China Social Science Review

No.4, 2023

Between Ignorance and Knowledge: Socrates in “The Apology” and “Symposium”

(Abstract)

Hao Chunpeng

By comparing with the wisdom of ignorance of Socrates, it can be found that the history of philosophy, after Plato and Aristotle, seems to have embarked on a metaphysical path that gradually deviates from everyday philosophy. Philosophers began to move further and further away from the nature of man as the “in-between,” with their understanding of it “alienated” to knowledge and method as the object. This is, for Heidegger, a forgetting of the true nature of being. In a way, Socrates’ wisdom of ignorance, which understands knowledge as virtue, recalls the foundations of philosophy and constitutes a reflection on the history of philosophy, which has become increasingly academic, intellectualized, and normative.