The influnce of Socrates and Plato on ancient philosophy and modern western philosophy - Essay Example

?Running Head: Reflection Paper The Influence of Socrates and Plato on Ancient Greek Philosophy and Modern Western Philosophy of Professor Date of Submission Introduction As the thoughts of Socrates were articulated only by spoken words, the post-Socratic world depends primarily on the written account of Plato for facts about them and there is hence doubt about the extent Plato could have exploited the name and personality of his mentor as a medium for his own thoughts. Nonetheless, Socrates was a well-known and contentious personality in ancient Greece. Socrates was a philosopher of ancient Greece who is acknowledged for establishing the basics of modern Western philosophy. Socrates has had a vast influence on ancient Greek or, generally, on Western philosophy, together with apprentices Plato and Aristotle. Even though most of the influence of Socrates is in the field of ethics, his contribution to the discipline of logic and epistemology is notable as well. On the other hand, the contributions of Plato to Western philosophy, such as his most celebrated masterpiece, the Republic, are widely considered as presenting the personal philosophy of Plato, where the primary character effectively represents Plato himself. His contributions merge metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, and moral psychology into a methodical and unified philosophy (Tejera, 1997). This reflective piece will discuss the contributions to and influences of Socrates and Plato on their own societies and how they perceive and challenge their social realities. This reflective piece will also include the influences of Classical philosophy, specifically of Socrates and Plato, on contemporary philosophy. This reflection will be based on the two videos entitled ‘Ancient Greece: Socrates and Plato’ and ‘Great Books: Plato’s Republic’. Ancient Greece: Socrates and Plato The social and political turmoil created by the Persian Wars and the unending rivalry between Sparta and Athens had at least a single unplanned outcome. A stream of new ideas flowed into Athens in the 5th century (Anastaplo, 1997). Generally, these novel ideas arrived as an outcome of the entry of Ionian scholars into the Attic region. Athens had turned out to be the artistic and intellectual hub of the Greece (Anastaplo, 1997). The Greeks exercised their ingenious potentials to enlighten experience by resorting to architecture, comedy, history, art, and tragedy. However, their artistic potentials were also exercised to ‘create’ philosophy, named the ‘love of wisdom’ (Tejera, 1997). Philosophy, on the whole, emerged when the Greeks realized their discontentment with legendary and mystical accounts of reality. Eventually, Greek philosophers started to think that there was a coherent, rational, or valid order to the universe. Socrates, the most brilliant and righteous citizen of Athens to have ever existed, came out among the Sophists; what can be certain about the life and actual influence of Socrates to his society was that he was noteworthy for being a living example of his own teachings. Asking for no payment, Socrates began and ruled a debate wherever the bright and young would pay attention, and people sought his counsel on issues of educational dilemmas and practical behavior. The young people of Athens gathered to beside him as he traveled the directions of the agora (Taylor, 2000). These Athenian youths adhered to his every teachings and ideals. The influence of Socrates on his society is immeasurable. Plato revered his mentor and was the main biographer of Socrates’s life and influence. The influence of Socrates is evidently proven by the fact that academics are predisposed to separate Greek philosophy into the Pre-Socratic era and the period after Socrates. Socrates looks for the absolute, perpetual, permanent ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ underneath the obvious ironies. The main transformation Socrates set off was the shift of emphasis from nature to human essence. The exploration of Socrates for the ultimate reality discovered its most eloquent advocate in his loyal follower, Plato. It is the depiction of Plato of Socrates as he emerges in the ‘Apology’ and the ‘Dialogues’ which has persisted in the vision of modern Western philosophy (Waterfield, 2000). Similarly, Aristophanes illustrates Socrates as a leader of a ‘thinkery’ where he explores and explains minor aspects and instructs students to get the better off their creditors (Taylor, 2000). Socrates’s influence on contemporary society is another aspect that is difficult to determine. He was an absolute model of an individual who lived by his ideals although it eventually took his life. And similar to Socrates, Plato’s influence extended over the years, all over history. Majority of his magnum opuses continued via the Academy, which he established when he went back from his unrecorded journeys to Egypt, Cyrene, Italy, and Sicily (Anastaplo, 1997). Philo of Alexandria was motivated and inspired by the philosophies and ideals of Plato to the point that he applied numerous of the principles of Plato for establishing the fundamental structure of the framework of Jewish religion (Cairns, Hermann & Penner, 2007). A number of ancient Christian scholars and romantics also employed the arguments and philosophies of Plato to justify and develop the core justifications for the religious traditions of Christianity. The teachings and philosophies of Plato also influenced the philosophers and scholars of Averroes and Avicenna, widening the influence of Plato into other religions as well (Cairns et al., 2007). The influence of Plato to his society and to modern philosophy will be discussed more fully in the next section. Great Books: Plato’s Republic The Republic attains the greatest level to which ancient philosophers ever reached. Plato was the first who formulated a system of knowledge. He was the most prominent metaphysical thinker whom humanity has witnessed; and in Plato, greater than in any other ancient philosopher, the roots of modern knowledge are enclosed. The disciplines of psychology and logic, which have informed several intellectual tools of later periods, are rooted in the thoughts of Socrates and Plato (Anastaplo, 1997). The fallacy of circular argument, the law of negation, the premises of definition, and the difference between circumstances and causes, between objectives and goals, and between accidents and nature of an idea or an aspect (Tejera, 1997); the separation of the mind into the touchy and logical components, or of whims and pleasures into pointless and essential; these and other remarkable types of knowledge can be situated in the Republic (Cairns et al., 2007), and were perhaps originally created by Plato. It should not be forgotten as well that the Republic is but another component of a still bigger plan which was to have taken into account an ultimate history of Athens, physical and political philosophy as well. That there is a reality greater than experience, of which the psyche strengthens herself, is a belief which in the contemporary period has been eagerly expressed, and is possibly increasing in popularity (Cairns et al., 2007). Of the philosophers of ancient Greece who enlivened the world up to the Renaissance period Plato has had the biggest sway. Plato’s Republic is also the earliest exposition on education, within which the works of Goethe, Jean Paul, Rousseau, and Milton are the rightful successors (Tejera, 1997). Plato has a discovery of another existence; he is deeply astonished with the harmony of knowledge. Even the elements of his arguments when replicated anew have in all eras attacked the spirits of men, who have discerned in them their own greater essence (Anastaplo, 1997). It takes the entire remnants of the Republic to provide a treatise in justification of fairness or justice as a common virtue and the groundwork of the finest political order. References Cairns, D., Hermann, F. & Penner, T. (2007) Pursuing the Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Anastaplo, G. (1997) The Thinker as Artist: From Home to Plato & Aristotle. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Taylor, C.C.W. (2000) Socrates: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tejera, V. (1997) Rewriting the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Waterfield, R. (2000) The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More