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Reaction Paper About Socrates

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Socrates is somewhat of an enigma because he never wrote anything down and frugal, perhaps even poverty-stricken life in later years. His achievements shaped the cultural and intellectual development of the world profoundly. His life is reported through a few sources like Plato and Xenophon, but many take Plato’s account’s to be most accurate. He is best known for his attempts and creating an ethics-based system on human reason rather than theological ideology. Many of his views and principles are still taught today and can be applied to subjects and issues in the world today.
Socrates was born in Athens around 470 BC to Sophroniscus and Phaenarete, a stone mason and sculptor and a midwife. Athens was a big classroom for Socrates. “Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of society. He asked questions of his fellow Athenians in a dialectic method (the Socratic Method) which compelled the audience to think a problem through to a logical conclusion” (Socrates Biography.com). It didn’t convey knowledge, instead it asked clarifying questions to help his students arrive at understanding on their own (Socrates).
One inconsistency that Socrates helped students explore is whether weakness of will actually existed. This meant doing something wrong when you knew what was right. Socrates seemed to believe that people only did wrong when at a given time they felt that the benefits outweighed the cost. Personal ethics was called “the art of measurement” (Socrates). He was also interested in the limits of human knowledge and this is one of the themes in Plato’s Apology. Socrates was told by Chaerephon that the Delphic Oracle declared him the wisest man in Athens, to which he hesitated, saying that he was not aware of any wisdom that he had. He searched to find someone smarter who could prove the Oracle wrong, but the politicians were lacking in knowledge, the poets had divine inspiration but no knowledge, and the craftsmen knew their own craft but thought they knew more than they did (Ambury). Then he realized that even if he knew nothing, he was aware of his own ignorance unlike most Athenians. This awareness is known as Socratic ignorance. He also differentiated

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