Philosophy of Socrates

The turning point in the development of ancient philosophy was the views of Socrates (469-399 BC). His name has become a household name and serves to express the idea of ​​wisdom. Socrates himself did not write anything, he was a sage close to the people, he philosophized in the streets and squares, and from there entered into philosophical disputes.

The invaluable merit of Socrates lies in the fact that in his facts the dialogue became the main method of finding the truth. Whereas previously principles were simply postulated, Socrates discussed all sorts of approaches critically and comprehensively. His anti-dogmatism was expressed in the rejection of claims to the possession of reliable knowledge. Socrates used a midwifery art called meieutics - the art of defining concepts through induction. With the help of skillfully asked questions, he singled out false definitions and found the correct ones. Discussing the meaning of various concepts (good, wisdom, justice, beauty, etc.), Socrates first began to use inductive evidence and give general definitions of concepts, which was an invaluable contribution to the formation of the science of logic.

Socrates became famous as one of the founders of dialectics in the sense of finding the truth through conversations and disputes. The method of dialectical disputes of Socrates was to detect contradictions in the reasoning of the interlocutor and bring him to the truth through questions and answers. He was the first to see in the distinctness and clarity of judgments the main sign of their truth. In disputes, Socrates sought to prove the expediency and reasonableness of both the world and man. He made a turn in the development of philosophy, for the first time placing man, his essence, the internal contradictions of his soul at the center of his philosophizing. Thanks to this, knowledge moves from the philosophical doubt "I know that I know nothing" to the birth of truth through self-knowledge. Socrates elevated to a philosophical principle the famous saying of the Delphic oracle: "Know thyself!" The main goal of his philosophy is to restore the authority of knowledge, shaken by the sophists. His restless soul of an inimitable debater strove with unceasing and persistent labor for the perfection of communication in order to clarify the truth. Socrates insisted that he only knew that he knew nothing.

Socrates emphasized the uniqueness of consciousness in comparison with material being and was one of the first to deeply reveal the sphere of the spiritual as an independent reality, proclaiming it as something no less reliable than the being of the perceived world, and thereby, as it were, laid it on the altar of universal human culture for the study of all subsequent philosophical and psychological thought. Considering the phenomenon of the soul, Socrates proceeded from the recognition of its immortality, which was linked with his faith in God.

In matters of ethics, Socrates developed the principles of rationalism, arguing that virtue stems from knowledge and a person who knows what good is will not act badly. After all, good is also knowledge, so the culture of intelligence can make people good: no one is evil out of good will, people are only evil out of ignorance!

The political views of Socrates were based on the conviction that power in the state should belong to the "best", i.e. experienced, honest, fair, decent and certainly possessing the art of public administration. He sharply criticized the shortcomings of contemporary Athenian democracy. From his point of view: "The worst is the majority!" After all, not everyone who elects rulers understands political and state issues and can assess the degree of professionalism of those elected, their moral and intellectual level. Socrates stood up for professionalism in management matters, in deciding who and whom can and should be elected to leadership positions.

Philosophy of Aristotle as an encyclopedic doctrine

The philosophical thought of ancient Greece reached its highest height in the works of Aristotle (384-322 BC), whose views, encyclopedically incorporating the achievements of ancient science, are a grandiose system of concrete scientific and proper philosophical knowledge in its amazing depth, subtlety and scale. Proceeding from the recognition of the objective existence of matter, Aristotle considered it eternal, uncreated and indestructible. Matter cannot arise from nothing, nor can it increase or decrease in quantity. However, matter itself, according to Aristotle, is inert, passive. It contains only the possibility of the emergence of a real variety of things. In order to turn this possibility into reality, it is necessary to give the matter an appropriate form. By form, Aristotle meant an active creative factor, thanks to which a thing becomes real. Form is a stimulus and a goal, the cause of the formation of diverse things from monotonous matter: matter is a kind of clay. In order for various things to arise from it, a potter is needed - a god (or mind - the prime mover). Form and matter are inextricably linked, so that every thing in the possibility is already contained in matter and, by natural development, receives its form. The whole world is a series of forms connected with each other and arranged in order of increasing perfection.

Categories are the fundamental concepts of philosophy. Aristotle's consideration of the relationship between matter and eidos (form), act and potency reveals the energetic dynamism of the being in its development. At the same time, the thinker sees the causal dependence of the phenomena of existence: everything has a causal explanation. In this regard, he makes a distinction between causes: there is an active cause - this is an energy force that generates something in the stream of universal interaction of the phenomena of existence, not only matter and form, act and potency, but also the generating energy-cause, which, along with the active principle, has a target Meaning: "for what".

Aristotle developed a hierarchical system of categories in which the main one was "essence", or "substance", and the rest were considered its features. In an effort to simplify the categorical system, Aristotle then recognized only three main categories: essence, state, relation.

According to Aristotle, the world movement is an integral process: all its moments are mutually conditioned, which also implies the presence of a single engine. Further, starting from the concept of causality, he comes to the concept of the first cause. And this is the so-called cosmological proof of the existence of God. God is the first cause of movement, the beginning of all beginnings. Indeed, a series of causes cannot be infinite or beginningless. There is a cause that determines itself, does not depend on anything: the cause of all causes. After all, the series of causes would never end if we did not allow the absolute beginning of any movement. This beginning is the deity as a global supersensible substance.

Aristotle gave an analysis of the various "parts" of the soul: memory, emotions, the transition from sensations to general perception, and from it to a generalized idea; from opinion through the concept to knowledge, and from immediately felt desire to rational will. The soul distinguishes and cognizes the existent, but it "spends a lot of time in mistakes" - "to achieve something reliable in all respects about the soul is certainly the most difficult thing." According to Aristotle, the death of the body frees the soul for its eternal life: the soul is eternal and immortal.

For Aristotle, knowledge has being as its object. The basis of experience is in sensations, in memory and habit. Any knowledge begins with sensations: it is that which is able to take the form of sensually perceived objects without their matter. The mind, on the other hand, sees the general in the particular. It is impossible to acquire scientific knowledge only by means of sensations and perceptions, due to the transient and changing nature of all things. The forms of truly scientific knowledge are concepts that comprehend the essence of a thing. Having developed the theory of knowledge in detail and deeply, Aristotle created a work on logic, which retains its enduring significance to this day. He developed the theory of thinking and its forms, concepts, judgments, conclusions, etc. Aristotle is the founder of logic.

Protagoras and his statement: "Man is the measure of all things that exist as they exist, and non-existent as they do not exist"

Protagoras (c. 481 - 411 BC) gained fame through teaching in several Greek cities.

Protagoras' thesis that "man is the measure of all things" can be interpreted as an epistemological proposition, namely: things do not reveal themselves to people as they are in themselves. Only certain aspects or properties of things always appear before a person.

Let's try to clarify this point with an example. A hammer in the hands of a carpenter is a tool for driving nails. It can be comfortable or uncomfortable, heavy or light. For a physicist, a hammer as an object of study appears to be a physical object that is not convenient or inconvenient, but which has one or another molecular structure, one or another physical property: weight. Strength, etc. for the seller, a hammer on a store shelf is a commodity that has a certain value and profit that its sale will bring. This product is easy, or maybe difficult, to sell and store. This is our interpretation.

If this is what Protagoras had in mind, then his thesis should be understood in such a way that a person is the measure of all things insofar as things always appear before people on that side, which is determined by the circumstances and the specific way they are used. This view of things leads to epistemological perspectivism, according to which our knowledge of things is always conditioned by the perspective of looking at them.

From this perspectivism emerges epistemological pluralism, which asserts a variety (plurality) of ways of looking at things.

Such perspectivism is also relativism: our knowledge of things is determined by our activities and the situation in which we find ourselves. Knowledge turns out to be situationally relative (relative).

The latter does not correspond to the position of Protagoras. He wanted to expand the perspective beyond the perception of things to include theoretical reasoning: “There are two opposite opinions about every thing” (2, p. 318). Does Protagoras assert in this position that people do not find agreement on almost any subject of reasoning? At the same time, Protagoras does not care whether they speak the truth or a lie. Or does Protagoras say that with respect to any subject, two opposite statements can be formulated that are equally true (in the same sense and with respect to the same subject)?

The first answer is not philosophically interesting. It comes down to a somewhat dogmatic expression of the actual state of affairs - "people contradict each other." However, the second answer turns out to be philosophically problematic. What is meant by saying that there are two opposite statements about a certain subject that are true in the same sense? Does this statement apply to yourself? If so, then it is possible to formulate the opposite statement to it, which will also be true. In that case, what then really asserts this proposition? Obviously, it lays the foundations for skeptical self-destruction.

Protagoras also says that “of the gods, I cannot know either that they exist, or that they do not exist, or what they look like. For many things prevent us from knowing this: both the incomprehensibility and the brevity of human life” (2, p. 319).

This fragment contains the idea of ​​the limits of human knowledge. Here Protagoras states that we cannot find out whether gods exist and what they are. However, this fragment does not cast doubt on the cognitive capabilities of a person, because the fragment itself, that is, the doubt expressed in it, is, in turn, questioned.

Protagoras' thesis about man as the measure of all things can be interpreted as applying to individuals who, having their own experience and being in special situations, have their own vision of things. The individual, the individual, is the measure of all things.

Indeed, the world is not the same for the happy and the unhappy, for the paranoid and for those in a state of ecstasy. From a psychological point of view, these differences do exist in a certain sense. But if Protagoras' thesis is understood as the statement that any knowledge of a thing depends on one or another of its perspectives, is determined by the various interests and circumstances of the individual, then when this statement is applied to him, a paradox arises. Is this statement not only an expression of the side that the problem appears to a particular individual?

So far the thesis of man as the measure of all things has been interpreted as an epistemological proposition, as a question of how things appear to individuals. But it can also be interpreted as a normative thesis, that is, as a statement about norms. Man is the measure of all things, since the value or significance that things possess is, in one sense or another, related to man. It can be said, for example, that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. They become such only in relation to a separate individual or a separate group of individuals.

Such a conclusion does not mean that good and evil are purely subjective. If it is stated that a bread knife is good, then, of course, certain qualities of the knife are meant. This is exactly the knife that is good. It is good for cutting bread. It is not our thoughts about the knife that are good, nor our feelings about the knife.

It can be objected that cutting bread is done by a person and how he does it - good or bad - depends on the person. Things in themselves, mono answer, are what they are, whether they are good for cutting bread or not.

However, a man specially made a knife to cut bread with it. Then the thing itself, the bread knife as a bread knife, is already predetermined by the intended use, where both good and bad cutting of bread is possible. It's already built into this thing that it should function as a good knife for cutting bread.

This brief discussion shows how problematic is the strict distinction between things as they are and things as good or bad, that is, the distinction between the descriptive and the normative.

The word normative is usually used in the context of talking about norms, that is, standards, rules, and customs that prescribe how something should or should be. What could the thesis about man as the measure of all things mean in this connection?

One possible answer is as follows. Rules and customs are not established by nature or God, but by people themselves. It is people who set the standard for human behavior. Neither sacred authority nor anything natural determines which ethical and political norms are generally valid. This is what a person does.

But what is a person? Does this word mean all people? After all, individuals do not always agree on norms. Then who or what do we mean when we talk about a person? The content of the answer, obviously, will not be determined until we clarify for ourselves how the interconnections between the individual and the historical-social community, between man and nature, between the human and the divine are understood. If we believe that people are really organic parts of the social whole, that they are part of nature, or that the human is based on the divine, then the thesis that a person is an authority in normative matters will not contradict the thesis that norms depend on society, nature on sacred.

One can also ask the following question: what human qualities - social, altruistic or egoistic - are really inherent in a person? Do spontaneous impulses and natural emotions characterize him, or is it a sense of duty and qualities developed by upbringing? Or is critical rationality the human essence, which plays the role of measure in normative questions?

The following conclusion follows from the above. Without a preliminary justified clarification of what a person is and how he is connected with society, nature and tradition, it is meaningless to say that “a person himself is a measure for his behavior” (5, p. 71).

The above statements of Protagoras - about religious agnosticism, about the fact that it is always possible to put forward the opposite opinion, and about man as the measure of all things - suggest what his views on the problem of the validity of the original norms were. Apparently, the first of these statements indicates that Protagoras did not consider it possible to solve this problem by referring to the divine - the will of the gods, their desires and commands. The reason for this is simple - we do not know anything definite about the gods.

In favor of the position that we cannot know anything definite about the gods, Protagoras put forward two arguments: 1) the divine is beyond the sensible and 2) human life is too fleeting. The first argument does not deny the existence of the divine, but affirms its inaccessibility to sensory perception. This implicitly assumes that sensory perception is the only fundamental form of human experience. From the second argument about the brevity of human life, it seems to follow that if life were longer, then we would be able to know about the divine. This argument then admits both the existence of the divine and the increase in one way or another of the knowledge of it with the increase in the duration of life.

The thesis that for any opinion there is a completely opposite one in this context can be interpreted, among other things, as an indirect criticism of the practice of adopting existing norms without discussing them. In this case, one can equally well argue in favor of not only accepted, but also alternative moral and political norms. Note that such a conclusion can serve as a justification for tradition - traditional norms are as good as any others.

If the agnostic thesis is interpreted as an argument against the justification of ethical-political norms on divine authority, then the thesis of the existence of conflicting opinions on any issue can, apparently, be interpreted as an argument against the justification of ethical-political norms directly on the dominant tradition.

From another possible interpretation of the thesis about man as the measure of all things, it follows that it is society that turns out to be the supreme authority in the question of the universal validity of norms.

The meaning of this interpretation is that values ​​and norms are generally valid for the society that established them, but not for other societies. This interpretation appears both absolute and relative. A certain system of norms and values ​​will be absolute (generally valid) in the society that has adopted it, but in other societies, other norms and values ​​will be universally valid. When we play chess, we must adhere to the rules of chess. But when we play preference, we must follow different rules of the game. In the same way, the general validity of certain laws in Athens does not contradict the fact that quite different, perhaps opposite, laws operate in Persia.

Here we find a contrast between two main points of view, in particular, on legal laws. According to the first, laws adopted at a given time, or “positive” law, are generally valid. According to the second, universally valid laws differ from "positive" law, as they are based on natural universal human law. In modern discussions, one speaks of legal positivism and the concept of natural law (natural law concept or theory).

All this raises the question of whether a person can in one way or another join the universal norms, whether he is able to know something universally correct and true, independent of tradition and views.

Sophists formulated a number of issues related to ethics, social sciences and epistemology, which remain relevant in our time. These are, in fact, entire problem areas, which are characterized by such key terms as relative and absolute; law and power; selfishness and altruism; individual and society; mind and feelings.

Many are familiar with the word "sophism" - pronounced, as a rule, with a touch of disdain in the voice and denoting a pseudo-wise, pseudo-true statement. This word goes back to the name of the ancient Greek tradition of sophists, or teachers of wisdom. They created schools where they taught young men various sciences and arts, the main of which they revered was the art of formulating and defending their opinion in a dispute on certain important philosophical issues. Sophists loved to talk about literally everything - about the structure of the world, about being, about man and society, about mathematics, music, poetry and much more. Often these arguments seemed paradoxical, contrary to common sense, but this did not bother the sophists much - the main thing, they believed, was that the reasoning proving this or that opinion was logically coherent. And whether it corresponds to the truth or not - it does not matter, because the sophists believed that there is not and cannot be any general or objective truth.

The Sophists took a philosophical position of doubt in relation to what the first natural philosophical systems of Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus, and others had affirmed before them. The Sophists believed that if one accepts the point of view of one or another natural philosopher, one will have to admit that human knowledge is simply impossible. After all, cognition is a process of advancement or development of consciousness. If, for example, we accept the position of Parmenides on the impossibility of movement, then no process, including cognitive, is possible. If, on the contrary, we accept the position of Heraclitus that “everything flows, everything changes,” then it turns out that knowledge simply has nothing to rely on. Indeed, if at a given moment I knew something about an object, then at the next moment of time this object changed, and I, who cognizes it, also changed - thus, the knowledge received is not true, it seems to hang in the air.

One of the most famous sophists, Gorgias (c. 483-373 BC), a student of Empedocles, was the first to formulate three principles of relativity of human knowledge: nothing exists; if something exists, it cannot be known; and if it can be known, then this knowledge cannot be transferred and explained to another. Interestingly, Gorgias attached great importance to the main method of transmitting information that existed at that time - speech. “Speech,” he said, “is a powerful mistress that performs the most divine deeds with the smallest and most inconspicuous body, because it is able to drive away fear, and avert sorrow, and arouse concern, and increase sympathy.”

Another well-known sophist, Protagoras (c. 481-411 BC), considering the problem of knowledge, believed that it is an exclusively personal matter of each person. There is no general, objective knowledge about the world, each person learns something of his own, and determines the truth of his knowledge for himself. Protagoras famous phrase: "Man is the measure of all things" speaking not about the fact that a person rules over the world, but about the fact that he has no other criterion for the truth of his knowledge of the world, except for himself.

The Sophists became famous for expressing many very controversial ideas. Let's just say that there is only one phrase of the sophist Thrasymachus that "justice is nothing but the benefit of the strongest." Nevertheless, sophistry played a very important role in the development of philosophy - firstly, it raised the question of the relativity of philosophical knowledge, and, secondly, prepared the understanding that man is the center of philosophy, and this created the basis for the emergence of the teachings of such great philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

According to the teachings of Democritus, emptiness separates the smallest particles of being - "atoms" (indivisible). Democritus admits an infinite number of such atoms, thereby rejecting the assertion that being is one. Atoms, according to Democritus, are separated by emptiness; emptiness is non-being and as such is unknowable: rejecting Parmenides' claim that being is unknowable.

It is also characteristic that Democritus distinguishes between the world of atoms - as true and therefore cognizable only by reason - and the world of sensible things, which are only an external appearance, the essence of which is atoms, their properties and movements. Atoms cannot be seen, they can only be thought.

5. Socrates and the Sophists: An Anthropological Turn in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Basic principles of the Socratic method. Ethics of Socrates.
Socrates is an ancient Greek philosopher, whose teaching marks a turn in philosophy - from the consideration of nature and the world, to the consideration of man. Sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" and "disrespecting the gods". His work is a turning point in ancient philosophy. With his method of analyzing concepts (maieutics, dialectics) and identifying virtue and knowledge, he directed the attention of philosophers to the unconditional significance of the human personality.

Socrates is characterized by the fact that, speaking out against the sophists (after all, they, for example, took money for education), at the same time, in his work and views, he expressed those features of philosophical activity that were specific to the sophists. Socrates does not recognize the problems characteristic of the philosophers of those times: reflections on nature, its origin, the universe, etc. According to Socrates, philosophy should not deal with nature, but with man, his moral qualities, and the essence of knowledge. Questions of ethics - that's the main thing that philosophy should deal with, and this was the main subject of Socrates' conversations.

“... Socrates investigated the moral virtues and was the first to try to give their general definitions (after all, of those who argued about nature, only Democritus touched on this a little and in some way gave definitions of warm and cold; and the Pythagoreans - before him - did this for a little, the definitions of which they reduced to numbers , indicating, for example, what an opportunity is, or justice, or matrimony... Two things can rightly be attributed to Socrates - proofs through guidance and general definitions: both of them concern the beginning of knowledge, ”wrote Aristotle (“Metaphysics”, XIII , four).

The Socratic Method Socrates, to substantiate his views, uses the method he developed, which entered the history of philosophy under the name Socratic, namely, dialectics, the art of dialectical dispute. Dialectics is a method by which ethical concepts are presented and developed, substantiated. For Socrates, philosophy is the consideration of a specific moral phenomenon, in the process of which we come to the definition of what this phenomenon represents, that is, to the definition of its essence.

The Sophistic movement (450-350 BC) completed the evolution of pre-Socratic thinking and laid the foundation for the next stage in the development of Greek philosophy. The Sophists found the diverse teachings of their predecessors unsatisfactory and criticized them. The theoretical foundations of sophistry were developed by Protagoras. Based on the relativism (recognition of the relativity, convention and subjectivity of knowledge) of Heraclitus, Protagoras taught that things are as they seem to each of us; everything is truth; man is the measure of all things. Based on these provisions, a practical application of sophism to moral and social life was developed. The Sophists put forward the thesis of the relativity of the law and argued that everyone has the right to use any means to satisfy their desires.

The period of activity of the sophists, who disenchanted mythical models and questioned traditional ideas about morality, is sometimes referred to as the Greek Enlightenment. Sophists, who are interested in man and society, act as the forerunners of a new paradigm of Greek thinking, in which the center of research is no longer nature, but man.

Socrates' method, which he used in his dialogues:

1. Doubt - The wisest is the one who understands that "I know that I know nothing."

2. Irony - revealing contradictions in the statements of the interlocutor.

4. Induction - finding empirical data, facts confirming the answer

5. Definition - the final definition.

So the Socratic method is a maieutic dialogue. I thought that knowledge is good in itself. Evil comes from ignorance. Knowledge is the source of moral perfection.

Protagoras... Man is the measure of all things

Lev Balashov

The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras put forward the thesis: "Man is the measure of all things that exist, that they exist, and non-existent, that they do not exist." For example, the same wind blows, but someone freezes at the same time, and someone does not. So how can you say that the wind is cold or warm in itself?

The logician A. M. Anisov comments: “This is a very convenient philosophy, since it allows you to justify anything. Since man is the measure of all things, he is also the measure of truth and falsehood. Hence the thesis of the sophists that every statement can be justified or refuted with equal success. Some sophists were ready to go to the point of absurdity” [Anisov A.M. Modern logic. M., 2002. S. 19].

This is one conclusion from the thesis of Protagoras. However, other assessments of the thesis are possible, quite positive. In fact, a person passes all the information coming from outside through himself, through his body, personality, soul, mind. Naturally, he willy-nilly acts as a kind of filter-measure.

The thesis of Protagoras points to this property of a person, to the fact that a person, when evaluating-looking at things, cannot jump out of himself, out of his “skin”, be completely impartial, objective, that he always brings a particle of himself into his thoughts-judgments. , their subjectivity (both as an individual, and as a representative of a particular community, and as a representative of the entire human race).

It is better to know about this original, irremovable subjectivity in advance than to deceive yourself and others. The thesis of Protagoras protects us from all sorts of prophets, clairvoyants, false sages who declare themselves to be the bearers-keepers of the truth-truth.

Unlike Protagoras, who developed the doctrine of the relativity of truth and all knowledge on the example, first of all, of the sensual stage of cognition, the second famous sophist Gorgias (485-378 BC) based his teaching on the difficulties that mind, trying to build a consistent worldview at the level of philosophical categories (one and many, being and non-being, being and thinking). And if Protagoras taught that everything is true, then Gorgias claims that everything is false. The main content of the views of Gorgias was set forth in the essay "On the non-existent, or on nature." In the first section of his work, he proves that nothing exists; in the second, that if something even exists, it is incomprehensible; in the third, that if it is comprehensible, it is inexpressible and inexplicable to others. We can say that here, too, we are talking, first of all, about the fact that nothing unconditional exists outside of man.

The first thesis - nothing exists - Gorgias proves, based on the teachings of the unity of being of the Eleatics and the plurality of atomists. The Eleatics proved that non-existence cannot exist. Gorgias also proves that being cannot exist, being plural and one at the same time. The concept of being is contradictory and therefore untenable.

Speaking of the unknowability of beings, Gorgias proceeds from the denial of the identity of being and thinking. Existing and thinking do not coincide, therefore, thought does not contain the existent, and thus it is impossible to know the existent. On the same basis, the impossibility of expressing, conveying knowledge is also affirmed, because it is transmitted by words. Words, like thought, do not coincide with beings, i.e. words do not contain the things that we communicate through words. In a word, the existent does not coincide with either the thought or the word, and it can neither be known nor expressed - everything is false. Gorgias' nihilism stems from a one-sided approach to the flexibility and plasticity of concepts, their internal inconsistency, reflecting the fluidity, variability, and inconsistency of this world itself.

6. The main part of Plato's philosophy, which gave the name to a whole trend of philosophy, is the doctrine of ideas (eidos), the existence of two worlds: the world of ideas (eidos) and the world of things, or forms. Ideas (eidos) are prototypes of things, their sources. Ideas (eidos) underlie the whole multitude of things formed from formless matter. Ideas are the source of everything, while matter itself cannot produce anything.

The world of ideas (eidos) exists outside of time and space. There is a certain hierarchy in this world, at the top of which stands the idea of ​​the Good, from which all the rest flow. Good is identical to absolute Beauty, but at the same time it is the Beginning of all beginnings and the Creator of the Universe. In the myth of the cave, the Good is depicted as the Sun, ideas are symbolized by those creatures and objects that pass in front of the cave, and the cave itself is an image of the material world with its illusions.

The idea (eidos) of any thing or being is the deepest, most intimate and essential in it. In man, the role of an idea is played by his immortal soul. Ideas (eidos) have the qualities of constancy, unity and purity, and things - variability, multiplicity and distortion.

The human soul is represented by Plato in the form of a chariot with a rider and two horses, white and black. The charioteer symbolizes the rational principle in a person, and the horses: white - noble, higher qualities of the soul, black - passions, desires and instinctive principles. When a person is in another world, he (the charioteer) gets the opportunity, together with the gods, to contemplate eternal truths. When a person is born again in the material world, the knowledge of these truths remains in his soul as a memory. Therefore, according to Plato's philosophy, the only way for a person to know is to remember, to find "reflections" of ideas in the things of the sensual world. When a person manages to see the traces of ideas - through beauty, love or just deeds - then, according to Plato, the wings of the soul, once lost by it, begin to grow again.

Hence the importance of Plato's teachings about Beauty, about the need to look for it in nature, people, art or well-organized laws, because when the soul gradually ascends from the contemplation of physical beauty to the beauty of the sciences and arts, then to the beauty of morals and customs, this the best way for the soul to climb the "golden ladder" to the world of ideas.

Plato's theory of knowledge is inseparable from his doctrine of being, from his psychology, cosmology and mythology. The doctrine of knowledge turns into a myth. According to Plato, our soul is immortal. Before she settled on the earth and took on a bodily shell, the soul, as it were, contemplated the truly existing being and retained knowledge of it. A person will know without learning from anyone, but only by answering questions, that is, he will draw knowledge in himself, therefore, he will remember. Therefore, the essence of the process of cognition, according to Plato, is the recollection by the soul of those ideas that it had already contemplated.

Plato wrote that “and since in nature everything is related to each other, and the soul has known everything, nothing prevents the one who remembered one thing - people call this knowledge - to find everything else himself, if only he is tireless in search ". Therefore, the nature of the soul must be akin to the nature of "ideas". “The soul is similar to the divine, and the body to the mortal,” we read in Plato, “... the divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indecomposable, permanent and unchanging in itself in. Our soul is similar to the highest degree.” In the words of J. Reale: "The soul must have a similar nature to the absolute, otherwise ... everything eternally existing would remain outside the soul's ability to perceive."

Only thinking gives true meaning. Thinking, on the other hand, is an absolutely independent process of recall, independent of sensory perceptions. Sense perception generates only an opinion about things. In this regard, the process of cognition is defined by Plato as dialectics, that is, the art of speaking, the art of asking questions and answering them, evoking memories. In other words, this is a reasonable comprehension of the truly existing kinds of being or ideas - "the most perfect knowledge." Plato's dialectic is the path or movement of thought through the untrue to the true. Such an impression or such a thought that contains a contradiction can call the soul to reflection. “That which affects the sensations at the same time as its opposite, I have defined as stimulating,” says Plato, “and what does not act in this way does not awaken thought.” The first half of the task of dialectical, in the Platonic sense, research is to determine an unambiguous, precisely fixed definition of "kind". It is necessary, in the words of Plato himself, "covering everything with a general look, to raise to a single idea that which is scattered everywhere, so that, giving a definition to each, make the subject of teaching clear." The second half of the same task is to "divide into species, into natural components, while trying not to break up any of them."

Similarly, Protagoras recognizes the sovereignty of rhetoric in relation to the criteria of truth. In the Antilogies (a work by Protagoras, known only in retellings), he points out that “around any thing there are two arguments that contradict one another”, which means “it is about teaching criticism and the ability to discuss, argue, organize a tournament of arguments against arguments. 4 The extremely relativistic position of Protagoras is expressed in his famous thesis: “ Man is the measure of all things that exist, that they exist, and those that do not exist, that they do not exist.. <…>If someone says that man is not the criterion of all things, he will still confirm that man is the criterion of all things, because the very one who affirms this is man; and whoever admits the phenomenon as related to man, he thereby recognized that the phenomenon itself belongs to that which is related to man. Therefore, the insane, in regard to what appears in madness, is a sure criterion; and the sleeper, in relation to what appears in a dream; and the infant to what happens in infancy; and the old man - to what is in old age "5.

Since everything turns out to exist insofar as it is perceived by someone in one way or another, and becomes true due to the fact that someone recognizes something as such, Protagoras prefers to distinguish not between "true" and "false" opinions, but between good and bad opinions. As Plato writes in Theaetetus on behalf of Protagoras, “he who, due to a bad state of mind, has an opinion corresponding to this state, thanks to a good state, can change it and get another, and some people, out of inexperience, call this appearance the truth, I will say that one is better than the other, but in no way truer. “I call a sage one who transforms the evil that seems to someone and exists for someone in such a way that it seems and is good for him” 7 . In the same way the physician cures the patient, to whom, while he is ill, all food seems bitter. Likewise, “a sage, instead of every bad thing, makes a worthy thing both be and seem fair to cities” 8 .

3. Socrates as an opponent of the sophists and a model of a true philosopher.

The fundamental objection of Socrates to Protagoras's relativism was an indication that in fact Protagoras cannot assert what he asserts. Indeed, agreeing that any opinion is only about what exists (and therefore, as Socrates interprets this, is true), Protagoras will have to admit that all statements that contradict his position are true. "Consequently, since everyone disputes it, Protagor's "truth", it cannot be true for anyone - neither for anyone else, nor for himself" 9 .

Moreover, without knowledge of the true good and justice, it is impossible to distinguish between good and bad opinions. And in general, as Socrates states in Plato's Protagoras, "the well-being of life depends on knowledge" 10 . It is not true that a person is controlled by something other than knowledge (pleasure, sorrow, love, fear). One should not think of knowledge as a "slave that everyone drags in his own direction." On the contrary: “Knowledge is beautiful and is able to control a person, so that the one who knows good and bad, nothing will force him to act otherwise than knowledge commands, and the mind is strong enough to help a person” 11 . And "apparently, it is not in the nature of a person to voluntarily go instead of good to what you consider evil" 12 . In a word, all evil deeds are committed solely out of ignorance. when something is considered to be good, which in fact is not. (This is the so-called position intellectualism in ethics.)

In a word, Socrates is fundamentally different from the sophists in his recognition of the objectivity of truth, as well as the objectivity of the criteria of goodness and beauty; those. value judgments can also be true or false. He considered the meaning of his conversations and disputes maieutics(obstetrics), assigning himself the role of an obstetrician, helping the interlocutor to "give birth" to the truth in his own mind.

However, at first glance, or, so to speak, “from the outside”, the Socratic method of conducting a conversation looks quite sophistical. Along with the steady striving for objective truth that drives Socratic conversation “from within”, its other no less important component, as if the outer shell, is an impenetrable irony. Socrates speaks out, always critically moving away from the arguments of the interlocutor, no matter how convincing they may seem, and (especially if you focus on the early dialogues of Plato) from his own judgments, presenting himself as an ignorant person and in need of instruction. The famous phrase “I know that I know nothing” is highly ironic, which Socrates cited as proof of the correctness of the Delphic oracle, which declared him the wisest of all. Indeed, after talking with a variety of people: statesmen, poets, artisans, Socrates discovered that they, in fact, do not know anything and only imagine themselves to be wise. While he himself, not being knowledgeable, does not consider himself to be such. It turns out that “the wisest one is the one who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is truly worth nothing” 13 .

How Socrates managed to expose the utter ignorance of his interlocutors is given by the dialogue “Hippias the Greater”, in which Plato’s teacher tries to get an answer from the richest and most popular of the sophists, Hippias, to the question of what is beautiful. I will not retell this dialogue in detail here, I will only note that it begins with the fact that Hippias undertakes to easily solve all the difficulties of Socrates and claims that the maidens, mares and - if you like to talk about such things - skillfully made clay pots are beautiful. But it immediately turns out that, compared with the kind of gods, the kind of maidens is like the most beautiful of monkeys compared to a man. That is, what Hippias listed is beautiful in one respect, and ugly in another. The interlocutors come to the same conclusions every time they try to define the beautiful through any relative characteristics (suitable, suitable, etc.). To the extent that, for example, defining the beautiful as the cause, or the father, of any good, they state that, since the father is not a son, it turns out that the beautiful is not good. It also turns out that whatever makes things seem beautiful doesn't necessarily make them really so. So Socrates gradually leads Hippias to raise the question of certain absolute criteria of beauty, of beauty in itself: “We must try to show what makes objects beautiful, whether they seem so or not” 14 . But Hippias is already so tired of the tricky objections of his interlocutor that he can only interrupt the conversation in irritation, in view of its senselessness: “But what do you think it is, Socrates, all taken together? Some kind of husk and scraps of speeches,<…>torn into small pieces. Something else is beautiful and valuable: to be able to make a good beautiful speech in court, council or before other authorities to which you hold it; convince the listeners and leave with a reward, not the smallest, but the greatest - to save himself, his money, his friends. This is what we should hold on to, having said goodbye to all these verbal trinkets, so as not to seem too stupid if we begin to engage, as now, in idle talk and chatter.

Socrates, in response, admits that he himself does not have an answer to the question posed by him, and himself, having listened to orators like Hippias, is ashamed that he is tormented by such absurd problems. But he is even more ashamed when, coming home, he listens to the denunciations of one “very close person to him” (of course, Socrates means himself), who says: “How will you know whether someone is speaking with a beautiful speech or not , and also in any other matter, since you do not know yourself about beautiful? And if you are like that, do you really think that it is better for you to live than to be dead? 16

The last dilemma: is it really better to live without knowledge than to be dead? Perhaps, for Socrates, his life was indeed inseparable from thinking and searching for truth. This is evidenced, for example, by the way he explained why he never wrote down his speeches: “A bad feature of writing, truly similar to painting: its creations stand as if alive, and ask them - they are majestically and proudly silent. It's the same with compositions: you think they speak like rational beings, but if someone asks about something from what they say, wanting to learn it, they always answer the same ”17. Those. for Socrates, the true thought was only the “living” thought, the one that is thought here and now, in each new situation, breaking through anew to the eternal and unchanging, hidden on the other side of transient things, changeable opinions and unpredictable circumstances. Such a thought, once imprinted in an always largely random set of words written on paper, cannot by its very essence be true - they are only dead signs that in themselves do not lead to the perception of ideas. (Remember the "concepts" of Deleuze and Guattari, which are mental acts, rather than frozen figures.)

And further: “Every work, once written down, is in circulation everywhere - both among people who understand, and equally among those who are not at all befitting to read it, and it does not know with whom it should speak and with whom it should not. If he is neglected or unjustly scolded, he needs the help of his father, but he himself is not able to defend himself or help himself. That is, Socrates admits that he treats his own speeches as a father treats his children, for whom he worries with all his heart and is afraid to let stupid, malicious and unjust people go free into the world. The distortion of his thought in someone else's mouth would be as painful for him as if someone harmed his child.

Finally, direct evidence of how closely “love of wisdom” and life itself were intertwined for Socrates is the final episode of his story 19: the trial on charges of disrespect for the gods and corrupting the youth and the subsequent death penalty, which he chose as punishment (according to the rules of the then legal proceedings) Socrates himself, refusing the possible fine and exile in his case. Moreover, when the students suggested that Socrates, who was awaiting execution, escape from prison, he refused, because in this way, in his opinion, he would recognize the correctness of his enemies, who accused him of disrespect for the laws. Socrates always taught that “both in war and in court, and everywhere, one should do what the City and Fatherland commands, or admonish them when justice requires it, but inflict violence on a mother or father, and even more so on Fatherland is wickedness” 20 . And he was ready to adhere to this conviction not only in words, but also in deeds.

I think the classical moral of this tragedy is obvious enough to you: Socrates is the embodiment of a true philosopher, ready to die for the sake of asserting a universal and objective truth, which at the same time is a universal and supreme good. Compared to him, the hypocritical sophists who serve the mighty of this world are philosophical monkeys, the embodiment of everything vile and disgusting. This is how the classical philosophical tradition treated Socrates for almost two and a half millennia.

However, as already mentioned, at the end of the XIX century. the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ventured to reveal some dark side of this impeccably bright image. Isn't Socrates a kind of personification of the decline of the will, "an extreme expression of the fact that began to threaten everyone: no one could already be master over himself, all instincts were confused and entered into a mutual struggle"? 21 But Socrates, proclaiming the supremacy and even tyranny of objective reason over all other motives of the soul, seemed to offer a cure: “there were two ways out - either to perish, or to become rational to the point of absurdity” 22 . An example of such absurd rationality is the reasoning of Socrates in court, when he proves to the judges that the death penalty would be the most just punishment for him. Here, ironically, it is rationality, in which one seeks salvation, that leads straight to death. Could it be that Socrates' mind here simply serves his deepest attraction? (This is a question not only for Nietzsche, but also for Freud, whom we will also talk about in due time.)

Let us also recall the irony of Socrates directed against the rich and influential Hippias, or, even better, his dispute with the noble Athenian Callicles about what constitutes happiness, justice and human dignity 23 . On this score, Nietzsche also has a lot of frightening questions: “What is the irony of Socrates? Is it an expression of the rebellious and vindictive feeling of a man who has come out of the people? Does Socrates, like the oppressed son of the crowd, enjoy his own cruelty, striking with his syllogisms? Does he take revenge on nobles by blinding them? Dialectics is a merciless weapon; having it in your hands, you can be a tyrant; if you own it, you already win. The dialectician leaves his adversary to prove his stupidity and thereby infuriate him. The dialectician deprives the opponent's mind of all power. - How? Is the dialectic of Socrates only a form of his revenge? 24

In a word, Nietzsche proposes to throw the dignity of Socrates into the scales again and see if such an “experiment” will not turn our ideas about him and his opponents-sophists upside down, and if the whole classical way of thinking will not be shaken along with this, revealing nullity your foundation? Let the sophists only pretend to be sages, but in the sophistication of their reasoning, Socrates, perhaps, clearly imitated the sophists, however, doing this for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of money and glory. So his method was to pretend to be a sage. Is double pretense the same as honesty? Is the negation of the negation equivalent to the affirmation? Does not then the most impressive part of all philosophy, which traces its kinship to Socrates, rest on this redoubled negativity? And if nothing can serve as a foundation for anything, then what is the true foundation of the wisdom that hides behind this double pretense, like a mask that hides that it is only a mask?

The ethical rationalism of Socrates

Socrates (c. 470 - 399 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher, Plato's teacher. According to Vladimir Solovyov - the greatest sophist and the greatest opponent of the sophists; considered as the founder of anthropologically oriented philosophy. Socrates did not leave any work because he did not write anything. Basically, you can get acquainted with his ideas from the works of his great student - Plato. Socrates, his life and death have become a symbol of philosophy.

For Socrates, the problem of man, his inner world is the main thing. "Know thyself" - this is his saying, in essence, means the requirement of constant knowledge of each person of himself. Socrates saw the danger of dissolving a person in the chaotic, "baseless" subjectivity of the sophists, which turned a person into something random, single, optional even for himself. Man obeys some inner law. This law differs from the laws of nature, it elevates a person above his own limitations, makes him think: God himself "obliged a person to live, doing philosophy." Philosophy is the true path to God, philosophy is a kind of dying, but dying for earthly life is preparation for the release of the immortal soul from its bodily shell. The spirit in the concept of Socrates acquires an independent existence. Socrates was not afraid of death, because man is not a simple element of nature. Human existence is not given to man initially. He can only say: "I only know that I know nothing." A person can independently come to an understanding of his involvement in a single ideal principle, common to all people.

It is no coincidence that Socrates paid so much attention to clarifying the content of such concepts as "justice", "good", "evil", etc. He, like the sophists, always focused on questions of human life, its purpose and purpose, and a just social order. Philosophy was understood by Socrates as the knowledge of what is good and evil. The search for knowledge about the good and the just together, in a dialogue with one or more interlocutors, in itself created, as it were, special ethical relations between people who gathered together not for the sake of entertainment and not for the sake of practical deeds, but for the sake of gaining the truth.

But philosophy - the love of knowledge - can be regarded as a moral activity only if knowledge in itself is already good. It is this ethical rationalism that constitutes the essence of Socrates' teaching. Socrates considers an immoral act to be the fruit of ignorance of the truth: if a person knows what is good, then he will never act badly - such is the conviction of the Greek philosopher. A bad deed is identified here with delusion, with a mistake, and no one makes mistakes voluntarily, Socrates believes. And since moral evil comes from ignorance, it means that knowledge is the source of moral perfection. That is why philosophy, as a path to knowledge, becomes for Socrates a means of forming a virtuous person and, accordingly, a just state. Knowledge of the good - this, according to Socrates, already means following the good, and the latter leads a person to happiness.

However, the fate of Socrates himself, who throughout his life strove to become virtuous through knowledge and encouraged his students to do the same, testified that in the ancient society of the 5th century BC. there was no longer a harmony between virtue and happiness. Socrates, who tried to find an antidote to the moral relativism of the Sophists, at the same time used many of the methods characteristic of them. In the eyes of most Athenian citizens, far from philosophy and irritated by the activities of visitors and their own sophists, Socrates differed little from the rest of the "wise men" who criticized and discussed traditional ideas and religious cults. In 399 BC. The seventy-year-old Socrates was accused of not honoring the gods recognized by the state and introducing some new gods; that he corrupts the youth, causing the young men not to listen to their fathers. For undermining the morality of the people, Socrates was sentenced to death in court. The philosopher had the opportunity to evade punishment by fleeing Athens. But he preferred death, and in the presence of his friends and students, he died after drinking a goblet of poison. Thus, Socrates recognized over himself the laws of his state - the very laws of undermining which he was accused. It is characteristic that, dying, Socrates did not give up his conviction that only a virtuous person can be happy: as Plato tells, Socrates was calm and bright in prison, until the last minute he talked with friends and convinced them that he was happy. human.

The figure of Socrates is highly significant: not only his life, but also his death symbolically reveals to us the nature of philosophy. Socrates tried to find in the very consciousness of man such a strong and firm support on which the building of morality, law and the state could stand after the old - traditional - foundation had already been undermined by the individualistic criticism of the sophists. But Socrates was not understood and accepted neither by the sophists-innovators, nor by the traditionalists-conservatives: the sophists saw in Socrates a "moralist" and a "revivalist of foundations", and the defenders of traditions - a "nihilist" and a destroyer of authorities.

So, all the virtues of a person, ultimately, are determined by the ability to distinguish between Good and Evil. Knowing the meaning of such a virtue as courage, a person, according to Socrates, will behave courageously in all individual cases. And knowing the essence of Good and Evil, a person, according to Socrates, will begin to show virtue in all possible forms. As we see, the knowledge of virtue in Socrates coincides with virtue itself, that is, the moral behavior of a person. In essence, morality, from this point of view, is impossible without the concept of its foundations, and having mastered such a concept, a person cannot act immorally. In such convergence and even identification of knowledge and actions in the moral sphere lies the originality of the position of Socrates, which is why this position is often called ethical rationalism.

This position is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Indeed, by and large, Socrates points to the nature of the moral principle. A person "with principles" really cannot act contrary to them. And this means that Socrates discovered and was the first to undertake to investigate a special type of causal dependence. This is no longer the relation of things to things in the natural world, but the relation of the general to the particular in the world of culture, where a general principle is able to determine particular cases in human behavior.

Modern man does not doubt the fact that people can be guided by principles and ideals. Everyone knows the names of those who once went to the stake without sacrificing religious or, conversely, scientific convictions. "It's a matter of principle!" one says. "It's a matter of honor!" - says another. And every time the general turns out to be more important than the particular, and the ideal is more significant than material goods. And in other cases, this determines the choice between life and death.

The principle is the general by which man is guided in his relation to nature; the ideal becomes the general in relation to man to man. If the basis of the principle is the objective measure of nature, then the basis of the ideal is the objective measure of the human in man. Socrates thus discovers a new type of dependence: ideal motives determine real deeds.

To understand this issue, let us turn to Plato's dialogue "Phaedo", where Socrates characterizes his attitude to the views of Anaxagoras. Socrates is surprised that, having recognized the Mind as the main cause and organizer of the world, Anaxagoras excludes it from consideration of individual processes, while referring to air, ether, water, and much more. Explaining the essence of the problem under discussion, Socrates gives the example of himself, awaiting the execution of a death sentence. If you think like Anaxagoras, says Socrates, then you should say: “Socrates is sitting here now because his body is made of bones and tendons and the bones are hard and separated from each other by joints, and the tendons can stretch and relax ... Here on this For some reason he sits here now, bent over. Continuing his thought, Socrates notes that for his conversation with his students, one can indicate reasons in the form of air movement, voice sounds, and the like, neglecting the main thing, namely, that since the Athenians considered it necessary to condemn Socrates to death, he considers it fair to remain here and be punished. “Yes, by the dog, these veins and these bones, I think, would have been somewhere in Megara or Boeotia for a long time, carried away by a false opinion about the best,” Socrates declares indignantly, “if I had not recognized the fairer and more beautiful do not run or hide, but accept any punishment, whatever the state may impose on me."

So, it is not the bones and tendons, Socrates argues, that determine the meaning and direction of human actions, but the knowledge of "fair" and "best", which form the basis of his soul. If a person has a soul, Socrates believes, then he should be guided by virtues in his choice. And they are as eternal as the soul itself, in the immortality of which Socrates is sure. But the paradox lies in the fact that it is the soul that is capable of dooming the human body to suffering and even death, which we see in the example of Socrates himself. And no matter how much we study the human body, up to the highest nervous activity and to the last nerve cell, we will not find in it a craving for such a voluntary sacrifice. Especially where his life and the lives of loved ones are not in danger.

The soul in the interpretation of Socrates is the antipode of the body. But the soul of Socrates is opposite to the body, primarily in its direction. It is in this sense that one can speak of its "ideality" in Socrates and his student Plato. By contrasting the soul of a person with his body as the general to the particular, Socrates thereby for the first time turned their relationship into a problem. At one time, the sophists, represented by Gorgias, recognized as a problem the relation of human thought to reality. Socrates was next, for the first time he recognized as a problem the relation of soul and body. The world philosophy is still dealing with the solution of this problem.

In the spiritual movements of man, Socrates notes a tendency opposite to that which dominates the entire natural world. Our spiritual motives and goals, he argues, are fundamentally different from our bodily desires. And one cannot but agree with this. After all, there is, for example, a difference between a simple bodily thirst and a thirst for justice, which represents the interests of the general in the particular. But here Socrates brings us to another problem. Turning to Truth, Goodness and Justice, I move from my separate, private point of view to the point of view of the whole, which, first of all, is society.

But the fact of the matter is that the general foundations of the soul in Socrates are not directly connected with the social whole. The origin of the universal will become the central problem for his student Plato, who will substantiate the connection of the soul with the "world of ideas". As for Socrates, let us once again emphasize his main contribution to philosophy. After all, Socrates will remain for centuries not only as a man who defended his ideals at the cost of his life, but also as the first thinker who outlined the subject and method of classical philosophy. We have in mind self-knowledge as a method of philosophical reflection, through which he was the first to explore the universal foundations of human life. European philosophy followed this path, following him and Plato.

Socrates propagated his ethical rationalism. The development of idealistic morality is the main core of the philosophical interests and activities of Socrates. In conversations and discussions, Socrates drew attention to the knowledge of the essence of virtue. How can a man live if he does not know what virtue is? In this case, knowledge of the essence of virtue, knowledge of what is "moral", was for him a prerequisite for moral life and the achievement of virtue. Socrates identified morality with knowledge. Morality is the knowledge of what is good and beautiful and at the same time useful for a person, which helps him achieve bliss and happiness in life. A moral person should know what virtue is. Morality and knowledge from this point of view coincide. In order to be virtuous, it is necessary to know virtue as such, as the "universal" that serves as the basis of all particular virtues.

Thus, according to Socrates, one of the hallmarks of true philosophy and a true philosopher was the recognition of the unity of knowledge and virtue. And not only recognition, but also the desire to realize this unity in life. Accordingly, philosophy in the understanding of Socrates was not limited to purely theoretical activity, but also included practical activity - the right way of life, good deeds. This position of Socrates received a definition in philosophy - ethical rationalism.

Modern man, surrounded on all sides by the benefits obtained precisely through the study of nature, is hard to understand the enemy of the study of nature ("cosmos"). But for Socrates it was the opposite. He served as the best example of what a person can achieve by following his teaching - the knowledge of the human spirit. Suffice it to recall Socrates' way of life, the moral and political conflicts in his life, his wisdom, military prowess and courage, and the tragic ending. The glory that Socrates was awarded during his lifetime, easily survived entire epochs and, without fading, through the thickness of two and a half millennia has reached our days.

Cognition in the teachings of Socrates is originally ethically colored. A knowledgeable person is a person who has received in his hands an instrument of domination over his passions, over the animal nature in himself. Reason and morality are basically identical, Socrates believes, only together they can make up a person's happiness. Happiness is a conscious virtue.

Such a convergence of knowledge and morality caused many objections from the thinkers of subsequent eras. However, the ethical rationalism of Socrates, incomprehensible to modern man, was very appropriate in the era of the destruction of patriarchal communal ties, traditional religion. A man of not yet strengthened sociality, not without the help of the sophists, remained alone, became a prisoner of his passions, began to fear himself.