Let me talk about political equality, to narrow things down. I agree there is a sense of “equality in the eyes of God” in the Bible passage, and offhand I can’t think of that idea’s appearing anywhere in pre-Christian Greek thought. (I may well be overlooking something obvious, but nothing comes to mind.) But political equality, the idea of equal treatment under the law, is another matter. When archaic Greece first started to emerge as new and newly-reorganized cities on the Greek mainland, on the islands, and along the coast of Asia Minor, their politics, poetry, and architecture reflected the idea of isonomia “equality under the law.” For a capsule description of this cultural and political construct see J-P Vernant The Origin of Greek Thinking, a short but superb book. Monarchs had largely disappeared from Greece by this time (800-600 BC). Cities were laid out with a central space, the agora, that symbolized citizens’ contributions to public discourse and policy. The military had changed so...

You are taking claims and concepts from two traditions very far removed from one another. And yet your question makes good sense; for in some respect I believe Heraclitus would understand hard determinism, and the modern hard determinist would understand that panta rhei. Indeed, as that first paragraph implies, I think the better question is not just whether the two positions are logically compatible, but whether they are intelligible to one another. After all, vegetarianism is compatible with belief in phlogiston. Nothing in a theory of phlogiston says you have to eat meat, and nothing about vegetarianism requires you to believe in the existence of oxygen. But this compatibility is surely a trivial one. There is a fuller sense, I believe – if I’ve understood your question – in which you want to know whether these two worldviews are mutually, shall we say, comprehensible not just compatible. In one direction the mutual comprehensibility is not at issue. Unless hard determinists want to say...

This question is harder to answer than it might look, partly because of our incomplete information about Greek drama. Another problem is that many people who address the issue elide from laying out the factual information we have available to us, to interpreting that information into a theory of the Platonic dialogue. Your question does not ask for a theory of Platonic writing as such, and I won’t attempt to give one. In a literal sense, Platonic dialogues began as other dialogues about Socrates did, with efforts by his friends to write down things Socrates had said. Socrates was not the type of philosopher to lecture, or to introduce a topic and develop a thesis about it. All the reliable evidence instead indicates that he would get involved with friends and strangers, query them about their beliefs, and perhaps defend positions of his own, but all in the context of ongoing conversation. It seems to have been clear to his friends that the written account of Socratic philosophy should respect this...

When I saw your question the phrase struck me as unknown in Plato’s writings. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, so I did a search through all his dialogues looking for some plausible Greek analogue to “beginning of wisdom.” I did not find your quote. I did notice, in the process, that it pops up around the Internet; but then so do other sayings supposedly in Plato’s works, like “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” or “Be kind, because everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.” Those two don’t correspond to anything in Plato, but they are widely attributed to him. It’s not exactly like Socrates to speak of the “beginning of wisdom,” although he does talk about summoning the soul or the intellect to think about issues, and he does speak (again, in Plato’s dialogues) as if this were the beginning of a process whose conclusion would be wisdom. I am also suspicious for the reason that “the beginning of wisdom” is a phrase we find in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Proverbs. That...

There are several problematic assumptions at work in your question: that taking a work “literally” means the same thing as taking it as “a philosophical work”; that the two options for philosophical writings are “artistic” and “philosophical treatise”; ultimately, that real philosophy is plainspoken and direct, while artistry puts us in the domain of exercises. We can’t think through all those ideas in a few paragraphs, but I draw your attention to them by way of inviting you to think them over. Ask yourself if artistry can’t be plainspoken and direct. Consider whether some third genre is not possible for philosophy between art and treatise. But for now we should focus on Plato, because your question is about two of his greatest works. I won’t pretend not to understand your question. All of Plato’s dialogues contain such features as narrative, framing, and a specific way of aligning a person’s character with the philosophical position that person expounds, but in some dialogues those features...

This is an excellent question; but that doesn't mean it can be answered in a few paragraphs. Ultimately the question of Plato's relationship to the "Socrates" he presents in his dialogues can only be thought about with reference to detailed interpretations of many of those dialogues, and careful thinking about what their author might or might not be saying. Could Plato have written dialogues for fifty years all reporting on the actual views of Socrates? In principle, maybe so. In practice, it seems fairer to believe that he thought about what Socrates should say, and for what reason; and so his own views became closely entangled with those he attributes to Socrates. But let's start with the Republic in particular. The earliest comments on that dialogue that we possess are found in Aristotle's Politics. Book 2 of the Politics begins its survey of political theories by considering the proposals in the Republic. And one of the striking things about this discussion is that Aristotle keeps...

Your question combines two thoughts about Socrates that are often put together: that he never charged a fee for talking to people, and that (therefore) he was available to everyone. For you describe the panelists as offering themselves "for anyone who wants to ask anyone." Now, it's true that in some portrayals, especially those written by Xenophon, Socrates equates the non-payment with a spirit of democratic openness. Not charging tuition or other fees means (on this interpretation of Socrates) being free to all. But a fascinating article from nearly thirty years ago, David Blank's "Socratics versus Sophists on Payment for Teaching," challenges this assumption. Blank grants the distinction between Socrates and the sophists on the basis of their charging (high) fees for instruction while he charged nothing. He only questions whether Socrates' purpose was to give his time and effort to all who wanted it. On the contrary, says Blank, sometimes it appears that Socrates keeps himself free by not...

This is an excellent question. My answer will be controversial; so will any other answer people give you. But first let's back up. What does "studying Socrates" mean to you? If you are curious about the historical person of Socrates, then you'll want to look into all the historical sources available. More on that in a minute. But if you are interested in the philosophy we mainly associate with Socrates, certain methods of defining vague terms and of understanding the virtues, then it might be enough to read Plato's dialogues for the version of Socrates found in them. From the point of view of understanding the Socratic philosophy, a lot depends on what one thinks of Xenophon as a philosopher. There are many scholars, and more today than a generation ago, who consider him a subtle, intelligent commentator on political thought and ethics. Many others, however, still find him relatively short on philosophical insight. This is what makes the question controversial. If Xenophon is, as...

This question needs to be narrowed down before it can be answered usefully. First, everyone speaking of ancient Greek religion has to bear in mind the complex relationship between that religion as a whole and the myths that -- to modern readers -- are its most famous element. Second, while it's not hard to answer the question as it asks about "any" of the myths (the answer is "Yes"), one comes to know Socrates and Plato better by trying to find out how many of the myths they might have believed, or which ones. First, the relationship between myths and religion. Modern religions tend to be organized around beliefs, not only general doctrinal beliefs (e.g. "God exists") but also beliefs about events ("Jesus was crucified and resurrected"). So modern readers tend to gravitate toward the most visible beliefs in ancient religion, which are the myths or stories about what their gods did. The great poems of Homer and Hesiod contain many of those myths; Socrates and Plato would have heard more through...

There are a lot of excellent questions here, and each one of them -- being excellent -- deserves a longer answer than I can give. But let me skip over the first part and move on to the rest. First of all, it's not that being virtuous will help us fulfill the human function, in the way that eating broccoli will help us be nourished. On both Plato's and Aristotle's views, if there is a human function, then human virtue simply consists in the fulfillment of that function. The function of a knife is to cut, and sharpness enables the knife to cut well, so sharpness is the knife's virtue. Sharpness does not help the knife cut well; rather, the cutting well is constituted by the virtue of sharpness. The happiness is trickier. It is true that for both Plato and Aristotle happiness requires the fulfillment of the human function. What a lot of philosophers debate is exactly how these philosophers think the connection works. Is happiness simply equivalent to performing the human function? Or does...