Socrates' Ideas and Life

The first and the main idea of Socrates as opposed to the Sofists was the virtue of knowledge. One, who is wanted to be happy, has to gather rather knowledge than wealth. The truth was for the Socrates one more kind of virtue. He also believed that the Good in knowledge, because one who has knowledge would never think about the Evil. Nevertheless one can’t find any of written knowledge of the Socrates, because he thought that the writing is harmful for the mind and memory. So the facts about his life and philosophy have been reproduced by his followers.

Views of the Plato and Aristotle on the art were similar, but the Aristotle suggests an idea, that the art can not only imitates the real world, but also beautifies it or distort it. According to the art the reality can be reflected as it is, as it able to be and as it is spoken to be. But the art it is something higher than just imitation of the real world. The object can be represented more beautiful or worse. The esthetic outlooks of the Burke lie in the reflection of the most beautiful events and natural phenomena, which can give rise to the feelings of happiness or delight and admiration. All these feelings lead to the unity of masses of people.

Kant, Immanuel (1804) in his works he emphasize the thought that there is no way to cognize the nature of things. One can only know the phenomena i.e. the result of interaction of real world and our ability of cognition.  Since the things are incognizable one can’t cognize the God, the soul and the world. He subjects to the criticism the evidences of the existence of the God and immortality of the soul. But proceeding from the existence of the moral laws embedded in our mind, arises the need of postulation of the aseity of God. There is only aspiration for execution of the moral law. So the nature of religion is the execution of the moral laws (commandments) One can observe these laws, but he is to forgot about any relations to the God, because there is no exact information about His existence. So the religion can exist without the God himself.

Originally, there are two connected methods which are used both in the science and philosophy comes from the Ancient Greek culture. And they called method of induction and deduction.

Deductive method works from the general to the specific. One can also call it a "top-down" approach. It is the process of narrowing of the theory to the hypothesis; this is what we can test. Narrower we can find observations for the hypothesis and the reason of all this project is confirmation of our original theory

An Inductive method works the other way around; it starts from the observation and works toward generalization. In the other words it is a “bottom-up” approach. Using induction we can observe many of a instances and on the basis of them we can proceed to the general principle or even law. It works for the philosophy as well as for science.

Hobbes was follower of the principle of original equality of the people. Some detached people voluntarily limited their freedom for the benefit of the state, task of which is preserving of peace and security. The state in Hobbes judgment is the absolute sovereign. Speaking about the form of the state, Hobbes supports monarchy. As opposed to the Hobbes Locke supposed that there was a special natural readiness to the changes. So, people decide to give some their own functions to the state for the sake of common good. It is a theory of social contract that is the cause of creation of the state. The main task of the state is protection of the natural laws, rights to life, rights to the freedom and property. The main difference between the theory of Locke and Hobbes is that the Hobbes was supporter of absolute power over the society and citizens.  But the Locke underlines other type of state. People give only part of their natural freedom. Social contract presupposes the responsibility of the state to the citizens. If there is a violation of some rights or integrity of the natural freedom, than the society has the rule to struggle against such state.

Burke was follower of the traditionalism and rejected all innovations and changes. All social order is the result of long historical work that consolidates stability, tradition, customs and superstitions. All of these are the legacy of predecessors which is to be secured and kept. Force of the constitution lies in remoteness and traditions. So, one can say that Burke was the predecessor of the conservatism of nowadays.