Philosophy of Socrates

This person is one of the greatest philosophers in the history of mankind. The philosophy of Socrates is that from which the great people of different ages pushed in their reflections. Curious is the fact that Socrates himself did not leave written works after himself - his ideas were always conveyed to students verbally. The students later wrote down these thoughts. There are reasons to believe that many of his statements were lost, and the meaning of others we got in a distorted form. The philosophy of Socrates came to us primarily thanks to Aristotle, Plato, and also Xenophon.

A special place in the reasoning of the philosopher is nature, the integral life of man, his soul, consciousness. Unlike its predecessors, Socrates does not waste time exploring the cosmos and man as part of the world. It was Socrates who laid the foundation for what Plato and Aristotle viewed.

Let us note that he was one of the first to start asking questions about the position of a person's personality in society. He also paid much attention to ethics. The ethical philosophy of Socrates contains a set of norms and rules of behavior, according to which, he believed, every person should live. Before him, the philosophers practically did not ask such questions. Also Socrates paid much attention to the ways of proving or disproving the truth of judgments.

The philosophy of Socrates is based on two principles. The first is the need to know yourself, and the second is that only a fool can think that he knows everything.

These principles, in the first place, he used to combat the sophists - Socrates and sophists never got along, their views differed greatly. The philosopher criticized them for the futility of the teachings, because they expressed their claims to knowledge of the truth. Also, these principles were used by the philosopher in order to force people to seek the truth. In order to interest someone in his work, he used the irony that he realized through the recognition of his own ignorance.

Under the knowledge of himself, he understood the search for knowledge and virtue. He very often identified these two concepts. He assured us that the main ignorance of people is manifested in the fact that they consider knowledge and virtue separately, they believe that they do not influence the behavior of people. In other words, he argued that often people act based on knowledge, not feelings. In connection with all this we can conclude that the ethical philosophy of Socrates is not based on morality, namely on overcoming ignorance, on the transition from it to virtue.

The philosophy of Socrates has other important sections. These include inductive reasoning. Here everything is based on the fact that in the process of analyzing a number of individual judgments or things through the concept, one can make a general discussion. Inductive reasoning is intended to define concepts that can express the essence of things. It is believed that it was he who was at the origin of the emergence of general concepts.

Socrates made a great contribution to the development of dialectics. Aristotle said that he not only developed, but also created it. The philosopher asserted that for the knowledge of the truth it is necessary to overcome all existing contradictions. The dialectic of Socrates is nothing more than the doctrine of the denial of contradictions, their overcoming and non-admission. It is important to add that the ideas of cognition, as well as dialectics itself, are very closely intertwined with theology.

As already mentioned in the beginning, Socrates made a huge contribution to the development and development of philosophy. It ended the natural-philosophical period of ancient Greek philosophy, thanks to him the development received a completely new stage of this science. It was from his thoughts that Plato and Aristotle repelled in their works.