Knowledge And Faith:Socrates’ Motive To Do Philosophizing

People do research on Socrates from a variety range of topics:why does Socrates do research on natural philosophy when he is young, but interest in ethics when he grows up? Does he focus on different conceptions/definitions of virtues or particular moral activities? What is the difference between his philosophy and many great Pre-Socratic natural philosophers or sophists? What are the differences between his and Plato’s’idea theory’? Could we take ’idea theory’ as a standard to differentiate Socrates from Plato? All above researches take Socrates’ philosophy as some kind of knowledge or theory. In contrast, this dissertation defines Socrates’ philosophy as some certain kind of’life style’. We aimed to argue for the following thesis:whenever people are live or dead, all of Socrates philosophizing aimed to urge people caring for the most important things. That is perfecting your souls. It is the greatest happiness.This dissertation focus on Socrates motive to do philosophizing, that is equal to say why does Socrates devote his whole life to philosophizing? I hold that Socrates’motto, the unexamined life is not worth living, is the best explanation to the question. Under the consideration of Athens’ accusation to Socrates and Socrates’ responding, this dissertation will give explanations to Socrates’ Philosophizing on three aspects: Socrates’ method to do philosophizing, his views on knowledge, and his points on faith.Whenever you want to do some research on Socrates, first of all, you’d better make it clear what do you mean by the word ’Socrates’. Is it the historical person, or the literature figure which is described in Plato or Xenophon’s books? This dissertation takes Socrates in Plato’ early dialogues (the Apology, Euthyphro, and Crito), especially the Apology, as the researching object. For the trial of Socrates is a public affair, and the Apology is the work has a high degree of historical reliability.After determining the research object, the following step is to examine Socrates’ method to do philosophizing, which is named elenchus, and his attitude, whether he is sincere or irony. Elenchus is a dialogue or ask-answer method. In the process of dialogue, Socrates takes’say what you belief as the basic requirement to the interlocutor; and the result is that the interlocutor find his believes contrary with each other. The debate on elenchus concentrated mainly on two aspects:first, what is the ultimate purpose of elenchus? Does it take the interlocutor’s believes or the interlocutor himself as the object? If the interlocutor’s belief, it will be pursuing knowledge and definition of things as the end of elenchus. If the interlocutor himself, the elenchus’ ultimate end will be exploring what kind of role does one’s belief play in his life. Second, what is the result of elenchus? Does it purely destructive, clearing up ones’ believes, or it has also the positive effect, bringing one with new views? The dissertation holds that elenchus is the new paradigm of philosophy, which is totally differentiate with natural philosophy before Socrates. Meanwhile, it is Socrates’life style.Taking elenchus as Socrates’ life style, it means that Socrates is sincere but not irony when he talks with the interlocutors. It is especially important to research Socrates’ attitude to do philosophizing in the Apology, for Socrates takes elenchus as his method to offering defense. As long as he failed the defense, he will be sentenced to death. So taking Socrates’ attitude as sincerity, it will help us to get a better understand of Socrates’ view on death.Chapter3, Socrates’ knowledge and ’teaching’, argues for Socrates Against the accusation ’corrupting the youth’. The whole argument constitutes three parts. Firstly, Socrates has no responsibility to the charge’ corrupting the youth’ from the consideration of knowledge. Socrates has never denied that the knowledge itself does exist, but he tries his best to prove that both he and the persons with a wise fame possess no such knowledge. Socrates has some kind of ’human wisdom’ which means that when Socrates doesn’t know something, neither does he think he knows. It is the fundamentally difference between Socrates and the wise-fame persons. There is a sharp contrast between the ’human wisdom’ and ’a wisdom more than human’. Secondly, Socrates has responsibility to the charge ’corrupting the youth’ from the consideration of his teaching method. Socrates’ elenchus does have the consequence of leading the youth. From the Meno paradox, we conclude that all activities aimed at imparting knowledge to others are doomed to failure. However, what Socrates’teaching cares for is not imparting knowledge, but the life style. It makes more and more people taking elenchus as their life style. What follows is that more and more wise-fame people are exposed to be ignorance. It lies in the significance of philosophy education:it brings persons realizing that they are ignorance on the most important things, that is improve ones’soul; and further more, it leads persons to care for their souls. Thirdly, we’d better try to understand Socrates’’corrupting the youth’under the more broad background: Athens democracy has made a great development, sophist-movement springs up, and the similarity between Socrates and sophists. We should pay attention to two aspects:on the one hand, Athens-democracy flourishing and the sophist-movement rising benefited each other, however, the sophist-movement goes so far that it impacts the traditional morality and education. On the other hand, Anytus, the main accuser, is the leader of democracy Athens, it is necessary to examine whether Socrates does threaten the Athens-democracy.Chapter4, Socrates’ piety,’obedience’ and happiness, argues for Socrates Against the accusation’ don’t believe the god which is believed by the city’, or briefly, the accusation of’impiety’. The argument also constitutes three parts. Firstly, from the standpoint of the Athens, Socrates has the responsibility to the charge of’impiety’. We could find out at least two reasons to support their accusation:for one thing, Socrates changed the communication form between human beings and divinity. Traditionally, people both sacrifice and pray to divinity. However, Socrates makes a lot of prayer but never sacrifice to divinity. For the other thing, Socrates compared himself with the hemi-divinity Achilles, meanwhile, he takes his daimon——the totally private divinity——as his ultimate ground for his whole defense. This brings people imagine that Socrates takes himself as hemi-divinity. Secondly, from the standpoint of philosophy, Socrates has never committed impiety. For, from the interpretation to the Delphic oracle, he got his lifetime mission. What is most important, obeying or refusing the Delphic oracle is closely connected with death. Obeying the oracle will bring him death. But under the threat of death, Socrates was unmoved to practice his philosophizing:as long as he draws breath and is able, he shall not cease to practice philosophy. Thirdly, the reason for Socrates’never ceasing philosophizing is that philosophizing will bring him happiness. Philosophers take the undamaged soul as their great happiness. What Socrates said about soul in the Apology is totally different from the tri-parted soul in Plato’middle and late dialogues. Talking with the most intelligent souls eternally in Hades, this is the greatest happiness.This dissertation uses the following methods:firstly, both do research on general conceptions and detail cases. We give abstract analysis on Socrates’ elenchus method, then, we analyze Socrates’irony in the trial. Secondly, go back to the background. Understanding the background of Athens democracy and educational tradition of Socrates’ time, we could get a better understanding of the charge’corrupting the youth’. Thirdly, when arguing for some of Socrates views, we seek for help from the Ancient Greek words.After examining the Apology, we arrived at the following conclusions:firstly, the Athenian has never oppugned the legality of philosophy. Socrates was accused, for he shifted philosophy from theoretical thinking to a life style. Secondly, it is reasonable to accuse Socrates for ’corrupting the youth’. Both Socrates’ elenchus and sophists’ sophistry have the same rhetoric function:the trap the interlocutors into self-contradiction. Thirdly, it is also reasonable to accuse Socrates for ’don’ t believe the god’, for Socrates changed the way of communication between human beings and gods. However, it has never proved that Socrates is impiety. Socrates’ piety was best presented in the contrast——to live, or go to die. Fourthly, Socrates is a eudaimonist, he cares about both his and others happiness.Our conclusions tried to impact the traditional views on Socrates’ death:Socrates was wronged and noble when he was sentenced to death. This dissertation tries to leave readers the following impression:Socrates does have obligation to the two charges-’corrupting the youth’ and ’don’t believe gods’. However, it doesn’t mean that Socrates is impiety. Reversely, Socrates has a steady ground for all of the above arguments: whenever he is alive or after death, piety urges him to pursue happiness with the method of elenchus.