Week 4 Essay History

Western Civilization Lesson 20
CB.
3/28/17
Week 4 writing assignment Answer two:

1) What was the disagreement Socrates had with the Sophists?

2) What qualities does Plato's ideal monarch -- the "philosopher-king" -- possess?

(Question 1) Socrates was an important philosopher from Ancient Greece who shifted his focus towards how humans should live. That’s why he had a difference with the Sophists they had polar opposite ideas from what he thought. Socrates thought there was a certain way a person should live, using reason and not just acting on instincts like an animal, but having an examined life and sticking to morals and ethics.  The Sophists taught public speaking, It was a necessary tool to have. The problem Socrates had with it was that they were teaching rhetoric how to make a convincing argument whether it was right or wrong, or in line with facts or not, they didn’t care. They just taught people to be persuasive whatever your position may be. Sophist thought you should do whatever benefits you what’s right for me is wrong for you who’s to say?  Soc’s feelings were “A unexamined life is not worth living”. “Man is the measure of all things” was a famous quote from Protagoras (a Sophist). So that was a contrast from Socrates political philosophy. Socrates was appalled by this way of thinking and acting and thought of it as corrupting the youth! Socrates believed in absolute truths and rejected relativism and dedicated his life to the study of it among other things such as ethics. His ideas were that there was an essence of justice and other things like goodness and beauty and we shouldn’t just know examples of these things. Socrates knew the extent of his own ignorance, he wanted to gain knowledge and grow. And that is what made him the wisest. So for him, he wanted to seek out answers and not just be content with something that may be right or may not be. Unlike the Sophist, Socrates didn’t ask payment for his teachings. And the Sophist did. Socrates wants to draw information out of his pupils and connect it to a bigger picture, absolute truths. His views elaborated are that you have to look at justice, goodness, and beauty in the abstract (big picture) to understand what, for example, goodness, really is! Understanding principals and being bound to them these principals would transcend time; he continued with the idea that you discover these principals and they exist in all times unbroken. We cannot make up our own rules just according to the environment of how a man (as in humans) wants to do things, Soc thought that was silly! Living should be like an art he says. He believes virtue is knowledge. Reflection on what you do and not acting on instinct for pleasure, he thought that’s what separated beast from man. Sophist thought to act on pleasure whatever makes you feel good. Overindulgence in food is an example and lots of items and so on to treat themselves bountifully. Socrates, ironically, was executed in the end for “corrupting the youth”; the very thing he accused the sophist of doing and “corrupting” by teaching ethics and moral principals oddly. This was a different period. Socrates was against the curve of thoughts at the time of what was acceptable. (Question 2) (Notes were deleted but done, and I can’t answer this one without notes.)