The question posed in this essay is a profound one which has perplexed and kept scholars interested for generations. The "Socratic problem" as it has been coined, is one which is difficult in defining. Paul woodruff wrote of Socrates, "he is our model of a philosopher". How many aspects of Socrates are there, and which one, if any, shows the real historical Socrates? This is the problem met when trying to recreate the historical mans thoughts, for the evidence is all from other parties, and so must be tainted with certain social and personal biases and opinions.
There are essentially four sources to base our historical Socrates upon . Writers both of, and after his time, they have varying degrees of accuracy. Plato, a philosopher of the highest order, and an extremely close companion to Socrates himself, is the first and probably the most accurate of the sources. Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and an esteemed philosopher in his own right, would have had second hand knowledge of Socrates. Xenophon, a military general who at the time of Socrates, was probably only a casual aquaintance . The last of the sources is the comic poet and social critic Aristophanes, who wrote rather disparately of Socrates in his comedies.
From these sources of the time, three Socrates emerged and it is from these which one can begin to piece together the thoughts of the historical philosopher. The first is the Aristophanic Socrates. Depicted in his Comedies as a Sophist, a natural philosopher who would teach arguments for money and denounced the existence of the gods of common opinion. For example, in Clouds by Aristophanes, Socrates agrees to teach pheidippides, strepsiades son, to win any argument, for a price:.
"Listen to his pronunciation - the drawl, the open mouth - did you hear? Its not going to be easy to teach him to win cases and make good debating points, which do not actually mean anything. And yet [reflectively] for 6ooo drachmas, Hyperbolus did manage to learn it.