Socrates – Dead-Logic

Socrates: The Anti-Influencer

Most people, I imagine, have heard the name “Socrates.” If you ask someone to name a person with a big white beard, Socrates might come third after God and Santa Claus. Maybe fourth if you include Gandalf. And most of those people probably know he was a philosopher if nothing else.

Socrates, through his life and his student Plato (and subsequently Plato’s student Aristotle), influenced modern western thinking. His contributions to Greek philosophy became the foundation upon which western philosophy was built. Students of philosophy divide history by “pre-Socratic philosophers” like Thales and Heraclitus and everyone else who came after Socrates.

Self-Titled Track

Self-Titled Track by GhostofSocrates

This video is partially blocked on YouTube because of some Hulk Hogan footage I used near the end. My apologies to Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, Bangladesh, Russia, Bhutan, and Afghanistan for not being able to watch it on YouTube. You can watch it here instead.

And while I’m here, I’d like to explain more about what the GhostofSocrates brand is about. It’s a reference to the spirit (the attitude and vision) of the Socratic Method. Questions are good. They help us seek knowledge and truth. Questions help us learn something new. For the past year, I’ve been slowly learning more about music theory. I posted my first beat on YouTube eight months ago. Six months ago I started learning the guitar.

I’m not doing any of this for money. I’m doing it for fun and for the love of music and passion for creativity. It means a lot to me, even when I’m dressed like a lobster and jump kicking Hulk Hogan in the face.

The Examined Life

The mise en scène of philosophy, as depicted by Norman Melchert, is a “great conversation” in which we interact not only with each other, but with the great thinkers of history who have also interacted with each other in the search for truth via an ongoing exchange of ideas and arguments about humanity’s deepest and most importunate concerns. I see the pursuit of philosophy as one’s personal quest for truth couched in the language of a pilgrimage which will continue for the remainder of one’s life. The seeker of truth engages in the great conversation during the course of their journey, administering critical thinking as one encounters the truth claims posited by the remarkable (and not so remarkable) intellectuals of both past and present.

Continue reading “The Examined Life”

The Heresy of Socrates

Socrates as presented in Plato’s Dialogues bred much enmity among the self-proclaimed “experts” he questioned due to their embarrassment and humiliation after the Socratic Method – the technique of “question and answer, questioning the answers, questioning those questions, question some more, repeat as necessary” – revealed their ignorance of the subject about which they claimed to have knowledge. This ultimately led to his death. Erroneous accusations of corrupting the youth and advocating religious heresies were made against Socrates and he was brought to trial. The jury of 501 Athenians found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death by hemlock.

Continue reading “The Heresy of Socrates”