How does socrates define wisdom

He had a chance to say sorry and argue his way out of the trial. But Socrates had to be edgy and instead told the jury that he had done nothing wrong.

In fact, they should actually be showering him with gifts and giving him free meals for the rest of his life for his dutiful service. He had a chance to escape death if he ran away and promised to lived a quiet life, not annoying any more people.

His friends begged him to take this option, but Socrates argued his way out of that and actually convinced his friend to agree that he should drink the hemlock honorably instead of trying to escape his death. We can learn humility from Socrates. He was never satisfied with what he knew and did not let the people around him be satisfied either. He told them to examine every part of their lives, and question everything everyday.

The key to attaining wisdom is to admit your ignorance. It seems paradoxical because we believe that being wise has something to do with acquiring vast amounts of knowledge. We tend to group the words knowledge and wisdom together, which leads us to confusing the two terms as synonyms. If I had to personify the two words, I would say that the Sophists would characterize knowledge and Socrates would characterize wisdom.

The sophists were prideful in their knowledge and taught Athenians ways to improve their rhetoric and debating skills in exchange for money. The more knowledge they accumulated, the smarter they believed they were. They thought that the more knowledge they accumulated, the more they understood the objective nature of the world. Socrates, on the other hand, realized that the more he accumulated knowledge, the more he realized that he knew nothing. He saw through the arrogance of the Sophists and saw through their claims to know everything.

The Sophists were considered wise to the untrained eyes of the average Athenian, but Socrates exposed them every time he challenged them. I want to be more like Socrates. I want to question the world and myself constantly, trying to understand and see through the illusions that we have placed for ourselves. The first way to do that is to admit my ignorance in all things. To think and examine is to live.

If you want to ask me a question or simply want to talk: ohc. Sign in. Socrates — What Makes Someone Wise? Socratic wisdom is a sort of humility: it simply means being aware of how little one really knows; how uncertain one's beliefs are; and how likely it is that many of them may turn out to be mistaken. In the "Apology," Socrates doesn't deny that true wisdom — a real insight into the nature of reality — is possible; but he seems to think it is enjoyed only by the gods, not by human beings.

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Wise people tend to acknowledge their fallibility, and wise people are reflective, introspective, and tolerant of uncertainty. Any acceptable theory of wisdom ought to be compatible with such traits. However, those traits are not, in and of themselves, definitive of wisdom. Socrates can be interpreted as providing an epistemic accuracy, rather than an epistemic humility, theory of wisdom. The poets, politicians, and craftsmen all believe they have knowledge about topics on which they are considerably ignorant.

Socrates, one might argue, believes he has knowledge when, and only when, he really does have knowledge. Perhaps wise people restrict their confidence to propositions for which they have knowledge or, at least, to propositions for which they have excellent justification.

Perhaps Socrates is better interpreted as having held an Epistemic Accuracy Theory such as:. According to EA1 , a wise person is accurate about what she knows and what she does not know. If she really knows p , she believes she knows p.

And, if she believes she knows p , then she really does know p. EA1 is consistent with the idea that Socrates accepts that he is wise and with the idea that Socrates does have some knowledge.

EA1 is a plausible interpretation of the view Socrates endorses, but it is not a plausible answer in the search for an understanding of wisdom.

Wise people can make mistakes about what they know. Socrates, Maimonides, King Solomon, Einstein, Goethe, Gandhi, and every other candidate for the honor of wisdom have held false beliefs about what they did and did not know.

It is easy to imagine a wise person being justified in believing she possesses knowledge about some claim, and also easy to imagine that she could be shown to be mistaken, perhaps long after her death.

If EA1 is true, then just because a person believes she has knowledge when she does not, she is not wise. That seems wrong. It is hard to imagine that anyone at all is, or ever has been, wise if EA1 is correct.

We could revise the Epistemic Accuracy Theory to get around this problem. We might only require that a wise person's belief is highly justified when she believes she has knowledge. That excuses people with bad epistemic luck. EA2 gets around the problem with EA1. The Socratic Method challenges one to produce reasons for one's view. When Socrates' interlocutor is left dumbfounded, or reduced to absurdity, Socrates rests his case.

One might argue that through his questioning, Socrates reveals not that his opponents lack knowledge because their beliefs are false, but he demonstrates that his opponents are not justified in holding the views they profess to know.

Since the craftsmen, poets, and politicians questioned by Socrates all fail his interrogation, they were shown, one might argue, to have claimed to have knowledge when their beliefs were not even justified.

Many philosophers would hesitate to endorse this interpretation of what is going on in The Apology. They would argue that a failure to defend one's beliefs from Socrates' relentless questioning does not show that a person is not justified in believing a proposition.

Many philosophers would argue that having very good evidence, or forming a belief via a reliable process, would be sufficient for justification. Proving, or demonstrating to an interrogator, that one is justified is another matter, and not necessary for simply being justified.

Socrates, some might argue, shows only that the craftsmen, poets, and politicians cannot defend themselves from his questions. He does not show, one might argue, that the poets, politicians, and craftsmen have unjustified beliefs. Since we gain very little insight into the details of the conversation in this dialogue, it would be unfair to dismiss this interpretation on these grounds.

Perhaps Socrates did show, through his intense questioning, that the craftsmen, poets, and politicians formed and held their beliefs without adequate evidence or formed and held them through unreliable belief forming processes. Socrates only reports that they did not know all that they professed to know. Since we do not get to witness the actual questioning as we do in Plato's other dialogues, we should not reject EA2 as an interpretation of Socrates' view of wisdom in The Apology.

Regardless of whether EA2 is Socrates' view, there are problems for EA2 as an account of what it means to be wise. Even if EA2 is exactly what Socrates meant, some philosophers would argue that one could be justified in believing a proposition, but not realize that she is justified. If that is a possible situation for a wise person to be in, then she might be justified, but fail to believe she has knowledge. Could a wise person be in such a situation, or is it necessary that a wise person would always recognize the epistemic value of what he or she believes?

There is no need to resolve this issue here because EA1 and EA2 fall prey to another, much less philosophically thorny and controversial problem. EA1 and EA2 suffer from a similar, and very serious, problem. Imagine a person who has very little knowledge. Suppose further, that the few things she does know are of little or no importance.

She could be the sort of person that nobody would ever go to for information or advice. Such a person could be very cautious and believe that she knows only what she actually knows. Although she would have accurate beliefs about what she does and does not know, she would not be wise. This shows that EA1 is flawed.

As for EA2 , imagine that she believes she knows only what she is actually justified in believing. She is still not wise. It should be noted, however, that although accuracy theories do not provide an adequate account of wisdom, they reveal an important insight. Perhaps a necessary condition for being wise is that wise people think they have knowledge only when their beliefs are highly justified. Or, even more simply, perhaps wise people have epistemically justified, or rational, beliefs.

An alternative approach to wisdom focuses on the more positive idea that wise people are very knowledgeable people. There are many views in the historical and contemporary philosophical literature on wisdom that have knowledge, as opposed to humility or accuracy, as at least a necessary condition of wisdom.

Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics VI, ch. All of these views very clearly distinguish knowledge from expertise on a particular subject. Aristotle distinguished between two different kinds of wisdom, theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom.

For Aristotle, theoretical wisdom involves knowledge of necessary, scientific, first principles and propositions that can be logically deduced from them. Aristotle's idea that scientific knowledge is knowledge of necessary truths and their logical consequences is no longer a widely accepted view. Thus, for the purposes of this discussion, I will consider a theory that reflects the spirit of Aristotle's view on theoretical wisdom, but without the controversy about the necessary or contingent nature of scientific knowledge.

Moreover, it will combine scientific knowledge with other kinds of factual knowledge, including knowledge about history, philosophy, music, literature, mathematics, etc. Consider the following, knowledge based, theory of wisdom:. According to WFK , a wise person is a person who knows a lot about the universe and our place in it. She would have extensive knowledge about the standard academic subjects.

There are many positive things to say about WFK. WFK nicely distinguishes between narrow expertise and knowledge of the mundane, from the important, broad, and general kind of knowledge possessed by wise people. The main problem for WFK is that some of the most knowledgeable people are not wise. Although they have an abundance of very important factual knowledge, they lack the kind of practical know-how that is a mark of a wise person.

Wise people know how to get on in the world in all kinds of situations and with all kinds of people. Extensive factual knowledge is not enough to give us what a wise person knows. There is more to wisdom than intelligence and knowledge of science and philosophy or any other subject matter. Aristotle is well aware of the limitations of what he calls theoretical wisdom. However, rather than making improvements to something like WFK , Aristotle distinguishes it as one kind of wisdom. Other philosophers would be willing to abandon WFK , that is, claim that it provides insufficient conditions for wisdom, and add on what is missing.

Aristotle has a concept of practical wisdom that makes up for what is missing in theoretical wisdom. Knowledge of contingent facts that are useful to living well is required in Aristotle's practical wisdom. Thus, for Aristotle, practical wisdom requires knowing, in general, how to live well. Many philosophers agree with Aristotle on this point. However, many would not be satisfied with the conclusion that theoretical wisdom is one kind of wisdom and practical wisdom another. Other philosophers, including Linda Zagzebski , agree that there are these two types of wisdom that ought to be distinguished.

Let's proceed, without argument, on the assumption that it is possible to have a theory of one, general, kind of wisdom. Wisdom, in general, many philosophers would argue, requires practical knowledge about living.

What Aristotle calls theoretical wisdom, many would contend, is not wisdom at all. Aristotle's theoretical wisdom is merely extensive knowledge or deep understanding. Nicholas Maxwell , in his argument to revolutionize education, argues that we should be teaching for wisdom, which he sharply distinguishes from standard academic knowledge.

Similar points are raised by Robert Sternberg and Andrew Norman Robert Nozick holds a view very similar to Aristotle's theory of practical wisdom, but Nozick is trying to capture the essence of wisdom, period. He is not trying to define one, alternative, kind of wisdom. More recently, Valerie Tiberius has developed a practical view that connects wisdom with well being, requiring, among other things, that a wise person live the sort of life that he or she could sincerely endorse upon reflection.