Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Protagoras', 'Speaking of Objects' and 'Apology of Socrates'

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2 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 3. Value of Knowledge
The most important things in life are wisdom and knowledge [Plato]
     Full Idea: It would be shameful indeed to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity.
     From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 352d)
     A reaction: He lumps wisdom and knowledge together, and I think we can take 'knowledge' to mean something like understanding, because obviously mere atomistic propositional knowledge can be utterly trivial.
The only real evil is loss of knowledge [Plato]
     Full Idea: The only real kind of faring ill is the loss of knowledge.
     From: Plato (Protagoras [c.380 BCE], 345b)
     A reaction: This must crucially involve the intellectualist view (of Socrates) that virtuos behaviour results from knowledge, and moral wickedness is the result of ignorance. It is hard to see how forgetting a phone number is evil.