Dismantling Of Wisdom

"The Dismantling of Wisdom"

"Mommy what's this? Where does it come from? What does it do? Why? Why? Why? Why is it just like that?", this series of questions are heard everyday throughout this country and even abroad in many different languages, from many different little voices as an attempt to understand. The desire to understand something often turns into a quest for knowledge and wisdom that leads one to different sources with various questions in hopes that our desire to understand will be fulfilled. However, in Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates the reader finds Socrates asking questions not to gain knowledge or wisdom, but to dismantle wisdom.

Through his constant questioning and challenging of thoughts and responses Socrates is attempting to reveal to the subject of his questions that they are not truly as wise as they believe themselves to be. The similarity of the dialogue between Socrates with Euthyphro and that of a parent and their child is astounding when the end result of each dialogue is analyzed. At the end of Socrates dialogue with Euthyphro, Euthyphro is frustrated and will no longer agree to try to explain the definition of piety to Socrates. In addition towards the end of the dialogue Euthyphro accuses Socrates of being Daedalus; thereby inferring that no matter what he says Socrates finds away of twisting them around and/or invalidating them. Euthyphro's response of frustration and unwillingness to continue on answering questions is almost identical with that of most parents once they've gotten to the fifth why and have realized that they have exhausted either their realm of knowledge or their capability to explain the answer.

The difference between the dialogue of Socrates and Euthyphro, and that of a parent and their child lies in the intentions of the inquisitor. From the outset of the dialogue it is obvious that Socrates motive is to reveal that Euthyphro does not have a clear understanding of piety, because if he did he would not be prosecuting his own father. Socrates questioning regarding the relationship between Euthyphro and his father's victim in it self illuminates disapproval for him prosecuting his father on the behalf of a non-relative. However, this dialogue develops from Euthyphro's declaration that he has accurate knowledge of the divine, and piety and impiety which leads him to believe that he is just in his decision to prosecute his father. It is interesting to me that Socrates choose to target Euthyphro's wisdom in regards to piety versus his wisdom about the divine, which seems like the easier target out of the two. How could Euthyphro claim to have accurate knowledge about deities that he has not seen or experienced in close council? Euthyphro's knowledge in regards to the divine must stem from the things he has been taught and not necessarily personal encounters and would therefore seem like an obvious target for scrutiny, because it can be challenged based on the accuracy of his sources. However, on some level I admire Socrates for going for the term that would appear to be harder target as far as being able to dismantle his level of knowledge wisdom about piety and its meaning. And although in this dialogue Socrates appears to have genuine desire to understand piety in The Apology he explains both his reasoning for dismantling the false apparent wisdom of others and the method by which he proceeds.

Socrates attributes his questioning of the wise men of Athens to the oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon that no man was wiser than Socrates. After hearing this Socrates began to go around to wise men hoping to prove the oracle wrong by proving someone else to be wiser than he. However, while continuing about his queries he did not find anyone wiser than himself and in fact became disturbed by the wisdom lacked by these men. I find that life is still very much so a mirror of this in that it is often people who think they are wise or boast about what they know are often proven to be deficient, whereas people who refrain from boasting and are quick to admit that they don't know as much as they wish they could are the people who normally prove to be inexhaustible resources from which to gain wisdom. Even if the wisdom learned is that it is alright to admit to not knowing something. In The Apology Socrates states that his public dismantling of the wisdom of wise men is what has brought him to trial and that the case against him is solely based off of slander created by the men whom he embarrassed.

The aspect of Socrates dealings with these wise men that I find to be fascinating is that once he tried to help them to see that they were not wise they got upset with him. This situation is one that I believe could be used in ministry to display to people their flawed reactions to finding out that they are incorrect about something. This could be used in both marriage counseling and conflict resolution, because many disagreements stem from miscommunications or misinformation. Using Plato's Euthyphro and The Apology based on Socrates people could learn to both explain their points lucidly so someone else can clearly understand them as well teach them to admit their shortcomings by presenting a picture of how not to behave. I believe Euthyphro could also be used to expose and perhaps clarify incorrect views about the relationship between God and humanity. At one point in Euthyphro Socrates says that "To sacrifice is to make a gift to the gods, whereas to pray is to beg from the gods?" ; in order to seek clarification from Euthyphro. Although Plato was not yet dealing with a thought process centered on monotheism I believe this point is one that many Christians today would admit to agreeing with. This piece of text could be used as a starting point from which