Greek Philosophy 7.2: Socrates' Philosophy

An approach to Socrates' philosophical ideas.
00:00 Introduction
01:52 Orientation to Socrates' Thought
02:30 Socrates' Philosophia: Re-Orienting Values
08:06 Freedom from External "Tyranny": Excessive Authority and Conformity
21:10 Freedom from Internal "Tyranny": Excessive Pride, Appetite, and Aversion
28:00 Socrates' Logos: A Search for Meaning
35:45 Socrates' Daimōn: The Inner Voice of the Spirit
41:44 Philosophy as a Way of Life
45:00 Inward and Outward Dialogue
45:37 Epictetus on Socrates' Journal
46:45 Socrates on the Self and Psychē: Acting from Soul
59:26 Ethics: No one does wrong willingly; wisdom and virtue
1:04:25 Ethics: It's better to suffer than to do unjust harm
1:08:41 Socrates in Context: Homer, the Polis, and the Sophists
1:10:27 Socrates' Legacy: The Socratic Movement

[@diegof8239]

I cannot thank you enough for these videos on Socrates. Great content and you present this info with such a good vibe. James

[@lianko2000]

As a Greek its nice to listen to your lectures and grasp the analysis in English. Socrates was the most important philosopher in ancient Greece.

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Thanks for the encouragement and feedback, and ευχαριστώ!

[@sanchezzz69420]

Listened to it while running for a couple of hours.

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Good to hear-I think the Peripatetic philosophers would approve!

[@germanschmidt3802]

Thank you very much for making me think.

[@davidflood3022]

Thank you very much for this fantastic lecture. Thoroughly enjoyed the content and also your skillful style of delivery 👍🏼

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Great to hear-thank you for the feedback!

[@arturogarcia7579]

man i love your videos

[@pinecone421]

This channel is amazing! I just shared it with my my philosophy club and i subscribed. Keep up the good work and soon you’ll be very popular!

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Thanks for the encouraging feedback, and greetings to the philosophy club!

[@dhananjaypandya5196]

Love your work! Keep it up

[@franl9954]

Wonderful to find this!

[@artimanmode4799]

Thank you so much. Love from india.🤗🤗🤗

[@metalbelt1]

new subscriber here. keep posting!

[@skutratufahija]

Hello! First of all, very nice videos! Will there be more videos, specifically on Plato and Aristotle?

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Hi Filip, thanks for taking the time to write. Yes indeed, more content specifically on Plato and Aristotle are next on the agenda, and-eventually-I'm hoping that we'll make our way through Hellenistic philosophy and Neoplatonism too. I appreciate the feedback!

[@stephenadams2397]

What is the difference between Sophia vs Phronesis? And do we know what Socrates meant by those differences here?

[@stephenadams2397]

​@@DelphicPhilosophy Helps a lot. Thank you!

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Hi Stephen, thanks for the excellent question! Briefly, we're not certain whether Socrates himself (or even Plato's Socrates) draws a clear line between Sophia and Phronesis-both can arguably mean 'wisdom', 'insight', or 'understanding'. But Aristotle draws fairly technical distinctions, for example in Nicomachean Ethics 6: roughly, Sophia amounts to knowledge about Forms or patterns, general non-contingent principles, while Phronesis involves the application of that knowledge in practice, with sensitivity to particular circumstances. John Cooper's book Pursuits of Wisdom (Princeton, 2012) has a chapter on Socrates that attempts to determine how he uses wisdom-terms to describe a grasp of human values. I hope that's helpful (and sorry for the double reply; it looks like the earlier one was deleted due to a glitch)!

[@kateengiellealcosaba9350]

Hi can I ask? If we connect the philosophy of Socrates to Rene decartes, an individual who knows himself is an individual who?

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Good question! I think you mean: how does Plato's Socrates, in comparison to Descartes, think that individuals "know ourselves"-and who is the individual who has this knowledge? Both can be tricky, but here are a few thoughts. (1) Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum" argument, in Meditations on First Philosophy, supposes that I can be absolutely certain of my own mental states, the direct contents of my conscious cognition, but I can't be certain about much else. So-Descartes' consciously thinking mind, attending closely to its own thoughts, is arguably a candidate for the self that knows itself. (2) Plato's Socrates seems to suggest that there are many candidates for the "self" that a self-knower knows-like one's possessions, physical appearance, and psychē (e.g. Philebus 48c-e); but Socrates usually talks as if psychē is the best of these candidates, the one that is right (Plato's Phaedo 115c-d, Xenophon's Memorabilia 53-55, etc.). When we try to care for or cultivate our selves, we should try to care for our psychē (Apology 29d-30b; Alcibiades I 128a-131a). It's important to stress that he isn't saying we should *ignore* our well-being in other ways-Xenophon says that Socrates encouraged his companions to take good care of their physical health, and to form lasting and mutually respectful friendships, for example-but that other concerns shouldn't override care for the well-being of the psychē, on which the rest somehow rely. So, what is psychē? Literally, it's "breath", but more broadly, for many Greek philosophers, it's the life-principle, that in virtue of which something is animate and not inanimate (as in Plato's Phaedrus); indeed, one Greek word for "animal", as Plato points out, is empsychos, "having-a-psychē-inside"; and similarly the English "animal" itself derives from the Latin "anima," a word used to translate the Greek psychē (both literally mean something like "breath" or "wind"). The story is more challenging in authors like Homer, but by the 5th-4th century BCE, psychē is starting to mean something more like our word "psyche" or even its later translation, "soul" (but without some of the connotations of that English word): that is, psychē is the locus of a plurality of states, experiences, and motivations, including appetites, desires, and aversions; anger, pride, and states of deep emotion; speech, reason, reflection, conscience, value, and meaning-making (see Republic 4, 443c-e for a lovely description of the "harmonization" of these faculties in a just "inner city", and see the Liddell-Scott-Jones dictionary s.v. logos for the latter). So, one answer would be: Socrates *might* think the self is the psychē, and that includes a far broader field than Descartes' "mind", because it includes many functions of life-experience and agency (above), like a wide range of sensitive and emotional and reasoning experiences and actions. But note that Plato also thinks that a lot of these psychic faculties are impermanent and likely not the core of the person (compare Symposium 207d-208b, Phaedo 65a-67d, 79c-e); what's really special is the kind of consciousness that can apprehend the Platonic Patterns or Forms, a faculty that he sometimes calls phronēsis (Phaedo 79c-e), which is close to Aristotle's notion of nous-that faculty of the psychē that might be immortal, depending on how some passages in Aristotle's De Anima are read. So a deeper question is: how similar is this more specified Platonic and Aristotelian notion of nous to Descartes' mind? I think nous is still a rather broader notion than Descartes' mind, and in some contexts (including its Homeric roots) is closer to English notions of "awareness" than "thinking," but that's another issue! Here's a more basic point. In contrast with Descartes, I think, Socrates is concerned with the question of self-knowledge because he wants to know how to cultivate or better the self (as in the possibly Platonic Alcibiades I, 128a-134c); Descartes' concern is more with certainty and defeating skepticism, with getting clear about what we can really know. So those orientations also give them different concerns. I hope that's some help! You might find this article interesting: Ancient Theories of Soul at plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/

[@hvklutch]

What is the source for this lecture?

[@DelphicPhilosophy]

Hi Harsh: Thanks for asking! Ancient sources are cited in the video; for example, Plato's Apology of Socrates 38a at 03:01; and modern sources are also cited in the video, e.g. the Asch studies at 17:05. If there's anything that isn't clear, feel free to let us know.

[@patrickskramstad1485]

9:50