if you want see Jesus as philosopher, see:

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

non-canonical

Can you sum up their respective life views and what you mean by better?

In any case, it's a bit of an interesting parallel between the two--

We don't have any words either actually wrote down themselves...

Just Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and various other extra-canonical/rejected works for Jesus (curious to see if people think those "count" or not, because if they do, I have to say, some of those are frankly more interesting than what's included in the Bible...I have a special hatred for John, given that I think his Gospel's the most Anti-Semitic of the 4, but I digress) and then Plato's early-to-mid dialogues as well as a few other "disciples" writing about Socrates on his side.

Both are iconic as martyrs obviously...

Famous trial for both...

Famous death portraits for both in the world of painting...

Both argued for the immortality of the soul...

And both even sort of "look" similar in the mind's eye, bearded ancients in robes and sandals walking around asking questions and giving answers..

Holy shit, Putin33 LIVES?!

...

Putin33, have you raised yourself from the WebDip dead...

Are YOU our site Lord and Savior?!

(Where the hell have you BEEN? Also, your namesake's been a very, very naughty boy in your absence...)

Focusing on academic work. My namesake is doing just fine.

Your namesake's breaking in on and jailing gays, not to mention he's capped his stonewalling UN action in Syria for 2 years by now backing Assad all the more and insisting that the chemical weapons were used by terrorists while the US, UK, France, and the UN inspectors all agree it was Assad's army.

So...he's been a naughty boy.

(Though you like Obama AND Putin...how do you choose between the two when they rather clearly hate each other at this point, and not without cause?)

And hopefully your academic work went well.

But back to the main thrust of the thread--

I think I'll try and kickstart the Socrates case first, since I'm pretty obviously biased on the Jesus case, that's probably best left to those who do back him here.

What I mean by "better"--

I was actually going to initially make this a "Who's Better for a Practical Life?" thread, but:

1. You could argue neither were perfectly practical (for as wrong as he was in terms of so many of his scientific "discoveries," Aristotle's probably the most practical of the Philosophic Trinity of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle between his appreciation of science and his views in "Nichomachean Ethics," which while not always "nice" by modern standards is still pretty practical, far more so than the idealism espoused in Plato's "Republic.")

And

2. A strictly-practical assessment isn't really fair, as I think you can argue that more practical doesn't necessarily equal better...

To dig out the Dickens, from Dombey to Gradgrind, I think Dickens illustrates what happens when practicality your main or sole measuring stick for a good life...and things don't work out well for either character there.

So I guess we could try and first say what Socrates and Jesus consider "the good life" to be, and then argue which is best, and that will tell us what we think the best life is?

Unless anyone has a better suggestion.

I don't see many differences in their thought.

Both are theistic - believing in a creator god.
Both focus on the spiritual as opposed to material world.
Both affirm the notion of absolute truths/moral absolutes.
Both believe in the immortality of the soul.

Key differences as I see them -
Platonism has a Vedic-like view of reincarnation. Souls are trapped in bodies and when a body dies it is entrapped in another body unless enlightenment is obtained.

The Platonist's concept of 'good' is also independent of the creator god. What is good is good intrinsically. The creator god is also finite and limited. This is logically consistent with the notion of god as perfect, since god cannot do evil actions god therefore must be limited.

The Platonic conceptions of god and good are more appealing to me. A finite god and intrinsic goodness make more sense to me and seem logically consistent. On that basis I side with Platonism/Socrates.

"UN inspectors all agree it was Assad's army."

The UN report made no such conclusion. The report only concluded that chemical weapons were used. But do try to stay on topic.

"So I guess we could try and first say what Socrates and Jesus consider "the good life" to be"

For Socrates, the good life was an ethical one lived according to certain virtues - the essence of each being knowledge of how to act. Reason & self-contemplation were the means of achieving knowledge about how to act, rather than experience. Living according to virtue is necessary to achieve happiness. Virtuous people are less likely to have their desires frustrated than non-virtuous people. For example - people who desire material wealth or power may not achieve them, and thus become frustrated. For this reason Socrates held that desire for such things was not virtuous. Socratic virtues cannot be frustrated by the environment.

Jesus also held that desire for material wealth and power would not lead to a good life. His notion of virtuous living was essentially the same as Socrates, repressing desires for worldly things, etc. The difference between the two is, as far as I can tell, in their method of finding out how to lead a virtuous life. For Socrates it was via reason. For Jesus it was via faith.

In which case I once again side with Socrates.

Obiobi, you're a bit late to the "oh my god putin's back" game. Do you not read other peoples threads? This has been going on for days!