Was Socrates right?

[enchanted]

Socrates said "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".

Is this true? Is this a good way to think? Can anything really be known? 

What are your thoughts? 

[Leo Gura]

Technically it is not correct. There are many things you can know. If that wasn't the case you could not survive.

But even beyond the practical stuff, you can know metaphysical stuff. Like, you can know that God exists.

But there is also some deeper truth which his statement is pointing to, which is that knowledge is a very limited thing and at the metaphysical level you don't really know what anything is.

Edited May 13 by Leo Gura

[Ishanga]

54 minutes ago, enchanted said:

Socrates said "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".

Is this true? Is this a good way to think? Can anything really be known? 

What are your thoughts? 

Identify with Ignorance as Ignorance is boundless, knowledge is limited so if You identify with something limited you will be limited too...

You know how to survive and accumulate more of what You are lacking in, ppl today accumulate ppl, places and things and experience, because they lack in real Experience and Clarity of what they really are...

[enchanted]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Technically it is not correct. There are many things you can know. If that wasn't the case you could not survive.

But even beyond the practical stuff, you can know metaphysical stuff. Like, you can know that God exists.

But there is also some deeper truth which his statement is pointing to, which is that knowledge is a very limited thing and at the metaphysical level you don't really know what anything is.

Thanks for the reply !

God is all there is.

Yes, metaphysically speaking nothing can be known because there is nothing to compare all of reality to. 

Edited May 14 by enchanted

[RendHeaven]

Socrates (as described in Plato's dialogues) had a genius-tier grasp on Divine Love, Divine Intelligence, and the role of Relativity within the Absolute.

Not merely in terms of technical understanding and speech, he certainly had no shortage of direct-immersion with Cosmic Absolutes for he would become "Divinely possessed" with ecstatic madness (Source: Plato's Phaedrus, which is my favorite book of all time).

So it's not really accurate to reduce his character to "he knew nothing and that made him wise."

Socrates' urban legend quote in effect says: "I know that I know nothing"

This line is taken from Plato's Apology. Socrates elaborates that each individual has his own unique avenue of wisdom: everybody out-skills someone else at something, which is a notable instance of experienced-discernment (aka wisdom). So everyone is wise in their own way relative to others. However, the "folly" of the masses is to then assume that your specific expertise gives you license to claim experience and discernment in other areas where you are truthfully ignorant.

Socrates embraces his ignorance in order to avoid the folly of the masses, but that's not to say that this is necessarily the only true wisdom.

Most accurately, Socrates is claiming that epistemic humility is the preferable path of the soul because any alternative attitude eventually falls into untruth (which has a self-evident slew of consequences).

8 hours ago, enchanted said:

Socrates said "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".

So no, this is a misquote. But good question!

Edited May 14 by RendHeaven

[Soul Flight]

I think it is true in the sense you must abandon everything and surrender your life to god, the monad, the dao, the Brahman, etc. The only way to live is to die before your death. Accepting your ignorance is like a death. At some point you must admit you were wrong about everything. Embrace humility. Let go of the Newtonian, dualistic, materialist, cosmos and accept the mystery and unknown.

[tvaeli]

I used to say "I know everything and nothing", because on some level of me, it seems everything is already known, but in some level of me, I think it could be known in much more enlightened way and *all* my knowledge sometimes transcends and changes, the whole world image shifting - it's the inner paradigm shift, by which every thing gets enlightened in a different way.

I think in Buddhist terms Socrates was pointing to the ego-consciousness, as he was critizising the old men, who lived traditional lives punctually and knew about food, marriage, building the house etc., but they did not think this all could have a deeper meaning. Such people sometimes seem meaningless, and you can question their truth. When you get enlightened, this all shifts it's meaning and as you feel it more deeply, you slightly change all those things. But this happens more and more. Socrates was western intellectual, so he probably meant you should do this by western philosophy - to question your values. This is a very basic level of ego-consiousness, where you know all the "good things" in life, and all the "responsibilities", and you follow them all the time as a fact stated a long time ago - then, slowly, you start doing things, which are against deeper meanings of the very same things.

[Oppositionless]

On 5/13/2024 at 3:36 PM, Leo Gura said:

Technically it is not correct. There are many things you can know. If that wasn't the case you could not survive.

But even beyond the practical stuff, you can know metaphysical stuff. Like, you can know that God exists.

But there is also some deeper truth which his statement is pointing to, which is that knowledge is a very limited thing and at the metaphysical level you don't really know what anything is.

Would you agree that knowledge is an appearance within consciousness? And that because it is an appearance it can't adequately describe the consciousness it appears within?

[Breakingthewall]

Socrates was wrong, I know everything: I am.