Can anyone explain Socrates method of dialectic and why he compares himself to a midwife?
The Socratic method of teaching is one where the "teacher" asks questions instead of presenting information in lecture form or in experience training. In other words the students are expected to know the anwers for fore-learing, so the teacher acts as mentor of thinking. This obviously means the mentor is acting like a "midwife" to the thinking process being born from the minds of the students. They already know certain answers but have not made the connections to other thinking. The mentor helps by the questions posed to get the student to make the jumps in thinking to learn how to think new thougts or ideas or find new information that is learned. Only in the law is the Socratic method to teaching used all the time.
Can someone explain in Socrates what he means by "private life?"?
A private life is just what it says. Out of the public eye. Socrates explains why he has led a private life, which has allowed him to practice philosophy. He explains this in two parts. First, he says he has a divine sign, which is a voice he hears that tells him when he should avoid doing something. His divine sign has been with him his whole life. On the matter of public service, the sign has steered him against it. Second, Socrates declares that if he were to enter public office, he would not have survived long. He asserts that a person who is true to their morals will reach conflict in public service, He said. You are wrong if you believe that by killing people you will prevent anyone from reproaching you for not living in the right way. To escape such tests is neither possible nor good, but it is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible" The problem with this is if you don't fight for the rights of others, you will also end up with no rights.
Can someone explain to me what it means when Socrates says that knowledge comes from the soul?
By "soul", those guys, in particular, meant a combination of three things - intellect, emotion, and religious beliefs. Personally, I think we need to keep those things separate, that they are separate. But regardless, they meant it is internal knowledge, intuition, or god's revelations to us, as opposed to going out and weighing a chunk of copper to determine its weight, for example. However, I think Soc overstepped in then deducing immortality. Rather, we could all have this knowledge in us, but it may be loaded into us the way we load a new laptop with the files from our previous one, or download new programs. The laptop is not immortal, even though it may contain info that was created before it was and will persist after it dies. Nor is knowledge immortal - any more than a particular song. It exists only when it is held by some human mind - if everyone on earth somehow forgot about something, then there would be no more knowledge of it - unless/until, someone re-discovered it again later. Soc did that a lot - made some dazzling and insightful and incisive points, but he was more than a little liberal in over-deducing to these add-on points. He'd have made a hell of a fierce defense attorney - hit you with four or five sophisticated points, so fast you could barely keep up, then toss in a ringer that was not true, but you'd be too bewildered to catch it in that moment and it would be three weeks later that you finally figured out how you got scammed. Got to watch him.
Socrates was Plato’s idol, mentor, and teacher. From observing Socrates’ dialectic method, Plato was inspired to write his dialogues, the greatest philosophical works of western antiquity. (The 20th century mathematician and philosopher of science, Alfred North Whitehead, said that “whenever he approached a philosophical problem, he met Plato coming back,” and that “All of western philosophy was a footnote to Plato.”) In Plato’s dialogue about Socrates death, the Phaedo, Plato mentions that he was not present at Socrates’ death with these words: because “Plato,” the interlocutor says, “ I think was ill.” When I first went to Athens and looked down from the Acropolis at the agora, where Socrates regularly engaged in dialogue with his young Athenian friends (which would have included Plato), I recalled these words of Plato’s from the Phaedo and captured in my own sensibility what Plato must have felt about the voluntary death of Socrates, and wept. Plato’s illness, I inferred, was simply grief at the passing of his friend, and , possibly, some anger at his willingness to die and leave his friends behind.
Can someone explain this to me?
Can someone explain this to me? :/ by attending your college of choice, you have agreed to become part of it's community, values, and Policies. You now have the responsibity to stand by it's code of academic and moral conduct and you have he responsibility to give your very best to every class and organization in which you are involved. And you have a responsiblitybto yourself to approach this new world with an open mind and curious enthusiasm.
Can someone explain Socrates' argument in the Meno: the good (virtuous) are not so by nature...?
I believe what Socrates means is that knowledge isn't a trait one is born with as part of the nature of one's being, as one might be born tall or short or with a certain kind of hair. Ultimately, as you note, we will be born with our souls already having knowledge, but we possess it insofar as our souls have seen the true Forms before being born into a body -- it's not innate in a literal sense ("inborn"). So there's no contradiction, if I'm reading it right, with the theory of recollection.
We all live our life in a particular way and we start believing that our life is the right way of living.We then extrapolate our thoughts to encompass everyone in the world.If you are a rich man, you would say that the life of poverty not worth living.If you are a social worker, you would say that a life without compassion is not worth livingIf you are a soldier, you would say that a life is not worth living unless you are fighting for your nationIf you are a politician, you would say that a life is not worth living unless you serve your nationIf you are a writer, you would say that a life without books is not worth livingIf you are a philosopher, you would say that a life without knowledge and wisdom is not worth livingIf you are a passionate person, you would say a life without passion is not worth livingIf you are a farmer, you would say that life without cultivation of crop is not worth livingSocrates spent his entire life examining it and building theories around it. Hence, he said that an unexamined life is not worth living.However, if everyone in the world only do examination of his life, who wouldCultivate cropsWrite booksMake moviesInnovate better goods and servicesSet up industries and businessDefend the country.I believe that every profession has its own purpose and its own sacredness.Your life is worth living as far as you are doing something good for the world and contributing to increase its happiness.
Socrates' claim wasn't that bad things can't happen to good people, it was that a more virtuous man could not be wronged by a person less virtuous. A lesser man, in their attempts to wrong the virtuous, would only lower themselves further.This was in the context of a council of judges laying charges against Socrates. Yeah, Socrates wasn't the most humble guy who ever lived.
Can someone explain the end of Plato's theaetetus?
At the end of his speech, Socrates admits to Theodorus that if Protagoras were alive to defend his idea, he would have done a far better job than Socrates has just done. Theodorus tells Socrates that he must be kidding, that he has come to the task with boyish vigor. Theodorus does not claim to be a disciple of Protagoras, but never contradicts Socrates repeated assertions that he is a friend of Protagoras. Socrates admits he has used the child's timidity to aid him in his argument against the doctrine of Protagoras. Socrates not at all certain that he has not misrepresented Protagoras in making each man the measure of his own wisdom. He presses Theodorus on the question of whether any follower of Protagoras (himself included) would contend that nobody thinks anyone else is wrong. Theodorus proves to be helpless against Socrates confusions. He agrees that Protagoras concedes that those who disagree with him are correct. In making Protagoras a complete epistemological relativist, where every person's individual perceptions are his reality and his truth, both Socrates and Theodorus paint Protagoras as maintaining an absurd position. Socrates says that if Protagoras could pop his head up through the ground as far as his neck, he would expose Socrates as a speaker of nonsense and sink out of sight and take to his heels.