... , the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy; for they will know you have done your best to destroy us." -Socrates (Plato 577) Socrates" argument moves from one of a general moral decision to the morality of his specific case. He basically says: -One ought never to do wrong ... reside would not. The government and citizens of the state may take their frustration of this injustice out on the friends and family of Socrates. In this argument, Socrates believes that the state would say, "think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards"(Plato 566). He says this a...

• Word Count: 1118
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... to varying degrees, depending on the extent of the identification of a religion with the society at large or the government." (All refer reference) Socrates went against the accepted ideas of religion and therefore was perceived as a threat to society. He rejected several Athenian gods including Hephaetus and questioned ... their existence. Although Athenians viewed him as a threat, Socrates" purpose was not to harm but bring about truth to Athens and for this I think it was wrong to punish him. Just because Athenians ... thought to have encouraged youthful followers to be anti-democrat...

• Word Count: 944
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... a crime that he didn't commit, he refused to commit a crime even if it involved saving his own life. In his time many people professed that Socrates was the smartest man alive, which made him angry because he himself believed that he knew nothing. That very fact made him known as the smartest man alive ... a wise man is really foolish, that does not make the wise man foolish, because the wise man is still wise no matter what the masses say. Socrates also argues that he would not want to live his life knowing that he had committed a crime because it would decrease his quality of health. ...

• Word Count: 1176
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... His ideas involving spiritual matters, the soul, individual enlightenment, and the truth are still very much practiced today. The amount of influence that Socrates has on a society depends on where that society is located as well as the type of government, leadership, and religion. Those areas that ... In his younger years he followed in the footsteps of his father and became a sculptor until he left to fight in the Peloponnesian War. When Socrates returned to Greece after the war he decided to end his previous profession and become a philosophical speaker. As a debater he quickly gained ...

• Word Count: 927
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... only consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong and acting the part of a good man or a bad one." (pg. 41) Socrates believes that one should act on moral knowledge alone. By not "calculating living or dying," you are taking away the emotional side of ones thoughts. Rather than ... be selfish and care about your own well being, Socrates is saying that one should simply follow the rules or not follow them at all. This alone will define you as a human being in the present ... being selfish and escaping, he should try to persuade the Laws to let him go by using his knowled...

• Word Count: 772
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... friends and ourselves but undermined society and morality of Athens by confusing people and attempting to destroy their social rules and orders. Socrates thinking became the major concept of philosophy because it makes people to question the decision they have made. His questioning is still ... friendship, poetry, religion, science and government. His important discussions were concerned with how one should live, with virtue and wisdom. In these discussions Socrates used an approach now known as Socratic method of questioning. Instead of lecturing people, he approaches them with a questi...

• Word Count: 823
• Approx Pages: 3

... he began to study the rhetoric and dialectics of the Sophists, the speculations of the Ionian philosophers, and the culture of Periclean Athens. At first, Socrates was a sculptor, like his father. He created the statue group of the three Graces, which stood at the entrance to the Acropolis until the ... 2nd century. In the Peloponnesian War, he served as an infantryman. He fought at the battles of Potidaea, Delium, and Amphipolis. Socrates liked to argue instead of write. Therefore, he spent a lot of time in the marketplace and other public places of Athens, trying to start ... willing. ...

• Word Count: 772
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... to be the people who are supposed to be experts on all these areas. The have well thought out opinions, and they are very learned people. Socrates (470 B.C.-399 B.C.) was born near Athens, and spent most of his life in Athens. He married women named Xanthippe, who was rumored in the town ... comfort. Supposedly, he once stood in one spot for a day and night puzzling over a philosophical problem. Now you may ask what is Socrates most noted for? Well, Socrates is best known for his devotion to logic and for his great argumentative skills. But there is no general introduction into the life ...

• Word Count: 931
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... way an individual thinks and how their way of thinking could contribute to improving society. In ancient Greece, there lived three great men named Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These men were the first and still the greatest philosophers of all time. They questioned people's way of life and ... and died. "It is better to die on my feet than to live on my knees," he stated proudly. Plato became disillusioned with Athens after Socrates died. Later, he started his own university called the Academy. There, he taught philosophy, math, astronomy, science, history, physical education, and rhe...

• Word Count: 924
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... home often wandering through the agora (an Ancient Greek market place) and discussing his ideas with students, friends and other people he found in the street. Socrates believed in questioning people and the way they ran their lives, claiming that "the unexamined life, for a human being, is not worth living". His ... large bald spot. This added to the people of the times" fascination towards him. However in the year of 399 BC charges were brought against Socrates claiming that he was guilty of not believing in the gods that the people of the time believed in, introducing new religious bel...

• Word Count: 794
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... with anyone who was willing to listen, the self knowledge that he inculcated were basis for his teachings. He was also a very religious individual. While Socrates were in these public areas in conversations he drew attention of other people especially the young people, who have a lot of time on their hands, some ... knowledge they knew. The people of Athens did not try to educate themselves in stead they look for some one to blame and that person was Socrates, he was accused of being some sort of criminal and that he was a bad influence on the young. He was later charged for neglecting ...

• Word Count: 534
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... obedience, he would be neither obeying them nor persuading them to change their decision if they are at fault. I would agree with these accounts because like Socrates said earlier in the play, the laws that are standing allowed his parents to marry and have him, plus raise him in a quality way, and then ... he would bring up his point that not all laws are "just" laws. He believes that there are two types of laws, just and unjust. He, like Socrates, feels that there is a moral obligation to obeying just laws. However, he also believes that people have a moral obligation to disobey unjust ...

• Word Count: 930
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... , there is any general human being as such. Only by knowing what this is can we hope to live rightly: "therefore virtue is knowledge. Socrates laid no claim to this knowledge. His advantage lay only in awareness of his ignorance. He wished to persuade men to seek it with him, ... inductive, and its outcome was to reduce all virtues, including justice, to an understanding of the true nature of good and evil. Armed with this understanding, Socrates believed, men would automatically choose the right: "No one errs voluntary." His constant exhortation was to "care for the soul" (psyche), and ...

• Word Count: 837
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... on the inside and the type of person you are. If you are a good wise person then all of exterior will fall into place. The first reason Socrates didn't escape was because he is a responsible person. A wise person is also a responsible one. Responsibility can be defined as ones ability to respond, especially ... never commit an unjust act, because all unjust acts are evil. Also one must never repay evil with evil. So although an injustice was committed against Socrates by man, he made a just agreement with them. He couldn't break the agreement by escaping because then he would be committin...

• Word Count: 801
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... live his life with a love of wisdom and excellence, instead of wealth and personal gain, that only then would one truly be happy. A citizen of Athens, Socrates was a model citizen and faithful to his city even after they condemned him to death. It was in his belief that the state is like a parent to ... of slave and master. One chooses to belong or reside in a state and in doing so one must devote oneself to the state in which he lives. Socrates says that the individual owes the state everything that he has and is. For it is the state that provides an education and a safe environment to l...

• Word Count: 855
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... These are the men who become tyrannical by indulging too much in their power, a point that leads to the collapse of the democratic state. Socrates describes the phenomena of the leaders" appetites as such, "that anyone who tastes the one piece of human innards that's chopped up with those ... ). Extreme freedom (i.e. the pursuit of such appetites) can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery (564a). Thus according to Socrates, democracy declines into tyranny. Two of the inherent weaknesses of this democracy that allow the idlers to exploit their power are unjust c...

• Word Count: 893
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... he would have stayed in Athens to be executed. Actually, I think he would have left Athens when he was a young man. There were other alternatives for Socrates, but they all betrayed his personal beliefs. He could have been exiled, but he loved Athens and refused to leave his homeland. He could have vowed to stop ... teaching(sharing) his supposed impious views. Socrates could not stop sharing his knowledge with others, because he was told to do so by a God and that was more important to him than living. ... to make this nation pay attention to justice. Neither of these men believed in ...

• Word Count: 792
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... in the action of masses of men" (Thoreau 5). Evidence of this argument is further carried over to "Crito" as well. At this point Thoreau would be in direct accordance with Socrates and would probably find his argument to be a somewhat accurate account of a problem that many societies face. However and important distinction lies in the two arguments as the issues relate ... directly to the overall notion of a system of government and existence of a traditional mindset of society. Socrates expresses a sense of duty to society and government even if these institutions are representing its ...

• Word Count: 557
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... called Sophists these people received money to teach people how to argue. The sophists did exactly what Socrates was apposed to, they advertised that they had knowledge and claimed to be able to pass it on; Socrates seeks knowledge without possessing any himself. Sophists also only wanted to win arguments and not find the ... truth. Where Socrates wanted to find truth and to do that it did not necessarily mean the argument is ... says that to find truth you might find a presence of ignorance and it is necessary to find the presence of ignorance to find genuine knowledge of virtue. Socr...

• Word Count: 277
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... then they would not have power over others. If they believed in justice the "weak" would fight for their rights and that is not what they want. Socrates believed in a just world. He would rather die then to commit injustice. He believed in doing what the right thing to do was, in obeying what God ... I believe that it is far worse to do what he is doing now, trying to put a man to death unjustly" (Plato, AP. Pg. 54). To Socrates pursuing a just life gave him happiness, the freedom to express the truth with out feeling afraid of what was to happen, because he was on the side of justice .....

• Word Count: 936
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Socrates and Confucius Essay Socrates dilemma about escaping with his friend Crito was a very serious problem in my point of view. His first principal dealt with what is the real truth not common opinion would ... society consisted of people who knew what they had to do so this also meant that they would have been living honestly and doing things correctly. The third principal from Socrates was to never to deliberately do wrong. So I don't think that I would need to explain what this meant because the title itself is kind of self-explanatory. Never the less ... to keep the country stable so...

• Word Count: 817
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... rather than claiming - not least to himself - to have false knowledge. Another example of Socratic ignorance is presented in The Meno, which takes place just after Socrates has won a similar argument on the nature of the virtues with a well known wise man in Athens at the time, Meno. Meno, who is known to ... . What matters to him is the continuing search for the truth. His sincerity can be shown in a variety of cases, recorded by Plato. In The Theaetetus, Socrates describes himself as a kind of intellectual midwife. He says that people are "pregnant with ideas", and that his job - barren...

• Word Count: 1140
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... state. He rejected the sentences of prison or exile, offering instead to pay a fine. When the jury rejected his suggestions and sentenced him to death, Socrates accepted the verdict and said that no one but the gods know what happens after death and so it would be foolish to fear what one does not ... warned the people who voted against him that by silencing him rather than listening to him, they have harmed themselves much more than they have harmed him. Socrates opened his case by asking the jury to listen to him openly and to pardon him if he went into his usual style of speaking. Hi...

• Word Count: 968
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... which means ''people'' and a verb, kratein, which means ''to rule,'' Its basic meaning is ''government by the people" or "rule by the ruled.'' Socrates quest for justice was written in the form of a dialogue by his student Plato, in Plato's Republic. Plato believed the Athenian democracy was on the verge ... Socrate's death. This encouraged him to write the Republic. In Plato's ideal society justice ruled. What is Justice? This is the question that Socrates wanted to find an answer to. According to the American Heritage Dictionary justice is the quality of being just and fair; the princi...

• Word Count: 1103
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... , and this would result in acting unjustly himself. Crito also mentioned that he would be abandoning his children and leaving them without a father. Socrates replies to Crito that he should not worry about public opinion and to only listen to expert and wise advise. He tells Crito that if ... cell. He believes that breaking one rule means breaking them all which would cause great harm since these laws provided for his upbringing and education. Socrates provides a very convincing argument of why he should not escape from the Athenian prison. He states that if he does as Crito suggests and...

• Word Count: 709
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School