![]() ![]() But, unlike these others, Socrates realized he was unwise. ![]() Poets, priests, and politicians were just as unwise as Socrates. The wisdom of Socrates, what made him the wisest of all, consisted of his knowing he was not wise. Could not be got around, got over or gone under. The old man was an indubitable manifestation of inspired reasoning. Politicians and poets and priests, among them. They followed him in the streets of Athens and exulted to watch as, with irony bordering on clairvoyant insight, he methodically deconstructed the false ideas of those who would engage him. The old man would not call himself their teacher. There was very little uproar over this declaration, according to the accounting we have from Plato (who was in the courtroom), but over other declarations, much uproar.Ī coterie of Socrates’ admirers was in attendance. ![]() This voice, he told the court at Athens, never once told him what he must do, it only told him what he must not do. This voice turned him away from honors and from titles. Socrates told the court at Athens that there had been a voice, a god, with him, since childhood. Using Socrates’ trial as his point of departure, the author spins out a meditation on wisdom, the divine, justice, grace, and desire like “an arrow in the chest.” “We cannot go backward any more than we can hide from the light,” he writes, “so we must make Eden where we are.” ![]()
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