Virtual Socrates Colloquium – Manfred Kraus: “Socrates and the Presocratics”

The International Society for Socratic Studies is pleased to announce the schedule for the Virtual Socrates Colloquium 2025-2026.

You can see the schedule –HERE

Notice that there is no need to register and all you need to do is join the following Zoom link:
https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/63132371340?pwd=nQwGxammbjajdzRSM9ZQXsCLoqfS2C.1
Meeting ID: 631 3237 1340
Passcode: 088283
The International Society for Socratic Studies is pleased to invite you to a lecture by Manfred Kraus (University of Tübingen), on the 26th of March at 18:00 (Rome Time), entitled

Socrates and the Presocratics
Abstract: For Cicero Socrates marks the great watershed in the history of Greek philosophy and the paradigm shift from early natural philosophy to a focus on human life and moral philosophy. Yet our ancient sources on the historical personality of Socrates (Plato, Xenophon, the minor Socratics, Diogenes Laertius, and Attic comedy) also exhibit a Socrates in multiple contact with Presocratic thinkers and Presocratic thought. Even if a personal encounter with the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno as staged in Plato’s Parmenides is clearly not only fictional but also intrinsically implausible, in the Platonic dialogues Socrates is frequently portrayed in discussions with Pythagoreans, Heracliteans, Eleatics and others, not to mention his disputes with the most famous sophists of his time. While in the Apology Socrates disclaims any personal engagement in natural philosophy, there is the autobiographical passage in the Phaedo on his youthful flirtation with the philosophy of Anaxagoras, and there are notices about a personal acquaintance with the Anaxagorean Archelaus. There are further anecdotes about his comments on earlier thinkers such as Heraclitus. Not least there is the portrait of Socrates as a sort of hybrid of Anaxagorean natural philosopher and sophistic rhetorician in Aristophanes’ Clouds. All this considered, there is a fair probability that Socrates was acquainted with theories of Presocratic philosophy circulating in Athens. Anaxagoras for sure lived in Athens during much of Socrates’ lifetime, and apart from Plato’s brilliant literary dramatizations, it is inevitable that Socrates will also in real life have met with exponents of the Sophistic movement such as Protagoras, Gorgias or Hippias, each of whom spent considerable time in Athens. It is thus worthwhile asking how far the real Socrates was actually familiar with the main strands of Presocratic thinking or if this is mainly literary fiction or doxographic speculation. The talk will review the available sources and evaluate their trustworthiness for a realistic picture of the intellectual personality of the historical Socrates.

Bio: Manfred Kraus is Retired Professor of Classics and Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen, Germany. His main research interests are in the history and theory of rhetoric of all periods, the theory of argumentation, Greek (especially Presocratic and Platonic) philosophy, Byzantine and Renaissance studies. His 1984 PhD dissertation was on philosophy of language in the Presocratics. He has published widely on all of the above-named subjects. He is a member of numerous international societies and past president of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric and of the International Society for the Study of Jesuit Rhetoric.