SOCRATES

For Socrates philosophy was not a profession, but a sort of living. Shabbily dressed, barefoot Socrates spent his days arguing in the market-place. With Socrates, there is a shift in philosophy to Ethics. Socrates was trying to discover the just, the true and the good. In his opinion, if one knows the good, one will always do the good. Therefore, anyone who does anything wrong, doesn't reslly know what the good is. Virtue is knowledge. If people have wrong ideas about virtue, morality, love or any other ethical idea they can not be trusted to do the right thing. Socrates, who did not have respect for traditions, mores and institutions, wanted to change the people so as to get the society changed. The Dialectics of Socrates was the most convenient tool for teaching anything. Socrates made the other tell their ideas through the questions he asked and his capability of controlling the conversation. Thus, at the end of the talk his views came out as a natural result. Aristoteles said that the founder of the Induction method was Socrates. Socrates moved from the partial to the general, from the general to the partial and from the abstract to the concrete and from the concrete to the abstract. Socrates did not write anything; but we have a very real picture of him from the writings of the general Xenephon and Plato.