ENGL 298 B: Intermediate Writing Social Sciences   Autumn 2011, University of Washington

“…there is a man called Socrates, a wise man…”(22b) The word “wise” is an important part of the text for the following reasons. In the book the word plays a similar role to Socrates in Athens. It gets you to think of what you know and what you pretend to know. In the text we gain perspective of the message Socrates is trying to convey to us through the word wise. He tells us that a man who thinks of himself as wise is not, but a man who is constantly seeking to gain knowledge and understands that he is not wise, is wise. This word in the text to me is used sarcastically. Socrates finds out that the oracle considers him to be the wisest of men, because Socrates considers himself to be unknowledgeable. I find this humorous, because we would typically not consider someone who is unknowledgeable to be wise. To me wise means to consider yourself ignorant, but the less ignorant you become the wiser you are.

“…those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient…”(25e) The word “reputation” is also an important part of the text, because in Athens a good reputation was essential. Socrates interviewed many citizens of Athens with the highest reputation and during his public interviews he showed that these men did not deserve the reputation they had. Socrates used this word to show that reputation did not count for much. By eliminating the fear of questioning those with the highest reputation, he enabled the work he had done as the cities gadfly to be able to continue after he was gone. That is why his emphasis on the truth about people with high reputation was essential in the text. To me reputation is a vague word, because it is a guess of what a person is. If we rely on reputation, we run the risk of becoming unenlightened.