Socrates (470-399 BC) is not only a famous philosopher in ancient Greece, but also a historical celebrity with distinctive personality, which has been praised by people since ancient times. His father is a stonemason and sculptor, and his mother is a midwife.
As a teenager, Socrates studied handicrafts with his father, became familiar with Homer's epic and other famous poets, and became a self-taught scholar. He made a living by imparting knowledge. In his thirties, he became a social morality teacher who didn't get paid or run a library. Many children from rich families and poor families often gather around him to learn from him and be Puritans. Socrates often said, "I only know that I know nothing."
He spent most of his life outdoors. He likes to talk with people in various fields, such as war, politics, friendship, art, ethics and so on, in public places such as markets, sports fields and streets. He fought in the war three times, served as a heavy infantry, and helped injured soldiers in battle more than once. Around the age of 40, he became a household name in Athens.
Socrates lived a hard life all his life. No matter how cold it is, he wears an ordinary thin coat, often wears no shoes and doesn't pay attention to food. But he didn't seem to notice it, just buried himself in his studies.
Socrates' theory is mysterious. He believes that the existence, development and destruction of all things in the world are arranged by God, who is the master of the world. He opposed the study of nature as blasphemy. He advocates that people know how to be human and live a moral life. His philosophy mainly studies and discusses ethical issues.
Socrates often argues with others. In the debate, he made the other side correct and give up the original wrong ideas by asking and answering questions, and helped people produce new ideas. He abstracted the universal things from the individual and took four steps: satire, midwifery, induction and definition. "Sarcasm" is to make the other party contradict itself and admit ignorance of this issue through constant questioning; "Midwifery" is to help the other party abandon fallacies and find the right and universal things, that is, to help the truth come out; "Induction" is to find out * * * from individual things, and to find general laws through the analysis and comparison of individual things; "Definition" refers to the classification of a single concept into a general concept.
Socrates never gave students ready-made answers, but made students unconsciously accept the influence of his thoughts by asking questions and refuting them. Please look at an interesting example of him answering questions with students.
Student: Socrates, what is good?
Socrates: Stealing, cheating and selling people as slaves are good deeds or evil deeds?
Student: It's evil.
Socrates: Is it evil to cheat the enemy? Is it evil to sell captured enemies as slaves?
Student: This is a good thing. But I'm talking about friends, not enemies. Socrates: As you said, stealing is evil for friends. However, if a friend wants to commit suicide, you steal the tools he is going to use to commit suicide. Is this evil? Student: This is a good thing.
Socrates: You said it was evil to cheat friends, but in the war, the commander-in-chief of the army told the soldiers that reinforcements were coming to boost morale. But in fact, there are no reinforcements. Is this deception evil?
Student: This is a good thing.
This teaching method has its advantages. It can inspire people's thoughts and make people actively analyze and think about problems. He used dialectical methods to prove that truth is concrete and relative, which can be transformed into his own negation under certain conditions. This epistemology is of great significance in the history of European thought.
Socrates advocates the theory of expert governance. He believes that all walks of life and even state power should be managed by trained and knowledgeable people, and opposes the democracy implemented by the lottery election law. He said: managers are not those who hold heavy power and bully the weak, not those who are elected by the people, but those who know how to manage. For example, ships should be driven by people who are familiar with sailing; When spinning wool, women should take care of men, because men are good at it and men don't understand it. He also said that the best people are those who are competent for their own work. Good farmers are good farmers; A good doctor is proficient in medical skills; People who are proficient in politics are excellent politicians.
In 404 BC, Athens was defeated in the Peloponnesian War. "The rule of thirty tyrants replaced democracy." Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, was Socrates' student. It is said that once Clerides called Socrates and ordered him to lead four men to arrest a rich man and seize his property. Socrates refused to obey and left. He not only dared to resist Clerides' illegal orders, but also publicly condemned his atrocities. Clerides angrily called him away, forbade him to come near the young man again, and warned him, "Be careful, don't let us have to reduce another sheep from the flock." Socrates simply ignored him and went his own way.
Later, the rule of the "Thirty Tyrants" was overthrown and the Democrats came back to power. He was accused of having close ties with Clerides, opposing democratic politics and poisoning young people with heresy. Socrates was arrested and imprisoned for this. According to the laws of Athens, before the court rebelled against the defendant, the defendant had the right to demand a different penalty from the plaintiff, so that the court could choose between the two. Socrates took this opportunity to make an impassioned speech. He claims to be innocent, believing that his words and deeds are not only innocent, but also conducive to social progress. As a result, he was betrayed to death. During his detention in prison, his friends tried their best to persuade him to escape and bribed the jailer to make an escape plan, but he would rather die than violate his beliefs. In this way, the 70-year-old man passed away peacefully.
Socrates had a large number of fanatical admirers and fierce opponents before and after his death. He left no works in his life, but his influence was enormous. Philosophers often regard him as a watershed in the history of the development of ancient Greek philosophy, and call his previous philosophy pre-Socrates philosophy. As a great philosopher, Socrates had a great influence on later western philosophy.
Platon (427- 348 BC) was a great philosopher, founder and educator of objective idealism in ancient western countries. The ontology of Plato's philosophy is called "objective idealism". He is the founder of western objective idealism.
Platonism: Platonism.
Platonism is the most influential mathematical philosophy in the history of mathematics. It originated from Plato in ancient Greece, and since then there has been an explicit or implicit Platonism concept in the field of western mathematics. In the19th century, it almost occupied the dominant position in the field of mathematics. At the beginning of the 20th century, the debate among the three schools of mathematics foundation just subsided, and Platonism became one of the hot topics of discussion.
The basic view of Platonism is that the object of mathematics is mathematical concepts such as numbers, quantities and functions, and mathematical concepts exist objectively as abstract generality or "* * *". Plato believed that they existed in a special world of ideas, and later Platonists did not accept the "theory of ideas", but they also believed that mathematical concepts were a special objective existence independent of the real world and an eternal existence independent of time, space and human thinking. Mathematicians get a new concept, not creation, but a description of this objective existence; New achievements in mathematics are not inventions, but discoveries. Correspondingly, Platonism believes that the truth of mathematical theory is objectively determined by the existence independent of the real world, and this truth is understood by "mental" experience and some kind of "mathematical intuition". Only through intuition can people reach the "mathematical world" independent of the real world.
Modern Platonism is also called "realism" because mathematical concepts are considered to be real. Platonism has a considerable influence in modern western mathematics, and some great mathematicians, such as G. Cantor, Russell, Godel and bourbaki, basically hold this view. It is generally believed that this is not accidental, but a philosophical reflection on the simple belief that mathematics reflects the objective world and mathematics has objective truth. Because of this, Platonism has a certain positive effect on the historical development of mathematics: it urges mathematicians to take an objective and scientific position in their own research, and when some highly abstract mathematical theories are doubted by people because they can't find realistic prototypes, it may also give people some faith. Although this belief is blind, it may also lead to mistakes.
The mistake of Platonism is obvious: taking the form of reflection as the object of understanding; Regard abstraction as concrete objective existence; It is of course an objective truth to think that a form of thinking itself is objective. Studying truth without human practice will inevitably lead to fallacy. Platonism is objective idealism in philosophy.
Plato's Philosophy: Philosophy of Objective Idealism
Platonic love: spiritual love, the desire to abandon the body.