Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης； English: Socrates; German: Sokrates) (469 BC [1], 470 BC [2] ~ 399 BC), is one of the founders of Greek (Athens) philosophy.
Socrates had a strong influence on philosophers in the later ancient and modern times. Socrates' description of art, literature and popular culture makes him one of the most well-known figures in the western philosophical tradition.

childhood
Socrates was born into a family of ordinary citizens in Athens, Greece. His father sophroniscus was a sculptor, and his mother phaenarete was a midwife.
youth
Socrates learned carving from his father. Later, he read Homer's epic and the works of other famous poets, and became a very learned man by self-study. He made a living by imparting knowledge. When he was in his 30s, he became a social ethics teacher who did not receive any remuneration or set up a library.
Socrates regarded himself as a gift and messenger given by God to Athenians. His task was to talk to people everywhere all day, discuss problems, and explore the most useful truth and wisdom for people. Therefore, he spent most of his life outdoors and likes to talk about various issues with people from all walks of life in public places such as markets, sports fields and streets, for example, what is piety? What is democracy? What is virtue? What is courage? What is truth? And what is your job? What knowledge and skills do you have? Are you a politician? If so, what have you learned about governance? Are you a teacher? How do you conquer your ignorance before educating the ignorant? wait.
The theme running through these discussions is to guide people to understand that people are very ignorant about these issues that are vital to people, so people need to seek what is true justice and kindness through critical discussion to achieve the purpose of transforming the soul and saving the city-state.
Socrates said: "my mother is a midwife, and I will follow her footsteps. I am a spiritual midwife, helping others to produce their own ideas." He also compared himself to a gadfly, a gift from God to Athens. God gave him to Athens for the purpose of stimulating the country with this gadfly, because Athens is like a fine horse, but it has become dull and sleepy due to its hypertrophy and laziness, so it is very necessary to have a gadfly bite it tightly, scold it at any time, persuade it at any time, so that it can wake up from its sleep and glow with spirit.
Socrates regarded criticism of Athens as a sacred mission given to him by God. This sense of mission and the thinking and exploration that came from it became the purpose of his life and philosophical practice. He knew that doing so would make many people very angry and wanted to trample on the gadfly, but God had given him a mission that he could not violate, so he risked his life. In this sense, he claims to be a sacred gadfly who criticizes current evils.
middle age
Around the age of 40, he became a famous figure in Athens. In Athens, he debated philosophical issues with many wise men at that time, mainly on ethics and education politics, and was considered the most intelligent man at that time.
He advocated people to understand the truth of being human and live a moral life. He defined philosophy as "love wisdom", and one of his important views is that he knows his ignorance. Many children of rich and poor families often gathered around him to ask him for advice, but Socrates often said, "I only know that I know nothing." He concluded: "only God is wisdom. His answer is to point out that human wisdom is worthless or worthless. God is not talking about Socrates. He only uses my name as an explanation, as if to say, people, only those who know that their wisdom is actually worthless like Socrates are the most intelligent." He is proud of his ignorance and believes that everyone should admit his ignorance.
As a citizen, he joined the army three times and served as a heavy infantry soldier. He showed tenacity and bravery in the war and rescued wounded soldiers more than once in the battle. In addition, he served as a jury in the Athens citizens' assembly.

Perish
Socrates' sculptures and works of Art
After the restoration of slave owner democracy in Athens, Socrates was charged with contempt for traditional religion, introduction of new gods, corruption of youth and opposition to democracy, and sentenced to death. According to the Crito chapter, he refused suggestions from friends and students to beg for pardon and escape, drank poison wine and died at the age of 70.
Socrates did advocate a new God, who is the source of moral goodness and wisdom truth: the God of universal rationality. This universal rational God is the ultimate basis of Socrates' philosophical pursuit - the true good. People can have knowledge because they have received special love from God and are endowed with a part of divinity, so that they have a soul, a mind and reason that love wisdom. But people should understand that the soul you have is incomparable with the wisdom of God. Therefore, this new concept of rational God and the teaching that people should be "self aware and ignorant" have become a powerful force to stimulate and promote people to pursue true knowledge and criticize the untrue and poor, the false and the hypocritical.
Socrates loved the city-state of Athens, and he did not allow the most sacred beliefs to be blasphemed in the slightest. Therefore, he resolutely chose to die. He does not cherish his life, but he pays more attention to his soul. He believes that God is omnipresent and omnipotent, and that everything is a conscious and purposeful clever arrangement of God. He did not betray God. In that case, death is God's call to him. What can he hesitate about? Maybe people laugh at him, laugh at his innocence, laugh at his stubbornness and stubbornness, but only those who really have insight into his inner world will be convinced by his wisdom and loyalty: Wisdom makes him see and pay close attention to the virtues that people have not noticed, loyalty is to the city he loves, the law he abides by all his life, and his eternal ideal pursuit.
In the Socrates case, one side was a great philosopher who pursued truth and sacrificed his life for justice, while the other side was the Athens city-state, which boasted democracy and freedom and was regarded as the source of democratic politics. Who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is evil, are not so clear-cut, and emotional choice has become a painful torture, so its tragic color has become increasingly prominent.
Socrates had a large number of fanatical admirers and fierce opponents both before and after his death. He did not leave any works in his life, and his actions and theories were mainly handed down through the records in the works of his students Plato and Xenophon. Since ancient times, there have been various records and statements about Socrates' life and theory, which has always been the most discussed issue in the academic world.
But his influence is enormous. In the history of European culture, he has always been regarded as a saint who died for the pursuit of truth, almost the same position as Confucius in Chinese history. Philosophical historians often regard him as a watershed in the history of the development of ancient Greek philosophy, and call his previous philosophy pre Socratic philosophy. With a brand-new understanding of philosophy, he opened a new era of Greek philosophy, and with his basic thought of soul reincarnation and purification, he exerted an extremely profound and huge influence on Plato, and through them, he has always influenced Western Philosophy in the Hellenized Roman era and even later generations.

It is not a simple thing to study Socrates' philosophical beliefs: since he has not left any of his own works at all, we can only explore them from the records of Plato and Xenophon. However, their records are often contradictory. Therefore, it has always been a topic of debate about which records are closer to the truth. Some people think that Socrates does not have any specific beliefs, but only interrogates each belief; Plato's lengthy theory published in the Republic is actually Plato's own idea. It is rather difficult to distinguish the concepts of Plato and Socrates from the records, and it is even more difficult to explain their concepts. Therefore, it is not easy to find Socrates' ideas from the records of Plato and Xenophon. It must be noted that these ideas may not be put forward by Socrates himself, but may be closer to the views of these recorders themselves.
The evidence obtained from the dialogue shows that Socrates had only two teachers: Prodicus, a grammarian, and Diotima, a priestess, who taught Socrates about love. Some dialogues also show that Socrates was influenced by thinkers at that time, such as Parmenides and Anaxagoras, who are often regarded as Socrates' teachers in historical records. John Burnet, a classical historian, claims that Socrates' main mentor is Archelaus, an Anaxagorean scholar. In fact, the records about Archelaus are Socrates' own theories. Eric A. Havelock believes that the relationship between Socrates and Anaxagoras proves the difference between his philosophy and Plato's.
Before Socrates, Greek philosophy mainly studied the origin of the universe and the composition of the world. Later generations called it "natural philosophy". Socrates believes that it is of little practical significance to study these problems again to save the country. He once said: my friend is not the trees outside the city, but the people inside the city. It is precisely out of this concern for the fate of the country and the people that Socrates began to study mankind itself, that is, to study human ethical issues, such as what is justice and what is injustice; What is courage, what is cowardice; What is honesty and what is hypocrisy; What is wisdom and how does knowledge come from; What is a country, what qualities can people have to govern the country well, how to train talents for governing the country, and so on. Socrates believes that the definition of a philosopher should be a person who loves wisdom, not a person who has wisdom. Later generations called Socrates' philosophy "ethical philosophy". He opened a new field for philosophical research and made philosophy "return to the world from heaven", which is of great significance in the history of philosophy.
Socrates' philosophy is mainly embodied in the following aspects:
heart
Starting from the wise, ancient Greek philosophy changed from focusing on the study of nature itself to focusing on the study of social ethics and people. But they only stay at the stage of sensibility and can only draw relativistic conclusions. Socrates fundamentally changed this situation. Socrates called for a "spiritual turn" to turn philosophy from studying nature to studying self, that is, what people often said later, to pull philosophy back from heaven to the world. He believes that the pursuit of natural truth is endless; Feeling that the world is constantly changing, the knowledge we get is also uncertain. Socrates wants to pursue an unchanging, definite and eternal truth, which can not be found in the natural world, but in himself and himself. His famous saying is "know yourself". From Socrates on, self and nature are clearly distinguished; Man is no longer just a part of nature, but another unique entity different from nature.
soul
Socrates' theory on soul further clarified the division between spirit and material. Philosophers before Socrates have long said that the soul is immortal, and the opposition between idealism and materialism has sprouted. However, the philosophers before him still had a vague view of the soul, and some still regarded the soul as the most delicate material. Therefore, the boundary between idealism and materialism was not clear. It was not until Socrates clearly regarded the soul as a spiritual entity that was essentially different from matter. In Socrates' view, the birth and death of things are just the aggregation and dispersion of certain things. His view that spirit and matter are clearly opposed has become the beginning of the history of philosophy.
truth
According to Aristotle, Socrates gave up his study of the natural world, wanted to seek universal truth on ethical issues, and began to seek a definition for things. He objected to the relativism of the wise men, and believed that there could be various opinions, but only one truth; "Opinions" can change with each person and other conditions, but "truth" is eternal and unchanging. In Plato's early dialogues, almost all the topics discussed were how to define ethics. What Socrates seeks is to understand "beauty itself" and "justice itself", which are universal definitions of beauty and justice, and are real knowledge, that is, Plato's "idea of beauty" and "idea of justice". This is the original form of "idealism" in the history of western philosophy. Socrates further pointed out that the series of causes and effects in nature is endless. If philosophy only seeks this kind of cause and effect, it is impossible to understand the ultimate cause of things. He believes that the ultimate cause of things is "goodness", which is the purpose of things. He replaced the study of causality with teleology, which opened up a way for later philosophy.

dialectical
The dialectics of midwifery and revealing contradictions
Socrates believes that all knowledge comes from difficulties. The more progress we make, the more difficulties we have. The more difficulties we have, the greater progress we will make. Socrates admitted that he himself had no knowledge, and that he had to teach others knowledge. He solved this contradiction in this way: this knowledge was not instilled into people by him, but what people already had; People are already pregnant, but they do not know that Socrates is like a midwife, helping others to generate knowledge. Socrates' midwifery is concentrated in the form of "questioning", which he often adopts, exposing the contradictions in various propositions and theories put forward by the other party by asking questions, so as to shake the basis of the argument of the other party and point out the ignorance of the other party; In the questioning, Socrates himself did not give a positive answer, because he admitted that he was ignorant. This method is generally called "Socratic irony". This method of Socrates is developed from the logical inference of the Elian school and the counter proof of Zeno of Elia. Generalizing the generality from the special cases, we think that the general precedes and is higher than the special, which is an independent thing. In the negative form of Socrates' satire, there are positive results of exposing contradictions and dialectical thinking. Su compares herself to a midwife, and uses the method of peeling cocoons and drawing silk from the conversation to make the other party gradually understand their ignorance, discover their mistakes, and establish correct knowledge concepts. The characteristic of this kind of conversation is that it is by means of questions and answers to clarify the other party's ideas and make him discover the truth himself. However, during the conversation, Su Shi paid more attention to questions and did not easily answer the other side's questions. He only asked the other party to answer the questions he raised. He asked questions with a humble attitude, and the answers of the other party led to information on other questions. Finally, due to constant questioning, the young man admitted his ignorance. In the process of questioning, Su gave students the highest wisdom, which is the famous Socratic irony. Socrates' method is the earliest form of dialectics in the history of western philosophy.
From the perspective of the development of philosophical thought, Socrates proposed the distinction between spiritual entity and material entity, which made the opposition between idealism and materialism break away from the simplicity of early philosophy and enter a more mature stage; He raised the ethical thought of the early Greek philosophers to the height of philosophy; He inspires thoughts and exposes contradictions by means of logical debate, and penetrates into the essence of things by means of dialectical thinking. All these contribute to the development of philosophical thinking. However, as the first philosopher with a systematic view in the history of western philosophy, he began the era of subjective, rational and abstract thinking, replacing religious myths with deism.
education
Socrates is engaged in education all his life, has rich experience in educational practice and has his own educational theory. But he didn't set up his own school. So where does he teach? How does he teach? Squares, temples, streets, shops, workshops, gymnasiums and so on are all places where he teaches. Young people, old people, rich people, poor people, farmers, craftsmen, nobles and civilians are all the objects of his teaching. No matter who asks him for advice, he will teach enthusiastically. Other teachers at that time, the wise men, collected tuition fees. They took teaching as a means of making money. Socrates taught people without tuition fees. He taught for the benefit of the city-state and was a compulsory teacher. He believes that education is very important to a person's growth. He believes that no matter who are more intelligent or who are less gifted, if they are determined to achieve praiseworthy achievements, they must study hard and practice hard.
Socrates' educational aim is to train talents for governing the country. After Pericles' death, Athens had no good leaders, and the democratic system became extreme democracy and anarchism. Even the leaders of the country were selected by drawing lots or drawing lots. Socrates was very sad about this. He believed that talents for governing the country must have a good education and advocated that talents for governing the country should be trained through education. In order to train talents for governing the country, he devoted his life to it.
As for the content of education, he advocated that first of all, we should cultivate people's virtue, teach people to learn how to be a person, and become a person with virtue; Secondly, we should teach people to learn broad and practical knowledge. He believes that a statesman must have extensive knowledge. He said that in all things, those who are respected and praised are those who have the broadest knowledge, while those who are condemned and despised are those who are the most ignorant; Finally, he advocated teaching people to exercise. He believes that a healthy body is very important to physical and mental activities in peacetime and wartime. And a healthy body is not born. Only through exercise can people be strong.
In terms of teaching method, Socrates formed his own unique teaching method through long-term teaching practice, which is called "Socratic Method" by people and "midwifery technique" by himself. His mother is a midwife, and he uses this to compare his teaching methods. His mother's midwifery is to deliver the baby, and his teaching principle of "midwifery" is to deliver the baby for ideas, which is to guide people to produce correct ideas.
"Socratic Method" is always carried out in the form of questions and answers between teachers and students, so it is also called "question and answer method". When Socrates teaches students to acquire a certain concept, he does not directly tell them the concept, but first asks them questions and asks them to answer. If the students answer incorrectly, he does not directly correct them, but puts forward other questions to guide them to think, so as to draw correct conclusions step by step. It lays a foundation for heuristic teaching.
The question and answer method advocated by Socrates has a great influence on later generations. Until today, the question and answer method is still an important teaching method.
There was such a thing in Socrates' teaching. On the first day of school, Socrates said to his students: "today we will only do one thing. Everyone will try to swing his arm forward and then backward." Then he gave a demonstration. "From today on, I will do 300 times a day. Can you do it?" The students all laughed. Who can't do such a simple thing. But a year later, when Socrates asked again, only one of his students insisted. Later, this person became a new generation of thinker after him. This person was Plato. Socrates actually had an assistant, who was his real heir.
Socrates has his own teaching plan
One day, in class, philosopher Socrates took out an apple and stood in front of the platform and said, "please smell the air!" A student raised his hand and answered, "I can smell it. It's the smell of apples!" Socrates stepped down from the platform and walked slowly past each student with an apple in his hand. He told them: "please smell carefully again. Is there any apple fragrance in the air?" By this time, half of the students had raised their hands. Socrates returned to the rostrum and raised the question again. This time, all the students raised their hands except one. Socrates went up to the student and asked, "don't you really smell anything?" The student said affirmatively, "I really can't smell anything!" At this time, Socrates announced to everyone: "he is right, because this is a fake apple." This student was Plato, who became a famous philosopher.
ethic
Socrates established an ethical ideology of virtue, that is, knowledge, whose center is to explore the purpose of life and good morality. He stressed that people should understand the universal laws of social life and "know themselves", and believed that all kinds of beneficial or harmful purposes and moral norms obtained by people in real life were relative. Only by exploring the concept of universal and absolute good and grasping the true knowledge of the concept, can people's highest purpose in life and the best virtue be achieved. Socrates believes that a person must have moral knowledge if he wants to have morality, and all immoral acts are the result of ignorance. Only when people get rid of the temptation of material desire and the limitation of acquired experience, and acquire conceptual knowledge, can they have wisdom, courage, moderation, justice and other virtues. He believes that morality can only be arranged by the mind and God, and moral education is to make people know the mind and God and listen to the instructions of the gods. This ethical thought of asceticism and mysticism was later inherited and developed by antistani, forming a cynical school characterized by emphasizing abstinence; The happiness theory contained in Socrates' ethics was inherited and developed by Aristotle, forming the curiani school which advocates pleasure. Plato fully inherited Socrates' ethical thought system and further systematized and theorized it. Socrates emphasized the importance of knowledge and thought that ethics and morality should be determined by reason. This rationalistic thought played a positive role in the development of Western Philosophy in the future
debate
Socrates often argues with people. In the debate, he made the other party correct and abandon the original wrong ideas and help people generate new ideas through the form of questions and answers. This kind of question and answer is divided into three steps: the first step is called Socratic irony, which he believes is a necessary step to make people smart, because unless a person is very humble and "knows his ignorance", he cannot learn true knowledge. The second step is called definition. After repeated questioning and induction in the question and answer, a clear definition and concept are obtained. The third step is called midwifery, which guides students to think and draw conclusions by themselves. As Socrates himself said, although he is ignorant, he can help others to gain knowledge, just like his mother is a midwife. Although she is old and unable to bear children, she can deliver babies and help new lives to be born.
Socrates taught his friend otidemus never to give them ready-made answers, but to make students unconsciously accept his ideological influence by asking and refuting questions. Please take a look at an interesting example of his question and answer with students.
Otidemos: Socrates, what is good?
Socrates: theft, deception, and the slave trade are good deeds or evil deeds?
Otidemos: it's evil.
Socrates: is it evil to deceive the enemy? Is it evil to sell captured enemies as slaves?
Otidemos: This is good. But I'm talking about friends, not enemies.
Socrates: according to you, theft is evil to friends. However, if a friend wants to commit suicide, you steal the tools he intends to use to commit suicide. Is this evil?
Otidemos: it's good.
Socrates: you said that cheating on friends was evil, but in the war, the commander of the army told the soldiers that reinforcements were coming to boost their morale. But in fact, there are no reinforcements. Is this kind of deception evil?
Otidemos: This is good.
This kind of teaching method has its merits. It can inspire people's thoughts, enable people to actively analyze and think about problems, and prove that truth is concrete and relative by dialectical methods. Under certain conditions, it can be transformed into its own reverse. This epistemology is of great significance in the history of European thought.

Governing the country
Socrates advocated the theory of expert governance. He believed that all walks of life, even the state power, should be managed by trained, knowledgeable and capable people, and opposed to democracy implemented by the lottery election law. He said: managers are not those who hold power and bully others with their power, nor those elected by the people, but those who know how to manage. For example, a ship should be piloted by people who are familiar with navigation; When spinning wool, women should manage men, because they are good at it, while men do not. He also said that the best people are those who can do their jobs. A good farmer is one who is good at farming; He who is proficient in medicine is a good doctor; He who is proficient in politics is an excellent politician.