Socrates:
The Dichotomy between Aristophanes and Plato’s Depictions

Ignorance: the condition of being uninformed or uneducated; this basic definition is crucial to understanding one of the most controversial figures in ancient Athenian society: the philosopher Socrates. The man’s entire life was devoted to proving the fact that no one actually knew what they thought they did; that everyone lived in ignorance. This viewpoint earned Socrates many enemies, so many that even a renowned playwright, Aristophanes, decided to exploit the situation. He wrote his critiquing play of Socrates called The Clouds; a scathing criticism that the philosopher would partially attribute to his future indictment on charges of impiety and corrupting the
Yet how do they differ from us, except that they do not write decrees? STREP: What then? Since you imitate the chickens in all things, won’t you eat dung and sleep on a perch? PHEID: It’s not the same, sir, and it wouldn’t seem so to Socrates either (Lines 1407-1432).”

This passage explains the logic behind Pheidippides’ unwarranted assaults but unfortunately, does not convince his father that he is right. Strepsiades finally loses all faith he had in Socrates’s teachings when his son tries to justify beating his mother with the same argument (1445-1450) Stirred to action, Strepsiades and his slave Xanthias march over to the Thinkery and set it ablaze much to the dismay of Socrates and his fellow sophists, thus marking the end of the play (1490-1510). In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, the philosopher is seen from a different viewpoint. The dialogue takes place during his trial in Athens; the charges against him being impiety and corrupting the Athenian youth. In part one of the Apology, Socrates begins by refuting the charge of corrupting the youth by arguing that deliberate corruption of the youth is an illogical plan. He goes on to explain the reasoning behind his interrogation of the Athenian citizens; it was to obtain an answer for the paradox proposed by the Oracle of Delphi. This paradox, that an ignorant man could be also the wisest of men, was obtained after Socrates’s friend