Analysis of Socrates in Aristhphane´s Clouds and Plato´s...

Socrates was a pompous man who believed that he was wiser than most, if not all, Athenian men of his time. He is also credited as one of the fathers of western philosophy, his own philosophy revolving around the welfare of one’s soul and reflecting on what the good life was. He was told by an oracle that he was the wisest of men and spent a great deal of time trying to prove it false, he decided that he was considered wise for accepting that he knew nothing, and never claimed to know anything that he questioned. In Plato’s text â€Å"Apology† Socrates is depicted as a man who was arrogant, hypercritical of others, and fixed on his ways no matter the consequences. He had the qualities of a man who saw no error in what he was doing because he†¦show more content†¦When Strepsiades’ lack of education was made evident by his misunderstanding of the simple topics that Socrates tried to teach him originally Socrates did not just give up on trying to educ ate him, but instead found something that he did know well and taught him more about it. Then encourages him to do some internal contemplating on his own before learning more (Clouds 637-395). This example of Socrates good character shows him not giving up on a student who was not quite cut out for learning such topics that him and the other sophists studied. Instead he seems to hope that any man, even those who weren’t meant to be educated, could learn if they so had the desire to. Although he was unable to truly teach or help Strepsiades learn the inferior argument that he wanted to learn to avoid his debts, Socrates still did try to help him understand. Even though Socrates knew that Strepsiades was not at a level where he could fully comprehend the lesson, Socrates still tried to help him get into the right mindset of thinking that would help him to solve his problems (Clouds 740-780). This led to Socrates coming to the conclusion that Strepsiades was too old, lacked th e memory, and was too set in his old ways to learn this new lesson himself. In turn Pheidippides was sent in place of his father to learn the inferior argument, and was successfully taught by Socrates this time. The way that Socrates helped, or tried to