The Apology of Socrates - Essay Example

25 September The Apology In his defense and directing his response to his old opponents, Socrates says that his image has been tarnished by the use of rumors that had nothing to do with reality. 33. Socrates has always been taking criticism and has never really taken a stand against it by making explanations for the things he has been accused of. 33. This is the first time that Socrates tries to tell people the underlying facts that they are unaware of; that they have been manipulated and brainwashed by the opponents of Socrates, who hated him out of a personal grudge rather than Socrates’s lack of wisdom or knowledge that they have been accusing him of for decades. 33. This paper evaluates Socrates’s reaction.

An important philosophical issue raised here is whether the teachers can charge the students for their service of transferring knowledge to them. because charging students for teaching them was one of the accusations made against Socrates. 34. Another philosophical issue is that if only the believers who consider their wisdom worth noting are wise, then how do atheists compare with the believers who think that they are wise? Finally, if an individual is an expert in a field, can he be considered wise even if he has no expertise in other fields at all?

According to Socrates, there is nothing wrong with a teacher taking money for passing knowledge on to the students. 34. Socrates has drawn upon the examples of numerous philosophers and educationalists like the Gorgias of Leontium who were paid, teachers. 34. According to Socrates, atheists, and believers think that their wisdom is worthy to belong to the same category of unwise people. 36. It is not about the presence or lack of belief in gods as gods are out of the equation. Socrates does not consider an individual who is an expert in a specific field but not in others wise. 37. Socrates’s reaction seems to be based on a self-concocted story.

It seems like a joke that an oracle declared Socrates as the wisest person on Earth. Socrates might not have found them but we know many people who underestimate their knowledge even when they know much more than others do. Secondly, belief in Socrates’s story necessitates an assumption that Socrates was a know-it-all kind of person. Probably the poets had made the correct interpretations and explanations of their poetry but Socrates was too naïve to understand that depth and in turn, declared that the poets did not understand their own poetry.

Although I do not quite believe in the story Socrates narrates in his defense, I support Socrates for the fact that he has highlighted some very true philosophical issues in his explanation and the fundamental point that he has tried to make in his reaction that one who thinks he is wise is actually unwise and vice versa is true to a large extent. The more an individual knows, the more he/she thinks that he knows the least because he/she is aware of the deficiencies in his/her knowledge whereas an individual who is not very knowledgeable if gains some knowledge starts thinking that he/she has really achieved something that others have not.