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Dear Socrates

Dear Socrates: A Symposium on Wisdom

Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.

Dear Socrates,

I know what knowledge is, but what do you mean by wisdom? If it is not the same as knowledge, is it intelligence like IQ, or is it perhaps some personality trait like modesty or prudence?

Yours,
Dave Henley

Dear Dave,

I am glad that you know what knowledge is, for even that has me stumped.

But let us suppose we know, for example, that the Earth is shaped like a ball, which was indeed my premonition just before I drank the hemlock. Well, I have since learned that my dear Plato’s able student, Aristotle, came up with a demonstration for it. What was his proof? Just that, during an eclipse of the Moon, the shadow that progressively covers it is curved; and since that shadow is projected by the Earth, the Earth itself must be curved, or ‘round’, or spherical … in other words, shaped like a ball.

Very nice.

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