Did Socrates’s philosophical lifestyle have the potential to “wake up” Athenians in a way that could have been useful to that society?
Socrates compared Athenians to a dazed, sluggish horse that could possibly be awakened by the persistent biting of an (annoying!) fly. This idea of Socrates as a transformative “philosophical gadfly” inspired many who have read about Socrates’s life and death. Your formal writing assignment this week is to write a 600-900 word essay that answers each of the following questions: […]






