Socrates ( 469 BC – 399 BC ) was one of the first Greek philosophers to encourage both scholars and the common citizen to turn their attention from the outside world to the condition of humankind.

Thus if a represents Socrates then Phil ( a ) asserts the first proposition, p ; if a instead represents Plato then Phil ( a ) asserts the second proposition, q.

That is, the " middle " position, that Socrates is neither mortal nor not-mortal, is excluded by logic, and therefore either the first possibility ( Socrates is mortal ) or its negation ( it is not the case that Socrates is mortal ) must be true.

According to Valesius these were mainly Socrates and Sozomen ; Albert Guldenpenning's thorough research placed Rufinus first, and next to him, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Sozomen, Sabinus, Philostorgius, Gregory Nazianzen, and, least of all, Socrates.

Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one's ignorance.

While this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, it in fact allowed Socrates to discover his own errors where others might assume they were correct.

In Plato's dialogues and other Socratic dialogues, Socrates attempts to examine someone's beliefs, at times even first principles or premises by which we all reason and argue.

Theaetetus finds the idea strange, so Socrates deduces that in order to know the syllable, the letters must be known first ( 203e ).

To give a physical description of Socrates ' body is to say that Socrates is sitting, but it does not give us any idea why it came to be that he was sitting in the first place.

His Historia Ecclesiastica, in eighteen books, brings the narrative down to 610 ; for the first four centuries the author is largely dependent on his predecessors, Eusebius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius, his additions showing very little critical faculty ; for the later period his labours, based on documents now no longer extant, to which he had free access, though he used them also with small discrimination, are much more valuable.

Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates.

In his youth he fought at Tanagra ( 426 BCE ), and was a disciple first of Gorgias, and then of Socrates, at whose death he was present.

Socrates leads him into the dingy Thinkery for his first lesson and The Clouds step forward to address the audience.

While there was philosophy prior to Socrates, it was Socrates, says Cicero, who was " the first who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil.

One additional reason for thinking Xanthippe's family was socially prominent was that her eldest son was named Lamprocles instead of " Sophroniscus " ( after Socrates ' father ): the ancient Greek custom was to name one's first child after the more illustrious of the two grandfathers.

They tend to agree also that Plato ’ s earliest works quite faithfully represent the teachings of Socrates and that Plato ’ s own views, which go beyond those of Socrates, appear for the first time in the middle works such as the Phaedo and the Republic.

The other is the understanding of Socratism: Socrates is recognized for the first time as an instrument of Greek disintegration, as a typical décadent.

" Although Socrates had previously identified himself as belonging to the world, rather than a city, Diogenes is credited with the first known use of the word " cosmopolitan ".

Early uses of the term ( in the first sense ) include Plato's Apology ( the defense speech of Socrates from his trial ) and some works of early Christian apologists, such as St. Justin Martyr's two Apologies addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius and the Roman Senate.

It is noteworthy that Socrates ( Plato, Phaedo, 98 B ) accuses Anaxagoras of failing to differentiate between nous and psyche, while Aristotle ( Metaphysics, Book I ) objects that his nous is merely a deus ex machina to which he refuses to attribute design and knowledge.

But, Socrates also has Euthyphro agreeing that the gods are quarrelsome and their quarrels, like human quarrels, concern objects of love or hatred.

Someone can believe Socrates ' philosophical claims about justice without also believing Socrates ' theological speculations about the Greek gods, or accept Aristotle's views on poetry without also accepting his claim that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones.

Socrates objects: there must be some virtue common to all human beings.

Socrates replies that he has no doubt about the existence of mathematical, ethical and aesthetic Forms ( e. g., Unity, Plurality, Goodness, Beauty ), but is unsure of Forms of Man, Fire and Water ; he is almost certain, though admits to some reservations, that undignified objects like hair, mud and dirt do not have Forms.

Socrates rebukes this theory by reminding Cratylus of the imperfection of certain names in capturing the objects they seek to signify.

In the tradition of Socrates and Cicero, Vico's real orator or rhetorician will serve as midwife in the birth of " the true " ( as a form or idea ) out of " the certain " ( as the confusion or ignorance of the student's particularized mind ).

In spite of his disclaimers, Socrates proves to be a master orator who is not only eloquent and persuasive, but even wise.

Given his awkwardness as an orator and his young age at the time of Socrates ' death, many hold that he was not the real leader of the movement against the early philosopher, but rather was simply the spokesman for a group led by Anytus.

He was formerly identified with an Egyptian priest who, after the destruction of the pagan temple at Alexandria ( 389 ), fled to Constantinople, where he became the tutor of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates.

Eudaemonists generally reply that the universe is moral and that, in Socrates ' words, “ No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death ,” or, in Jesus ' words, “ But he who endures to the end will be saved .”

Any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates.

The sentences " Socrates is not bald " and " it is not the case that Socrates is bald " both appear to have the same meaning, and they both appear to assert or presuppose the existence of someone ( Socrates ) who is not bald, so that negation takes narrow scope.

According to Aristophanes, the alleged co-author was a celebrated actor, Cephisophon, who also shared the tragedian's house and his wife, while Socrates taught an entire school of quibblers like Euripides:

In Act II, Scene III of Henry V, his death is described by the character " Hostess ", possibly the Mistress Quickly of Henry IV, who describes his body in terms that parody Plato's description of the death of Socrates.

Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust city is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain ( the common people ), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship's course ( the politicians ), and a navigator ( the philosopher ) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port.

Larissa was indeed the birthplace of Meno, who thus became, along with Xenophon and a few others, one of the generals leading several thousands Greeks from various places, in the ill-fated expedition of 401 ( retold in Xenophon's Anabasis ) meant to help Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II, king of Persia, overthrow his elder brother Artaxerxes II and take over the throne of Persia ( Meno is featured in Plato's dialogue bearing his name, in which Socrates uses the example of " the way to Larissa " to help explain Meno the difference between true opinion and science ( Meno, 97a – c ) ; this " way to Larissa " might well be on the part of Socrates an attempt to call to Meno's mind a " way home ", understood as the way toward one's true and " eternal " home reached only at death, that each man is supposed to seek in his life ).

This view of myths and their origin is criticised by Plato in the Phaedrus ( 229d ), in which Socrates says that this approach is the province of one who is " vehemently curious and laborious, and not entirely happy.

Historically, religious skepticism can be traced back to Socrates, who doubted many religious claims of the time.

Unlike myth, which is a means of explaining the natural world through means other than logical criticism, scientific tradition was inherited from Socrates, who proposed critical discussion, according to Popper.

Socrates Scholasticus gives Ulfilas a minor role, and instead attributes the mass conversion to the Gothic chieftain Fritigern, who adopted Arianism out of gratitude for the military support of the Arian emperor.

Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates ( as a semihistorical dialogue character ) in the Philebus ( p. 49b ) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed.

Socrates of Constantinople, also known as Socrates Scholasticus, not to be confused with the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates, was a Greek Christian church historian, a contemporary of Sozomen and Theodoret, who used his work ; he was born at Constantinople c. 380: the date of his death is unknown.

Socrates ' teachers, noted in his prefaces, were the grammarians Helladius and Ammonius, who came to Constantinople from Alexandria, where they had been pagan priests.

Socrates asserts that he owed the impulse to write his work to a certain Theodorus, who is alluded to in the proemium to the second book as " a holy man of God " and seems therefore to have been a monk or one of the higher clergy.

The author was hailed as the " German Plato ," or the " German Socrates "; royal and other aristocratic friends showered attentions on him, and it was said that " no stranger who came to Berlin failed to pay his personal respects to the German Socrates.