Socrates’ philosophical thoughts are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Mind

Starting from the wise men, ancient Greek philosophy focused on the study of nature itself. Shift to focus on the study of social ethics and people. But they only stay at the perceptual stage and can only draw relativistic conclusions. It was not until Socrates that this situation fundamentally changed. Socrates demanded a "turn of the soul", turning philosophy from the study of nature to the study of self, which is what people later called it, pulling philosophy back from heaven to earth. He believes that the pursuit of natural truth is endless; he feels that the world is constantly changing, so the knowledge gained is also uncertain. Socrates wants to pursue an unchanging, certain, and eternal truth. Therefore, he cannot look to the natural outside world, but must return to himself and study himself. His famous quote is know yourself. Starting from Socrates, self and nature are clearly distinguished; man is no longer just a part of nature, but another unique entity different from nature.

Soul

Socrates’ theory of the soul further made the differentiation between spirit and matter clearer. Philosophers before Socrates had already said that the soul is immortal, and there were already the seeds of the opposition between idealism and materialism. However, philosophers before him still had a vague view of the soul, and some regarded the soul as the most refined substance. Therefore, the boundary between idealism and materialism was not yet clear. It was not until Socrates that the soul was clearly regarded as a spiritual entity that is essentially different from matter. In Socrates' view, the emergence and destruction of things are nothing more than the aggregation and dispersion of something. His view of the clear opposition between spirit and matter became the origin in the history of philosophy.

Truth

According to Aristotle, Socrates gave up studying the natural world, wanted to seek universal truths on ethical issues, and began to seek definitions for things. He opposed the relativism of wise men and believed that there can be various "opinions", but there can only be one "truth"; "opinions" can change with each person and other conditions, but "truth" is eternal and does not change. Changed. In Plato's early dialogues, the topics discussed were almost always the question of how to define ethics. What Socrates pursues is to understand "beauty itself" and "justice itself". This is the universal definition of beauty and justice. It is real knowledge, which is what Plato calls "the idea of ??beauty" and "the idea of ??justice". This is the original form of "ideology" in the history of Western philosophy. Socrates further pointed out that the causal series in nature is endless. If philosophy only seeks this kind of cause and effect, it will be impossible to understand the ultimate cause of things. He believes that the ultimate cause of things is "good", which is the purpose of things. He replaced the study of the causal relationship of things with teleology, paving the way for future philosophy.