tfw I finally understand what he means by this
He's just being ironic.
what did he mean by that
I always thought he was referring to the fact that no one really knows why do we exist
>>1298913
But if he knows he knows nothing he knows something, therefore making the statement self contradicting.
>>1298913
I just thought it was a humbling statement.
The first step to learning is acknowledging you don't know shit about what you want to learn.
>>1298913
Socrates was told by the oracle at Delphi that he was the wisest man in Athens. So Socrates went on a quest to figure out what exactly that meant. He argued with all the people in Athens regarded as wise and BTFO their ideas, but he could never produce any answers himself. So he concluded that he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he knew nothing, while every other "wise" person claimed to know something, which in fact they did not.
>>1298995
iirc in the original story, he did not conclude that he was the wisest man in athens. That was just the assumption in the story. He stated that he was still ever looking for a man who was wiser than him, but had not yet found one. One reason for that is because everybody who he talked to who was considered wise would spout off about topics that they had no fucking clue about.
it's one of my favorite stories.
>>1298913
You realize that every answer you're given in life just brings up more questions.
You can simply declare something right but lot of people don't under fear of being wrong (though you'll have to make the call sooner or later).
A lot of guess work ITT instead of reading the Apology (and possibly the Symposium) where this shit is explained.
>>1298958
>ancient people had a concept of irony
Please this somber bastard probably just watched three kids die of plague ten minutes after he uttered this statement.
He was just an ancient crazy man who said some clever things his philosophy is totally antiquated and quaint.
Socrates was a literal nigger in its truest definition.
>>1299026
>ancient people didn't have a concept of irony
Gotta love when some ignorant kid embarasses himself while trying to sound smart by uttering an asinine comment.
>>1299026
that is an unbelievably stupid statement.
>>1299061
>increddiblely
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Socratic_irony
>This is "the dissimulation of ignorance practised by Socrates as a means of confuting an adversary".[55] Socrates would pretend to be ignorant of the topic under discussion, to draw out the inherent nonsense in the arguments of his interlocutors. The Chambers Dictionary defines it as "a means by which a questioner pretends to know less than a respondent, when actually he knows more".
>>1299000
so basically the internet
>>1299013
>A lot of guess work ITT instead of reading
Welcome to /his/, take a sit
