Читать книгу Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O'Shanters - Martin Hannan - Страница 63

‘I know enough to know that I will never know enough’ is a rough approximation of the greatest piece of wisdom enunciated by Socrates (469–399BC). His school in ancient Athens became the centre for a new type of philosophical learning, and his most famous pupil, Plato, recorded many of his master’s musings.

The man himself was an oddball. Apparently quite ugly, after serving as a soldier, he took to walking round Athens barefoot and stinking as he refused to wash daily. His Socratic method of philosophical inquiry has influenced much of western thought, yet the man himself appears to have been a walking disaster area, upsetting people in power. Ordered by the Athenian authorities to kill himself in punishment for ‘corrupting the youth’, he calmly drank poisonous hemlock.