As a result, Plato is demonstrating social disobedience, by highlighting how anyone who questions authority will face a similar fate as Socrates. (Plato, 2007) In Crito, Socrates has been found guilty of his crimes and is awaiting his death sentence in an Athenian prison cell. On an early morning, his friend Crito pays him a visit and offers to help him escape. He feels that if Socrates is able to

Socrates and Plato Greek philosophy held a preeminent place in the middle ages among scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica was an attempt to reconcile faith and reason. The faith aspect was supplied by the Church, but the reason came from classical (pagan) ecclesiology -- notably from Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. The latter was the pupil of the former, and the former was the pupil of the first

Socrates Argument Against Charges The Apology: The horse-breaker analogy The trial of Socrates came about because he was the teacher of several radical aristocrats who attempted to overthrow Athenian democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. Socrates had taught many of these men philosophy, and he advocated a philosophical kingdom ruled by elite philosophers as the ideal form of government. Socrates believed that just as the people most suited to make shoes

Socrates Was Not an Enemy to the State Was Socrates an enemy of the state? There are two appropriate answers -- "yes" and "no." But first a definition of "enemy" is needed. In Mark Twain's short story "The Mysterious Stranger," Satan explains why there will always be war. It is because "a loud little handful" at first instigates it then, "…the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its

Socrates and Pythagoras Pythagoras: Pythagoras was born in 569 BC in Samos, to Mnesarchus of Tyre and Pythias of Samos. Mnesarchus was a merchant and so Pythagoras had the opportunity to visit many lands as a child traveling with his father. Besides these facts there is very little that is known of the childhood of Pythagoras. There is no doubt that he would have been properly educated and there is evidence to

Furthermore, many laypeople can have great stores of knowledge, and may have learned to train horses better than professionals -- and to be better teachers and philosophers, from personal experience. In fact, given that philosophy is the study of life, one could argue that ordinary people are the best teachers of the discipline. This is one of the principles of the democratic Athenian system, that everyday people can govern