SOCRATES -A MAN WHO DIED FOR HIS PRINCIPLES

Socrates was a Greek philosopher credited for his work on western philosophy and also assumed as founder of moral philosophy of the western ethical tradition of thoughts.

 EARLY LIFE  --

The year of birth of Socrates stated is an estimation ,as no reliable sources are found which could tell about his birth date . But it is assumed about period of years ranging 470 to 469 BC .

Socrates was born in alopoke and belonged to the tribe Antiochis . His father Sophroniscus was a sculptor or stonemason.

His mother , Phaenarete was a midwife .Socrates married Xanthippe ,who bore for him three sons Lamprocles,Sophroniscus and Menexenus .

CAREER --

Socrates first worked as a stonemason .As a youth he showed an appetite for learning. He started his career as a hoplite (foot soldier ).

 For a time , Socrates fulfilled the role of hoplite ,participating in the Peloponnesian war - a period spanning 431 to 404 BC . Several of Plato's dialogues refer to Socrates's military service.

Epistates at the trial of the six commanders--

During 406, he participated as a member of the Boule. His tribe the Antiochis held the Prytany on the day it was debated what fate should befall the generals of the Battle of the Arginusae, who abandoned the slain and the survivors of the foundered ships to pursue the defeated Spartan navy.

Trail And Death Of Socrates -

The tyrants were forced from power before they could punish Socrates, but in 399 he was indicted for failing to honor the Athenian gods  and for corrupting the young. Although some historians suggest that there may have been political machinations behind the trial, he was condemned on the basis of his thought and teaching. 

In his “The Apology of Socrates,” Plato recounts him mounting a spirited defense of his virtue before the jury but calmly accepting their verdict. It was in court that Socrates allegedly uttered the now-famous phrase, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

His execution was delayed for 30 days due to a religious festival, during which the philosopher’s distraught friends tried unsuccessfully to convince him to escape from Athens. On his last day, Plato says, he “appeared both happy in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear.” He drank the cup of brewed hemlock his executioner handed him, walked around until his legs grew numb and then lay down, surrounded by his friends, and waited for the poison to reach his heart.

SOCRATES PHILOSOPHY  --

Although many of Aristophanes’ criticisms seem unfair, Socrates cut a strange figure in Athens, going about barefoot, long-haired and unwashed in a society with incredibly refined standards of beauty. It didn’t help that he was by all accounts physically ugly, with an upturned nose and bulging eyes. Despite his intellect and connections, he rejected the sort of fame and power that Athenians were expected to strive for. His lifestyle—and eventually his death—embodied his spirit of questioning every assumption about virtue, wisdom and the good life.

SOCRATES LEGACY  --

Socrates is unique among the great philosophers in that he is portrayed and remembered as a quasi-saint or religious figure. Indeed, nearly every school of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the Skeptics to the Stoics to the Cynics, desired to claim him as one of their own (only the Epicurians dismissed him, calling him “the Athenian buffoon”). Since all that is known of his philosophy is based on the writing of others, the Socratic problem, or Socratic question–reconstructing the philosopher’s beliefs in full and exploring any contradictions in second-hand accounts of them–remains an open question facing scholars today.

Socrates and his followers expanded the purpose of philosophy from trying to understand the outside world to trying to tease apart one’s inner values. His passion for definitions and hair-splitting questions inspired the development of formal logic and systematic ethics from the time of Aristotle through the Renaissance and into the modern era. Moreover, Socrates’ life became an exemplar of the difficulty and the importance of living (and if necessary dying) according to one’s well-examined beliefs.

 In his 1791 autobiography Benjamin Franklin reduced this notion to a single line: “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”