What Socrates’ ‘know nothing’ wisdom can teach a polarized America
This is the birth of “epistemic humility” in Western philosophy: the acknowledgment that one’s blind spots and shortcomings are an invitation for ongoing intellectual investigation and growth.
Socrates taught that being humble about one’s own views was a necessary step in searching for truth – perhaps the most essential one. That was and perhaps still is a revolutionary view, because it forces us to challenge preconceived ideas about what we believe, what we worship and where we tap meaning. He placed himself in the middle of Athenians’ sharply polarized debates about what truth and goodness were, and he was the one who got hit.
“Humility like darkness,” wrote American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, “reveals the heavenly lights.” Put another way, humility about the verity, accuracy and wisdom of one’s ideas can reveal the fact that others have understandable reasons for thinking as they do — as long as you try to see the world as they are seeing it. In contrast, arrogance tends to extinguish the “heavenly light” about what we still don’t fully understand.
Being humble about one’s position in the world is not an invitation for a post-truth, anything-goes opinion free-for-all. Truth – the idea of truth – matters. And we can pursue it together, if we are always open to being wrong.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/socrates-know-nothing-wisdom-teach-151040543.html
