IS SOCRATES CONCEIVABLE IN PLATO’S ACADEMY?

Abstract

Apart from the “embellished” “over-Platonic” Socrates, there are some alternative (diverse) insights into his philosophy. Multiplicity and the “wavering” historical sources, which help researches to reconstruct Socrates’ personality and his teaching, to a certain degree produce a number of decorated “photographs” (some of them very similar and others utterly different). With no intention to muddy the waters and create confusion, while rejecting the misunderstanding of Socrates’ conversational style, which was advocated by W. Weischedela in his work “Socrates oder Das Ärgernis des Fragens”, I gave myself the right to read and grasp in an unorthodox way the well- established and widely accepted sources, including those proscribed and “marginal”. Consequently, in a Satirical and Silenus similitude, I found the picture of a hedonistic Socrates, who was a rhetorically skillful swordsman – due to the techniques and achievements of the older sophistic school of thought. We must accentuate what is the most substantial (regardless of various research concept and sources); namely, that the thinker Socrates existed with his active life (at which alternative explanations and comprehensions hint) – which is the answer to the question: why is Socrates inevitable and ever-present in the spiritual visions of our civilization.