Socrates_vs._Plato_vs._Aristotle

The three great Athenian philosophers were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They were each connected to each other in the sense that Aristotle was one of Plato’s students, and Plato was one of Socrates’ Pupils. All of whom were knowledgeable men, each with many both similar and different from each other’s ideas about philosophy, politics, and education (Everyday Life in Ancient Greece) Socrates was the first of the three great Athenian philosophers. He was born in Athens in 469 B.C. into a family that was fairly poor (Carr). His father was a sculptor and Socrates practiced as one as well, but his true love was always philosophy (Boeree). He fought bravely for Athens in the Peloponnesian War, and when it ended, he had time to peruse what he wanted (Carr). When he was in his mid forties, he began to really think about the world around him, and found himself captivated by questions like “What is beauty'”, “What is Piety'”, and “What is Wisdom'” (Carr). He found these sorts of questions hard to answer and thought that it would be easier if a lot of people thought about the questions together, so as to come up with more ideas. This was the real beginning of his endeavors in philosophy (Carr). He began by simply walking around and asking people questions like what they thought wisdom of piety really was (Boeree). Many of people simply shook him off and ignored him, but some people tried to answer him (Carr). When people actually thought about the questions and came up with answers to them, Socrates would try to teach them to think more in-depth by asking them more questions to make them see the problems in their own logic. This method of teaching is called the Socratic Method, and is widely known and used to this day (Everyday Life in Ancient Greece). Soon enough, Socrates had acquired a group of young men whom he considered his pupils. Among them was one of the other great Athenian philosophers, Plato (Carr). Since Socrates never wrote down his ideas and teachings, people learned about him from the documents and books about him that Plato wrote (Boeree). Socrates never charged money from his pupils, for he believed that the purpose of teaching was to better the individual rather than to provide money for the teacher (Everyday Life in Ancient Greece). Socrates was never for democracy (Carr). He believed that the smartest people should be chosen and that they should be the ones that made the decisions for everyone (Socrates vs. Plato vs. Aristotle ). The Athenians did not approve of this idea and wanted to charge him in court for saying un-favorable opinions and thoughts about democracy to his pupils. However, the Athenians were not able to charge him for simply being against democracy because after the Peloponnesian War, they had promised not to take revenge on anyone for their ideas of how a government should work (Carr). Instead, the Athenians used vague religious charges like impiety and the corruption of youth (Everyday Life in Ancient Greece). After being put on trial in front of an Athenian jury, Socrates was convicted of these charges. He was sentenced to death and died soon afterwards when the guards forced him to drink a cup of hemlock (Boeree). Plato was born in Athens in 429 BC to a very wealthy and aristocratic family. He had many relatives who were involved in politics, however, he himself never was. Plato was one of Socrates’ pupils, and he built his own ideas and beliefs off of those of Socrates and shared many of the same ideas and philosophies him as well (websense.cm). He really respected Socrates and when Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 B.C., Plato was extremely upset and even wrote a book called The Apology, which was a written defense of Socrates (The Columbia Encyclopedia) Unlike Socrates who wrote down very little, Plato began writing down quite a lot. He was a superb writer who wrote many books such as ¬The Apology, The Meno, and The Gorgias (The Columbia Encyclopedia). He wrote quite a few important documents as well including Theaetetus; the Parmenides, both of which deal with the relationship between one and many (The Columbia Encyclopedia). He also wrote The Sophist which discusses the nature of nonexistence and nonbeing (The Columbia Encyclopedia). In fact, most of what is known about Socrates is only known because Plato wrote about it in his documents and books. He eventually founded a school which was known as ‘The Academy’ where people could learn and study philosophy (Boeree). He was taught philosophy and mathematics there, and one of his students ended up becoming the third great Athenian philosopher (Carr). Plato was very intrigued by the way people determine what is real and what is not, and the art of being and knowing. He believed that the thought behind an action was almost as important as the action itself (Boeree). For instance, he believed that justice was only good if it is backed up by the idea of good (The Columbia Encyclopedia). One of Plato’s ideas was that object and person had an ‘ideal form’ which exists only in someone’s mind, and when they actually encounter that object or person, no matter how happy the person is with it, it will never be as good as it is in their mind (Socrates vs. Plato vs. Aristotle ). He was also convinced in his idea that people, even those who believe they understand the world and how it works, are only able to perceive a small portion of it (Carr). He knew that some of his ideas were hard for some people to understand, so he used a lot of visualizations to help people understand them (Boeree) Plato tried to explain one of his ideas was with a well known analogy about a cave. Imagine there is a cave and some men chained up to a wall inside of it so that they are facing the wall on the back of the cave. These men cannot see anything outside the cave and they cannot even see each other clearly. They can only see shadows on the wall of what is going on outside, and eventually, the prisoners would come to believe that these shadows were real, and that was what the real world actually looked like and consisted of. If one of the men escaped and was able to see what everything looked like- people, trees, water, and everything else in the world, he would be amazed at how he ever could have thought that those shadows on the cave were what the real world looked like. Plato says we are like those men sitting in the cave; we think we understand the world around us but we can only perceive a small portion of the world because we are trapped in our bodies (Boeree). One of his goals was to help people understand the real world better even without being able to see it (Carr). Like Socrates, Plato was by no means a democrat. He believed that people with superior intellect or resources should be selected to make the decisions for the rest (Carr). His book, The Republic, critiques the system of government in Athens and outlines a different system (Boeree). This new system, Plato thought, would give Athens order and security even in times of chaos (The Columbia Encyclopedia). Aristotle, unlike the other great philosophers, was born in Stagira, in Thrace, in 384 B.C. (Boeree) His father was the physician for the king of Macedon (Carr). He was also the only one of the three great philosophers who was middle class, neither rich nor poor (Bala). As a young man in about 350 BC, he went to study at Plato’s Academy. Plato was fairly old by then and although Aristotle did very well at the academy and studied there for twenty years, when Plato died, the leaders chose someone else instead of Aristotle to lead the Academy. (Carr). Aristotle never got along with Plato though so soon afterwards, Aristotle left Athens and went back to Macedon to be the tutor of the prince Alexander, who would grow up to be Alexander the Great (Boeree). Over the years, Aristotle and Alexander grew to be close friends and even as king, Alexander never forgot about Aristotle (The Columbia Encyclopedia). When Alexander became king, Aristotle decided to go back to Athens and open his own school, the Lyceum, in order to compete with Plato’s Academy. He studied and taught there for twelve years, but when Alexander began conquering much of the known world, Macedonians became rather unwanted in Athens and Aristotle was booted out in 323B.C. He died only a year after that (Boeree). Aristotle studied under Plato for 20 years, but he disagreed with most of what Plato said. Plato thought about the world in abstract terms, and Aristotle could not bring himself to think of it the same way. He thought the world could be understood though observation and cataloging. He believed that the basis of all knowledge is strictly empirical (Boeree). He was the one who differed the most out of the three great Philosophers. Plato shared many beliefs with Socrates, but Aristotle was profoundly different in his opinions compared to both Socrates and Plato. He was based on observation and scrutiny of all the parts of the world that each individually have their own unique traits, and how they intertwine to form what we know as reality (Bala). Plato, on the other hand, believed that everything, even something as simple as a rock, had a physical form, and a form that was beyond what anyone can perceive (Carr). The three philosophers had many differences. They all had their own way of looking at life and reality and they each had their own backgrounds which differed from each other. Socrates was the poorest of the three, and he valued not only knowledge, but on what people individually know knowledge to be. Plato, Socrates’ pupil, was born into a very well-off family, and his writing dealt with government, ethics, and reason. He believed in an abstract way of looking at reality and how we perceive it. Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, was a well rounded philosopher who wrote about everything from metaphysics to natural science. He relied on sensory input for his knowledge and disagreed with virtually everything Plato said. Each philosopher had their own quirks and points of views, but without any single one of them, the world would be nowhere near where it is today. Works Cited "Plato ." The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2008. Boeree George. The Ancient Greeks, Part Two: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle . 2008. October 8 . Sadish Bala. Aristotle vs Plato. 2004. October 8 . Everyday Life in Ancient Greece, 4th Century BC. 2001. October 8 . Socrates vs. Plato vs. Aristotle . 2007. October 8 . Dr. Karen Carr. Socrates. 2009. October 8 . Bibliography Dr. Karen Carr. Socrates. 2009. October 8 . Dr. Karen Carr. Plato. 2009. October 8 . Dr. Karen Carr. Aristotle. 2009. October 8 . "Plato ." The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2008. Boeree George. The Ancient Greeks, Part Two: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle . 2008. October 8 . Sadish Bala. Aristotle vs Plato. 2004. October 8 . Everyday Life in Ancient Greece, 4th Century BC. 2001. October 8 . Socrates vs. Plato vs. Aristotle . 2007. October 8 . Dr. Karen Carr. Socrates. 2009. October 8 .