What kind of wisdom does socrates have

But what is good? What is his riddle? I am very conscious that I am not wise at all; what then does he mean by saying that I am the wisest? For surely he does not lie; it is not legitimate for him to do so.

I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a result he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. After that I proceeded systematically. And by the dog, gentlemen of the jury—for I must tell you the truth—I experienced something like this: in my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.

In this revelation, we have a potential resolution to the wisdom puzzle in The Apology. Although the story may initially appear to deliver a clear theory of wisdom, it is actually quite difficult to capture a textually accurate and plausible theory here. One interpretation is that Socrates is wise because he, unlike the others, believes he is not wise, whereas the poets, politicians, and craftsmen arrogantly and falsely believe they are wise.

This is a tempting and popular interpretation because Socrates certainly thinks he has shown that the epistemically arrogant poets, politicians, and craftsmen lack wisdom. Moreover, Socrates claims that he is not wise, and yet, if we trust the oracle, Socrates is actually wise. Upon careful inspection, H1 is not a reasonable interpretation of Socrates' view. Although Socrates does not boast of his own wisdom, he does believe the oracle.

If he was convinced that he was not wise, he would have rejected the oracle and gone about his business because he would not find any puzzle to unravel.

Clearly, he believes, on some level, that he is wise. The mystery is: what is wisdom if he has it and the others lack it? Socrates nowhere suggests that he has become unwise after believing the oracle. Thus, H1 is not an acceptable interpretation of Socrates' view.

Moreover, H1 is false. Many people are clear counterexamples to H1. Many people who believe they are not wise are correct in their self-assessment. Thus, the belief that one is not wise is not a sufficient condition for wisdom. Furthermore, it seems that the belief that one is not wise is not necessary for wisdom. It seems plausible to think that a wise person could be wise enough to realize that she is wise.

Too much modesty might get in the way of making good decisions and sharing what one knows. If one thinks Socrates was a wise person, and if one accepts that Socrates did, in fact, accept that he was wise, then Socrates himself is a counterexample to H1.

The belief that one is wise could be a perfectly well justified belief for a wise person. Having the belief that one is wise does not, in itself, eliminate the possibility that the person is wise.

Nor does it guarantee the vice of arrogance. We should hope that a wise person would have a healthy dose of epistemic self-confidence, appreciate that she is wise, and share her understanding of reality with the rest of us who could benefit from her wisdom. Thus, the belief that one is not wise is not required for wisdom. H1 focused on believing one is not wise.

Another version of the humility theory is worth considering. When Socrates demonstrates that a person is not wise, he does so by showing that the person lacks some knowledge that he or she claims to possess. Thus, one might think that Socrates' view could be better captured by focusing on the idea that wise people believe they lack knowledge rather than lacking wisdom.

That is, one might consider the following view:. Unfortunately, this interpretation is not any better than H1. It falls prey to problems similar to those that refuted H1 both as an interpretation of Socrates, and as an acceptable account of wisdom.

Moreover, remember that Socrates admits that the craftsmen do have some knowledge. Socrates might have considered them to be wise if they had restricted their confidence and claims to knowledge to what they actually did know about their craft. Their problem was that they professed to have knowledge beyond their area of expertise. The problem was not that they claimed to have knowledge. Before turning to alternative approaches to wisdom, it is worth mentioning another interpretation of Socrates that fits with the general spirit of epistemic humility.

One might think that what Socrates is establishing is that his wisdom is found in his realization that human wisdom is not a particularly valuable kind of wisdom. Only the gods possess the kind of wisdom that is truly valuable.

This is clearly one of Socrates' insights, but it does not provide us with an understanding of the nature of wisdom. It tells us only of its comparative value. Merely understanding this evaluative insight would not, for reasons similar to those discussed with HP1 and HP2 , make one wise. Humility theories of wisdom are not promising, but they do, perhaps, provide us with some important character traits associated with wise people.

Wise people, one might argue, possess epistemic self-confidence, yet lack epistemic arrogance. 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. 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. He answers that he has developed a reputation for wisdom--but a kind of limited, human wisdom, not the kind of super-human wisdom that would be required to speak authoritatively about matters such as the Presocratics and the sophists discuss. This reputation originated in a prophecy given by the oracle at Delphi to his friend Chaerephon. Chaerephon asked the omniscient oracle if there was anyone wiser than Socrates, and the priestess replied that there was not.

Socrates recounts how he took this news with great puzzlement: he knew the oracle could not lie, and yet he was only too aware that he had no particular wisdom or specialized knowledge at all. In order to test the oracle, or to prove it wrong, Socrates sought out and questioned Athenian men who were highly esteemed for wisdom.

First, he interrogated the politicians, then the poets, and then the skilled craftsmen. In questioning the politicians, he found that though they thought they were very wise, they did not in fact know much of anything at all. The poets, though they wrote great works of genius, seemed incapable of explaining them, and Socrates concluded that their genius came not from wisdom but from some sort of instinct or inspiration which was in no way connected to their intellect.

Furthermore, these poets seemed to think they could speak intelligently about all sorts of matters concerning which they were quite ignorant. In the craftsmen, Socrates found men who truly did have great wisdom in their craft, but invariably, they seemed to think that their expertise in one field allowed them to speak authoritatively in many other fields, about which they knew nothing.