Russell Vs Socrates

The first concept that I noticed shared by Russell and Socrates was the concept that one had to remove themselves before serious philosophical contemplation could take place. In Russell 's case, he refers to the "Self" and the "Not-Self". With Socrates, as seen in the Apology, confronting his accuser about the corruption of youth, his accuser is silent because he had not given the matter any thought. Socrates awareness of his own ignorance frees him from what Russell would refer to as "Self".

I mention this because it serves as a common theme even as both philosophers differ in their messages. They both are looking at defining concepts of what is of value to society. However, the environment they lived in also shaped the message they delivered.

Socrates was born in fairly turbulent times. Athens had been form in the wake of the Persian invasion and was in the process of becoming an empire of itself. When the Athenians executed their remaining leadership for failing to retrieve the bodies of their comrades in a using a trial against Athenian law. two mistakes were committed. First, was weakening of their military, which they would pay for later, and the second was the disregard of their own laws. Imagine the impression this would make to an individual like Socrates. I believe the root of his

Russell was the product of the English aristocracy right at the turn of the 20th century. He began shaping his early concepts of philosophy in the halls of academia. An interesting thing I noticed that while Socrates had already defined the concept virtue, Russell believed that values were an expression of human emotion and could not be neatly analyzed, like the sciences. Due to the analytic nature of his work, he struggled with the idea of making a specific definition for "good", because that would place ethics in the realm of the sciences, where it did not belong. His main body of work was the analyze and define concepts that fell outside of the realm of the