The Model of Citizenship We Need

Many well - known philosophers (Kant, Russell, Popper, etc.) agree that Socrates is the one who changed mankind, for which history is divided into two periods before Socrates and after him. The change occurred when Socrates decided not to trust the Delphi Oracle that he had told his friend Kaerf that there was no one smarter than Socrates.

This éincident between two friends in philosophy is known as the “the great Socratic variable”. In this account, Socrates represents the philosophy that refuses to accept unverified findings as well, even if they come from the prophetic ones. It is known that the “value has only one life examined ) and analyzed”.

It seems that everything that has happened after Socrates is in the field of philosophical and political thought. It's just the input of his thoughts. This is because even today we continue to refer to his philosophical views of individualism, about the role of education in society, the necessity of respecting judicial laws, etc.

Of course, in a brief scripture like this, it is impossible to make a proper analysis of these subjects of outstanding value. However, two of them have always seemed intriguing, which to this day best describe our currentity - the subject on human citizenship and wisdom.

The main keepers of the democratic movement of Athens, Anita, Meletus and Licos accused Socrat of two sins: deliberately refusing to believe the gods, as well as of the degrading or degrading teachings he taught young people. In fact, though, according to philosopher Carl Popper, formal accusations were different. The philosopher had directly conflicted with intellectuals of his day, represented by playwright Aristotle. These accused Socrates of opposing the spirit and of the thinking of the day as an enemy of the then prevalent model of citizenship.

Inspired by the epic works of Homer and Hessiod (which for the time represent what the Bible and the Koran today represent), young Athenians were educated by a model of citizenship based on virtues of war - distinguished in battle, muscle, and martial skill - to die when you ask for “kaza”.

Socrates viewed this concept as unworthy of worship. Most important, home heroes took them as weak civic models; described them as codeless, immoral people, given to much money; ignorant and passionate, full of anger and blind desire for punishment. He proposed another civic model that was contrary to the traditional homeric concept: a model based on rational and philosophical virtues, best represented by the individual who relies on the powers of the rational mind, the knowledge, in the power of his independent judgment. This citizen's elite should make up wise and honest intellectuals. To Socrates, being wise and endowed with knowledge is not the same. He was skeptical about such a taught person as he was perceived in his time by the sophists. The kind of wisdom he had in mind was different: our awareness about that “as little as we know”, as well as our awareness that we are limited in knowledge. Above all, for Socrates, I knew was not a gift from the gods but acquired and can be absorbed by anyone endowed with universal human intelligence. Those who do not understand it manifest ignorance, and they show how little knowledge has affected them.

In fact, awareness of our ignorance is an attribute of the true scientific spirit. There are people who still do not understand that spirit because they identify wisdom with the charlatanism of someone who claims to know everything. There are still people who are trapped in pre-Socratic views of wisdom and science. Many of us today also equate the wise with the amount of knowledge that someone possesses rather than with our awareness of our ignorance and intellectual integrity.

Socrates believed heavily in intellectual honesty and wisdom. Honest and wise intellectual, he says, has only one weapon - the courage to object, not to things that are unfair and immoral. He himself had set the example of a abstaining, disobedient intellectual who says no.

intellectual courage has made him the first martyr of knowledge the model of the unique intellectual who is able to die, not for the populist cause, but for the truth.