Stop! Don't Drink That! (The Sequel)

Ok so like I finished "The Hemlock Cup" and what did I learn? All Socrates quotes are, a bit like the Bible if you'll excuse the comparison, a second party reference. Sure, SOME of these admirers may have actually known Socrates...devotees, friends, enemies... but the gentleman never wrote anything down. Literacy in that period of Greek history was relatively high in city dwellers, so we might assume he simply choose NOT to write down his thoughts, trusting or not caring that others may/may not later write them down, for which all of us are the better that some did.

"I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

With this level of awareness Socrates could hardly have cared what was said about what HE was saying. And yet he's one of the most influential philosophers of any time. Likewise he noted about others that "they do not like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has been detected", a statement winning him a few detractors to be sure.

Condemned to death by the very people who had held him in so high regard he did take the sentence and swallow it, leaving us with "For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good."

What a way to go. Even if you believe in NO afterlife this parting thought works.