One of the most interesting philosophers in the
history of classical Greece is Socrates.
Socrates is considered as the wisest man ever lived. Though this claim is still a matter of debate,
but scholars commonly agreed that Socrates together with Plato –his
student, and Aristotle are considered as the penultimate in the high-brow
culture of the Greeks –that is, philosophy.
Philosophizing is something unique in the Hellenic
culture and civilization in ancient times.
The neigboring civilizations like that of the Jews and of the Egyptians
were mostly religious. With
philosophizing, the Greeks were able to break their ties from mythical past
–the past haunted by beliefs in gods and goddesses intervening human affairs.
Philosophy, then, is understood as an inquiry for the
ultimate principle of everything that is in aid of human reason. In this definition, we can single out two
important characteristics of philosophy.
Firstly, philosophy is a search for one ultimate principle of all things
that exist. This sort of inquiry is like
putting all diverse things (multi-verse) into one idea/ principle. This principle will give a clearer picture of
all these diverse things. This picture,
then, depicts one meaningful whole of things.
To put it simply, the ultimate principle bears “meaning” of all diverse
things –the “uni-verse.” Of course,
Thales is known to be the first philosopher to have thought of one single principle
to be the source of life and of all things, and this single principle is
water. This philosophical belief is what
drives rover missions to Mars designed and sent by NASA. For NASA scientists working in these
missions, if water element exists in Mars, then it is very possible that life
exists in that red planet and it’s highly possible that it will become a human
habitation in the near future. Secondly,
philosophizing is a search for an ultimate principle aided only by reasoning.
Before philosophy came into practice, Greeks relied on myths to explain
human and natural phenomena. For
example, earthquakes, lightning, typhoons, tidal waves, etc. were attributed to
the activities of gods and goddesses.
Without any resort to mythical explanations, philosophers tried to
understand the world based purely on reasoning.
Thales, for example, relied on rational demonstration to attribute the
origin of everything –even any form of life, to water. By logical reasoning, he might have thought
that the element of water has properties to transform into other material
objects. By empirical observation, we
know how water transforms into gas or transforms into solid such as ice. Yet, Thales went far in concluding that water
is the principle that was, is and will be.
It doesn’t change substantially yet change only accidentally. On the contrary, the Jews established their
identity as a group of people in a strong belief in one eternal God. The Greeks never had this kind of faith. Their faith is entirely based on human
capacity to understand the world and all things therein.
Based on this analysis of philosophy, we can now
understand the person of Socrates and the structure of his thought. Socrates was not a cosmologist like his
predecessors such as Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraklitus among others. He was rather a sophist. Not all scholars would agree such
though. He lived in a democratic Athens
depicting himself as a gadfly to a fat slow-moving animal –a metaphor Socrates
told his audience during his public trial in Athens. The fat slow-moving animal means the society
he belongs. As a gadfly, he constantly
made noise in the animal’s ears for it to move forward. In the same way, Socrates should exert force
to push his society forward to progress since society takes a very slow progress.
Because of this mission in life, Socrates spent much
of his life conversing with other people in the polis. He conversed with students, other sophists,
politicians and those who pretended they knew anything. Like a gadfly, he asked questions to all he
conversed until the person he conversed would no longer knew what he talked
about. This method is now known as
Socratic dialogue –a sort of dialogue, which created more enemies than
friends. For those he conversed,
Socrates’ way of asking questions is irritating since his questioning will lead
them to ignorance. For Socrates, on the
other hand, it’s his mission –to be a wisest man is one who knows only one
thing –that is, he does not know anything.
That’s why, he asked questions and furthered his questioning.
Socrates died for his mission. He died a martyr of his philosophy. He was martyred in a democratic Athens.
