This man is one of the greatest philosophers in the history of mankind. The philosophy of Socrates - this is what great people of different eras repelled in their thoughts. Curious is the fact that Socrates himself did not leave behind written works - his ideas were always passed on to students orally. The disciples later wrote down these thoughts. There is reason to believe that many of his statements were lost, and the meaning of others we received in a distorted form. The philosophy of Socrates came to us primarily thanks to Aristotle, Plato, as well as Xenophon.
A special place in the philosophical discourse is occupied by nature, the integral life of man, his soul, consciousness. Unlike its predecessors, Socrates does not spend time studying space and man as part of the world. It was Socrates who laid the foundations of what Plato and Aristotle considered.
Note that he was one of the first to start asking questions about the position of a person’s personality in society. He also paid great attention to ethics. Socrates' ethical philosophy contains a set of norms and rules of behavior, according to which, as he believed, every person should live. Before him, philosophers practically did not ask similar questions. Socrates also paid much attention to the methods of proving or refuting the truth of judgments.
The philosophy of Socrates is based on two principles. The first is the need to know oneself, and the second is that only a fool can think that he knows everything.
First of all, he used these principles to fight the sophists - Socrates and the sophists never got along, their views diverged in many respects. The philosopher criticized them for the futility of the teachings, for the fact that they expressed claims for knowledge of the truth. Also, these principles were used by the philosopher in order to force people to seek the truth. In order to interest someone in his business, he used the irony that he carried out by recognizing his own ignorance.
By knowing himself, he understood the search for knowledge and virtue. He very often identified these two concepts. He assured that the main ignorance of people is manifested precisely in the fact that they consider knowledge and virtue separately, believe that they do not affect the behavior of people. In other words, he reasoned that often people act based on knowledge, not on feelings. In connection with all this, we can conclude that the ethical philosophy of Socrates is based not on morality, but on overcoming ignorance, on the transition from it to virtue.
The philosophy of Socrates has other important sections. These include inductive reasoning. Here, everything is based on the fact that in the process of analyzing a number of individual judgments or things, a general reasoning can be made through a concept. Inductive reasoning is intended to define concepts that can express the essence of things. It is believed that it was he who stood at the origins of the emergence of general concepts.
Socrates made a great contribution to the development of dialectics. Aristotle said that he not only developed, but also created it. The philosopher argued that in order to know the truth, it is necessary to overcome all the contradictions that exist. The dialectic of Socrates is nothing more than the doctrine of the denial of contradictions, their overcoming and preventing. It is important to add that the ideas of cognition, as well as the dialectic itself, are very closely intertwined with theology.
As mentioned at the beginning, Socrates made a huge contribution to the development and formation of philosophy. It ended the natural-philosophical period of ancient Greek philosophy, thanks to him, a completely new stage of this science was developed. It was from his thoughts that Plato and Aristotle repelled in their writings.