Socrates was born in Athens in 470/469 B. C. and he died in the same city in 399 B.C., convict due to an accusation of impiousity : he was accused of atheism and of corrupting the youths with his philosophy, but, in fact, these accusations hid very deeps resentments against Socrates by the part of the powerful people of his time.

He was a sculptor's son, called Sofronisc, and of a midwife called Fenarette. Since from his youth, Socrates had the habit of to debate and to dialogue with the people of his city. Unlike his predecessors, Socrates didn't found a school, also preferring to accomplish his work in public places (mainly in the public squares and gyms), acting of descontraitng form (at least in the appearance), dialoguing with all the people, what fascinated youths, women and politicians of its time.

In according to the authors Reale & Antiseri (1990), after some time following the naturalists' teachings, Socrates started to feel a growing dissatisfaction with those philosophers' legacy, and he passed to concentrating himself in the subject what is the man - that is to say, of the knowledge degree that the man can have on the own man.

While the philosophers pre-socratics, called naturalists, tried to answer to subjects of the type: "What is the nature or the last foundation of the things "? Socrates, for his time, try to answer to the subject: "What is the nature or the man's last reality?" The answer that Socrates arrived is that the man is his own soul - in Greek, psyche -, and is his soul that distinguishes him of the any others things, giving it, by virtue of his history, an unique personality. And for psyche Socrates understands our rational center, wich is intelligent and etical operanting, or still, the conscience and the intellectual and moral personality. This placement of Sócrates ended for exercising a deep influence in all the posterior European tradition, until today.

To teach the man to take care of his own soul would be the main task to be carried out by Socrates, and for all the authentic philosophers. Socrates believed to have received that task lively for heaven's sake, as we can read in the Sócrates' Apology, by Plato: " (...) it's the God's order to me. And I am really persuaded that there nothing is not larger for you well in the city than my obedience to God. Actually, it's not other thing that I do in my adventures wich to persuade you, young and old, that you should not only take care of the body, nor exclusively of the wealth, and nor of any other thing before and more strongly than of the soul, so that she is always improved, because it is not of the accumulation of wealth that's born the virtue, but the improvement of the soul is that are born the wealth and everything that more imports the man and the State ".

According to Reale & Antiseri (1990), one of the fundamental reasonings done by Sócrates to prove that thesis is the following: a thing is the instrument that is used and the other is the subject that uses the instrument. Now, the man uses his body as instrument, what means that the human essence uses the instrument, that it is the body, not being, therefore, the own body. Thus, to the question " what is the man?", wouldn't be a logical answer like "he is his body", but yes what is that " what is served on the body ", what is the psyche, the soul. This same soul would be immortal and fadada to reincarnate so many times was necessary until the soul to improve in such a way that didn't need more to return to this planet.

Among the accusations against Sócrates there was the that he was introducing new " daimonions", or new divine entities. In his Apology, Sócrates says: " The reason (...) they are those accusations that a lot of times and in several circumstances you heard to say, that is to say, that in me something is verified of divine or demoniac (...) a voice that makes to hear inside of me since I was boy and that, when it makes to hear, it always stops me of doing that that is dangerous and that I am to the point of to do, but that never exhorted me to do anything". Or that is to say, the socratic's "daimonion" was " a voice " that vetoed it certain things, what saved it several times of dangers and negative experiences (Reale & Antiseri, 1990, p. 95). It didn't reveal anything to him, it just vetoed some things that were it dangerous.

The socratic daimonion is something very specific that is in respect to a very particularly by Sócrates' exceptional personality, being placed in the same plan of a mediunism type that made her present in certain moments of very intense concentration and in quite close moments of reflection to the ecstasy ecstasies in that Sócrates (as well as it happened with Buddha, Plotinus, Jeanne D'Arc, etc) it sometimes dove and that lasted for a long time, thing of the which as much Plato as well Xenofonte speaks expressly.

Jostein Gaarder, in his book The Sophia's World, speaks that the people still yet today asking the real reason why Socrates had to die.Then he makes a parallel one between Jesus and Socrates: both were charismatic people and enigmatic people were still considered in life. None of both left any written, and we needed to trust in the image and impressions that they left in theirs pupils and theirs conteporary people. Both were masters of the rhetoric and they had so much self-confidence in what they spoke that so much could snatch as to irritate its listeners. And both believed to speak on behalf of a thing that was larger than themselves. Both challenged the ones that acutely they stopped the power in the society, pointing without pity the hypocrisies and false foundations in that settled to make every luck of abuses and injustices. It was this that, in the end, cost them theirs lifes. After all, the ones that question they are always dangerous for the powerful ones and pseudo-wise persons of all the times.

The way as Socrates made the people they to know each other to themselves it was also tied up to its discovery that the man, in his essence, is his psyché. In its method, called of maieutic, he tended to deprive the person of its false illusion of the knowledge, fragilizing his vanity and allowing, like this, that the person was more free from false faiths and more sensible to extract the logical truth that was also inside of itself.

Being a midwife's son, Sócrates compare its activity with the one of bringing to the world the truth that there is inside of each one. He didn't teach anything, but he just helped the people they to remove it of themselves own and clean opinions of false values, because the true knowledge has to come from within, in agreement with the conscience, and that one cannot obtain expremendo-if the other ones. Even in the activity of learning a discipline any, the teacher can make nothing else than to guide and to illuminate doubts, as a polisher removes the excess of dump of the diamond, not making the own diamond. The process of learning is a more effective internal, and so much process as adult goes the interest of learning. The knowledge that comes from within is only capable to reveal the true discernment. In certain sense, we say that when a person " settles down ", she simply brings to the conscience something very clear that was " already inside " of himself. Thus, the purposes of the socratic dialogue are the catharsis and the education for the self-discovering.

To do a dialogue with Socrates was been to submit to a " wash of the soul " and an installment of bills of the own life. It was as a psychotherapy in group. As Plato said: " who wants that is close to Sócrates and, in contact with him, he/she becomes to ratiocinate, any that is the treated subject, it is dragged by the spirals of the dialogue and unavoidably it is forced to proceed ahead, until that, surprisingly, to see to render bills of himself and in the way as he lives, he thinks and he lived ".

In its method, that is the maieutic, when beginning a chat, Sócrates it always adopted the an ignorant person's position, that just " knows that nothing knows ". And is exactly for using this affirmative one, he forced the people they to use it the reason. He entered in such a way in the chat, and in such a way it dominated her, that was capable to look a larger ignorance or of showing more foolish than it was really. His more faithful pupils already knew that when the opponent drops in this play, soon soon it would take a tremendous tumble when the picture if it inverted. And this era the main technique of Sócrates' method: to use the irony. It was as soon as he exposed a lot of the weaknesses of the thought Athenian. An encounter with Sócrates coulded not signifcar the risk of exposing to the ridicule. But the people that passed for this reason and they got to overcome the shock of the wounded pride, going until the end in the process cartático, they ended for extracting of himself the answer in everything logic and compatible with the exposed problems, giving it the solution. The result is that the individual felt a true illumination sensation, of discovery, of it be given to the light something of valuable that there was inside of itself, but that was not the minimum aware. It was Sócrates as soon as it conquered fervourosis pupils. But if the person surrendered to the wounded pride, she became a ferocious Socrates enemy. And this went to reason that cost it the life.

to return

This page is part of a colection accessed times.

Be honest I do get, don't plagiarize works

João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil, in 12/27/96

Transleted from Portuguese to English in 07/09/97. Revised in 02/24/98.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Carlos A. F. Guimarães

---