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Conversation between Plato and Socrates
Essay on Plato's Dialogue
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Mary Rose Anne Cerezo Response Paper 1
PHI 100 “APOLOGY”
Q: How did Socrates get his bad reputation? What does this have to do with “wisdom”?
Socrates has and have gained a lot of enemies and accusers. I think Socrates started to get his bad reputation when the oracle of Delphi has said that he is the wisest man of all Athens. Though Socrates does not believe that he is wise at all, the oracle does not lie. So, in order to test the oracle and prove it, he wanders around to find someone who is wiser than him. He sought, asked and interrogated many people like poets, politicians and artisans as they seem to have higher wisdom than him. But, by examining them, he discovered and felt like he is indeed wiser than all of them. He
Throughout all the years, he never could find anyone as wise as himself, and all he did was make enemies searching. These enemies are now his accusers, and they accuse him of spreading evil doctrines, corrupting the youth, and not believing in the Gods. Throughout the speech, Socrates continues to shoot down every accuser and it is evident that he has done no wrong. Eventually, one of his accusers states that he must be doing something strange and that he wouldnt be that famous if he were like other men. Socrates did not live a very public life unlike most people at that time.
Socrates was wise men, who question everything, he was found to be the wise man in Athens by the oracle. Although he was consider of being the wises man alive in those days, Socrates never consider himself wise, therefore he question everything in order to learned more. Socrates lived a poor life, he used to go to the markets and preach in Athens he never harm anyone, or disobey any of the laws in Athens, yet he was found guilty of all charges and sentence to die.
Aristophanes wrote a comedy about this accusation and Socrates does refer to this in his trial. The comedy portrays him as someone who “swings around claiming he’s walking on air and talking a lot of other nonsense on subject that I know neither a lot nor a little but nothing at all about.” (Plato 650) Socrates goes on to explain that he has “acquired this reputation because of nothing other than a sort of wisdom.” (Plato 651) He goes deeper into this explanation by saying he possesses “human wisdom. For it may just be that I really do have that sort of wisdom, whereas the people I mentioned just now
Socrates lived such a private life that it lead to the most important revelation of his entire life. He would go about his life doing nothing but self-examination. In examining his life so strenuously others would come to him to be taught, or to have their children be taught by Socrates. They would offer him money and he would refuse. They would do whatever they could to learn anything Socrates had to teach. What they did not know is that Socrates was not teaching anyone he was simply going about his usual life and people just happened to learn from it. This was also why Socrates was put on trial. He was brought up on two charges, one of impiety and the other of corrupting the youth. These two charges set the course for the last month of his life.
Socrates was accused of being a sophist, a professional philosopher. Sophists were seen as corrupters of society and as generally bad men. Socrates says that every one of these accusations is false. He tells the Athenians a story where he asks a man who he would hire to educate his sons and how much that man's services would cost. The man replies that he would hire Evenus of Paros, and that he charges 500 drachmae. Socrates expresses his surprise that any man could be good enough to charge that much money. The man says that Evenus is the best tutor in the world. Socrates says that he does not posses the knowledge or wisdom to do anything even remotely close to what Evenus does. Socrates never charged money for his lessons, and he never really did any formal teaching. He had followers, and they claim that they learned a lot from him. But the fact is, Socrates never did any formal instruction, so he never told people what to believe. Therefore, Socrates could not have corrupted the youth with his teaching, because...
The Apology is Socrates' defense at his trial. As the dialogue begins, Socrates notes that his accusers have cautioned the jury against Socrates' eloquence, according to Socrates, the difference between him and his accusers is that Socrates speaks the truth. Socrates distinguished two groups of accusers: the earlier and the later accusers. The earlier group is the hardest to defend against, since they do not appear in court. He is all so accused of being a Sophist: that he is a teacher and takes money for his teaching. He attempts to explain why he has attracted such a reputation. The oracle was asked if anyone was wiser than Socrates was. The answer was no, there was no man wiser. Socrates cannot believe this oracle, so he sets out to disprove it by finding someone who is wiser. He goes to a politician, who is thought wise by him self and others. Socrates does not think this man to be wise and tells him so. As a consequence, the politician hated Socrates, as did others who heard the questioning. "I am better off, because while he knows nothing but thinks that he knows, I neither know nor think that I know" (Socrates). He questioned politicians, poets, and artisans. He finds that the poets do not write from wisdom, but by genius and inspiration. Meletus charges Socrates with being "a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the State, and has other new divinities of his own."
In the Apology, Socrates was told by the Delphic Oracle that there was nobody wiser than him. With ancient Greece having been a prominent home of philosophy and art since before Socrates' time, the Athenian court found his proclamation both insulting and hard to believe. Socrates goes through great lengths to find the wisest of men and seeing if their reputations are in fact true. He hoped to find a man wiser than him to prove the oracles prediction was false, even Socrates failed to believe he was the wisest man. He first went to a man that seemed wise. After he spoke with him Plato quotes "I came to see that, though many persons, and chiefly himself, thought that he was wise, yet he was not wise."(77) With his certainty that Socrates was wiser, the man was insulted and hated Socrates for derailing his intelligence. Socrates then goes to another wise man, but is again let down. He still believes he is wiser. Convinced that he would not find a more intelligent man amongst wise men, he then questioned the more "educated people", such as poets and artisans. According to Plato, Socrates says "I imagine, they find a great abundance of men who think that they know a great...
Socrates was a revolutionary thinker. He brought new ideas and processes of thought to Athenian society and his work still has its place in the world today. However during his time, his ideas were not always thought of as a good thing. Many viewed him as a corrupting influence on other people and accused him of forcing his ideas upon others. Perhaps most frequently the center of controversy was his thoughts on theocracy and piety as seen in the Plato’s Euthyphro. Socrates also appears at the butt end of Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds, where he is satirically ridiculed and seemingly corrupting the youth of Athens in his school, the Thinkery. Although virtually completely seen as a positive influence now, in ancient times, Socrates may have done more harm than good for his society.
In his defense, Socrates claims over and again that he is innocent and is not at all wise, “…for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great.” Throughout the rest of his oration he seems to act the opposite as if he is better than every man, and later he even claims that, “At any rate, the world has decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men.” This seems to be his greatest mistake, claiming to be greater than even the jury.
Is there a such thing of unjust, and just laws? If these unjust laws actually exist, should one disobey these laws if unjust. These questions can be applied to Socrates, a wise philosopher, who is on death row, for disobeying the law in the novel “Five Dialogues”. revised by John M. Cooper. Socrates believes that if he broke an unjust law, then one should still be penalized for these actions, even if that law that is being broken is considered unjust. Socrates would rather die than to actually escape from his wrongdoing. Is Socrates theory of the situation infact not conclusive? In this paper, I will argue that Socrates’ argument of what is unjust and just is not persuasive, but he contradicts himself and his arguments, and one should not succumb
Socrates, according to Plato challenged the norms of society by questioning life and having others question it as well. He was labeled of “corrupting the youth” and for not believing in the Athenians gods. “Socrates is guilty of corrupting the young, and of not acknowledging the gods the city acknowledges, but new daimonic activities instead.” (The Apology, pp 654) Although, he was cast by being “corrupt”, Socrates had many followers that saw him as a wise man. Socrates trial was made up of thirty jurors, who were later known as “The Thirty.” The “Thirty” really wanted was to silence Socrates, rather than taking his life. However, Socrates did not want to disobey the laws, he did not want to be violated of his right to freedom of speech, nor did he did he want to be undermine his moral position. (The Apology, pp. 647) He stood against injustice acts several times while he was in counsel. “I was the sort...
It was because of the Oracle that Socrates began to question his wisdom and the wisdom of others. He was not trying to corrupt the youth nor did he believe in false gods. Socrates was a man who believed that the Oracle’s message, “There was no one wiser than Socrates.”, was misguided and tried to prove it wrong. He went about doing that by questioning people. Socrates realized that he truly know nothing, of importance. So he tried to seek the truth. To be able to do this he ahd an open mind, and told his followers they should also have open minds. This is why Socrates was falsely accused by a culture that was both strict and hypocritical.
As told in the story, Socrates and Chaerephon visit the oracle of Delphi because he believed that Socrates was meant to be wisest of all the Greek philosophers. Furthermore, Socrates declined the oracle’s theory due to the fact that he thought that there were other Greek Philosophers that were deemed to be much wiser than him; Socrates was puzzled at the oracle’s response at first and disagreed with his decision because he thought that he did not have the vast amount of knowledge as the other Greek philosophers supposedly had. So, as a result, Socrates performs an investigation in which he goes to the city and begins to question everyone he could find. After interrogating a selective amount of a people, he comes to the conclusion that the oracle was right because everyone he interviewed gave him a false perception of what they truly understand. Trying to be something you aren’t or understand something you clearly don’t is always the wrong choice to make in life. Socrates unlike them did not claim to know something he simply didn’t know and this makes him far apart unique from the other Greeks. Sometimes too much modesty can get in the way of making good decisions and sharing what one knows. It’s always best to be humble and to always demonstrate important character
At his trial, Socrates establishes philosophy as the process of evaluating himself and those that he meets. He discusses his “duty of leading the philosophic life” which he describes as the act of “examining [him]self and others” (55). He views it as necessary to question others due to their often inflated perceptions of their own wisdoms. Thus, Socrates argues that knowledge is the awareness of facts, while wisdom is the awareness of what one does not know. Socrates’ conversations with politicians, poets, and craftsmen display this difference. Socrates explains how, while talking to a politician, he found that “although in many people’s opinion, and especially in his own, [the politician] appeared to be wise” that he in fact was not. Socrates elaborates that when he “began to try to show [the politician] that he only thought he was wise and was not really so, [his] efforts were resented” (44). Socrates saw this as proof that he was wiser than the politician because “‘neither of [them] has any knowledge to boast of; but [the politician] thinks that he knows something which he does not know” while Socrates is
Socrates was a philosopher who set out to prove, to the gods, that he wasn't the wisest man. Since he could not afford a "good" Sophist teacher, surely a student of one had to be smarter than he. He decides to converse with the youth of Athens, but concludes that he actually is wiser than everyone he speaks with. He then realizes that their lack of intelligence is the fault of their teachers. Socrates understands that the practice of "sophism" leads to a lack of self-knowledge and moral values. Socrates was later accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and put on trial. In The Apology of Socrates he sta...