If Everyone Believes It, It's Probably Wrong - The Philosophy of Socrates (& Plato)

this video is sponsored by the book summary app blinkist click the link in the description and receive one free week and 25 off a full membership known as the father of western philosophy ancient greek philosopher socrates is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in history encouraging and shaping the early budding of philosophy and directly inspiring other formative ancient greek philosophers like plato and aristotle socrates would be a catalyst to the way humanity has and continues to think about the world and the way we live within it there are no known works directly attributed to socrates so he remains a fairly mysterious figure all accounts of his life and philosophy are provided by other classical writers many of which differ and sometimes contradict each other in historical studies this is what is known as the socratic problem making it difficult if not impossible to fully pin down an accurate image of him however most of what is understood and believed to be closest to accurate is found in the work of one of his students named plato who would go on himself to become an essential figure in socrates's legacy as well as the development of western philosophy in general writing around 36 books all comprised of dialogues primarily featuring socrates it is generally agreed that socrates was born in athens and ancient greece in around 469 bc it is believed that his philosophical occupation began after a successful career as a sculptor and serving with distinction in the athenian military during the peloponnesian war during this later philosophically focused part of his life socrates spent most of his time wandering around greece asking lots of questions and challenging lots of men who the public believed to be wise he would soon become very skeptical of the so-called wisdom of the time finding that most men who claimed and were held to be wise were essentially just arrogant in plato's book apology socrates says when referring to a wise man when i conversed with him i thought this man seemed to be wise both to many others and especially to himself but that he was not and then i tried to show him that he thought he was wise but was not but of that he disliked me and so did many others who were there but i went away thinking to myself that i was wiser than this man the fact is that neither of us knows anything beautiful and good but he thinks he does know when he doesn't and i don't know and don't think i do so i am wiser than he is only by this trifle that what i do not know i don't think i do it was this that socrates belief separated him from others of the time and defined true wisdom and arguably he was right as this credo would ultimately become one of the defining components of his legacy that has lasted millenniums while most of the other wise men of the time disappeared in mere generations at best socrates would go on to spend much of his time attempting to teach and convince others to question what they held to be true and realize as he put it the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing in doing so he believed he would compel others to join him on a journey of philosophical inquiry toward a better life as they realized their current answers and beliefs were insufficient as time would pass socrates would garner a following of young students interested in his way of thinking although he was skeptical of knowledge and popular ideas he was not without convictions he taught and made claims about politics being extremely critical of democracy made assessments of values prioritizing virtue self-knowledge goodness truth and happiness over wealth fame and power developed explanations of ethics believing that evil is always done out of ignorance and harms the doer more than the victim defined concepts of the soul and the list goes on arguably most notably however is that differing from the more cosmic focus of the pre-socratic thinkers before him socrates maintained that the purpose of philosophy was answering the very practical down-to-earth question what is the way we ought to live despite his good intentions though socrates's efforts were often poorly received by the public after pushing his luck too far he was put on trial for religious impiety and corrupting the youth he was found guilty and sentenced to death in 399 bc he would be given a cup of poison hemlock to drink which would slowly move through his body until reaching his heart and taking his last breath one of history's greatest minds shut down for asking too many questions about a world that was not yet ready to admit it was still at the starting line although his mission would be cut short it would be far from unsuccessful one of socrates's greatest legacies was his student plato who would successfully take the hand off from him and officially begin the relay race of western philosophy plato would follow in socrates's footsteps of skepticism critical questioning reasoning and the prioritization of knowledge toward achieving what was termed eudemonia or fulfilled happy life unlike socrates however plato wrote down his work and crafted a more defined philosophical system producing around 36 books during his lifetime and setting up the first ever university called the academy in this rite plato is considered by many to be the first ever true philosopher at least in the western tradition in his work plato would explore ideas related to things like love friendship beauty politics ethics and happiness however arguably one of if not his most prominent and influential philosophical contribution was his thinking about thinking itself following in socrates's skepticism of knowledge plato's next move was to question how we can and do come to know things at all ultimately plato believed that knowledge is possible and that there are fixed objective truths to be discovered and used more accurately rediscovered as plato believed all knowledge was innate prior to birth and then forgotten upon birth requiring recollection through reasoning and what would become known as platonic idealism plato would separate the realm of truth from the material world distinguishing the world of things as we perceive them from the world of things as they really are for plato reality as we observe it is a flawed reflection of a higher truth around beyond time space and the human mind containing universalities and abstract objects that exist in their purest unchanging ideal form plato would refer to these as the forms with the capital f and suggested that they function as the fundamental building blocks of the material world as a simplified example consider how there are many trees in the world but that all trees are different there is no tree that is the same as any other but all trees are still trees according to plato this is because all trees are imperfect shadows of the perfect ideal tree form that all trees are made from through which we can discern a tree's treeness from a practical standpoint plato suggested that through reason and philosophy individuals and societies could understand the ideals of things like justice happiness friendship being and goodness in order to strive toward and attain them plato would illustrate this theory with arguably his most popular written work the allegory of the cave which is contained in book seven of his work the republic in which he tells the story of a group of prisoners who have been chained up facing a wall inside a cave ever since birth with no knowledge of the outside world on the wall shadows of different shapes are casted by people passing with various objects in front of a fire behind them the prisoners name and classify the shadows believing that they are seeing the true forms of things however when suddenly one of the prisoners is freed he exits the cave and discovers the real world outside all the actual forms and qualities of the objects that were previously just displayed as shadows to him this prisoner after realizing what he has become aware of returns to the cave to tell the other prisoners however when he does they think he has gone insane brainwashed or corrupted by whatever is outside they respond not only with resistance but also violence hostile to his attempt to challenge their current beliefs and encourage new improved knowledge of the truth there are of course multiple ways of interpreting this allegory but in the context of hysteria forms plato creates the distinction between the shadows and the objects they are casted from to parallel the forms and the material world we experience where we are all caved inside our senses restricted and ignorant to the true forms of things the escaped prisoner representing the philosopher who through reason righteously tries to communicate his discoveries but is resisted or even killed by the public as interesting innovative and useful as this allegory is there is at least one obvious issue with it which is perhaps mirrored in the problem of plato's philosophy in almost all of western philosophy as a whole how does the prisoner who was freed know that once outside he's not merely in another sort of cave how does he know that the objects in their supposed true or pure form outside the cave are not merely another sort of crude shadow casted by another purest source he is not yet aware of or perhaps could never be aware of and if he were to somehow reach or discover a subsequent truer realm how would he know this one to be true does not the increasing discovery of obviously true things to be untrue increase the odds that what is currently being discovered is also untrue of course although socrates and plato were fundamental to the founding of western philosophy both combining to influence essential ideas and questions about reality knowledge reason and the way an individual and society ought to exist much of what they believed and claimed does not hold up today although perhaps they were the escaped prisoners of their time they were nonetheless still prisoners to another cave just outside of it perhaps all reality is a prison and time is its guard in plato's apology socrates says to the citizens of athens following his trial i prophecy to you that after my death the punishment will soon descend upon you a punishment far more severe than that which you have inflicted on me you will have caused my death hoping in vain to escape from my critical questioning around 2 400 years later it would seem that socrates's prophecy in at least some sense has come true we have yet to escape from his critical questioning with each new generation each new philosophy and each new realm of knowledge we find ourselves in the wake of socrates still either unsure or in denial socrates plato and soon to be plato student aristotle seemingly gave us some of the first tools needed to begin taking the whole world apart but they never had and we likely never will have an instruction manual to put it back together we still know very little of what it means to be a self let alone a true self what it means to live or how we ought to what consciousness is why there is life or a universe at all what the ultimate purpose of literally anything and everything is if there is any truth and how we can know for sure and the list goes on one of the only true constants that appears to have remained from the early groundwork of ancient greek philosophy is perhaps the recognition of our ignorance the socratic paradox i know that i know nothing socrates knew he knew nothing but seemed to believe that this paradox could be overcome to good end perhaps it can certainly in many practical cases it seems to be but in other cases of these bigger questions of existence perhaps philosophy is in some sense futile perhaps there are no ultimate answers in philosophy perhaps there never will be but there are no ultimate answers in music in art in a beautiful landscape or in a conversation with a friend and yet i know of no one who does not find value insight love and solace and all of these things perhaps by means of the very same thing that cursed humanity with the need to philosophize we can learn through philosophy to enjoy philosophy's futility perhaps the purpose of philosophy then at least of a certain broader kind is best recontextualized in which the ambiguity and unknowingness is an end in it of itself rather than a means perhaps what we should and only can do is try to enjoy the process of playing with the blocks of philosophy like children playing with toy blocks for no reason other than the curiosity and fun of it not because in the end the blocks will provide something that stays up forever but because we inevitably will take the blocks down put them away for a little while and then play with them again another day in a different way and for that whether we agree or disagree with socrates plato aristotle or the western philosophical tradition in general we can and should thank them for this for providing the materials and tools of thinking and questioning that have and will continue to help provide millennium's worth of philosophical wonder this video was sponsored by blinkist whether you enjoy learning about higher level philosophical thinking or just want to learn more practical ideas related to areas like your health or career there is certainly no shortage of literature and no shortage of reasons to engage in it blinkus is a book summary app that can help you do this more easily and efficiently by allowing you to discover and rediscover ideas from entire nonfiction books and podcasts in as little as 15 minutes taking over 5000 of the best nonfiction books in 27 categories and transforming them into text and audio summaries that can be read and listened to even while offline blinkist allows you to easily transform pockets of time into opportunities rife with new knowledge and insights about the world with the average best-selling non-fiction book taking the average reader about 10 and a half hours 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Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 433,670

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Id: HOjYd-Vap7w

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022