INDEX 1.2. GREEK PHILOSOPHY:

SOCRATES AND THE SOPHISTS

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Athens and its Acropolis. Agora, isonomos, isegoros

Direct democracy (demos)

Sophists: General characteristics

Protagoras

Gorgias

Hipias

Isocrates

Socrates: Biography

Philosophy

Some quotes.

Decree of ancient assembly of Athens

ATHENS EMPIRE

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ATHENS AND THE DEMOCRACY

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ATHENS MAP

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ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS

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ARETÉ OR EXCELLENCE

Virtue is the habitual, well-established, readiness or disposition of man's powers directing them to some goodness of act.

Virtue is moral excellence of a man or a woman.

The word arete applied to humans, a virtue is a good character trait.

The Latin word virtus literally means "manliness," from vir, "man" in the masculine sense; and referred originally to masculine, warlike virtues such as courage. In one of the many ironies of etymology, in English the word virtue is often used to refer to a woman's chastity.

Arete is "habitual excellence". It is something practiced at all times. The virtue of perseverance is needed for all and any virtue since it is a habit of character and must be used continuously in order for any person to maintain oneself in virtue.

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PAIDEIA

To the ancient Greeks, Paideia was "the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature."

It also means culture. It is the ideals in which the Hellenes formed the world around them and their youth. Since self-government was important to the Greeks, Paideia combined with ethos (habits) made a man good and made him capable as a citizen or a king.

This education was not about learning a trade, or an art which the Greeks called banausos (mechanical) unworthy of a citizen, but was about training for liberty (freedom) and nobility (The Beautiful).

Paideia is the cultural heritage that is continued through the generations.

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RELATIVISM

Relativism is the view that the meaning and

value of human beliefs and behaviors have no

absolute reference.

Relativists claim that humans understand and

evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of,

for example, their historical and cultural context.

Philosophers identify many different kinds of

relativism depending upon which classes of

beliefs allegedly depend upon what.

Ethical relativism

Epistemological relativism

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RETHORIC

Rhetoric ("orator") is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture.

In ancient and medieval times, both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive. The concept of rhetoric has shifted from time to time during its 2500-year history.

Today rhetoric is generally described as the art of persuasion through language.

Rhetoric can be described as a persuasive way in which one relates a theme or idea in an effort to convince.

However, both the terms "rhetoric" and "sophistry" can be used today in a pejorative or dismissive sense, when someone wants to denigrate certain verbal reasoning as spurious.

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SOPHISTS: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

Sophist: sophis meaning "wise-ist," or one who 'does' wisdom; sophós, "wise man”. someone who gave sophia to his disciples, applied to early philosophers such as the Seven Wise Men of Greece (sophist was the title given by Greek tradition to seven wise ancient Greek men who were philosophers, statesmen and law-givers: Solon of Athens - "Nothing in excess“; Chilon of Sparta - "Know thyself“; Thales of Miletus - "To bring surety brings ruin“; Bias of Priene - "Too many workers spoil the work“; Cleobulus of Lindos - "Moderation is the chief good“; Pittacus of Mitylene - "Know thine opportunity“and Periander of Corinth - "Forethought in all things“) .

Sophism was originally a term for the techniques taught by a highly respected group of philosophy and rhetoric teachers in ancient Greece.

The Sophists are known today only through the writings of their opponents (specifically Plato and Aristotle), which makes it difficult to formulate a complete view of the Sophists' beliefs.

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SOPHISTS: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

In traditional logical argument, a set of premises are connected together according to the rules of logic and lead therefore to some conclusion.

The essential claim of sophistry is that the actual logical validity of an argument is irrelevant; it is only the ruling of the audience which ultimately determine

whether a conclusion is considered "true" or not.

By appealing to the prejudices and emotions of the judges, one can garner favorable treatment for one's side of the argument and cause a factually false position to be ruled true.

In the second half of the 5th century B.C., and especially at Athens, "sophist" came to be applied to a group of thinkers who employed debate and rhetoric to teach and disseminate their ideas and offered to teach these skills to others.

Due to the importance of such skills in the litigious social life of Athens, practitioners of such skills often commanded very high fees.

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SOPHISTS: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

The practice of taking fees, coupled with the willingness of many practitioners to use their rhetorical skills to pursue unjust lawsuits, eventually led to a decline in respect for practitioners of this form of teaching and the ideas and writings associated with it.

Protagoras is generally regarded as the first sophist. Other leading 5th-century sophists included Gorgias and Prodicus. Socrates was perhaps the first philosopher to significantly challenge the Sophists.

By the time of Plato, "sophist" had taken on negative connotations, usually referring to someone who used rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all challenged the philosophical foundations of sophism.

In modern usage, sophistry is a derogatory term for rhetoric.

The Sophists held a relativistic view on cognition and knowledge. Their philosophy contains criticism of religion, law and ethics. Though many sophists were as religious as their contemporaries, some held atheistic or agnostic views.

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PROTHAGORAS, 5TH BC

Prothagoras (481 BC in Abdera - 420 BC) was famous as a teacher of rhetoric and debate which were vital to Greek social life. Due to those interests, he was fascinated by the study of orthoepeia, or the correct use of words.

His most famous saying is:

"Man is the measure of all things, of those that are because they are, and of those that are not because they are not."

Protagoras was also a famous proponent of agnosticism. In "On the Gods," he wrote

"Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.“

Protagoras knew that the less appealing argument could hide the best answer, that is why he stated that it was needed to strengthen the weakest argument. These assertions have been taken as a relativism. Far from this, Protagoras was aiming to objectivity through favoring equipotenciality in argumentation, in other words: getting the best possible information by contrasting the best contrary thesis that could possibly be opposed on a subject. So, Protagoras was not truly a relativist.

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GORGHIAS, 4TH B.C.

Gorgias (circa 483-375 BC), Greek sophist, philosopher, and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily.

His chief claim to recognition consists in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric to Greece, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose.

He was the author of a lost work On Nature or the Non-existent, In this work he argued that Nothing exists

Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it, and

Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others

Gorgias is generally credited with having invented the philosophical doctrines of solipsism and nihilism in the statements above.

Gorgias features as a character in Plato's dialogue, the Gorgias, in which he and two of his students try to defend the art of rhetoric.

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ISOCRATES, 4TH BC

Isocrates (436–338 BC), Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators., master of many rhetoricians at his school. His professional career is said to have begun a hired courtroom speech writer.

Because of Plato's attacks on the Sophists, this school of rhetoric and philosophy came to be viewed as unethical. Yet many of Plato's criticisms are hard to discern in the work of Isocrates.

He saw the ideal orator as someone who must not only possess rhetorical gifts, but possess also a wide knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts. The orator should also represent Greek ideals of freedom, self-control, and virtue.

On the art of rhetoric, he was also an innovator. He promoted a clear and natural style that avoided artificiality, while providing rhythm and variation that commanded the attention of the listener. Like most rhetoricians, he saw rhetoric as a method of clarifying the truth, rather than one of obscuring it.

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HIPPIAS OF ELIS, 5TH BC

Hippias of Elis, Greek Sophist, was born about the middle of the 5th century BC and was thus a younger contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates.

He boasted that he was more popular than Protagoras, and was prepared at any moment to deliver an extempore address on any subject to the assembly at Olympia. Of his ability there is no question, but it is equally certain that he was superficial. His aim was not to give knowledge, but to provide his pupils with the weapons of argument, to make them fertile in discussion on all subjects alike.

Plato's two dialogues, the Hippias Major and Minor, contain an exposé of his methods, exaggerated no doubt for purposes of argument but written with full knowledge of the man and the class which he represented.

There is, however, no question that Hippias did a real service to Greek literature by insisting on the meaning of words, the value of rhythm and literary style..

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SOCRATES (470-399), ATHENS

Socrates (June 4, ca. 470 BC – May 7, 399 BC) (was a Greek (Athenian) philosopher.

Biography: The character of Socrates provides an illustration of a historical conundrum. If Socrates ever wrote a single word, it has not survived.

As such, the entirety of modern knowledge concerning Socrates must be drawn from a limited number of secondary sources, such as the works of Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon.

Due to the problems inherent in such sources, all information regarding Socrates should be taken as possibly, but not definitely, true.

According to accounts from antiquity, Socrates' father was Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and his mother Phaenarete, a midwife.

He was married to Xanthippe, who bore him three sons. By the cultural standards of the time, she was considered a shrew. Socrates himself attested that he, having learned to live with Xanthippe, would be able to cope with any other human being (supposedly), just as a horse trainer accustomed to wilder horses might be more competent than one not.

He also saw military action, fighting at the Battle of Potidaea, the Battle of Delium and the Battle of Amphipolis. It is believed, based on Plato's Symposium, that Socrates was decorated for bravery. In one instance he stayed with his wounded friend Alcibiades, and probably saved his life; despite the objections of Alcibiades, Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades. During such campaigns, he also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes and a coat in winter.

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SOCRATES BIOGRAPHICAL DATA (?)

It is unclear what exactly Socrates did for a living. He did not work; in Xenophon's Symposium he explicitly states that he devotes himself only to discussing philosophy, and that he thinks this is the most important art or occupation.

It is unlikely that he was able to live off of family inheritance, given his father's occupation as an artisan. In the accounts of Plato, Socrates explicitly denies accepting money for teaching; however, Xenophon's Symposium clearly has Socrates state that he is paid by his students, and Aristophanes depicts Socrates as running a school of sophistry with his friend Chaerephon.

It is also possible that Socrates survived off of the generosity of his wealthy and powerful friends, such as Alcibiades.

The Death of Socrates. At a time when Athens was seeking to recover from humiliating defeat, the Athenian public court was induced by three leading public figures to try Socrates for impiety and for corrupting the youth of Athens. He was found guilty as charged, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.

According to the version of his defense speech presented in Plato's Apology, Socrates' life as the "gadfly" of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded negatively. Socrates, interpreting this as a riddle, set out to find men who were wiser than him. He questioned the men of Athens about their knowledge of good, beauty, and virtue. Finding that they knew nothing and yet believing themselves to know much, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was wise only in so far as he knew he knew nothing. The others only falsely thought they had knowledge.

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SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHY (?)

Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is The Socratic Method (which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice, concepts used constantly without any real definition).

In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge.

The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions.

It was designed to force one to examine his own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs.

Socrates believed that his wisdom sprung from an awareness of his own ignorance.

Socrates believed that wrongdoing came from ignorance, that those who did wrong knew no better.

The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was "the art of love" or "the love of wisdom", i.e., philosophy.

He never claimed to be actually wise, only to understand the path one must take to become wise. It is debatable whether Socrates believed that humans (as opposed to gods like Apollo) could actually become wise.

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SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHY (?)

In the Theaetetus and elsewhere Socrates calls himself a midwife, explaining that he is himself barren of theories, but knows how to bring the theories of others to birth and determine whether they are worthy or mere "wind eggs". To act, the midwife must have experience and knowledge of what she is judging.

Socrates believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth.

He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt that this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.

The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates' teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that

"virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and that it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know." (Solomon 44)

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SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHY (?)

Ultimately, virtue relates to the form of the Good; to truly be good and not just act with "right opinion" one must come to know the unchanging Good in itself.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates' reliance on what the Greeks called his "daemon", a voice who spoke to Socrates only and always when Socrates is about to make a mistake. It was this daemon that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the Phaedrus, we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the daemon is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, the Greek word was clearly used to signify a spirit or entity akin to what we would call a guardian angel, and Socrates certainly seemed to attribute personality and voice to his daemon.

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SOCRATES “QUOTES” ATTRIBUTED TO SOCRATES IN

PLATO'S AND XENOPHON'S WRITINGS

“The unexamined life is not worth living”. (Apology, 38.).

“For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul”. - Apology,

“You, Antiphon, would seem to suggest that happiness consists of luxury and extravagance; I hold a different creed. To have no wants at all is, to my mind, an attribute of Godhead” Memorabilia, by Xenophon.

“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. (Phaedo, 91)

“So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another”r. (Apology)

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SOCRATES’ “QUOTES”

“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” (Last words, according to the Phaedo — Asclepius was the god of medicine and healing, to whom such a sacrifice might be made upon the curing of a disease).

“Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: "Does teaching consist in putting questions?" Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of”. (Oeconomicus by Xenophon, translated: The Economist by H.G. Dakyns)

“Is the pious holy because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is holy?” (Eurythpro)

“And I say that there will only be a perfect city when philosophers have become kings”. (Republic)

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