Hello YouTube, welcome Philosophy Addicts.
Today I'm going to talk to you about Socrates. And yes,
you will tell me, "Henric, why do you start
with Socrates?" Socrates is not the first
philosopher, I know. And one day I'll make a
video talking about the first
philosophers, but in my opinion,
Socrates revolutionized the way we
understand philosophy, and it's worth
starting with him. In Socrates, philosophy
begins to reflect on how one should
live one's life. Philosophy
becomes something that is lived in an
existential or vital activity, and this is
clearly seen in the activity of
Socrates. Okay, Socrates, Socrates,
all I know is that I know nothing. Well, you can already
delete that phrase from your list
of famous quotes because, as far as we know,
Socrates never said that. Understand me. It's not
that the phrase doesn't reflect
Socrates' attitude well in a certain sense, it's
just that, as far as we know, he
never said it. In fact, Socrates did not
write anything. But then, what
are our sources? First of all, we have
Plato, the most
brilliant disciple of Socrates. Plato writes a
lot of dialogues and in almost all of them
Socrates is the main protagonist.
Then there's a guy named
Genophon, who also knew
Socrates and tells us some things about
him in his writings. Genophon's Socrates
is a bit weak compared to Plato's
, but still
good. We also have Aristophanes, who
is this man who looks a little like
Jesus Christ, a playwright who wrote
a comedy called The Clouds, in which he
presents Socrates as a
sophist. Since this work is a comedy, it is
not usually taken as a
reliable source. Finally, Aristotle also
tells us some things about Socrates.
Aristotle did not know
Socrates personally, but since he spent almost half his
life at Plato's side in his academy,
he surely heard many
things about his teacher. Aristotle is useful
because he helps us distinguish between
Socrates and Plato. For example, we know
that wherever Socrates in
Plato's dialogues mentions the theory of
ideas, that is already pure Plato. For
our purposes, Plato's early dialogues are usually taken as the
most reliable source
. And this is important, only
the early ones, because little by little Plato
develops his own philosophy and
puts it in the mouth of Socrates in his
dialogues. But in the first dialogues he
wrote, which are above all a
vindication of the figure of Socrates
against those who accused him and who
managed to kill him, it is usually
considered that we find a
faithful expression of the type of Socrates, of what it was like to
know Socrates. But
what do we know about the concrete life of Socrates? Well, he was
born in Athens in 469 BC and
died executed, as I told you in the
first video, in 399. It is said that he
bravely participated in the
Peloponnesian War and that on several occasions he
publicly opposed measures of the
Athenian government that seemed
unjust to him, both during the era of
democracy and during the tyranny of the 1930s.
In other words, he had them.
Why did you begin your
philosophical activity? It is said that a friend of his,
Creon, went to the oracle at Delphi to
ask who was the wisest person
and the oracle replied that the
wisest was Socrates. When Socrates
found out, as he was aware that he was not
wise at all, he decided to go and question
those who were considered wise
in order to prove that the oracle
was wrong. Start asking
the politicians, those who are supposed to
know because they are responsible for the
good of the entire community. Well, it
turns out they don't know because they can't
answer their questions and they
continually fall into contradictions.
So ask the poets,
those who are supposed to
know because they are in charge of
Hellenic culture and have a very
important role in the education of
young people. Guess what, it turns out they do
n't know either. Finally ask the
artisans. These people really know
their stuff, but because they know only one thing, they
think they know everything, so they do
n't know anything either. And Socrates is making it
publicly evident that those who
were considered wise and who even
consider themselves wise
are actually ignorant people who do not recognize that
they are, you know, making friends and all that.
By the way, as an aside, it should be
noted that, compared to what the Greeks
knew, Socrates carried out a
very unusual activity, especially
because he didn't charge anything, unlike
the sophists. This leads on several
occasions to Socrates and his family
having to receive funding
from Socrates' disciples,
because since he spent all day in
the market questioning people, he did
n't have much time to
bring money home. In short,
after questioning all these people,
Socrates ends up concluding that the
oracle says that he is the wisest
because he alone is aware of the
limits of his own knowledge and does not
pretend to know what he does not know.
Thus, as a service to the gods, he
decides to continue with this activity.
So, if you happen to
find someone wise, you can
learn from them, and if not, you can put
people in their place. In the Apology,
Socrates says that he is like a gadfly
who continually harasses his
fellow citizens so that they do not forget the
difference between what they know and what they do not
know, because when this
difference is forgotten, then stupid decisions are made
. So, what do you think
about Socrates? Would you like him? Would you
dislike him? Would you be his disciples?
Hey? You would try to have him killed. What do
you think? Do you think he does it in good
faith as he says, or that he just
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