Socrates (/skrtiz/;[2] Greek: [skrts], Skrts; 470/469 399 BC)[1] was

a classical Greek (Athenian) philosophercredited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He

is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings
of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato's
dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though
it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato". [3]
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the
field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony
and theSocratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of
discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions is asked not only to draw
individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. Plato's
Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the field of epistemology, and the
influence of his ideas and approach remains a strong foundation for much western philosophy that
followed.

Plato and Socrates

The precise relationship between Plato and Socrates remains an area of contention among scholars.
Plato makes it clear in his Apology of Socrates, that he was a devoted young follower of Socrates. In
that dialogue, Socrates is presented as mentioning Plato by name as one of those youths close
enough to him to have been corrupted, if he were in fact guilty of corrupting the youth, and
questioning why their fathers and brothers did not step forward to testify against him if he was
indeed guilty of such a crime (33d-34a). Later, Plato is mentioned along with Crito, Critobolus, and
Apollodorus as offering to pay a fine of 30 minas on Socrates' behalf, in lieu of the death penalty
proposed by Meletus (38b). In the Phaedo, the title character lists those who were in attendance at
the prison on Socrates' last day, explaining Plato's absence by saying, "Plato was ill." (Phaedo 59b)
Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues. In the Second Letter, it says, "no writing of
Plato exists or ever will exist, but those now said to be his are those of a Socrates become beautiful
and new" (341c); if the Letter is Plato's, the final qualification seems to call into question the
dialogues' historical fidelity. In any case, Xenophon and Aristophanes seem to present a somewhat
different portrait of Socrates from the one Plato paints. Some have called attention to the problem of
taking Plato's Socrates to be his mouthpiece, given Socrates' reputation for irony and the dramatic
nature of the dialogue form.[35]
Aristotle attributes a different doctrine with respect to the Ideas to Plato and Socrates
(Metaphysics 987b111). Putting it in a nutshell, Aristotle merely suggests that Socrates' idea of

forms can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, unlike Plato's Forms that exist
beyond and outside the ordinary range of human understanding.

The Socratic problem

Socrates did not write anything of his own, all the direct information about him and his ideas and
thoughts depend upon secondary sources. Understanding Socrates as an individual and
appreciating his exact philosophical stand-point and views, therefore, relies upon these sources, but
comparison of the details of the sources reveals contradictions, thus creating a conflictual problem in
reliably knowing the actual Socrates, this issue is known as the Socratic problem,[4] orthe Socratic
question.[5][6]
To understand Socrates and his thought, one must turn primarily to the works of Plato, whose
dialogues are thought the most informative source about Socrates' life and philosophy,[7] and
also Xenophon.[8] These writings are the Sokratikoi logoi, or Socratic dialogues, which consist of
reports of conversations apparently involving Socrates. [9][10]
As for discovering the real-life Socrates, the difficulty is that ancient sources are mostly philosophical
or dramatic texts, apart from Xenophon. There are no straightforward histories, contemporary with
Socrates, that dealt with his own time and place. A corollary of this is that sources that do mention
Socrates do not necessarily claim to be historically accurate, and are often partisan. For instance,
those who prosecuted and convicted Socrates have left no testament. Historians therefore face the
challenge of reconciling the various evidence from the extant texts in order to attempt an accurate
and consistent account of Socrates' life and work. The result of such an effort is not necessarily
realistic, even if consistent.
Amid all the disagreement resulting from differences within sources, two factors emerge from all
sources pertaining to Socrates. It would seem, therefore, that he was ugly, and that Socrates had a
brilliant intellect.[11][12]

Socrates as a figure
The character of Socrates as exhibited in Apology, Crito, Phaedo and Symposium concurs with
other sources to an extent to which it seems possible to rely on the Platonic Socrates, as
demonstrated in the dialogues, as a representation of the actual Socrates as he lived in history.[13] At
the same time, however, many scholars believe that in some works, Plato, being a literary artist,
pushed his avowedly brightened-up version of "Socrates" far beyond anything the historical Socrates
was likely to have done or said. Also, Xenophon, being an historian, is a more reliable witness to the
historical Socrates. It is a matter of much debate over which Socrates it is whom Plato is describing
at any given pointthe historical figure, or Plato's fictionalization. As British philosopher Martin

Cohen has put it, "Plato, the idealist, offers an idol, a master figure, for philosophy. A Saint, a prophet
of 'the Sun-God', a teacher condemned for his teachings as a heretic." [14][15]
It is also clear from other writings and historical artefacts, that Socrates was not simply a character,
nor an invention, of Plato. The testimony of Xenophon and Aristotle, alongside some of Aristophanes'
work (especially The Clouds), is useful in fleshing out a perception of Socrates beyond Plato's work.

Socrates as a philosopher
The problem with discerning Socrates' philosophical views stems from the perception of
contradictions in statements made by the Socrates in the different dialogues of Plato. These
contradictions produce doubt as to the actual philosophical doctrins of Socrates, within his milieu
and as recorded by other individuals.[16] Aristotle, in his Magna Moralia, refers to Socrates in words
which make it patent that the doctrine virtue is knowledge was held by Socrates. Within
the Metaphysics, he states Socrates was occupied with the search for moral virtues, being the ' first
to search for universal definitions for them '.[17]
The problem of understanding Socrates as a philosopher is shown in the following: In
Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates is reported as saying he devotes himself only to what he regards
as the most important art or occupation, that of discussing philosophy. However, in The Clouds,
Aristophanes portrays Socrates as accepting payment for teaching and running a sophist school
with Chaerephon. Also, in Plato's Apology and Symposium, as well as in Xenophon's accounts,
Socrates explicitly denies accepting payment for teaching. More specifically, in the Apology,
Socrates cites his poverty as proof that he is not a teacher.
Two fragments are extant of the writings by Timon of Phliuspertaining to Socrates,[18] although Timon
is known to have written to ridicule and lampoon philosophy.[19][20]

EARLY LOGIC
While the ancient Egyptians empirically discovered some truths of geometry, the great achievement
of the ancient Greeks was to replace empirical methods by demonstrative science. The systematic
study of this seems to have begun with the school of Pythagoras in the late sixth century BC.[4] The
three basic principles of geometry are as follows:

Certain propositions must be accepted as true without demonstration; such a proposition is

known as an axiom of geometry.

Every proposition that is not an axiom of geometry must be demonstrated as following from
the axioms of geometry; such a demonstration is known as a proof or a "derivation" of the
proposition.

The proof must be formal; that is, the derivation of the proposition must be independent of
the particular subject matter in question. [4]

Fragments of early proofs are preserved in the works of Plato and Aristotle, [7] and the idea of a
deductive system was probably known in the Pythagorean school and the Platonic Academy.[4]
Separately from geometry, the idea of a standard argument pattern is found in the method of proof
known as reductio ad absurdum, which was used by Zeno of Elea, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the
fifth century BC. This is the technique of drawing an obviously false (that is, "absurd") conclusion
from an assumption, thus demonstrating that the assumption is false. [8] Plato's Parmenides portrays
Zeno as claiming to have written a book defending the monism of Parmenides by demonstrating the
absurd consequence of assuming that there is plurality. Other philosophers who practised
suchdialectic reasoning were the "minor Socratics", including Euclid of Megara, who were probably
followers of Parmenides and Zeno. The members of this school were called "dialecticians" (from a
Greek word meaning "to discuss").
Further evidence that pre-Aristotelian thinkers were concerned with the principles of reasoning is
found in the fragment called dissoi logoi, probably written at the beginning of the fourth century BC.
This is part of a protracted debate about truth and falsity.[9]
In the case of the classical Greek city-states, interest in argumentation was also stimulated by the
activities of theRhetoricians or Orators and the Sophists, who used arguments to defend or attack a
thesis, both in legal and political contexts.[10]

Plato's logic
None of the surviving works of the great fourth-century philosopher Plato (428347 BC) include any
formal logic,[11] but they include important contributions to the field of philosophical logic. Plato raises
three questions:

What is it that can properly be called true or false?

What is the nature of the connection between the assumptions of a valid argument and its
conclusion?

What is the nature of definition?

The first question arises in the dialogue Theaetetus, where Plato identifies thought or opinion with
talk or discourse (logos).[12] The second question is a result of Plato's theory of Forms. Forms are not
things in the ordinary sense, nor strictly ideas in the mind, but they correspond to what philosophers
later called universals, namely an abstract entity common to each set of things that have the same

name. In both The Republic and The Sophist, Plato suggests that the necessary connection
between the assumptions of a valid argument and its conclusion corresponds to a necessary
connection between "forms".[13]The third question is about definition. Many of Plato's dialogues
concern the search for a definition of some important concept (justice, truth, the Good), and it is
likely that Plato was impressed by the importance of definition in mathematics. [14] What underlies
every definition is a Platonic Form, the common nature present in different particular things. Thus, a
definition reflects the ultimate object of understanding, and is the foundation of all valid inference.
This had a great influence on Aristotle, in particular Aristotle's notion of the essence of a thing.[15]

Aristotle's logic
The logic of Aristotle, and particularly his theory of the syllogism, has had an enormous influence
in Western thought.[16] His logical works, called theOrganon, are the earliest formal study of logic that
have come down to modern times. Though it is difficult to determine the dates, the probable order of
writing of Aristotle's logical works is:

The Categories, a study of the ten kinds of primitive term.

The Topics (with an appendix called On Sophistical Refutations), a discussion of dialectics.

On Interpretation, an analysis of simple categorical propositions into simple terms, negation,

and signs of quantity. It also contains a comprehensive treatment of the notions
of opposition and conversion; chapter 7 is at the origin of the square of opposition (or logical
square); chapter 9 contains the beginning of modal logic.

The Prior Analytics, a formal analysis of what makes a syllogism (a valid argument,
according to Aristotle).

The Posterior Analytics, a study of scientific demonstration, containing Aristotle's mature

views on logic.

These works are of outstanding importance in the history of logic. Aristotle was the first logician to
attempt a systematic analysis of logical syntax, of noun (or term), and of verb. In the Categories, he
attempts to discern all the possible things to which a term can refer; this idea underpins his
philosophical work Metaphysics, which itself had a profound influence on Western thought. He was
the first to deal with the principles of contradiction and excluded middle in a systematic way. He was
the first formal logician, in that he demonstrated the principles of reasoning by employing variables
to show the underlying logical form of an argument. He was looking for relations of dependence
which characterise necessary inference, and distinguished the validity of these relations, from the
truth of the premises (thesoundness of the argument). The Prior Analytics contains his exposition of

the "syllogism", where three important principles are applied for the first time in history: the use of
variables, a purely formal treatment, and the use of an axiomatic system. He also developed a
theory of non-formal logic (i.e., the theory of fallacies), which is presented inTopics and Sophistical
Refutations.[17]

Stoic logic
The other great school of Greek logic is that of the Stoics.[18] Stoic logic traces its roots back to the
late 5th century BC philosopher Euclid of Megara, a pupil ofSocrates and slightly older contemporary
of Plato. His pupils and successors were called "Megarians", or "Eristics", and later the
"Dialecticians". The two most important dialecticians of the Megarian school were Diodorus
Cronus andPhilo, who were active in the late 4th century BC. The Stoics adopted the Megarian logic
and systemized it. The most important member of the school wasChrysippus (c. 278c. 206 BC),
who was its third head, and who formalized much of Stoic doctrine. He is supposed to have written
over 700 works, including at least 300 on logic, almost none of which survive. [19][20] Unlike with
Aristotle, we have no complete works by the Megarians or the early Stoics, and have to rely mostly
on accounts (sometimes hostile) by later sources, including prominently Diogenes Laertius, Sextus
Empiricus, Galen, Aulus Gellius,Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Cicero.[21]
Three significant contributions of the Stoic school were (i) their account ofmodality, (ii) their theory of
the Material conditional, and (iii) their account of meaning and truth.[22]

Modality. According to Aristotle, the Megarians of his day claimed there was no distinction
between potentiality and actuality.[23] Diodorus Cronus defined the possible as that which either is
or will be, the impossible as what will not be true, and the contingent as that which either is
already, or will be false.[24] Diodorus is also famous for what is known as his Master argument,
which states that each pair of the following 3 propositions contradicts the third proposition:

Everything that is past is true and necessary.

The impossible does not follow from the possible.

What neither is nor will be is possible.

Diodorus used the plausibility of the first two to prove that nothing is possible if it neither is
nor will be true.[25]Chrysippus, by contrast, denied the second premise and said that the
impossible could follow from the possible. [26]

Conditional statements. The first logicians to debate conditional statements were

Diodorus and his pupil Philo of Megara. Sextus Empiricus refers three times to a debate

between Diodorus and Philo. Philo regarded a conditional as true unless it has both a
true antecedent and a false consequent. Precisely, let T0 and T1 be true statements, and
let F0 and F1 be false statements; then, according to Philo, each of the following
conditionals is a true statement, because it is not the case that the consequent is false
while the antecedent is true (it is not the case that a false statement is asserted to follow
from a true statement):

If T0, then T1

If F0, then T0

If F0, then F1

The following conditional does not meet this requirement, and is therefore a false statement
according to Philo:

If T0, then F0

Indeed, Sextus says "According to [Philo], there are three ways in which a conditional may
be true, and one in which it may be false." [27] Philo's criterion of truth is what would now be
called a truth-functional definition of "if ... then"; it is the definition used in modern logic.
In contrast, Diodorus allowed the validity of conditionals only when the antecedent clause
could never lead to an untrue conclusion.[27][28][29] A century later,
the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus attacked the assumptions of both Philo and Diodorus.

Meaning and truth. The most important and striking difference between
Megarian-Stoic logic and Aristotelian logic is that Megarian-Stoic logic
concerns propositions, not terms, and is thus closer to
modern propositional logic.[30] The Stoics distinguished between
utterance (phone), which may be noise, speech (lexis), which is
articulate but which may be meaningless, and discourse (logos), which
is meaningful utterance. The most original part of their theory is the
idea that what is expressed by a sentence, called a lekton, is something
real; this corresponds to what is now called a proposition. Sextus says
that according to the Stoics, three things are linked together: that which
signifies, that which is signified, and the object; for example, that which
signifies is the word Dion, and that which is signified is what Greeks
understand but barbarians do not, and the object is Dion himself. [31]