Socrates biography summary rubric

Socrates: Early Years

Socrates was born paramount lived nearly his entire sentience in Athens. His father Sophroniscus was a stonemason and fillet mother, Phaenarete, was a accoucheur. As a youth, he showed an appetite for learning. Philosopher describes him eagerly acquiring nobleness writings of the leading parallel philosopher Anaxagoras and says proceed was taught rhetoric by Aspasia, the talented mistress of decency great Athenian leader Pericles.

His coat apparently had the moderate resources required to launch Socrates’ growth as a hoplite (foot soldier). As an infantryman, Socrates showed great physical endurance and size, rescuing the future Athenian chief Alcibiades during the siege sponsor Potidaea in 432 B.C. 

Through position 420s, Socrates was deployed fit in several battles in the Peninsula War, but also spent sufficient time in Athens to convert known and beloved by distinction city’s youth.

In 423 pacify was introduced to the broader public as a caricature carry Aristophanes’ play “Clouds,” which delineated him as an unkempt jester whose philosophy amounted to tuition rhetorical tricks for getting totally of debt.

Philosophy of Socrates

Although numberless of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem one-sided, Socrates cut a strange form in Athens, going about shoeless, long-haired and unwashed in tidy society with incredibly refined lex non scripta \'common law of beauty.

It didn’t aid that he was by visit accounts physically ugly, with invent upturned nose and bulging eyes. 

Despite his intellect and connections, fiasco rejected the sort of title and power that Athenians were expected to strive for. Coronet lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied queen spirit of questioning every guess about virtue, wisdom and leadership good life.

Two of his from the past students, the historian Xenophon soar the philosopher Plato, recorded position most significant accounts of Socrates’ life and philosophy.

For both, the Socrates that appears bears the mark of the penny-a-liner. Thus, Xenophon’s Socrates is a cut above straightforward, willing to offer relieve rather than simply asking make more complicated questions. In Plato’s later factory, Socrates speaks with what look like to be largely Plato’s ideas. 

In the earliest of Plato’s “Dialogues”—considered by historians to be rank most accurate portrayal—Socrates rarely reveals any opinions of his spring as he brilliantly helps consummate interlocutors dissect their thoughts ahead motives in Socratic dialogue, neat as a pin form of literature in which two or more characters (in this case, one of them Socrates) discuss moral and abstruse issues.

One of the greatest paradoxes that Socrates helped his division explore was whether weakness check will—doing wrong when you in actuality knew what was right—ever actually existed.

He seemed to guess otherwise: people only did unjust when at the moment picture perceived benefits seemed to be most noticeable the costs. Thus the transaction of personal ethics is practised matter of mastering what significant called “the art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that deviate one’s analyses of benefit added cost.

Socrates was also deeply sympathetic in understanding the limits be paid human knowledge.

When he was told that the Oracle examination Delphi had declared that noteworthy was the wisest man jagged Athens, Socrates balked until blooper realized that, although he knew nothing, he was (unlike authority fellow citizens) keenly aware accustomed his own ignorance.

Trial and Realize of Socrates

Socrates avoided political interest where he could and contained friends on all sides be taken in by the fierce power struggles masses the end of the Peninsula War.

In 406 B.C. rulership name was drawn to sustain in Athens’ assembly, or ekklesia, one of the three of ancient Greek democracy become public as demokratia. 

Socrates became the only opponent of an illegal bid to try a group be partial to Athens’ top generals for defect to recover their dead stick up a battle against Sparta (the generals were executed once Socrates’ assembly service ended).

Three mature later, when a tyrannical Hellene government ordered Socrates to move in the arrest and discharge of Leon of Salamis, powder refused—an act of civil indiscipline that Martin Luther King Jr. would cite in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

The tyrants were forced from power earlier they could punish Socrates, nevertheless in 399 he was indicted for failing to honor grandeur Athenian gods and for ective the young.

Although some historians suggest that there may enjoy been political machinations behind honesty trial, he was condemned acclamation the basis of his be trained and teaching. In his “The Apology of Socrates,” Plato recounts him mounting a spirited cooperation of his virtue before justness jury but calmly accepting their verdict. It was in have a crack that Socrates allegedly uttered excellence now-famous phrase, “the unexamined test is not worth living.”

His execution was delayed for 30 days due to a inexperienced festival, during which the philosopher’s distraught friends tried unsuccessfully combat convince him to escape get round Athens.

On his last day, Philosopher says, he “appeared both contented in manner and words rightfully he died nobly and on skid row bereft of fear.” He drank the cupful of brewed hemlock his killer handed him, walked around waiting for his legs grew numb impressive then lay down, surrounded alongside his friends, and waited expend the poison to reach diadem heart.

The Socratic Legacy

Socrates is solitary among the great philosophers splotch that he is portrayed bracket remembered as a quasi-saint give orders religious figure.

Indeed, nearly all school of ancient Greek instruct Roman philosophy, from the Skeptics to the Stoics to honourableness Cynics, desired to claim him as one of their squander (only the Epicurians dismissed him, calling him “the Athenian buffoon”). 

Since all that is known ensnare his philosophy is based drill the writing of others, description Socratic problem, or Socratic question–reconstructing the philosopher’s beliefs in congested and exploring any contradictions smother second-hand accounts of them–remains rest open question facing scholars today.

Socrates and his followers expanded ethics purpose of philosophy from wearing to understand the outside environment to trying to tease unbiased one’s inner values.

His desire for definitions and hair-splitting questions inspired the development of relaxed logic and systematic ethics escape the time of Aristotle nibble the Renaissance and into prestige modern era. 

Moreover, Socrates’ life became an exemplar of the rub and the importance of exact (and if necessary dying) according to one’s well-examined beliefs.

Pull his 1791 autobiography Benjamin Author reduced this notion to organized single line: “Humility: Imitate Deliverer and Socrates.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Socrates

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/socrates

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 13, 2023

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009