Reflection Of Socrates And Plato

Ex-convict from South Central Los Angeles, Socrates Fortlow, makes a difference in his community by helping/guiding an 11-year old boy soon to be gang member, Darryl, helps long time friends, Howard and Corina, get their family back in order, and helps get rid of a murderer in the neighborhood, Petis.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” states socrates. Socrates means that people who do not examine their lives, who don’t think about what they want to do with their lives, don’t live a happy life. Jimmy Santiago Baca and Frederick Douglas relate to socrates because they also lived their lives like him. Socrates educated people on the need to examine life and decide how to live it.

The concept of living “the good life” means something different for everyone. There is a general understanding that living “the good life” is associated with unyielding happiness and lasting satisfaction. The exact meaning of this desired life was pondered by thinkers and philosophers for hundreds of years. They constructed principals of behavior, thought, and obligation that would categorize a person as “good”. Although some of these ancient philosophies about “the good life” had overlapping ideas, their concepts varied widely. This contrast of ideas can be examined through two major characters in two famous works: Aeneas in “The Aeneid” and Socrates in “The Apology”. Aeneas exemplifies the philosophy that the direct route to “the good life" is through faith, trust in the Gods, and family, while Socrates in “The Apology” emphasizes free will, and vast knowledge of life.

The problem with Socrates concerns the problem with the role of value and reason. Nietzsche believes that the bulk of philosophers claim that life is a corrupt grievance for mankind. Nietzsche reasoned that these life deniers were decadents of Hellenism, as a symptom of some underlying melancholy. For someone to paint life in such a negative light they must have suffered a great deal through the course of their own life. Furthermore, these no-sayers agreed in various physiological ways and thus adopted the same pessimistic attitudes towards life. Socrates was ugly, alike decadent criminals and by ways of these similarities was decadent as well. Nietzsche also claims ugliness as a physiological symptom of life in its decline supported by studies in phenology.

In 469 B.C. a man by the name of Socrates was born. Socrates was a very wise man that cared about doing the right thing. He believed that the best ways to develop ideas was in the give and take of conversation, and that the best way to educate people was to ask them a series of questions leading in a particular direction (now named “Socrates method). Socrates had been quick to identify the drawbacks of democracy, and he had also been the teacher of two men who in different ways harmed Athens: Alcibiades and Critias. Which made the parents of the children that Socrates had taught very upset and angry. Granting all this, it lead to the Trial of Socrates 399 B.C. During this trial Socrates expressed his view of death by using his question-and-answer method, for which he was famous for and what seemed to have gotten him in trouble. Socrates did not write so we have to depend on on what others wrote, and by doing that we now get to see the diverse ways people read and understand what was written about his speech. My chosen primary source, Socrates View on Death, is important, because it gives one view of Socrates speech while my outside source, Ancient Greece, gives a slightly more in depth view.

A philosophical attitude toward life should play a major part in our lives. It is crucial for us as humans to learn and accept lessons learned through the experience of life. If you do not “examine your life” then what do you learn and what do you gain? Socrates’ in “The Trial and Death of Socrates” he details this in many ways. We can pull all the evidence and ideas we need from this text written by Plato. In the 3 parts Euthyphro, Apology and Crito many conclusions are made and there is much to learn from this text. Some of the most important parts allude to this idea of living life with a philosophical attitude. The book begins with the search for the definition of piety. In the apology Socrates’ details his side of the argument showing everyone the power of his own ideas and that is proved by his execution and finally in the Crito his commitment to his way of life is the last point that Socrates’ made. This text is chalked full of life lessons but the most important is the one that urges people to live their lives while never stopping to learn and think.

There are times in every mans life where our actions and beliefs collide—these collisions are known as contradictions. There are endless instances in which we are so determined to make a point that we resort to using absurd overstatements, demeaning language, and false accusations in our arguments. This tendency to contradict ourselves often questions our character and morals. Similarly, in The Trial of Socrates (Plato’s Apology), Meletus’ fallacies in reason and his eventual mistake of contradicting himself will clear the accusations placed on Socrates. In this paper, I will argue that Socrates is not guilty of corrupting the youth with the idea of not believing in the Gods but of teaching the youth to think for

In order to do this, he goes about Athens questioning those he believes to be wiser than him, including politicians, poets, and craftsmen. Upon this questioning, he discovers that even those perceived as the wisest actually know far less than one would expect. Even the craftsmen, who have much practical wisdom in their respective fields, see their success as merely a tribute to their vast knowledge of many subjects. This, Socrates claims, is not true wisdom. Human wisdom can be described as the acknowledgement and acceptance that one does not know everything, nor is one capable of knowing everything. This, however, does not mean that people should sit idly by, never pursuing wisdom, for it is still vital to the attainment of a good life, which should be the ultimate goal of mankind.

Socrates spent his time questioning people about things like virtue, justice, piety and truth. The people Socrates questioned are the people that condemned him to death. Socrates was sentenced to death because people did not like him and they wanted to shut him up for good. There was not any real evidence against Socrates to prove the accusations against him. Socrates was condemned for three major reasons: he told important people exactly what he thought of them, he questioned ideas that had long been the norm, the youth copied his style of questioning for fun, making Athenians think Socrates was teaching the youth to be rebellious. But these reasons were not the charges against him, he was charged with being an atheist and

Socrates lived most of his life constantly examining his own ideas and character. He saw such self-examination, whether conducted by himself or conversation with partners, to be the greatest good of a life worth living. Socrates' focus was to determine how to become a better human being. In this Socratic perspective, the quality and persistence of the attention we pay to living an examined life is at the heart of living well. Examining anything will result in understanding it. As for that Socrates quote "The unexamined life is not worth living". To me, that means to understand what you are living for is more important than actually living. Understanding yourself, your choices, and why you make those choices; Understanding others that influence you or are influenced by you. Truly understanding what you're doing in your lives endeavors are all things that would make your life "examined". Living an unexamined life would consist of never asking questions to help obtain knowledge to be intelligent instead of being completely ignorant to the world around you. However in this current society, knowledge seeking students are fed ideas and frameworks of interpretations, and attitudes about life and subjects

Socrates found his purpose through oracles and dreams by a divine power, “…since I was trying to find out the meaning of the oracle, I was bound to interview everyone who had a reputation for knowledge.” (Apology 22a), from the oracle of Apollo, Socrates believed that his purpose was to philosophize. Socrates would question reputable wise men and try to prove the oracle that he (Socrates) was not the wisest man. After interviewing men with a high reputation, Socrates began to expose them for their ignorance and their deficiency. He also determined that his wisdom was of no value, yet he was the wisest mortal. He also established that there are three levels of wisdom; “real wisdom” (the highest), being “wisest among men” (the middle), “not being wise, but seeming wise, especially to oneself” (the lowest). Even after establishing his purpose and proving the oracle, he felt as if he should still philosophize (Mission from God, pg. 20). Along with morality, Socrates had the belief that our purpose in life was to examine how to live, he thought that we must come

     “The Unexamined Life is not Worth Living.” This is the famous quote proclaimed by Socrates, a controversial philosopher of ancient Athens. He believed that anyone could lead a significant and meaningful existence by examining his or her own life and ideas very thoroughly. (Soccio)

The “good life” is a way of living that would typically be heralded as the optimum way to live ones life. The way in which the good life is lived, however, along with all the beliefs within that way of living, has been individualized between multiple different philosophers and philosophies. Firstly, John Stuart Mill for example would probably use his age-old argument of saying that the “good life” would be one where you’re happy - but with absolutely no harm caused to others. The early Christian faith belief would be simply: the “good life” is to follow Jesus. The philosophy of stoicism is a belief that the “good life” is to have strong personal traits, and strength of character. Finally, a personal belief is that the “good life” is an essentially insurmountable goal.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."  (Plato, trans. 1871, pa.68)   As Socrates stands against the court, on his final moments, he stands against his firm beliefs, and his insubordinate teachings.  He feels that it is his mission, by God, and his purpose, to seek for this truth within both himself, and other men.  It is often asked what makes life worth living?  In the eyes of Socrates, this 'unexamined life' is one who lives with ignorance, and is not willing to live through experiences, and constantly searches for the truth.  Both self-reflective and self-critical, they walk on a path that seeks for answers to the bigger (and sometimes smaller) questions.  The thirst for knowledge and, through examining his own life, encouraging and reflecting on others' lives, and being critical of those who do not examine their own, Socrates drew to the assumption that an unexamined life is certainly just not worth living.

To Aristotle leading a good life, for the most part, means fulfilling one’s purpose in a way that is good by balancing life’s pleasures. In order to determine if an object fulfills its function in a good way, we must first consider the object. If we were to agree that a car should be reliable, then we could also agree that reliable car should be considered a good car. Similarly, animals, for example, possess certain traits like the power of locomotion, and the desire to seek nourishment and reproduce. According to