A Lesson From Socrates That Will Change The Way You Think

hello i am socrates and i changed the world as i speak to you now i'm sitting in a jail cell in a cave just outside of athens in a few moments a guard is going to bring me a cup of poison hemlock to drink after i do so i will become very sleepy then i will take my last breaths but before that happens i thought i'd share some things with you i was born in athens and ancient greece people know very little about my history in early life and i like to keep it that way

you will see that i'm a bit of a troublemaker and like to be a little mysterious most people know me as one of the first philosophers of the western world but i never saw myself that way philosophers tend to think they know a lot about the world but me i really don't think i know anything at all when i returned to athens after fighting in the peloponnesian war i did quite a bit of thinking you see in my time there were many men who were considered wise but i was very skeptical of this wisdom in

my life and travels i found that many people who appear or claim to be wise are not actually very wise at all this is a problem because when people believe a man is wise they tend to blindly follow him often with terrible consequences if you don't question this wisdom you can never discover its flaws then knowledge stands still like a stone instead of growing and changing like a tree so i started asking questions i found that when someone makes a claim that something is true the best way to test that truth is to ask a

series of challenging questions for example if a man claims that it is virtuous to love the god zeus i would ask what is virtue what is love are there other gods to love if they cannot even explain what virtue is how can they say that it is virtuous to love zeus if they cannot explain what love is how can we know if we are really loving zeus and therefore that we are virtuous if someone making these claims cannot answer these challenges then how can they know the truth of their claim in my life i didn't

publish any work so write much down for others to read but many young men in athens including a very bright student named plato used to follow me around and watch closely as i questioned some of the wisest men in the city plato would eventually pass this method down to his student aristotle who was the tutor of alexander the great alexander spread greek thought to his vast kingdom when the romans took over alexander's empire they expanded it even larger and spread the greek tradition even further sadly when the romans fell the world entered a long dark

period where knowledge stood still once again but then something wonderful happened there was a renaissance of thought and knowledge when people began to revive the works of my students science flourished when people realized the power of methodical questioning and testing of claims in your time my method of questioning is known as the socratic after me method and is the basis of modern scientific and philosophical inquiry and all this because i asked a few questions many people think that when someone asks a question or many questions like i do that they are unwise but i think

just the opposite true wisdom is the knowledge of how little you actually know it is this realization that allows you to start asking questions and get to the real truth asking questions may be the best way to get to truth but it is also a fast way to make enemies i'm afraid that i embarrassed quite a few very important men in athens who saw me as kind of a professional smart aleck when they saw that young men in the city were beginning to question like i did i was arrested for corrupting the youth of athens

my student plato wrote about the trial and how i tried to defend myself using the same method of questioning that i was arrested for this just made my accusers even angrier eventually when i was convicted the court asked me what i thought my punishment should be i said that there should be a meal in my honor every night at the sacred hearth of the city where great men and olympic champions are honored i said that my punishment should be a free meal at that hearth since i have opened up everyone's eyes to true wisdom needless

to say they didn't like that answer at all seeing it as further proof of my insolence i told you i was a troublemaker and sentenced me to death so here i am talking to you i have to say goodbye to my friends and family now but don't feel bad for me i am an old man now anyway and i'm happy to be the world's first martyr for the cause of truth remember the only thing you know is that you know nothing but don't take my word for it for i know nothing as well