The Apology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

The Apology - Essay Example 33. This paper evaluates Socrates’s reaction. An important philosophical issue raised here is whether the teachers can charge the students for their service of transferring knowledge to them?, because charging students for teaching them was one of the accusations made on Socrates. 34. Another philosophical issue is that if only the believers who consider their wisdom worth nothing are wise, then how do atheists compare with the believers who think that they are wise? Finally, if an individual is an expert in a field, can he be considered wise even if he has no expertise in other fields at all? According to Socrates, there is nothing wrong with a teacher taking money for passing knowledge onto the students. 34. Socrates has drawn upon the examples of numerous philosophers and educationalists like the Gorgias of Leontium who were paid teachers. 34. According to Socrates, atheists and believers who think that their wisdom is worthy belong to the same category of unwise people. 36. It is not about the presence or lack of belief in gods as gods are out of the equation. Socrates does not consider an individual who is expert in a specific field but not in others wise. 37. Socrates’s reaction seems to be based on a self concocted story. It seems like a joke that an oracle declared Socrates as the wisest person on Earth. Socrates might not have found them but we know many people who underestimate their knowledge even when they know much more than others do. Secondly, belief in Socrates’s story necessitates an assumption that Socrates was a know-it-all kind of person. Probably the poets had made the correct interpretations and explanations of their poetry but Socrates was too naà ¯ve to understand that depth and in turn, declared that the poets did not understand their own poetry. Although I do not quite believe in the story Socrates narrates in his defense, yet I support