Socrates And Socratic Ignorance

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Socrates is one of the greatest philosophers of all time and has managed to maintain relevance throughout the centuries. The experience that most individuals have with Socrates is through the works of Plato, who largely relies on Socrates as a character to elaborate a greater concept. Throughout the works of Plato, Socrates is seen denying having knowledge of anything and eventually the character explaining a concept reaching a new conclusion through the explanation. In a nutshell, that is the Socratic method. The Socratic method is consistent with Socrates asking an initial question and then asking for deeper interpretations of whatever response the initial question entails. Many individuals can find themselves intimidated by Socrates and …show more content…

Socrates goes through his counterargument in his typical method of feigning lack of knowledge on a subject, while then proceeding to pick the argument apart with specific questions, but in the case with Meletus, Socrates is merely trying to embarrass Meletus (Plato 24c). Throughout the counterargument, Socrates tries to prove that his efforts as one man are not the downfall of the youth because many individuals are responsible for the quality of the youth (Plato 24e). It can be confusing to follow the logic of Socrates considering that he is stating that he knows nothing valuable, but is also stating that he is not valuable because he is not a strong enough factor in the lives of the youth. Socrates previously states that the youth follow him out of their own desire, but then makes the statement that he is not important enough to have any effect on their lives (Plato 23c & 25b). The most difficult aspect of understanding Socrates is that within his false ignorance is also a strong sense of irony, which can be difficult to interpret for the average individual. It can be difficult to take Socrates seriously considering that he makes excellent arguments, but also claims to know …show more content…

Typically, ‘know’ means understanding and accurately being able to parrot facts and even being aware of wear to receive more information on a topic (Vlastos 11). ‘Knowledge’ is having a very high level of certainty in a concept to the point where the amount of certainty would leave it incapable of error (Vlastos 13). The differences between ‘know’ and ‘knowledge’ make understanding Socrates’ argument of not knowing anything easier to decipher. Socrates does make points in arguments, which can be attributed to ‘know’, but for many of his other arguments the amount of inference and deductive reasoning that is used would lead one to assume that Socrates has knowledge. Another aspect to note when seeking to understand Socrates is that uncertainty does not inhibit him, but does exhilarate him because it allows him to continue with his preferred method of work (Vlastos 20). Through understanding the differences between the types of knowledge that exists it is easier to comprehend that Socrates was on a quest for knowledge and that Socratic ignorance is an important tool when attempting to reach certainty on concepts. When discussing concepts of knowledge, it is worthy to note that epistemology is still debating upon the factors of

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