Benquo

During the civil war around the Thirty Tyrants, a man named Aristarchus had 14 of his sisters, nieces, and cousins sheltering in his house as refugees.

The land had been seized by enemies.

There was no money and he saw no way to borrow because he had nothing productive to spend it on.

He couldn't feed 14 people on nothing.

Socrates noticed that the women already knew how to work wool.

He told Aristarchus to borrow capital, buy materials, and put them to work.

Now there was a reason to borrow, and they did.

Xenophon says the suspicious glances turned to smiles, the household became productive and harmonious, and eventually Aristarchus came back to Socrates delighted, reporting that the only complaint was that he was now the sole member of the household eating the bread of idleness.

In another episode, a man is harassed by lawsuits because of his deep pockets, but has a poor friend who's articulate and virtuous.

Socrates advises him to pay his friend to start suing the people who are suing him, as a deterrent.

The cross-examination and the practical advice are not two different activities by two different Socrateses.

They are both what it looks like when a living mind engages with the world.

Whether the world presents a man-performing authority he cannot account for, or a household full of hungry refugees sitting next to a loom.

At his trial, Socrates gave his own account of what he had been doing.

In the Apology, he makes his limited claim to wisdom.

Craftsmen really are wise about some things, but he doesn't think that kind of wisdom is relevant to his interests as a free Athenian trying to participate in deliberations about public matters.

Others falsely claim and believe themselves to have scientific knowledge of ethical or political truths.

Socrates can claim distinctive wisdom only insofar as he clearly knows himself not to know such things.

This is usually read as a philosophical thesis about the limits of human knowledge.

It is a man on trial for his life, explaining to the jury that the people who condemned him are exercising lethal authority on the basis of knowledge they do not possess, which makes implementing any standard impossible.