Did Socrates exist? nt

[arely staircase]

[Xipe Totec]

1. If he didn't he ought to. nt

[arely staircase]

2. good answer nt

[mindwalker_i]

3. Of course

I saw him on Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.

And he kicked Mozart's ass.

[arely staircase]

4. true.

He came from a time when most of the world looked like Led Zeps Houses of the Holy album

[Iggo]

9. Socrates Johnson.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. three contemporary sources attest to his existence.

Plato and Xenophon, both students of Socrates, and Aristophanes, the playwright. There is a wealth of knowledge regarding Socrates, his family, his life, his role in historic events in Athens, and his philosophical school.

Unlike, for example, Jesus, or whatever his actual name was, of Nazareth, or wherever he was supposedly from.

[intaglio]

7. More likely the Nazareth bit is a corruption of Nazarite

The "consecrated" ones. Sampson was a Nazarite who fell from grace.

[intaglio]

6. The good old Socrates argument - b-o-o-o-ring n/t

[edhopper]

8. How can we say for sure

the writings about him were from people who lived well after he supposedly died, and they are full of conflicts, both internally and with known events. And then there is the farfetched supernatural aspects of his life....
Wait that is about the guy you are trying to make a point about. Not Socrates who has contemporary verification.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. There is contemporary evidence, but as with anyone

the character/personhood of historical Socrates may not be accurately recorded/understood.


In that timeperiod if you wanted to say something unpopular, you might attribute it to a person, possibly a dead person, as a rhetorical foil to insulate themselves from harm for saying it.

A famous example by Diogenes Laertius:

“Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions; - that laws were like cobwebs, -for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off”

Possible that line is actually Diogenes himself, arguing, but he attributed it to Solon. True or not? Possibly lost to antiquity.