Socrates was told by his friend that the oracle at Delphi said that he (Socrates) was the smartest man in Greece. Socrates thought this was hilarious, but not wanting to contradict a god (Apollo worked through Delphi), he went out into Athens and started asking people some pretty basic questions about their areas of expertise.
It transpired that they didn’t know anything, but they thought they did. Socrates, on the other hand, didn’t know anything but was aware of the fact that he didn’t know anything. And he therefore felt that the god was referring to this when he pronounced Socrates the smartest man in Greece.
Answer: From the perspective of Socrates, any knowledge or information he did have was likely to be insignificant (or even completely false) compared to how much was left to be discovered.
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Socrates was told by his friend that the oracle at Delphi said that he (Socrates) was the smartest man in Greece. Socrates thought this was hilarious, but not wanting to contradict a god (Apollo worked through Delphi), he went out into Athens and started asking people some pretty basic questions about their areas of expertise.
It transpired that they didn’t know anything, but they thought they did. Socrates, on the other hand, didn’t know anything but was aware of the fact that he didn’t know anything. And he therefore felt that the god was referring to this when he pronounced Socrates the smartest man in Greece.
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Answer: From the perspective of Socrates, any knowledge or information he did have was likely to be insignificant (or even completely false) compared to how much was left to be discovered.
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