Did Socrates believe in free will?
Free will in antiquity
In Plato's Gorgias (and in the Protagoras 345c4-e6), Socrates argues that no one does wrong willingly, one of the most famous doctrines to be associated with him. When framed in modern (Western) terms, the implication is that it is ignorance, rather that free individual agency, that is responsible for morally wrong actions.
Sophia (wisdom)
The term "philosophia" (, , ) was primarily used after the time of Plato, following his teacher Socrates, though it has been said that Pythagoras was the first to call himself a philosopher. This understanding of "philosophia" permeates Plato's dialogues, especially the "Republic". In that work, the leaders of the proposed utopia are to be philosopher kings: rulers who are lovers of wisdom. According to Plato in "Apology", Socrates himself was dubbed "the wisest [, ] man of Greece" by the Pythian Oracle. Socrates defends this verdict in "Apology" to the effect that he, at least, knows that he knows nothing. Socratic skepticism is contrasted with the approach of the sophists, who are attacked in "Gorgias" for relying merely on eloquence. Cicero in later criticized Plato for his separation of wisdom from eloquence. "Sophia" is named as one of the four cardinal virtues (in place of "phronesis") in Plato's "Protagoras".
Socrates
Socrates's opposition to democracy is often denied, and the question is one of the biggest philosophical debates when trying to determine exactly what Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is that the view is expressed no earlier than Plato's "Republic", which is widely considered one of Plato's "Middle" dialogues and not representative of the historical Socrates's views. Furthermore, according to Plato's "Apology of Socrates", an "early" dialogue, Socrates refused to pursue conventional politics; he often stated he could not look into other's matters or tell people how to live their lives when he did not yet understand how to live his own. He believed he was a philosopher engaged in the pursuit of Truth, and did not claim to know it fully. Socrates's acceptance of his death sentence after his conviction can also be seen to support this view. It is often claimed much of the anti-democratic leanings are from Plato, who was never able to overcome his disgust at what was done to his teacher. In any case, it is clear Socrates thought the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was also objectionable; when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown. He did, however, fulfill his duty to serve as "Prytanis" when a trial of a group of Generals who presided over a disastrous naval campaign were judged; even then, he maintained an uncompromising attitude, being one of those who refused to proceed in a manner not supported by the laws, despite intense pressure. Judging by his actions, he considered the rule of the Thirty Tyrants less legitimate than the Democratic Senate that sentenced him to death.
Plato's tripartite theory of soul
In Book IV of the "Republic", Socrates and his interlocutors (Glaucon and Adeimantus) are attempting to answer whether the soul is one or made of parts. Socrates states that, "It is clear that the same thing will never do or undergo opposite things in the same part of it and towards the same thing at the same time; so if we find this happening, we shall know it was not one thing but more than one." (This is an example of Plato's Principle of Non-Contradiction.) For instance, it seems that, given each person has only one soul, it should be impossible for a person to simultaneously desire something yet also at that very moment be averse to the same thing, as when one is tempted to commit a crime but also averse to it. Both Socrates and Glaucon agree that it should not be possible for the soul to at the same time both be in one state and its opposite. From this it follows that there must be at least two aspects to soul.
Free will
However, the preceding quote has often been misinterpreted as Vivekananda implying that everything is predetermined. What Vivekananda actually meant by lack of free will was that the will was not "free" because it was heavily influenced by the law of cause and effect – "The will is not free, it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect, but there is something behind the will which is free." Vivekananda never said things were absolutely determined and placed emphasis on the power of conscious choice to alter one's past karma: "It is the coward and the fool who says this is his fate. But it is the strong man who stands up and says I will make my own fate."
Sam Harris
Harris says the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. According to Harris, science "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet." People's thoughts and intentions, Harris says, "emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." Every choice we make is made as a result of preceding causes. These choices we make are determined by those causes, and are therefore not really choices at all. Nevertheless Harris maintains that the absence of free will does not erode the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions, arguing that intentions tell a lot about the global attributes of a person's brain. Harris argues that this realization about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Trial of Socrates
In "The New Trial of Socrates" (2012), an international panel of ten judges held a mock re-trial of Socrates to resolve the matter of the charges levelled against him by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, that: “Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and he believes in other new divinities of his own”; by split decision, five judges voted “Guilty” and five judges voted “Not guilty”, which acquitted Socrates of corruption of the young and of impiety against the Athenian pantheon. Limiting themselves to the facts of the case against Socrates, the judges did not consider any sentence; the judges who voted the philosopher guilty said that they would not have considered the death penalty for Socrates.
Symposium (Plato)
Alcibiades states that when he hears Socrates speak, he feels overwhelmed. The words of Socrates are the only ones to have ever upset him so deeply that his soul started to realize that his aristocratic life was no better than a slave's (215e). Socrates is the only man who has ever made Alcibiades feel shame (216b). Yet all this is the least of it (216c)- Socrates is mad about beautiful boys, following them around in a daze (216d). Most people, he continues, don't know what Socrates is like on the inside:
Socrates
Socrates frequently says his ideas are not his own, but his teachers'. He mentions several influences: Prodicus the rhetor and Anaxagoras the philosopher. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates claims to have been deeply influenced by two women besides his mother: he says that Diotima (cf. Plato's "Symposium"), a witch and priestess from Mantinea, taught him all he knows about "eros", or love; and that Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, taught him the art of rhetoric. John Burnet argued that his principal teacher was the Anaxagorean Archelaus but his ideas were as Plato described them; Eric A. Havelock, on the other hand, did not accept the view that Socrates's view was identical with that of Archelaus, in large part due to the reason of such anomalies "and" contradictions that have surfaced and "post-dated his death."
Socrates
Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian hegemony to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens sought to stabilize and recover from its defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government. Socrates appears to have been a critic of democracy, and some scholars interpret his trial as an expression of political infighting.
Socrates on Trial
Socrates on Trial is a play depicting the life and death of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. It tells the story of how Socrates was put on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens and for failing to honour the city’s gods. The play contains adaptations of several classic Greek works: the slapstick comedy, "Clouds", written by Aristophanes and first performed in 423 BCE; the dramatic monologue, "Apology", written by Plato to record the defence speech Socrates gave at his trial; and Plato’s "Crito" and "Phaedo", two dialogues describing the events leading to Socrates’ execution in 399 BCE. The play was written by Andrew David Irvine of the University of British Columbia and premiered by director Joan Bryans of Vital Spark Theatre Company in 2007 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver.
Trial of Socrates
In "The Trial of Socrates" (1988), I. F. Stone said that Socrates wanted to be sentenced to death, in order to justify his philosophic opposition to the Athenian democracy of that time, and because, as a man, he saw that old age would be an unpleasant time for him.
Trial of Socrates
In "Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths" (2009), Robin Waterfield said that the death of Socrates was an act of volition motivated by a greater purpose; Socrates “saw himself as healing the City’s ills by his voluntary death”. That Socrates, with his unconventional methods of intellectual enquiry, attempted to resolve the political confusion then occurring in the city-state of Athens, by willingly being the scapegoat, whose death would quiet old disputes, which then would allow progress towards political harmony and social peace for the Athenian polis.
Socrates (film)
His enemies, led by a young man named Meletus, accuse him in court, arguing that the philosopher preaches crazy doctrines to the youth, and does not believe in the gods, but demons. Socrates makes his "apology" (i.e., legal defense), but the citizens are against him; so Socrates is sentenced to death, and held in prison, awaiting execution. His disciples are desperate, and one of them, Crito, tries to help him by encouraging him to flee. Socrates rejects this idea, saying he must obey the rulers of the city. Socrates then resolves to die, and dies as soon as he is forced to drink hemlock.
Ethics of belief
Many thinkers before Clifford and James had important things to say about the ethics of belief. In ancient Greece, Socrates stressed the importance of self-examination, the pursuit of wisdom, and admitting how little one knows. Ancient skeptics such as Pyrrho, Arcesilaus, and Sextus Empiricus argued that we should suspend judgment on most controversial matters because powerful and perhaps equally compelling arguments can always be given on both sides. In modern times, René Descartes wrote extensively on norms of intellectual inquiry in his "Discourse on Method" (1637), as did John Locke in Book 4 of his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690). Three important thinkers--Blaise Pascal, Immanuel Kant, and Søren Kierkegaard—anticipated James in rejecting evidentialism and arguing that there are important matters on which, for practical or existential grounds, we should believe even if we lack sufficient evidence.
Free will
Maimonides reasoned that human beings have free will (at least in the context of choosing to do good or evil). Without free will, the demands of the prophets would have been meaningless, there would be no need for the Torah, and justice could not be administered. In Maimonides's view, human free will is granted by God as part of the universe's design.
Free will in theology
The concept of free will is also of vital importance in the Oriental (or non-Chalcedonian) Churches, those in communion with the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. As in Judaism, free will is regarded as axiomatic. Everyone is regarded as having a free choice as to in what measure he or she will follow his or her conscience or arrogance, these two having been appointed for each individual. The more one follows one's conscience, the more it brings one good results, and the more one follows one's arrogance, the more it brings one bad results. Following only one's arrogance is sometimes likened to the dangers of falling into a pit while walking in pitch darkness, without the light of conscience to illuminate the path. Very similar doctrines have also found written expression in the Dead Sea Scrolls "Manual of Discipline", and in some religious texts possessed by the Beta Israel Jews of Ethiopia.
Ethics
Virtue ethics describes the character of a moral agent as a driving force for ethical behavior, and it is used to describe the ethics of Socrates, Aristotle, and other early Greek philosophers. Socrates (469–399 BC) was one of the first Greek philosophers to encourage both scholars and the common citizen to turn their attention from the outside world to the condition of humankind. In this view, knowledge bearing on human life was placed highest, while all other knowledge was secondary. Self-knowledge was considered necessary for success and inherently an essential good. A self-aware person will act completely within his capabilities to his pinnacle, while an ignorant person will flounder and encounter difficulty. To Socrates, a person must become aware of every fact (and its context) relevant to his existence, if he wishes to attain self-knowledge. He posited that people will naturally do what is good if they know what is right. Evil or bad actions are the results of ignorance. If a criminal was truly aware of the intellectual and spiritual consequences of his or her actions, he or she would neither commit nor even consider committing those actions. Any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates. While he correlated knowledge with virtue, he similarly equated virtue with joy. The truly wise man will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy.
Ancient Greek philosophy
Socrates, believed to have been born in Athens in the 5th century BCE, marks a watershed in ancient Greek philosophy. Athens was a center of learning, with sophists and philosophers traveling from across Greece to teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, geometry, and the like. The great statesman Pericles was closely associated with this new learning and a friend of Anaxagoras, however, and his political opponents struck at him by taking advantage of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it became a crime to investigate the things above the heavens or below the earth, subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been charged and to have fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age. There is a story that Protagoras, too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books. Socrates, however, is the only subject recorded as charged under this law, convicted, and sentenced to death in 399 BCE (see Trial of Socrates). In the version of his defense speech presented by Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a philosopher that will convict him.
Free will in antiquity
Richard Sorabji's 1980 "Necessity, Cause, and Blame" surveyed Aristotle's positions on causation and necessity, comparing them to his predecessors and successors, especially the Stoics and Epicurus. Sorabji argues that Aristotle was an indeterminist, that real chance and uncaused events exist, but never that human actions are uncaused in the extreme libertarian sense that some commentators mistakenly attribute to Epicurus.
Democracy
On the other hand, Socrates was of the belief that democracy without educated masses (educated in the more broader sense of being knowledgeable and responsible) would only lead to populism being the criteria to become an elected leader, and not competence. This would ultimately lead to a demise of the nation. This was quoted by Plato in book 10 of The Republic, in Socrates' conversation with Adimantus. Socrates was of the opinion that the right to vote must not be an indiscriminate right (for example by birth or citizenship), but must be given only to people who thought sufficiently of their choice.
Historical figure
Søren Kierkegaard, in his early essay "The Concept of Irony", generally agrees with Hegel's views, such as his characterization of Socrates as a world-historical figure who acted as a destructive force on Greek received views of morality.
In Hegel's view, Socrates broke down social harmony by questioning the meaning of concepts like "justice" and "virtue".
Eventually, the Athenians quite rightly *(Name source) condemned Socrates to death. But they could not stop the evolution of thought that Socrates had begun, which would lead to the concept of individual conscience.
Hegel said of world-historical figures,
However, Hegel, Thomas Carlyle and others noted that the great historical figures were just representative men, expressions of the material forces of history. Essentially they have little choice about what they do. This is in conflict with the views of George Bancroft or Ralph Waldo Emerson, who praised self-reliance and individualism, and in conflict with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who also felt that individuals can determine their destiny.
Engels found that Hegel's system contained an "internal and incurable contradiction", resting as it does on both dialectical relativism and idealistic absolutism.
Socrates
Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates's reliance on what the Greeks called his "daimōnic sign", an averting (ἀποτρεπτικός "apotreptikos") inner voice Socrates heard only when he was about to make a mistake. It was this "sign" that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the "Phaedrus", we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the "sign" is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, Socrates's characterization of the phenomenon as "daimōnic" may suggest that its origin is divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts. Today, such a voice would be classified under the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" as a command hallucination.
Euthyphro dilemma
William of Ockham went further, contending that (since there is no contradiction in it) God could command us not to love God and even to "hate" God. Later Scholastics like Pierre D'Ailly and his student Jean de Gerson explicitly confronted the Euthyphro dilemma, taking the voluntarist position that God does not "command good actions because they are good or prohibit evil ones because they are evil; but... these are therefore good because they are commanded and evil because prohibited." Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin both stressed the absolute sovereignty of God's will, with Luther writing that "for [God's] will there is no cause or reason that can be laid down as a rule or measure for it", and Calvin writing that "everything which [God] wills must be held to be righteous by the mere fact of his willing it." The voluntarist emphasis on God's absolute power was carried further by Descartes, who notoriously held that God had freely created the eternal truths of logic and mathematics, and that God was therefore capable of giving circles unequal radii, giving triangles other than 180 internal degrees, and even making contradictions true. Descartes explicitly seconded Ockham: "why should [God] not have been able to give this command [i.e., the command to hate God] to one of his creatures?" Thomas Hobbes notoriously reduced the justice of God to "irresistible power" (drawing the complaint of Bishop Bramhall that this "overturns... all law"). And William Paley held that all moral obligations bottom out in the self-interested "urge" to avoid Hell and enter Heaven by acting in accord with God's commands. Islam's Ash'arite theologians, al-Ghazali foremost among them, embraced voluntarism: scholar George Hourani writes that the view "was probably more prominent and widespread in Islam than in any other civilization." Wittgenstein said that of "the two interpretations of the Essence of the Good", that which holds that "the Good is good, in virtue of the fact that God wills it" is "the deeper", while that which holds that "God wills the good, because it is good" is "the shallow, rationalistic one, in that it behaves 'as though' that which is good could be given some further foundation". Today, divine command theory is defended by many philosophers of religion, though typically in a restricted form (see below).
Free will in theology
The Orthodox Church holds to the teaching of synergy (συνεργός, meaning working together), which says that man has the freedom to, and must if he wants to be saved, choose to accept and work with the grace of God. St. John Cassian, a 4th-century Church Father and pupil of St. John Chrysostom, articulated this view and all the Eastern Fathers embraced it. He taught that "Divine grace is necessary to enable a sinner to return unto God and live, yet man must first, of himself, desire and attempt to choose and obey God", and that "Divine grace is indispensable for salvation, but it does not necessarily need to precede a free human choice, because, despite the weakness of human volition, the will can take the initiative toward God.".
Cesare Beccaria
Three tenets served as the basis of Beccaria's theories on criminal justice: free will, rational manner, and manipulability. According to Beccaria—and most classical theorists—free will enables people to make choices. Beccaria believed that people have a rational manner and apply it toward making choices that will help them achieve their own personal gratification.
Freedom of thought
It is impossible to know with certainty what another person is thinking, making suppression difficult. The concept is developed throughout the Bible, most fully in the writings of Paul of Tarsus (e.g., "For why should my freedom ["eleutheria"] be judged by another's conscience ["suneideseos"]?" 1 Corinthians 10:29).
Although Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates had discussed Freedom of Thought minimally, the edicts of King Ashoka (3rd century BC) have been called the first decree respecting Freedom of Conscience. In European tradition, aside from the decree of religious toleration by Constantine I at Milan in 313, the philosophers Themistius, Michel de Montaigne, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Voltaire, Alexandre Vinet, and John Stuart Mill and the theologians Roger Williams and Samuel Rutherford have been considered major proponents of the idea of Freedom of Conscience (or 'soul liberty' in the words of Roger Williams).
Trial of Socrates
The totalitarian Thirty Tyrants had anointed themselves as the elite, and in the minds of his Athenian accusers, Socrates was guilty because he was suspected of introducing oligarchic ideas to them. Larry Gonick, in his "Cartoon History of the Universe" writes, ""The trial of Socrates has always seemed mysterious...the charges sound vague and unreal...because behind the stated charges was Socrates's real crime: preaching a philosophy that produced Alcibiades and Critias... but of course he couldn't be prosecuted for that under the amnesty" (which had been declared after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants)... "so his accusers made it "not believing the Gods of the city, introducing new Gods, and corrupting the youth.""
Euclid of Megara
Euclid himself wrote six dialogues — the "Lamprias", the "Aeschines", the "Phoenix", the "Crito", the "Alcibiades", and the "Amatory" dialogue — but none survive. The main extant source on his views is the brief summary by Diogenes Laërtius. Euclid's philosophy was a synthesis of Eleatic and Socratic ideas. Socrates claimed that the greatest knowledge was understanding the good. The Eleatics claimed the greatest knowledge is the one universal Being of the world. Mixing these two ideas, Euclid claimed that good is the knowledge of this being. Therefore, this good is the only thing that exists and has many names but is really just one thing. He identified the Eleatic idea of "The One" with the Socratic "Form of the Good," which he called "Reason," "God," "Mind," "Wisdom," etc. This was the true essence of being, and was eternal and unchangeable. The idea of a universal good also allowed Euclid to dismiss all that is not good because he claimed that good covered all things on Earth with its many names. Euclid adopted the Socratic idea that knowledge is virtue and that the only way to understand the never-changing world is through the study of philosophy. Euclid taught that virtues themselves, however, were simply the knowledge of the one good, or Being. As he said, "The Good is One, but we can call it by several names, sometimes as wisdom, sometimes as God, sometimes as Reason", and he declared, "the opposite of Good does not exist".
Apology (Plato)
For his self-defence, Socrates first eliminates any claim that he is a wise man. He says that Chaerephon, reputed to be impetuous, went to the Oracle of Delphi and asked her, the Pythia, to tell him of anyone who was wiser than Socrates. The Pythia answered to Chaerephon that there was no man wiser. On learning of that oracular pronouncement, Socrates says he was astounded, because, on the one hand, it is against the nature of the Oracle to lie, but, on the other hand, he knew he was not wise. Therefore, Socrates sought to find someone wiser than himself, so that he could take that person as evidence to the Oracle at Delphi. Hence why Socrates minutely queried everyone who appeared to be a wise person. In that vein, he tested the minds of politicians, poets, and scholars, for wisdom; although he occasionally found genius, Socrates found no one who possessed wisdom; yet, each man was thought wise by the people, and each man thought himself wise; therefore, he (Socrates) was the better man, because he was aware that he was not wise.
Free will in antiquity
Although he thinks Aristotle was not aware of the "problem" of free will vis-a-vis determinism (as first described by Epicurus), Sorabji thinks Aristotle's position on the question is clear enough. Voluntariness is too important to fall before theoretical arguments about necessity and determinism.
Eleutheria
I. F. Stone, who taught himself Greek in his old age, wrote a book, "The Trial of Socrates", pointing out that Socrates and Plato do not value "eleutheria", freedom; instead were Sparta-lovers, wanting a monarch, an oligarchy, instead of a democracy, a republic.
Free Will (book)
Free Will is a 2012 book by American neuroscientist and author Sam Harris. Harris argues that the truth about the human mind (that free will is an illusion) does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of political and social freedom, and can as well as should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Socrates
The idea of asceticism being hand in hand with an ethical life or one with piety, ignored by Plato and Aristotle and somewhat dealt with by the Cynics, formed the core of another philosophy in 281 BC—Stoicism when Zeno of Citium would discover Socrates's works and then learn from Crates, a Cynic philosopher.
Free will
Buddhism accepts both freedom and determinism (or something similar to it), but in spite of its focus towards the human agency, rejects the western concept of a total agent from external sources. According to the Buddha, "There is free action, there is retribution, but I see no agent that passes out from one set of momentary elements into another one, except the [connection] of those elements." Buddhists believe in neither absolute free will, nor determinism. It preaches a middle doctrine, named "pratitya-samutpada" in Sanskrit, often translated as "inter-dependent arising". This theory is also called "Conditioned Genesis" or "Dependent Origination". It teaches that every volition is a conditioned action as a result of ignorance. In part, it states that free will is inherently conditioned and not "free" to begin with. It is also part of the theory of karma in Buddhism. The concept of karma in Buddhism is different from the notion of karma in Hinduism. In Buddhism, the idea of karma is much less deterministic. The Buddhist notion of karma is primarily focused on the cause and effect of moral actions in this life, while in Hinduism the concept of karma is more often connected with determining one's destiny in future lives.
Free will in antiquity
Lucretius (1st century BCE), a strong supporter of Epicurus, saw the randomness as enabling free will, even if he could not explain exactly how, beyond the fact that random swerves would break the causal chain of determinism.
Censorship
In 399 BC, Greek philosopher, Socrates, defied attempts by the Greek state to censor his philosophical teachings and was sentenced to death by drinking a poison, hemlock. Socrates' student, Plato, is said to have advocated censorship in his essay on "The Republic", which opposed the existence of democracy. In contrast to Plato, Greek playwright Euripides (480–406 BC) defended the true liberty of freeborn men, including the right to speak freely. In 1766, Sweden became the first country to abolish censorship by law.
Laconophilia
Laconophiles nevertheless remained among the philosophers. Some of the young men who followed Socrates had been Laconophiles. Socrates himself is portrayed as praising the laws of Sparta and Crete. Critias, a companion of Socrates, helped bring about the oligarchic rule of the Thirty Tyrants, who were supported by Sparta. Xenophon, another disciple of Socrates, fought for the Spartans against Athens. Plato also, in his writings, seems to prefer a Spartan-type regime over a democratic one. Aristotle regarded the kind of laws adopted by Crete and Sparta as especially apt to produce virtuous and law-abiding citizens, although he also criticises the Cretans and Spartans themselves as incompetent and corrupt, and built on a culture of war.
Gorgias (dialogue)
Socrates argues that he aims at what is best, not at what is pleasant, and that he alone understands the technique of politics. He says that he enjoins people to take the bitter draughts, and compels them to hunger and thirst, while most politicians flatter the people with sweetmeats. He also says that "the body is our tomb of soul" (493a) citing the words of Euripides, "who knows if life be not death and death life". (492e) He says of his trial that, "I shall be judged like a doctor brought before a jury of children with a cook as prosecutor" (521e). He says that such a pandering prosecutor will no doubt succeed in getting him sentenced to death, and he will be helpless to stop it. Socrates says that all that matters is his own purity of soul; he has maintained this, and it is the only thing that is really within his power (522d).
Socratic problem
Socrates — who is often credited with turning Western philosophy in a more ethical/political direction and who was put to death by the democracy of Athens in May 399 BC — was Plato's mentor. Plato, like some of his contemporaries, wrote dialogues about his teacher. Much of what is known about Socrates comes from Plato's writings; however, it is widely believed that very few, if any, of Plato's dialogues can be verbatim accounts of conversations between them or unmediated representations of Socrates' thought. Many of the dialogues seem to use Socrates as a device for Plato's thought, and inconsistencies occasionally crop up between Plato and the other accounts of Socrates; for instance, Plato has Socrates denying that he would ever accept money for teaching, while Xenophon's "Symposium" clearly has Socrates stating that he is paid by students to teach wisdom and that this is what he does for a living.
Sage (philosophy)
A sage (, "sophos"), in classical philosophy, is someone who has attained the wisdom which a philosopher seeks. The first to make this distinction is Plato, through the character of Socrates, within the "Symposium". While analyzing the concept of love, Socrates concludes Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher (, meaning "lover of wisdom") does not have the wisdom sought, while the sage, on the other hand, does not love or seek wisdom, for it is already possessed. Socrates then examines the two categories of persons who do not partake in philosophy:The position of the philosopher is between these two groups. The philosopher is not wise, but possesses the self-awareness of lacking wisdom, and thus pursues it.
Free will
Most "classical compatibilists", such as Thomas Hobbes, claim that a person is acting on the person's own will only when it is the desire of that person to do the act, and also possible for the person to be able to do otherwise, "if the person had decided to". Hobbes sometimes attributes such compatibilist freedom to each individual and not to some abstract notion of "will", asserting, for example, that "no liberty can be inferred to the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to doe." In articulating this crucial proviso, David Hume writes, "this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains." Similarly, Voltaire, in his "Dictionnaire philosophique", claimed that "Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will." He asked, "would you have everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices?" For him, free will or liberty is "only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs."
Western philosophy
A key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a branch of philosophy that is still pursued today. It is said that following a visit to the Oracle of Delphi he spent much of his life questioning anyone in Athens who would engage him, in order to disprove the oracular prophecy that there would be no man wiser than Socrates. Socrates used a critical approach called the "elenchus" or Socratic method to examine people's views. He aimed to study human things: the good life, justice, beauty, and virtue. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations. He was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisted of drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 BC.
Socrates
Some modern scholarship holds that, with so much of his own thought obscured and possibly altered by Plato, it is impossible to gain a clear picture of Socrates amid all the contradictory evidence. That both Cynicism and Stoicism, which carried heavy influence from Socratic thought, were unlike or even contrary to Platonism further illustrates this. The ambiguity and lack of reliability serves as the modern basis of criticism—that it is nearly impossible to know the real Socrates. Some controversy also exists about Socrates's attitude towards homosexuality and as to whether or not he believed in the Olympian gods, was monotheistic, or held some other religious viewpoint. However, it is still commonly taught and held with little exception that Socrates is the progenitor of subsequent Western philosophy, to the point that philosophers before him are referred to as pre-Socratic.
Free will
Thirteenth century philosopher Thomas Aquinas viewed humans as pre-programmed (by virtue of being human) to seek certain goals, but able to choose between routes to achieve these goals (our Aristotelian telos). His view has been associated with both compatibilism and libertarianism.
Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein
He was also an incompatibilist, in 1932 he said the following:
I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.
Isocrates
Because of Plato's attacks on the sophists, Isocrates' school — having its roots, if not the entirety of its mission, in rhetoric, the domain of the sophists — came to be viewed as unethical and deceitful. Yet many of Plato's criticisms are hard to substantiate in the actual work of Isocrates; at the end of "Phaedrus", Plato even shows Socrates praising Isocrates (though some scholars have taken this to be sarcasm). Isocrates saw the ideal orator as someone who must possess not only rhetorical gifts, but also a wide knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts. He promoted the Greek ideals of freedom, self-control, and virtue; in this he influenced several Roman rhetoricians, such as Cicero and Quintilian, and influenced the core concepts of liberal arts education.
Free will
The problem of free will has been identified in ancient Greek philosophical literature. The notion of compatibilist free will has been attributed to both Aristotle (fourth century BCE) and Epictetus (1st century CE); "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them". According to Susanne Bobzien, the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias (third century CE); "what makes us have control over things is the fact that we are causally undetermined in our decision and thus can freely decide between doing/choosing or not doing/choosing them".
Nonresistance
Perhaps the oldest recorded statement of nonresistance philosophy is that of Socrates around 399 BC. An influential ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian democracy for teaching his students to question authority and think for themselves. Socrates accepted his fate on reasons of morality and justice, rather than accept help from his supporters to flee Athens and escape execution.
Voluntary euthanasia
The term euthanasia comes from the Greek words "eu"-meaning good and "thanatos"-meaning death, which combined means “well-death” or "dying well". Hippocrates mentions euthanasia in the Hippocratic Oath, which was written between 400 and 300 BC The original Oath states: “To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.” Despite this, the ancient Greeks and Romans generally did not believe that life needed to be preserved at any cost and were, in consequence, tolerant of suicide in cases where no relief could be offered to the dying or, in the case of the Stoics and Epicureans, where a person no longer cared for his life.
Eternal oblivion
In the "Apology of Socrates" (written by Plato), after Socrates is sentenced to death, he addresses the court. He ponders the nature of death, and summarizes that there are basically two opinions about it. The first is that it is a migration of the soul or consciousness from this existence into another, and that the souls of all previously deceased people will also be there. This excites Socrates, because he will be able to conduct his dialectic inquiries with all of the great Greek heroes and thinkers of the past. The other opinion about death is that it is oblivion, the complete cessation of consciousness, not only unable to feel but a complete lack of awareness, like a person in a deep, dreamless sleep. Socrates says that even this oblivion does not frighten him very much, because while he would be unaware, he would correspondingly be free from any pain or suffering. Indeed, Socrates says, not even the great King of Persia could say that he ever rested so soundly and peacefully as he did in a dreamless sleep.
Intellectualism
In the view of Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC), intellectualism allows that “one will do what is right or best just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best”; that virtue is a purely intellectual matter, since virtue and knowledge are familial relatives, which a person accrues and improves with dedication to reason. So defined, Socratic intellectualism became a key philosophic doctrine of Stoicism. The apparent, problematic consequences of this view are “Socratic paradoxes”, such as the view that there is no weakness of will — that no one knowingly does, or seeks to do, evil (moral wrong); that anyone who does, or seeks to do, moral wrong does so involuntarily; and that virtue is knowledge, that there are not many virtues, but that all virtues are one.
Free will in theology
The controversial term "liberum arbitrium" was translated “free-will” by Henry Cole and “free will” remains in general use. However, the Rupp/Watson study of Luther and Erasmus chose “free choice” as the translation and provided a rationale. Luther used “free choice” (or “free-will”) to denote the fact that humans act “spontaneously” and with “a desirous willingness.” He also allowed “Free-will” as that “power” by which humans “can be caught by the Spirit” of God. However, he deplored the use of the term “Free-will” because it is too “grand, copious, and full.” Therefore, Luther held that the inborn faculty of “willingness” should be “called by some other term.”
Erasmus
"Free will does not exist", according to Luther in his letter "De Servo Arbitrio" to Erasmus translated into German by Justus Jonas (1526) in that sin makes human beings completely incapable of bringing themselves to God. Noting Luther's criticism of the Catholic Church, Erasmus described him as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" while agreeing, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed." He had great respect for Luther, and Luther spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of his own. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing that to do so would endanger his position as a leader in the movement for pure scholarship which he regarded as his purpose in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus hesitated to support him, the straightforward Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose. However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus stemmed, not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To Philip Melanchthon in 1524 he wrote:
Ancient Greek philosophy
The fact that many conversations involving Socrates (as recounted by Plato and Xenophon) end without having reached a firm conclusion, or aporetically, has stimulated debate over the meaning of the Socratic method. Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a virtue.
Sophist
Plato, the most famous student of Socrates, depicts Socrates as refuting some sophists in several Dialogues. These texts depict the sophists in an unflattering light, and it is unclear how accurate or fair Plato's representation of them may be; however, Protagoras and Prodicus are portrayed in a largely positive light in "Protagoras" (dialogue). Protagoras was the first sophist, whose theory said "Man is the measure of all things", meaning Man decides for himself what he is going to believe. The works of Plato and Aristotle have had much influence on the modern view of the "sophist" as a greedy instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. In this view, the sophist is not concerned with truth and justice, but instead seeks power.
Some scholars, such as Ugo Zilioli argue that the sophists held a relativistic view on cognition and knowledge. However, this may involve the Greek word "doxa", which means "culturally shared belief" rather than "individual opinion". Their philosophy contains criticism of religion, law, and ethics. Though many sophists were apparently as religious as their contemporaries, some held atheistic or agnostic views (for example, Protagoras and Diagoras of Melos).
Grace in Christianity
The Council of Trent declared that the free will of man, moved and excited by God, can by its consent co-operate with God, Who excites and invites its action; and that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification. The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race (Sess. VI, cap. i and v).
Socratic Puzzles
Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974) as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for Socrates, and his intellectual debts to Sidney Morgenbesser and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of decision theory ("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on "Anarchy, State, and Utopia"'s derivation of the state from individuals' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in "The Nature of Rationality" (1993), where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief.
Epicurus
Epicurus was first to assert human freedom as a result of the fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms. This has led some philosophers to think that, for Epicurus, free will was "caused directly by chance". In his "On the Nature of Things", Lucretius appears to suggest this in the best-known passage on Epicurus' position. In his "Letter to Menoeceus", however, Epicurus follows Aristotle and clearly identifies "three" possible causes: "some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency." Aristotle said some things "depend on us" ("eph'hemin"). Epicurus agreed, and said it is to these last things that praise and blame naturally attach. For Epicurus, the "swerve" of the atoms simply defeated determinism to leave room for autonomous agency.
Free will in antiquity
It was the Stoic school of philosophy that solidified the idea of natural laws controlling all things, including the mind. Zeno of Citium, the original founder of Stoicism, had a simple but powerful idea of the causal chain compared to Aristotle. Zeno said that every event has a cause, and that cause necessitates the event. Given exactly the same circumstances, exactly the same result will occur.
Thirty Tyrants
In Plato's "Apology", Socrates recounts an incident in which the Thirty once ordered him (and four other men) to bring before them Leon of Salamis, a man known for his justice and upright character, for execution. While the other four men obeyed, Socrates refused, not wanting to partake in the guilt of the executioners. However, he did not attempt to warn or save Leon of Salamis. By disobeying, Socrates may have been placing his own life in jeopardy, and he claimed it was only the disbanding of the oligarchy soon afterward that saved his life:
Hard determinism
In ancient Greece, Socrates initiated the rationalistic teaching that any agent is obliged to pursue the chief good conceived by his or her mind. The peripatetic naturalist Strato of Lampsacus speculated that an unconscious divine power acts in the world and causes the origin, growth and breakdown of things. Diodorus Cronus asserted the identity of the possible and the necessary and inferred that future events are as determined as the past ones. Chrysippus refuted the "idle argument" invented to discredit determinism as if human efforts were futile in a preordained world; he explained that fated events occur with the engagement of conscious agents. In the 17th century, both Locke and Spinoza argued for strict causality of volitional acts. In the age of enlightenment, Baron d’Holbach promulgated the naturalistic interpretation of mental events. Schopenhauer observed that everyone regards himself free "a priori"; however, "a posteriori" he must discover that he had been obliged to make the decisions he actually made. Nietzsche noticed that free decisions are graded as "causa sui", emerging from non-existence. Recently Daniel Wegner stressed the limitations of free will on grounds of experimental evidence for unconscious choice and action. To prove determinism, the following putative experiment was proposed: all principal differences between the features of an artificial zygote and that developing naturally can be avoided.
Free will in antiquity
One view, going back to the 19th century historian Carlo Giussani, is that Epicurus' atomic swerves are involved directly in every case of human free action, not just somewhere in the past that breaks the causal chain of determinism. In 1928 Cyril Bailey agreed with Giussani that the atoms of the mind-soul provide a break in the continuity of atomic motions, otherwise actions would be necessitated. Bailey imagined complexes of mind-atoms that work together to form a consciousness that is not determined, but also not susceptible to the pure randomness of individual atomic swerves, something that could constitute Epicurus' idea of actions being "up to us" (πὰρ' ἡμάς). Bailey states that Epicurus did not "identify" freedom of the will with chance.
Socratic method
Socrates generally applied his method of examination to concepts that seem to lack any concrete definition; e.g., the key moral concepts at the time, the virtues of piety, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. Such an examination challenged the implicit moral beliefs of the interlocutors, bringing out inadequacies and inconsistencies in their beliefs, and usually resulting in aporia. In view of such inadequacies, Socrates himself professed his ignorance, but others still claimed to have knowledge. Socrates believed that his awareness of his ignorance made him wiser than those who, though ignorant, still claimed knowledge. While this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, it in fact allowed Socrates to discover his own errors where others might assume they were correct. This claim was known by the anecdote of the Delphic oracular pronouncement that Socrates was the wisest of all men. (Or, rather, that no man was wiser than Socrates.)
Socrates
The idea that there are certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates's teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that "the unexamined life is not worth living [and] ethical virtue is the only thing that matters."
Oracle
She allegedly also proclaimed that there was no man wiser than Socrates, to which Socrates said that, if so, this was because he alone was aware of his own ignorance. After this confrontation, Socrates dedicated his life to a search for knowledge that was one of the founding events of western philosophy. He claimed that she was "an essential guide to personal and state development." This oracle's last recorded response was given in 362 AD, to Julian the Apostate.
Eleutheria
The French philosopher Michel Foucault, in lectures given at Berkeley and Boulder, made the same argument for Socrates' failure to invoke "parrhesia", freedom of speech, the obligation to speak the truth for the common good at personal risk, in his own defense at his trial, preferring to die in obedience to law as above men. Athenians held that they democratically shaped law, seeing Socrates' stance as treason.
Moral intellectualism
In the view of Socrates (469–399 BC), intellectualism allows that “one will do what is right or best just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best”; that virtue is a purely intellectual matter, since virtue and knowledge are cerebral relatives, which a person accrues and improves with dedication to reason. So defined, Socratic intellectualism became a key philosophic doctrine of Stoicism. The Stoics are well known for their teaching that the good is to be identified with virtue.
Phaedo
One of the main themes in the "Phaedo" is the idea that the soul is immortal. In the dialogue, Socrates discusses the nature of the afterlife on his last day before being executed by drinking hemlock. Socrates has been imprisoned and sentenced to death by an Athenian jury for not believing in the gods of the state (though some scholars think it was more for his support of "philosopher kings" as opposed to democracy) and for corrupting the youth of the city.
Socrates (Voltaire)
Like more historical accounts by Herodotus, Plato, and Xenophon, the playwright shows Socrates as a moral individual charged with baseless accusations by a conspiracy of corrupt Athenians or Athenian officials although Voltaire implies that the wrongdoers are a select few.
Will (philosophy)
Concerning "free will", most early modern philosophers, including Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume believed that the term was frequently used in a wrong or illogical sense, and that the philosophical problems concerning any difference between "will" and "free will" are due to verbal confusion (because all will is free):
Eudaimonia
It emerges a bit further on that this concern for one's soul, that one's soul might be in the best possible state, amounts to acquiring moral virtue. So Socrates' point that the Athenians should care for their souls means that they should care for their virtue, rather than pursuing honour or riches. Virtues are states of the soul. When a soul has been properly cared for and perfected it possesses the virtues. Moreover, according to Socrates, this state of the soul, moral virtue, is the most important good. The health of the soul is incomparably more important for eudaimonia than (e.g.) wealth and political power. Someone with a virtuous soul is better off than someone who is wealthy and honoured but whose soul is corrupted by unjust actions. This view is confirmed in the "Crito", where Socrates gets Crito to agree that the perfection of the soul, virtue, is the most important good:
Eudaimonia
As with all other ancient ethical thinkers, Socrates thought that all human beings wanted eudaimonia more than anything else. (see Plato, "Apology" 30b, "Euthydemus" 280d–282d, "Meno" 87d–89a). However, Socrates adopted a quite radical form of eudaimonism (see above): he seems to have thought that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia. Socrates is convinced that virtues such as self-control, courage, justice, piety, wisdom and related qualities of mind and soul are absolutely crucial if a person is to lead a good and happy (eudaimon) life. Virtues guarantee a happy life eudaimonia. For example, in the "Meno", with respect to wisdom, he says: "everything the soul endeavours or endures under the guidance of wisdom ends in happiness" ["Meno" 88c].
Free will in antiquity
Epicurus did not say the swerve was directly involved in decisions. But following Aristotle, Epicurus thought human agents have the autonomous ability to transcend necessity and chance (both of which destroy responsibility), so that praise and blame are appropriate. Epicurus finds a "tertium quid", beyond necessity (Democritus' physics) and beyond chance. His "tertium quid" is agent autonomy, what is "up to us".
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
According to Kant, we think of ourselves as having free will. This lets us make judgments such as “you ought to have done that thing that you did not do.” Kant argues that this notion of freedom cannot be derived from our experience. We can be sure that this concept of freedom doesn't come from experience because experience itself contradicts it. Our experience is of everything in the sensible world and in the sensible world, everything that happens does so in accord with the laws of nature and there is no room for a free will to influence events.
Meno
Socrates rejects the idea that human virtue depends on a person's sex or age. He leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that temperance ("sophrosunê"- exercising self-control) and justice ("dikê, dikaiosunê"- refraining from harming other people) are virtues even in children and old men. Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people. Socrates points out to the slaveholder that "governing well" cannot be a virtue of a slave, because then he would not be a slave.
Socrates
Socrates turned down Crito's pleas to attempt an escape from prison. Xenophon and Plato agree that Socrates had an opportunity to escape, as his followers were able to bribe the prison guards. There have been several suggestions offered as reasons why he chose to stay:
Symposium (Plato)
Alcibiades thought at the time that Socrates really only wanted him sexually, and by letting Socrates have his way with him he would entice Socrates to teach him everything he knew (217a). Yet Socrates made no move, and Alcibiades began to pursue Socrates "as if I were the lover and he my young prey!" (217c). When Socrates continually rebuffed him, Alcibiades began to view Socrates as the only true and worthy lover he had ever had. So he told Socrates that it seemed to him now that nothing could be more important than becoming the best man he could be, and Socrates was best fit to help him reach that aim (218c-d). Socrates responded that if he did have this power, why would he exchange his true (inner) beauty for the image of beauty that Alcibiades would provide. Furthermore, Alcibiades might be wrong and Socrates may be of no use to him (218e-219a). Alcibiades spent the night sleeping beside Socrates yet, to the deep humiliation of Alcibiades, Socrates made no sexual attempt (219b-d).
Free will in antiquity
Michael Frede typifies the prevailing view of recent scholarship, namely that Aristotle did not have a notion of free-will.
Protagoras (dialogue)
Socrates then broaches the initial question of whether virtue is one or many things, himself claiming that all virtue is knowledge and therefore one. He argues that the reason people act harmfully, to others or themselves, is because they only see the short term gains while ignoring the long term losses which might outweigh them, just like one makes errors in judging the size of objects that are far away. He says that if men were taught the art of calculating these things correctly, have a more exact knowledge that is, they would not act harmfully (357c–358d). Same goes for bravery. A brave swimmer is one who knows how to swim better and therefore, in a way, all virtues are essentially knowledge and can be considered one and the same, more like parts of golden objects (as discussed above) rather than the parts of a face. While Socrates seems to have won the argument, he points to the fact that if all virtue is knowledge, it "can" in fact be taught. He draws the conclusion that to an observer he and Protagoras would seem as crazy, having argued at great lengths only to mutually exchanged positions with Socrates now believing that virtue can be taught and Protagoras that all virtues are one instead of his initial position (361a). Protagoras acknowledges Socrates a notable opponent in dispute while being much younger than he and predicts that he could become one of the wisest men alive. Socrates departs for whatever business he claimed he had when he wanted to end the dialogue earlier.
The unexamined life is not worth living
Socrates believed that philosophy – "the love of wisdom" – was the most important pursuit above all else. For some, he exemplifies more than anyone else in history the pursuit of wisdom through questioning and logical argument, by examining and by thinking. His 'examination' of life in this way spilled out into the lives of others, such that they began their own 'examination' of life, but he knew they would all die one day, as saying that a life without philosophy – an 'unexamined' life – was not worth living.
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle reviews various opinions held about self-mastery, most importantly one he associates with Socrates. According to Aristotle, Socrates argued that all unrestrained behavior must be a result of ignorance, whereas it is commonly thought that the unrestrained person does things that they know to be evil, putting aside their own calculations and knowledge under the influence of passion. Aristotle begins by suggesting Socrates must be wrong, but comes to conclude at the end of Chapter 3 that "what Socrates was looking for turns out to be the case". His way of accommodating Socrates relies on the distinction between knowledge that is activated or not, for example in someone drunk or enraged. People in such a state may sound like they have knowledge, like an actor or student reciting a lesson can.
Crito
Crito ( or ; ) is a dialogue by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It depicts a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito regarding justice (δικαιοσύνη), injustice (ἀδικία), and the appropriate response to injustice. Socrates thinks that injustice may not be answered with injustice, and refuses Crito's offer to finance his escape from prison. The dialogue contains an ancient statement of the social contract theory of government.
Atheism
The Athenian public associated Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) with the trends in pre-Socratic philosophy towards naturalistic inquiry and the rejection of divine explanations for phenomena. Aristophanes' comic play "The Clouds" (performed 423 BCE) portrays Socrates as teaching his students that the traditional Greek deities do not exist. Socrates was later tried and executed under the charge of not believing in the gods of the state and instead worshipping foreign gods. Socrates himself vehemently denied the charges of atheism at his trial and all the surviving sources about him indicate that he was a very devout man, who prayed to the rising sun and believed that the oracle at Delphi spoke the word of Apollo. Euhemerus ( 300 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures. Although not strictly an atheist, Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods".
Critical thinking
The earliest documentation of critical thinking are the teachings of Socrates recorded by Plato. Socrates established the fact that one cannot depend upon those in "authority" to have sound knowledge and insight. He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational. He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief.
Trial of Socrates
Before the philosopher Socrates was tried for moral corruption and impiety, the citizens of Athens knew him as an intellectual and moral gadfly of their society. In the comic play, "The Clouds" (423 BC), Aristophanes represents Socrates as a sophistic philosopher who teaches the young man Pheidippides how to formulate arguments that justify striking and beating his father. Despite Socrates denying he had any relation with the Sophists, the playwright indicates that Athenians associated the philosophic teachings of Socrates with Sophism. As philosophers, the Sophists were men of ambiguous reputation, “they were a set of charlatans that appeared in Greece in the fifth century BC, and earned ample livelihood by imposing on public credulity: professing to teach virtue, they really taught the art of fallacious discourse, and meanwhile propagated immoral practical doctrines.”
Will (philosophy)
Arthur Schopenhauer put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:
Everyone believes himself "a priori" to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life ... But "a posteriori", through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...
In his "On the Freedom of the Will", Schopenhauer stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can "will" only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing."
Trial of Socrates
The trial of Socrates (399 BC) was held to determine the philosopher’s guilt of two charges: "asebeia" (impiety) against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state; the accusers cited two impious acts by Socrates: “failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges” and “introducing new deities”.
Trial of Socrates
In the play "Socrates on Trial" (2007), Andrew Irvine said that for loyalty to Athenian democracy, Socrates willingly accepted the guilty-verdict voted by the jurors of his trial. “During a time of war, and great social and intellectual upheaval, Socrates felt compelled to express his views, openly, regardless of the consequences. As a result, he is remembered today, not only for his sharp wit and high ethical standards, but also for his loyalty to the view that, in a democracy, the best way for a man to serve himself, his friends, and his city—even during times of war—is by being loyal to, and by speaking publicly about, the truth.”
Free will in theology
The Roman Catholic Church holds to the teaching that "by free will, (the human person) is capable of directing himself toward his true good … man is endowed with freedom, an outstanding manifestation of the divine image'." Man has free will either to accept or reject the grace of God, so that for salvation "there is a kind of interplay, or synergy, between human freedom and divine grace". "Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent: 'When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight' (Council of Trent)."
Twilight of the Idols
Nietzsche holds Socrates in special contempt. Socrates, he believes, was subject to all manner of vice and lustful impulses and was a product of the "lower orders" of society. Nietzsche singles out two particular ideas of Socrates for attack. The first is the interconnectedness of reason, virtue, and happiness. The second is Socrates's introduction of the dialectic method to philosophy (the process by which two or more people with different points of view reach a conclusion through a process of discourse, logic, and reason, also called the Socratic method). Nietzsche thought that the dialectic allowed weaker philosophical positions and less sophisticated thinkers to gain too large a foothold in a society. Nietzsche's program valued instinct over reason, but because of Socrates and the dialectic, Greek culture now became "absurdly rational." A key part of Nietzsche's thesis is that "happiness and instinct are one," but reason stands in direct opposition to instinct.
Free will
David Hume discussed the possibility that the entire debate about free will is nothing more than a merely "verbal" issue. He suggested that it might be accounted for by "a false sensation or seeming experience" (a "velleity"), which is associated with many of our actions when we perform them. On reflection, we realize that they were necessary and determined all along.
Arthur Schopenhauer put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:
Everyone believes himself, "a priori", perfectly free – even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life. ... But "a posteriori", through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...
In his essay "On the Freedom of the Will", Schopenhauer stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can "will" only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing." According to Schopenhauer, phenomena do not have free will. However, will [urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring] as noumenon is free.
Apology (Plato)
Having addressed the social prejudices against him, Socrates addresses the first accusation — the moral corruption of Athenian youth — by accusing his accuser, Meletus, of being indifferent to the persons and things about which he professes to care. Whilst interrogating Meletus, Socrates says that no one would intentionally corrupt another person — because the corrupter later stands to be harmed in vengeance by the corrupted person. The matter of moral corruption is important for two reasons: (i) corruption is the accusation that he (Socrates) corrupted the rich, young men of Athens by teaching atheism; (ii) that if he is convicted of corruption, it will be because the playwright Aristophanes already had corrupted the minds of his audience, when they were young, by lampooning Socrates as the "Sophistical philosopher" in "The Clouds", a comic play produced about twenty-four years earlier.
Socrates
Evaluation of and reaction to Socrates has been undertaken by both historians and philosophers from the time of his death to the present day with a multitude of conclusions and perspectives. Although he was not directly prosecuted for his connection to Critias, leader of the Spartan-backed Thirty Tyrants, and "showed considerable personal courage in refusing to submit to [them]", he was seen by some as a figure who mentored oligarchs who became abusive tyrants, and undermined Athenian democracy. The Sophistic movement that he railed at in life survived him, but by the 3rd century BC, was rapidly overtaken by the many philosophical schools of thought that Socrates influenced.
Will (philosophy)
With the use of Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" makes a structured treatment of the concept of will. A very simple representation of this treatment may look like this:This is related to the following points on free will:The use of English in philosophical publications began in the early modern period, and therefore the English word "will" became a term used in philosophical discussion. During this same period, Scholasticism, which had largely been a Latin language movement, was heavily criticized. Both Francis Bacon and René Descartes described the human intellect or understanding as something which needed to be considered limited, and needing the help of a methodical and skeptical approach to learning about nature. Bacon emphasized the importance of analyzing experience in an organized way, for example experimentation, while Descartes, seeing the success of Galileo in using mathematics in physics, emphasized the role of methodical reasoning as in mathematics and geometry. Descartes specifically said that error comes about because the will is not limited to judging things which the understanding is limited to, and described the possibility of such judging or choosing things ignorantly, without understanding them, as free will. Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, considered the freedom of human will is to work toward individual salvation and constrictions occur due to the work of passion that a person holds. Augustine calls will as “the mother and guardian of all virtues”.
Sócrates
On April 16, 1984 he spoke out in support of Diretas Já (Free Elections Now), a popular movement that called for direct presidential elections. In "Socrates and the Corinthians' Democracy" Juca Kfouri, a Brazilian journalist, recalls how, "Socrates took the risk of saying, in front of two million people gathered on the cathedral square, that if direct presidential elections weren’t accepted by the regime, he’d go play in Italy." By hinging his transfer abroad on the outcome of a constitutional amendment, Socrates' political legacy began to form. His denunciation of the military dictatorship and fight to redemocratize Brazil extended his legacy beyond the football field.
History of ethics
In his personal life, Socrates lived extremely morally. He was chaste, disciplined, pious, responsible, and cared for his friends In Gorgias he defends the notion that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. The Greeks found this paradoxical, but Socrates both argued and lived this philosophy consistently. That is because the doing of evil damages the soul, which is the highest part of humans. In the Republic, Socrates is challenged to defend the view that we have reasons to be moral that do not come from rational self-interest, in response to Glaucon's arguments in Book 2. The Republic develops the view that being a good person in an ethical sense involves achieving internal harmony of the parts of the soul. However, Plato's ethical ideal, as expressed in the Republic, still has much in common with the Homeric conception of the leader of a tribe or city: the successful running of the city and the internal harmony of the citizen who runs it is the main ethical aim, and there is little mention in Plato of any strictly moral obligations the ruler may be under.
Free will in theology
Although our wills are a function of and are in bondage to our inherited sinful desires, Luther insisted that we sin “voluntarily.” Voluntarily means that we sin of our own free will. We will to do what we desire. As long as we desire sin, our wills are only free for sin. This is Luther's “bondage of the will” to sin. The sinner's “will is bound, but it is and remains "his" will. He repeatedly and voluntarily acts according to it.” So it is, to be set free from sin and for righteousness requires a “rebirth through faith.” A rebirth of faith gives “true freedom from sin,” which is, wrote Luther, "a liberty [freedom] to do good.”
Socrates
Claiming loyalty to his city, Socrates clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society. He praised Sparta, archrival to Athens, directly and indirectly in various dialogues. One of Socrates's purported offenses to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of what he perceived as immorality within his region, Socrates questioned the collective notion of "might makes right" that he felt was common in Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the "gadfly" of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenians's sense of justice may have been the cause of his execution.
Socrates
It is argued that Socrates believed "ideals belong in a world only the wise man can understand", making the philosopher the only type of person suitable to govern others. In Plato's dialogue the "Republic", Socrates openly objected to the democracy that ran Athens during his adult life. It was not only Athenian democracy: Socrates found short of ideal any government that did not conform to his presentation of a perfect regime led by philosophers, and Athenian government was far from that. It is, however, possible that the Socrates of Plato's "Republic" is colored by Plato's own views. During the last years of Socrates's life, Athens was in continual flux due to political upheaval. Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants, led by Plato's relative, Critias, who had once been a student and friend of Socrates. The Tyrants ruled for about a year before the Athenian democracy was reinstated, at which point it declared an amnesty for all recent events.
Free will in antiquity
The first thinkers to look for explanatory causes (ἀιτία) in natural phenomena (rather than gods controlling events) were the Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers ("physiologoi"). The reasons or rules (λόγοι) behind the physical (φύσις) world became the ideal "laws" governing material phenomena. Anaximander (610-546) coined the term physis (φύσις) and perhaps even the cosmological combination of cosmos (κόσμος), as organized nature, and logos (λόγος), as the law behind nature. The Greeks had a separate word for the laws (or conventions) of society, nomos (νόμος). Heraclitus (535–475) claimed that everything changes ("you can't step twice into the same river") but that there were laws or rules (the logos) behind all the change. The early cosmologists imagined that the universal laws were all-powerful and must therefore explain the natural causes behind all things, from the regular motions of the heavens to the mind (νοῦς) of man. These "physiologoi" transformed pre-philosophical arguments about gods controlling the human will into arguments about pre-existing causes controlling it.