Three Schools of Thought: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

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Three Schools of Thought Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle Three Schools of Thought: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This paper is a discussion of Socrates’, Plato’s, and Aristotle’s schools of thought. It is interesting to note that Aristotle was a student of Plato who was a student of Socrates. SOCRATES Background Socrates lived from 469 to 399 BC and what we know of Socrates is due to the writings of his students as he himself wrote nothing, or if he did nothing has survived. One question that will always remain is did Socrates exist or was he a tool used by Plato and other philosophers to create dialog and controversy. His physical description, “impervious to the effects of cold and alcohol” with eyes able to see ahead and to the side like a crab, is unrealistic and could represent the characteristics of a god (Nails, 2010). Was Socrates the Athenian god of philosophy? His willingness to be put to death for the crime of irreverence to the gods of Athens seems to follow the theme used by Jesus, being put to death for trying to change the way one is to think about god or gods. School of Thought Socrates’ school of thought is idealistic; for a man to be happy he must truly know himself (Moore, 2012). He also based his writings around the idea of: “how can we ever learn what we do not know?” (Kemerling, 2011). His belief was that we all had inherent knowledge from past lives that can be tapped and brought to the surface. Additionally, he felt that all men did what they thought was right; prior to his death, he is quoted in several different writings as stating “neither to do wrong or to return a wrong is ever right, not even to injure in return for an injury received…, not even under threat of death…, not even for one’s family…” (Nails, 2009). Socrates was not consistent in thought through his life and reached the idea that it

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