Issn 2181-1296 ilmiy axborotnoma научный вестник scientific journal

ILMIY AXBOROTNOMA FALSAFA 2021-yil, 6-son 
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process. He was sentenced to death. And here it is necessary to say about one more revolution 
associated with the name of Socrates - the revolution of non-violence. The fact is that friends 
were preparing him to escape from prison. But he categorically refused! Escape would mean a 
violation of the verdict, which means violence against the law. The verdict of the court (even 
if Socrates did not agree with him!) meant for him the law. If a person, having used all the 
powers of his mind, did not achieve the goal, could not convince his fellow citizens that he 
was right, then he must bow before the law. Escape is arbitrariness, and has produced 
dishonor under any circumstances. According to Plato, Socrates said: “You should neither 
avoid, nor withdraw, nor leave your place, but in war and in the tribune, in any other place, 
you should obey the order of your city and fatherland, or run away, which is justice; the use of 
violence is blasphemous.”4 Xenophon attributes to him the following statement: “The 
preference is to die, remaining true to the law, rather than live in violence.”
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Let's return to the Socratic method. There are two points to note here. 
First, starting a conversation, Socrates put on a kind of mask of “ignorance”. He said: 
“I know that I don’t know anything, but others don’t know that either.” And here is the 
famous Socratic irony. In general, irony means "simulation", "pretense". Socrates pretends to 
be a devoted friend of his interlocutor, admires his abilities and merits, asks to teach him 
something. But, dressing up as a jester, Socrates achieved quite serious goals. There was a 
serious and methodical chain behind this trick. Imperceptibly, gradually, through finely 
thought-out questions, Socrates forced the interlocutor to reach the bottom of his soul, showed 
him the limitations of his knowledge, knocked him down from the arrogance of false 
omniscience, helped him find mistakes and free himself from them. The effect of this 
refutation, of confusion, has often been overwhelming and beneficially cleansing for people. 
During the dialogue, the object of research is determined (for example, good, good, justice, 
etc.), then conclusions are drawn in various ways, their incompleteness and inconsistency are 
emphasized, then the process of their criticism and refutation takes place until the listener 
recognizes himself ignorant. It was the effect of lifting the shackles of false self-evidence. But 
this was a preliminary stage, preparing the soul for the comprehension of the truth. 
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Secondly, it was the turn of maieutics. Literally, maieutics is the art of a midwife, a 
midwife. Socrates believed that in conversations with them, the human soul "becomes 
pregnant with the truth", true knowledge is born in it. And if Socrates himself is a spiritual 
midwife who takes birth with the truth of the soul, helping the soul to be relieved from the 
burden and safely give birth to the truth into the world, then he did not impose any ready-
made knowledge on his interlocutors, but only with his conversations did it so that they 
themselves found something wonderful and produced. And he, Socrates, only helped them in 
this. Describing this method, it is important to remember that the main issues for Socrates 
were moral and ethical issues. He wanted to understand what is the absolute good, goodness. 
Thus, he arrived at two theses that have gone down in history as Socratic intellectualism: 
• All ignorance is evil, and all knowledge is good. 
• Nobody sins consciously, any evil from ignorance. Socrates was sure that the villain is a 
person who knows little. He does evil not for the sake of evil, but because he wants to benefit, 
good. But due to his ignorance, he does not understand that he is being deceived, he is 
mistaken, i.e. he is ultimately a victim of error. 
But here the paradoxes of Socratic ethics arise. Why do so many people see and 
approve of the best, but act on the worst? Why do many people know that there is good, but 
still choose evil? Socrates left this question unanswered, open. And the point is that in order 
to do good, only reason is not enough. You still need the complicity of the will. But Socrates 
(as well as antiquity in general!) did not discuss the problem of will. It will become central 
much later - in Christian ethics. 

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