Discussed this passage in Western Civ. Today. It’s very interesting…
From Plato’s The Apology contained in The Last Days of Socrates.
What’s going on: Socrates has been summoned to the judicial courts in Athens on the charge of heresy and corrupting the youth of the city. He claims that his teaching is only his assisting the oracle of Delphi in proving that he is the wisest of all Athenians. This isn’t as prideful or arrogant as it sounds. Upon hearing what the oracle said about him, Socrates disagrees and begins to search for those that have to be wiser than he. But, he finds that the oracle is correct. There is no one wiser that he can find. But, he begins to think, maybe he is wiser because he will admit that he does not know everything and the others pretend to. So now it has become an experiment for him. The poets are his second group for his experiment…
“I want you to think of my adventures as a cycle of labours undertaken to establish the truth of the oracle once for all. After I had finished with the politicians I turned to the poets, dramatic, lyric, and all the rest, in the belief that here I should expose myself as a comparative ignoramus. I used to pick up what I thought were some of their most polished works and questioned them closely about the meaning of what they had written, in the hope of incidentally enlarging my own knowledge. Well, gentlemen, I hesitate to tell you the truth, but it must be told. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have explained those poems better than their actual authors. So I soon made up my mind about poets too: I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. It seemed clear to me that the poets were in much the same case; and I also observed that the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant. …”
See? Interesting huh? All you fellow poets out there think about this and gimmie some feedback…
…………………Good Providence
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3 comments:
I'm confused about who was trying to decide who was the wisest. Was it Socrates trying to prove himself to be the wisest, or was it Socrates trying to prove the Delphi was the wisest? That series of sentences confused me...?
wow...plenty to chew on...
I can see what he is saying and in some ways I possibly agree...
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