SOCRATES

born c. 470 BC, , Athens died 399, Athens ancient Athenian philosopher who directed philosophical thought toward analyses of the character and conduct of human life and who is remembered for his admonition to know thyself. Socrates lived during the chaos of the Peloponnesian War; he served as a hoplite (infantry soldier) during the war and was a conspicuous figure at Athens when Aristophanes and Ameipsias both made him the subject of their comedies in 423. He was married and had three sons. He spent much of his time speaking with young men of promise and also with politicians, poets, and artisans about their various callings and their notions of right and wrong. In 399 he was indicted for impiety on two counts, corruption of the young and neglect of the gods whom the city worships and the practice of religious novelties. He was found guilty. Sentenced to death, he declined an opportunity to escape and drank the fatal hemlock. A full account of the episode is recounted in the Phaedo of Plato, who, though not present, knew most of those who were. Socrates wrote nothing. Information about his personality and doctrine is found chiefly in the dialogues of Plato and the Memorabilia of Xenophon. born c. 470 BC, Athens died 399, Athens ancient Athenian philosopher. He was the first of the great trio of ancient GreeksSocrates, Plato, and Aristotlewho laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture. As Cicero said, Socrates brought down philosophy from heaven to earthi.e., from the nature speculation of the Ionian and Italian cosmologists to analyses of the character and conduct of human life, which he assessed in terms of an original theory of the soul. Living during the chaos of the Peloponnesian War, with its erosion of moral values, Socrates felt called to shore up the ethical dimensions of life by the admonition to know thyself and by the effort to explore the connotations of moral and humanistic terms. born c. 380, , Constantinople died c. 450 also called Socrates Scholasticus Byzantine church historian whose annotated chronicles, Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History), are an indispensable documentary source for Christian history of the 4th- and 5th-century patristic period. Through excerpts in later collections they provided the medieval Latin church with a major portion of its knowledge of early Christianity. A legal consultant, Socrates was the first known layman to write church history. The Historia ecclesiastica, the second edition of which is still completely extant, encompasses religious and secular annals of the period in seven books. Each book corresponds to the reign of an Eastern Roman emperor, from Constantine I (AD 324337) to Theodosius II (408450), and includes the fundamental work of the 4th-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea. Incorporating earlier sources verbatim and integrating conciliar proceedings with available letters of emperors and bishops, Socrates compiled a relatively impartial and, in principle, critical account of events that he sometimes embellished with expanded anecdotes from eyewitnesses. Additional reading General studies A thorough and balanced introduction to Socrates is W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, pp. 323507 (1969). Socrates' cultural and philosophical context is concisely described in Francis M. Cornford, Before and After Socrates (1932, reprinted 1979); and in W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle, ch. 4 (1950, reissued 1975), on the reaction toward humanism. Older classical accounts by John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed. (1930, reissued 1963); A.E. Taylor, Socrates (1932, reissued 1979); and Constantin Ritter, Sokrates (1931, in German), ascribe to Socrates himself much of Plato's formal theory of Ideas while also giving sympathetic portraits of his personality and thought. The historical Socrates Many studies centre on the historical value of the principal informants about Socrates: Plato and Xenophon, Aristotle and Aristophanes. The main source materials and problems are presented by Richard L. Levin and John Bremer, The Question of Socrates (1961); a brief informative survey of positions comes from C.J. de Vogel, Philosophia, part 1, Studies in Greek Philosophy, ch. 5 (1970). Reliable accounts of the SocratesPlato relationship are given by Guy C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 3rd ed. (1967); and of Socrates' last days by Coleman Phillipson, The Trial of Socrates (1928). Historical facts are skeptically regarded and the functions of myth and political polemic on the part of the sources are stressed by Olof A. Gigon, Sokrates: Sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte, 2nd ed. (1979); A.H. Chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth: The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (1957), with special criticism of Xenophon and Antisthenes; and the two reporting dissertations by V. de Magalhes-Vilhena: Le Problme de Socrate (1952), and Socrate et la lgende platonicienne (1952). There are some scholarly defenses and methodological interpretations of the historicity of the major Socratic sources: Auguste Dis, Autour de Platon, 2 vol. (1927, reprinted 1975); T. Deman, Le Tmoignage d'Aristote sur Socrate (1942); Kenneth J. Dover's introduction and commentary to his edition of Aristophanes, Clouds (1968); and Hugh Tredennick's introduction to his translation of Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates and the Symposium (The Dinner Party) (1970). Socrates in history The personality, ideals, and examples of Socrates are a perennial inspiration for subsequent thinkers and traditions. His influence is visually manifested in the many illustrations and texts of Micheline Sauvage, Socrates and the Human Conscience, (1960; originally published in French, 1956); as well as in the collection of testimonies gathered by Herbert Spiegelberg in The Socratic Enigma (1964). His educational impact is measured by William K. Richmond, Socrates and the Western World (1954), while his deep impress upon Christian religious awareness and Existential thinking is affirmed in Romano Guardini, The Death of Socrates (1948, reissued 1965; originally published in German, 1943). Samples of Socrates' relationships with modern philosophy are: Sren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates (1965, reissued 1968; originally published in Danish, 1841), reformulating his view of irony in terms of Romanticism and Hegel; Leonard Nelson, Socratic Method and Critical Philosophy (1949, reprinted 1965), giving a Neo-Kantian interpretation of his maieutic method; and Laszlo Versnyi, Socratic Humanism (1963, reprinted 1979), showing Socrates' implications for modern reflective and Existential humanisms; and Werner J. Dannhauser, Nietzsche's View of Socrates (1974). Philosophy Gregory Vlastos (ed.), The Philosophy of Socrates (1971, reissued 1980), a collection of scholarly essays; James Beckman, The Religious Dimension of Socrates' Thought (1979), and Gerasimos F. Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato's Early Dialogues (1979), detailed analyses of the Apology and Crito. See also Richard D. McKirahan, Plato and Socrates: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 19581973 (1978).