Editing Ancient Greek philosophy (section)

=== Socrates ===
{{Main|Socrates}}
[[File:British Museum - Four Greek philosophers.jpg|thumb|left|Four Greek philosophers: Socrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippos, Epicurus; British Museum]]
[[Socrates]], believed to have been born in Athens in the [[Fifth-century Athens|5th century BC]], marks a watershed in ancient Greek philosophy. Athens was a center of learning, with sophists and philosophers traveling from across Greece to teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, and geometry.

While philosophy was an established pursuit prior to Socrates, [[Cicero]] credits him as "the first who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil."<ref>[[Cicero|Marcus Tullius Cicero]], ''[[Tusculan Disputations]]'', V 10–11 (or V IV).</ref> By this account he would be considered the founder of [[political philosophy]].<ref>Leo Strauss, ''Natural Right and History'' (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1953), 120.</ref> The reasons for this turn toward political and ethical subjects remain the object of much study.<ref>Seth Benardete, ''The Argument of the Action'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 277–96.</ref><ref>Laurence Lampert, ''How Philosophy Became Socratic'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).</ref>

The fact that many conversations involving Socrates (as recounted by Plato and [[Xenophon]]) end without having reached a firm conclusion, or [[aporia|aporetically]],<ref>Cf. [[Plato]], [[The Republic (Plato)|''Republic'']] 336c & 337a, [[Theaetetus (dialogue)|''Theaetetus'']] 150c, [[Apology (Plato)|''Apology of Socrates'']] 23a; [[Xenophon]], [[Memorabilia (Xenophon)|''Memorabilia'']] 4.4.9; [[Aristotle]], ''[[Sophistical Refutations]]'' 183b7.</ref> has stimulated debate over the meaning of the [[Socratic method]].<ref>[[W.K.C. Guthrie]], ''The Greek Philosophers'' (London: Methuen, 1950), 73–75.</ref> Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a [[virtue]].

While Socrates' recorded conversations rarely provide a definite answer to the question under examination, several maxims or paradoxes for which he has become known recur. Socrates taught that no one desires what is bad, and so if anyone does something that truly is bad, it must be unwillingly or out of ignorance; consequently, all virtue is knowledge.<ref>[[Terence Irwin]], ''The Development of Ethics'', vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007), 14</ref><ref>Gerasimos Santas, "The Socratic Paradoxes", ''Philosophical Review'' 73 (1964): 147–64, 147.</ref> He frequently remarks on his own ignorance (claiming that he does not know what courage is, for example). [[Plato]] presents him as distinguishing himself from the common run of mankind by the fact that, while they know nothing noble and good, they do not ''know'' that they do not know, whereas Socrates knows and acknowledges that he knows nothing noble and good.<ref>[[Apology (Plato)|''Apology of Socrates'']] 21d.</ref>

The great statesman [[Pericles]] was closely associated with this new learning and a friend of [[Anaxagoras]], however, and his political opponents struck at him by taking advantage of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it became a crime to investigate the things above the heavens or below the earth, subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been charged and to have fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age.<ref>Debra Nails, ''The People of Plato'' (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 2002), 24.</ref> There is a story that [[Protagoras]], too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books.<ref>Nails, ''People of Plato'', 256.</ref> Socrates, however, is the only subject recorded as charged under this law, convicted, and sentenced to death in 399 BC (see [[Trial of Socrates]]). In the version of his [[Apology (Plato)|defense speech]] presented by Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a philosopher that will convict him.

Numerous subsequent philosophical movements were inspired by Socrates or his younger associates. Plato casts Socrates as the main interlocutor in his [[Plato#Works|dialogues]], deriving from them the basis of [[Platonism]] (and by extension, [[Neoplatonism]]). Plato's student [[Aristotle]] in turn criticized and built upon the doctrines he ascribed to Socrates and Plato, forming the foundation of [[Aristotelianism]]. [[Antisthenes]] founded the school that would come to be known as [[Cynicism (philosophy)|Cynicism]] and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. [[Zeno of Citium]] in turn adapted the ethics of Cynicism to articulate [[Stoicism]]. [[Epicurus]] studied with Platonic and [[Pyrrhonism|Pyrrhonist]] teachers before renouncing all previous philosophers (including [[Democritus]], on whose atomism the [[Epicurean]] philosophy relies). The philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the [[Roman Empire]] were thus born in this febrile period following Socrates' activity, and either directly or indirectly influenced by him. They were also absorbed by the expanding Muslim world in the 7th through 10th centuries AD, from which they returned to the West as foundations of [[Medieval philosophy]] and the [[Renaissance]], as discussed below.