8/7/2019 Socrates vs Plato vs Aristotle

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The Dilemma: If youve seen one smart old Greek guy in a bedsheet, youve seen em all.

People You Can Impress: philosophy majors, Greeks, and any lingering fans of Bill & TedsExcellent Adventure

The Quick Trick: Its simple! Just think of them in reverse alphabetical order: Socrates taughtPlato who taught Aristotle who taught Alexander the Great.

The Explanation:Like many a good philosopher, Socrates (470399 or so BCE) was obsessed with truth and thecorrect way to stumble into it. In fact, in his effort to find truth, Socrates placed value not just onknowledge, but on how we know knowledge, and his inquisitive teaching style refl ected it. Forone thing, Socrates never lectured. Instead, he asked questions on top of questions (a teachingmethod still used to this day). The more his students answered, the more they knew or, moreaccurately, learned what they didnt know. For example, when you ask yourself, Do I hate my jobbecause Im awful at it, or am I awful at my job because I hate it? youre being Socratic in your

search. As a master philosopher, Socrates greatest rhetorical tool was irony, but not theSeinfeld-ian kind. Socratic irony is a tactic by which one pretends to be ignorant of anothersdogmatic beliefs. And by asking apparently innocent questions, Socrates would then tear theothers position to ribbons.

Unfortunately for Socrates, endless questioning is also extremely annoying, and the barefootphilosophers inquisitiveness made him powerful enemies. Put on trial for corrupting the youth,Socrates was forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock.

Luckily for us, his work lived on through his students. If Socrates wrote anything, it didnt survive.But his question-and-answer sessions were recorded by his pupils, Plato and Xenophon, in thedialogues. The former (427347 BCE, give or take) also took it upon himself to expand onSocrates, and in the later dialogues Socrates is mostly AWOL, meaning its all Plato. Platos work

didnt stop with the dialogues. His own writings dealt mostly with government, law, ethics, andreason. Today The Republic is considered Platos major masterwork. In fact, his treatise on agood city is still a must read for poli-sci majors in universities everywhere.

Of these three philosophical bigwigs, however, it was Platos student Aristotle (384322 BCE)who had the most expansive intellect (not to mention the shortest beard). Aristotle wrote onliterally every subject of the day, from metaphysics and government to mathematics and naturalscience. In fact, his renown as a polymath is what led Macedonian King Philip II (359366 BCE)to choose Aristotle as a tutor for his son, Alexander. Aristotle departed from his two predecessorsline of thought, relying more on sensory input as a source of knowledge. Today Aristotle isthought of as the granddaddy of the scientific methoddespite the fact that he relied on purereason, not experiment, to come to a conclusion, and as a result was wrong a breathtakinglylarge percentage of the time.