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How can I walk in the shoes of Socrates?

The following is an attempt to develop a means for us to empathesize with Socrates.

Many decades ago a professor of philosophy told me that “philosophy is about radically critical self-consciousness”. It was thirty years later that this statement began to make sense to me.

To become critically self-conscious is to tread on the path to a philosophical frame of mind. If you treat this imaginary problem that I lay out here as more than thoughtless past time you might begin to comprehend what that philosophy professor thinks philosophy is about.

Imagine that you and a thousand other people live deep in the isolated and frozen interior of Alaska. Imagine further that every one of you had been born colorblind and none had any idea what color was. Imagine further that you are an exercise nut and discovered, quite by accident, that if you performed a certain sequence of exercises you developed color perception.

What would you do?

If you tried to tell the others what would they do? Would you be able to convince any one of them to follow your example? How would you explain to them what you had accomplished?

Would they eventually kill you like the Athenians did Socrates?

Unfortunately "began" is the only word of value in that statement. Try focusing on the "sense" and the "me" if you want to get out of the starting gate !

Pauline epiphanies from your "Good Books" won't wash.

BTW the answer to the Socrates question is for you to take the hemlock forthwith !

On the dozen or so forums on which coberst posted this question, four respondents have told him to take the hemlock, five have said Socrates wore sandals not shoes, and two have declined to "walk in the shoes" because of Socrates' pederastic and anti-democratic character traits.

I don't think you'll make it in the emulating Socrates stakes coberst. So I suggest you have a nice hot cup of tea, and a lie-down in a dark room for a while. It may possibly help a bit, and hasten the evolving thirty year epiphany!

Athenians killed Socrates because people are closed-minded. If Socrates made a speech in our society, I don't think people in this age would kill him. People in this age are more developed and know whom to listen and whom to not listen. No one has ever died because of publishing an idea. It's a thing of the past.

Oh Valeria, I so wish I agreed with you! Ask Salmon Rushie what can happen!!

Where is the "our society" in which all views are welcomed and people of contrary ones will not be vilified and, yes, sometimes, maybe not in your paradise, but certainly on this planet, driven to suicide for expressing an idea?

Theo van Gogh

Anna Politkovskaya

Alexander Litvinenko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_journalists

perhaps Ayaan Hirsi Ali soon enough

and Roger Köppel

and maybe Kurt Westergaard

There are sanctimonious murderers in the world who would do it for the best of reasons - no better way to show one's love of God and country than to commit a murder.

Generalities don't apply here!

The issues are:

1. Why was Socrates condemned ?
Because he was a threat to the fledgling democracy of Athens. Two of his followers had already attempted coups.

2. Why did he die ?
Because he was too pompous to flee through the "open door" to exile.

1. Does coberst emulate Socrates?
In pomposity yes...in intellect no

4. coberst has been "exiled" for pomposity alone from half a dozen forums. Intellectual threats didn't come into it !