Socrates

Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. New Your:

Doubleday. 1985.

I. influence and development

A. certain

1. studied cosmology of East and West

a. Archelaus

b. Diogenes of Apollonia

c. Empedocles

B. Theophrastus

1. holds Socrates a member of the school of Archelaus

a. a successor of Anaxagoras at Athens

C. Anaxagoras

1. disappointment for Socrates

a. mind as cause of all natural law and order

b. disappointment

1. mind was used only to get vortex movement going

2. result of disappointment

a. set out on own investigation abandoning Natural Philosophy

D. in twenties

1. thought evolved from cosmological speculation of Ionians to man

II. philosophical activities

A. Aristotle

1. two improvements in science justifiably ascribed to Socrates

a. inductive arguments

b. universal definitions

1. fixed concepts

B. inductive arguments

1. practical method

a. dialectic (conversation)

1. proceed from less adequate definitions to more adequate definitions

2. or from consideration of particular examples to a universal definition

C. universal definitions

1. remain the same (definitions)

2. particulars

a. may change

3. importance

a. mainly in ethics

1. firm foundation impervious to arguments of Sophists

D. mission

1. "...to stimulate men to care for their noblest possession, their soul, though the acquisition of wisdom and virtue."

E. knowledge

1. means to ethical action

a. one who knows what is right will do what is right

F. right

1. serves true utility

2. promotes true happiness

a. not the merely pleasurable

G. moral weakness

1. overlooked by Socrates