Socrates

Socrates was born in Athens, Greece in 470BC and, by trade, practiced mason work that he learned from his father, Sophroniscus. “He was, by all accounts, short and stout, not given to good grooming, and a lover of wine and conversation” and was not noted to be a handsome man (Boerre, 2009). Rather he had “bulging eyes, thick lips, and blunt nose” (Brickhouse, 1990). According to Plato, Socrates was married to a woman named Xanthippe, and fathered 3 children. Other accounts of his life state that he had 2 wives, and might have married one while still being married to the first. Socrates was able to participate in the Peloponnesian War (431-04 B.C.E) against the Spartans. At this time Athens was growing in power and prosperity, and they ruled 50 years over the Mediterranean area. The aftermath of the war was a broken land filled with poverty and suffering from which Athens was never able to recover. Somehow, Socrates managed to stay alive and went on to create the “Socratic Method.” Ironically, Socrates is not credited with writing any written words, including his philosophies. We know of him only because of the writings of his students, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes and Xenophon. There have been claims that Socrates himself does not exist but that his students invented him to explain their own theories. Regardless, he is credited with laying the fundamentals of western philosophy. In the end, Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 B.C.E for his views.

“Socrates genius was to transfer the rigorous truth centered methods of scientific inquiry to questions of human nature and ethics” (Pojman, p. 49). Socrates developed a system of argumentation that was meant to fool the opponent. Through a series of questions that lead the opponent to believe the conversation was simple, it would then turn around and blind side them. In the end, men who argued with Socrates soon realized their own ignorance. Plato wrote the “Socratic Dialogues”, which outlines the Socratic Method. “The Socratic Method is so designed as to help examine one's own beliefs and evaluate their worth” (‘Socrates’, n.d.).  He believed that care for the soul was important, and that a prerequisite for the good life was self-knowledge. Socrates is quoted as saying that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This leads one to discern he too examined his own mortality.

Socrates was alive during the time that the prophet Malachi died, 430 BC. “This coincidence and the frequent and startling approximations of his teachings to those of Christianity gave rise to the belief that philosophy had been divinely accredited to fill the gap between the prophetic period and the Advent of the Redeemer. This belief received additional weight from Socrates' own claim to divine impulses and divine guidance (Tapscott, 1935, p.59). However, he grew up in Greece, immersed in a polytheistic society. The Septuagint was made available 150 years after he died, so it is unlikely that he ever heard or read a word of biblical scripture. Unfortunately, Socrates did not contribute to the Christian faith directly, but we use his ideas of logic in our apologetics. In regards to the Christian faith, it is said that in order to reach reality, man must study himself. We continually need to be examining ourselves and our lives. This will lead us to evaluating them based on a higher standard, a godly standard. Socrates appears to be an idealist and his main concern was with how we were to live. He spoke that good was good, and bad was bad and was credited for introducing us to moral logic. These are principles, which we still value and use today. These lessons in logic and argumentation can be beneficial to both deepening our faith and demonstrating it to the world around us.