'IGNORANCE IS THE ONLY EVIL'

By Alex P. Vidal

"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." -- SOCRATES

Socrates is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy. He never wrote a single line. Yet he is one of the philosophers who has had the greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the dramatic nature of his death.

Socrates thought that a philosopher is someone who recognizes that there is a lot he does not understand, and is troubled by it. In that sense, he is still wiser than all those who brag about their knowledge of things they really know nothing about. 

NOTHING

Socrates himself said, "One thing only I know and that is that I know nothing."

But while he constantly questioned the extent of his own knoweldge (a method that Rene Descartes was to employ some 2,000 years later), Socrates believed that it is possible for man to obtain absolute truths about the Universe. He felt that it was necessary to establish a solid foundation for our knowledge, a foundation which he believed lay in man's reason. With his unshakable faith in human reason, Socrates was decidedly a rationalist.

In the year 399 B.C., Socrates was accused of "introducing new gods (the "divine inner voices" he claimed to hear in his head) and corrupting youth, as well as not believing in the accepted gods.

Although the government of Athens was one of the world's earliest democracies, Socrates (470 B.C.-399 B.C), on the other hand, let everyone know he believed it was better for the state to be ruled by a single person, whom he described as "the one who knows."

THREAT

Some regarded Socrates' outspoken views as a threat to the very fabric of Athenean life. Worried by his anti-democratic influence over the many young aristocrats (including Plato) involved in the Socratic think-tank, a jury of 501 found him guilty by a slender majority and was forced to drink the poison hemlock.