Socrates

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Socrates

Socrates, arguably the greatest philosopher in all of history, can also be one of the most confusing people to try to understand. His way of thinking was so far from the norm of his time he was considered to be corrupting the people he came in contact with during his life. But, was he corrupting or improving society? He appears to contradict himself on many different occasions during The Apology. But is he contradicting himself or do we need to look deeper into his words to understand the point that Socrates was trying to get across?

Socrates claims to have no wisdom. He quoted, “I know I have no wisdom, great or small.” This was in response to the god of Delphi saying that no man is wiser than Socrates. But Socrates does say that he knows some things; for example, “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.” This is a wise statement, but Socrates claims to have no wisdom. He still believes that he has no wisdom because of the way he sees the world. To Socrates, the world has an infinite number of possibilities and any thing he claims to know is extremely minimal compared to the possibilities. He believes that he is also still in the cave because there is so much he has no been exposed to yet.

But even if Socrates does not believe he is wise, he is still very wise. To be able to say he knows nothing because he can see the potential of the world and the potential of humans is extremely wise. The quote, “… he knows nothing and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know” shows the great wisdom that Socrates possessed.

Socrates was also knowledgeable and intelligent. He was able to have peaceful arguments with so called experts in any field of work and prove to them that they really do not know what they think they do. Socrates could not have had this effect on the people with a firm grasp of knowledge on the topics he argued about. Knowledge and intelligence do not constitute wisdom but Socrates possessed all of these characteristics. But being intelligence is common in people who are wise. Intelligence plays a large part in being wise and proving to others the wisdom that one possesses.

No, Socrates is not guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens.

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