Life and works
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 469 BC ≈ | Born in Athens, in the deme of Alopece (the SEP, following Nails, gives 469 BC; Britannica records c. 470 BC).[1] [3] |
| 432 BC | Serves as an infantry soldier (hoplite) in the Potidaea campaign, alongside Alcibiades.[1] |
| 431 BC | Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the backdrop of his adult life.[1] |
| 424 BC | Fights at the battle of Delium, an Athenian defeat, under the command of Laches.[1] |
| 423 BC | Caricatured in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds, staged at the festival of Dionysus.[1] |
| 422 BC | Fights at the battle of Amphipolis, another Athenian disaster — his last known campaign.[1] |
| October 406 BC | A member of the presiding committee (prytaneis) by lot, opposes the collective, summary trial of the generals of the battle of Arginusae before the Assembly.[1] |
| 404 BC ≈ | Under the regime of the Thirty, refuses the order to go to Salamis and arrest the democratic general Leon — an episode later recalled in his defense.[1] |
| 469–399 BC ≈ | Works: he wrote nothing; his thought is known above all through Plato's dialogues, Xenophon's Socratic writings and Aristophanes' satire — the disparity between the portraits constitutes the 'Socratic problem'.[1] [2] |
| spring 399 BC | Tried for impiety and for corrupting the young, he is condemned and executed by poison (hemlock) at seventy, in Athens.[1] [3] |
How he read him
Reception, not philosophy: each entry records how Olavo de Carvalho characterised this philosopher, attributed and dated to the 2002 course. The project does not adjudicate who is right. The recordings are machine-transcribed and unchecked against audio, so everything here is paraphrase and nothing is quoted.
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The session turns on a distinction between three figures the tradition confuses: the philosopher as martyr, the philosopher as leader and ruler, and the philosopher as his community's teacher and guide but not its chief. Socrates is the first and the third; the second is the error he lays at Plato's door.
Curso História Essencial da Filosofia, session 02 — the Socratic project — 2002 ?
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Philosophical authority is real but powerless, and he argues it has to be. A philosopher claiming power equal to his cognitive authority would have to be an absolute tyrant — and that is incompatible with how wisdom is acquired, which needs trial, error and an interior freedom a philosopher-king could not allow.
Curso História Essencial da Filosofia, session 03 — Socrates and Plato — 2002 ?
Reception in the COF
Present in 182 of the 589 transcription files of the Curso Online de Filosofia; 57 lectures engage him substantially (5 or more mentions). The most engaged lectures:
This section documents what Olavo said and when — never what the philosopher "really" meant. Characterizations are Olavo’s, tied to a lecture by number and date.
| Lecture (aula) | Date | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| 103 | 2011-04-23 | 48 |
| 142 | 2012-02-19 | 39 |
| 1 | 2009-03-14 | 35 |
| 149 | 2011-04-07 | 35 |
| 146 | 2012-03-17 | 27 |
| 72 | 2010-08-29 | 26 |
| 161 | 2012-06-30 | 25 |
| 117 | 2011-08-06 | 24 |
| 104 | 2011-04-30 | 23 |
| 243 | 2014-03-22 | 21 |
| 324 | — | 21 |
| 148 | 2012-03-31 | 20 |
| 99 | 2011-03-26 | 18 |
| 113 | 2011-07-09 | 18 |
| 118 | 2011-08-13 | 18 |
A dash in the date column means the transcription file carries no verified date — an undated file, not an undated lecture. Counts are accent-insensitive, word-boundary matches over the public community transcription corpus.[4] [5]
References
- Socrates — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Socrates (469—399 B.C.E.) — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Socrates — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- COF — community transcriptions of the Curso Online de Filosofia (585 lectures) — Community transcription repository (upstream declares CC0 for the transcription work; the lectures remain the estate's)
- COF em Áudio — lecture audio collection — Internet Archive (community upload)