"The Dismantling of Wisdom"
"Mommy what's this? Where does it come from? What does it do? Why? Why? Why? Why is it just like that?", this series of questions are heard everyday throughout this country and even abroad in many different languages, from many different little voices as an attempt to understand. The desire to understand something often turns into a quest for knowledge and wisdom that leads one to different sources with various questions in hopes that our desire to understand will be fulfilled. However, in Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates the reader finds Socrates asking questions not to gain knowledge or wisdom, but to dismantle wisdom.
Through his constant questioning and challenging of thoughts and responses Socrates is attempting to reveal to the subject of his questions that they are not truly as wise as they believe themselves to be. The similarity of the dialogue between Socrates with Euthyphro and that of a parent and their child is astounding when the end result of each dialogue is analyzed. At the end of Socrates dialogue with Euthyphro, Euthyphro is frustrated and will no longer agree to try to explain the definition of piety to Socrates. In addition towards the end of the dialogue Euthyphro accuses Socrates of being Daedalus; thereby inferring that no matter what he says Socrates finds away of twisting them around and/or invalidating them. Euthyphro's response of frustration and unwillingness to continue on answering questions is almost identical with that of most parents once they've gotten to the fifth why and have realized that they have exhausted either their realm of knowledge or their capability to explain the answer.
The differen ...