[21a] He was my comrade from a youth and the comrade of your democratic party,
and shared in the recent exile and came back with you. And you know the kind of
man Chaerephon was, how impetuous in whatever he undertook. Well, once he went
to Delphi and made so bold as to ask the oracle this question; and, gentlemen,
don't make a disturbance at what I say; for he asked if there were anyone wiser
than I. Now the Pythia replied that there was no one wiser. And about these
things his brother here will bear you witness, since Chaerephon is dead. [21b]
But see why I say these things; for I am going to tell you whence the prejudice
against me has arisen. For when I heard this, I thought to myself: “What in the
world does the god mean, and what riddle is he propounding? For I am conscious
that I am not wise either much or little. What then does he mean by declaring
that I am the wisest? He certainly cannot be lying, for that is not possible
for him.” And for a long time I was at a loss as to what he meant; then with
great reluctance I proceeded to investigate him somewhat as follows.
I went to one of those who had a reputation for wisdom, [21c] thinking that
there, if anywhere, I should prove the utterance wrong and should show the
oracle “This man is wiser than I, but you said I was wisest.” So examining this
man—for I need not call him by name, but it was one of the public men with
regard to whom I had this kind of experience, men of Athens—and conversing with
him, this man seemed to me to seem to be wise to many other people and
especially to himself, but not to be so; and then I tried to show him that he
thought [21d] he was wise, but was not. As a result, I became hateful to him
and to many of those present; and so, as I went away, I thought to myself, “I
am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good,
but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not
know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little
thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not
think I know either.” From him I went to another of those who were reputed
[21e] to be wiser than he, and these same things seemed to me to be true; and
there I became hateful both to him and to many others. ...
---
Oh yes, not a mere footnote, but a great story. 'Once upon a Plato' will never
be the same. Plato was after absolute truth. Can we move on now? Really!
That was then and this is now. Can we move on now to what the great mother
knows that everything is connected to everything. Entanglement.
---
Chapter 5
Heaven and Earth are impartial
They regard myriad things as straw dogs
The sages are impartial
They regard people as straw dogs
The space between Heaven and Earth
Is it not like a bellows?
Empty, and yet never exhausted
It moves, and produces more
Too many words hasten failure
Cannot compare to keeping to the void
---
What I do not know I do not think I know.
On May 16, 2013, at 10:54 PM, X Acto <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Socrates favoured _truth_ as the highest value, proposing that it could be
> discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates
> valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for
> persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To
> Socrates, _truth_, not _aretē_, was the greater good, and each person should,
> above all else, seek truth to guide one's life.
>
> Wiki "dialectics"
>
>
>
> * Virtue—all virtue—is knowledge.
> * Virtue is sufficient for happiness.
>
>
> The idea that there are certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates'
> teachings. These virtues represented
> the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the
> philosophical or intellectual virtues.
> Socrates stressed that "virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the
> ideal life was spent in search of the Good.
>
>
> Socrates "truth", was (is) intellectual excellence
>
> Although he claims he is not himself a teacher (Apology). His role, he
> claims, is more properly to be understood as
> analogous to a midwife (μαῖα maia). Socrates explains that he is himself
> barren of theories, but knows how to bring
> the theories of others to birth and determine whether they are worthy .The
> one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have
> knowledge of was "the art of love", which he connected with the concept of
> "the love of wisdom", i.e., philosophy.
> He never actually claimed to be wise, only to understand the
> path a lover of wisdom must take in pursuing it.
>
>
> ..
>
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
