Socrates : a life worth living /
Devra Lehmann.
- xvii, 379 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-350) and index.
The city of gods and humans -- The way to citizenship -- The young intellectual -- The nature of reality -- Questions for an age of humanism -- The growth of a following -- The sophists -- Knowledge and morality -- The democracy and the spartan alternative -- Athens on the ascent -- Potidaea and the welcome return -- Crisis and cruelty -- Definitions of courage -- The clouds -- Family and divine mission -- Melos, Alcibiades, and the teachability of virtue -- The conscientious objector -- The charges and the question of piety -- The trial -- Sentencing and imprisonment -- The fatal drink.
"Socrates: A Life Worth Living traces the life and ideas of one of Western Civilization's founding philosophers, whose influence is still felt more than two thousand years later. Socrates is famous for how he died, executed by the Athenian government for corrupting the youth of Athens, but his most important contribution was to challenge the people around him to test their ideas and beliefs in conversation with each other, in the belief that in this way we could become a society that knows the difference between truth and falsehood, and find what makes a life worthwhile. He did not claim to have definitive answers, but he knew that knowledge was the key to finding them, and he invited everyone he met to join him in his quest"--