Socratic Dialectic, Method and Piety

Socratic Dialectic, Method, and Piety

This essay will discuss the nature of Socrates inquiries in to the way humans ought to live. This paper will begin by looking at Socrates' understanding of the good life and the importance of self-knowledge. It will then look at the theory of learning that the Socratic dialectic fosters, along with Socrates' theory of the natural goodness of human nature. Using Plato's story of Euthyphro, it will show the practical nature of Socrates' task of making people think for themselves and understand their own fallibility through the destructive process of the Socratic dialectic. Finally, it will strip the story of Euthyphro of its details and demonstrate the step-by-step process of the Socratic method.

The ultimate aim of Socrates' philosophical method is ethical. Skeptical of the conflicting theories regarding the physical world of whom "some conceived existence as a unity, others as a plurality; some affirmed perpetual motion, others perpetual rest" (Internet), Socrates