Abstract:
Aristotle regarded the definition as Socratic main philosophic achievement, hence a misunderstanding in study of philosophic history. It was just by seeing the definition breaking the logical illusion in the realm of dialectical reasoning that Aristotle overoptimistically affirmed the validity of the definition as the starting point of science. However, Socrates showed special concern with the transcendental illusion the definition had to encounter in the realm of practical reasoning, which was unfortunately neglected by Aristotle. Since this illusion was hard to break, Socrates emphasized more the invalidity of the definition in face of ethnic and moral knowledge. Thus, they two came to quite different conclusions: Aristotle highly advocated scientific spirit by the definition, while Socrates tore down scientific spirit with his transcendent “spirit”. By seeing Socrates from Kant's view, we find Socratic philosophy agreed largely with Kant’s, but disagreed mostly with Aristotle’s.
