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Socrates

Socrates has always alleged to be a man for Athens but is notorious for being civil disobedient on several occasions. Was Socrates civic or civil resistant? Could it have been Socrates’ philosophical ideas and theories which contributed to his civil disobedience and his eventual death? Socrates dedicated his life to Athens and fought as a soldier in two battles, Potidaea and Delium, and was recognized for his velour by his superiors. (Symposium) He was a   true patriot and was highly concerned for the well being of Athens. This leads me to question why Socrates would be civil disobediant in some situations but follow orders to end his own life in another? Were Socrates philosophies useless in helping   construct Athenian politics?
In order to attempt to understand Socrates first one must look at his ideas and teachings. One of the important views Socrates had was ethics. “Ethics has to do with values, that is, with weahter or not an action or, more broadly a way of life is good or evil, right or wrong.” (wester political thought pg 7)   It deals with the way thing ought or should be. Ethical statmens are easy to distiguish for example: “we ought not to commit murder” or “we should not steal from eachother”. When we make such assertions, we implicitly claim to have knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, what we ought or ought to not do. This is ethic or normative knowledge. Emperical knowledge on the other hand deals with knowledge attained either directly or inderictly through the sences. It seems   as we analyze Socrates philosphies he set up the blue prints for us to distinguish the difference between the two throughout time.
Socrates was interested in the ethical or normative questions and not the empirical. He believed that we must think of what we are trying to acomplish as an end result to realize   what should and should not to be. For instance we ought to not commit murder if our goal is to preserve life. All ethical questions relate with how we ought...