Prophets and philosophers

The way of dialogue was a special way od seeking that valued the spoken word and gave a secondary role to writing.Today,the thinker is a writer,then,the thinker was a speaker.Socrates rxplainned that just as a painting,unlike a living person,cannot respond to questions,so too the written word is lifeless,but the spoken word,"an intelligent word graven in the soul...can defend itself,and knows when to speak and when to be silent..The living word of knowledge...has a soul...of which the written word is no more than an image."So the thinkert" will not seriously incline to 'write' his thoughts' in water' with pen and ink,sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others."

At his trial Socrates was not charged with being a member of a sect or the author of subversive writting,But he heard" voices" and was accused of unorthodox teaching in his interviews with Athenian youth.The irony of the trial and death of Socrates still challenges us.Hehad repeatedly risked his life on the battlefield,fighting for Athens in the Great Peloponnasian Wae.Yet he had become the gadfly of the state and then outraged citizens by asserting the superiority of individual reason over conventional wisdom.And he gave his life willingly in deference to the laws of his little community.

job finally confessed his inability to undertand and judge the will of god,while Socrates dield for the right to awaken his fellow Athenians to their ignirance.But while job finally acquisced in his own ignorance.Socrates in his last words begged his judges:"when my sons are grown up,Iwould have you trouble them,as i have troubled you,if they seem to care about riches,or anything,more than about virtue;or if they pretent to be something when they are really nothing...the hour of departure has arrived,and we go our ways_I to die,and you to live.Which is better God only knows."