The Time for Civil Dissent

Some of the greatest individuals throughout history have been people that were willing to stand up and defy the majority to express their opinions even though they might have been unpopular or even life threatening at the time. One of the best examples of this is the well known philosopher Socrates. He was a man that was willing to stand by his actions even though he knew that by going about this divine mission he was becoming increasingly unpopular and hated by the many powerful people in Athens that he was questioning. While Socrates thought that he was carrying out a divine mission and helping the citizens of Athens in his role as the gadfly of Athens I would disagree with this claim and say that he was doing more harm than good and actually hurting the people of the city instead of helping them. While I know that this might not be an opinion shared by many of other scholars I believe that the uncertainty of the period and the troubles that the city was undergoing at the time would have been better off without Socrates questioning. Athens would have been better served if Socrates had put his skills into bringing about unity and smoothing conflict instead of creating dissention and upheaval among the elite.

One of the driving forces behind Socrates never ending questioning of those people claiming to be Ð''wise' was his belief that it was divinely required of him to do so. It was this belief that can be seen as his prime motivation for his constant questioning and his refusal to give up his mission even though it was making him far more enemies than friends. He deduced that it was his appointed mission to show people that human knowledge was limited and that only the gods had true wisdom after hearing that the Oracle of Delphi had proclaimed that Ð''Socrates was the wisest one of them all' in response to the question of, "is their none wiser than Socrates". After hearing this proclamation Socrates decided to test out the Oracle's claim and see if he was truly wise by questioning the Ð''wise' and learned people that he met. Since many of these individuals were the rich and wealthy of the city, the resulting conversations between Socrates and themselves, in which he proved them to be unwise, made him many powerful enemies among the elite. After many conversations of this nature Socrates realized that the Oracle was telling the truth in regard to Ð''wisdom' because Socrates knew that he had limitations and didn't know everything where as