Finally, I went to the craftsman, for I was conscious of knowing practically nothing, and I knew

that I would find that they had knowledge of many fine things.

In this, I was not mistaken.

They knew things that I did not, and to that extent they were wiser than I.

But gentlemen of the jury, the good craftsmen seemed to me to have the same fault as the

poets. Each of them, because of his success at his craft, thought himself very wise in other

most important pursuits, and this error of theirs overshadowed the wisdom they had,

so that I ask myself on behalf of the oracle whether I should prefer to be as I am,

with neither their wisdom nor their ignorance, or to have both.

The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am.

All right, that is Socrates' apology. You may have recognized it.

If you've been with us for a while, we did a whole episode on the apology of Socrates,

his recorded speech, or at least Plato's report of what he said, what Socrates said in front

of the tribunal that would decide his fate, and of course the Athenians did condemn Socrates

to death for dishonoring the gods of the city and corrupting the youth.

And we are on, I don't know where we are now, we've been adopting this format here on this show,

where we do a little bit more exploring and let ideas take us where they may.

And so we have been on a kind of Plato's cave kick for a while now.

And I've been doing it that way because in the longer lifespan of young heretics of the show,

this is the classical education that you never knew you were missing.

And I really want you to have a firm grasp of some of the texts that are really central in my view

to the Western canon. And I don't want to just kind of skim over them.

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