"Our age, with its habit of instantly judging a man or woman's life based on the fragmentary and proverbial sound bite, is often impatient with detail, nuances, depth. It takes a certain generosity of spirit too--sadly a rare virtue in our age--to admire the moral quality of a person when one disagrees with his or her ideas. In my experience, that generosity of spirit is nevertheless almost always rewarded. I have repeatedly been delighted to find large kernals of decency and integrity in the lives of people with whom, on political issues in particular, I have strongly disagreed."
With that as a preface, I'd like to take on Socrates's shadow. As with many of us, Socrates' vices were often the flip side of the coin of his strength. Behind the picture of a man called to expose the foolishness of man's pretensions to wisdom emerges another less dignified picture - the picture that must have dominated in the minds of those who condemned him.
- "Why ever do some people enjoy spending a great deal of time
with me?....they enjoy hearing men cross-examined who think
they are wise, and are not; indeed that is not unpleasant."
Apology - "Besides this, the young men, those who have most leisure,
sons of the most wealthy houses, follow me of their own
accord, delighted to hear people cross-examined; and they
often imitate me, they try themselves to cross-examine, and
then I think, they find plenty of people who believe they
know something, when they know little or nothing. So in
consequence those who are cross-examined are angry with me
instead of themselves."
Apology - Aristophanes describes his walk as a swagger. Not a
difficult thing to imagine of the man who, when convicted,
proposed that his punishment be free meals for life at
public expense.
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