Extracts from an article by Quentin de la Bedoyere: Catholic Herald 7.4.17
......He held that to write things down was to close the argument. But he taught that knowledge was a dynamic process: we can never claim to know the truth and the best we can do is to recognise our ignorance. In that way, we beat down the barriers to knowledge.
.... His superior wisdom, he concluded, was that he knew the extent of his own ignorance.
Socrates was not popular. Going around pointing out people's errors is not a recipe for popularity. Indeed, even his friends could find him aggravating as he picked holes in their common-sense ideas. And he did so simply by asking questions, which obliged his victim to discover his errors for himself.
Socrates's great enemies were the sophists. These were the pseudo-intellectuals who went around Athens selling their false truths. We have plenty of these nowadays on our media..........The general and public view was that Socrates was a comic old idiot, ...... capable of "making the weaker argument defeat the stronger".
...... But we like our heroes, and recognising Socrates as the prophet of moral virtue...... is an indulgence I am happy to grant my self.
Me too; I like the sound of him!
