From the Beginning to Plato

428 GLOSSARY
Socratic: pertaining to Socrates; an associate of Socrates.
Socratic problem: the problem of determining which of the three
portraits of Socrates, those by Plato, Xenophon and
Aristophanes, is historically accurate. Many scholars
believe that the problem is insoluble and so should be
ignored in favour of explorations of the literary
character, Socrates, in the works of our three main
sources. Others have argued that the problem can be
solved in favour of one or more of the three.
sophist: an intinerant intellectual. The fifth-century
philosophers known collectively as ‘The
sophists’ (see ch. 7) taught a wide range of subjects,
including science and mathematics, but were
particularly associated with the teaching of
techniques of persuasion (rhetoric) and argument, and
with rationalistic and critical attitudes towards
traditional morality and religion.
soul (psuchē): the Greek word is widely used to refer to the life-force
which characterizes animate beings as opposed to the
lifeless parts of nature. Animals and plants have souls
in this sense. The soul also constitutes the identity or
personality of a living individual, and can include
intellectual and other mental capacities. In the
traditional (Homeric, q.v.) conception, the soul is
separated from the body at death and survives in
Hades as a shadowy wraith, without mentality or
consciousness. In Plato’s thought, on the other hand,
the claim that the soul survives death amounts to the
claim that the mind is separable from the body and
can survive independently of it.
Stoic: pertaining to a philosophical school founded by Zeno
of Citium (third century BC), influential throughout
the Hellenistic and Roman periods. An adherent of
that school.
substrate: the underlying subject of predication or bearer of
Sufficient Reason,
Principle of:
attributes.
the principle that for everything that there is, and for
every event that occurs, there must be something that
grounds a complete explanation for its being just as it
is (and, in the case of an event, for its occurring just
as it does) and not otherwise.
syllabary: a system of writing which employs a single different
sign to represent each syllable.