Essay On Socrates And Socrates

Both Socrates and Aristotle strove to better understand the world around them using epistemological approaches they derived on their own. Aristotle disagreed with much of his predecessors' beliefs thus provoking him to create his own methods of understanding. Socrates would walk the streets of Athens barefoot and question anyone willing to listen and search for truth using his Socratic method. If the person was fully engaged with their conversation Socrates would try to lead them both down the path of understanding by constantly asking questions that might get them to the answer they need to be at. Further and further Socrates would prod the bystanders to either prove him wrong or explain their thinking by using definitions. On the other hand, Aristotle created his own method of logic that quite like Socrates method, was supposed to lead the user towards a correct answer by default. Not only that but Aristotle was not satisfied simply by logic, he believed to completely understand a topic you must understand the four causes which would explain the why aspect of a question. Both philosophers believed that the truth would eventually come out on its own if they continued to look into it, but each of these philosophers approached study of knowledge differently.

Not only were there differences in these two philosophers approaches towards knowledge but the metaphysical beliefs of the two philosophers were worlds apart. Socrates believed the psyche of a human came from a world of forms which is another realm where the form of everything exists.4 In the Phaedo Socrates best describes his belief of the psyche when he says "and what did you think of that part of the argument in which we said that knowledge was recollection only, and infer...

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...g questions and the belief that knowledge is already built into the person, Aristotle created his own form of logic that is meant to derive the correct answer. Not only did Aristotle derive his own form of logic but he also created four causes that were meant to also answer various questions of why. These four causes were necessary to completely understanding the thing being studied. Other than the epistemological differences of these two philosophers both also showed severe differences in their metaphysical ideas. Aristotle is the archetype for the naturalistic belief upon life while Socrates believed in a world of forms that Aristotle refuted. These two philosophers' beliefs mostly do not stand today but they are constantly reconciled because of their ingenious during their time period and both philosophers are still thought of as original fathers of philosophy.