#Philosophizing (Part III) About Socrates and self-knowledge

In the previous post, we explored what is knowledge, how does the subject-object relationship work and what are the basic questions to develop a theory of knowledge.

We also linked all of these ideas with the search of a personal or introspective knowledge, that's why talking about Socrates is inevitable to continue discussing about knowledge in general and its nature.

If we take as a basis that all knowledge starts from the relationship that exists between a subject that knows and an object that is known, we understand, even superficially, that all knowledge has to start from a consciousness of the self . What do I mean by this? Well, that in order to know we must be aware that we are cognitive beings, with the ability to know.

But that is not enough, because we must also be able to take on everything we do not know, everything we ignore. This is the starting point of the Socratic philosophy.

Socrates and knowledge

We know very little about Socrates, really. We could even affirm that there is more than one Socrates: the one of flesh and bone, whose life is calculated around 470 to 399 BC, and of whom we know what we know thanks to disciples such as the historian Xenophon; and the fictional Socrates, immortalized mainly by Plato in much of his work.

We can never be really sure of how much of the real Socrates embodied the protagonist of the Platonic Dialogues, and there are those who claim that Plato took advantage of the absence of registration of the Socratic doctrine to put his own doctrine on the mouth of his teacher.

Socrates never wrote anything, either because he thought that each one had to develop their own ideas actively, or because he was simply an eccentric character (I doubt very much that he belittled the written language, as some authors have suggested), however, there are many testimonies of his life, his actions and his doctrine.

In the majority of the Platonic dialogues, if not all, Socrates is represented as a character that uses self-deprecation, bashfulness and a sly praise of his interlocutors as a strategy, in order to channel them into the path of self-reflection and the deduction that will bring them closer to the truth.

In these elements resides the pedagogy of Socrates, who made use of irony and maieutics to help his interlocutors to go beyond what they "believed to know" and "give birth" to true knowledge.

^{"The Death of Socrates" by Jacques Louis David (1787) Source:}

Socrates, it was said, was a dangerous man: because "he had the skill to turn the worst cause into a good cause", or vice versa, and because he publicly taught the secret. He was accused of impiety and of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. That is why he was trialed and then sentenced to death by punishment. He died a victim of hemlock poisoning, around 399 BC.

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The Socratic Method

Socrates questioned knowledge as an authority, he asserted that it was necessary to constantly review our discursive positions, our arguments and our points of view, to be able to find the truth in them beyond dogmas, beliefs and mere opinions, and in that way work our way through the path of knowledge.

I’ve used the word "path" because that is precisely what the Socratic philosophy proposes to follow.

^{Source: Vox Greek-Spanish Dictionary}

The word ”Method” comes from ancient greek "Methodos" (μέθοδος ) and it means: “path of thought" or "path to knowledge", procedure.

The Socratic method is composed by several phases:

SELF-AWARENESS

Here we identify and are able to recognize ourselves, all that we are and what we are not.

The first step of this path towards wisdom is extremely interesting. As an introspective or preparatory phase, it comprises an inner knowledge, a turning on oneself.

This phase refers to the famous inscription of the Oracle of Delphi, which reads "know thyself", and was a kind of warning addressed to men to incite them to recognize their limits and not to exceed.

There is, therefore, a requirement to establish the limits of knowledge, because to aspire to divine things was to sin of arrogance, and arrogance was punished by the gods.

In addition, Socrates thought that wisdom consisted in knowing oneself, in apprehending our own essence.

^{A memento mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio, in Rome, featuring the Greek motto. Source:}

"DOCTA IGNORANTIA"

Through the review of what we know and what we do not know, we assume that what we affirm as true or as accurate knowledge may not be it at all.

This "learned knowledge" of Socrates included an awareness of what is not known, that is, an awareness of one's own ignorance. Hence the famous phrase "I know that I know nothing" attributed to Socrates.

By the way, it was Plato who made the first attribution of that phrase to Socrates, in his Apology of Socrates, although the use we give to the phrase is perhaps not the most accurate or faithful translation:

For my part, as I went away, I reasoned with regard to myself: “I am wiser than this human being. For probably neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he supposes he knows something when he does not know, while I, just as I do not know, do not even suppose that I do. I am likely to be a little bit wiser than he in this very thing: that whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know.”

REFUTATION

This is the "negative" phase in which we position ourselves against that ignorance and question it. This is what Socrates did when he urged his interlocutors to answer a series of questions that ultimately helped them to find an answer for themselves.

MAIEUTICS

^{A bust of Socrates in the Louvre.}

This last step, which is characterized by dialectics, would be the overcoming of the entire previous process.

Maieutics is a Greek word that can be translated as "obstetrics", and it refers to the technique used by midwives to attend births.

It is this method of maieutics (named in honor of his mother, Phaenarete, who was a midwife) that allows us to discover the truth by ourselves and not from "what the majority says", what is imposed by an authority of knowledge or what we believe is true based on superficial observations of the world.

Socrates, like his mother, was a kind of midwife, one that desired to help mankind to "give birth" to knowledge.

<sup>Consulted sources:
- J. Hessen, Theory of Knowledge, Era-Luz Editorial.
- Wikipedia article on Socrates
- Classic Greek - Spanish VOX Dictionary
- Plato’s Apology of Socrates</sup>

That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed reading.

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What do you think? What is your opinion on Socrates? Did you learn something new about him by reading this? Share it with me on a comment below! I welcome any kind of constructive feedback.

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Alicia xx