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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Socrates

why so many hated him

Socrates: 469 BC - 399 BC

from https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/

Plato’s Socrates moves next to explain the reason he has acquired the reputation he has and why so many citizens dislike him.  The oracle at Delphi told Socrates’ friend Chaerephon, “no one is wiser than Socrates” (Apology 21a).  Socrates explains that he was not aware of any wisdom he had, and so set out to find someone who had wisdom in order to demonstrate that the oracle was mistaken. 

He first went to the politicians but found them lacking wisdom. 

He next visited the poets and found that, though they spoke in beautiful verses, they did so through divine inspiration, not because they had wisdom of any kind. 

Finally, Socrates found that the craftsmen had knowledge of their own craft, but that they subsequently believed themselves to know much more than they actually did...  

In showing many influential figures in Athens that they did not know what they thought they did, Socrates came to be despised in many circles.