Teaching of Socrates Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Teaching of Socrates - Essay Example The three great Socratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato(www.wsu.edu:8080/dee/GREECE/PLATO.HTM), and Aristotle(www.philosophypages.com/hy/2n.htm), were to be "rediscovered" during the Renaissance(www.absoluteastronomy.com/ encyclopedia/c/ch/christendom.htm) and their rational, practical, and scientific ideas were to influence the thinking and the governmental, religious, and educational institutions of the entire western world" it also says that "Socrates was distinct in inculcating ideas on (a) Ethics(www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/jmoral01.htm) that that influenced later Greek philosophers (b) Inductive method of reasoning. (www.cs.miami.edu/geoff/Courses/ CSC545-F05/Content/LogicalConsequence.shtml) (c) Imposed Knowledge is happiness. He believed that knowledge or insight is the foundation of virtue (depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/ classics/dunkle/studyguide/apology.htm) and happiness (plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character/) (d) Rationalism. Thru reasoning, man can reach the truth. His question and answer method, as described below, caused his students and future philosophers to use thinking as a major way of getting to the truth. Future philosophers and Catholic Saints like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas delved into his virtue, knowledge and happiness theories and expanded and brought to the next level Socrates' theories by adding their own modern day philosophical theories. In the "SOCRATIC METHOD . Athens(web.utk.edu/utfp/eoc/athens/) became the classroom of Socrates. He went about asking questions of authorities and of the man in the street in order to arrive at political and ethical truths. He questioned groups of his students as a means of instruction, to compel them to think a problem through to a logical(www.roangelo.net/logwitt/) conclusion. His dialectic(www.english-test.net/gre/ vocabulary/meanings/031/gre-words.php) method, or method of investigating problems through dialogue discussions, came to be known as the Socratic method. It involved: 1. SOCRATIC IRONY(depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/ classics/dunkle/studyguide/apology.htm). Socrates pretended that he knew no answers. His assumed ignorance or willingness to learn from others was the background for adroit questioning to reveal the t truth or expose the error of the answers he received. 2. DEFINITION(www.thefreedictionary.com/definition). The initial question usually required the definition of the concept. 3. ANALYSIS(www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/glothi.htm - 101k - 28 Okt 2005). Subsequent questions elicited an analysis of the definition in all its implications.4. GENERALIZATIONS(www.friesian.com/founda-1.htm). After examining all of the particular applications and consequences of the concept(radicalacademy.com/philsocrates.htm), Socrates reasoned, or persuaded his students to reason, from the particular to the general, or by the process of induction, to reach a general conclusion". His style of pretending to know