Socrates’s Last Days

Credit: Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons user: Sting

I want to tell you a great story of heroism, bravery and tragedy. It is the story of Socrates’s last days, which took place about 2,300 years ago and remains an important touchstone for the history of philosophy today.

Meno: Plato on Ethics and Epistemology

While Plato’s Meno is ostensibly about ethics since it discusses virtue, it is also about epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge. Written in 385 BC,[1] the plot is about a man, Meno, who is talking to Socrates about the nature of virtue. Meno wanted to know if virtue can be taught, gained through practice or is inborn.

Multi-Dimensional Man

By Copy of Silanion, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7831217

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.[1] Even though The Republic was written by Plato 2,400 years ago, a modern reader will sympathise with the everyman notions of justice presented by Socrates’s interlocutors in Book I who believe that:

1) Justice is “to speak the truth and to pay your debts.”[2]

2) Justice is “giving to each man what is proper to him.”[3]

3) Justice serves the “interest of the stronger.”[4]

This essay will focus on the third idea of ‘might makes right,’ Socrates’s argument against it, and formulate an alternative response of the multi-dimensional man, which Socrates may find hard to resist.

Is Socrates a Sophist?

By Sting, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3569936

Are Sophists philosophers? No. Is Socrates a philosopher? Yes. Hence, is he a Sophist? No.

Anaxagoras's Influence on Plato and Aristotle

By Eduard Lebiedzki, after a design by Carl Rahl - http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinacoteca/nbe_pinacoteca_artists_l.htm

While Anaxagoras’s theory on the nature of things ultimately led to disappointment for Plato and Aristotle, it played a role in the formulation of Platonic Ideas and Aristotle’s four causes.