Historical evidence for Socrates

[LCBOY]

I wanted to start this here. I remember a professor in college telling me that there is no historical evidence that Socrates ever lived. Is this true? Has anyone read up on this?

[c4ts]

Originally posted by LCBOY
I wanted to start this here. I remember a professor in college telling me that there is no historical evidence that Socrates ever lived. Is this true? Has anyone read up on this?

I have. Socrates refused to write anything, as it is reported that he found dialectic superior to the written word. However, there's a play by Aristophanes called the Clouds lampooning Socrates. There are a number of reports on him by historians, one who says he attended the performance of the Clouds and was laughing the entire time. I can't think of any specifics right now, but I'll look them up in Coppleston collection.

[LCBOY]

Originally posted by c4ts


I have. Socrates refused to write anything, as it is reported that he found dialectic superior to the written word. However, there's a play by Aristophanes called the Clouds in which Socrates is the main character (portrayed as a sophist). There are a number of reports on him by historians, one who says he attended the performance of the Clouds and was laughing the entire time. I can't think of any specifics right now, but I'll look them up in Coppleston collection.

Thanks!

So is the issue that there is very little historical evidence or contradictory evidence?

[c4ts]

Originally posted by LCBOY


Thanks!

So is the issue that there is very little historical evidence or contradictory evidence?

There is very little contradictory evidence. You could probably enough historical evidence if you Googled "Socrates."

[LCBOY]

Thanks, I will. I am curious why some believe he did not exist. What are their reasons...

[c4ts]

Originally posted by LCBOY
Thanks, I will. I am curious why some believe he did not exist. What are their reasons...

Then there are those who think that the character of Socrates in Plato's dialogues was fictional. After all, Plato's last words were "Socrates wasn't even in the picture."

[LCBOY]

I think I have to go read Plato's dialogues again. I haven't read them in over 10 years...

[Argo Nimbus]

Originally posted by LCBOY
I wanted to start this here. I remember a professor in college telling me that there is no historical evidence that Socrates ever lived. Is this true? Has anyone read up on this?

Perhaps the professor was making the point that the life of Jesus was at least as well attested as the life of Socrates. I've heard that argument before, but I've never heard it said that there was no historical evidence for Socrates.

To add one item to c4ts' list, there is also an essay about Socrates by Xenophon, a Greek general who, like Plato, knew Socrates personally. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Socrates existed, but when you compare what Plato wrote and what Xenophon wrote, you might wonder if they were talking about the same guy.

See the following link for The "Socratic Problem":

Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates (http://stripe.colorado.edu/~shields/Blackwell.Socrates.html)

This issue is also covered in the following books:

Socrates on Trial, T.C. Brickhouse and N.D. Smith, 1989
Plato's Socrates, same authors, 1994.

Also, on the Internet:

Aristophanes, Clouds (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0028)

Xenophon, Works on Socrates (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0212&query=head%3D%231<LI><a%20href>)

--- Argo

[Questioninggeller]

Some people think that he was just a character in Plato's plays... but without him wirting anything it's really a guess.

[stamenflicker]

To add one item to c4ts' list, there is also an essay about Socrates by Xenophon, a Greek general who, like Plato, knew Socrates personally. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Socrates existed, but when you compare what Plato wrote and what Xenophon wrote, you might wonder if they were talking about the same guy.

I find this interesting though in the light of the Jesus debate... if I've taken your summary right we have two people reporting a different picture of someone they both claim to have known, yet these condradictory views of the individual don't throw the existence of that individual into flux. They just disagree. Whereas we have countless atheists websites out there that want to paint the picture of a conflicting NT as evidence of a non-existent Jesus.

It's the double standard that Potato Stew brought up eons ago and I suppose will never get a satisfactory answer.

Flick

[evildave]

Short of inventing a "time machine", and going to meet him yourself, no you won't.

Call it a "double-standard", if you like, but Socrates has not apparently been claimed to be THE God, a God, a Demigod, or even mildly super-human.

Now, when you compare that against claims of a miracle worker who did "amazing", yet irreproducible deeds, against a plain man, the possibility of a plain man existing who thought those thoughts seems more plausible (after all, the thoughts had to come from somewhere) is more credible than the possibility that:

God Almighty, Creater of "ALL" (or whatevr) made a woman pregnant by virgin birth, so he could walk around and stir up trouble, do the odd miracle for credibility, then commit elaborate suicide to "save everybody".

Or make it possible for everybody to be saved.

Or get ready to come back "any day now" for 2000 years to make "his kingdom".

Or go to the Americas and become a savior there, too.

Or crawl out from under his rock every so often and check for a shadow.

Or appear as a 50 foot apparitions to televangelists to ask for cash.

Socrates isn't even spotted on tortillas and rust stains. You'd think his face would pop up occasionally, too. Elvis does, all the time.

Socrates hasn't been claimed to have "come back to life".

In short, Jesus sounds like a UFO tale.

Socrates sounds like just another clever guy from Greece.

You want to make the claim that some guy said the kinds of things Jesus said, I would agree. Good enough. Somebody said it. Call him "Jesus" if you like. We may never know the true authorship, and one name is as good as any.

We only need routine evidence to accept that a typical human probably existed.

You want to make *AMAZING* claims about a SUPER HUMAN, you'd better have *AMAZING* and SUPER HUMAN evidence.

Is that simple enough?

[stamenflicker]

Call it a "double-standard", if you like, but Socrates has not apparently been claimed to be THE God, a God, a Demigod, or even mildly super-human.

So what? What we are left with is a version of historical scrutiny is based solely on one thing:

"Whether you like the guy or not."

Hardly a very reasoned, and objective approach. It's like a bunch of kids on the playground who turn their backs on the other kid cause he's new or different or not playing the way they want him to play. It's "taking your ball and going home." Hardly a logical response to presented evidence as to even the existence of the figure in question.

Flick

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LCBOY
I wanted to start this here. I remember a professor in college telling me that there is no historical evidence that Socrates ever lived. Is this true? Has anyone read up on this?


So, if no one can prove Socrates existed, that will prove Jesus did ?

Here are some previous discussions. You might find them interesting.

For the No-Jesus Camp (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7879)
Christ-mythers vs. POM (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7801)

[whitefork]

The question of the nature of the "Historical Socrates" is interesting because the character presented in the Platonic dialogs is to a large degree a dramatic invention. The words Plato puts in his mouth are highly suspect, with the likely exception of the Apology.
In any event, a very large number of the other characters are real: Plato himself, Protagoras, Parmenides, Alcibiades, Euclides, Thrasymachus, Gorgias, Agathon, Aristophanes.... possibly a hundred individuals whose writings are either extant or quoted by others, and in the case of Alcibiades, his actions are well-described by Thucidides. The point is that these testimonies are independent of Plato.

In the case of Jesus, we have independent historical evidence for, let's see, Pilate and the Herods, and perhaps Simon Peter.

I'd say that the evidence for the historical evidence of Socrates, while not as certain as that for Pericles for instance, is a lot stronger than that for Jesus.

We even have physical descirptions of Socates from contemporaries. None for Jesus as far as I know.

Anecdotal evidence? Certainly. But there's quite a lot of it.

[Argo Nimbus]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
if I've taken your summary right we have two people reporting a different picture of someone they both claim to have known, yet these condradictory views of the individual don't throw the existence of that individual into flux. They just disagree. Whereas we have countless atheists websites out there that want to paint the picture of a conflicting NT as evidence of a non-existent Jesus.

It's the double standard that Potato Stew brought up eons ago and I suppose will never get a satisfactory answer.

One difference between the witnesses for Socrates and the witnesses for Jesus is that those who claim to have known Socrates are themselves historical figures known to other contemporary Greek writers. For example, Xenophon is known to history as the leader of the first Greek military expedition into Persia. He later wrote a book about the expedition (sometimes called The March of the Ten Thousand). The witnesses for Jesus, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, aren't known to history with any more certainty than Jesus is.

In fact, for the last two hundred years, Christian scholars have been raising doubts about whether the gospels were even written by men who actually witnessed the events described. For example, the gospels of Matthew and Mark contain material that is identical word for word in both. This suggests that either Matthew copied from Mark (accepted as the earliest writer) or they both copied from an earlier source known to both. If they both copied from an earlier source, then one can reasonably doubt that either was a witness to the events they report. The most commonly accepted theory is that in the last half of the first century AD, the gospels consisted of a loose collection of Jesus stories (or "traditions") that were eventually reworked into the texts we now have. (See Google for "Q Source"). This reworking was done by men who were not witnesses to the events. Once you accept the idea that there was a collection of Jesus stories in circulation which were open to selective reworking by the men who actually wrote the gospels, but were not themselves witnesses, then the existence of Jesus begins to look a lot less certain than the existence of Socrates. And we owe this theory to Christian scholars, not to atheist websites.

--- Argo

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by stamenflicker


It's the double standard that Potato Stew brought up eons ago and I suppose will never get a satisfactory answer.

Flick

And most of the protagonists admitted they were adhering to a double standard.

As much as the ' yes-Historical Jesus ' camp want to protest, the " incredible claims require incredible evidence' argument, it doesn't make it invalid.

Is the fact that I consume most of what I eat without reading the label, and the fact that I don't take medicine without doing so, a double standard?
Yes.. Sometimes a double standard makes sense.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Diogenes


As much as the ' yes-Historical Jesus ' camp want to protest, the " incredible claims require incredible evidence' argument, it doesn't make it invalid.


But isn't there a difference between the questions "Was there a historical Jesus" and "Was there a historical Jesus who was the son of God and performed miracles?"

Generally, when a question is phrased as "was there a historical X" it's implied to mean "was there a real person behind the myth of X" and not "Is the myth of X real." We can discuss if there was a historical King Arthur or not, without arguing that there was a real wizard named Merlin or a real Lady of the Lake.

So, "There was a historical Jesus" isn't an incredible claim. (That said, a positive answer to that question isn't worth anything for someone trying to argue that Christianity is correct.)

[LCBOY]

Ok, I taking this thread back from the hijackers :D

I just wanted to find out about the historical evidence for Socrates. I never have doubted his existence but when a college professor told me there was no evidence I was curious. I don't know how Jesus got into this thread. Thanks to everybody who posted links about Socrates. There were quite informative...

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by Leif Roar


But isn't there a difference between the questions "Was there a historical Jesus" and "Was there a historical Jesus who was the son of God and performed miracles?"



Yep' there is... I Suggest that this difference is not the concern of the ones trying to establish the historacity of Jesus..

I could be wrong though...

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by LCBOY
Ok, I taking this thread back from the hijackers :D

I just wanted to find out about the historical evidence for Socrates. ..

Sure you did..;) ( .... just a skeptic being skeptical..)

[LCBOY]

Originally posted by Diogenes


Sure you did..;) ( .... just a skeptic being skeptical..)

Quoting our good friend Dark Cobra, "Evidence, please." ;)

[Denise]

Socrates was written about as a person at the same time that he lived. Mona Lisa's image was painted when she was alive. We don't know her identity, she didn't write anything herself, but it is evidence.

[arcticpenguin]

Of course Socrates existed. I saw him appear in a documentary Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005PJ6N/103-7123154-6351848?vi=glance)

[LCBOY]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
Of course Socrates existed. I saw him appear in a documentary Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005PJ6N/103-7123154-6351848?vi=glance)

And that's pronounced SO-CRATES!! not Sock-cra-tees! :D

[stamenflicker]

Is the fact that I consume most of what I eat without reading the label, and the fact that I don't take medicine without doing so, a double standard?

This argument would only apply if you assumed somehow that admiting a Jesus really existed meant that you had to accept everything he said as gospel... pun intended.

My comments were intended for those (and there are many) who live and breathe to deny Jesus even a place in history as a literal figure trying to reform his religion, and humanity for that matter.

Flick

[evildave]

Well, there are those (and there are MANY MORE) who would state that not only did Jesus exist - without a doubt, but he's GOD, too.

Did a man exist that said those things?

Probably.

Was he even necessarily named Jesus?

We could call him "Bob the Savior" and it might be just as valid a name. Of course, did he do the whole laundry list of things *for real* as some would like me to believe? Probably not.

Similarly, with or without a literal Socrates, the words were said and written by *someone*. Call him or her "Bruce the Philospher", if you like.

So "Bruce the Philospher", or Socrates or whatever probably wrote or said some of that stuff. Also quite possibly, in the same way that email chain letters get "famous" names tacked on to gain more milage from drivel, some nerds over time have probably takcked the "Socrates" name onto their own "quotes".

Naturally, the same applies to "Jesus". As an example, some dork liked the sound of "Give Caesar what is his" (wherever that phrase came from), and it got Jesus's name stuck on it. When you consider that Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire as its "standard", a little jot from the powers that be to encourage people to pay their taxes obviously can't hurt any.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Is the fact that I consume most of what I eat without reading the label, and the fact that I don't take medicine without doing so, a double standard?

This argument would only apply if you assumed somehow that admiting a Jesus really existed meant that you had to accept everything he said as gospel... pun intended.

My comments were intended for those (and there are many) who live and breathe to deny Jesus even a place in history as a literal figure trying to reform his religion, and humanity for that matter.

Flick

So you would have us believe that the agenda of people who are intent on proving the historocity of Jesus, does not include pushing the Gospels as gospel? ( good pun, i'll borrow it ..)

[stamenflicker]

So you would have us believe that the agenda of people who are intent on proving the historocity of Jesus, does not include pushing the Gospels as gospel? ( good pun, i'll borrow it ..)

No, I think you have a valid criticism of the process as it is typically portrayed in Christian circles. I just don't think the portrayal, or the response is logically coherent.

Flick

[LCBOY]

Anyway...Back to Socrates...:D

[c4ts]

I'm suprised Socrates hasn't responded to this thread saying something like "I think I exist, but do I??"