The Death of Socrates

Socrates, virtually single-handedly, became a revolution in the world of thought when he started asking questions to his cohorts that showed not only that they didn't know the things they thought they knew, but that they didn't even know how to know the disciplines about which they were supposed to be wise. His extraordinary quick-wittedness and his unmatched ability to pierce through arguments, often showing the unintended consequences and internal contradictions that would follow from his adversaries' ways of thinking, gained him the unfavorable disposition of many powerful men in Athens, leading ultimately to the trial in which he would be sentenced to death after having been found guilty of corrupting the youth. This is a quick biography of the ancient philosopher.

Finally, the following is a very interesting dramatization of the trial and the last days of Socrates, including an interview with the master himself, which I took from the book Great Moments in History.

And there you have it, Socrates brilliantly cheated death... by dying. No wonder the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard based his philosophy dissertation, titled On the Concept of Irony, on Socrates.
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