Short Paper on Socrates

Short Paper on Socrates

  1. Did Socrates’s philosophical lifestyle have the potential to “wake up” Athenians in a way that could have been useful to that society?
  2. Does the importance of being awoken in that way justify the extreme manner that Socrates chose to live and die?
  3. Do you agree that (to use a famous phrase from the eighteenth century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant), awakening an individual–or an entire society–from “dogmatic slumbers” is a constructive and useful role of raising probing philosophical questions? Is there a significant opportunity for philosophers or others to play this kind of constructive role in our own society?