Essay on Socrates
Socrates is one of the supreme Greek philosophers who never suggested any particular policy or information. His major aim was to show how discussion, debate and argument could help people to comprehend complex issues. He primarily deals with issues that are political in from the surface but revealed to be moral upon being subjected to further questioning. He helped people to know what was wrong with their notions. He clearly signposts the limit of his understanding by asserting that he knows everything that he does not know.
(a). Socrates strives to pursue truth through reasoning rather than just accepting basic facts held by his predecessors or the then cohort. He considers the love of gods as a mere attribute to theistically based ethic, providing both a historical and hypothetical springboard. Socrates complicates the human understanding of God and this might affect their comprehension of how God works. He completely appears to disregard pious acts. He does not want to know which acts are pious but rather strives to identify what is common in all those acts that make them religious. He should have realized that a wrong and right exists and that standard cannot be independent of God’s command or drive. God helps us understand or differentiate right from wrong as clearly depicted in religious books. He should clearly understand that anything accepted by God is right and what God forbids is unquestionably wrong. With such basics, he could be able to create a list of pious acts. (b). Socrates states that virtuous are what all the deities adore. He further suggests that the gods love acts that are pious. I strongly concur with his imagination of how the deities accept certain acts to be pious not for of clemency but because they are already determined as pious. Though we do not have a clear elucidation of what made the actions spiritual in the first place, striving to seek a description for it only leads to the fallacy of begging the Question. I also agree that certain acts are pious and seeking further explanation for it will complicate the issue. Our professed experience should not go to the extent of questioning gods but should not limit our questioning of authorities. (c). Socrates once said, "A life that was not examined was not worth living." This denotes that one must contemplate about their life and its tenacity. It is contrary to my reasoning and perception of life in general. Most humans are more contented if they do not think so much about their life. Asking too many questions about life only makes one realize that they are not living their lives as God expects or according to the criterions established or anticipated by the society. He did not conceptualize the life that his contemporaries lived before formulating such statements. The fact that the life lived by his fellow Athenians was dubious does not necessarily imply that it was an unexamined life. His impetuous eagerness and unhesitating self-confidence with which he criticizes his fellow compatriots’ life is quite unacceptable since it did little in helping them transform their lives. He solely considers their lives as unexamined since the Athenians were significantly preoccupied with sex, social standing and money. He should have realized that people have different objectives in life. Therefore, though their lives might appear unexamined, it was, in fact, examined and live happily.
