Socrates The Apology
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Socrates reaches ethics, social and political philosophy, and logic in the Apology, in part because of the circumstances that the text deals with and in part because of the way that Plato presents the structure of Socrates' arguments. The context for the Apology is the anticipation of Socrates's execution for corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of Athens (Apology 12). Socrates explains that the accusation is a ruse by Athenians who wish to silence him on account of his social strategy, which is to ask questions of the supposedly wise in order to achieve "such wisdom as is attainable by man" (Apology 8). He draws answers out of others without giving them the answers, yet by exposing (with some irony) the logical problems with their answers he points toward truth, clarity, and understanding. He explains that he sought out politicians, poets, and artisans, who thought that because they were good at their particular profession "they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom" (Apology 10).Socrates's accusers--representing poets, politicians, artisans, and rhetoricians--deliberately reformulate and mischaracterize his conclusion that after consulting with the supposedly wise he was better off as he was, lacking wisdom and knowing it, instead of lacking wisdom yet declaring himself wise (Apology 10-11). Accordingly, Socrates is declared "an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into th
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oints toward the development of an ethical consciousness. How this occurs goes directly to the question of a philosophical education and what Aristotle eventually calls practical wisdom. That is what Aristotle means when he says it is important "to qualify our activities, since the differences between the conditions of soul correspond to the differences of the activities which give rise to them" (Aristotle 46). In other words, the soul needs to be trained to develop and to enact goodness. Training is bound up with philosophical study.
It is hard to fault the moral component of Aristotle's thought, and he is systematic in his approach. But the extended metaphor for happiness exposes the social elitism implicit in his entire discourse. Aristotle did not perhaps invent slavery and war, but the experience of more recent human history has demonstrated that societies founded on them are vulnerable. Thus it would be a mistake to believe that Aristotle's ideas of happiness are truly universal in scope.
4. Lucretius: "On the Nature of the Universe"
Lucretius's philosophical preoccupations are metaphysics and cosmology. He seeks to deal with the issue of what is real by studying the world/universe/things in terms of what constitutes exis
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4497
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)
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