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Socrates as Provocative Gadfly
- Plato portrays Socrates as an annoying gadfly who challenges people's ignorance publicly.
- Socrates provokes deeper self-examination by revealing interlocutors' unrecognized ignorance.
Sources on Historical Socrates
- We know Socrates mainly through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes' accounts, each biased.
- Plato's portrayal likely best reflects the historical Socrates' provocative teaching style.
Socrates as a Peculiar Figure
- Socrates is a sui generis figure: strange, peculiar, neither divine nor fully human.
- Plato presents him as admirable yet deeply flawed and not simply a role model to imitate.