SOCRATES 469 BC - 399 BC ATHENS Once assured by the oracle at Delphi that he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.) borrowed his view of life from the inscription at Delphi, "Know Thyself." [p. 1]
The significance of that 'absolute' commandment: Know thyself whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality of what is essentially and ultimately true and real of mind as the true and essential being. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind
The effect of these investigations of mine, gentlemen, has been to arouse against me a great deal of hostility, and hostility of a particularly bitter and persistent kind, This is due to the fact that whenever I succeed in disproving another person's claim to wisdom in a given subject the bystanders assume that I know everything about that subject myself. Mixing humility with arrogance, he boasted that his superiority lay in his awareness of his own ignorance, and he spent the rest of his life making fools of the self-proclaimed 'wise men' of Athens. [p. 1]
In Euthyphro (written by Plato), Socrates claims to descend from the lineage of Daedalus, the mythic sculpture who created statues that, when completed, would begin to move in all directions, evading the grasp of the people. When someone would try to approach these statues, they would run away and disappear as if they were ghosts. Taking Note: The Online Notebook of Lorenz Lammens http://lorenzlammens.com/tags/anecdotes
Clearly it should be a penalty I deserve, and what do I deserve to suffer or to pay." I have deliberately not led a quiet life but have neglected what occupies most people: wealth, household affairs, the position of general or public orator or the other offices, the political clubs and factions that exist in the city. I thought myself too honest to survive if I occupied myself with those things."
I went to each of you privately and conferred upon him what I say is the greatest benefit, by persuading him not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should he as good and as wise as possible, not to care for the city's possessions more than for the city itself, and to care for other things in the same way. Socrates here suggests that the state should give him a pension, rather than a punishment, for being a public benefactor and urging his students to be virtuous. [p. 3]
[Y]ou will acquire the reputation and the guilt, in the eyes of those who want to denigrate the city, of having killed Socrates, a wise man, for they will say that I am wise even if I am not. If you had waited but a little while, this would have happened of its own accord.. I leave you now, condemned to death by you, but they are condemned by truth to wickedness and injustice.
I was convicted because I lacked not words but boldness and shamelessness and the willingness to say to you what you would most gladly have heard from me, lamentations and tears and my saying and doing many things that I say are unworthy of me but that you are accustomed to hear from others. I would much rather die after this kind of defense than live after making the other kind. It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury, it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death. So I maintain my assessment, and they maintain theirs. That perhaps had to happen, and I think it is as it should be.