ignorance; he used to say that the only thing he was aware of was his ignorance, seeking to imply that the realization of our ignorance is the first step in philosophizing.
Socrates exerted a strong influence on philosophers in later antiquity and has continued to do so in the modern era. Almost all major philosophical currents in the classical era saw themselves as continuing the work of Socrates. Socrates was studied by medieval and Islamic scholars and played an important role in the thought of the Italian Renaissance, particularly within the humanist movement. Interest in Socrates continued unabated, as reflected in the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Depictions of Socrates in art, literature and popular culture have made him a widely known figure in the Western philosophical tradition.
The hostility of Friedrich Nietzsche against Socrates for reshaping the philosophical landscape of humanity is well known.[204] Nietzsche accused Socrates of responsibility for what he saw as the deterioration of the ancient Greek civilization during the 4th century BC and after, in his first book The Birth of Tragedy (1872). For Nietzsche, Socrates turned the scope of philosophy from pre-Socratic naturalism to rationalism and intellectualism. He writes: “I conceive of [the Presocratics] as precursors to a reformation of the Greeks: but not of Socrates”; “with Empedocles and Democritus the Greeks were well on their way towards taking the correct measure of human existence, its unreason, its suffering; they never reached this goal, thanks to Socrates”.[205] The effect, Nietzsche proposed, was a perverse situation that had continued down to his day: our culture is a Socratic culture, he believed.[204] In a later publication, The Twilight of the Idols (1887), Nietzsche continued his offensive against Socrates, focusing on the arbitrary linking of reason to virtue and happiness in Socratic thinking. He writes: “I try to understand from what partial and idiosyncratic states the Socratic problem is to be derived: his equation of reason = virtue = happiness. It was with this absurdity of a doctrine of identity that he fascinated: ancient philosophy never again freed itself [from this fascination]”,[206] From the late 19th century until the early 20th, the most common explanation of Nietzsche’s hostility towards Socrates was his anti-rationalism; he considered Socrates the father of European rationalism. In the middle of the 20th century, philosopher Walter Kaufmann published an article arguing for Nietzsche’s admiration of Socrates, and current mainstream opinion is that Nietzsche was ambivalent towards Socrates.[207]
Continental philosophers Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss and Karl Popper, after experiencing the horrors of World War II, amidst the rise of totalitarian regimes, saw Socrates as an icon of individual conscience.[208] Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), sees how Socrates’s constant questioning and self-reflection could prevent the banality of evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates
