The Most Famous Name in Philosophy
Socrates (470 – 390 BC) is probably the best known name in philosophy. This, despite the fact that he authored no texts, and just about all that is known about is from posthumous accounts written by others. To most people, he is the old Greek philosopher who asked questions that tied people in knots, and who ended up sentenced to death by poison. From what is known about Socrates, the man was a troll. The widely accepted narrative is that he was an honest man who asked uncomfortable questions that his fellow Athenians did not like. So in his old age, they railroaded, tried and executed him. At least that is how his most famous pupil, Plato, put it. Other contemporaries saw Socrates as a guru who taught some nasty people, and filled their heads with anti-democracy views. His students then did horrible things.
Socrates did not do any of the bad things done by his worst pupils. When called upon to personally participate in evil, he went home instead. However, Socrates could be compared to modern radical imams who might not personally get their hands dirty, but whose teachings encourage others to do awful things. Socrates was a gadfly who often stopped people and asked them a series of questions that tied them up in logical knots, and made them contradict themselves – the Socratic Method. That made him unpopular. He emerged when Athens was at the height of its power – a vibrant democracy and the era’s most powerful polis, or city state. A bit like the USA of the Greek world.
