What are the main philosophical ideas of Socrates

What are the main philosophical ideas of Socrates:

The Turn of the Mind

Starting from the Wise Men, Ancient Greek philosophy shifted from focusing on the study of nature itself to focusing on the study of social ethics and human beings. But they remained only at the stage of sensibility and could only draw relativistic conclusions. It was Socrates who radically changed this situation. Socrates called for a "turn of mind," a shift from the study of nature to the study of the self, or, as it was often called later, a return of philosophy from the heavens to the earth. He believed that the quest for natural truths was endless; the sense of the world was ever-changing, and therefore the knowledge gained was uncertain. Socrates wanted to seek an unchanging, certain, eternal truth, which could not be sought in the natural world, but rather in the self, in the study of the self. From Socrates onwards

the self is clearly distinguished from nature; man is no longer merely a part of nature

but another unique entity distinct from nature.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul

Socrates' doctrine of the soul further clarifies the division between spirit and matter. Philosophers before Socrates had long had a claim to the immortality of the soul, and there was already the germ of an opposition between idealism and materialism. But the philosophers before him had a vague view of the soul, and some still regarded the soul as the finest substance, so that the boundary between idealism and materialism was not yet clear. It was not until Socrates that the soul was explicitly viewed as a spiritual entity essentially different from matter. In Socrates' view, things come into being and go out of existence

, but are merely the aggregation and dispersion of something. By placing spirit and matter in such a clear opposition, he became the founder of idealistic philosophy in the history of Western philosophy.

Seeking a Universal Definition of Things

According to Aristotle, Socrates gave up the study of the natural world and, wanting to seek universal truth in ethical questions, began to seek a definition for things. He rejected the relativism of the wise men, arguing that while there can be all kinds of opinions, there can be only one truth, and that while opinions can vary according to individuals and other conditions, truths can vary according to the conditions of the people. "Truth is eternal and unchanging

. In Plato's early dialogues, the subject of discussion is almost always the question of how to define ethics. What Socrates seeks is the demand to know "beauty itself" and "justice itself," which is the universal definition of beauty and justice, the true knowledge

, what Plato calls the "Idea of Beauty" and "Idea of Justice. "The Idea of Beauty" and "The Idea of Justice". This is the original form of "Ideology" in the history of Western philosophy. Socrates further pointed out that the series of cause and effect in nature is endless, and if philosophy only seeks this cause and effect, it is impossible to recognize the ultimate cause of things. He argues that the ultimate cause of things is the "good," which is the purposefulness of things. He replaced the study of causality of things with purposiveness, which opened the way for the later idealistic philosophy.